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Bioterrorism and the United States: We are Vulnerable
Remember the ricin scares and anthrax attacks in this country?
In 1995, two members of a Minnesota militia group were convicted of possession of ricin which they had produced themselves for use in retaliation against local government officials.
In 2001, anthrax was delivered by mail to U.S. media and government offices. There were five deaths as a result.
These events seem so long ago.
After the anthrax attacks, George W. Bush announced an ambitious effort for the government to develop an early-warning network against these dangerous agents. Although $21 billion has been spent, the results have been mixed:
BioWatch, which had cost nearly $1 billion to install and operate by then, took up to 36 hours to gather and analyze potential pathogens. Worse, its sensors had falsely warned of dozens of germ attacks in major cities — including at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008.
But four years ago the Department of Homeland Security identified a Silicon Valley company, NVS Technologies. The company was working on “a portable device that would swiftly and accurately analyze air samples from sensors deployed nationwide, and determine whether they contained anthrax spores or other lethal germs,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The reviews by several scientists with the government were excellent:
‘NVS has done a tremendous job in fulfilling our requirements,’ Segaran Pillai, Homeland Security’s chief medical and science advisor, wrote in a seven-page internal report dated June 13, 2013. He recommended continued funding for NVS ‘to ensure a successful outcome for the Nation.’
Nevertheless, in February 2014 –six months before the NVS engineers were going to deliver a prototype-the work was stopped. The new person put in charge of Pillai’s division was Donald Woodbury. (Woodbury had spent much of his career at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which developed stealth technology and other sophisticated tools for the Pentagon.) He wasn’t convinced of the NVS technology and stated that the government could find other commercial technology and identify a better use of taxpayer money. He noted Pillai’s expertise, but felt it was a responsible decision regarding government resources, even after a report by the Inspector General John Roth in February 2015 that stated, “We did not identify evidence to substantiate any of the concerns.” By the end of 2016, Woodbury had retired from Homeland Security.
Meanwhile Biowatch still requires 36 hours to identify a germ, while the NVS Technology was supposed to work in less than an hour.
As a result of a contract dispute, a trial began on September 12 before an administrative judge of the U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals. Although the trial is scheduled to run for three days, results may not be forthcoming for weeks. NVS hopes to prove that the government acted in “bad faith,” which is defined as an “intentional dishonest act by not fulfilling legal or contractual obligations, misleading another, entering into an agreement without the intention or means to fulfill it, or violating basic standards of honesty in dealing with others.” I have learned that bad faith is difficult to prove.
For anyone who wonders if bioterrorism should be a serious concern, let me review the dangers of these substances:
Although there are more than 1,200 biological agents that could be used to cause illness or death, relatively few possess the necessary characteristics to make them ideal candidates for biological warfare or terrorism agents. The ideal biological agents are relatively easy to acquire, process, and use. Only small amounts (on the order of pounds and often less) would be needed to kill or incapacitate hundreds of thousands of people in a metropolitan area. Biological warfare agents are easy to hide and difficult to detect or protect against. They are invisible, odorless, tasteless, and can be spread silently.
This link also provides information on how these agents can be delivered, detected and protected against.
In reviewing this situation, I’m trying to figure out the reasons for the Donald Woodbury’s cancellation of a project that had met milestones, one that received exemplary reviews by those who had worked with the company, and that was about to provide a prototype. And no one was able to reverse his decision. To date, as far as I can tell, the BioWatch program is still unreliable.
My questions are:
Do you find the motivation for the cancellation reasonable?
What are the odds that the NVS Technologies will win its “bad faith” case?
Do you think the contract should be re-instated and the work should continue?
Do you think this kind of project against bioterrorism should be pursued?
What other thoughts do you have about this subject?
Published in General
Main thought I have is “why haven’t I heard about this before?”. Surely, some MSM time could be spent on this instead of the (COC) they spend it on. Do you have any links to look into it?
WillowSpring, the only article I could find was the LA Times link in the OP. Every other article was from there. But you’re right: why hasn’t anyone been talking about it? I guess I might have missed it when the company was first hired. And I doubt they’d want to brag about their “success” with BioWatch. Let me know if you can find anything else.
This is quite a story. If the ball was dropped for no legitimate reason, I’ll have to file it under government incompetence–similar to its incompetence in ensuring our protection relatively inexpensively from EMPs, a subject that we’ve discussed before on Ricochet.
I wonder why Donald Woodbury’s successor has failed to take up the NVS Technologies case. The LA Times doesn’t say–the article stops rather abruptly with Woodbury’s retirement at the end of 2016.
It was the backgrounds of the people involved that I was interested in. I have done some checking on LinkedIn and based on that, unless something else is going on, I would trust the judgement of Segaran Pillai (who has worked extensively with biological vulnerabilities ) over that of Woodbury who seems to be into “Innovation management”. That seems a bit generic.
Thanks for bringing attention to this.
Good point, Marci. Now that a judge has reviewed the case (which I believe would have just ended) we should know in a few weeks whether he determines that bad faith was involved. At that point, I’m not sure what will happen.
Thank YOU for doing the additional research, WS. We agree.
When I read a story like this, I wonder about where it would go if we could follow the money. Was this a case of a product that would earn millions in government contracts for connected investors but turn out to not work as advertised in the real world? There’s no shortage of examples here where lobbyists and bureaucrats work together and get the government to spend money on something worthless, only to see those same bureaucrats retire to a comfortable second career working for the now established company. Or is this a case of established interests conspiring to crush a upstart, game-changing product? Again, there’s plenty of examples of big companies working behind the scenes to make sure that the government doesn’t upset the apple cart and damage their profit line. Where does the money lead this time? Did Woodbury retire from DARPA to take a job with whoever makes money off of Biowatch? How many of the people trying to get this approved ended up working for NVS Technologies? How much of a cynic am I that I’m not even considering the possibility that this isn’t one of these two scenarios?
Not more cynical than I am, Nick! This isn’t buy overpriced toilets! The sad part is that we are left less secure at this point. I hope we are both wrong, but the facts definitely don’t add up.
I am going to join you on this. But, it’s great we have an incorruptible FBI to look into this kind of thing… Oh wait…
[Groan]