War with Iraq would halt incineration, Army says

This story was published Wed, Nov 20, 2002

By Karen Zacharias
Herald Oregon bureau

PORTLAND -- Destruction of chemical weapons would likely stop immediately if the country goes to war with Iraq, an Army official said Tuesday.

John Ferriter, of the Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, made the remark while fielding questions from a crowd of 100 people gathered at a conference in Portland on the weapons destruction program.

The reason weapons incineration would be stopped is because the Army does not have ground-to-air missiles at the eight sites where the nation's 24,000 tons of chemical weapons are stored, Ferriter said, so they could not stop an aerial attack.

"We want to minimize the potential hazards by reducing how much agent we have sitting there to be processed," Ferriter said.

The Umatilla Chemical Depot, just 30 miles south of the Tri-Cities, stores 3,717 tons of deadly chemical agents.

The Portland conference includes representatives from the Department of Defense, the Army and the Pentagon, who have joined with state officials and local citizen advisory groups from Oregon, Alabama, Maryland, Utah, Colorado, Arkansas, Kentucky, Johnston Atoll and Indiana to discuss safety of the chemical weapons stockpile.

Ferriter said if intelligence sources indicated there was a threat against one of the sites, additional military personnel would be moved to the site. The depots also would be closed to nonessential personnel, and chemical munitions would not be moved from storage to the incineration facilities.

Similar safety measures were imposed immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, as all the nation's depot sites were placed on the highest alert. The furnaces at Tooele, Utah -- the only plant burning chemical munitions at the time -- were shut down.

Ferriter said so far none of the nation's depot sites has been targeted for attack. But he said if someone flew a plane into
a bunker storing chemical munitions,
it could be a "spectacular, disastrous event."

While that's considered an unlikely scenario given increased airport security and the difficulty of hitting an igloo where munitions are stored, the Army is taking steps to prevent it.

For instance, Ferriter said, more than 13,000 tons of blister agent and VX were moved into more secure storage bunkers at five different sites after Sept. 11. Ton containers of mustard agent that previously were stored out in the open or in shedlike buildings at Umatilla were moved to storage bunkers.

Also, National Guard troops have been stationed to beef up security at the depot sites. Ferriter said he expects that military presence to remain at the chemical depots until the last munitions are destroyed -- not until 2012 at the earliest.

He praised the security forces. "They are doing a very important job for our country. Just think about what they are protecting and what would happen if somebody broke in and stole these things," he said.

That's exactly what officials in Utah were worried about earlier this fall when an intruder was spotted about a mile from the fence line of the stockpile at Deseret Chemical Depot.

Although the intruder never was found, he didn't get close to the stockpile, said Deborah Kim, chairwoman of the Utah Citizens Advisory board. "I think the stockpile is secure," she said.

Kim said she is more worried about the workers who are given access to the chemical munitions daily.

"What's the screening process for those people?" she asked.

Rigorous, Ferriter said. He said the employees must undergo random drug tests, random vehicle searches and extensive background checks, including a look into their financial dealings and family relations.

 

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