AMERICA THE VULNERABLE

By Bruce W. Nelan

Saddam Hussein's unwatched arsenal of poisons and germs can redouble the threat to America, and the terrorists are already among us. That message fairly screamed at Americans last week. In the shadow of the World Trade Center, the target of a bombing in 1993, New York City began the week with a drill involving 600 police, fire fighters and FBI agents responding to a mock attack by terrorists supposedly using deadly VX nerve gas, which Iraq has produced in vast quantities. The following day, in Fairfax, Va., a jury convicted Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani, of assassinating two CIA employees in 1993. The day after that, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the "mastermind" of the World Trade Center bombing, and his driver were found guilty in a federal court in New York City.

An aftershock of the CIA-case conviction hit in Karachi, Pakistan, where four American auditors were shot to death, along with their driver, as they went to work at the local office of Union Texas Petroleum. In morning rush-hour traffic, two gunmen with assault rifles pulled up beside the Americans' station wagon, got out and riddled them with bullets, then drove away. It could have been a replay of the way Kasi killed two people and wounded three as they waited to make the turn into CIA headquarters one morning almost five years ago. A Pakistani group calling itself the Aimal Secret Committee said it had acted in retaliation for Kasi's conviction. In Fairfax, jurors in the case asked the judge if they were in danger, and he responded by sequestering them and ordering their names sealed.

In other words, yes, they are in danger. Americans no longer believe their country is immune to terrorism, as they did for decades, and they are spending big money to fight the threat--more than $400 million in federal counterterror programs alone. State and local efforts are becoming more serious too; the New York City drill is an example. But experts insist the country is essentially insecure. The borders are porous, the government cannot keep track of routine visa violators, and the population is forever on the move. The U.S. is a sea into which evildoers can dive and remain submerged. Terrorists, like anyone else, have little difficulty obtaining guns or the simple makings for oil-barrel truck bombs. Now the new terror could be an even more lethal destroyer--microbes. Germ weapons are small, cheap, easy to hide, simple to dispense and horribly effective. They may be the threat of the near future.

Officials in Washington are deeply worried about what some of them call "strategic crime." By that they mean the merging of the output from a government's arsenals, like Saddam's biological weapons, with a group of semi-independent terrorists, like radical Islamist groups, who might slip such bioweapons into the U.S. and use them. It wouldn't take much. This is the poor man's atom bomb. A gram of anthrax culture contains a trillion spores, theoretically enough for 100 million fatal doses. The stuff can be spread into the air with backpack sprayers or even perfume atomizers. The U.N.'s specialists say that 100 lbs. of anthrax bacteria sprayed around a city of 1 million could kill 36,000 people within a week. And Saddam has produced anthrax in large amounts, along with botulinum, a poison that kills by paralyzing the victim, and aflatoxin, a carcinogen.

Even before the U.S. went to war in the gulf, the CIA was eyeing the bioweapons threat apprehensively. In a now declassified study sent to the White House in September 1990, the agency warned that Iraq could use "special forces, civilian-government agents or foreign terrorists to hand-deliver biological or chemical agents clandestinely." Saddam would hardly produce such weapons if he never intended to use them. And when might he unleash them? The CIA thought it would be when he felt his survival was in danger. "He would want to take as many of his enemies with him as he could," the agency predicted.

In an interview with TIME last week, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz brushed off any suggestion that his government might engage in terror attacks. "No," he said, "we are not in the business of terrorism. You know that." But then he went on to speculate that various groups might sympathize with Iraq's plight and strike on their own. "There are," Aziz said, "people in other countries who are not satisfied with the situation about Iraq. If a military attack is waged against Iraq, that will increase the resentment against the Americans, and more people would be in that mood."

If such attacks do come, they will find the U.S. largely unprepared. In 1996 Congress passed the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act, which called for government action to block assaults on U.S. territory and help for local governments to prepare to deal with them. The Pentagon is beginning to work on better detectors, masks, filtration systems and vaccines. The Army and Marine Corps have created special task forces to respond to germ or gas threats. But earlier this year President Clinton reported to Congress that local authorities are not properly trained. In fact, he said, the first police and paramedics on the scene were likely to become casualties themselves. Antidotes and other medical supplies should be stockpiled around the country, but so far they are not.

New York City was getting with the program last week, trying to face up to the danger. The city has spent millions for training and equipment since the World Trade Center bombing, much of it from grants provided by the Defense Department, which paid for the VX exercise. Even so, some experts are unimpressed. "The New York region," says Isaac Yeffet, former head of security for El Al, the Israeli airline, "is no better prepared for a terrorist attack today than it was before the World Trade Center bombing." Building security is very poor, and "the airports are still wide open." Police commissioner Howard Safir agrees about the airports. "The airlines are responsible for their own security," Safir says, "and that is wrong. If you hire $5-an-hour security guards, you get $5 security."

In Washington the emphasis is on perimeter security: more guards, better fences, metal detectors, no-parking zones around key buildings. At the CIA there is a big, new guardhouse outside the gate. The agency has also beefed up what is probably the most effective line of defense, its efforts to gather every sort of intelligence to pinpoint terrorist plots before they can be carried out. The Counter Terrorism Center, run by the CIA and FBI, has been expanded and put on round-the-clock operation.

What more should be done? If America is less than secure against attack, what is the underlying cause? Well-meaning government officials and company presidents quickly learn that there is a limit to how much security Americans are willing to tolerate and pay for. They don't take long to mutter about living in a garrison state. Convenience and cost cutting are two near holy values in the U.S., and its citizens are not going to accept constant delays and higher costs to live in a city or ride on public transportation. That is, until they are engulfed in a catastrophe, and then it will be too late.

--Reported by Edward Barnes/New York, Elaine Shannon and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by EDWARD BARNES/NEW YORK, ELAINE SHANNON AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON