Then continue reading to see just what American officials are now warning could happen if a biotech "terrorist attack" does succeed in the USA -- the "disintegration" of American society. And as an article in yesterday's Washington Post outlines, the U.S. is already spending billions as it moves to become "fortress America" on land, as well as in space to come.

Foreign Report - 24 July 2001: A CONFIDENTIAL analysis of the possibility that the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could spread has been produced by the outgoing chief of research of the military intelligence service (Aman), Brigadier-General Amos Gilad.

Here are some highlights.

Aman's research department reckons that the chance that the Intifada might turn into a regional war is slim. However, if the armed forces implement an attack against the Palestinians, as some generals are recommending, the report predicts that "certain military steps will be taken by Arab countries in order to deter the Israeli army and mainly to calm down the mob".

Egypt: According to Aman, the new general secretary of the Arab League, Amro Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, is well-known for his anti Israeli stance. He would co-ordinate the implementation of Arab League agreements to defend an Arab sister attacked by Israel. The Arabs see the Palestinian Authority as an Arab independent state. Aman believes that the Egyptian 3rd Army will cross the Suez canal and move into the Sinai peninsula in a violation of the peace agreement with Israel. Such a move would force the Israelis to send at least two armoured divisions to defend Israel's southern border. This is still not a war between Israel and Egypt, but it is not far off.

Jordan: Aman does not expect Jordan to attack Israel. However, if the Israelis attacked the Palestinians, Jordan would put its developing relationship with the Jewish state in the deep freeze. Jordan might allow some Iraqi units to enter and form bases there. Jordan may even accept the temporary presence of an Iraqi expeditionary force as it did in 1967 and 1973.

Syria: Aman's report asserts that Syria does not want to be involved in a war with Israel. However, Aman warns that an Israeli military attack on the Palestinians will force Hizbullah to implement its promise to attack northern Israel. That would be answered by Israeli Air Force retaliation on Syrian targets in Lebanon. Such an Israeli attack would provoke a larger one from Syria. Aman claims that Syria tested a Scud missile carrying a chemical warhead in the Syrian desert three weeks ago as a warning to Israel.

Europe: After an Israeli assault on the Palestinians, Israeli and American interests all over the world would be targeted. So far, the Intifada has not reached Europe. Once the Palestinians are attacked, however, it will.

With all the signs pointing to a further escalation of the crisis in the Middle East, JID's regional correspondent has sent this report, which reveals the changing strategies of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. The prospects for peace appear very bleak indeed.

Intelligence Digest - 06 July 2001: Whether one marks the end of the US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli 'ceasefire' which began on 13 June with Israel's assassination of three Palestinians late on Sunday night or with the shooting of one Israeli and the deaths of two others which followed, it seems clear that this particular house of cards is on the brink of collaspe.

While the Israeli security cabinet met on Tuesday morning to reassess its plans, the press reported that no significant changes were made in defence strategy. But while there may be no Israeli bombing raid on the immediate horizon, there are notable signs that both Palestinian and Israeli leaders have effectively given up attempts to maintain the increasingly illusory ceasefire.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called the assassination of three men, one of them the Islamic Jihad activist Muhammed Bisharat, by Israeli helicopter gunships "a flagrant violation of the ceasefire". The midnight shelling of the car in which the three men were travelling is the first clear Israeli assassination since the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared over a month ago that it would stop all attacks not in self-defence.

Another Palestinian man was killed under suspicious circumstances in the centre of the West Bank town of Nablus last week. The activist, from Arafat's own Fateh faction, died when a bomb exploded in the public telephone he was using. Israel has denied any involvement in that killing.

Palestinian analysts are warning that Sunday's assassinations may mark the end of a tacit understanding between the Palestinian leadership and the Islamic hardline factions. After a suicide bombing on 1 June at a Tel Aviv nightclub that killed 22 Israelis, many of them teenagers, Arafat - recognising he was in danger of losing international support and under intense pressure from the USA - declared a ceasefire and set about the business of convincing the Islamic militants that bombings inside Israel could only hurt the Palestinian cause at this stage.

West Bank Hamas political leader Hasan Yusef said in a recent interview that he was called in by Palestinian intelligence and asked to observe the Palestinian call for an end to bombings. He said then that Hamas would "give Israel one more chance".

Other officials of Islamic groups who publicly challenged the decision were detained briefly by Arafat's Palestinian security service. The absence of operations inside Israel since that time has revealed the success of Arafat's deal.

Now, however, Israel has given Islamist military wings the excuse they need to resume operations.

US LAWMAKERS WARNED OF "DARK WINTER" IN CASE OF BIOTERRORIST ATTACK

WASHINGTON, July 23 (AFP) - A chilling scenario of possible national collapse was presented Monday to US lawmakers by a group of prominent security experts, who warned that a biological terrorist attack on US soil could bring the country to the brink of disintegration.

The panel, which included former deputy secretary of defense John Hamre, Oklahoma governor Frank Keating and former senator Sam Nunn, presented their conclusions after holding a two-day exercise code-named "Dark Winter," which featured a computer-simulated bioterrorist attack on three US states.

Members of the House Subcommittee on National Security closely listened as participants painted a picture of the world's most powerful nation descending into chaos in a matter of several weeks.

The game starts with a brief television report that about two dozen people checked into an Oklahoma City hospital with an unidentified illness. Doctors soon find the patients have smallpox, a highly contagious and deadly disease unseen in the United States since 1949.

Similar smallpox cases are reported in Pennsylvania and Georgia. By day six, 300 Americans are dead and 2,000 others are infected. Cases of smallpox are reported in Mexico, Canada and Britain, according to the scenario.

Meanwhile the US heath system is overwhelmed, the 12 million doses of smallpox vaccine quickly disappear, schools nationwide are forced to close, and public gatherings are limited due to fear of contagion.

Droves of Oklahomans anxious to flee stream toward Texas -- but the Texas governor, eager to protect his own residents, closes the border and deploys the state National Guard. Shots are fired.

As the standoff between Texans and Oklahomans deepens, a rift opens between federal and local authorities. Members of the US National Security Council suggest "nationalizing" the national guard, while state governors insist on keeping the local troops under their control.

On day 12 of the scenario, when the death toll reaches 1,000, interstate commerce grinds to a halt and stock trading is suspended. Demonstrations demanding more smallpox vaccines turn into riots. The United Nations moves its headquarters from New York to Geneva, Switzerland.

Less than two months after the outbreak, when the number of dead reach one million and three million more are infected, the president, played in the exercise by Nunn, gathers his top aide to considers imposing marshal law.

Dead silence reigned in the hearing room as Hamre and Nunn presented their findings with the help of colorful "emergency newscasts" prepared by the nation's leading television broadcasters, who also took part in the exercise, which took place at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C. in June.

"I think we felt it would cripple the United States if it occurred," Hamre said.

"We though we were really gathering together to talk about the mechanics of government," Hamre said. "What we ended up doing is thinking how we save democracy in America."

To Republican Congressman Benjamin Gilman, scenarios like this no longer belong to the realm of science fiction.

"Sadly, events of the last few years, with bombings ... in New York, Oklahoma City, have transformed the bioterrorism debate from the question of 'if' to the seeming inevitability of 'when," he said.

Nunn, who had sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee for more than two decades, said the exercise raised more questions than answers. If there is only one dose of smallpox vaccine for every 23 Americans, whom do you vaccinate? he asked.

"Do you seize hotels and convert them to hospitals? Do you close borders and block all travel? What level of force do you use to keep someone sick with smallpox in isolation?" he asked.

No clear answer was offered by those present.

As Terrorist Threats Rise, Powell Asks for $1.3 Billion More to Bolster Security

[Washington Post - Monday, July 23, 2001; Page A20] Since terrorist bombs destroyed two U.S. embassies in East Africa nearly three years ago, the State Department has spent $3 billion on security initiatives that include shatter-proof windows, high-tech screening devices and plainclothes surveillance teams at embassies around the world.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is proposing an additional $1.3 billion for even more security upgrades in the coming fiscal year as the number of intelligence reports on possible terrorist threats have grown higher than ever.

Last week, the State Department, citing a communications intercept, warned of a possible imminent terrorist attack in the Arabian Peninsula. Last month, U.S. officials ordered military forces in the Persian Gulf on the highest state of alert because of threats linked to Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden. The embassy in Yemen has been closed to the public for the past month, despite the recent arrest of nine suspected terrorists.

Worldwide, more than 70 embassies have been closed temporarily since terrorists linked to bin Laden detonated nearly simultaneous truck bombs outside the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998, killing 224 and wounding 4,600.

Suspected terrorists have become so bold and sophisticated, U.S. counterterrorism officials say, that it is now common for them to walk into U.S. embassies and pose as informants to assess security measures.

But State Department officials insist that an array of new security measures have deterred terrorist bombers and produced a vastly improved security consciousness on the part of U.S. diplomats.

"What really matters is the attitude of people toward security -- and the view that 'it will never happen to me' is gone," said Undersecretary of State Marc I. Grossman. "That's a big force multiplier. You can call that a defensive crouch -- but I don't think so. It shows we value the people working here."

One result of the new emphasis on security is that U.S. embassies increasingly resemble fortresses, set back from the street and surrounded by jersey barricades and imposing perimeter walls.

The embassy in Amman, Jordan, for example, is removed from every nearby building and surrounded by essentially three fortifications -- a ring of jersey barriers in the public roadway that runs in front of the building, an outer wall and an inner wall that surround it.

The embassy in Saudi Arabia is about 15 minutes from downtown Riyadh, in the middle of the "diplomatic quarter" -- a ghetto for embassies where entrances and exits are closely watched, particularly at night. There are separate guards and roadblocks on the streets leading into the area where American personnel live.

The embassies in Kuwait and Yemen follow a similar general layout, with outside security fences perhaps 50 yards or more from the actual embassy buildings.

Less visible are new counter-surveillance teams, staffed by foreign nationals, operating round-the-clock at virtually every embassy in the world. The teams watch for suspicious vehicles circling embassies, individuals taking photographs and other signs that U.S. facilities are under surveillance.

The counter-surveillance program was created by David G. Carpenter, a former high-ranking Secret Service official responsible for the president's security detail, who became assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security immediately after the embassy bombings in 1998.

"It's surveillance on the perimeter of our facilities -- a block, two blocks, three blocks in some instances," said Carpenter, who brought with him a belief that he could not protect those inside the walls of an embassy "without eyes and ears outside the walls."

Daily reports filed by the counter-surveillance teams combined with video produced by cameras that have been installed at most embassies give State Department security officers -- whose numbers will have increased by almost 50 percent by the end of fiscal 2002 -- the ability to assess the reliability of threat reports coming into embassies.

Last year, Carpenter said, the department investigated about 800 reports of surveillance or other suspicious activities on the perimeter of U.S. embassies.

"We try to run all of them to ground, establishing what made these people come and what they're doing there," Carpenter said. "We look at every threat as if this could be the one. You can't allow yourself to think, this is just another one of these" bogus tips.

But even with all the new security measures, Carpenter said, emergency action committees headed by ambassadors at every embassy are encouraged to temporarily shut down operations and review security precautions if credible intelligence exists to suggest that an attack may be imminent.

Yemen remains closed, except for limited consular functions, precisely because of just such hard intelligence, even though the facility in Sanaa is one of the first embassies to have been built to standards defined by a review panel on embassy security headed by retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman in the mid-1980s after the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut.

More than 80 percent of the State Department's 260 embassies and consulates still do not meet those standards, particularly the requirement for 100-foot setbacks from roadways.

But part of the $3 billion appropriated for security upgrades since 1998 has gone toward the purchase of land to broaden a defensive perimeter around embassies. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the State Department recently bought a gas station beside the embassy to deny would-be terrorists a possible staging ground for a truck bomb attack.

Jane C. Loeffler, author of a recent book, "The Architecture of Diplomacy," said implementation of the Inman standards and other security measures have served to isolate U.S. diplomatic missions from foreigners.

"Traditionally, our diplomats have wanted to be accessible, and our embassies have been prominently placed in foreign capitals," she said. "In order to do their work, they would have to be part of the community. The situation in which they find themselves increasingly isolated is definitely not in the interest of what we call diplomacy -- and what we see as the American image of a country that's open."

But current and former State Department officials deny that fortifying U.S. embassies with new security measures has created a fortress mentality in which diplomats decline to interact with foreign nationals out of concern for their safety.

"It's just not true -- and I've been in two embassies where we've proven it's not true," said Edward S. Walker Jr., who served as ambassador in Cairo and Tel Aviv before becoming assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the Clinton administration.

Far from a sign of weakness or a victory for bin Laden, Walker and other officials describe the layers of security at embassies as part of a new resolve to do what it takes to operate in spite of bin Laden's threats.

Closing an embassy for a day or two or putting troops on high alert should not be seen as victories for bin Laden, Grossman said. "The victory for bin Laden," he said, "is dead bodies."

Wyche Fowler Jr., a former U.S. senator from Georgia who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Clinton administration, said he was a strong supporter of new security measures and did not believe they impeded the diplomatic mission.

What does seem to be lacking from the State Department's response to threats and attacks by terrorists, however, is any consideration "of why people want to do us harm, why they want to bomb us."

"Until that question is addressed," Fowler said, "you have to take every precaution possible to protect the lives of Americans who are abroad."