Annals of Homeland Security

[Theophylact]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- On the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices, President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins.

Buried in documents justifying Bush's 2005 budget proposal released Monday is an Environmental Protection Agency acknowledgment that his proposed cut "represents complete elimination of homeland security building decontamination research."

The agency said in the documents that Bush's proposal will "force it to disband the technical and engineering expertise that will be needed to address known and emerging biological and chemical threats in the future."

The toxin ricin was discovered in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office Monday. Intensive testing of the Tennessee Republican's office mailroom in the Dirksen Senate Office Building has so far failed to locate the deadly poison's origin.

The discovery -- the second such attack on Senate offices since 2001 -- came the same day the president's budget was released. The EPA this week joined the FBI and 100 Marines from the corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force to investigate, clean up and collect all mail from all congressional offices as a precaution.

White House budget office spokesman Chad Colton said Thursday that each of the administration's budgets, including its 2005 proposal, has "invested substantial resources" into researching ways of preventing and responding to bioterrorism.

But Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, whose office was the target of an anthrax-laced letter in October 2001 when he held Frist's job, said he was surprised by Bush's proposal to eliminate the research program.

"It is a stunning example of the budget choices this administration has made, where tax cuts for elites are more important than public health or adequate homeland security," Daschle said Thursday.

In 2001, the EPA oversaw the first government building decontamination of its kind: a $23 million cleanup of anthrax bacteria found in Daschle's office mailroom. The nine-story Hart Senate Office Building was closed for three months before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared it safe.

Around the nation, five people were killed and 17 sickened after coming into contact with letters containing anthrax. Anthrax-laced envelopes were mailed in the fall of 2001 to government and news media offices, including those of Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

The EPA also worked with postal officials and other experts to decide how best to decontaminate the Brentwood postal facility in Washington and the Trenton postal facility in Hamilton Township, North Jersey.

The EPA gained responsibility in 1998 for cleaning up buildings and other sites contaminated by chemical or biological agents due to terrorism.

Environmentalists said eliminating the research program would be irresponsible.

"When it comes to the EPA budget, these people are so reckless with the red pen that they'll chop out even programs essential to protecting Americans from terrorist attacks," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, an advocacy group. "Building decontamination has been EPA's homeland security role."

[whitebeard21]

Halliburton/kellogg/brown&root do not do building decontamination.