Paid to Worry

March 12 - Dr. Stephen Younger is a mild-mannered, slightly bookish federal bureaucrat unknown to the general public. But as much as any other government official, he is the man charged with worrying about how to head off the next terrorist attack. As the director of the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Agency, Younger spends about $2 billion a year looking for ways to deter and defend against terrorism. He is not alone, of course; from President Bush on down, there are 40-plus government agencies and 43 congressional groups and a new Office of Homeland Defense jostling to fight the war on terror. But Younger, a former nuclear-weapons designer who studies ancient societies and reads Trollope on the side, may have a better feel than anyone in Washington for the nature and dimensions of the threat—and what to do about it.

STUDYING THE PROBLEM anew in the wake of 9/11, Younger has concluded that “everything we thought we knew turned out to be wrong.” He had assumed, for instance, that a nuclear explosion in an American city would produce the most casualties. Not so: the biggest killer would be a biological attack, which could claim upwards of one million victims, he says. A chemical attack is the next-worst scenario, spreading a lethal cloud that humans cannot outrun. “The good news is that it is much more difficult to make nuclear weapons than most people think.” The bad news, he says, is that almost any industrialized state can get chem-bio weapons virtually at will.

Younger puzzles over “why there has not been a mass attack on the United States with chemical or biological weapons. Part of the answer, I think, is human nature. I think terrorist groups want to see an explosion—dramatic proof of their deed. Though, arguably, it would be more terrifying to have people dropping dead in the street from a silent bio weapon.” Younger thinks that many people have underestimated the significance of the anthrax attacks last fall. He asked bio weapons experts to rate the skills required to send letters containing spores of anthrax milled so fine they would float upward as the letter was opened. Their disturbing answer: “beyond state of the art.”

One of Younger’s harder challenges is to “anticipate the threat.” He notes that “we have missed every history-changing major surprise in the last 15 years: the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and then the (9/11) terrorist attacks.” To not miss the next one, Younger is putting together scholars from arts and literature, history and psychology, religion, economics and sociology, along with professional “simulators” to create most-likely models and scenarios. “We have 5,000 years of recorded history,” says Younger, who enjoys studying the ancient Sumerians in his spare time. “Really, human beings haven’t changed.” As a more urgent task, his agency is already putting sensors in U.S. cities to detect bio-agents.

But Younger also plays offense. He is at work on a project to put high-precision conventional warheads on ballistic missiles so that critical targets—a terrorist meeting in progress, say, or a missile ready for launch with a bio-warhead—could be struck anywhere in the world within 30 minutes of detection.

And if another attack on the United States happens? Younger’s agency is preparing “play books” for state and federal agencies. He is also writing leaflets telling citizens the simple steps they can take to increase their chances of survival. For instance, in a nuclear attack, he says, it is best to lie down on the ground facing away from the blast—and to stay there. The shock wave will pass over—and then come whipping back. In a chemical attack, the best refuge is the second floor, not the basement; chemicals are usually heavier than air and sink to the ground.

Younger, 50, has worked on all sides of the doomsday business. A double major in philosophy (“my hero is Thomas Aquinas”) and physics at Catholic University, Younger switched to theory after nearly burning up the lab while experimenting with laser beams. Bored by writing papers for the National Bureau of Standards, in 1982 he answered a mysterious ad in the Washington Post for physicists looking for “exciting” work. It turned out to be Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recruiting talent to build nuclear weapons. In the ’90s, when the cold war ended, he risked his career by going to Russia—some 35 times—to meet with Soviet nuclear-weapons scientists who were suddenly looking for work.

The prevailing ethos in the government at the time, as one George H.W. Bush administration official put it, was “let them starve in the dark.” Younger, by contrast, recognized that some might instead sell their talents to terrorists and rogue states. “The first couple of times I went to Russia I said, they’re just like us,” Younger recalls. “After six or eight times, I said, I don’t know these people at all.” Studying Russian culture, reading its literature, Younger slowly came to know his opposites—and to be trusted by them. He, more than any other single person, is widely credited today with helping to keep the Russian nuclear labs intact, averting a catastrophic Diaspora of bomb-making talent.

Rising to become director of the U.S. nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos in 1998, Younger agreed last year to take the job running the DOD’s Threat Reduction Agency after a friend, a navy admiral, told him that if he declined, he would relinquish “his right to criticize the government for ever more.” Younger replied, ‘That’s too great a price to pay. I will accept.”

Far from being overwhelmed by the enormity of his task, he seems to approach it as an intriguing scientific puzzle to be solved, piece by piece. That said, he acknowledged that he has been reading his morning liturgy—the traditional version—from the Episcopal prayer book with greater attention since September 11. He believes, he says, that mankind is basically “good.” But, he adds, “very, very violent.”

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.