Posted on 12/11/2001 10:58:28 AM PST by rdavis84
Monday, December 10, 2001
The Honorable Henry J. Hyde, Chairman
Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of Representatives
Re: Investigation into Responsibility for Recent Anthrax Incidents
Dear Chairman Hyde:
While I was able to monitor only a portion of the Committee’s hearings of Wednesday, December 5, 2001 (as broadcast by C-SPAN), at which Messrs. Spertzel and Alibek and Ms. Harris testified concerning responsibility for the recent anthrax incidents, I was struck by the absence of references by the witnesses and by members of the Committee to certain matters of potential significance. Interestingly, these appear also to have been ignored in course of law-enforcement and related investigations of these incidents and by the news media.
Two fundamental lacunae of inquiries into the recent anthrax incidents can be identified:
First, the recent incidents are assumed to be without historical precedent. Yet, such an assumption is false logic. Because there is a lack of documented cases does not mean there have been no incidents.
Second, the institutional or historical context of these events has been largely ignored. In fact, whether of domestic or foreign origin, these anthrax incidents emerge within the rich context of current and historical, foreign and domestic activity involving lethal biological and chemical agents, and the elements comprising this context are interrelated across time and geography.
Because of these lacunae, traditional law enforcement methods of “investigating crimes” is dangerously inadequate.
Having devoted substantial attention to this nexus of issues over the past two years,1 I take the liberty of outlining briefly specific matters which the Committee and other bodies with oversight and law-enforcement responsibility should consider.
1. Ill-founded presumption of the uniqueness of recent events – Official public pronouncements and media commentaries have repeatedly stated that the recent incidents of inhalational-anthrax-initiated illness and death represent the first to be observed in the United State since 1976.2
That the last officially-recognized case of inhalational-anthrax infection occurred in 1976 cannot be interpreted to mean that no cases of inhalational-anthrax infection have occurred in the interim. Rather, any cases of inhalational-anthrax infection which have occurred over this period have not been officially recognized and recorded.___________________
1 At the outset I should indicate that my interest in this subject emerged from the serendipitous intersection of two initially independent lines of inquiry. One originated in my role as an economic consultant to a major national law firm defending a client in litigation initiated in the aftermath of an airplane crash, which eventually led to an inquiry into the nominally unrelated (and unexplained) death of a businessman in Oklahoma (requiring intensive study of its possible causes, including inhalational anthrax). The second, which I was motivated to pursue, initially, as a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, involved the privatization of the state’s Biological Products Laboratory, the sole U.S. manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. I have been assisted in these increasingly intertwined inquiries by a Russian investigator.2 See, e.g., J. Jernigan et al., “Bioterrorism-Related Inhalation Anthrax: The First 10 Cases Reported in the United States,” Emerging Infectious Diseases (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), vol. 7, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 2001), http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol7no6/jernigan.htm.
In fact, it is highly likely that that a previous incident of illness or death attributable to inhalational anthrax would not have been correctly diagnosed. First, it is unlikely that inhalational anthrax would even have been considered to be a possible cause. Thus, the consensus statement of a DHHS-initiated working group on anthrax as a biological weapon observed: “Early diagnosis of inhalational anthrax would be difficult and would require a high index of suspicion.”3 In the absence of “a high index of suspicion” associated with a particular person’s illness or death an attending physician or medical examiner would be unlikely even to test for anthrax as the cause.
____________________
3 T. V.Inglesby et al., “CONSENSUS STATEMENT-- Anthrax as a Biological Weapon, Medical and Public Health Management,” JAMA, vol 281, no. 18, pp. 1735-45 (May 12, 1999).
Second, a failure to test for anthrax early in the course of the disease renders it difficult if not impossible to identify anthrax later in the course of the disease, after the patient has been administered antibiotics. Thus, the working group’s consensus statement notes: “In experimental animals, once toxin production has reached critical threshold, death occurs even if sterility of the blood-stream is achieved with antibiotics.”4 In short, in the absence of an early diagnosis anthrax may never be identified as the cause of the illness.
____________________
4 Inglesby et al., p. 1737.
This conclusion is reinforced by analysis of three of the first ten recent cases:
The diagnosis of anthrax was established in three patients without growth of B. anthracis from clinical specimens. In all three of these cases, proper cultures were obtained only after initiation of antibiotic therapy. The diagnosis in these patients was established by a history of exposure or occupational and environmental risk with a clinically compatible syndrome, by the identification of B. anthracis in pleural fluid, pleural biopsy, or transbronchial biopsy specimens by immunohistochemical staining with B. anthracis-specific cell wall and capsular antibodies, or by identifying B. anthracis DNA by PCR on pleural fluid or blood. Serologic data from ELISA available for one patient with inhalational anthrax also demonstrated a >4-fold increase in levels of serum antibody (IgG) to the PA component of anthrax toxins.5 [Emphases added.]____________________
5 Jernigan et al.
Notably, the more sophisticated means of identification have been developed only relatively recently. Even in the three referenced recent cases these techniques would not have been employed in the ab-sence of the “high index of suspicion” arising from the prior identification of anthrax in a significant number of cases involving a narrowly-defined population (postal workers and mail handlers, comprising eight of the ten cases) over a relatively brief period. Thus, Jernigan et al. conclude: “The clinical presentation in these patients was variable and often resembled a viral respiratory illness, but the interpretation of the initial symptoms in the context of a possible exposure to B. anthracis often [but not invariably] led to an early diagnosis.” [Emphasis added.]
In short, we do not know how many inhalational-anthrax deaths occurred in the United States between 1976 and September 2001. We know only that the officially-assigned cause of any inhalational-anthrax death which did occur either has been “unknown” or is incorrect.6
____________________
6 A possible example is provided by the case of an Oklahoma businessman (whom I will identify here only as X) who, quite innocently, found himself involved in a dispute which led to his discovery of pervasive public corruption, originating in Oklahoma but extending to the nation’s capital. As a cooperating witness for the FBI and through his private litigation, X threatened the public revelation of this criminal activity. However, before this corrupt nexus could be exposed, X suddenly became ill, exhibiting symptoms which, in retrospect, appear quite consistent with inhalational anthrax, and quickly died. Although unable to identify a cause of death, the state’s medical examiner ruled that the manner of death was “natural”; as a result, no criminal investigation was conducted. When, more than two years later, I challenged this determination, the medical examiner changed the manner of death to “unknown.” Only four years after X’s death have I been able to secure the necessary court orders to permit an independent toxicological examination, which will be undertaken shortly.X’s case might appear to be one in which a “high index of suspicion” should have been present. However, his attending physicians were entirely unaware of the dispute in which he was involved, of his role as a cooperating witness for the FBI and of the fact that his discoveries were likely to have significant political consequences. For reasons which are unexplained, the agents of the FBI with whom he had worked also failed to conduct an investigation and, in fact, strongly encouraged the staff of the medical examiner to characterize the manner of X’s death as natural.
In light of the unlikelihood of detection of an incident of inhalational anthrax infection it would be rather surprising if inhalational anthrax had not been employed in the commission of a homicide. The only obstacle would be the difficulty of procuring the means.
In this context, Dr. Alibek’s stress on the relatively modest knowledge and facility requirements for the production of deliverable anthrax is particularly significant. Moreover, criminal deployment does not require criminalproduction. Lethal (“weapons-grade”) anthrax, used quite legally for such purposes as animal tests of the efficacy of vaccines and the development of antibiotic regimens,7 is certainly available in the U.S. and abroad. Thus, employment of anthrax as a lethal agent requires only the participation of a person with access to these existing stocks. If foreign governments have been able to induce agents of the FBI, CIA, Defense Department and INS to engage in espionage against the United States, as they have, then it would certainly not be surprising if a criminalelement had been be able to induce a much less closely-monitored employee of a government, academic or industrial laboratory, here or abroad, to provide weapons-grade anthrax to be utilized in the commission of a crime. With negligible accountability and recordkeeping “a few spores missing” would be unnoticed.
____________________
7 This point is significant in that the Biological Weapons Convention [BWC] is frequently claimed, erroneously, to prohibit the development of “weapons grade” biological agents. In fact, Public Law 101-298 (18 USC Sec. 175), the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which implements the BWC, explicitly exempts “the development, production, transfer, acquisition, retention, or possession of any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes.”
2. Failure to consider those engaged in the development and use of lethal biological agents – Despite the plethora of media and investigative inquiries, no attention has been given to obvious intelligence clues. Close sources indicate that no investigator or official inquiry has followed up on these few examples:
In early March 2000 at his home in Irvine, Orange County, California, Larry C. Ford, M.D., died of a shotgun blast. His death was later ruled a suicide, notwithstanding the fact that his firearms had supposedly been confiscated by the police several days before, after the attempted murder of his business partner, a crime for whichhe was a principal suspect. Only later was it revealed that Ford had served as a consultant to both the CIA and the chemical- and biological-weapons program of the South African Defense Forces, headed by Wouter Basson. Ford’s contributions to Basson’s program included lecturers on converting ordinary items into lethal biological weapons. After Ford’s death his Irvine neighborhood was evacuated for several days as federal authorities excavated a weapons’ bunker in Ford’s yard and removed samples of various toxic biological agents found in Ford’s refrigerators. The specific biological agents found in Ford’s home have never been identified by the authorities, nor have they reported if any toxic agents were found in the university and other laboratories used by Ford. An initially frenzied FBI investigation quickly became quiescent. One Ford associate reports that Ford had been in contact with BioPort Corporation, sole U.S. manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. Recently discovered evidence indicates that, shortly before his death, Ford was actively preparing to move his medical-scientific work abroad. Close Ford associates expected a revival of the investigation after the onset of the recent anthrax incidents but have observed no evidence of any current Ford-related activity on the part of the FBI or other agencies.8
____________________
8 Ford is of particular interest because of the plausibility of his association with persons placed at risk by the Oklahoma businessman, X, referenced in an earlier footnote. Among those whose interests were threatened by X’s discovery of public corruption and other crimes was X’s erstwhile Oklahoma partner, Y, who has substantial business interests in Orange County, California; Ford and X’s former partner were prominent members of the same church. After X’s death, Y, who had had no biotechnology experience, formed a biotechnology company, just as Ford was seeking a new corporate umbrella which would permit him to evade obligations to his then-partner in California (the target of the attempted murder in February 2000).
Ford’s colleague Wouter Basson, M.D., headed the South African biowarfare program from its inception in the late 1970s until it was nominally abandoned in 1993. Arrested in 1997 on charges of murder, embezzlement and drug violations, Basson’s trial commenced in 1999 and continues today. Sessions of Basson’s South African trial were held in Florida in January 2000 to hear testimony of attorney David R. Webster, who had created a complex of off-shore companies and accounts through which Basson operated.9 Revelations in the course of his trial include: Basson claims to have enjoyed access to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases [AMRIID] and Porton Down, respectively the principal U.S. and U.K. chemical-biological warfare establishments. Basson was involved in several undertakings (of an undetermined nature) with Libyans and made numerous trips to Libya, continuing after his program was terminated (leading to successful British and U.S. demands that he be reemployed, and controlled, by the South African government). He also had established relationships in the U.S.S.R. and in a number of eastern and western European countries. South African responsibility for a major anthrax outbreak in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1979 is currently being investigated. Basson is alleged to have developed such means of delivery of biological agents as, e.g., anthrax-laced cigarettes.
____________________
9 Although the Jacksonville sessions of the Basson trial were held in the U.S. Courthouse, the public was excluded, nominally on orders of the presiding South African judge but with the evident encouragement of the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to assist in the proceedings.
On November 23, 2001, the New York Times reported the death, two days earlier, of Vladimir Pasechnik, former director of the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, a component of the Soviet biowarfare establishment, Biopreparat. Pasechnik had defected to Britain in 1989. In England Pasechnik was employed by Porton Down until he joined in the creation of a private company several years ago. With the exception of the Times obituary Pasechnik’s death went unreported for almost a week. Interestingly, the Times was apparently informed of Pasechnik’s death by the U.K. Ministry of Defense representative on the team which had debriefed Pasechnik after his defection.10 In Russia the National News Service commented: “The chief developer (while in Soviet Union) of the military grade plague as well as several successful types of binary weapons died, according to the New York Times obituary, from the stroke, although the fact that the newspaper quotes a former member of British intelligence rather than the doctor, makes people to believe in the other versions of death of the person who knew too much.”11 While the “other versions” of Pasechnik’s death and the substance of those matters of which he “knew too much” are not revealed, the coincidence of Pasechnik’s death and the recent rash of anthrax-related illnesses and deaths is certainly interesting.
____________________
10 The Time’s source, Christopher Davis, M.D., has since left the U.K. Ministry of Defense and now is employed in the U.S. by Veridian, a private defense consulting firm.11 National News Service (www.nns.ru/chronicle), Moscow, 27 November 2001, 08:58.
In the early 1980s a significant part of the “civilian” component of the British Porton Down complex, the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research [CAMR], was privatized as Porton International, a creation of Wensley Haydon-Baillie, who reputedly became one of the 50 wealthiest persons in Britain as a result of what was alleged to have been political favoritism in the acquisition of government assets by Porton International. At least by the early 1990s Ibrahim and Fuad El-Hibri acquired an interest in Porton International and/or related Proton Down spin-offs, Porton Products and Speywood Holdings, and were instrumental in obtaining anthrax vaccine in the U.K. for Saudi Arabia. In 1997 the U.S. Department of Defense awarded a defense-biologics contract in excess of $300 million to Dyn-port LLC, which is a joint venture of Porton International and U.S. defense contractor Dyncorp. By the late 1990s Haydon-Baillie had lost control of Porton International (accused of personal enrichment at the expense of the company), entered bankruptcy and been arrested for tax fraud. Haydon-Baillie’s current activities have not been reported, but his history is instructive with reference to the careers of those who have secured control of significant components of the biowarfare complex.
By a process reminiscent of Haydon-Baillie’s creation of Porton International, in 1998 Ibrahim and Fuad El-Hibri and Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., who had just returned from a posting as ambassador to the United Kingdom, created BioPort Corporation, which acquired the State of Michigan’s Biological Products Laboratory, the principal function of whichwas the production of anthrax vaccine for the U.S. Department of Defense. This “privatization” of a state laboratory was highly questionable in a number of respects. The managers of the public laboratory, director Robert Myers and deputy director Robert van Ravenswaay (an attorney on the state’s central administrative staff assigned to oversee the privatization process), appear to have insured that the successful bidder (one of only two final bidders) would give them a significant share of the ownership (as muchas 32 percent) of the new entity. AdmiralCrowe obtained his interest (approximately 13 percent) as what appears to have been a “gift” of the El-Hibris. Together, the ownership interests of Crowe and Nancy Grunenwald El-Hibri were claimed to give American citizens majority ownership, even prior to Fuad El-Hibri’s adoption of American citizenship. Although BioPort has yet to obtain FDA approval to sell a single dose of vaccine, the Department of Defense, immediately after the privatization, agree to a contract modification which increased the per-dose price from $3.50, charged by the state-owned lab, to $10.64, with “advance payments” to cover the cost of renovating the production facility. In the meantime, BioPort has been engaged in a vitriolic dispute with three members of the state lab’s scientific staff who claim a proprietary interest in the lab’s technology, in the course of which certain critical documents were claimed to have been taken by the disgruntled former employees. In mid 2000 a lab employee died of questionable causes.
Consideration of the issues which I have highlighted could have profound consequences for the scope, manner and effectiveness of the current terrorism investigation. To view recent incidents as entirely without precedent and as occurring outside of any meaningful historical, organizational and social context will be, at best, inefficient and, at worst, will doom the investigation to failure.
Should you, your staff or other appropriate authorities care to pursue these issues further, you will have my cooperation.
Sincerely,
Stephen P. Dresch, Ph.D.
Crowe is the turncoat who endorsed Clinton, taking off a lot of the draft-dodger heat. For that Clinton appointed him Ambassador to Britain. His subsequent payoff appears to be Bio-Port. Whatever we find under this rock it is very likely to be very slimy.
Crowe is the turncoat who endorsed Clinton, taking off a lot of the draft-dodger heat. For that Clinton appointed him Ambassador to Britain. His subsequent payoff appears to be Bio-Port. Whatever we find under this rock it is very likely to be very slimy.
Coming up soon, sometime in Dec. supposedly, we'll see what Bush's FDA does.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Federation of American Scientists
revised December 10, 2001
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All the available evidence indicates that the source of the mailed anthrax, or the information and materials to make it, is a US government program.
ANTHRAX STRAIN
All letter samples contain the same strain of anthrax, corresponding to the AMES strain in the N. Arizona State University database (which has been used for identification). The Ames substrain possessed by N. Arizona State is referred to herein as the "reference strain." That strain was obtained from Porton Down (UK) in the mid-90's (the sample was marked "October 1932"); Porton had gotten it from Fort Detrick.
A 2000 paper by M. Hugh-Jones, PJ Jackson, P. Keim et al says that the Ames strain played a central role in the US BW program [i.e., before 1969]. Hugh-Jones says he learned that from David Huxsoll, Former Commander, USAMRIID. However, he says Vollum 1B was the strain stockpiled (at least in the early days of the US biological weapons program). The search for better strains undoubtedly continued, leading the US program to prefer the Ames strain because of its high virulence.
The Ames strain is used now in the US biodefense program for testing vaccines etc.
The Ames reference strain in the N. Arizona collection is probably the earliest Ames substrain (isolated in 1925 and sealed in 1928, perhaps subcultured in 1932).
There are at least four Ames substrains, all under the control of Fort Detrick. They were isolated by laboratories in Ames, Iowa but were not subsequently studied or distributed by them.
Undoubtedly the confusion about Ames substrains could be cleared up by USAMRIID, but they have been evasive.
WEAPONIZATION
"Weaponization" is used here to mean preparation of the form of anthrax found in the Daschle letter: fine particles, very narrow size range, treated to eliminate static charge so it won't clump and will float in the air. The weaponization process used was extraordinarily effective. The particles have a narrow size range (1.5-3 microns diameter), typical of the US process.
The extraordinary concentration (one trillion spores per gram) and purity of the letter anthrax is believed to be characteristic of material made by the US process.
A reporter who writes on anthrax vaccine has privately stated that four labs have told him that under the electron microscope the appearance of the sample is like that of unmilled anthrax spores. Milled samples are identifiable because they contain debris. The optimal US process did not use milling.
The US weaponization process is secret-Bill Patrick, its inventor, says it involves a COMBINATION of chemicals.
The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Washington DC) is studying the anthrax using an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscope, which can detect the presence of extremely tiny quantities of chemicals; traces of several chemicals have been found.
The Senate sample contains a special form of silica used in the US process. It does not contain bentonite (used by the Iraqis).
All the letters probably contained the same material. The clumping of the anthrax in the two letters mailed on Sept 18 (to NBC and the NY Post) probably resulted from the letters getting wet in the course of mail processing or delivery, according to Army scientists. This conclusion is strengthened by the similarity of the Florida anthrax (the first to be observed, probably also mailed on Sept 18) to that in the Daschle letter, mailed Oct 9.
ANTHRAX PRODUCTION
A study of genetic drift at certain locations in anthrax is underway at Northern Arizona State University. The results are expected to give an idea of how many times the letter anthrax had replicated, in comparison to the reference strain-ie, whether it was grown on a very large scale (as in a State program) or on a very small scale, as would be likely if recently made by a terrorist.
Analysis of trace contaminants could also indicate the scale/method of production (ie, liquid medium, in a fermenter, or solid medium, on petri dishes, a likely method for small-scale preparation).
It has just been reported that the complete sequence has been determined for the genomes of both the anthrax used in the Florida attack and the Ames reference strain to which it corresponds. This work was done under government contract by the Institute for Genomic Research, a private non-profit organization. The results have not been made public but they are in government hands and there has been no retraction of the oft-repeated official statement that the letter anthrax matches the Ames reference strain.
In addition, sequence data will reveal whether the Ames reference strain is a mixture of types, as sequencing has revealed to be the case for another anthrax strain. If so, the proportions of the mixture may differ from lab to lab and could be used to identify the source.
Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in late October that investigators can identify with great certainty which lab produced the anthrax, but it will be a laborious, time-consuming process. (Chicago Tribune, 27 Oct 01).
SOURCE LOCATION
Contrary to early speculation, there are no more than about 20 laboratories known to have obtained the Ames strain from Fort Detrick. The names of 15 of these laboratories have been found in the open literature (see Appendix). Of these, probably only about four in the US might possibly have the capability for weaponizing anthrax. These include both US military laboratories and government contractors.
INFORMATION REGARDING THE PERPETRATOR
Analysts believe the letters were not written by a Middle-Easterner. The FBI publicly conjectures that the perpetrator was a lone, male domestic terrorist, obviously one with a scientific background and lab experience who could handle hazardous materials.
The perpetrator must have received anthrax vaccine recently (it requires a yearly booster shot), whether or not he made the material himself, because filling the letters was a dangerous operation. The vaccine is in short supply and is not generally accessible. Vaccination records must be available.
The perpetrator appears to be a forensic expert. In preparing and mailing the letters he successfully covered every personal trace.
There was only one week between Sept 11 and Sept 18, when the first two letters (and probably another letter, never found, to AMI) were postmarked. This suggests that the anthrax was already in hand before Sept 11.
Did the perpetrator have advance knowledge of the Sept 11 attacks? Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has said that he does not believe al Qaeda was responsible for the anthrax attack, and other public officials have increasingly indicated that the perpetrator was probably domestic.
PUBLIC STATEMENTS
At first, US officials provided miscellaneous bits of information, some conflicting; then denied some of the earlier information, then clammed up. They now have a great deal of information that has not been made public. Under pressure from leaks, they have started a gradual release of information again.
The US rejected a UN resolution offered by France to condemn the anthrax attack, on the grounds that it could have been domestic terrorism.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services said in October that some of the relevant information is classified, and some is restricted by the FBI.
John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, spoke on Nov. 19 at the opening of the five-yearly Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva. At a press conference following his talk, he said "We don't know, as I say in the statement, at the moment, in a way that we could make public, where the anthrax attacks came from." This statement, as well as other information, indicates that US officials DO know where the anthrax came from.
The FBI says it is now investigating government and contractor laboratories possessing the Ames strain, and individuals who had access to them. Col. Arthur Friedlander, Sr. Research Scientist at USAMRIID, said no one there knows how to make dry weaponsized anthrax.
According to the New York Times (2 Dec 01), a law enforcement official close to the federal investigation called the concept of a government insider, or someone in contact with an insider, "the most likely hypothesis…it's definitely reasonable." An American official sympathetic to this thesis was quoted in the same article saying that, in addition to military laboratories, "there are other government and contractor facilities that do classified work with access to dangerous strains, but it's highly likely that the material in the anthrax letters came from a person or persons who really had great expertise. We haven't seen any other artifacts that point us elsewhere."
Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, recipient of one of the anthrax letters, has been in frequent contact with investigators. He said on Dec 8 that the perpetrator was probably someone with a military background.
The perpetrator is probably an American microbiologist who has access to weaponized anthrax or to the expertise and materials for making it, in a US government or contractor lab. He does not live in or near Trenton, but more probably in the Washington, DC area. Trenton is probably accessible to him (it is a stop on the Amtrak line that runs along the East coast), but if he is smart enough to handle anthrax he is smart enough not to mail it from his home town.
The anthrax in the letters was probably made and weaponized in a US government or contractor lab. It might have been made recently by the perpetrator on his own, or made as part of the US biodefense program; or it may be a remnant of the US biological weapons program before Nixon terminated the program in 1969. Weaponization of dry anthrax after 1972, when the Biological Weapons Convention was signed, could be construed as a violation of the Convention.
The motive of the perpetrator was not necessarily to kill but to create public fear, thereby raising the profile of BW. He simply took advantage of Sept 11 to throw suspicion elsewhere. The letters warned of anthrax or the need to take antibiotics, making it possible for those who handled the letters to protect themselves; and it seems unlikely that the perpetrator would have anticipated that the rough treatment of mail in letter sorters etc, would force anthrax spores through the pores of the envelopes (which were taped to keep the anthrax inside) and infect postal workers and others. The choice of media as targets seems to have been cleverly designed to ensure publicity about the threat of biological weapons. One can only speculate that the perpetrator may have wished to push the US government toward retaliatory action against some enemy, or to attract funding or recognition to some program with which he is associated. The choice of Senators Daschle and Leahy as targets may be a clue that has yet to be deciphered.
The US government has undoubtedly known for some time that the anthrax terrorism was an inside job. They may be reluctant to admit this. They also may not yet have adequate hard evidence to convict the perpetrator. In opposition to most of the countries of the world, the Bush administration turned down a Protocol to monitor compliance with the ban on biological weapons last July. In so doing it reversed the policy of the previous three administrations aimed at strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention, which lacks verification measures. The action put the US at odds with most of its allies and fueled accusations of US unilateralism, according to the Washington Times (Dec 5). The anthrax attacks have had no effect on administration policy. At the start of a five-yearly Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference last month, Under-Secretary Bolton caused dissention by accusing several parties to the Convention of violating it. On Dec 7, the last day of the conference, the US doublecrossed its European allies by reversing a compromise agreement of the previous day, thereby causing an uproar and derailing the Conference. According to European diplomats, failure of the conference sends the message that the international community is not willing to enforce the ban on biological weapons.
Conclusions: A recent report by the Congressional GAO, as well as many recent statements by military and non-governmental experts in the BW field, holds that terrorists are unlikely to be able to mount a major biological attack without substantial assistance from a government sponsor. The recent anthrax attack was a minor one but nonetheless we now see that it was perpetrated with the unwitting assistance of a sophisticated government program. It is reassuring to know that it was not perpetrated by a lone terrorist without state support. It is not reassuring, however, to discover that a secret US program may have been the source of that support, and that security is so dangerously lax in military or defense contractor laboratories. US government insistence on pursuing and maintaining the secrecy of elaborate biological threat assessment activities is undermining the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention and encouraging biological weapons proliferation in other countries, which in turn may support bioterrorist attacks on the American public.
APPENDIX
LABORATORIES THAT HAVE WORKED WITH THE AMES STRAIN OF ANTHRAX
(Information obtained from open sources)
USArmy Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (Ft. Detrick, MD)#*
Dugway Proving Ground (Utah)#*
Naval Research Medical Center and associated military labs (MD)#
Battelle Memorial Institute (Ohio; plus laboratories in many other locations)#*
Duke University Medical School, Clinical Microbiology Lab. (NC)
VA Medical Center, Durham (NC)
USDA laboratory and Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine, Ames (Iowa)
LSU College of Veterinary Medicine*
Northern Arizona State University (Arizona)*
Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IL)
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque (NM)*
Institute for Genomic Research (MD)
Chemical and Biological Defense Establishment, Porton Down (UK)*
Center for Applied Microbiology and Research, Porton (UK)* Defense Research Establishment, Suffield (CA)*
In addition, CDC, NIH, and Los Alamos and a few others may have the Ames strain.
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* Obtained through a FOIA request by the Washington Post (article Nov 30, 01)
# indicates laboratories in the US that are probably more likely than the others to have weaponization capabilities.
Probably too uncomfortable because the evidence of a sinister group pulling politician's strings, and we pay them to do it, is getting simple enough for numbnuts TV watchers to grasp.
No, strike that, it's just Overload. They're gonna git all upset any day now, vote the buggers out if it doesn't straighten out! :-)
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