Feds Still Fear Anthrax Attack

NewsMax ^ | 12-29-03

[Prince Charles]

Feds Still Fear Anthrax Attack
NewsMax.com
Monday, Dec. 29, 2003

In the wake of a mock attack exercise last month that showed antibiotics in some cities could not be distributed and administered quickly enough and that a widespread anthrax attack could kill thousands, administration officials say they have growing consternation about terrorist attacks with the deadly germ.

According to a report in the NY Times, the officials said that anthrax spores could be more widely dispersed than previously believed. Furthermore, during interrogations with terror suspects in custody, it has come to light that the al-Qaeda terror group has been actively seeking weapons-grade anthrax.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, confirmed to American officials that Al Qaeda, and particularly its second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, a physician, had long been anxious to acquire biological agents -- particularly anthrax, said the report.

"Scarlet Cloud," the recent mock-atack exercise did, however, determine that the country was better able to detect an anthrax attack than it was two years ago, said officials who spoke to the Times.

"The exercise was designed to be very stressful to the system, and it was," a senior government official said.

Adding to the stress is the sense of impending danger that has been generated by disturbing facts on the record:

• Al-Qaeda agents have in the past inquired about renting crop-dusters to spread pathogens, especially anthrax.

• Computer hard drives and handwritten notes seized at the home where Mohammed was arrested included an order to buy anthrax.

• Mohammed told questioners that until the American invasion, al- Qaeda's anthrax program was up and running in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

"Nothing so far translated implies access to the most dangerous microbial strains or to any advanced processing or delivery methods," recently wrote Milton Leitenberg, a biological warfare expert at the Center for International and Security Affairs at the University of Maryland, in the journal Politics and Life Sciences.

Meanwhile, veterans of America's biological warfare program of the 1950's and 1960's maintain that the now touted ability of anthrax to spread widely was consistent with research conducted decades ago --

"The new generation of biological and chemical experts is simply unfamiliar with the earlier studies," William C. Patrick III, a former head of product development at Fort Detrick, Md., told the Times.

[chicagolady]

Don't worry Prince Charles, I am sure someone will create a vaccine to cure any anthrax attack.