Bio Threat: Worse Than You're Told: Christopher Ruddy

Anyone who believes these attacks were significant is foolish, delusional or both.

The death of 5,000 Americans is no small matter. But the casualty list of Sept. 11 is small compared to what could have happened, and what may happen.

I am baffled that in the wake of Sept. 11 the major media, and some government officials, continue to downplay the significance of ongoing events.

The media have given great coverage to such non-issues as racial profiling, Jerry Falwell's comments, how misunderstood Islam is, and other matters that don't deal head-on with the present crisis. The American people are very reasonable, as long as they have the facts. But that’s not what they are getting from CNN and the rest of the media pack. Here are some stories the heartland of America would like to see on CNN:

Instead, as America faces the new biological threat of anthrax, the media are flooding the airwaves with experts and government officials saying "no need to worry folks, anthrax is hard to make, hard to deploy, can’t hurt you, no need to worry, yadda, yadda ..."

Recently, I spoke with Dr. Byron Weeks. Dr. Weeks is a retired Air Force colonel. He has the distinction of having been the youngest flight surgeon in the Air Force during the Korean War.

After years of military service, and after serving in several senior medical posts in the Air Force, including hospital commander at the U.S. Air Force Base, Bitburg, Germany, Dr. Weeks retired to private practice.

Since the late 1970s, Dr. Weeks has been specializing in biological warfare. He has lectured and written on the subject. He has also given many warnings about its dangers.

In my conversations, I found much of what he said startling. He says exactly the opposite of what we hear from the "don’t worry" p.c. crowd. For starters, Dr. Weeks believes America is woefully unprepared for an anthrax attack -- one that he says could kill millions.

Dr. Weeks has consulted with the former head of Russia’s bio-weapons program, Dr. Ken Alibek. He knows what capabilities the Russians developed over a decade ago -- and what Russian friends like the Iraqis likely have access to.

According to Weeks, the Russians developed a "weaponized" form of anthrax that is hearty, doesn’t break down easily in sunlight or heat, and can be easily dispersed.

But anthrax, Weeks said, is the not the greatest threat. He also talks about the danger of bubonic plague, easily manufactured and deployed. Also dangerous, he says, is smallpox.

As far the so-called government "stocks" of smallpox vaccine and antibiotics, Dr. Weeks dismisses these as insignificant. He told me what he believes will happen when a significant outbreak occurs, perhaps with 100,000 cases or more.

The reported antibiotic supply for 2 million cases will likely arrive too late to be effective -- amidst panic and other problems.

Dr. Weeks suggests that as the gravity of the attack sinks in among political and military leaders, they will decide NOT to dispense the stocks.

Because they know that once the small amount of antibiotics is used up there will be none for the U.S. military and for them, the political elites. The decision will be made not to deplete the stocks. The epidemic will rage, and many will die.

Two weeks ago, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson claimed that there was no need to worry about a biological attack because the antibiotic stockpile is set aside for 2 million cases. He said this was more than sufficient.

Fast-forward to this past week: Thompson announced he is seeking to increase the antibiotic stockpile to 10 million cases. If 2 million was enough just two weeks ago, why the sudden need for a supply for 10 million?

Weeks knows the truth: Even 10 million may not be enough for a country of 280 million souls.

Weeks advises directly -- and counter to what the talking heads are saying on TV: Make sure you have a supply of Cipro, the best antibiotic for countering anthrax, for you and your family. Don’t depend on the government.

One reason not to count on the government is how inconsistent the official line has been.

Consider what officials were saying about the threat of biological weapons before Sept. 11.

Last week, I came across a paper prepared for the U.S. Air Force’s Air War College by Lt. Col. Lansing E. Dickinson, entitled "Military Role in Countering Terrorist Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction."

In his brilliant and often prescient 68-page report published in 1999, Col. Dickinson lays out the facts about the threat of biological and other weapons of mass destruction.

The terrorist threat is real. Some say it is only a question of time before terrorists use weapons of mass destruction against our military forces. Secretary Cohen in the Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review concluded "the threat or use of chemical and biological (CB) weapons is a likely condition of future warfare, including in the early stages of war to disrupt U.S. operations and logistics. ... This requires that the U.S. military continue to improve its capabilities to locate and destroy such Chemical/Biological weapons, preferably before they can be used, and defend against and manage the consequences of CB weapons if they are used."

Most experts agree terrorist groups are more likely to use chemical or biological weapons versus a nuclear weapon. This is due to the ease of acquisition, inexpense, and easier methods of delivery. Bruce Hoffman, Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, says, "previously, terrorism was not just a matter of having the will and motivation to act, but of having the capability to do so -- the requisite training, access to weaponry, and operational knowledge. ... Today, however, the means and methods of terrorism can be easily obtained at bookstores, from mail-order publishers, on CD-ROM, or even over the Internet. Relying on such commercially published or readily accessible ... manuals and operational guides ... the `amateur' terrorist can be just as deadly and destructive as his more professional counterpart."

The chief advantages of Chemical/Biological weapons are the unrestricted availability of the necessary information, the relatively small resources needed, and the ability to test the product. There are no meaningful controls on the availability of chemicals, and what little control exists over pathogenic cultures can be overcome in a variety of ways. Perhaps most important is the fact that the chemical and biological materials can be produced under the cover of an apparently legitimate commercial venture such as a small research company, fine chemical manufacturer, or bio-medical laboratory.

As for what the U.S. government really thinks about anthrax, Lt. Col. Dickson writes:

Brigadier General John Doesburg, the former Director of the Joint Program Office for Biological Defense, says, "Anyone who makes home-brewed beer can make anthrax. Anthrax is a deadly toxin that, depending on the quantities used, can disable and kill thousands of people within hours or days. ... Another agent that could be in the enemy's arsenal is staphylococcus enterotoxin B (SEB) -- an incapacitant that, if it goes into the lungs, causes a fever of 106 degrees within an hour to three hours. The force will go into immediate malaise, but the agent will not kill them. If they ingest it, they will have severe diarrhea and vomiting."

The most effective means of delivering toxic agents is through aerosol clouds. Kupperman and Smith state that "aerosol dispersal technology is easy to obtain from open literature and commercial sources, and equipment to aerosolize biological agents is available as virtually off-the-shelf systems produced for legitimate industrial, medical, and agricultural applications. With access to a standard machine shop, it would not be difficult to fabricate aerosol generators and integrate components to produce reliable systems for dispersing microorganisms or toxins.

Others suggest dispersing agents with cropdusters or through building air ventilation systems. The OTA [Office of Technology Assessment] study sums up the biological threat by stating, "Standard biological agents for covert sabotage or attacks against broad-area targets would be relatively easy to produce and disseminate using commercially available equipment, such as agricultural sprayers."

I have reprinted these lengthy excerpts so that you may compare them to what the media talking heads are telling us today: Biological weapons are difficult to make, difficult to deploy, and difficult to die from.

You can believe the media if you like. I would tend to believe Dr. Weeks and Lt. Col. Dickinson. They don’t care if CNN invites them onto a show, they are just revealing the truth as they see it.

Smallpox Attack Exaggerated

By Steven Milloy

Concern over the possibility of terrorist attacks involving biological agents—especially the smallpox virus—is developing into full-fledged hysteria. Sen. Bill Frist claimed last week that a smallpox attack could kill 40 million Americans.

But a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, slated to appear in the November-December issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases and detailed here for the first time, should provide some relief to a worry-worn public.

The CDC researchers say smallpox appears much less infectious than commonly thought. This assessment calls into question the widely publicized results of last summer’s bio-terrorism war game called "Dark Winter" – a primary rationale for the current scare mongering.

Dark Winter was designed to simulate U.S. response to terrorism with smallpox. The exercise was developed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies and the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, and held at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. in June 2001.

Its participants, including more than a dozen current and former government officials and news media personalities, reacted to a make-believe smallpox attack.

Dark Winter began with a report that, on December 9, 2002, 24 persons reported to Oklahoma City hospitals with a strange illness. The CDC confirmed the illnesses as smallpox and the players reacted to control the epidemic. They pretended to fail so that, within two months after the epidemic started, three million cases of smallpox and one million deaths had occurred hypothetically.

Dark Winter ended with the collapse of interstate commerce, crowds rioting in the streets and the National Security Council discussing the need for martial law – a chilling scenario.

But like any other hypothetical exercise, Dark Winter is limited by the reality of its underlying rules and assumptions. One key assumption was that each person with smallpox would infect at least 10 other people and that those 10 people would each infect 10 more people and so forth. Dark Winter’s designers claimed this was a low or "conservative" assumption.

This assumption, and its use as the basis for the simulation, arises from Dark Winter participants at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. Center director D.A. Henderson likes to emphasize a 1970 outbreak of smallpox in Germany where one patient appeared to infect 17 others and a 1972 outbreak in Yugoslavia where one infected person infected 38 others.

But the authors of the new CDC study regard these infection rates as extreme and unusual. They call the Yugoslavia incident "probably a record number" and describe the German incident as caused by "close sustained contact in a hospital."

The CDC researchers looked at data from a number of different outbreaks around the world in the 1960s and 1970s. They report that most outbreaks averaged less than two persons infected per infectious person. Most outbreaks recorded less than one person infected per infectious person. In all outbreaks, some infected persons did not transmit a symptomatic case of smallpox to another person.

The researchers cite the last case of naturally occurring smallpox in October 1977 as further evidence of the difficulty for one person to infect others. Of the 161 persons who had contact with the infected person, 12 unvaccinated persons had face-to-face contact. None of the 12 became ill with clinical cases of smallpox.

Although evidence exists that one person can infect many others and that many in the U.S. are susceptible to smallpox—meaning they’ve never been exposed or vaccinated—the CDC researchers concluded "the probability that the average transmission rate will be greater than two cannot be demonstrated reliably."

So should we blindly accept the Dark Winter scenario when the war game may have been critically flawed?

This is not to say that the possibility of bio-terrorism via smallpox should be ignored. But the hysteria grounded in Dark Winter should cease. It should be replaced with a more sober approach to the possibility of a smallpox attack.

The U.S. Government has accelerated the order of 40 million smallpox vaccines—a rationale move, and not only to squelch an epidemic. Dark Winter players believe that, "Forcible constraints on citizens may likely be the only tools when available vaccine stocks are depleted."

Physicians, hospitals and local public health officials should be calmly reminded about the symptoms of smallpox and actions to take in case of a breakout. Channels of communication between local and national public health officials need to be improved. The sooner infected individuals can be isolated and populations can be vaccinated the sooner an epidemic can be halted.

None of these actions, however, require the public to be panicked.

(dueling experts)

Chris Ruddy is a very excellent journalist; It is very telling about our times that journalists like him are shunned by the major media and even that those who employ him are discriminated against and slandered publicly.

He is very much right too in this article. The high quality anthrax sent to Daschle shows that our enemy has solved the largest technical problems necessary to kill tens of millions or more Americans. The remaining problems of distributing the stuff effectively are much smaller technical problems compared to the process of getting anthrax into the fine powder. The anthrax sent to Daschle is finely ground and able to be distributed through the air, it is very different from the previously mailed anthrax. That's why so many of Daschle's people are effected. The American nation now is staring directly in the face a situation where we have evidence that our enemy can kill us in a huge way.

praise god by the name of jesus for there is no other force that can or will save us from this. Perhaps we have failed, we have allowed sin to dominate us and our nation both. When we consider public issues and try to manage our nation's affairs as a free people we only consider images unrelated to reality, we make prominent journalists whom we know lie and obfuscate, we've elected leaders whom we know to be decadent liars, we've bragged arrogantly even while we ignore the downtrodden and poor in this world. We are not worthy, but god may have mercy and spare us. Perhaps we are being taught that we must do better.

as the article said there is a very limited supply of this anti-anthrax antibiotic drug;

Our government should've already contracted Bayer to produce it 24 hours a day; Our government should see to it that production is increased dramatically with perhaps other suppliers helping. Our government did studies that showed that if somebody evil were to get a hold of the high quality anthrax that can be distributed in the air, then just 4 DC9's could be modified to act as crop dusters and that just these 4 planes could kill half the American population in one night. Of course it takes a week or two to die after the initial attack, but a one night attack could kill us in this manner according to a study done by our own government.

We now know that our enemy has produced this fine powder anthrax in an effective way because Daschle received it in the mail. It is the height of foolishness and arrogance both for us to believe that our enemy doesn't have a knife at our throat right now.

People in rural areas are relatively safe. People in big cities are not. Don't fool yourselves, president Bush himself said that he would preside over these dark days in American history. I must admit President Bush is a huge target, the terrorists may try to kill him, it's not as if he doesn't share in the risk. But they are not honest with us when they downplay the risk.

If we were to publicly acknowledge the threat, and discuss it, then maybe a lot of Americans would leave the cities and live in the rural areas instead.

We knew years ago that we could place devices all over our country to sense the anthrax or other biological/chemical weapon to provide an early warning system. With such an early warning system in place along with planning and preparation we could arrange for mass application of the anti-antrhax drug immediately after an attack. We didn't think that this was a priority, just as we don't think it's a priority to shoot down nuclear missiles when they come across the ocean towards us, just as we didn't think it was a priority to stop American companies from showing the Chinese how to destroy America with nuclear weapons. We are a people who thought it was more important to focus our news completely on the president's perverted relationship with a 22 year old woman instead of real issues.

Instead of blaming the democrats we should realize that the republicans equally share the blame. We should realize that our news media is not going to serve us and that we need different organizations instead to patronize for our news.

President Bush himself thought it was more 'Compassionate' to put tens of billions of dollars into a Department of Education that we know already contributes nothing at all to education than it is to increase defense spending so that we could prepare. Image is everything you know in American politics. The real issues are things that only bad people, conservatives and other hate-mongers think about or discuss.

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