Blair prepares for biological war threat

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of the smallpox vaccine after US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Iraq could counter military action with a biological terror onslaught.

The two leaders met at Downing Street on March 12 and exchanged intelligence about the possible threat from Iraq.

Cheney told Blair that intelligence experts had warned that the US and Britain would be the two main targets of biological warfare in the event of a conflict, London's Sunday Telegraph said.

US reports, according to the paper, suggested that Saddam Hussein would use all the weapons at his disposal if he was attacked.

Unlike the Gulf War, where he showed some restraint, this time he would know that the military action is intended to end in his death or capture, it added.

Two days after Cheney and Blair met, six government health officials, including Health Secretary Alan Milburn, met in London and decided to order inoculations against smallpox.

The Sunday Telegraph said that in the event of a war being launched against the West, Iraqi special agents would try to smuggle smallpox into Britain and release it in confined spaces such as the Tube (underground system) or cinemas.

The worst case would be suicide terrorists infected with smallpox, the paper added.

Earlier this year US scientists projected how smallpox infections would spread after a single terrorist strike, according to the paper.

They found that an attack on a train on April 1 would result in 15,000 cases of smallpox, including 2000 deaths, by June. The disease would also spread to four foreign countries, they calculated. BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of the smallpox vaccine after US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Iraq could counter military action with a biological terror onslaught.

The two leaders met at Downing Street on March 12 and exchanged intelligence about the possible threat from Iraq.

Cheney told Blair that intelligence experts had warned that the US and Britain would be the two main targets of biological warfare in the event of a conflict, London's Sunday Telegraph said.

US reports, according to the paper, suggested that Saddam Hussein would use all the weapons at his disposal if he was attacked.

Unlike the Gulf War, where he showed some restraint, this time he would know that the military action is intended to end in his death or capture, it added.

Two days after Cheney and Blair met, six government health officials, including Health Secretary Alan Milburn, met in London and decided to order inoculations against smallpox.

The worst case would be suicide terrorists infected with smallpox, the paper added.

Earlier this year US scientists projected how smallpox infections would spread after a single terrorist strike, according to the paper.

They found that an attack on a train on April 1 would result in 15,000 cases of smallpox, including 2000 deaths, by June. The disease would also spread to four foreign countries, they calculated.

How did Alhaznawi get infected with anthrax in Florida?

How did Atta get reddened hands while in Florida?

Why was Atta looking at cropdusters in Florida?

How do these facts fit with the "filled abroad" theory?

Not to mention the attack on hijackers landlord's office at AMI, which looks decidely ad hoc. In the end, it doesn't matter. The amount of anthrax in the letters sent to Daschle et al was probably sufficient to kill a few hundred people in a shopping mall -- small potatoes, after 9-11. If Saddam is not bluffing -- and I doubt that he is bluffing -- the real stash is likely sitting in a left-luggage locker with a combination lock: the sleepers will get the pickup info by phone or over the internet during the final showdown. Of course, they might flake out at the last minute, but I see little evidence to support optimism there. Bin Laden provides reliable people.

I do remember reading, however, that at least one of the letters (was it the New York Post?) contained a "dirty brown" granular anthrax, that did not sound as if it was the "weaponized" material that Daschle recieved.

I'm not sure, but I thought the brown powder was in one of the letters that turned out not to contain anthrax (maybe the suspicious letter to Brokaw that was initially thought to be the source of the anthrax, but that turned out not to be). I could be wrong, however -- I'll look it up if I can.

I don't think we really have enough to go on to say whether the envelopes were filled abroad or not. Why would it be any harder to get a glove box in the U.S. than abroad? And what about the problem of transporting the spores in envelopes rather than in vials -- wouldn't the envelopes have started leaking? Or did it really taking the pressure of the postal equipment to cause any significant leakage.

One argument in favor of the letters being filled abroad is that it's probably easier to get an envelope through customs than a vial of powder. But getting a vial in wouldn't be all that hard. (The anthrax might even have been sent via diplomatic pouch.)

On the other hand, maybe I'm being naive here, not having worked with such powders, but could Alhaznawi have gone out to some isolated location to fill the envelopes? Yes, you'd get some local contamination -- and, in fact, Alhaznawi seems to have contracted cutaneous anthrax. But most of the other spores contaminating the area would have settled, causing no obvious problems. (In the various contaminated buildings, the spores seem to have settled fairly quickly. Even in the case of the heavily contaminated AMI building, which was neither evacuated nor cleaned up quickly, only two people contracted anthrax (no other employees, no visitors, nobody in adjacent buildings.)

If something like that scenario didn't happen, how did Alhaznawi contract anthrax?

Not to mention the attack on hijackers landlord's office at AMI, which looks decidely ad hoc.

In the interest of accuracy, it was one step further removed than that: it was the hijackers' landlord's husband's office. [Also, "landlord" here really means the real estate agent who handled the rental of the apartments concerned.]

Of course, they might flake out at the last minute, but I see little evidence to support optimism there. Bin Laden provides reliable people.

It's not a question of flaking out. They'll do it if they perceive it as being in their advantage to do so. There may be somebody watching them to ensure that they follow orders (or people watching each other to ensure it).

There may also be an arrangement where 2 out of 3 people, say, are needed to carry the operation out. (A key code could be divided in such a way as to do that.) This type of thing would help headquarters keep control of the anthrax, but would also make sure that it gets distributed when ordered (since a certain number of people -- 1 in my example -- could get cold feet without it affecting the operation).

One reason to expect a sudden massive strike on (presumably) Iraq is that if the agents perceive that Iraq has lost already, before they have a chance to act, they may not follow through, because it would be pointless (the anthrax could be saved for a later occasion when it wouldn't be "wasted"; plus the personal risk might not be worth it under those circumstances). If victory is still up in the air, however, they have every reason to strike back.

It would require very sophisticated equipment to fill the envelopes even if was done out in the woods. There was no trace of anthrax EVEN ON THE GLUE!!

I'm an engineer not a chemist/drugest so I cannot comment on the effects or properties of the anthrax spores.

But, suppose the anthrax was prepared and stored in sealed hypodermic needles in a labratory environment.

The anthraxonist could address and seal an envelope and then inject the powder just before placing in the mail box. This could be done along one of the seams of the envelope without leaving much evidence and allow a semi sterile procedure.

Just a guess.

I don't expect a sudden, massive strike on Iraq, nor do I expect us to kill Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden's service to Saddam Hussein has been to provide him with reliable agents who are not self-interested, as we would understand the term, but driven by hatred of America and, no doubt, their own personal demons (psycho-sexual, in Atta's case). Both the US and Soviet Union managed to deter each other for forty years based on the same assumption of "irrationality," with far less evidentiary basis. There's no way we are going to roll the dice on this. We will deal with the situation in much the same way as we dealt with the Soviet threat -- by fighting proxy wars, by economic isolation, and perhaps by making a credible effort at technologically defusing the threat, until such time as the regime we are up against self-destructs in response to internal and external pressures.

It is pure speculation; however, if the envelopes were "filled abroad" then I suspect they would have been delivered to the US in a sterile, sealed container. In that event, perhaps Alhaznawi and Atta were infected by opening the container and/or pulling out an envelope or two to give to others to mail.

Timing is significant here - the time required to manufacturer the product, the time elapsed between exposure and onset of symptoms, the date Atta met with the Iraqi intelligence agents, the date they were checking into cropdusters. A timeline would help us see whether any possibility should be ruled out.

As to the cropduster, I have no doubts these guys had visions on a grand scale. They may have been doing research.

By the same logic, we would have nuked Russia and China after they attained the capability to attack us with ICBMs. We didn't because, of course, by the time they had that capability, it was too late. I don't think it has sunk in for you yet -- we are already in a MAD posture vis á vis Iraq. We cannot turn the clock back five years and change history. We f***ed up, big time.

One theory that I'd heard early on was that the gradation between samples could be explained by settling of the powder in shipment. Specifically if the anthrax was shipped, in say sealed film cannisters, the contents would settle in shipment. Depending on which envelope was filled first from a common container which had had its contents settle, might explain the differing characteristics of the samples. For all we know, the remaining anthrax is sitting in a sealed paint can in a self-storage locker in Florida.

I am working on a comprehensive timeline of the 9/11 hijackers and their movements, contacts, etc. I hope to have it ready this weekend.

Here's something else to throw out for everyone:

At one apartment complex in Delray Beach, Fla., [the apartments rented by Gloria Irish to Ahmed Alnami and Saeed Alghamdi] two neighbors said they regularly heard odd, late-night "banging noises" coming from one of the suspects' apartments. "Like a hammer hitting metal," Randy Ferris recalled, "but you can't very well call the police for that. Believe me, I wish I had."
Chicago Tribune, 9/17/01

Yes, this could well be true. I'm wondering, however, if we have any real evidence that the various samples were physically different.

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