It is also offered on CDs. ABOUT THE BOOK
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
FROM OUR EDITORS
Three New York Times veteran reporters teamed up for this thoughtful and thorough report on bio-terrorism -- from a salmonella attack by cultists in Oregon during the 1980s to the current state of biological weapons.
ANNOTATION
A frightening and unforgettable narrative of cutting-edge science and spycraft, Germs shows us why advances in biology and the spread of germ weapons expertise to such countries as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea could make germs the weapon of the twenty-first century.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the wake of the anthrax letters following the attacks on the World Trade Center, Americans have begun to grapple with two difficult truths: that there is no terrorist threat more horrifying -- and less understood -- than germ warfare, and that it would take very little to mount a devastating attack on American soil. In Germs, three veteran reporters draw on top sources inside and outside the U.S. government to lay bare Washington's secret strategies for combating this deadly threat.
Featuring an inside look at how germ warfare has been waged throughout history and what form its future might take (and in whose hands), Germs reads like a gripping detective story told by fascinating key figures: American and Soviet medical specialists who once made germ weapons but now fight their spread, FBI agents who track Islamic radicals, the Iraqis who built Saddam Hussein's secret arsenal, spies who travel the world collecting lethal microbes, and scientists who see ominous developments on the horizon. With clear scientific explanations and harrowing insights, Germs is a masterfully written -- and timely -- work of investigative journalism.
SYNOPSIS
In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad of The New York Times uncover the truth about biological weapons and show why bio-warfare and bio-terrorism are fast becoming our worst national nightmare.
Among the startling revelations in Germs:
- How the CIA secretly built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb, alarming some officials who felt the work pushed to the limits of what is permitted by the global treaty banning germ arms.
How the Pentagon embarked on a secret effort to make a superbug.
Details about the Soviet Union's massive hidden program to produce biological weapons, including new charges that germs were tested on humans.
How Moscow's scientists made an untraceable germ that instructs the body to destroy itself.
The Pentagon's chaotic efforts to improvise defenses against Iraq's biological weapons during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
How a religious cult in Oregon in the 1980s sickened hundreds of Americans in a bio-terrorism attack that the government played down to avoid panic and copycat strikes.
Plans by the U.S. military in the 1960s to attack Cuba with germ weapons.
But you'll never hear the liberal media quote these facts.