CAN ANTHRAX REALLY BE USED AS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION?
The answer is yes, though to date it has not been.
Fortunately, it's far more difficult to turn anthrax into a weapon of mass destruction than you may have been led to believe. First, only certain strains of bacteria are exceptionally deadly. A bioterrorist would have to have access to a particularly virulent strain and then brew a large batch of microbes. The bacteria would have to be dried and converted to spores, then refined into very, very small particles.
The recent distribution of anthrax through the mail system infected at least eighteen people and killed five. The mail system was paralyzed regionally. Congress was essentially shut down for four days, buildings were closed for months. The country was terrorized. But anthrax was not used, as it might have been, as a true weapon of mass destruction. The same amount of anthrax placed in the ventilation system of a building could have exposed thousands to a lethal dose.
For more than three decades, scientific, military, and health experts have tried to analyze the consequences of a large-scale anthrax attack. The worst-case scenario would be that some nation or group was able to spread anthrax from an airplane over a major metropolitan area. In an analysis that is over thirty years old and conducted long before we developed the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile and early-mobilization program, the World Health Organization estimated in 1970 that the release of aerosolized anthrax over a densely populated area with 5 million people could result in 250,000 casualties, 100,000 of whom could die unless treated.
In another analysis, the U.S. congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) estimated in 1993 that releasing aerosolized anthrax over Washington, D.C. could result in 130,000 to 3 million deaths--an attack as deadly as a hydrogen bomb.
Senator Bill Frist, When Every Moment Counts
They turned to the hot topic of anthrax. The powder in the letter mailed to Senator Daschle's office had been found to be potent, prompting officials to suggest its source was likely an expert capable of producing the bacteria in huge amounts. Tenet said, "I think it's AQ" -- meaning Al Qaeda.
"I think there's a state sponsor involved. It's too well thought-out, the powder's too well refined. It might be Iraq, it might be Russia, it might be a renegade scientist, perhaps from Iraq or Russia."
"I'm not going to talk about a state sponsor." Tenet assured them.
"It's good that we don't." said Cheney, "because we're not ready to do anything about it."
Bob Woodward, Bush at War (2002), pp. 248-249.
It is protection for Saddam to have biological and chemical weapons, because, in the final analysis, if pressed, if he is surrounded in Baghdad, he will threaten to use them. He's capable of that. This is a sort of Samson complex--if you push me too hard, I'll bring the house down, on myself and on everyone else. Washington realizes that this is a possibility. For obvious reasons, it's not talked about openly. No one in Washington wants to tell the American people that Saddam is still capable of blackmailing us. They're acting as if he is capable of blackmailing them, but they are not going to admit it openly.
Said K. Aburish, author of Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge
Interview with PBS Frontline, January 2000
Iraq also has a more advanced capability for delivering biological agents than it possessed in the Gulf War, the officials said.
"In 1991, the bulk of their capability was wet agent" delivered in liquid form, which limited its spread and lethality, one expert said.
But Iraq has since developed dry toxins that spread in particle form in the air and are breathed in more deeply by the victim, the expert said.
Bio-weapon boom in Iraq since '98
NY Daily News, December 17, 2002
Richard Spertzel, a microbiologist and former head of biological inspection teams in Iraq for the United Nations, said he, too, had talked to federal investigators about the Senate powder.
"There's no question this is weapons quality," Dr. Spertzel said. "It has all the characteristics — fine particles and readily dispersible." Particles must be small to penetrate deep into human lungs, where they can start a lethal infection.
Al Zelicoff, a physician and expert on biological weapons at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, who is developing a computerized system to allow epidemiologists to track suspicious disease outbreaks, said his conversations with federal investigators had alarmed him.
"These people know what they're doing," Dr. Zelicoff said of the anthrax terrorists. "I'm truly worried. They have the keys to the kingdom." > Contradicting Some U.S. Officials, 3 Scientists Call Anthrax Powder High-Grade
BIOTERRORISM MONITORS TO BE PLACED THROUGHOUT USA... intended to tell within 24 hours whether anthrax, smallpox and other deadly germs have been released into the air, senior administration officials tell Wed NYT... MORE... system uses sophisticated data analysis which officials said had been quietly developed since the Sept. 11 attacks... MORE...