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Why didn't the Bush administration connect the dots and take aggressive measures before 9/11? For the same reason we're not doing so today: distractions and a lack of urgency. Forget about the blame game — for it's just that kind of distraction. It's more important to look ahead and try to block the next attack. Where are the dots today? One dot is Osama bin Laden's fervent efforts to obtain bio-weapons, reflected in the lab he was building near Kandahar, Afghanistan, to produce anthrax. Another dot is Iraq. Hazem Ali, a senior Iraqi virologist involved in his country's bio-weapons program,...

Toogood Reports [Weekender, June 9, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Psst! The anthrax-laced letters that killed five people last fall, were sent by a home-grown, American terrorist. In fact, the killer — a heterosexual, Christian, white male wacko, if you'll excuse the redundancy — is a scientist who was doing contract work for the CIA, and who murdered five innocents on orders from the CIA. The feds have covered it all up. Pass it on. I know who did it, because Barbara Hatch Rosenberg told me. Rosenberg is not only a tenured professor of microbiology at the New York State...

Article shows how the notion that the anthrax killer was a "home-grown" terrorist was concocted and spread by Marxist professor Barabara Hatch Rosenberg, who stole her theory from a TV series.

Anthrax Theory Emerges Scientists: FBI Questions Suggest Insider Grew Spores At Lab, Refined Them Elsewhere By DAVE ALTIMARI And JACK DOLAN Courant Staff Writers June 13 2002 The FBI is investigating whether the anthrax spores used in last fall's attacks could have been grown secretly inside an Army lab and then taken elsewhere to be weaponized, according to three sources familiar with the ongoing probe. A former government microbiologist, who was interviewed in recent days by the FBI, said agents focused their questioning on the logistics of how someone with access to the U.S. Army's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick,...

nthrax spores mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office were rendered even more deadly by a chemical additive that investigators suspect was made in the U.S., according to a report today. The sophisticated substance enables the spores to stay suspended in air so they can be more easily inhaled. Iraq and the former Soviet Union are the only other countries thought to be able to produce the additive, according to The Washington Post. But an unnamed government source with direct knowledge of the investigation told the newspaper that so far it doesn't look like they did. Each nation used ...

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Scientists have determined that the anthrax powder sent through the mail last fall was fresh, made no more than two years before it was sent, senior government officials said. The new finding has concerned investigators, who say it indicates that whoever sent the anthrax could make more and strike again. Establishing the age of the anthrax that killed five people has strengthened the theory that the person behind the mailings has a direct and current connection to a microbiology laboratory and may have used relatively new equipment. "We're still looking for someone who fits the criteria...

<p>Most researchers, policy analysts and public observers disapproved of last month's recommendation by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to vaccinate only about 20,000 U.S. health-care workers against smallpox. Now, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services say they want to vaccinate even more workers, perhaps upwards of a half-million, beginning as early as the fall.</p>

<p>The United States is imposing economic sanctions on eight Chinese companies for selling destabilizing arms and germ-weapons materials to Iran, The Washington Times has learned.</p> <p>The administration for the fourth time since September has singled out Beijing's state-run companies for violating U.S. laws aimed at curbing transfers of weapons and arms-related goods to rogue states.</p>

........ The CDC does not expect a high level of public demand for the vaccine prior to an outbreak, Grant said. Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association, agreed and said there has not been the same level of demand from the public for the smallpox vaccine as there was for Cipro during last year’s anthrax attacks. ........

WASHINGTON Far more first responders than originally planned may be given smallpox vaccinations, officials said yesterday. One estimate put the figure at 500,000, up sharply from the 10,000 to 20,000 health care and emergency workers originally recommended for the vaccine. The new proposal results from estimates that a widespread attack involving the highly contagious disease would expose many more people to the deadly virus. A decision about the vaccination program is expected by month's end from Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. "We'll have to have a clear idea of where we're going by Aug. 1," said Dr....

The federal government will soon vaccinate roughly a half-million health care and emergency workers against smallpox as a precaution against a bioterrorist attack, federal officials said. The government is also laying the groundwork to carry out mass vaccinations of the public — a policy abandoned 30 years ago — if there is a large outbreak. Until last month, officials had said they would soon vaccinate a few thousand health workers and would respond to any smallpox attack with limited vaccinations of the public. Since 1983, only 11,000 Americans who work with the virus and its related diseases have received a...

There will be another terrorist attack and it will be worse than anyone can imagine, Michael Osterholm told more than 300 environmental health experts in Minneapolis on Sunday. The nationally recognized bioterrorism expert said it could be anthrax, smallpox or an attack on the nation's food and water supply. But Osterholm said the impact could be many times that of the World Trade Center attacks. It's not the first time he has warned of another attack. Since September, Osterholm — director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and a former state epidemiologist — has...

Source: Science 296 (5573), May 31, 2002, p. 1594.BIOTERRORISM:In Search of a Kinder, Gentler Vaccineby Martin EnserinkJames Koopman saw the last 16 cases of smallpox in the Indian district of Azhagar in the early 1970s, but by now they blur together. Crystal clear, however, is the memory of a child, about 1 year old, who suffered from an uncontrollable infection called progressive vaccinia after receiving a smallpox vaccination in 1973. "It completely destroyed her arm, right down to the bone," says Koopman, now a researcher at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.To Koopman, that girl is a grim reminder...

Some Americans Being Vaccinated Against Smallpox Virus Email story to a friend Bio-terrorism has been a topic of concern since September 11th, with a specific focus on the smallpox virus. The question is should Americans be vaccinated? And if so, is there enough vaccine to go around? WAVE 3's Lori Lyle has more on a new study to answer those questions. Because of the ongoing threat of terrorism, the government has been stockpiling the smallpox vaccine for months. And now, for the first time in about 30 years, Americans are being vaccinated against smallpox. The first in the nation are...

Press Statement on Smallpox, Flu and Tetanus Vaccines for Children By Louis Z. Cooper, M.D., President, American Academy of Pediatrics For Release: June 21, 2002 "Yesterday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made several vaccine decisions of importance to all parents. The decisions were based on input from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other specialists in immunization and public health.Smallpox vaccine is not being recommended for the general public, including infants, children and teenagers. The Academy agrees with the ACIP conclusion that exposing our patients to the severe side effects...

WASHINGTON, Nov 28, 2001 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The Bush administration signed a contract Wednesday to buy 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine from a British firm in case terrorists try to spread the deadly virus. The contract with Acambis Inc. will bring the nation's stockpile to 286 million doses of the vaccine by the end of next year, promising protection for every American should bioterrorists ever attack with the all-but-extinct virus. The vaccine can be administered four days after exposure to smallpox and still offer protection. For that reason - and because the vaccine can cause some rare ...

June 21, 2002 Panel Rejects Immunizing All Against a Smallpox OutbreakBy LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN TLANTA, June 20 — A panel of specialists advising the federal government on smallpox vaccinations unanimously rejected a proposal today to offer vaccines to every American. Instead, the panel recommended immunizing only the estimated 15,000 health care and law enforcement workers who would be most likely to respond to a biological attack and come in contact with victims. In rejecting the idea of starting mass vaccinations for the first time since routine immunization was halted in 1972, the panel said the risks of complications from the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Biological terrorism remains a serious threat to America, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., warned Thursday. "The risk is real. The risk is increasing. Our vulnerability remains high," Frist said at a briefing in an office building closed for months following last fall's anthrax-by-mail attack. Sidney Taurel, chairman of the drug maker Eli Lilly and Co., called for cooperation among government, academic researchers and the pharmaceutical industry in finding new ways to detect and combat bioterrorism. "This is not business as usual. This is not politics as usual. This is war," Taurel said at the briefing on terrorism and...

(CNSNews.com) - After he toured a biotechnology laboratory in Havana Monday with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, former President Jimmy Carter criticized the Bush administration for alleging that Cuba is developing biological warfare research and may be exporting that know-how to enemies of the United States. Undersecretary of State John Bolton made the allegations during a speech to the Heritage Foundation in Washington last week. Carter, with Castro by his side, said he received briefings from the State Department, American intelligence agencies and high White House officials and the subject never came up. "There were absolutely no such allegations made or...

MARILYN CHASE, The Wall Street JournalFriday, May 17, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/05/17/financial0952EDT0048.DTL (05-17) 06:52 PDT (AP) -- What would happen if another bioterrorist struck the U.S.? Probably the same confusion, fear and uncoordinated response that happened during last fall's anthrax attacks. Federal and state plans to respond to bioterrorism have run up against civil libertarians and a host of others who worry their rights will be trampled. Even some hospital groups have fought against plans for bioterror attacks because they don't want contagious patients in their facilities. Just seven months ago, when anthrax was killing people and closing...