National Institutes of Health researcher Steven Hatfill demonstrates how a determined terrorist could cook up a batch of plague in his or her own kitchen using common household ingredients and protective equipment from the supermarket.

A homemade broth culture, based on recipes published by Louis Pasteur in the late 1800s, could be incubated in an ordinary electric oven set at a low temperature. An Army surplus gas mask, garbage bags, duct tape and dishwashing gloves complete the chemical chef's fashion ensemble.  Household bleach decontaminates working surfaces.

For this photo opportunity, Hatfill left out the secret ingredient -- namely the plague bacteria -- which an enterprising terrorist could collect from a prairie-dog habitat in the American Southwest, where it is endemic. Hatfill "weaponizes" the batch by pouring it into a hiker's water bag attached to a homemade sprayer. In one scenario, a terrorist in a wheelchair, highly inoculated with antibiotics, could conceal the device under a tracksuit and wheel through a crowded area, spraying as he or she went. 

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 4, 1999; Page A11

A leading U.S. expert on biological warfare walked through security at the Rayburn House Office Building yesterday carrying 7 1/2 grams of powdered anthrax in a small plastic bottle, proceeding directly to a hearing efore the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and displaying his deadly sample.

The expert, William C. Patrick III, said he was trying to show how a hostile state could smuggle powdered anthrax into the United States in a secure diplomatic pouch and attack major federal government installations almost at will.

"I've been through all the major airports, and the security systems of the State Department, the Pentagon, even the CIA, and nobody has stopped  me," Patrick told the committee. "Seven and a half grams would take care of the Rayburn Building and all the people in it."

Patrick's testimony on biological warfare and its most frightening mutant, bioterrorism, was given during one of the intelligence panel's rare open sessions as Congress and the administration focus increasing attention and vast new resources on counterterrorism. Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said he called the unusual open session to help educate the public on what he called "a national security concern of the highest priority."

President Clinton has made defending the country against biological and chemical attacks among the highest priorities of his administration. In January, he proposed a $10 billion counterterrorism budget for the coming fiscal year that includes $1.4 billion for enhancing domestic readiness in the event of a chemical or biological terrorist attack.

In his testimony, Patrick revealed that he toted a number of other chilling samples through Rayburn security "like Sherman went through Georgia," including a small canister of 25,000 dormant mosquito eggs that he said could easily have been infected with encephalitis and loosed on the population at large.

John A. Lauder, director of the CIA's Nonproliferation Center, told the committee that a dozen countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria, "now either possess or are actively pursuing offensive biological weapons capabilities for use against their perceived enemies, whether internal or external." Countries with biological weapons technology include the United States and some of its closest allies but also, as Lauder pointed out, hostile powers such as Iran, Iraq, Libya
and North Korea.

Weaponizing biological agents is much more difficult for small rogue states and terrorists "than some popular literature seems to suggest," Lauder said. But biological weapons remain a highly dangerous threat because they are cheap and relatively easy to make, he said, and could become far more threatening with rapid advances in biotechnology.

Experts say a chemical attack in the U.S. is a matter of "not if but when." After a series of hoaxes, some ask: How real is the threat? 

by Steve Goldstein, Inquirer Washington Bureau 

Philadelphia Inquirer

November 14, 1999 

WASHINGTON - Nearly five years ago, the apocalyptic cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system, killing a dozen people and sickening hundreds. 

Aum also released something else, with far greater impact - the specter of terrorists using chemical or biological weapons to murder thousands of people. 

Since the Tokyo crisis, there have been no mass attacks using unconventional weapons in the United States or against Americans abroad. Nevertheless, there has been a mushrooming of concern about bioterrorism in government circles - complete with commissions, congressional hearings, and a thriving herd of consultants and defense contractors grazing on an expanding antiterrorism budget. 

Terrorism is now a growth industry. The possibility of a chemical or bioterrorism attack is increasingly defined as "not if but when." 

As threat fever has soared, so has the number of consultants, experts, institutes and defense contractors involved in chemical- and biological-warfare issues. Defense Week magazine staged a two-day conference-cum-trade show called "WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction] and Domestic Preparedness III" last week in Washington. The registration fee was $895 for the more than 150 attendees. 

The number of agents that the FBI assigns to counterterrorism has nearly tripled from 550 in 1993 to almost 1,400 today.  President Clinton submitted a budget of $10 billion for 2000 to fight terrorism; that's up from $6.5 billion in 1998. About $5 billion of that is to go to agencies dealing directly with national security. 

A recent General Accounting Office report noted that all of this is happening even though the government has not issued a single assessment of the actual threat to the nation. 

The so-called Deutch Commission (named for a former CIA director) tried to unravel the Gordian knot of more than 90 agencies that can claim some jurisdiction over the threat. None of its recommendations, delivered in July, has been acted upon.

The deadly scenarios seem endless. Most recently, when the cause of a deadly mosquito-borne encephalitis was laid to the West Nile virus in crows, a national magazine reported that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may have been looking for ways to use the virus as a weapon. 

Hoaxes involving hard-to-see biological agents are increasing exponentially. The FBI has investigated nearly 150 threats involving anthrax this year alone from among more than 247 cases involving biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. As recently as 1996, the FBI investigated 37 such cases. 

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, director of weapons of mass destruction preparedness for the National Security Council, espouses the ounce-of-prevention, pound-of-cure theory, arguing that because of a real threat of attack, federal and local governments must take defensive and remedial action. 

Brad Roberts of the Institute for Defense Analyses, who consults with military and civilian agencies on chem-bio warfare, is also bullish on the threat. Yet he concedes that "there's some overcompensation going on now." 

Said Jeff Simon, head of Political Risk Assessment, a security-consulting firm: "When there's so much money being poured around, every entity wants a piece of it, every government agency, every business, every consultant. It's almost like a runaway train - with no clear direction." 

"The hype, I think, was necessary to get our attention," said David R. Franz, former head of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. "But we have to be careful to deal with facts rather than hype, or we will be expending unnecessary resources." 

The facts suggest that attacks are not imminent, but many studies of terrorist activities have stressed how vulnerable America is and how much damage could be inflicted - rather than the actual likelihood of an attack. 

"The level of uncertainty is so extraordinarily high that the so-called experts are being called upon to exercise powers of prophecy," said Brian M. Jenkins of the Rand Corp., who has studied terrorism for nearly 30 years. 

"Anything beyond five to 10 years is beyond analysis; you're in the realm of speculation and entertainment." 

Some attempts are being made to slow the train. 

At a recent hearing of a House national security subcommittee, a senior official of the watchdog General Accounting Office said terrorists in most cases "would have to overcome significant technical and operational challenges" to use chemical and biological agents to kill or injure large numbers of people - without substantial assistance from a rogue state. 

"I don't know if [the hype] has gotten out of control, but the agencies until now have been tasked to look at consequences rather than risk," said Milton Leitenberg of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. 

Leitenberg has tried for years to temper fears of large-scale chemical and biological attacks. He has publicly taken Defense Secretary William S. Cohen to task for predicting the use of weapons of mass destruction by nations or terrorist groups. 

Leitenberg and other critics were particularly appalled by Cohen's appearance on a Sunday talk show in 1997, when he held up a five-pound bag of sugar and said that a similar amount of anthrax released in the air over the nation's capital would kill half the city's population, about 300,000 people. A few months later, four government anthrax experts said Cohen had exaggerated the fatality rate by 100 times. 

In an extraordinary five-part series called "Biowar" aired in early October on ABC's Nightline, "terrorists" smashed glass bottles containing anthrax spores in a city subway. While illustrating the susceptibility of the U.S. health-care infrastructure to such an attack, the series was otherwise riddled with "misleading scenes" showing efforts to contain the attack, said bioterrorism expert Donald A. Henderson of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. 

Henderson called for "careful media coverage of this easily sensationalized topic." 

Sensational presentations of the subject may be at least partly responsible for an epidemic of hoaxes. 

Anthrax in powdered form looks benign and is highly fatal, and unlike a chemical agent, its effects are not immediately apparent - so the target does not know that it is a fake. Authorities have no choice but to respond with significant costs in time and money. 

"We were poised to believe that this is terrorism; we're on a hair trigger," Bruce Hoffman of the Rand Corp. said of anthrax hoaxes. 

He has concluded that the vast majority of terrorists still prefer the relatively "modest success" of using conventional weapons. 

"People see you can make these threats and they are hard to track down," said John Parachini of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. 

Only the Aum attack involved weapons of mass destruction. The lone bacterial attack in America was in 1984, when the Rajneesh cult used salmonella, a nonlethal bacterial agent, to poison a salad bar in The Dalles, Ore., sickening 700 people. 

Most experts say terrorists still prefer guns and bombs. 

"The thing we need to fear most in the near term is a truck bomb," said Robert Blitzer, who until last year headed the FBI's counterterrorism unit. 

A Rand Corp. terrorism database details about 10,000 incidents in the last 30 years, but only a small percentage involved such unconventional weapons as biological and chemical agents. 

"We haven't gotten to the point where we are panicking where there is no threat, but we have a political environment where we are trying to address the threat and people are exploiting this climate," Blitzer said. 

Most of those who have studied the uses of such weapons say more caution is needed in developing a comprehensive national strategy. 

"The more government money that is poured into this area, the more difficult it is to have interagency cooperation and planning," Franz said. 

At bio-chem terrorism conferences, Jenkins said, "it is not accepted to be agnostic; you have to be on board, be a believer." 

Leitenberg - who says he has been contacted by TV journalists to talk about the subject only to have his appearances canceled once it becomes obvious that he is not hyping the threat - says the unqualified predictions of many so-called experts are "a stimulant" to possible terrorism. 

"These false and hysterical arguments will bring it quicker," he said. "They are telling people how easy it is, and then they say how terrible it will be and how much we fear it. 

"They are sucking it out of the woodwork," he said, grimly. 

Live anthrax found at office

Miami Herald/August 30, 2001 

Paris -- Aum Supreme Truth, the Japanese doomsday sect that carried out a nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, made a trial run of an anthrax weapon, using harmless vaccine bacteria as a test, New Scientist says.

What has been dismissed as a botched attempt to carry out an anthrax attack may have been a dress rehearsal for the real thing, it says in a report due to be published on Saturday.

Hiroshi Takahashi, a scientist at Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases, told an anthrax conference in Maryland in June that the sect cultured the bacteria in large drums of liquid in the basement of its headquarters outside Tokyo, the report says.

Then, in July 1993, sect members pumped the liquid to the roof and sprayed it in the air for 24 hours.

Takahashi said police investigated when neighbors complained about the smell, but they were unable under Japan's religious protection laws to enter and search the building. However, they did manage to take samples of a fluid leaking from a pipe on the outside of the building.

No one in the neighborhood fell sick. Because of this, when light was eventually shed on Aum's experiments with biological weapons, the operation was seen as a failed attempt to create anthrax.

But, New Scientist says, new evidence suggests Aum was farther down the road to anthrax terrorism than previously thought.  A laboratory at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff has now analyzed the fluid sample taken by the police, and found it to be full of live, healthy anthrax bacteria.

DNA analysis shows that the bacteria belong to the Sterne strain, which is used in live vaccine for animals, the report says. Sterne anthrax is designed to lack a fragment of DNA that enables the bacteria to become toxic, and is thus harmless.

Aum carried out the spraying in a practice run but may have been discouraged from carrying out a real attack because of police attention, an Arizona researcher suggested.

The results of the tests show the sect had already overcome the biggest hurdles with bioweapons -- keeping cultures alive, manufacturing enough of the bacteria and spraying in sufficient volumes to cause mass death.

Aum released the nerve gas sarin in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto, killing four people, in June 1994.

It carried out a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995, killing 12 and injuring about 5,000 others.

Tokyo narrowly escaped a devastating anthrax attack

AUM SHINRIKYO, the Japanese doomsday sect that killed 12 people by releasing sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo subway in 1996, had the knowledge and skills to wreak even greater devastation with anthrax. New research in the US shows that Aum not only had the ability to release anthrax, it even did so—though it used a non-virulent strain.

The sect cultured the bacteria in large drums of liquid in the basement of its eight-storey headquarters in the Tokyo suburb of Kameido, says Hiroshi Takahashi of Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases. Then, in July 1993, Aum members pumped the liquid to the roof and sprayed it into the air for 24 hours

The police investigated when neighbours complained about the smell, but Japan's religious protection laws prevented them from searching the building. But they did manage to take samples of a fluid leaking from a pipe on the outside of the building.

Medical records show that no one reported any anthrax symptoms in the area after the spraying, Takahashi told an anthrax conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in June. The fact that Aum was unable to infect people with anthrax is cited by many terrorism experts as evidence that bioweapons are too complex for such extremists.

But now scientists at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff have analysed the fluid sample and found it contains plenty of healthy anthrax bacilli. DNA analysis shows they belong to the Sterne strain, which is used in live anthrax vaccines for animals. Sterne anthrax lacks a fragment of DNA necessary for the bacteria to cause disease, and is easily purchased in the vaccine form. "It wouldn't have made anyone sick," says Kimothy Smith, a member of the team.

Why would terrorists spray harmless bacteria? They may have been practising, says Smith. Police attention could have discouraged them from moving on to virulent bacteria. Worryingly, the results show that Aum had got around the main difficulties with bioweapons—dead cultures and inadequate spraying. "I have no doubt people would have been sick, and probably died, if they had used a virulent strain," says Smith.

"Most terrorists still prefer explosives or arson," says David Claridge, a terrorism specialist at Rubicon, a security consultancy in London. One of the few exceptions, he fears, might be people committing hate crimes.

This scenario will be played out in the drama Gas Attack, to be screened on Britain's Channel 4 this month. It shows racial extremists killing Kurdish asylum seekers in Glasgow with lethal anthrax taken from animal carcasses. "That would be feasible," says Smith. "You can make the culture medium in the kitchen."

Debora MacKenzie

Anthrax bacteria in Reno letter

Small amount poses no risks, health officials say 

By SEAN WHALEY 
DONREY CAPITAL BUREAU 

RENO -- A battery of tests completed Saturday determined that a pornographic picture mailed from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in Reno did contain the anthrax bacteria. 

Authorities promptly sent a sample to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where experts as early as today will establish whether the bacteria are capable of causing anthrax. 

Health officials said it is possible the bacteria represent a harmless strain used to create vaccine. 

Regardless of the outcome of those tests, state officials said the pornographic picture mailed to the south Reno office of Microsoft Licensing does not pose a serious health risk, even to the person who opened the letter. 

Dr. Dee Brown, director of the state laboratory where the testing was performed, said the amount of bacteria found on the picture was insufficient to infect a person. 

"It would take many times over what we have here to infect someone," Brown said. 

In addition to one fatality, at least nine people on the East Coast have contracted anthrax, have shown symptoms of anthrax or tested positive for exposure by inhaling or touching bacteria-produced spores sent through the mail. 

Despite widespread speculation, authorities have not publicly linked these incidents to the terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 hijackings of four airliners. 

On Saturday, health officials said no one in Northern Nevada had tested positive for anthrax. 

Health workers swabbed the noses of six people, five Microsoft employees and one family member of an employee, to obtain samples for testing. Results of those tests could be completed today. 

Authorities first raised the possibility of an anthrax incident when they announced Friday afternoon that preliminary testing had detected anthrax. Hours later, authorities announced that subsequent testing did not detect anthrax. 

At that time, authorities cautioned that the issue would not be resolved until results of the sole remaining test were available Saturday morning. 

Gov. Kenny Guinn announced Saturday that this test had confirmed the presence of the bacteria that cause anthrax. 

The governor said he was convinced that his administration made the right call by alerting the public to a possible anthrax threat after the first positive test result was returned Friday afternoon. 

He said his decision to release the information was based on statements issued recently by the White House telling Americans to be vigilant, even if no specific threat has been identified. 

"There are no secrets here, and the best thing you can do is be open and honest," Guinn said. 

The piece of mail that sparked the Reno anthrax scare was initially sent by Microsoft Licensing to an unidentified vendor in Malaysia. The envelope was returned several weeks ago, but it was not until Wednesday that an employee opened it. 

Guinn said the check Microsoft had mailed was still inside the envelope.  However, it appeared to have been dampened and then dried. 

Also, the employee discovered that five pornographic magazine pictures had been inserted into the envelope before it was returned. 

Alarmed Microsoft employees immediately contacted authorities. 

Employees with the state Health Division tested the contents of the envelope Friday and Saturday. The check was not tainted, but bacteria of the type that causes anthrax were found on one of the pictures. 

Authorities on Saturday sent a sample of the bacteria to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. 

Brown, the state laboratory director, said the shipment was expected to arrive at the CDC on Saturday, but was delayed in Memphis by inclement weather. 

The DNA testing the CDC will perform takes less than one hour, and state health officials said they expected results would be available today. 

The CDC tests will determine whether the bacteria found on the pornographic picture are capable of causing disease. It is possible, health officials said, that the bacteria are of a type used to create vaccine. If so, they would pose no health risk. 

About 160 Microsoft employees work in the office located inside a building that is owned by Sierra Pacific Power Co. 

More than 100 employees of Microsoft and Sierra Pacific attended an informational meeting Saturday in the offices of the Washoe County Commission. 

Most employees declined to comment as they left the meeting, which was closed to the media. 

But Microsoft employee Bill Thomas said the incident hasn't caused him much worry, only made him more vigilant. 

"I can't control it. I just get on with my life," he said. 

Thomas said that during the meeting he sat next to the Microsoft employee who opened the envelope. 

"He's doing fine," Thomas said. 

He described morale among employees as high and said the incident wouldn't stop worker from doing their jobs or living their lives. 

A Microsoft spokesman referred questions to the FBI, which with the assistance of state agencies is investigating the matter. 

Daron Borst, a spokesman for the Las Vegas office of the FBI, said specialists from the agency's Weapons of Mass Destruction team were assisting in the probe. 

"Anytime you send anthrax through the mail, the intent is to induce fear, and that's a form of terrorism," Borst said. "We will track them down." 

Brown, the state laboratory director, said the trace amounts of anthrax found in the envelope were mixed with many other substances normally found on human skin. 

While cautioning that he was discussing only one possible explanation, he said this could indicate the picture was tainted accidentally. 

Anthrax is most common in livestock and can be spread to humans through exposure to the tissue of an infected animal. 

"If it (the tainted picture) were handled in an agrarian country, where cattle live and die nearby, it may have been handled by someone who had some on their hands," Brown said. 

Review-Journal staff writer J.M. Kalil contributed to this report.

This story is located at:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-14-Sun-2001/news/17220491.html

Col. Byron Weeks, M.D., Ret.
Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2001 
Newsmax.com

Dr. Weeks has had a distinguished medical and military career with the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps. He began military service as the youngest flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. After 15 years of military service, during which he served in senior posts, including Hospital Commander at Bitburg Air Force Base, Germany, Dr. Weeks retired and entered private practice. For the past two decades, he has focused his studies on the threat of biological and chemical agents as a weapon of war. He has lectured and written numerous articles on infectious diseases and biological warfare.

Like anthrax, plague is a highly lethal bacterium. Unlike anthrax, plague is contagious - and poses a significant threat to America's national security.

Plague is present in many areas of the world and is endemic in prairie dogs and squirrels in the southwestern United States.

American scientists found that plague bacteria quickly lose infectivity in an aerosol.

Weaponized plague was successfully developed after Pasechnik in the Soviet Union developed a powdered form covered with a polymer capsule.

The best delivery system, developed in Russia, is one that releases a canister that sprays a cloud of the dried and powdered bacterium from a low-flying and hard to detect object, the cruise missile.

Overview

Bubonic plague has been the most lethal disease pandemic (the term for an exceptionally widespread epidemic) in history. It killed one quarter of the European population in the 14th century. It is the most lethal, virulent and invasive disease known to man.

The plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, is a rod-shaped bacillus that is non-motile (non-moving), doesn't form spores, stains red with Gram stain, and is of the family Enterobacteraceae.

It causes plague, a zoonotic disease (communicable from animals to humans) of rodents (e.g., rats, mice, ground squirrels and prairie dogs).

Various species of fleas that live on the rodents can transmit the bacteria to humans, who then suffer from the bubonic form of plague.

The bubonic form may progress to the septicemic (blood poisoning) and/or pneumonic forms.

Pneumonic plague is the most serious form of the disease and would be the predominant form after a purposeful aerosol dissemination.

Recovery from plague is followed by temporary immunity.

The organism remains viable in water, moist soil and grains for several weeks. At near freezing temperatures, it will remain alive from months to years but is killed by 15 minutes of exposure to 55°C.

It can live for some time in dry sputum, flea feces and buried bodies, but sunlight kills it within a few hours.

History and Significance

The United States worked with Y. Pestis as a potential biowarfare agent in the 1950s and 1960s before our offensive biowarfare program was terminated, and other countries are suspected of weaponizing this organism.

The former Soviet Union had more success than America and has tons of the dry powdered form for use as a bioweapon.

The Japanese army attempted to use infected fleas on the Chinese in World War II but met with little success. This method was cumbersome and unpredictable.

The Soviet Union developed the more reliable and effective method of aerosolizing the organism, and this method was later adopted in the U.S.

The contagious nature of pneumonic plague makes it particularly dangerous as a biological weapon.

Clinical Features

The three forms of plague in man are bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic.

Bubonic plague begins after an incubation period of two to 10 days, with high fever, malaise, headache, muscle aches and, usually, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Up to half of patients will have abdominal pain.

Simultaneous with or shortly after the onset of these nonspecific symptoms, the bubo develops - a swollen, tender lump or lymph node, usually noted in the groin, in the lymphatic drainage from the leg where a bite ordinarily occurs.

The liver and spleen are enlarged and tender. Twenty-five percent of victims will have a pustule, blister, dark scab, or pimple where the flea bite occurred.

Secondary septicemia (invasion of the bloodstream) is common, and 80 percent of patients will be positive for the bacteria on blood culture.

Occasionally the blood infection is primary, without buboes or skin lesions.

The symptoms are similar to other Gram-negative septicemias: high fever, chills, malaise, hypotension, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

The blood may clot in the small vessels of the fingers and toes, with necrosis and gangrene; clotting may even occur throughout the vascular system.

Blackened distal extremities (fingertips) and purplish patches under the skin are caused by a toxin and are signs of impending death. The bacteria can also spread to the central nervous system, lungs and elsewhere.

Plague meningitis occurs in about 6 percent of septicemic and pneumonic cases.

Pneumonic plague is an infection of the lungs due to either inhalation of the organisms (primary pneumonic plague) or spread to the lungs from septicemia (secondary pneumonic plague).

The pneumonic form is by far the most serious and usually comes on two to four days after either inhalation or via the infected bloodstream.

The first signs of illness include high fever, chills, headache, malaise and muscle pain, followed within 24 hours by a cough with bloody sputum, which may contain visible pus. Gastrointestinal symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain, may be present.

Rarely, a bubo might be seen in the neck area from an inhalational exposure. The chest X-ray commonly reveals patchy pneumonia, although at times it may be consolidated (lobar). The pneumonia progresses rapidly, resulting in shortness of breath, crowing breath sounds, and blueness of the skin. The disease terminates in about 18 hours with respiratory failure and shock.

Nonspecific laboratory findings include a total WBC count up of to 20,000 cells with increased band cells, a sign of infection, and greater than 80 percent polymorphonuclear cells.

One also often finds increased fibrin split products in the blood, indicative of a low-grade onset of coagulation disorder. Signs of kidney and liver failure are usually evident in blood chemistry.

In the bubonic type, the death rate is about 60 percent, and close to 100 percent in the pneumonic type when treatment is begun beyond 18 hours after infection.

In the absence of biowarfare the pneumonic type is rare. In the U.S. over the past 50 years, four out of seven pneumonic plague patients (57 percent) died.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis is based primarily on clinical suspicion.

The sudden appearance of large numbers of previously healthy patients with sudden onset of severe, rapidly progressive pneumonia with spitting up of blood strongly suggests plague. A blood smear, or examination of a bubo aspirate or spinal fluid, may demonstrate the organism. Blood culture is reliable and readily available, although studies of antibodies are specific when available.

The organism grows slowly at normal incubation temperatures, and may be misidentified by automated systems because of delayed biochemical reactions.

It may be cultured on blood agar, MacConkey agar or infusion broth. In immunoassay, a fourfold rise in antibody titer in patient serum is diagnostic, but the results tend to be available only after the patient is dead or has survived as a result of empiric treatment. Most clinical assays can be performed in Biosafety Level 2 labs, whereas procedures producing aerosols or yielding significant quantities of organisms require Level 3 containment.

Medical Management

Suspected pneumonic plague cases require strict isolation with masking and gowning to avoid droplets coughed by the patient.

Suspended droplets in the air around the patient are highly contagious. Isolation and quarantine must continue for at least the first 48 hours of antibiotic therapy, or until sputum cultures are negative in confirmed cases.

If competent vectors (fleas) and reservoirs (rodents) are present, flea insecticide sprays must be used, along with attempts at eradication of rodents near patient care areas.

In the areas of native infection, streptomycin, gentamicin, doxycycline, and chloramphenicol are highly effective, if begun early. The bioweaponized form from Russia is resistant to 16 different antibiotics and plague pneumonia is almost always fatal if treatment is not initiated with an effective antibiotic such as ciprofloxacin within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms.

Dosage regimens are as follows: gentamicin, 5mg/kg IM or IV once daily, or 2mg/kg loading dose followed by 1.75 mg/kg IM or IV every eight hours; doxycycline 200 mg initially, followed by 100 mg every 12 hours. Duration of therapy is 10 to 14 days. While the patient is typically afebrile after three days, the extra week of therapy prevents relapses. These may not be efficacious in resistant strains.. Recommended dosage of ciprofloxacin is 400mg IV twice daily. Chloramphenicol, 25 mg/kg IV loading dose followed by 15 mg/kg IV four times daily x 10-14 days, is required for the treatment of plague meningitis.

Usual supportive therapy includes IV saline and potassium if laboratory studies indicate. Monitoring of vital signs is important. Although low-grade coagulation disorders may occur, clinically significant hemorrhage is uncommon, as is the need to treat with heparin. Shock is common from the release of the bacterial endotoxin, but pressor agents such as dopamine are rarely needed. Buboes should not be drained, since they nearly always recede with antibiotic therapy and incision may tend to spread the infection to attendants. Aspiration with a needle and syringe is recommended for diagnostic purposes and may provide symptomatic relief.

Prophylaxis

Vaccine: No vaccine is available for prophylaxis of plague. A licensed, killed whole cell vaccine was available in the U.S. from 1946 until November 1998. It offered protection against bubonic plague, but was not effective against aerosolized Y. Pestis. A (fusion protein) antigen vaccine is in development at USAMRIID (U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases). It protected mice for a year against an inhalational challenge and is being tested in primates.

Antibiotics: For face-to-face contacts (within 2 meters), patients with pneumonic plague or persons possibly exposed to a plague aerosol in a plague biowarfare attack should be given antibiotic prophylaxis using a quinolone such as ciprofloxacin for seven days or the duration of risk of exposure plus seven days. If fever or cough occurs in these individuals, treatment with IV antibiotics should be started.

Ciprofloxacin, 500 mg orally twice daily, has also shown to be effective in preventing disease if the patient does not have any symptoms of infection, and it may be more available in a wartime setting, as it is also distributed in blister packs for anthrax post-exposure prophylaxis.

Tetracycline, 500 mg orally four times daily, and chloramphenicol, 25 mg/kg orally four times daily, are acceptable alternatives if the strain is native and not genetically modified. Contacts of bubonic plague patients need only be observed for symptoms for a week. If symptoms occur, start treatment with antibiotics.

There is no evidence to suggest Iraq is behind the anthrax attack

Scott Ritter
Friday October 19, 2001
The Guardian

The current spate of anthrax attacks on media and government buildings in the United States has heightened the undercurrent of concern since September 11 about the possibility of links between the perpetrators and the Iraqi regime. However, fears that the hidden hand of Saddam Hussein lies behind these attacks are based on rumour and speculation that, under closer scrutiny, fail to support the weight of the charge. 

First, there is the history of UN weapons inspections in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. It is true that Iraq has not fully complied with its disarmament obligation, particularly in the field of biological weapons. However, this failure does not equate to a retained biological weapons capability. Far from it. Under the most stringent on-site inspection regime in the history of arms control, Iraq's biological weapons programmes were dismantled, destroyed or rendered harmless during the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections. The major biological weapons production facility - al Hakum, which was responsible for producing Iraq's anthrax - was blown up by high explosive charges and all its equipment destroyed. Other biological facilities met the same fate if it was found that they had, at any time, been used for research and development of biological weapons. 

M oreover, Iraq was subjected to intrusive, full-time monitoring of all facilities with a potential biological application. Breweries, animal feed factories, vaccine and drug manufacturing facilities, university research laboratories and all hospitals were subject to constant, repeated inspections. Thousands of swabs and samples were taken from buildings and soil throughout Iraq. No evidence of anthrax or any other biological agent was discovered. While it was impossible to verify that all of Iraq's biological capability had been destroyed, the UN never once found evidence that Iraq had either retained biological weapons or associated production equipment, or was continuing work in the field. 

Another mitigating factor is purely scientific: Iraq procured the Vollum strain of anthrax from American Type Culture Collection, a company based in Rockville, Maryland, which provides commercially available viruses - such as anthrax - to consumers worldwide.  While Iraq had investigated other strains, including those indigenous to the country, it was the Vollum strain that Iraq mass-produced for weapon use. It is a unique, highly virulent form of anthrax, and its use would represent the kind of link needed to suggest Iraq as a likely source. That is not to say that the presence of a Vollum strain would automatically indict Iraq, or that a non-Vollum strain clears Iraq. However, federal investigators currently think that the anthrax used in New York and Florida is the same strain, most probably the Ames strain, a variety native to the US. The strain used in Washington is as yet unidentified, but it has been assessed as non-weapons grade and responsive to antibiotics. Based upon this information, it would be irresponsible to speculate about a Baghdad involvement. 

There is also the political factor. Despite the ongoing efforts of the US and Great Britain to maintain economic sanctions, Baghdad has been very successful in developing a political and diplomatic momentum to get them lifted since weapons inspectors left three years ago. The events of September 11 brought this anti-sanctions momentum to a halt. It makes absolutely no sense for Iraq to be involved in a bio-terror attack that, in one fell swoop, undermines what has been Iraq's number one priority over the past decade: the lifting of economic sanctions. 

There is another side to the political equation. America's policy towards Iraq continues to be one of abject failure, and President Bush's administration exhibits the same level of frustration and impotence shown by its predecessor in trying to piece together aviable plan for dealing with Saddam's continued survival. Washington finds itself groping for something upon which to hang its anti-Saddam policies and the current anthrax scare has provided a convenient cause. It would be a grave mistake for some in the Bush administration to undermine the effort to bring to justice those who perpetrated the cowardly attacks against the US by trying to implement their own ideologically-driven agenda on Iraq. Those who have suggested that Iraq is the source of the anthrax used in the current attacks - including Richard Butler, a former chairman of the UN weapons inspection effort - merely fan the flames of fear and panic. There is no verifiable link whatever and it is irresponsible for someone of Mr Butler's stature to be involved in unsubstantiated speculation. His behaviour has, it seems, been guided by animosity towards Baghdad, rather than the facts. 

·Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-8. His book Endgame is published by Simon & Schuster. 

WSRitter@aol.com 

Osama bought a batch for 10G

By NILES LATHEM

October 24, 2001 -- WASHINGTON - Terror master Osama bin Laden bought samples of anthrax by mail from shady laboratories in Eastern Europe and Asia for as little as $10,000, a former follower has told authorities in Egypt.

The astonishing claim of how easily - and cheaply - the world's most wanted terrorist was able to acquire anthrax and other deadly germ agents was made in a 143-page confession of former extremist Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar at a recent trial of more than 100 members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Al-Najjar, serving a life sentence in Egypt, was among several Islamic Jihad operatives arrested in Albania in 1999 and brought home to Egypt to face trial for a series of attempts to destabilize the pro-Western government of President Hosni Mubarak.

According to translated accounts of his testimony obtained by The Post, al-Najjar told authorities there was nothing cloak-and-dagger about bin Laden's transactions involving deadly biological agents.

"Factories" in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Eastern Europe supplied deadly bacteria, including e-coli and salmonella, by mail without checking the identities of the purchasers as long as bin Laden's agents paid $7,500 up front, al-Najjar said.

Bin Laden's group was able to get the anthrax germ from another "factory" in Southeast Asia, which supplied it to the Indonesian-based Islamic Moro Front, a terror group closely associated with bin Laden.

The price for the anthrax spores, al-Najjar said, was $3,685, "plus shipping costs."

U.S. officials say they don't yet know whether bin Laden is responsible for the anthrax scare gripping the nation, although President Bush and other senior officials say they are suspicious.

Bin Laden is known to have contacts with Iraqi officials and mafia groups in former Soviet republics - nations that have extensive chemical-and biological-weapons programs and that are known to have experimented with anthrax.

October 25, 2001

WAR ON TERROR: DEADLY DEALER;
BIN LADEN BOUGHT ANTHRAX, E-COLI AND SALMONELLA, AIDE TELLS COURT

By: Lucy Rock In New York And Andy Lines In Washington

FUGITIVE Osama bin Laden traded in bio-death through the post, one of his aides has revealed.

The al-Qaeda terror chief gave the Indonesia-based Moro Front pounds 2,500 to buy anthrax spores from a factory in south east Asia, plus extra for "shipping costs".

He also paid pounds 5,000 cash for e-coli and salmonella from makers in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in eastern Europe.

Astonishingly, bin Laden made no attempts at secrecy. His identity was not checked and the spores were sent openly by post.

The disclosures, which have stunned the FBI, came as the US anthrax toll mounted and the British consulate in New York was evacuated after receiving an envelope of white powder.

Bin Laden's deadly dealing is revealed in a 143-page confession made to an Egyptian court in 1999 by Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar.

Al-Najjar is a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant. He is also a chief of Egyptian Jihad whose leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is bin Laden's right hand man.

Because of his links, FBI agents believe his claims are true.

Defiant Al-Najjar, serving life jail for trying to topple Egypt's President Mubarak, told the court that all targets in the West are legitimate. He said: "I am a Muslim. I am anti-Jew and support what Osama bin Laden does because the confrontation with the US is an issue of defiance which concerns not only al-Zawahiri or bin Laden, but the Islamic nation."

Referring to the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi which killed 213 people, he added: "I supported the operation because that embassy is the biggest centre for monitoring Islamic movements in the region."

Al-Najjar worked undercover with Islamic extremists moving between Pakistan, Sudan, Albania, and Azerbaijan. He was among 12 men extradited to Egypt from Albania in July, 1998.

Accusing the CIA of being behind his arrest and extradition, he said: "They kidnapped me from a street in Tirana, just as they kidnapped all my colleagues.

"They tied my hands and put a canvas sack over my head, which they did not remove except in front of a US general who checked my identity.

"Albanian police fabricated accusations against me and put me under house arrest for 48 hours."

All 150 staff at the British consulate in New York were evacuated after a woman in the visa department opened an envelope containing white powder. The envelope was sent from Glasgow on October 17. It was addressed in black felt tip pen to the British Consulate General.

Within 30 minutes, the building was sealed off. A member of staff said: "People were very frightened. We were told to go home."

Vice consul Ray Donoghue confirmed: "A suspicious letter was received. Precautionary mail procedures were in place."

FBI agents have discovered magazines with cover stories about poison gas and bio-weapons at the home of two men arrested after the September 11 attacks.

Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan flew from Newark on September 11, then left the flight when it was grounded in St Louis, Missouri.

They were were arrested the next day after being found on a train in Texas with box-cutters, thousands of dollars in cash and black hair dye.

Neither man is cooperating with investigators.

Their flatmate, Mohammed Pervez, is charged with lying to the FBI about more than pounds 70,000 that moved in and out of his bank.

Pervez used to work in Trenton, New Jersey, where anthrax letters were postmarked.

A 55-year-old Pakistani man arrested by the FBI was found dead in his cell at Hudson County jail in New Jersey.

October 25, 2001

BERLIN (AFP) - German investigators are trying to determine if suspected hijacker Mohammed Atta received anthrax spores from Iraqi agents and then brought the germs to the United States, the mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported Thursday. 

Bild quoted reports from Israeli intelligence services that Atta, suspected leader of the pilots who steered two hijacked US planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, had met twice in the Czech republic with Iraqi secret service agents who allegedly gave him the anthrax bacteria. 

Bild said German investigators suspected that Atta had brought the spores with him to New York, where US customs officers may have checked his luggage for drugs but not for bacteria. 

Up to 13 people have been infected with anthrax in the United States, spread in a spate of poisoned letters from individuals whom officials have described as unidentified "terrorists." Three people have died. 

Bild quoted US FBI agents as saying that Atta, who lived and studied in the northern German city of Hamburg over the past decade, had met "the Iraqi Achmed Al'ami for the first time on June 2, 2000 in a cafe in Prague." 

Al'ami was an Iraqi diplomat in Prague and under surveillance by Czech intelligence services. 

Atta allegedly met a second Iraqi agent on another trip to Prague. This agent was the high-ranking Achmed Hedschani, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Bild said. 

German federal police, the BKA, refused to comment on the reports. 

The German federal prosecutor's office was not immediately available for comment. 

On Monday in Prague, police spokeswoman Ivava Zelenakova had said that Atta stayed in the Czech Republic on at least two occasions under his own name. 

Police have proof of two visits to Prague in the summer of 2000, and are investigating whether he might have made other journeys to the country, whether under his own name or an alias. 

According to his visa, Atta did not leave the transit lounge at Prague airport on his first visit. On the second, his visa records he entered the country. 

Czech police would not comment on earlier reports in the Prague daily Dnes that Atta had talks with Samir Al-Ani, former consul and second secretary to the Iraqi ambassador in Prague. 

The claims were formally rejected by the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz. 

However, the Prague weekly Pravo reported last week that Atta had spent a night at the Prague Hilton in the summer of 2000. 

According to several sources close to the secret services, he had spent several days in Prague and at Kutna Hora, 60 kilometres (36 miles) north of the capital under the name Mohammed Sayed Ahmed, the paper claimed. 

Saturday, November 10, 2001, 12:00 a.m. Pacific

By Chris Mondics and James Kuhnhenn
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - FBI officials said yesterday that they believe the person who mailed several anthrax-filled letters is probably a U.S.-based male loner with a scientific bent, possibly like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, whose letter bombs mystified law enforcement for nearly two decades.

Federal officials have been speculating for weeks that the anthrax attacks were not connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but the FBI's announcement yesterday was the strongest endorsement yet of that theory.

Even so, FBI officials said they had not ruled out the possibility that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is behind the anthrax attacks. But they said the wording of the three known anthrax-laced letters suggests a domestic source.

Whoever sent the letters "did not select his victims randomly," one FBI source said. Based on analysis of the handwriting on the letters, they said the anthrax attacker likely was nursing a grudge and probably had a high degree of technical training.

The officials believe, too, that he decided to increase the potency of the anthrax he put into the letters as one attack led to another. So far, four people have died after inhaling anthrax spores, and 13 more got sick from anthrax exposure.

Two of three mail workers hospitalized in Virginia with inhalation anthrax went home yesterday while a third remained in fair condition, hospital officials said. All work at the U.S. Postal Service's Brentwood Road plant in Washington, which processed an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle last month.

The officials said they could detect no political agenda from the letters and their sender's known actions. Each of the three known letters were photocopies, not originals, likely used to help him evade pursuers.

The FBI profile of the likely anthrax attacker suggests that he probably avoids public situations. If he has a job, they said, it likely does not involve contact with many people. They suspect he underwent a significant behavioral change as the letters went out, becoming focused on his mission to spread terror, and might have struck acquaintances as increasingly remote.

FBI officials said they doubt the letters were sent by Middle Eastern terrorists because they do not resemble other such letters sent in the past.  One official said that such letters typically include some Arabic text, but these do not.

The FBI's new profile of the likely anthrax-attacker doesn't bring them any closer to solving the case. Law-enforcement authorities spent nearly two decades trying to capture the Unabomber and did not succeed until Ted Kaczynski's brother turned him in.

The FBI appealed openly to the public to help them identify possible suspects, knowing they probably will have to rely on an informant to finger the person responsible.

In a potential break in the hunt for the suspect, anthrax tests detected traces of the bacteria in four more post offices in central New Jersey, authorities said yesterday.

The anthrax was found in private sorting areas at the post offices in Rocky Hill, Princeton Borough, Trenton and Jackson Township. The buildings were closed and will be cleaned today.

The small satellite offices all feed a regional processing center in Hamilton Township that handled three tainted letters sent to Daschle's office in Washington and to the New York offices of NBC and the New York Post.

The new evidence could help narrow down possible sites from where the letters were sent.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

LINDA LISANTI, Staff Writer
November 06, 2001
 

A forensic expert said yesterday that the handwriting on the three anthrax-laced letters mailed from the postal facility in Hamilton speaks volumes about the mastermind who mailed them.

"Handwriting is our brain writing. We naturally project our personality and habits through (it)," said J. Richard Naduea, a national handwriting profiler, who worked with the FBI on the Unabomber case.

From tiny A's to swooping J's, handwriting can lend clues to a person's attributes, occupation, even their education level.

While most experts agree that the handwriting on the letters mailed to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and the "Editor" at the New York Post is artificial, Naduea said the spacing gives just as many key clues.

"They disguised their actual writing by using a template, but didn't ever think to hide the spacing," the expert said.

"Most criminals never do."

Naduea said the spacing between the letters, lines and words on the envelope and message prove that the sender took time to make it precise.

People with larger spacing, like that on the anthrax letters, are usually thinkers, as opposed to feeling types who rely more on values, he said.

As a thinker, the sender also is data-oriented and excessively organized, which would be useful in occupations like accountant, mathematician or scientist.

Perhaps the most disturbing qualities possessed by the anthrax letter mastermind, Naduea said, are a need for control and a tinge of cruelty

"The letters show this person is excessively controlling...and everyone is subservient to them," said the 30-year forensic veteran.

"They control the experiments. They control people's health. They have a purpose and they have no interest at all in values." 

©The Trentonian 2002

November 12, 2001

Bravado--and blood--in Taliban territory

By: This article was reported by a former Kabul Times reporter whose name is being withheld for his safety.; Philip Smucker.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--"Have you ever heard of anthrax?" asks the diminutive Filipino standing at the reception desk in one of this shattered city's crummy hotels. "That is the kind of thing I'm pretty good at making."

An idle boast? Maybe, except for the letter the man hands the desk clerk. It appears to bear the signature of Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The letter grants the bearer free lodging. It is written on stationery emblazoned with the green Arabic letterhead of al Qaeda.

Clad in a white skullcap and clean gown, a pistol at his waist, the man claims membership in Abu Sayyaf, the militant Filipino group linked to bin Laden. He explains, a bit nervously, that he is a biochemistry graduate with "extensive experience in microbiology" and is working on viruses and germs to use against U.S. troops fighting the Taliban.

There is no way to know for sure whether the man is a biowarfare expert. But U.S. officials have been worried that al Qaeda and the Taliban might try to use chemical or biological weapons against American forces.

Of course, the Taliban is also relying on more conventional defenses. Caves, for instance. A strategic base in an old copper mine south of Kabul has been battered by U.S. bombs. But Arab fighters there are still using the caverns.  Outside, fighters have formed a kind of Mad Max brigade with 25 motorcycles.  "These motorcycles have been brought from Kabul to attack the American helicopters in case they try landing," says a turbaned mechanic. "I've seen the riders training in the mornings with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and heavy machine guns. . . . They seem pretty good at what they do."

Near the entrance to one cave, some 50 Arabs, most Yemenis, take a tea break. They wear pocketed vests containing what villagers say is dynamite. "They tell us they are walking antitank bombs," says the mechanic. One of the Arabs nods his head in the direction of the conversation, adding: "We are ready to be martyrs."

Nursing wounds. At the front lines in the north, there is less bluster. But there is more blood. In the village of Hussein Khil, three ambulances are crowded with patients moaning for help. Puddles of blood spread across the dirt as male nurses, who have used their turbans as tourniquets, splash the faces of their charges with water.

Heavy B-52 raids have turned bunkers into craters. Mullah Abdul Hadi, a 23-year-old Taliban soldier, scanned the front line as another salvo rained 25 bombs onto a nearby bunker. "If this heavy bombing and this weather keeps up, it's bound to be a horrible winter," he bitterly tells a senior commander.  Nearby hospitals are so jammed that female nurses have been allowed to treat men. That's a first for the Taliban. "We were prepared for 100 injuries a day," says Nasa Rullah Stankizai, a doctor in Kabul's largest hospital. "But we are flooded with 180."

The only boost for the Taliban was the arrival last week of a few thousand veteran Pakistani fighters. They are being deployed as a second line of defense around Kabul. The militants arrived in trucks, with a loudspeaker blaring Taliban fight chants (without music, per Taliban law). One verse goes: "Oh, backers of Bush, come down and fight; why are you flying around like butterflies and not landing?"

Friday, February 08, 2002 

By Steven Milloy 
Fox News Channel

President Bush proposes to spend $5.9 billion on bioterrorism preparedness in the fiscal year 2003 federal budget. It's an important line item, given the anthrax attacks and the CIA's congressional testimony this week that Al Qaeda is regrouping and "was pursuing a sophisticated biological weapons research program." 

Though the proposal represents a 300 percent increase in funding for bioterrorism preparedness, it only typifies Big Government's problem-solving calculus — just spend more money. 

Will the proposed spending really make us safer? Or is it a nice payday for the hard-lobbying bioterror industry and good political cover for the President? And should we really have to pay more for security from bioterror? 

While spending $650 million to stockpile antibiotics and smallpox vaccine makes sense, the benefit to the public of the other proposed spending is less clear. 

The bioterror budget includes $518 million for hospitals to improve infrastructure, planning and training exercises. Another $400 million is for states to "assess" and "strengthen" their bioterror response capabilities. 

While these expenditures may seem reasonable, they are only vaguely defined in the budget document. One might wonder whether hospitals and states will use the money for purposes other than improving bioterrorism response. 

Hospitals will receive money, among other things, to increase capacity. Does this improve bioterrorism preparedness or just save hospitals from spending their own money on new construction? Why build more general capacity for bioterror? This wouldn't have made a difference last fall and scenarios of mass bioterror are unlikely. 

How can we be sure states don't reallocate bioterrorism funds, as they've done with their settlements from the tobacco industry?  Those funds were supposed to be used for youth-smoking prevention programs, but have been used instead for highway construction and other purposes — no doubt useful, but hardly the intended purpose. 

The National Institutes of Health is slated to get $187 million for a new research facility on its luxurious main campus in Bethesda, Md. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is getting $184 million for construction. 

Are you feeling safer yet? 

Assuming these expenditures somehow would improve preparedness, why can't they come from existing public-health budgets? 

President Bush wants to give $697 million to the CDC for its Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion program, the primary vehicle through which our federal lifestyle police provide instruction concerning "proper diet, exercise and tobacco-use reduction." 

Couldn't we forego at least some federal nannying for a year in favor of bioterrorism preparedness? 

There's more flab over at the CDC's $156 million Environmental Health program. Much of this money is being wasted on quixotic efforts to link "environmental hazards and chronic diseases" — largely hypothetical phenomena evading proof despite 30 years of intense research efforts. 

Almost the entire budget for bioterrorism could be funded by reducing, if not shutting down the federal government’s failed "war on cancer." 

President Bush proposes increase spending on cancer research by $629 million, to a record $5.5 billion. This is in addition to the $40 billion-plus of taxpayer money already spent on the cancer research since 1971. 

You don't have to take my word about the utter futility of this research. I recommend a visit to the Web site of the National Institutes of Health where the painfully slim progress in the federal government's war on cancer is presented. 

The 1970s saw the development of cures for childhood leukemia and testicular cancer, according to the NIH. Since then, no new cures have been developed by taxpayer-funded research. 

By all means, let's throw even more taxpayer money down this rat hole. 

Why not step back from the cancer stalemate, take a deep breath and re-evaluate? In the meantime, taxpayer money that would otherwise likely be wasted on futile research could be spent improving bioterrorism preparedness. 

Even the Washington Post — whose central government-loving editors rarely see a federal program they don't think should be expanded — are concerned about the proposed bioterrorism budget.

The Post noted in an editorial this week that the research budget for the National Institute for Allergic and Infectious Diseases is slated to increase from $36 million to $441 million — an 1,100 percent increase in a single year. 

The Post politely warned this "rush to mobilize the research enterprise...must not translate into a flood of less than rigorous research" — that is, junk science — and that "the potential lurks in this bioterrorism bonanza for catastrophic waste." Indeed. 

Taxpayers spend enough on public health and should not be expected to spend even more for security from bioterrorism. The federal government should economize before asking taxpayers for more. Who knows, perhaps some belt-tightening might even force the feds to ensure that money spent on bioterrorism isn't wasted. 

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

Does a rash of mysterious deaths around the world lead to Memphis?

by Rebekah Gleaves
The Memphis Flyer

It sounds like a mystery for Mulder and Scully. A string of scientists working on similar projects all over the world are found dead. A mysterious Russian with ties to biological warfare tells tales of threats that boggle the mind. A Tennessee driver-testing center employee is burned to death after being implicated in a license-selling scandal. And the United States government pushes states to adopt a doomsday law that dramatically reduces civil rights.

Chock-full of conspiracy theories and a surprising amount of verifiable data, it’s a story that’s got Web sites and talk-radio callers churning with speculations. And the theories stem from events right here in Memphis.

Formula For Death

Late on November 16, 2001, Dr. Don C. Wiley, a prominent Harvard-based microbiologist, went missing in Memphis. After attending a banquet for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at The Peabody hotel, Wiley -- one of the world’s top biochemists and rumored to be headed toward a Nobel Prize -- disappeared without a trace. Four hours after he left the Peabody, Wiley’s rented white Mitsubishi Galant was found abandoned with a full tank of gas and the keys in the ignition, pointed west on the Hernando DeSoto bridge into Arkansas.

A month later his body was found snagged on a tree 320 miles downstream in a sidewater of the Mississippi River near Vidalia, Louisiana. Bloated from the water and rendered unrecognizable by exposure to the elements, Wiley’s body was nonetheless easy to identify because his wallet and identification were still in his pants pocket.

Across the Atlantic in a rural village near Wiltshire, England, a seemingly unrelated death occurred a week after Wiley’s disappearance. Vladimir Pasechnik died of a stroke on November 23rd in the yard behind his house. Pasechnik, a Russian who defected to England in 1989, was once in charge of the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, first in St. Petersburg and later in Leningrad. Pasechnik and his comrades developed and perfected potential biological weapons such as anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus (similar to Ebola), plague, Q fever, and smallpox, eventually creating strains of these viruses stronger than any scientists had ever imagined possible.

On December 10, 2001, back in the United States, Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was found stabbed to death in his rural Loudoun County, Virginia, home. Authorities speculated at the time that Schwartz might have interrupted a burglary in process. However, investigators found no signs of forced entry and nothing seemed to be missing from the home. Schwartz, who lived alone, was a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association and executive director of research and development at Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology. He was extremely well respected in the field of biophysics and considered something of an expert on DNA sequencing.

Two days later and a few hundred miles south, Dr. Benito Que was found comatose on a Miami street near the University of Miami Medical School laboratory where he worked. Que died of injuries Miami police initially suspected were the result of a mugging. Later Que’s death was determined to be “natural”-- the result of a heart attack. Que was a cell biologist involved in research on infectious diseases and worked in the hematology department of the medical school.

On December 14th, two days after Que’s death, Dr. Set Van Nguyen was found dead in Geelong, Australia.  Nguyen had worked as a scientist in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s animal-diseases facility for 15 years. Earlier last year two scientists at that facility were written up in the esteemed science journal Nature for their work in genetic manipulation and DNA sequencing. Specifically, the two had created a virulent form of mousepox.

“Australian scientists, Dr. Ron Jackson and Dr. Ian Ramshaw, accidentally created an astonishingly virulent strain of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox, among laboratory mice. They realised that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could be unleashed” read the Nature article on the scientists.

According to the Victoria police department, Nguyen died after entering a refrigerated storage facility. “He did not know the room was full of deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Unable to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died” reads the official report.

Then, in January 2002, Ivan Glebov and Alexi Brushlinski -- both members of the Russian Academy of Science -- were killed. The Russian daily newspaper Pravda reported that Glebov died as the result of a bandit attack and simply says that Brushlinski was killed in Moscow.

On February 9th, Pravda reported the death of Victor Korshunov, head of the microbiology sub-faculty of the Russian State Medical University. Korshunov died of massive head trauma. His body was found February 8th at the entrance of his Moscow house.

Less than a week later, on February 12th, the body of Ian Langford, a senior fellow at the University of East Anglia’s Center for Social and Economic Research, was found in his blood-spattered and ransacked Norwich, England, home. The Times of London reported the following day that police and emergency technicians discovered Langford naked from the waist down and partly wedged under a chair. Coroners were unable to determine the exact cause of Langford’s death. Langford was described by The Times as being one of Europe’s leading experts on the links between human health and environmental risk.

In less than four months, then, nine of the world’s top microbiologists were dead. All had been doing research that had connections with the creation and prevention of biological warfare. But there is more to the story.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk, Siberia, was shot down over the Black Sea by an “errant” Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing everyone on board. The highly publicized crash rattled the 9/11-shaken nerves of people everywhere, but, according to conspiracy theorists, none were rattled more than the Israeli science community.  Many in Israel believe the flight carried four or five microbiologists headed to work in one of the 50-plus scientific laboratories in Novosibirsk.

Just before the Black Sea crash, Israeli journalists were claiming that two Israeli microbiologists had been murdered by terrorists. After the crash, these same journalists claimed that Avishai Berkman, Amiramp Eldor, and Yaacov Matzner -- flight manifests confirm they were on the plane -- were top microbiologists in Israel. These journalists say that the men were the head of hematology at a major hospital, the director of Tel Aviv’s public-health department, and the director of the Hebrew University’s school of medicine, respectively.  However, the names and the titles don’t match.

Then on November 24, 2001, a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed during its landing approach.  Twenty-four of the 33 people on board were killed, including the head of the hematology department at Israel’s Ichilov Hospital and directors of the Tel Aviv public-health department and the Hebrew University school of medicine.

Meanwhile, back in Memphis, on February 10th the burned-beyond-recognition corpse of Katherine Smith, a driver-testing center employee, was found in her car on U.S. 72 near Fayette County. Smith was scheduled to testify before a federal magistrate the following day against five Middle Eastern men who allegedly paid her $1,000 each for fraudulently issued Tennessee driver’s licenses.

What does it all mean? Is it a worldwide conspiracy? It sounds like a plotline from The X-Files, but these are the facts, and they’ve got conspiracy theorists all over the globe buzzing.

Terror Talk

“As a talk-radio host you get these conspiracy types all the time. I like to say to them, ‘Sir, you are being misled,’” says Lowell Ponte, host of radio’s The Lowell Ponte Show (www.talkamerica.com/lowell/) and a frequent contributor to FrontPage Magazine (www.frontpagemag.com), a news site edited by controversial writer David Horowitz.

But when he heard about the dead scientists and the driver’s-license scheme, Ponte says he realized that maybe the conspiracy theorists were onto something this time. So he read up on the issues and penned a column titled “Terror in Tennessee: The Middle East echoes in America’s Heartland.” In the column, Ponte discusses the mysterious deaths of Wiley and Smith and speculates on the possible links to global terrorism.  Ponte ends the column by writing, “Reasonable people would say that any prudent look at such fatal coincidences should lead us to support President George W. Bush’s life-and-death, open-and-clandestine war against terrorism. Those with a more ‘liberal’ imagination prefer to believe that Denial really is just a river flowing past Memphis, Tennessee.”

Ponte told the Flyer that he wrote that column after reading about the Katherine Smith case in several national newspapers and reading about the dead microbiologists on some Web sites devoted to traditional news and some devoted to conspiracy theories.

“When you have two people -- both of whom are involved in activities that are significant to terrorists -- who die in the same community during a short period of time, you have to at least entertain the idea that the [events] are related,” said Ponte.

London-based author Ian Gurney also became interested in the scientists’ deaths while doing research for his next book. The book is about biological warfare and is tentatively titled The Spawn of the Devil.

“I was doing research for my book and it seemed like every week I would receive a news alert about another microbiologist dying,” Gurney told the Flyer. “The story was all over the place but no one had really connected the deaths yet.”

So Gurney began researching the various deaths himself and saw a common theme -- all were working on projects related to biological warfare. Considering the post-9/11 climate worldwide, he thought these links were more than just coincidental.

“I don’t believe that much in coincidence,” said Gurney.  “Most people in America, like most people in my country, tend to only scan the news for about 30 minutes. That’s all we can take before we have to go make a cup of tea.  We don’t usually get into the stories behind the stories.  The news doesn’t usually get in depth.”

Gurney took it upon himself to visit the Web sites of major newspapers all over the world. Reading articles and obituaries, he pieced together a web of deaths -- some natural, some violent -- that he believes are related to current advancements in biological weapons. Gurney began publishing articles on the connections on his Web site (www.caspro.com), and his stories were soon picked up or modified by other sites like FrontPage Magazine and the conspiracy-theory-heavy site Rense.com (www.rense.com) run by talk-radio host Jeff Rense.

“The news doesn’t really go in depth,” said Gurney. “The majority of people in your country and in mine are being treated like mushrooms. We’re being kept in the dark and having bullshit heaped over us. If there is a conspiracy and we don’t pay attention to the signs, they’re going to get away with it.”

Dr. Death

Conspiracy theory or not, there is an unmistakable and frightening connection between one of the dead scientists and a man referred to by London newspaper News of the World as “The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.”

Vladimir Pasechnik, the Soviet scientist who died in England last fall, and Dr. Ken Alibek, the scientist formerly known as Kanatjan Alibekov, worked together at Biopreparat -- the Soviet germ-warfare laboratory.  Alibekov defected to the United States in 1992, changed his name, and made the talk-show circuit. After September 11th, many Americans saw Alibek sharing his views on cable and network news. His life begun anew, Alibek now spends his days in a tiny office at George Mason University, near Washington, D.C., trying to undo the horrors he spent the first part of his scientific career creating.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Pasechnik and Alibekov were the top two scientists at Biopreparat, but they were hardly the only scientists there. According to U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, at its height Biopreparat employed as many as 70,000 scientists and technicians -- many of whom worked solely on creating biological weapons of mass destruction.

“Through our program, we stockpiled hundreds of tons of anthrax, plague, and smallpox for our use against the West,” Alibek told News of the World in October. “What went on in our labs was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War.”

But when the Soviet Union collapsed, funding for Biopreparat disappeared with it, and the previously employed scientists began selling their services to the highest bidders. According to Alibek: “Many went to Europe and Asia or have simply dropped out of sight. I’ve heard that several went to Iraq and North Korea.”

Of Pasechnik, Alibek says this: “He was behind some of our best work, devising a machine that turns viruses into a fine powder. It had been a huge breakthrough because it complemented another project, using cruise missiles to fly low over enemy territory, spraying out clouds of disease.”

Originally trained as a doctor, Alibek says he is holding himself accountable to the Hippocratic oath he ignored for so long. In July 2001, well before the September attacks, Alibek told New Scientist magazine that he was devoting his time to enhancing “innate immunity” in the respiratory tract.

“Our objective is to develop an inhaler containing micro-encapsulated cytokines to prevent degradation and toxicity. The inhaler could be used to treat people before a biological weapons attack and after they are exposed,” Alibek told New Scientist.

In a Frontline interview that aired October 13, 1998, on PBS, Alibek said that scientists at Biopreparat had specifically selected smallpox as a biological weapon because it was highly contagious and because it was a “dead” virus -- meaning in the future most people would not be vaccinated against it. When asked if the Russians would have vaccinated their citizens against smallpox before unleashing it, Alibek was grim.

“In my opinion,” he told Frontline, “nobody cared what would happen to the Russians because this weapon would be used just in case of a total war.”

Dark Winter

That’s just what U.S. government officials feared early last summer when representatives from several major departments met to stage a mini-war. Alibek was not the only person in the United States to realize that we need to develop a defense against biological weapons and these officials wanted a test to see if the U.S. could withstand a major biological attack.

They called their fake war “Dark Winter.” In the exercise, smallpox is discovered in Oklahoma and Georgia. State governments had to try and consolidate efforts with the federal government to ensure that the disease was not spread. The participants hoped to determine how each department would respond in a crisis situation. The results were grim.

“We, all in the room, were humbled by what we did not know and could not do and were convinced of the urgent need to better prepare our nation against this gruesome threat,” Margaret Hamburg, M.D., said in her July 23, 2001, testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, following the Dark Winter exercise.

Hamburg participated in the exercise as the secretary of health and human services. Many Americans may be familiar with her name because, like Alibek, she appeared on many cable and network news shows following the September 11th and anthrax attacks last fall. Hamburg had previously been the New York City health commissioner when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 and also was an assistant secretary in the federal department of health and human services.

Hamburg also told the committee, “People should not be exchanging business cards on the first day of a crisis.”

Frank Keating, the current governor of Oklahoma, played himself in the exercise. Keating was also governor of Oklahoma in April 1995 when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed. Emergency response groups now look to Oklahoma’s response as the model of governmental efficiency during a crisis situation.

In his testimony before the House committee, Keating placed particular emphasis on the need to be open with the public and media and encouraged the committee to “resist the urge to federalize everything.”

Likewise, Senator Sam Nunn, who played the role of U.S. president, realized that both the nation as a whole and the individual states were ill-prepared to cope with biological warfare.

“In the evolution of warfare,” said Nunn, “arrows were countered with shields; swords with armor; guns with tanks; and now biological weapons must be countered with medicines, vaccines, and surveillance systems.”

All of the participants testified that the U.S. would have a long way to go before it would be ready to handle a biological attack. They all also testified that several legal hurdles currently stand in the way of officials, hurdles they believe need to be removed in advance.

Legislative Action

After the results of Dark Winter, and particularly after the September 11th attacks, federal policymakers decided that it was time to overcome these legal hurdles. A panel composed of law professors from Georgetown University and medical professors from Johns Hopkins University worked together to create a law to address the problems.  After only 18 days of discussion, the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) was finished.

The act has since been introduced in every state legislature, where “Model” is replaced with the state’s name. In Tennessee, TEHPA (House Bill 2271/Senate Bill 2392) is currently being reviewed in committee.

However, nationwide left- and right-wingers alike are sounding off on MEHPA-based laws in Web chat rooms and bulletin boards. At issue are the vast and truly frightening powers the laws bestow upon state governors and their appointees.

Under MEHPA, and Tennessee’s TEHPA, a governor or his appointee, after declaring a “public health emergency,” has the power to take a number of actions.  In the event of such an emergency, MEHPA allows each state to transform into something that would shock even George Orwell. The Model Emergency Health Powers Act allows officials to require an individual to be vaccinated.  Anyone who refuses vaccination could be charged with a felony and forcibly quarantined. Likewise, it allows officials to require individuals to receive specific medical treatment or also be charged with a felony and quarantined. The state would also be allowed to seize any property, including real estate, deemed necessary to handle the emergency, and the property could be destroyed or retained without any compensation for the owner.

During a “public health emergency,” officials would be able to draft a person or business into state service and to impose rationing, price controls, quotas, and transportation controls. Any preexisting law thought to interfere with handling the emergency would be suspended. State governments would also be able to control the availability and distribution of medicines and vaccines and would be permitted to collect specimens from and perform tests on living persons.

Regardless of whether or not a connection exists between the dead microbiologists, between Don Wiley’s and Katherine Smith’s deaths, or between the events of September 11th and the anthrax attacks, the federal and state governments seem now at least to be aware of the threat of biological attack. What remains to be seen is how Americans will respond. And the links -- real or imagined -- between the rash of mysterious deaths?  That’s a mystery even Mulder and Scully couldn’t solve.

KSU scientists target bioterrorism, proposing aerial spraying to kill anthrax spores, better irradiation of mail

School enlists in war

Kent State researchers hope for federal aid for counterterrorism projects
By Katie Byard
Beacon Journal staff writer

About five years before anthrax spilled from letters and envelopes last fall, a Kent State University professor was dreaming up an airborne way to wipe out large amounts of the deadly spores quickly.

Why not spray some kind of neutralizing agent from a low-flying airplane? After all, Mitch Fadem reasoned, aerial spraying is used to kill disease-carrying mosquitoes and other pests.

Now, Fadem hopes to attract $1 million in federal funding to boost his studies, which sound like the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel.

The 50-year-old toxicologist envisions tests with a military transport airplane flying over a remote area of southern Canada and spraying a chemical compound on simulated anthrax.

``Since we've already been attacked'' by terrorists, Fadem said, ``we know that this kind of thing can happen. It's no longer, `This thing might happen.' ''

These days, interest in counterterrorism research is high, and military and university scientists are scrambling for the money available to fund it. Already this year, the federal government has nearly tripled -- to nearly $1.5 billion -- the amount it plans to spend on counterterrorism research and development, said Kei Koizumi of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

While much of that money will be spent in government laboratories, Koizumi said, some will go to university researchers like Fadem. And, Koizumi said, the pot of federal money might grow to $2.8 billion for the next fiscal year, which begins in October.

Counterterrorism research ``is now on the agenda'' more than ever, Koizumi said. But the downside ``is that if you're a scientist and your work is in no way security- or counterterrorism-related, the funding situation doesn't look so good.''

Air Force Reserve work

Fadem's notion of neutralizing anthrax by zapping it from the air grew out of his work as a biomedical toxicologist in the Air Force Reserve's 910th Airlift Wing at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Trumbull County, not far from Fadem's office at Kent State's Trumbull campus.

The 910th has the military's only full-time aerial spray unit that uses C-130 airplanes, rather than helicopters, to wipe out pests. In 1989, after Hurricane Hugo came ashore in South Carolina, the unit sprayed millions of acres of mosquito-breeding areas along the East Coast. The planes also are used to spray weedkiller on government property.

Fadem, a captain in the reserve, thought about using the aerial spraying equipment -- big tanks and nozzles attached to the C-130s -- to decontaminate an area exposed to chemical or biological agents.

This was before anthrax and biological warfare became part of the national vocabulary.

``I've been telling people for a long time it (bioterrorism) is going to happen here,'' Fadem said. ``The climate was right. I knew how open the United States was and how easy it would be to get the materials.''

In his lab, Fadem has sprayed a chemical compound on various materials to determine the concentration that would kill the anthrax spores without harming people or damaging buildings.

With his test results and encouragement from a federal agency that bankrolls high-tech military projects, Fadem plans to apply for $1 million in federal money for his proposed aerial spraying tests.

Irradiation at Kent State

While Fadem is focusing on using chemicals to fight bioterrorism, two other Kent State researchers, Christopher Woolverton and Carlos Vargas, are concentrating on killing anthrax via irradiation.

Making use of technology that has long been used to sterilize medical, dental and household products, Woolverton and Vargas are irradiating mail -- using beams of electrons to kill bacterial spores. They are tinkering with the concentration of radiation needed to decontaminate the mail.

The problem, Woolverton said, is that with too little radiation, ``you don't get any killing'' of the spores, and with too high a level, ``you destroy important things in the mail, like credit cards, floppy disks and other electronic media.... Pieces of mail have even caught on fire.''

Woolverton and Vargas soon will publish a paper that says far smaller amounts of radiation are needed to kill anthrax than is commonly believed.

The two have had a big advantage in doing their research: Kent State is co-owner of an electron-beam irradiation facility -- NEOBeam Alliance Ltd. -- in Middlefield in Geauga County.

Manual and training site

Woolverton and Vargas, who is director of the electron-beam program for the university, plan to propose to the government that it pay for the creation of an operations manual for postal workers telling them how to properly irradiate various types of mail.

A grander idea -- if the government goes along with it -- would have Kent State building a facility where postal workers and others would be trained in e-beam procedures. Such a facility would need workers, Woolverton said, meaning the technology would lead to the creation of jobs.

Luanne Daigneault, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service who works in the Akron district, said the agency has bought eight ``e-beam'' machines: Four are to be installed in Washington, and the other four are to be put in another location yet to be announced.

The only mail the Postal Service is irradiating is that bound for certain Washington ZIP codes.

Microbial bio-sensors

In addition to killing anthrax, Woolverton also is developing a way to vastly speed up the detection of the spores and other bioterrorism threats.

Working with researchers at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and Kent State's Liquid Crystal Institute, Woolverton is using liquid crystal display technology -- which is used in watches and computer monitors -- to make credit-card-size ``microbial bio-sensors.'' These sensors, using liquid crystals, can detect a microorganism in five minutes, he said.

Two proposals have been submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense asking for money for more testing of the bio-sensors. About $1.5 million is needed, Woolverton said.

A Bellevue, Wash., company, MicroDiagnosis Inc., has licensed the technology from Kent State.

Woolverton said scientists obviously like the attention their counterterrorism work is getting, but it's unfortunate that it took the events of last fall to generate that interest. ``I think we were caught off guard in October'' when anthrax began arriving in the mail, he said. ``A lot of people are still smarting from that and saying we need to solve these problems.''

Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com

THE PURSUIT 

G.I.'s Search Afghan Caves, Finding Trove of Material

By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, April 6 — A team of American soldiers completed a sweep today of a large cave network believed to have been used recently by Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, carrying away photos, dossiers and vials containing an unidentified white powder. 

Some 500 troops from the Army's 101st Airborne Division arrived here this afternoon after the five-day mission, which took them into the subterranean complex in Khost Province near the border with Pakistan. The men said they had ventured into more than 15 caves, some of them hundreds of feet deep, complete with bedrooms, warehouses and even iron-barred jail cells. After cleaning out the caves, the men used C-4 explosives and antitank missiles to seal them.

When the soldiers ran out of ordnance, they marked the caves they could not destroy and brought their coordinates back to base. Apache helicopters were to go back later to finish the caves off.

"Some of the stuff looked pretty old, but the locals said Osama bin Laden had been there," said Capt. Lou Bauer, 29, of Windsor, N.Y.

The search of the caves appeared to represent a new phase in the American operation in Afghanistan. After the end of the large American operation last month in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, where hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were thought to have been killed, American troops appear to be moving toward smaller operations against targets that are more dispersed.

In a statement today, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief commander in the war here, said that American forces had no large-scale operations against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces planned soon. There are some 6,500 American troops in Afghanistan, as well as the first members of a 1,700-man British commando brigade. 

The operation into the caves also appears to represent a shift for the American troops, who left unsearched many of the caves used by Taliban and fighters in the Tora Bora region last December. 

The American soldiers said they had destroyed the caves so they could not be used again by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who might be trying to re-enter Afghanistan.

The caves, many of them fortified during the American-backed war against the Soviet Union in the 1980's, lie just a few miles from the border with Pakistan, where hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are believed to have fled in the past few months. The caves lie in a region called Zhwara, about 30 miles from the Shah-i-Kot Valley, from which many Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were thought to have escaped. 

So far, Pakistan is off-limits to American troops, and American and Afghan officials worry that the fugitive fighters appear to be planning guerrilla attacks from their Pakistani sanctuaries. Although Pakistani officials insist that the 12,000 soldiers they have deployed in the border region are keeping a lookout for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, there have been persistent reports that these fighters are regrouping in the largely ungoverned area. 

Lounging near the airstrip of this old Soviet base, the American soldiers said it appeared that the caves had been used recently by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. In addition to destroying several hundred rounds of mortar shells and bullets, the men said they had carted off five bags filled with documents.

Included in the haul were dozens of what appeared to be personnel files of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, complete with mug shots and write-ups of each one.

The men in the photographs appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin, the Americans said, and much of the writing in the documents appeared to be in Arabic. 

There were several signs that Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters had been in the caves fairly recently, the soldiers said. 

One soldier said he found what appeared to be a relatively new box of 155-millimeter howitzer shells. Another said he found a body in a small mausoleum that appeared to have been recently entombed. One soldier found a copy of USA Today dated May 17, 2001.

The most intriguing discovery were dozens of vials filled with white powder.

The soldiers said they were not sure what the substance was; some speculated that it might be anthrax, others that it could be heroin or cocaine. 

"I'm not sure what it was, maybe drugs," said Sgt. First Class Chuck Nye, one of the soldiers who took part in the cave searches. 

The soldiers said they also searched an abandoned village, called Shodiaka. They said the village appeared to have been recently abandoned, and they found some of the same white powder stored in clay jars there. 

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
The Associated Press
4/12/02 7:04 PM

NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge denied bail Friday to a postal worker accused of aiding a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida. 

During the bail hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Bianco said the government has a "mountain of proof" against the Staten Island postal worker, including hundreds of secretly taped telephone conversations with leaders of the terrorist organization Islamic Group. 

Bianco said Ahmed Abdel Sattar, 42, joined with New York civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart and two others in a conspiracy to help Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman communicate with the terrorist group. Stewart was arrested Tuesday. 

Abdel-Rahman, described as the U.S. leader of the Islamic Group, is serving a life sentence after being convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy in a plot to blow up five New York landmarks. 

Prosecutors say the Islamic Group is an Egyptian-based international terrorist group dedicated to overthrowing Egypt's secular government and opposing others who do not share its radical interpretation of Islamic law. 

Bianco described Sattar as the "point man of this worldwide terrorist organization in the United States." 

U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl rejected a $2 million bail package prepared by Sattar's defense lawyer, Kenneth Paul, who said many of his client's friends had called to offer their homes as collateral. 

Paul said Sattar, an Egyptian, entered the United States in 1985, became a citizen in 1989, joined the postal service a year later and married his wife. Sattar had not left the country since 1992, when he briefly went to Egypt after his father died, the lawyer said. 

He called his client a "hard working individual, a family man." 

After bail was denied, Sattar's wife and four children left the courtroom in tears. 

"I know my husband better than anybody. All the stuff they said is not true," Lisa Sattar said. 

Phil Brennan - newsmax.com
Wednesday, June 5, 2002 

Let's start with this disclosure: One of my sons now works for American Media (AMI) in Boca Raton, Fla. In September of 2001, he was working in AMI's headquarters for Lasertech International (now Vertis Inc.), a subcontractor which handles production of AMI's many publications. 

It was then that the building came under an attack of deadly anthrax, which killed one of AMI's photo editors, Bob Stevens, a longtime friend of mine, and almost killed Ernie Blanco, the mailroom boss and another old friend of mine. 

Obviously, I have more than a passing interest in the matter I'm about to discuss.

OK, with that out of the way, let's take a look at the anthrax attack and the FBI's goofy way of looking at the case.

About a week before Sept. 11, 2001, a letter arrived at AMI. It ended up in the offices of the Sun, one of AMI's tabloids. People at the Sun who saw it said it was a "weird love letter to Jennifer Lopez." Inside the letter was a "soapy, powdery substance" and a cheap Star of David charm. 

The letter, which had been taken to the Sun by Ernie Blanco, was passed ar