- The anthrax spores enclosed in envelopes mailed to two
leading Senate Democrats in October are biologically identical to bacteria
secretly manufactured at a US germ warfare facility during the last decade,
according to press reports and an analysis by a leading
microbiologist.
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- The army biological and chemical warfare unit at the
Dugway Proving Ground, about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah,
may well be the source of the weapons-grade anthrax sent to Senators Tom
Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Scientists at Dugway grew and processed spores
deriving from the Ames strainóthe strain that appeared in all the
letters sent to media outlets and Congress.
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- The spores had been carefully milled to produce the size
most effective in spreading the deadly bacteria, between one and three
microns.
-
- The existence of the secret army program was first
revealed
by the Baltimore Sun in an article published December 12. Until then, US
officials, including those investigating the anthrax attacks, had
maintained
that the American military stopped producing germ warfare materials in
the late 1960s, before the signing of an international treaty banning the
development of such weapons.
-
- Pentagon spokesmen now claim that the development of
weapons-grade anthrax was legal under the treaty because the production
of small quantities is permitted for "peaceful and protective"
purposes, i.e., to prepare countermeasures to a germ warfare attack. The
United States is the only country that is known to have produced
weapons-grade
anthrax in the past 25 years.
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- While the Dugway facility produced the dried anthrax
spores, they were sometimes sent to another germ warfare unit at Fort
Detrick,
near Frederick, Maryland, only 30 miles from Washington, DC. Fort Detrick
has equipment for killing bacteria with radiation, and received shipments
of the anthrax to be sterilized so it would be safer to work on. The most
recent shipment from Dugway to Fort Detrick was last June 27, the Sun
reported.
The spores were returned to Dugway on September 4, one week before the
terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, and four weeks before
the first anthrax cases were detected in south Florida.
-
- Spores were also sent in 1997 to the Armed Forces
Institute
of Pathology in Washington, according to a spokesman for that
agency.
-
- Even before the Sun's report confirmed that the Dugway
lab had recently produced weapons-grade anthrax, a leading specialist on
the subject had concluded that a US government facility was the most likely
source of the anthrax used in the recent mailings. In an analysis released
December 10 by the Federation of American Scientists' Working Group on
Biological Weapons, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg declared, "The anthrax
in the letters was probably made and weaponized in a US government or
contractor
lab. It might have been made recently by the perpetrator on his own, or
made as part of the US biodefense program; or it may be a remnant of the
US biological weapons program before Nixon terminated the program in
1969."
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- Another expert in the field, Richard Spertzel, a former
army colonel who directed the UN biological weapons inspection team in
Iraq, also rejected the notion that a disaffected individual like the
Unabomber
could have produced the anthrax letters. In testimony to the House
Committee
on International Relations December 5, Spertzel declared, "The quality
of the product contained in the letter to Senator Daschle was better than
that found in the Soviet, US or Iraqi program, certainly in terms of the
purity and concentration of spore particles."
-
- In response to the Baltimore Sun article, a spokesman
for the Dugway Proving Ground confirmed that the facility had produced
dry anthrax powder similar to that found in the Daschle and Leahy letters,
but claimed that it was "well protected" and entirely accounted
for. The statement was the first admission by the US government that it
has produced useable germ warfare material since the program for offensive
biological weapons was terminated in 1969 by the Nixon
administration.
-
- Barbara Hatch Rosenberg said, "This is very
significant.
There's never been an acknowledgement that any US facility had weaponized
anthrax. The question is, could someone have gotten hold of a very small
amount and used it in the letters?"
-
- According to the Washington Post, the FBI is
investigating
a possible connection between the anthrax attacks and Dugway, and has
questioned
lab personnel. Fort Detrick is also a possible source, and the US Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) is the
principal
source of the Ames strain of anthrax, supplying it not only to a handful
medical researchers in the US, but to germ warfare research facilities
in Canada and Great Britain as well.
-
- The Post reported November 30, "Since the mid-1980s,
the US Army laboratory that is the main custodian of the virulent strain
of anthrax used in the recent terrorist attacks distributed the bacteria
to just five labs in the United States, Canada and England, according to
government documents and interviews."
-
- The most recent transfers took place only a few months
before this autumn's anthrax attacksóthe Ames strain was sent in
March to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in
Albuquerque,
and in May to the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, a private
company involved in anthrax vaccine research.
-
- According to a report in the New York Times, federal
investigators have concluded that the anthrax spores in the Daschle and
Leahy letters could only have been produced in a government weapons
laboratory,
probably one run by the American government. The anthrax in these letters
contained as many as one trillion spores per gram, a concentration
sufficient
to cause the death of half the American population if widely
distributed.
-
- The Times observed, citing an unnamed federal science
adviser, that the quality of the anthrax "lends credence to the idea
that someone with links to military laboratories or their contractors might
be behind the attacks." The scientist told the Times, "It's frightening to think that one of our own scientists could have done something lik
e
this. But it's definitely possible."
-
- The revelations about the production of weapons-grade
anthrax at Dugway and the distribution of the Ames strain from Fort Detrick
have aroused concerns among the relatively small group of scientists
familiar
with the most up-to-date research in the field. Several expressed surprise,
in comments to the press, about the ongoing germ warfare program. Barbara
Hatch Rosenberg categorically declared that the Dugway activities were
a violation of international treaty obligations in relation to germ
warfare.
-
- The Washington Post, in a front-page report December
16, cited these experts as concluding: "Genetic fingerprinting studies
indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to
stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the US Army since 1980."
At least one of the scientists told the Post that "the original
source"
of the anthrax in the Daschle and Leahy letters "had to have been
USAMRIID," i.e., Fort Detrick.
-
- The Post added: "The FBI's investigation into the
anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether US government
bioweapons
research programs, including one conducted by the CIA, may have been the
source of deadly anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to sources
with knowledge of the probe. The results of the genetic tests strengthen
that possibility. The FBI is focusing on a contractor that worked with
the CIA, one source said."
-
- The genetic fingerprinting finding was made by a research
team led by geneticist Paul Keim at Northern Arizona University in
Flagstaff,
the newspaper said, adding that the FBI had begun interviewing CIA
officials
responsible for the CIA's own germ warfare program, which made use of the
Ames strain.
-
- The Post added that both profit and politics were being
considered as possible factors in the anthrax letters: "Investigators
are considering a wide range of possible motives for the anthrax attacks,
including vengeance of some sort, profiteering by someone involved in the
anthrax cleanup business, or perhaps an effort by someone to cast blame
on Iraq..."
-
- While this new direction in the investigation is well
known in official Washington, neither the Bush administration nor the major
television networks have focused any public attention on the growing
likelihood
that a section of the state apparatus itself, with close links to far-right
elements, is the probable source of the anthrax attacks.
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- http://www.wsws.org
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