- INDIANAPOLIS - Science and
politics never mix very well; war and politics can never be separated.
Put all three together, and you get a jumble that breeds anthrax,
biological
terrorism's prime example of a weapon of mass disruption.
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- Anthrax is capable of mass destruction, too, and on a
horrifying scale. But last year's anthrax attack killed fewer Americans
than the flu does on any given weekend, points out Stanford biologist
Steven
Block, one of the nation's leading experts on biological weapons. On the
other hand, anthrax's terror generated massive political, economic and
social disruption, he notes, from closing down the Supreme Court and
slowing
down mail service to inflicting millions of dollars in cleanup
costs.
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- Yet despite the scale of the anthrax disruption, efforts
to identify the perpetrator of the attack have apparently been ineffectual.
The FBI's performance in the anthrax case would not make for a very
impressive
CSI episode. But Dr. Block says that more is known about the killer than
many people realize, and he hints that political considerations may end
up protecting the culprit's identity.
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- Speaking in Indianapolis last month at a national meeting
of the American Physical Society, Dr. Block reviewed the chronology of
last year's anthrax episodes and highlighted some of the conclusions that
the evidence to date suggests.
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- For one thing, the anthrax used in the attacks was almost
certainly derived from the U.S. military anthrax research program, he
said.
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- "Nearly all the clues so far point to the
possibility
that this was in fact a domestic source, an inside job," Dr. Block
said.
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- The American process for preparing anthrax is secret
in its details, but experts know that it produces an extremely pure powder.
One gram (a mere 28th of an ounce) contains a trillion spores.
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- "A trillion spores per gram is basically solid
spores,"
Dr. Block said, which is why the U.S. method is regarded as
"optimal"
for weaponizing anthrax. And the evidence indicates that the anthrax powder
used in the mail attacks must have been effectively weaponized.
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- "It appears from all reports so far that this was
a powder made with the so-called optimal U.S. recipe," Dr. Block said.
"That means they either had to have information from the United States
or maybe they were the United States."
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- By that he meant the culprit or culprits may have been
participants in U.S. government anthrax research. And that, he said,
"raises
the serious possibility that the United States may be violating" the
international treaty outlawing the development of offensive biological
and chemical weaponry.
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- Only about 200 researchers participate in the U.S.
program,
Dr. Block said, and fewer than 50 would have possessed the knowledge and
skills needed to produce the high-purity spores.
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- In a group of scientists that small, it should take no
more than a handful of clues to pinpoint any individual. Say, for
illustration
purposes only, that the prime suspect was a science writer. If
investigators
revealed that the guilty one usually drove long distances to attend science
meetings, always sat in restaurants where he could see the door, and
included
a note in the envelope saying journalism is dead, dozens of other science
writers would know immediately who it was.
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- Similarly, enough is known about the anthrax letters
that at least one researcher would almost certainly have a pretty good
idea who sent them.
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- So maybe the FBI already knows who did it but doesn't
have enough evidence to make an arrest. There is, however, another
possibility,
Dr. Block mentioned at the physics meeting. Perhaps the FBI knows who did
it but also knows that it is someone who knows too much.
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- "The FBI, after all these months, has still not
arrested anybody," Dr. Block said. "It's possible, as has been
suggested, that they may be standing back because the person that's
involved
with it may have secret information that the United States government would
not like to have divulged."
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- It's a scenario that would make a good conspiracy-theory
movie script. But real-life events argue that such suspicions should be
taken seriously. After all, Dr. Block noted, both the Clinton and George
W. Bush administrations have resisted adjustments to the international
biological weapons treaty that would have allowed inspections of U.S.
research
facilities.
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- Of course, other possibilities remain. It may be that
clues have been manipulated to deceive investigators and the public;
perhaps
foreign terrorists were involved in the anthrax attacks. Maybe a domestic
terrorist illicitly gained access to anthrax without the knowledge of any
U.S. researchers.
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- So unless the guilty party decides to go public and
confess,
there may never be any way to know if the cover-up scenario accurately
reflects the facts. And if it does, nobody who really knows is free to
say, and nobody who's free to say really knows. But anybody who knows
anything
knows that when science clashes with politics, there's always more to the
story than most people will ever know.
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