PBS Transcript
ANTHRAX INVESTIGATION
October 25, 2001
Margaret Warner examines the anthrax investigation with Stephen Engelberg, investigations editor at The New York Times, and Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit.
MARGARET WARNER: And, Steve Engelberg, for instance, if you had to go out and buy this equipment or get the anthrax, does that leave a trail, or is this stuff available in a way that investigators could never find the trail?
STEPHEN ENGELBERG: Well, you'd be surprised. The Pentagon a couple years ago went and did a program in which they gave some people a million dollars and said, "Go out and build yourself an anthrax factory." And they found that you could get the fermenter you needed on the Internet from Germany, from a brewery, you know, somebody selling used equipment. The other equipment was basically available if you knew what you were doing, from Lowe's Hardware Store or Home Depot. The anthrax is a bit of a trick if you want to get a strain that is truly virulent, that takes something. But the main thing you need here is knowledge. Once you know what you're doing and you have somebody guiding you, the trail you leave is not that wide a swath.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july-dec01/anthrax_10-24.html-------------------------
On Sept. 4, 2001 -- just a week before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Times reported that from 1997-2000, the CIA conducted a program called Clear Vision, to build a model of a Soviet germ bomblet. The program was carried out at the West Jefferson, Ohio, labs of Battelle Memorial Institute, a defense and CIA contractor. In addition, the Times story reported, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence arm, hired Battelle last year to create a type of genetically enhanced version of anthrax, a "superbug," to see if the anthrax vaccine currently in use by the Pentagon was effective against it. A second Pentagon program, called Bacchus, involved building a germ factory in the Nevada desert from scratch, but reportedly did not use real germs, but simulants that mimic their dispersal.
"I was only aware of one of those three programs," Harris says. "I was never told by the Defense Department about the other two. I was also not aware that since the early 1990s, the U.S. Army has apparently been producing small quantities of dry, very potent Ames strain anthrax."
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/terrorists_and_freedom_fighters/163722.html------------------------
U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits
September 4, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04GERM.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=allOver the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.
The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.
The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.
Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.
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Next to Old Rec Hall, a 'Germ-Making Plant'
New York Times
September 4, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04BIOW.htmlCAMP 12, NEVADA TEST SITE, Nevada - In a nondescript mustard-colored building that was once a military recreation hall and barbershop, the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities.
Adjacent to the pool tables, the shuffleboard and the bar stands a gleaming stainless steel cylinder, the 50-liter (53- quart) fermenter in which germs can be cultivated.
The apparatus, which includes a latticework of pipes and other equipment, was made entirely with commercially available components bought from hardware stores and other suppliers for about $1 million - a pittance for a weapon that could deliver death on such a large scale.
The factory was built by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that works to contain the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Officials said the project was intended to assess how hard it would be for a terrorist or rogue nation to assemble a germ factory.
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NucNews archives are a goldmine for research.both of the above New York Times articles available:
http://nucnews.net/nucnews/briefslv.htm