20 - 26 December 2001
Issue No.565
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 - 26 December 2001 Issue No.565 |
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Conspiracy theory
News that the US Army has been weaponising anthrax is no small development in the anthrax mystery. Nyier Abdou catches the scent of an inside job
Following reports last week that the United States Army has been working with anthrax as part of the government's secret anti- biowarfare programme, defence specialists and scientists have been revisiting their notes on the 1972 Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention, to which the US is a signatory. Aside from providing ample fodder for avid conspiracy theorists to chew on, the revelation that the Army has been converting "wet anthrax" into weapons-grade anthrax (a finely ground, powderised form that can become airborne and lodge spores in the lungs to bring on the most deadly form of the disease, "inhalation" anthrax), lends strong credence to the theory that the perpetrator of the recent anthrax scare is home-grown.
Seemingly ubiquitous decontamination experts have been tested as never before in the anthrax scare (photo: AP)
The notorious Dugway Proving Ground, the 800,000-acre military zone in the Utah desert that is part of the US Army Test and Evaluation Command (TECOM), headquartered in Maryland, is back in the headlines -- and, as usual, the news is not kind. Long the centre of quirky controversy as the holding site of a hushed-up UFO crash, the top-secret research facility was also accused of releasing deadly VX nerve gas, which is believed to have caused the mysterious deaths of some 6,400 sheep in an area just outside the facility in March 1968. A $1 million settlement with farmers did little to patch up the facility's unsavoury reputation. Last week it was revealed that researchers there have been working with anthrax as far back as 1992.
The biological weapons treaty does permit the manufacture of small amounts of biological weapons for the purposes of research and does not specify a limit. But as the FBI bears down on all facilities working with the anthrax bacteria, many experts are wondering if the military has breached the contract it has held over countries like Iraq to devastating effect. More importantly, specialists are pointing to a probable inside job, meaning that the source of the frightening anthrax letter scare, which has killed five people and infected 13 others, may be either a rogue scientist or someone with access to government facilities. Former US President Richard Nixon terminated the country's offensive germ warfare programme in 1969.
While Dugway apparently has the ability to weaponise anthrax, it does not have the equipment to kill the anthrax bacteria, making it necessary to ship the spores elsewhere if scientists want to work with a benign form -- a curiously elaborate procedure for such a potentially lethal substance. Wet anthrax was shipped from Dugway to Fort Detrick, in Maryland, where the spores were rendered harmless by irradiation, as recently as June, according to reports obtained by the Washington Post. There was still some confusion early this week as to whether Dugway has produced weapons-grade anthrax in the Ames strain -- the type used in the tainted letters sent to media outlets and two US Congressman, US Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- although the Washington Post reported that it has. The report also claims that no other nation is known to have weaponised Ames anthrax.
The type of anthrax sent in the letter to Daschle is said to be of an extremely sophisticated powderised form. It also holds a crucial clue: a "fingerprint" of its sub-strain. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the sub-strain of Ames anthrax found in Daschle's contaminated office was an exact genetic match to the sub-strain maintained by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. A handful of laboratories have matching strains, and all can trace their source to the USAMRIID. But on Monday, Fort Detrick spokesman Chuck Dasey revealed that the facility received its supply of Ames anthrax from the Agriculture Department, implying that the Army laboratories were not the only possible source of the strain.
Ordinary Ames anthrax is used in numerous labs both in America and abroad for research, but Dugway is the only known facility working with anthrax to have weaponised it. The CIA, which in recent weeks revealed to FBI investigators that its own bioweapons research programme uses (unregistered) Ames strain, says it has never produced or weaponised anthrax. In her report on the ongoing investigation of the anthrax scare in the US, bioweapons expert Barbara Hatch Rosenberg suggests that the attacks could not have been perpetrated without either overt or inadvertent help from the US government.
Rosenberg, who chairs the bioweapons panel at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, was recently questioned by the FBI in connection with her portrait of the terrorist. Rosenberg notes that the person is probably scientifically skilled, with lab experience and knowledge of how to handle hazardous materials. He or she also has good knowledge of forensics, because they left no trace of evidence on the letters. Furthermore, the person must have recently received the anthrax vaccine, which Rosenberg points out is in "short supply and is not generally accessible." The picture painted by Rosenberg is a lone American microbiologist, either disgruntled or infuriated, who was seeking to raise the importance of the bioweapons file. She suggests that there was not intent to kill, but to shock the public into awareness.
A comprehensive joint report on anthrax as a biological weapon by prominent experts in the field and published in the journal of the American Medical Association in May of 1999 states that most experts "concur" that the manufacture of lethal anthrax in aerosol form is "beyond the capacity of individuals or groups without access to advanced biotechnology." The report does cite two cases when anthrax was released, one accidental, and one intentional. In 1979, anthrax was released from the military microbiology facility in Sverdlovsk, in the former Soviet Union, resulting in 68 deaths. More recently, militant Japanese group Aum Shinrikyo released airborne anthrax and botulism in Tokyo in 1993, although no infections were reported. The same group was behind the release of serin in the Tokyo subway in 1995.
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