'Move along, nothing to see here,' says FBI on anthrax attacks

Pat Leahy, one of the US senators targeted in the 2001 anthrax attacks, made this shocking declaration yesterday that he doesn't believe Bruce Ivins, the scientist blamed for the attacks who committed suicide earlier this year, acted alone:

"If he is the one who sent the letter, I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people," Leahy told FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III at a hearing yesterday. "I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact. I believe that there are others who can be charged with murder."

Noting that GOP senator and former prosecutor Arlen Specter joined Leahy in aggressively discounting the FBIs claims, telling Mueller that the case wouldn't pass muster in a criminal trial, Glenn Greenwald at Salon summed up the import of the hearing:

The bottom line is that it is quite extraordinary that the FBI has claimed it has identified with certainty the sole culprit in the anthrax attacks, but so many key Senators, from both parties, simply don't believe it, and are saying so explicitly. Leahy's rather dark suggestion that there were others involved in these attacks -- likely at a U.S. Army facility or key private CIA contractor -- is particularly notable. It has been crystal clear from the beginning that the FBI's case is filled with glaring holes, that their thuggish behavior towards their only suspect drove him to commit suicide and thus is unable to defend himself, and yet, to this day, the FBI continues to conceal the evidence in its possession and is stonewalling any and all efforts to scrutinize its claims.

It takes a lot for Senators from both parties to so openly and explicitly say they don't believe the FBI's definitive accusations in such a high-profile case.

Indeed, it does!

These matters can get particularly dicey for the FBI when a primary crime victim is also the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee! Rightly or wrongly, Leahy's in a position to insist that they show their work when otherwise, clearly, they'd rather call the case closed and forget about it.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Fort Detrick anthrax case shows homegrown threat is biggest bioterrorism concern
• Stratfor: Bioweapons an unlikely means of terrorist attack
• Aggie administrators ignore risk from bioterrorism research
• We have met the bioterrorism threat and it is us

Stratfor: Bioweapons an unlikely means of terrorist attack

News this week of the suicide by a US bioterrorism scientist just before his indictment for the 2001 anthrax attacks caused me to dredge up some old research and writing of mine from before the launch of this blog on the topic of emerging bioterrorism threats. At the time, I worked for ACLU of Texas and there weren't too many security experts speaking out who publicly agreed with my layman's assessment: that the risk from expanded research into obscure, deadly bugs, sometimes ones the scientists themselves genetically engineer, outweighs the chance that Al Qaeda would successfully attack us that way.

Several years later I'm glad to see expert assessments changing to recognize the hard truth: We have met the bioterrorism threat and it is us. At Stratfor, an Austin-based private intelligence firm, Fred Burton and Scott Stewart offer an essay on the free part of the site ("Busting the anthrax myth," July 30), in which they declare:

We must admit to being among those who do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that posed by a nuclear strike. To be fair, it must be noted that we also do not see strikes using chemical or radiological weapons rising to the threshold of a true weapon of mass destruction either. The successful detonation of a nuclear weapon in an American city would be far more devastating than any of these other forms of attack.

In fact, based on the past history of nonstate actors conducting attacks using biological weapons, we remain skeptical that a nonstate actor could conduct a biological weapons strike capable of creating as many casualties as a large strike using conventional explosives — such as the October 2002 Bali bombings that resulted in 202 deaths or the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191.

We do not disagree with [Department of Homeland Security] statements that actors such as al Qaeda have demonstrated an interest in biological weapons. There is ample evidence that al Qaeda has a rudimentary biological weapons capability. However, there is a huge chasm of capability that separates intent and a rudimentary biological weapons program from a biological weapons program that is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Burton and Stewart offer an assessment that was considered near-blasphemous when I promoted the same idea back in 2002 - Al Qaeda is highly unlikely to attack us this way:

Operating in the badlands along the Pakistani-Afghan border, al Qaeda cannot easily build large modern factories capable of producing large quantities of agents or toxins. Such fixed facilities are expensive and consume a lot of resources. Even if al Qaeda had the spare capacity to invest in such facilities, the fixed nature of them means that they could be compromised and quickly destroyed by the United States.

If al Qaeda could somehow create and hide a fixed biological weapons facility in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas or North-West Frontier Province, it would still face the daunting task of transporting large quantities of biological agents from the Pakistani badlands to targets in the United States or Europe. Al Qaeda operatives certainly can create and transport small quantities of these compounds, but not enough to wreak the kind of massive damage it desires.

That's exactly right. Most bioweapons attacks fail or kill at most a few dozen people and delivery systems to turn bioweapons into WMD require super high levels of sophistication. Al Qaeda knows it could kill more people than that by stealing the nearest plane, or buying one.

By contrast, the story of the 2001 anthrax attacks began in 1981 with cultures extracted from a dead cow along the Texas-Mexico border that was bred into a bioweapon-ready strain by scientists at Fort Detrick, then weaponized into a powder for delivery at Dugway Air Force Base in Utah. This event was not an attack by external terrorists but was enabled by practitioners of the black arts within the American defense establishment itself, whether or not the man who committed suicide was responsible.

Like the Stratfor writers, I agree it's worthwhile for the United States to continue"efforts to undermine the biological warfare plans and efforts of militant groups such as al Qaeda." However the massive bioweapons research in American universities studying super-dangerous bugs in BSL-3 and 4 labs IMO creates more risk than it resolves and diverts primary research dollars toward dangerous and unproductive ends.

Serious debates about security can only occur in the face of accurate, un-hyped risk assessments, so the Stratfor folks are providing a valuable service on that score.

BLOGVERSATION: See three posts by Bugs and Gas Gal on the topic and a widely blogged-about piece at Salon by Glenn Greenwald. Common Sense says the the scientist may have had a profit motive.

MORE: From the New York Times, Has bioterrorism research made us less secure?

Fort Detrick anthrax case shows homegrown threat is biggest bioterrorism concern

After 9/11, much-publicized anthrax attacks on Congress and the media set off massive new spending in biodefense research. But in retrospect, that decision funneled money precisely to those most likely to infect US civilians, either intentionally or by accident.

As exhibit one in making that case, this week a top US Army bioterrorism specialist killed himself after learning he would be prosecuted over the 2001 anthrax attacks. Reports the London Daily Mail:

Biodefence researcher Bruce Ivins, 62, had been warned about the impending prosecution shortly before his death on Tuesday after swallowing a massive dose of painkillers.

He had worked for the past 18 years at the U.S. government's biodefence laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The laboratory has been at the centre of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

The anthrax was sent through the mail to media organisations and politicians in 2001 shortly after the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

The anthrax virus killed five people and sickened 17 others, crippled national postal services, shut down a Senate office building and spread fear of further terrorism.

For several years after 9/11, I served on Texas' Bioterrorism Preparedness Coordinating Committee representing ACLU of Texas. I became convinced from that experience that the greatest threat of releasing toxic biopathogens comes not from Islamic terrorists but accidents or malevolent actions by an expanding cadre of US bioterrorism researchers. Quite a few of these scientists work in Texas, particularly in Galveston and San Antonio, as well as in a number of smaller labs around the state.

The 2001 anthrax attack offers a perfect example how this home grown threat outpaces any bioterror threat from our nation's enemies. Referencing the case in a letter to a Texas Senate committee in 2004 (by which time investigators had identified Fort Detrick, MD scientists as the source of the attack), I wrote that:

According to published reports, that particular strain was first retrieved from a cow near the Texas-Mexico border in 1981, cultured at Fort Detrick, Maryland by US Army scientists, and turned into an aerosolized, or “weaponized” form at Dugway Army Base in Utah. The weaponized anthrax was then shipped back to Fort Detrick via commercial Federal Express delivery service. Investigators and independent analysts now believe a US-trained scientist at one of these facilities, probably in Maryland, may be responsible.

So, as you consider bioterrorism threats to Texas, always keep in mind that in America’s highest profile bioterrorism case in history, terrorists used America’s so-called 'defensive' research offensively against us. That’s also the most likely scenario in the future.

Though investigators originally accused the wrong person, it now it appears undeniable that one or more US scientists were the source of the 2001 attacks.

The other, perhaps more significant danger from expanded bioterror research is the threat of pure accidents, which can create just as much threat as an overt attack. Last summer an Aggie biodefense researcher was accidentally exposed in an incident that could have easily infected others. Several other cases cited in my 2004 letter reinforce the risks from expanded bioterror research and funding:

• A Texas Tech professor lost or destroyed 30 vials of Bubonic Plague somewhere on the Lubbock campus, then lied to federal investigators about it. The professor was convicted in federal court, in part, for carrying vials of Bubonic Plague on commercial airline flights to and from Tanzania without registering them with US Customs, and sending plague vials via Federal Express without informing the carrier they were transporting bioagents.

• A researcher at the UT Health Science Center in Houston was exposed to Anthrax at a BSL-3 lab, doing tests on some of the Anthrax used in the 2001 attack on Washington.

• A package headed for UTMB Galveston filled with West-Nile-Virus-infected bird remains exploded in an Ohio Federal Express facility, causing its evacuation.

I've not been tracking the subject as closely in recent years but am certain by now this list could expanded. The denouement of the Fort Detrick case confirms my earlier conclusion that US biodefense policy remains misguided and based on a faulty set of assumptions. The source of the next infection from bioterror agents won't be a pathogen concocted by Al Qaeda scientists in some Pakistani mountain redoubt. As in 2001, it will almost certainly occur at the hands of American scientists, either accidentally or - as at Fort Detrick - through some perverse crime of opportunity.

MORE: Bioweapons an unlikely means of terrorist attack

Aggie administrators ignore risk from bioterrorism research

Viruses created as bioweapons rank among technology's most grim contributions to the human experiment, but too often those researching these deadly bugs seem quite callous and casual about the risk of spreading them to the public.

I've written before that we've met the bioterrorism threat in Texas and it is us, but you wouldn't know it from how our state leaders behave. Texas A&M University claims it's ready to re-certify it's biodefense lab after a lab worker was accidentally exposed to a virus during an experiment this summer. Reports AP:

After learning about lab workers' exposure to bioweapons agents, the CDC launched an investigation that uncovered other failures, including several missing vials of Brucella and at least seven cases in which the school allowed unauthorized access to select agents.

Edward Hammond, director of The Sunshine Project, an Austin-based bioweapon watchdog, said university officials were "excessively optimistic" when they said publicly that they expected to be up and running by the end of 2007.

"When they said that, they were trying to put a spin on it, trying to trivialize, to minimize, the implications of what had happened," Hammond said. "They thought this was a problem minor enough to be fixed in short order. Turns out, that's not the case."

The Sunshine Project first discovered that workers had been exposed to the toxic agents while researching the universities vying to host a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. Texas A&M had been among the applicants for the homeland security project.

American biodefense labs have experienced more than 100 accidents or missing shipments since 2003, and more deadly viruses and toxins are being transported routinely among more labs than ever before.

Upon studying bioterror threats at some length as a member of Texas' Bioterrorism Preparedness Task Force several years ago, I became convinced that a graver risk existed from an accident among our own domestic "defense" programs than from Al Qaeda or some terrorist group. Perhaps the most concise statement of my views on the subject was laid out in this 2004 letter to a Texas Senate committee. (I notice Jay Kimbrough, then the Governor's homeland security guru, was cc'd on the 2004 letter, so at least he's heard these arguments before.)

Not every Texas university needs a BSL-3 or BSL-4 lab to handle the planet's most deadly bugs. The existing labs in Galveston and San Antonio mean Texas already does more than it's share of biodefense research, and I don't think officials pursuing the expanded lab at A&M have fully grokked the massive potential risk that comes along with the new federal dollars they're pursuing. We shouldn't have to wait until another labworker is exposed, they walk outside onto the campus and kill a bunch of hapless Aggies before these concerns are taken more seriously.

At a minimum I wish officials weren't in such a rush to get the lab back online. It's one thing for Mike McKinney and Jay Kimbrough to say the lab is ready to go, but I'd feel a lot better if the CDC and the Sunshine Project agreed with their assessment.

We have met the bioterrorism threat and it is us

Several years ago I had the privilege to spend a great deal of time studying the subject of bioterrorism in order to participate in rulemaking and the legislative processes on the subject after 9/11. During that time I became concerned (bordering on alarm) about the risk of accidents from releasing deadly and even incurable bioterror agents under the control of US researchers, whose numbers have grown rapidly with an expansion in federal funds. Now AP reports that:

American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons that can cause illnesses with no cure

This risk has existed for some time, and it's growing. In 2003, after helping craft bioterror response to legislation during the 2003 78th Legislature, I was appointed on behalf of ACLU to Texas' Bioterrorism Preparedness Task Force.

Upon studying bioterror threats at some length, I became convinced that a graver risk existed from an accident among our own domestic "defense" programs rather than from Al Qaeda or some terrorist group. Perhaps the most concise statement of my view was laid out in this 2004 letter to a Texas Senate committee focused on bioterror threats, but more detailed (though unfinished, and only partially footnoted) analysis written in 2003. This last document was never published but shared widely among legislative and opinion leaders. I was actually always quite proud of this work and disappointed the public-safety solutions I proposed never gained traction in the homeland security or state health department.

Those interested in the topic should take a look at the linked historical documents, both written when I was in charge of homeland security issues for the ACLU of Texas. I came to believe that the problem identified in the AP story is a bigger threat than any terrorist-backed bioterror attack, Jack Bauer and 24 notwithstanding. And when a deadly pathogen with no cure is released in Houston or San Antonio or Galveston, it won't really matter who created it - just how many people die.

Remember the botched evacuation of Houston during Hurricane Rita? Imagine if the city were fleeing a major bioterror accident instead of a hurricane. A bioterror event would be a worst case scenario by comparison, and no sound emergency plans exist to manage an incident of significant magnitude - the cars stalled on the highway leaving Houston without gas two years ago proved that.

Nobody ever wanted to listen to those messages at the health department or the Governor's homeland security agency (which at the time ironically was headed by past-TYC conservator Jay Kimbrough). But I still think if the overall goal is public safety, reducing domestic experimentation with bioterror pathogens is the best way to reduce their availability to the bad guys and reduce the chance of public exposure.

For more on the subject: See the Sunshine Project's website.