Threat of Bioterrorism

The idea of using diseases as a weapon gained a new degree of sophistication in the early 1930's as nationally funded research programs on bio-warfare were developed. The Japanese, the Germans, and later the Allies have all conducted extensive research on bio-warfare followed by the Soviets' vast research and production of disease agents such as anthrax.

As worries about bioterrorism mount, the National Counterproliferation Center is creating a new advisory panel for the purpose of bridging the gap between the science and intelligence communities on emerging bioterrorism threats. In a house testimony on May 4, 2006 Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer for DHS, said the intelligence community is increasingly concerned about a “lone wolf” with training in biosciences and the capability to create a crude but effective biological weapon.

On April 19, 2006 Tom Day, the US Postal Service senior vice president of government relations, expressed concern that some agencies still have not developed procedures for handling an anthrax attack, the threat of which “remains credible”. In its report “Anthrax Detection: Agencies Need to Validate Sampling Activities in Order to Increase Confidence in Negative Results,” GAO (General Accountability Office) said that even the system the Postal Service had in place for detecting, moving and analyzing had not been validated. Generally, GAO concluded that systems certain agencies had in place were so unsound that “they could not provide any statistical confidence with regard to the basic question: Is this building contaminated?”

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn, whose House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations asked for the GAO investigation last year, said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Homeland Security, United States Postal Service and the Association of Public Health Laboratories had agreed with the conclusion by GAO that methods for detecting anthrax contamination in facilities were not validated and had agreed with GAO recommendations calling for a coordinated, systematic effort to validate the methods to be used for such testing.

In February 2006 about 200 people, including a dozen senators, were evacuated from the Russel Senate Office Building after a sensor indicated that a nerve agent was present. Although the alarm later proved to be false, the dramatic incident served as a jarring reminder of post September 11, 2001 security concerns.

In January 2006 the US State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator, Henry Crumpton, was quoted as saying: “I rate the probability of terror groups using weapons of mass destruction as very high. It's simply a question of time.” Crumpton said a biological attack was potentially the most troubling scenario. He said evidence from Afghanistan suggested al-Qaeda had been seeking to develop anthrax before the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. “It is not the nuclear threat that bothers me,” he was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying. “I think, if anything, the biological threat is going to grow. As catastrophic as a nuclear attack would be, it would be self-contained. But if you look at a worst-case scenario for a biological attack, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it was a terrorist attack, and it would be far more difficult to contain.”