Anthrax spores came from U.S. weapons labs

Last week a Justice Department spokesperson announced that the anthrax case of 2001 was closed following the suicide of Dr. Bruce Ivins, who the Justice Department and the FBI now claim was the sole perpetrator. Dr. Ivins’ attorney as well as family and friends deny the charges. Whether or not Dr. Ivins was involved in the anthrax release remains to be seen. No one should jump to the conclusion that Dr. Ivins’ suicide was an admission of guilt.

No indictment had been made prior to Ivins’ suicide. One can only speculate whether his death has given the government the opportunity to claim the case is closed, by focusing charges on a dead man who cannot defend himself in court and who cannot reveal what has been going on behind the closed doors of the military biological weapons lab where he worked until his death.

Shortly after the 9-11 attacks, weaponized anthrax spores were mailed to Senate Democrat Tom Dashle, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw and several others. Both were considered liberals and targets of ultra-right talk radio show hosts. The anthrax letters never reached the intended targets. Instead, high-speed mail sorting machines pressed spores outside the envelopes, and the deadly spores infected some postal workers and individuals whose mail just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When the first cases of anthrax became public, the media tried to blame “Muslim terrorists.” Then Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush officials and media pundits tried to link the anthrax to Iraq, citing unnamed “experts” who falsely claimed the anthrax had chemicals that were only found in Iraq. Several months later the FBI started leaking to the media that the anthrax almost assuredly came from a U.S. military biological weapons lab in Fort Detrick, Md.

At first the name of Dr. Ayaad Asaad, a scientist of Egyptian ancestry, was leaked. Then Dr. Steven Hatfill was named as a “person of interest.” The same types of unsubstantiated circumstantial “facts” were spread through the media as are now appearing about Dr. Ivins. The Justice Department has now stated they were wrong about Hatfill and have given him over $5 million to settle the lawsuit he brought against the U.S. government.

We may never find out which individual or individuals actually put anthrax spores in the mail. But all the evidence points to the U.S. government biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick. The U.S. bio-weapons program is clearly responsible for the deaths, illnesses and panic that took place in 2001.

Anthrax is a bacterial disease that is relatively common in agricultural areas. When anthrax infects the skin (the most common natural form), it is treatable with ordinary antibiotics and is usually not life threatening. If spores are breathed in through the lungs, however, anthrax can be very deadly.

During World War II, the U.S. developed a huge biological weapons industry under the leadership of the then-head of Merck pharmaceutical company. Ordinary anthrax bacteria were mass-produced and converted into dried spores that could be spread through the air. It was an advanced industrial process, and to this day only a few countries have been able to do it. This so-called weapons-grade anthrax is hard to make and even harder to handle and store.

The difficulty in making and handling biological-weapons-grade material is what has made biological terrorism more fiction than fact. But this material is readily available in military-sponsored U.S. research labs. These labs supposedly study defense against biological weapons, but they may also be involved in recreating biological-weapons capability for the U.S. in clear violation of the Biologic and Toxin Weapons Convention to which the U.S. is a signatory.

Starting in 1997, the number of U.S. labs funded to research anthrax expanded greatly. Without these labs, the weaponized anthrax spores that killed five people would never have been available. After 2001 enormous amounts of money were diverted from real health needs to research these biological warfare materials. And the danger of future releases, whether accidental or on purpose, has increased greatly, while spending on public health has declined.

Despite years of claims that bio-terrorism is a major health threat, there have so far been no deaths in the U.S. or anywhere else from biological terrorism—other than the five anthrax deaths in 2001. These deaths can be attributed to so-called bio-terrorism defense.

In short the Pentagon and its research divisions, the politicians that fund them, and those scientists and health professionals who took the money to do the dirty work should be held responsible for the anthrax deaths in 2001—no matter which hands stuffed the envelopes with the deadly spores.

The writer is a Doctor of Public Health.