IP: U.S. Recently Produced Anthrax in a Highly Lethal Powder Form

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 23:45:36 -0500
> From: finin <finin () cs umbc edu>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/national/13ANTH.html
> December 13, 2001
> U.S. Recently Produced Anthrax in a Highly Lethal Powder Form
> By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER
>
> As the investigation into the anthrax attacks widens to include
> federal laboratories and contractors, government officials haveq
> acknowledged that Army scientists in recent years have made anthrax in
> a powdered form that could be used as a weapon.
>
> Experts said this appeared to be the first disclosure of government
> production of anthrax in its most lethal form since the United States
> renounced biological weapons in 1969 and began destroying its germ
> arsenal.  Officials at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah said
> that in 1998 scientists there turned small quantities of wet anthrax
> into powder to test ways to defend against biowarfare attacks.
>
> ...
> Private and federal experts are clashing over how much powdered
> anthrax Dugway has made. The issue is politically sensitive since some
> experts say producing large quantities could be seen as violating the
> global treaty banning germ weapons.
>
> William C. Patrick III, a scientist who made germ weapons for the
> United States and now consults widely on biological defenses, told a
> group of American military officers in February 1999 that he taught
> Dugway personnel the previous spring how to turn wet anthrax into
> powders, according to a transcript of the session.
>
> The process, Mr. Patrick told officers at Maxwell Air Force Base in
> Alabama, was not as refined as the one used in the heyday of the
> government's germ warfare program, but it worked. "We made about a
> pound of material in little less than a day," he told the
> officers. "It's a good product."  He did not say what strain of
> anthrax was used in this work.  But Ms. Nicholson, the Dugway
> spokeswoman, said workers there "never produced more than a few grams"
> of powdered anthrax in any given year. There are 454 grams in a pound.
>
> ...
> Intelligence officials say that Battelle Memorial Institute, a
> military contractor in Ohio, has experience making powdered
> germs. They say the contractor participated in a secret Central
> Intelligence Agency program, code-named Clear Vision and begun in
> 1997, that used benign substances similar to anthrax to mimic Soviet
> efforts to create small bombs that could emit clouds of lethal germs.
>
> Katy Delaney, a Battelle spokeswoman, would not comment on the
> laboratory's anthrax work except to say that the lab had always
> cooperated "with any and all legitimate inquiries from law
> enforcement."

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