Shocking End to the Shocking Anthrax Attacks of 2001?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Nearly seven years after letters with lethal anthrax spores were sent to media personalities and to U.S. senators, affecting especially postal workers, who handled the mail, and killing five people and sickening more than a dozen, the FBI closed in on a suspect: Bruce E. Ivens, a 62-year old biodefense researcher at an elite U.S. Army bioweapons laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Perhaps, we will never know for sure whether Mr. Ivens’ suicide earlier this week was the step of a guilty man finally caught as the perpetrator of the bio-terrorism attacks or of an innocent researcher who broke under the burden of accusations and pressure by FBI agents.

Just recently, the Department of Justice had reached a settlement reportedly worth $5.85 with Steven J. Hatfill, who had fought for years for his vindication, after he had been identified as a person of interest by the Justice Department and was unable to find employment. Like Ivens, Hatfill worked as a bio-weapons expert at Fort Detrick. If the FBI has indeed conclusive evidence that Ivens was the individual perpetrator of the worst case of bio-terrorism in the country or part of a conspiracy, it would be a shocking end of the anthrax mystery. After all, one would expect that scientists in the Army’s premier bio-weapons research center protect Americans, not kill them. Indeed, Ivens was helpful to the FBI in 2001 in that he analyzed samples of anthrax spores from the series of attacks. That was no coincident, after all, according to the Washington Post,

 

“Ivins was one of the nation's leading biodefense researchers, the [Los Angeles]Times reported, and co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. In 2003, Ivins and two of his colleagues at the USAMRIID -- the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick--received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.” 

Seven years ago, in October 2001, the deadly anthrax letters stirred the already massive fear and anxiety of Americans. They stiffened the nation’s resolve to fight terrorism and support the president’s declared “war on terrorism”—including the Iraq War. Shortly after the anthrax attacks stopped, 61% of Americans thought it very likely (34%) or somewhat likely (27%) that Saddam Hussein was involved. How ironic and shocking, if the real killer worked in Fort Detrick to protect us from “evil-doers.”

Comments

[Eric Chen]

Professor Nacos,

This fits the narrative of special-interest groups, and even individuals, who are becoming superempowered by terrorist methods tailored to a globalizing world. If anything, the news makes the broad-sounding "War on Terror" more apt as a label and our success more urgent.

In this war, defeating the methodology is as important as defeating the agent, because there are many different alienated people in the world with many different grievances against various local, regional, and world orders. Terrorism becomes much more dangerous to all of us if the methodology is commonly understood to be proven, accessible and effective to the range of alienated people, from the Cho Seung-Hui's, to the Ted Kaczynski's, to the Tim McVeigh's, to the Eric Rudolph's, to the (possibly) Dr Ivens' - just to point out a diverse set of motivated individuals in our society who've been attracted to terrorism.

Heck, maybe residual Ku Klux Klan remaining from the mid-20th century crackdown by the US government will even decide to school themselves on modern terrorism to revitalize their movement.

It is prudent for us to discredit the methodology as much as possible by identifying and diminishing the threat as posed by the likeliest, most-effective, and famous agents and purveyors, eg, al Qaeda and Saddam. In the course of the war, at the same time, it is also incumbent upon us to develop defensive, and more importantly, preventative measures to further discourage the use and spread of the methodology.

Not coincidentally, our mission in Iraq contains all the areas we need to succeed in our "War on Terror". It would help if the media would do more to highlight the failures of terrorists in Iraq together with our successes there, just to globally broadcast the discreditation and increase prevention of terrorism as attractive methodology.

[Sanitize]

Does a bacterium’s cell wall, shape, way of moving, and environment really matter?