Tom Engelhardt: Six Questions About the Anthrax Attacks.
The revelation that Bruce Ivins, conveniently suicided, was the lone
anthrax terrorist ties up another loose end before the clock runs out
on the Bush administration. Or does it? One thing is that it reminds
us of a set of events that had a powerful effect at the time, but
have been largely forgotten since. I clearly remember some talking
head on TV shortly after 9/11 but before the first anthrax attacks
arguing that it was not a question of if but only of when the first
bioterror attacks would occur. In the 7 years since then, the only
such attacks occurred a few days later, almost on cue. Moreover, we
now know that they weren't done by the people who did 9/11; rather,
they originated from within the US military.
Today, it's hard even to recall just how terrifying those anthrax
attacks were. According to a LexisNexis search, between Oct. 4 and
Dec. 4, 2001, 389 stories appeared in the New York Times with
"anthrax" in the headline. In that same period, 238 such stories
appeared in the Washington Post. That's the news equivalent of an
unending, high-pitched scream of horror -- and from those attacks
would emerge an American world of hysteria involving orange alerts and
duct tape, smallpox vaccinations, and finally a war, lest any of this
stuff, or anything faintly like it, fall into the hands of
terrorists.
And yet, by the end of 2001, it had become clear that, despite the
accompanying letters, the anthrax in those envelopes was from a
domestically produced strain. It was neither from the backlands of
Afghanistan nor from Baghdad, but -- almost certainly -- from our own
military bio-weapons labs. At that point, the anthrax killings
essentially vanished . . . .
Poof! . . . while 9/11 only gained traction as the
singular event of our times.
The six questions:
Why wasn't the Bush administration's War on Terror modus
operandi applied to the anthrax case? I.e., why didn't "the
gloves come off"; why weren't the suspects rounded up, tortured,
etc.
Why wasn't the U.S. military sent in? Terrorism is
an act of war, isn't it?
Once the anthrax threat was identified as coming from
U.S. military labs, why did the administration, the FBI, and the media
assume that only a single individual was responsible?
What of those military labs? Why does their history
continue to play little or no part in the story of the anthrax
attacks? After all, the anthrax attacks would not have been
possible except for all those taxpayer dollars investing in
making weapons-grade anthrax.
Were the anthrax attacks the less important ones of
2001? They killed fewer people than 9/11 and didn't have the
visual impact, but they were far more repeatable and scalable,
and they could have easily been directed at anyone anywhere
in the country.
Who is winning the Global War on Terror? Well,
for one thing, US bio-defense laboratories -- the source of
the anthrax attacks -- have swelled from a few hundred people
to some 14,000.
I have another question here: why did the attacks stop?
One reason would be that they had done their job, in which case
their purpose would have been limited by their effects. The lone
madman theory doesn't fit very well with the discipline to halt
an operation that had been successful but would have gained risk
for diminishing returns.
I don't think much of any 9/11 conspiracy theories, but this
anthrax matter sure smells.
