Florida Man Dies of Rare Form of Anthrax

A 63-year-old Florida man who had been hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax on Tuesday died today, state health officials said.

Of course, in light of the September 11 attacks, the word “terrorism” was whispered, but public health officials firmly stated that did not yet know how the man had contracted the disease.

A New York City Emergency Service police officer inspects a mailbox on New York’s Fifth Avenue, yesterday. (October 17, 2001) — AP photo

However, by October 9, the FBI had taken over the case, which was now making front page news; by October 11, three people had died in Florida. On October 13, the news broke that an NBC employee in New York had contracted anthrax:

Anthrax case confirmed in New York

An NBC employee in New York today tested positive for anthrax, following tests at the offices of the TV network after mail containing a suspicious powder was received.

The anthrax was not the inhaled form of the disease, which killed a Florida man a week ago. The female NBC employee has the skin form of the disease and is expected to recover, the network said.

With the US Capitol in the background, members of the US Marine Corps’ chemical-biological incident response force demonstrate anthrax clean-up techniques… — AP photo

Three days later, headlines across the nation announced:

Anthrax threat comes to Congress

New security precautions and a swelling unease swept the U.S. Capitol and much of the nation yesterday after a letter testing positive for anthrax was opened in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

The discovery of a letter containing a powdery substance and a Trenton, N.J., postmark brought the reality of terrorism literally to Congress’ desktop in the most direct way since the attack Sept. 11 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It caused officials to redouble efforts to secure the buildings and people on Capitol Hill and to search for a common thread.

Until 2001, there had only been 18 fatal cases of pulmonary anthrax in the US in the past 100 years; the 10 fatal cases in 2001 were the first in US history caused by an intentional release of anthrax. Eventually, public health officials were able to determine that seven anthrax-laden letters were were mailed; four were opened.

Americans waited on the edge of their seats for the FBI to announce that they’d caught the culprit (or culprits). Publicly, it looks like they hit some rough spots early on; investigators argued about the possible source of the anthrax: who might have formulated the weapon? Was it “weaponized”? Military grade? Were the perpetrator(s) former US military lab researcher(s), or maybe just researcher(s) in a civilian lab? (The Bush administration immediately tried to pin it on Saddam, of course.)

In any case, it was agreed that the anthrax was “energetic”, and “professionally done”, became airborne easily, and was therefore readily inhaled and effective as a weapon.

Five years (and many conspiracy theories) later, the feds gave their last update. They said that they’re still on the case, and that it has high priority.

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Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues.

“Arms control”, as in WMDs. Oh, the irony…

In case you’re wondering where Wolfowitz has been since his demise last year as president of the World Bank, he’s been hanging out with the sensitive, thoughtful souls at the American Enterprise Institute.

The State Department panel that he will chair is the ISAB, or the International Security Advisory Board. As described on the State Department website:

The Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board (formerly called the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB)) provides the Department with independent insight and advice on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, international security, and related aspects of public diplomacy. The ISAB is sponsored and overseen by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. The Board provides its recommendations directly to the Secretary of State.

The Boston Globe article continues with a great quote from an expert in the field of nuclear nonproliferation:

Joseph Cirincione, a senior fellow and director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based policy research group, criticized Wolfowitz’s appointment.

“The advice given by Paul Wolfowitz over the past six years ranks among the worst provided by any defense official in history,” Cirincione said. “I have no idea why anyone would want more.”

As Arms Control Wonk’s Jeffrey Lewis mentioned here and here, it’s noteworthy that Wolfowitz will be chairing a panel that already leans to the right. It includes Kathleen Bailey, Amb. Robert Joseph, and Keith B. Payne, who are members of a right wing think tank that has advocated the development of nuclear “bunker busters”. The board also includes James R. Schlesinger (Secretary of Defense under Presidents Nixon and Ford), and former CIA director R. James Woolsey (1993-1995), who, on September 12, 2001, claimed that “the most likely, certainly not the only possibility [behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks) is Iraq.”

One of the other board members is William van Cleave, who, like Wolfowitz, was a member of the infamous “Team B“, way back when George H. W. Bush was head of the CIA:

The outside experts on Team B were led by Harvard Professor Richard Pipes and included such well-known hawks as Paul Nitze, William Van Cleave, and Paul Wolfowitz. Not surprisingly, Team B concluded that the intelligence specialists had badly underestimated the threat because they relied too heavily on hard data, instead of extrapolating the Soviets’ intentions from ideology.[1] According to some Team B members, “the principal threat to our nation, to world peace, and to the cause of human freedom was the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup.”[2]

Although the Team B report contained little factual data, it was enthusiastically received by conservative groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger, whose members included Ronald Reagan, and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. But the report turned out to be grossly inaccurate.

[snip]

Team B was right about one thing. The CIA estimate was indeed flawed. In 1989, the agency published an internal review of the threat assessments from 1974 to 1986. The report concluded that the Soviet threat had been “substantially overestimated” every year. In 1978, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that the selection of Team B members yielded a flawed composition of political views and biases.[4] Consequently, the Team B analysis was deemed a gross exaggeration and completely inaccurate.

In other words, Wolfowitz learned the art of threat inflation way back during the Cold War, and perfected it in the buildup to the Iraq war. So, he’ll definitely be in good company in his new job.

So, what’s the next threat inflation project? Iran?

The [NATO] Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them… will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

[NATO member countries today]

The NATO countries played an important role in the Cold War nuclear arms race by either having their own nuclear weapons (e.g. France and the UK), or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their soil (e.g. Pershing nuclear missiles in West Germany). The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists‘ “Doomsday Clock” is a vivid historical indicator of the Cold War nuclear tensions (click the image at right).

The Cold War ended in 1991. The US and Russia have fewer nuclear weapons than they did, but still have far more than enough to render the Earth uninhabitable; the US has about 9,900, and Russia has about 15,000 (pdf). NATO has changed its mission to adapt to post-Cold War conflicts; one of the most recent examples is the takeover of US-lead military operations in southern Afghanistan by a NATO-lead force in the south of Afghanistan.

What does the future hold for NATO? General John Shalikashvili (former NATO commander in Europe), General Klaus Naumann (ex-chairman of Nato’s military committee), General Henk van den Breemen (former Dutch chief of staff) Admiral Jacques Lanxade (former French chief of staff), and Lord Inge (former chief of the general staff and defense staff in the UK) have proposed reforms for NATO that make me wonder if they are yearning for the Cold War days.

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The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

“Terrorism” is most easily committed using weaponry, such as:

• Conventional explosives, e.g. the July 2005 London bombings and the September 11 attacks (airliners as conventional explosives).
• Biological weapons, e.g. the 2001 anthrax attacks
• Chemical weapons, e.g. the use of Sarin (a nerve agent) by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo
• Nuclear and radiological devices. Experts point out that [pdf]:
  

  There have been zero cases of nuclear terrorism—neither nuclear nor radiological. There are no known cases of theft or purchase of an intact nuclear weapon, so a terrorist attack with one is more than unlikely. There has not been any documented theft of enough fissile material for a crude nuke—although there have been attempts. There has never been a dirty bomb attack. There has never been a case of nuclear plant sabotage.

  [Link inserted.]

“Terrorism” is a staple of empty political rhetoric. “Terrorism” is a GOP candidate’s ultimate buzzword; it been redefined as a vague, derogatory term to describe “something that perceived bad guys do”.

“Terrorism” is a real threat that requires actual solutions. Fortunately, the top three Democratic candidates are offering those solutions as part of their rhetoric.

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A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine with the Greenpeace Netherlands action team gave me an absolutely stunning book for Christmas. It’s called Planet Ocean, and it’s a collection of photos taken by Greenpeace photographers on the 16 month “Defending Our Oceans” expedition. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

We are born of the oceans; it is where it all began. When the first slimy life forms slithered out of the seas and began the process of evolution on land 400 million years ago, life below the ocean waves was already well established, stretching back around three billion years.

While we might have progressed from the primeval soup, life on Earth still comes from the oceans. They cover three quarters of our planet, are the engines driving our weather systems, a ready-made food store for billions on land and sea and give sanctuary to a staggering 80 percent of life on Earth.

If you live far inland (as I did most of my life), it’s easy to forget that our planet is mostly ocean. It’s easy to forget about amazing creatures like sperm whales, which can dive up to 2000 meters deep hunting for giant squids (more fun facts here).

It turns out that sperm whales are unknowingly sounding a warning to the planet, and Ocean Alliance biologist Roger Payne has translated their message for us:

The first gift the whales gave Roger Payne was their song, which he in turn spread to the ears of the world.

He’s planning to do the same with their final gift to him, the data locked inside the skin and blubber samples he gathered from 986 sperm whales on a 5 1/2-year, round-the-world journey… sitting inside those biopsy samples is the first overall baseline assessment of pollution in the world’s oceans.

“What we’ve analyzed so far,” Payne said, “is shocking. It’s well beyond any degree of pollutants that I thought would exist.”

What may inspire humans to act is not the plight of the whales themselves, but that their plight could be a harbinger of our own demise:

“If we don’t do something about ocean pollution,” Payne said from the study of his hillside home in South Woodstock, Vt., “I think there’s a very good chance that humanity will lose access to fish from the sea. And because seafood is the principal source of protein for over a billion people, you could easily argue that this is the largest public health crisis in the world.”

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