[iwar] [fc:Iraq.'behind.US.anthrax.outbreaks']

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-14 10:13:29
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 10:13:29 -0700 (PDT)
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Iraq 'behind US anthrax outbreaks'

David Rose and Ed Vulliamy, New York
Sunday October 14, 2001
The Observer 

American investigators probing anthrax outbreaks in Florida and New York
believe they have all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack - and have
named Iraq as prime suspect as the source of the deadly spores. 

Their inquiries are adding to what US hawks say is a growing mass of
evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, possibly indirectly, with the
11 September hijackers. 

If investigators' fears are confirmed - and sceptics fear American hawks
could be publicising the claim to press their case for strikes against
Iraq - the pressure now building among senior Pentagon and White House
officials in Washington for an attack may become irresistible. 

Plans have been discussed among Pentagon strategists for US air strike
support for armed insurrections against Saddam by rebel Kurds in the
north and Shia Muslims in the south with a promise of American ground
troops to protect the oilfields of Basra. 

Contact has already been made with an Iraqi opposition group based in
London with a view to installing its members as a future government in
Baghdad. 

Leading US intelligence sources, involved with both the CIA and the
Defence Department, told The Observer that the 'giveaway' which suggests
a state sponsor for the anthrax cases is that the victims in Florida
were afflicted with the airborne form of the disease. 

'Making anthrax, on its own, isn't so difficult,' one senior US
intelligence source said.  'But it only begins to become effective as a
biological weapon if they can be made the right size to breathe in.  If
you can't get airborne infectivity, you can't use it as a weapon.  That
is extremely difficult.  There is very little leeway.  Most spores are
either too big to be suspended in air, or too small to lodge on the
lining of the lungs.'

As claims about an Iraqi link grew, senior health officials in Britain
revealed they warned all the country's GPs last week to be vigilant
about the disease.  'I think we have to be prepared to think the
unthinkable,' said the Government's Chief Medical Officer, Dr Liam
Donaldson.  The Department of Health confirmed the Government is
conducting an urgent review of Britain's ability to cope with chemical
or biological attacks. 

It also emerged last night that three people who worked in the Florida
buildings at the centre of anthrax scares are now in the UK and
undergoing tests for the disease.  And in America a letter sent from
Malaysia to a Microsoft office was found to contain traces of anthrax. 

In liquid form, anthrax is useless - droplets would fall to the ground,
rather than staying suspended in the air to be breathed by victims. 
Making powder needs repeated washings in huge centrifuges, followed by
intensive drying, which requires sealed environments.  The technology
would cost millions. 

US intelligence believes Iraq has the technology and supplies of anthrax
suitable for terrorist use.  'They aren't making this stuff in caves in
Afghanistan,' the CIA source said.  'This is prima facie evidence of the
involvement of a state intelligence agency.  Maybe Iran has the
capability.  But it doesn't look likely politically.  That leaves Iraq.'

Scientists investigating the attacks say the bacteria used is similar to
the 'Ames strain' of anthrax originally cultivated at Iowa State
University in the 1950s and later given to labs throughout the world,
including Iraq. 

According to sources in the Bush administration, investigators are
talking to Egyptian authorities who say members of the al-Qaida network,
detained and interrogated in Cairo, had obtained phials of anthrax in
the Czech Republic. 

Last autumn Mohamed Atta is said by US intelligence officials to have
met in Prague an agent from Iraqi intelligence called Ahmed Samir
al-Ahani, a former consul later expelled by the Czechs for activities
not compatible with his diplomatic mission. 

The Czechs are also examining the possibility that Atta met a former
director of Saddam's external secret services, Farouk Hijazi, at a
second meeting in the spring.  Hijazi is known to have met Bin Laden. 

It was confirmed yesterday that Jim Woolsey, CIA director from 1993 to
1996, recently visited London on behalf of the hawkish Defence
Department to 'firm up' other evidence of Iraqi involvement in 11
September. 

Some observers fear linking Saddam to the terrorist attacks is part of
an agenda being driven by US hawks eager to broaden the war to include
Iraq, a move being resisted by the British government. 

The hawks winning the ear of President Bush is assembled around Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and a think tank,
the Defence Policy Advisory Board, dubbed the 'Wolfowitz cabal'. 

Their strategy to target Iraq was hammered out at a two-day seminar in
September, of which the dovish Secretary of State Colin Powell had no
knowledge. 

The result was a letter to President Bush urging the removal of Saddam
as a precondition to the war.  'Failure to undertake such an effort,' it
said, 'will constitute a decisive surrender in the war against
terrorism'. 

In a swipe at Powell's premium on coalition-building, it continues:
'coalition building has run amok.  The point about a coalition is "can
it achieve the right purpose?" not "can you get a lot of members?"'

Administration officials close to the group told The Observer : 'We see
this war as one against the virus of terrorism.  If you have bone marrow
cancer, it's not enough to just cut off the patient's foot.  You have to
do the complete course of chemotherapy.  And if that means embarking on
the next Hundred Years' War, that's what we're doing.'

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