[iwar] [fc:shut.down.the.US.Congress.for.a.couple.of.hundred.dollars]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-25 20:49:59
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 20:49:59 -0700 (PDT)
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The Australian Financial Review 
18 October 

Peter Hartcher 
Washington 

The US House of Representatives went into an emergency adjournment of at 
least six days as politicians fled anthrax in the seat of the American 
legislature. 
The news that 31 Congressional staff members had been found to have been 
exposed to the potentially lethal germ sent the nation into a new state of 
fear. 
Even as the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Dr Alan Greenspan, told a 
Congressional committee that the nation was recovering from the shock of 
the September 11 attacks, senators were called away for an urgent briefing 
on anthrax. 
The news depressed Wall Street. The source of the anthrax apparently was a 
single envelope mailed to a senator. 
The perpetrators had "shut down the US Congress for a couple of hundred 
dollars," said a specialist on military strategy, retired Air Force Colonel 
Chet Richards, referring to the cost of an anthrax culture kit, readily 
available until a month ago. 
The authorities were strained to the limit in responding to hundreds of 
calls from a jittery public which regards innocuous materials with new 
suspicion. 
The FBI said that its testing laboratories were overburdened with over 
2,300 cases of suspected anthrax in first 16 days of the month. 
To date, six locations have tested positive for the presence of anthrax. 
The Fox TV network said that among the thousands of false alarms, the 
authorities had been called to inspect a suspicious envelope that turned 
out to contain a love note and a pair of ladies' knickers. 
In a long day of confusion and misinformation, officials and commentators 
rushed to accuse Iraq of launching an anthrax attack after the Democrat 
leader in the House of Representatives, Dick Gephardt, said that it was 
"higher-grade, weapon-grade kind of anthrax." 
An army specialist, General John Parker from the Fort Detrick biological 
warfare centre, later had to explain that this was false and that it was 
"garden variety" anthrax. 
It was a form that could be treated readily with all types of antibiotics, 
he said. 
Of the 31 staff members who had so far tested positive to the bacterium, 
none had contracted the disease, medical officials said, and all were being 
treated with antibiotics to ensure that they did not. 
Another piece of misinformation came from the Speaker of the House, Dennis 
Hastert, who said that anthrax had been spread through the ventilation 
system in Congressional offices. 
The Deputy US Surgeon-General, Mr Ken Moritsugu, later said that there was, 
in fact, no trace of anthrax in the ventilation. 
He said that the anthrax was limited to a "very specific area" in a 
mailroom and in and near the office of the letter's recipient, Senator Tom 
Daschle, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. 
In contrast to the House of Representatives, the Senate decided to keep 
working, although three senate office blocks were evacuated for testing. 
"There is no risk here at the Capitol" building, the imposing white 
legislature that sits atop Capitol Hill at the end of Pennsylvania Ave, 
said the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Senator Trent Lott. 
The decision of the Senate to keep working reportedly infuriated the 
leadership of the House, who looked cowardly by contrast. 
The anthrax arrived in a letter postmarked Trenton, New Jersey. This was 
the same postmark borne by the anthrax-laden letter sent to an anchorman at 
the NBC TV office in New York, Tom Brokaw. 
The postmark of Trenton is potentially significant because two of the 
terrorists who hijacked planes in the September 11 attacks had been living 
in that city. 
However, the Bush Administration has said that there is no evidence to 
connect the anthrax to the terrorists or their suspected ringleader, Osama 
bin Laden. 
The President added that he was evil and "I wouldn't put it past him." 
Col. Richards said that if the source of the anthrax was indeed Osama bin 
Laden's Al-Qaida network, "we're certainly playing their game for them - if 
this was done to create chaos, it has certainly been successful." 
He said that for the cost of a few envelopes of anthrax, the perpetrators 
had terrified the US and tied up an extraordinary amount of national 
resources. 
Parts of the US media have been verging on the hysterical and CNN, itself 
breathless in its coverage, carried an interview with the former Defence 
Secretary, William Cohen, calling on the networks to calm down. 
The reason anthrax is feared as an agent of biological warfare is that it 
can be dispersed over a crowd, silently and invisibly, carried by the 
breeze. A handful has the potential to kill thousands. 
But sending it by mail suggests either that it is being used to unnerve 
rather than to kill, or that it is being used by people without the ability 
to disperse it more widely. 
While the US is playing to its strength in Afghanistan by conducting 
military attacks, the terrorists are playing to its weakness at home by 
frightening the civilian population. 
Col. Richards, who operates an online forum called Defence and the National 
Interest, said that the anthrax might be coming from domestic extremists or 
local madmen. 
"It's such low-level stuff compared to what Al-Qaida did on Septemeber 11 
it doesn't look like them." 
But he said that there was another possibility. He said that it was a 
principle of unconventional warfare to alternate unpredictably between 
decisive moves and distracting feints. 
The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu called it cheng and ch'i. 
"It's quite possible that they are doing this to get our attention and tie 
up our resources, and while we are distracted, they move decisively on 
another front where we least expect it. 
"They may have another operation planned. The effect on the national psyche 
would be incredible. 
"If, after all we've done to protect ourselves, they crash another plane 
into a building or launch some other devastating blow, the whole idea of 
who we are and what we are as a people would be under attack." 


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