I don't know anything about biological agents but I do know that in the 1950s, the U.S. Army tested the effects of nuclear fallout on their own troops. About 6,000 army personnel were exposed to the effects of a nuclear explosion...some troops were in trenches, others in no shelter at all spread out in various distances from the epicenter. Designed as an experiment to see if it would be possible to invade a country shortly after a nuclear bombardment, the experiment did nothing more than prove the long term effects of radiation exposure as all but a handful of the subjects tested have succomb to cancers and other mysterious deaths. This incident is currently a hotly debated, multi-million dollar, class action lawsuit with the governement claiming that at the time they did not know the harmfull effects of nuclear fallout.
In the seventies, a small town -not but an hour's drive from my apartment- was exposed to a dose of nerve agents that were accidently released from a nearby military testing facility on the Dugway Proving Grounds. Fortuneatly for the Skull Valley inhabitants, only sheep were killed by the release of these nerve agents. However, another class action lawsuit against the government is ongoing.
This state -Utah- is home to some of the deadliest of America's facilities. Just South of Tooele is one of the nation's largest depositories of chemical and nerve agents (nearly 1/4 of the national stockpile). Also, on the grounds is a recently built incinerator to dispose of the more obsolete bio-chemical weapons. Further south is the Dugway Proving Grounds -a couple hundred square miles to test conventional, nuclear, and bio-chemical weapons. In addition there are another half-dozen civilian installations of the similar hazard.
...What a great state to host the Olympics.
As for Greeenpeace's statement: Although I must admit that one loner with a P.h.d in bio-chemistry (American or otherwise) is a very likely possibility, I highly doubt it. First of all, the Anthrax used was home grown and not particularly well refined. If it had been stolen or bought from a lab it would have been a much more intense strain, capable of killing a person in a fraction of the time it took for the infected persons to die. The government and civilian labs have engineered strains hundreds of times more powerful than what was used in these letters. Don't believe that f***-off senator who said, "This strain was weapons grade; it airesolized when the letter opened..." He doesn't know sh!t about anthrax...he probably hasn't had any science courses since his freshman year in college.
Second: the timing. It was only a few days after f-day that these letters arrived. And three weeks before anyone knew about it. The timing of the Anthrax (as well as the letters saying "This is next, take pencilin now, Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great...") point towards knowledge of the events to take place. Mailing the antrax letter was not a spur of the moment decision. Whoever did it knew about what was going to happen and when it would happen. He would have manufactured the anthrax before f-day and mailed the letters immediatly after the events took place. If a person was going to use this event for whatever reason, I doubt he would have been able to gather the material, manufacture a lethal strain in a few days, and mail it to the intended targets.
Third: the concept of someone doing this for funding is hysterical. Although the U.S. government officially stopped the research of bio-chemical weapons for offensive purposes, the U.S. military still conducts millions of dollars worth of research into "defensive" bio-chemical weapons and both post-infection and pre-infection vaccines. In addition to the millions spent by the military, the government still showers civilian labs (like the CDC, or ATCC) with billions of dollars in research grants to develop biological agents. Funding for biological weapons is not an issue.
>>p.s. I was watching TV earlier on and they had a show on about the history of biological weapons. Strangely enough, you can buy deadly biological agents online from the ATCC. Not long ago an Aryan Nation nut-case posed as a biochemist doing research and was able to purchase three vials of Bubonic plague from the ATCC.
If you have the papers, you can buy almost any type of bacteria you want from
http://www.atcc.org (Mastercard and Visa accepted). In 1985 Sadam Hussein was able to purchase botchulinum from the same organization.
