A post at
AmericaBlog the other day jogged my memory about something that's been bothering me for a while, but I never got around to writing about. In the weeks following 9-11, several major media groups as well as two Senators received an envelope/letter containing some very special Anthrax.
Anthrax was a natural fit for the cold-war bioweapons division. It's not terribly contagious and it's close to 100% fatal if left untreated. Anthrax is relatively easy to grow and "breed" into more virulent strains, only a few key sequences need be altered to significantly change how resistant the resulting spores are to immune responses. Thus it is both effective in killing off the target population and comparatively containable therein.
Aetiology--[A]nthrax could potentially be manipulated by anyone with some basic expertise in molecular biology. For example, research has shown that the number of copies of a bacterial plasmid can affect bacterial virulence, particularly in certain lineages of the bacterium, possibly by increasing production of the bacterial capsule (the slimy outer coating that aids in resistance to phagocytosis, or "eating" of the bacteria by cells of our immune system.
The bugs used in the 2001 attacks weren't just any old run-of-the-mill Anthrax either. Some or all of them appear to have been, originally at least, American made:
Wikipedia--Although the anthrax preparations were of different grades, all of the material derived from the same bacterial strain. Known as the Ames strain, it was first researched at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Ames strain was then distributed to at least fifteen bio-research labs within the U.S. and six overseas.
Short version: Someone[s] apparently got a hold of some of Uncle Sam's super-secret Anthrax stash and cultured it, weaponized it crudely, and started mailing the stuff out. They could have mailed a hundred letters, or maybe even a thousand for all we know. For that matter, the Anthrax spores could have been distributed in far less visible and considerably more effective ways, if the idea was to infect as many people as possible. Instead, it was mailed to a handful of precisely the kind of targets that guaranteed it would be quickly discovered and widely reported. Thoughts, plots, conspiracies?