Whereas the sponsorship of the anthrax attacks remain
a mystery, the attacker presumably gained knowledge
about the vulnerabilities of the United States. What
would a hostile state, especially one intent on developing
a deterrent against an American attack (or an American
reprisal for 9/11), have learned?
A hostile state would have determined that:
1) The US postal system is an effective delivery system
for an anonymous biological attack. Letters carrying
dry anthrax spores can be mailed to targeted buildings
in America from any place in the world. So a hostile
state would not need to possess intercontinental missiles
or bombers to make such a threat credible.
2) Anthrax can paralyze parts of the American economy,
even if does not inflict mass casualties, by closing
down vital buildings and communication links.
The first anthrax delivery to American Media in Florida
demonstrated that when anthrax is not identified by
a warning letter, it is not likely to be immediately
identified or contained. (The time that elapsed between
its delivery and its identification is known to the
The second anthrax delivery in September to NBC and
the New York Post demonstrated that when warning letters
are included a media frenzy can be induced.
The third anthrax delivery of anthrax to the offices
of Senators Daschle and Leahy was in a weaponized form
that turned into an aerosol. It demonstrated that key
government buildings can be totally immobilized and
that their decontamination requires several months.
Further, these two letters containing weaponized anthrax
demonstrated that the processing of mail in sorting
centers produces cross-contamination. A post office
facility as far away as Wallingford, Conn. reported
a cluster of 3 million anthrax spores on its ceiling.
From these disruptions, a hostile state could extrapolate
the damage caused by a mass mailing of weaponized anthrax
to a wide range of buildings, with and without warning
letters, including the paralysis of the postal system
in the United States.
3) The probes with warning letters also demonstrated
that, even when anthrax was immediately identified,
medical defenses could not be counted on. The only available
vaccine required injections over several months to be
completely effective and the distribution of the antibiotic
Cipro ran the risk of creating resistant strains of
the bacteria. So infected buildings would have to be
4) The attacks also demonstrated that the US did not
have the means to identify their source.
Eleven months after Robert Stevens was murdered by
anthrax in Florida, the FBI still had not fully searched
the initial crime scene for the delivery vehicle. Instead,
the entire building was shut down and quarantined. Only
in late August 2002 did the FBI re-enter the building
to continue the search.
On August 30th, 2002, the AP reported "Clad in white
protective suits, investigators set up devices inside
the quarantined former headquarters of the National
Enquirer yesterday to take samples and search for clues
in last fall's anthrax attack."
By using the Ames strain, which originally had been
cultured in America, and then sent to both American
and foreign research labs, the attacker also led the
FBI to focus its investigation on the possibility of
American rather than foreign perpetrators. The FBI was
not able to find the laboratory used to grow the billions
of spores from a sample of the Ames strain. This facility
also had to sequentially filter these to produce a uniform
size as minute as one micron (a length one-millionth
of a meter) and treat the spores through a material
science technology, such as coating or vacuum-freezing,
so that they would become a lethal aerosol. The perpetrator
might therefore assume that he would have a cloak of
deniability if not anonymity, in future attacks.