Anthrax Attacks Show Government Officials Made of (Flawed!) Human Material

“The federal government is supposed to protect us from terrorism.” This may have been a plausible theory at one time, but now, after a decade of goofs and lapses, it sounds more like the opening line of a late-night comedy routine. The latest revelation about government’s anti-terrorism programs makes for rather dark comedy indeed. The Department of Justice has just released a comprehensive, final report on the anthrax attacks that occurred in the United States in the fall of 2001. As the reader may recall, envelopes containing weapons-grade anthrax spores were mailed to media organizations and U. S. senators, resulting in the deaths of five people, and leading to the hospitalization of 17 others, and causing expensive cleanup efforts. Since the poisoned letters contained notes scrawled with “Allah is Great” and “Death to Israel,” these slogans suggested the perpetrator was a radical Muslim. Well, he wasn’t. After an exhaustive FBI investigation, the Justice department has concluded that the spores came from a U. S. Army medical research facility, and that the person responsible was a scientist, Bruce Ivins, who worked there. So “the worst act of bioterrorism in U. S. history,” (as the Washington Post described it), proved to be the work of a U. S. government employee: a nightmare version of “I’m from government and I’m here to help you.”...read more