By Christopher Effgen
The Disaster Center
July 28, 2004

The term weapon of mass destruction as it is commonly used generally refers to the use of certain types nuclear, biological, or chemical substances. Even though the use of explosives or a jet crashing into a building and exploding involves chemical reactions, these acts are generally not thought of as a WMD. The distinction is important one because for the many years that I have been studying US anti-terrorism policy that policy has focused on the threat of WMD.

I can not tell you how many times I have read prophecies that we will be soon be subject to an attack using WMD. The only times these weapons have been used to kill in the United States they came from a US military weapons lab. When used soon after 9-11 they were sent to two members of the Senate democratic leadership, who quickly passed the Patriot Act, and members of the news media who became supporters and promoters of the war in Iraq.

My view of the problem of WMD is different than most. I don’t just worry about the release of WMD by terrorists; I worry about their release from any threat source. Every year in the United States over 300 people directly die as a result of releases of these substances. The number of people who do not directly die, but whose life is shortened and results in the spontaneous abortion of fetuses, certainly numbers in the tens of thousands, but probably runs into the hundreds of thousands. The research into the total number of people so effected has not been performed.

Seven years ago, when I first came upon the issue of WMD, I looked at a policy that did not make sense to me. Terrorists have budgets just like governments do. To produce WMD requires that a terrorist organization acquire the technological expertise, take the extreme risks involved in producing and transporting a WMD, endure the extraordinary costs to produce a weapon, and if an attack succeeded suffer the resulting annihilation of their terrorist group from the entire civilized world. A terrorist group is unlikely to be successful using WMD because the number of people and the transactions involved in such an act makes hiding it difficult, if someone is looking for the signs. Why take all this risk to create a threat which if sucessful would cause a thousandth of the damage for the same cost, if terrorists used conventional explosives?

Modern United States anti-terrorism policy was developed following the April 19, 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the Aum Shinrikyo’s sect’s March 20, 1995 sarin attack. The cost of materials for the Oklahoma City bomb certainly was less than ten thousand dollars, while the cost to produce the sarin used in the Tokyo subway was over a million dollars. Aum Shinriko’s sarin attack killed 12 people and caused virtually no capital damage. The Oklahoma bombing killed 168 and caused over 82 million dollars in capital damages. The Oklahoma figures do not include over 200 million dollars in insurance related costs.

If WMD are the main threat that they were being purported to be one would expect that efforts would be undertaken to reduce the probability of terrorists accessing the raw materials and equipment that needed to be used in their manufacture. Yet, at the time these efforts were minimal. When you looked at the terrorism response plan prior to 9-11-01, what you saw was a plan to that only considered the release of WMD and was equally suited to respond to a release of these substances by industry or terrorists.

At that time, I believed that the threat of terrorism was being used to justify the expense for equipment and training to enable responders to survive when they responded to accidents involving spills of these substances. In statistical tables, used to compile lists of those who die in the United States as a result of accidential releases, responders merit their own category.

I felt conflicted. It was good that responders were receiving the equipment and training. We were broadcasting our fear of WMD, and perhaps terrorists groups would waste their time and money in an attempt to create a WMD. The down side of this was policy was that we were not preparing for what terrorists could actually do.

When the President of the United States tells the American people that they should be afraid of terrorist attack using WMD, and that it is a matter of National Security, its not be a good idea to argue. I have experienced many instances in my life in which I have had a reason to regret my actions, not raising the question of the soundness of US anti-terrorism policy prior to 9-11-01 is one of those regrets. I take responsibility for my failure to publicly question the administration's strategy.

Because we did do anything to stop what terrorists could actually do, when I saw that second plane plow into the World Trade Center, I understand how it could happen.

For me the anthrax attacks were a surprise until I learned that the source that the anthrax came from the US military. Effective WMD are not easy to make. We should regulate the equipment and training to required to refine them. Anthrax, in particular, is difficult to produce in what would be called weapons grade quality, it is susceptible to the absorption of moisture from the air, which then causes the spores to clump.

Years before 9-11-01 experts had gone before congress and, like Secretary of State Powel would later do before the UN, held up a little vial and testified that this much anthrax could kill everyone in this room. What they didn’t say was that only researchers in the US and a few other nations had the knowledge and technological capacity to refine anthrax to such a fine state.

Actually there were two anthrax attacks after 9-11-01. The first time the anthrax was sent it did not immediately cause anyone to die. Apparently for this reason, anthrax was sent a second time. The anthrax that was sent the second time derived from the same source, but it was in a much more concentrated form. The targets for the second attack included two US Senators, who at the time were threatening to block passage of the Patriot Act.

The 911 Commission did not investigate the anthrax attacks. If history is any judge, and there is another attack using WMD, the investigators should presume that a US Government affiliated source is behind the attack and its purpose is to influence US policymakers and the media. Given the probable motivations of the anthrax terrorists and the resulting changes in US policy, one might conclude that the anthrax attacks, following 9-11-01, were the most successful acts of terrorism in history.

The commission points out that there are a lot of things that we can do to mitigate the threat of the WMD. One of these things would be to alter our thinking and our approach to developing a WMD risk/threat management policy. Since the Commission's study did not address the anthrax attacks its conclusions regarding WMD should be dismissed out of hand. The fact that the conclusions of the Commission were based in part on its presumptions regarding threats from WMD calls into question the legitimacy of the commissions other recommendations.

Terrorism makes up just a small portion of the risk/threat that we face from these substances. There is the potential for the development of viruses in the wild that could kill a significant portion of the human race in a year.

By far the greatest man caused threat from materials identified as WMD is due to the development of genetic engineering. Expertise and infrastructure now exists in hundreds of laboratories scattered around the globe to develop genetically altered biological agents that are far more lethal than anything that we have to fear from nature or the present capacity of terrorists.

Among biological agents viruses that have been intentionally or unintentionally created we can include genetically engineered anthrax, treatment resistant plague, a new virus that if released in the wild could result in extinction of mice, hybrid of viruses causing hepatitis C and dengue fever. The later being created under unsafe laboratory conditions, which almost resulted in the virus being released.

The Biological Weapons Convention must be ratified. Projects currently being undertaken, in the United States and around the world, in violation of that convention need to be stopped. Besides creating an open and transparent inspection regime, restrictions on certain types of research is required.

The United States is currently the leading advocate of policies that may result in a bioweapons arms race. If the rest of the world were to follow the United States lead in this area, deadly manmade viruses will soon represent a greater threat to the human race than nuclear weapons. This threat is so real that the International Committee of the Red Cross to issue an appeal. "We urge you to consider the threshold at which we all stand and to remember our common humanity"

If we are going to develop an effective risk/threat management plan, we should never lose sight of the fact that the human race faces a greater historical threat from the accidental and deliberate release of these substances from governments and industry. At present the greatest threat from these substances is from nature.

We need to develop a comprehensive risk/threat management policy.

This document is located at:
http://www.disastercenter.com/911_5.htm

Commentaries On The 9/11 Commission Report
For Those Who Loved Them
Risk/Threat Management
The Terrorism Center
Deep Institutional Failings
WMD -- Weapons of Mass Destruction
The 911 Commission Report and the Markle Foundation's Recommendations
An Example of Data Matching
The Accuracy of Data Matching
What the United States Stands For
The 911 ReportThe complete Commision Report in PDF format (7.4 MB)

Christopher Effgen [send him an mail] is the owner of the Disaster Center web site, and has been active in reporting about disasters by digital means since the site was established in 1996. He has authored articles dealing with wide variety of disaster related topics including risk/threat management, neural networks, the science of disaster communication, and compiled numerous disaster related statistics (many of which are hosted on this site). He is active as a participant in national and international forums promoting disaster mitigation towards the goal of sustainable development.

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