A lethal germ is unleashed in the U.S. mail. A chain of letters spreads terror from Florida to Washington, D.C., from New York to Connecticut, from the halls of Congress to the assembly lines of the U.S. Postal Service. Five people die, and ten thousand more line up for antibiotics to protect against exposure. The government, already outsmarted by the terrorist hijackers of 9/11, leaves its workers vulnerable and a diabolical killer on the loose.
Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and a review of thousands of pages of government documents, The Killer Strain is the definitive account of the year in which bioterrorism became a reality in the United States. Revealing the little-known victims and unsung heroes in the anthrax debacle, investigative reporter Marilyn Thompson also examines the FBI's slow-paced investigation of the crimes and the unprecedented scientific challenges posed by the case.
The Killer Strain, more than just a thrilling read, is also a clarion wake-up call. It shows how billions of dollars and a decade of elaborate bioterror dress rehearsals meant nothing in the face of a real attack -- and how we may still be at risk.
I cannot believe that a Washington Post investigative writer would include allusions to "connections to al Qaeda" in a book on the anthrax attacks. Why do we find this in the offical book description? Why would an author or publisher want that as part of the official description, unless they're pandering to the neocons and collaborating with damage-control propaganda?
These connections were "hinted," of course, by the bogus letters talking about Allah, which were sent along with the anthrax. And the Bush administration and its fans are working very hard to get the public (and the FBI) to stop thinking, and claiming, that the profile of the perpetrator points to a domestic, right-wing, inside job.
Surveys have shown that a high percent of US citizens, never much lower than 50%, have believed for years that Iraq and al Qaeda were in league with each other for the 9-11 attacks. This has been disproved, and Bush has even admitted as much--but then Cheney keeps talking as if the connection is there.
Give it up. It was the Easter Bunny. It was Santa Claus. It was the Great Pumpkin who sent the Anthrax letters, cooking up and weaponizing the anthrax in the pumpkin patch, weaponizing it by a process known only to a relatively small group inside the US military-intelligence community. That makes as much sense as any speculation about al Qaeda, which only serves to deflect attention from the FBI's findings, that it was an inside job.
Read the news stories since the events first unfolded, and you will notice the damage control, the effort to blame al Qaeda or Iraq, and to turn public opinion away from the FBI's original findings.
A government exposed? Not quite, not enough, not in their propaganda-producing role, and not in their ability to compromise the journalistic integrity of some investigative reporters by suspending their disbelief in the Bush myth that dark-skinned, middle-eastern extremists were behind the anthrax attacks.
The main fact I walked away from this book was, when it first came to the City Island Library, in New York City, in the Bronx, was twofold. One, it was made by the same people who brought us the Watergate Scandal (but perhaps failed to bring the second Watergate dweller, Ms. Lewinsky, a resident next to the Doles, to light) and two, that C.O.'s Conscientious Objector's a Draft Board designation, were used in the testing of anthrax exposure, and just recently given awards for risking their lives. It also gave some credence to a story of C.O.'s being used in other devious ways to service bombsights, perhaps. I live in the Bronx, where Kathy Nguyen, one of the victims was from. The WP did a good job investigating the 1987 "Wedtech Scandal" here too, where military field deployed bridges were supposed to be made and vast sums of money were embezzled. Unfortunately, 9/11/01 and subsequent acts stopped the Maya Lin designed newspaper recycling plant proposed for the South Bronx, where the US Capitol Dome was forged during the Lincoln Administration. See "Bronx Ecology: Blueprint For A New Environmentalism".
This book is a little dense and sometimes repetitive. For those looking for a medical mystery this book will probably not be very satisfying. The point of this book, which is made several times and then some, is that the response from federal agencies to the 2001 anthrax attacks was not perfect. And those mistakes cost lives.
The history of US anthrax production was interesting and offered perspective, and the chapter on the US Justice Departments attack and smear of a scientist was good and should have been developed more.
