http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/04/098l-030499-idx.html - Anthrax Vial Smuggled In to Make a Point At Hill Hearing By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 4, 1999; Page A11 A leading U.S. expert on biological warfare walked through security at the Rayburn House Office Building yesterday carrying 7 1/2 grams of powdered anthrax in a small plastic bottle, proceeding directly to a hearing efore the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and displaying his deadly sample. The expert, William C. Patrick III, said he was trying to show how a hostile state could smuggle powdered anthrax into the United States in a secure diplomatic pouch and attack major federal government installations almost at will. "I've been through all the major airports, and the security systems of the State Department, the Pentagon, even the CIA, and nobody has stopped me," Patrick told the committee. "Seven and a half grams would take care of the Rayburn Building and all the people in it." Patrick's testimony on biological warfare and its most frightening mutant, bioterrorism, was given during one of the intelligence panel's rare open sessions as Congress and the administration focus increasing attention and vast new resources on counterterrorism. Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said he called the unusual open session to help educate the public on what he called "a national security concern of the highest priority." President Clinton has made defending the country against biological and chemical attacks among the highest priorities of his administration. In January, he proposed a $10 billion counterterrorism budget for the coming fiscal year that includes $1.4 billion for enhancing domestic readiness in the event of a chemical or biological terrorist attack. In his testimony, Patrick revealed that he toted a number of other chilling samples through Rayburn security "like Sherman went through Georgia," including a small canister of 25,000 dormant mosquito eggs that he said could easily have been infected with encephalitis and loosed on the population at large. John A. Lauder, director of the CIA's Nonproliferation Center, told the committee that a dozen countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria, "now either possess or are actively pursuing offensive biological weapons capabilities for use against their perceived enemies, whether internal or external." Countries with biological weapons technology include the United States and some of its closest allies but also, as Lauder pointed out, hostile powers such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Weaponizing biological agents is much more difficult for small rogue states and terrorists "than some popular literature seems to suggest," Lauder said. But biological weapons remain a highly dangerous threat because they are cheap and relatively easy to make, he said, and could become far more threatening with rapid advances in biotechnology. � Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] *********************************************************************** BIOWAR-L Biowar/Bioterrorism/Toxins Mailing List To unsubscribe or subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text: unsubscribe BIOWAR-L or subscribe BIOWAR-L. Post to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Archive: <http://www.sonic.net/~west/digest.htm>. BIOWAR Web site: <http://www.sonic.net/~west/biowar.htm>. -Wes Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
