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[Note: A transcript of this meeting is unavailable. The discussion is summarized below.]

October 29, 2001

Speakers: Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad

According to a team of investigative reporters from The New York Times, there is still a great deal that we don’t know about the anthrax attacks—including whether they’re linked to September 11 or al-Qaeda. For now, the FBI suspects they’re of domestic origin, both because some fringe militias have avidly pursued anthrax (sometimes even vaccinating their members against it), and because it doesn’t seem like al-Qaeda to send accompanying letters that forego the all-important biowarfare element of surprise. But germs don’t leave fingerprints, which is part of their appeal. And whoever made the anthrax in the letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle—made “fluffier” and more deadly because it had been rendered static-free—knew what they were doing.

September 11 is a grim reminder that there is no real way to deter the new terrorists. The global dissemination of knowledge makes it easier to start the complex sequence required to build a truly deadly biological weapon, and al-Qaeda has tried hard to get its hands on all kinds of weapons of mass destruction. Worse, the underpaid and underemployed scientists from Russia’s decaying biowarfare program could be bought up by states that sponsor terrorism; Iran has already recruited at least four such scientists. To mount a real defense, the American public health infrastructure needs to gear up, including pushing ahead on major research programs to custom-produce vaccines to hardy new bugs. But the inadequate current Health and Human Services bill shows that we have yet to get serious about the germ warfare threat.