CIA spymaster turned Counterterrorism ambassador Henry A. Crumpton is quoted in a Daily Telegraph piece by this AP story on CNN, with the catchy pitch:
U.S.: ‘Very high’ chance of WMD terror strike
Tuesday, January 17, 2006; Posted: 3:43 a.m. EST (08:43 GMT)
LONDON, England (AP) — There is a “very high” probability that a terrorist group will strike using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said in comments published Tuesday.
My paranoia may be oversensitive these days, but I can’t help see this as a little stoking of the fear machine to help the Chimperor-in-Chief out of a tough spot. Perhaps the statements made by this expert are not so extreme:
“I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of mass destruction) as very high,” U.S. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Henry Crumpton was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “It is simply a question of time.”
“It is not just the nuclear threat that bothers me,” he was quoted as saying. “I think, if anything, the biological threat is going to grow.”
But there is this little vague and unsubstantiated tidbit which was so reeking of truthiness that it raised a red flag:
Crumpton said a biological attack was potentially the most troubling scenario. He said evidence from Afghanistan suggested al-Qaeda had been seeking to develop anthrax before the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001.
Is he suggesting that the weaponized anthrax used in the US attacks came from Al Qaeda? No, that would be absurd. It would take a relatively advanced infrastructure to produce, and the investigations have tended to assume a domestic/military source. This was troubling in itself, since the US had sworn off development of bioweapons, according to treaty, at least.
So what could he be referring to. Is he sharing some new classified detail from his days guiding the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to “success”? I think not. I think they are recycling a used scare that Russ Baker pinpointed in The Nation in 2003, when he dissected Bloody Judy Miller’s war propaganda campaign in the NYT:
In September 2002, a year after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Miller had yet another Osama scoop provided by the authorities. Headlined “Lab Suggests Qaeda Planned to Build Arms, Officials Say,” the article begins: “Pentagon officials disclosed new details today about equipment found in a laboratory near Kandahar, Afghanistan, that they contend Al Qaeda intended to use to make biological and chemical weapons.”
Is this a real story? The headline and lead are powerful. But here’s the second paragraph: “The officials said the equipment–a centrifuge for separating liquids and an oven in which slurried agents could be dried–supported the assessment that Al Qaeda might have acquired what it needed to make ‘a very limited production of biological and chemical agents,’ one official said.”
Of course Judy’s connection to the anthrax thing is complex. Not only was she victim of an anthrax-letter hoax, she also wrote some fundamental articles for the NYT exploring the US role in fabricating weaponized anthrax. Unfortunately, they again were less than meets the eye, as the Baltimore Sun revealed 3 months later:
While there was important information in the September 4-5 articles by Judith Miller and others published in the New York Times, these articles actually served to conceal the most important facts about the Dugway program. According to the first article by Miller, published September 4, “Officials stressed that the plant never made anthrax or any other lethal pathogen.” We now know that this statement is false: the Dugway plant made weapons-grade anthrax which was so dangerous that it was sent to Fort Detrick, Maryland for sterilization so the bacteria could be studied without undue risk to the scientists involved.
The Times articles were based on interviews with former Dugway director Jay C. Davis, who gave Miller and ABC News a tour of the facility with Pentagon permission. Miller dutifully reported the Pentagon version of events, writing: “Dr. Davis and other officials said the Defense Department’s lawyers had carefully reviewed the project to ensure that it did not violate the biological weapons treaty or American law. Because it was purely defensive and never made deadly germs, it was both legal and appropriate, he and others said.”
Again, the premise of this legal opinion is blatantly false. The Dugway project did make deadly germs, and was therefore in direct violation of the biological weapons treaty. In view of what was actually going on at Dugway, the Pentagon’s decision to invite Times and ABC reporters to the premises and give them a sanitized version of events seems to be a calculated effort at disinformation, using two media outlets that have proven their reliability as conduits for government propaganda.
As in all such disinformation, falsehood and truth are mixed together, and enough new revelations are included to make the piece look like an exposure, when it is really a cover-up. The main revelations came in a second article by Miller, William S. Broad and Stephen Engelberg, published the same day. The most important section reads as follows:
“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.
“Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.
“Administration officials said the need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, which has been signed by 143 nations.”
As the GOP mob faces waves of indictments, and possibly a few suicides (real and staged), and Bush begins to stare down the prospect of impeachment, his cornered junta may react even more erratically and vindictively than usual.
cross-posted at DailyKos
