Protection against terrorist attacks
According to Henderson, when the WHO declared in 1980 that smallpox had been eradicated from the planet, the virus immediately acquired strategic value. protection against terrorist attacks Reactions-of-september-11-2001-terrorist-attacks. And its strategic value, he says, has continued to rise in the last 20 years as smallpox vaccinations have ceased. According to Alibek, the Soviet Union tried to harness the virus's strategic potential by turning it into a biological weapon. Alibek himself supervised the production of 20 tons of smallpox for Biopreparat, the Soviet Union's biological weapons complex. protection against terrorist attacks Statistics on terrorism. The virus, he says, was to be delivered on SS-18 missiles in the event of a "total war" with the United States. Henderson, who now directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, says that Alibek's smallpox revelations completely changed his approach to the terrorist threat. "The Russian program," says Henderson, "resolved many development and dissemination problems and produced large amounts of materials. protection against terrorist attacks Sea terrorism. " To deter terrorists or rogue states from attempting to acquire the virus, Henderson argues that its possession should be considered a crime against humanity. The Stimson Center's Amy Smithson shares Henderson's concerns about Alibek's disclosures. "We now know that the Soviet Union weaponized smallpox, a contagious disease. There's a reasonable probability that vials of smallpox are located in different spots. There are reports that Iraq, North Korea, and Iran may have shared the Soviet's wealth in this area. " If a terrorist group were to be aided by a country with access to the smallpox virus, says Smithson, the "consequences would be devastating. "In November 1997, Defense Secretary William Cohen told ABC-TV's This Week that a supply of anthrax the size of a 5-pound bag of sugar would kill half the population of Washington, D. C. This sort of sensational rhetoric leaves many analysts shaking their heads in frustration. Milton Leitenberg, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies, told a government panel early this year that Cohen's 1997 remark was "exaggerated, inflammatory, essentially incorrect, counterproductive, and even dangerous. "Part of the problem with the debate over chemical and biological terrorism, says the RAND Corporation's Bruce Hoffman, is how we define the weapons. "We focus on chemical and biological weapons as weapons of mass destruction, when that is inaccurate. Except for nuclear weapons, which are the least probable weapons terrorists would use, none of these are weapons of mass destruction. " Hoffman cites the Aum Shinrikyo cult's 1995 sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway, which resulted in only a dozen deaths, as proof that terrorists are incapable of using chemical and biological agents as weapons of mass destruction. Other analysts, however, are concerned about the social and psychological impact a terrorist attack could have on the civilian population. According to Alibek, "A sole case of five or six people dead [from a chemical or biological terrorist attack] would be enough to create an enormous political crisis. ""These agents would have a huge psychological impact," says Amy Smithson. "This is scary stuff. You don't hear it, you don't smell it, you don't see it, and in the case of biological agents you may not even feel the symptoms for more than a week. " If there is an attack, she adds, "the finger-pointing that will take place will be a good show.
Protection against terrorist attacks
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