What If Al Qaeda Terrorists Launch Anthrax Attack at New Years Eve Merrymakers on NY Times Square - Essay Example

What-If Scenario al Qaeda Terrorists Launch Anthrax Attack at New Year's Eve Merrymakers On NY Times Square, Thousands Dead How Do We Prevent or Respond to It Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for NS510 - Home Defense __________________________ Name _________________________________ School ______________________ Date Table of Contents Chapter Page 1. Introduction 3 2. Biochemical Weapons . 4 3. al Qaeda... 8 4. Anthrax 10 5. Greatest Holiday ... 14 6. Crisis Response .. 16 7. Prevention . 19 8. Summary & Conclusion .. 22 Bibliography .. 24 Chapter 1 - Introduction The threat of terrorism acquired a new dimension when anonymous letters filled with anthrax spores were mailed to US senators and selected media men in October 2001. This came on the heels of the September 11, 2001 attacks in which suicide squads identified with the terrorist group al Qaeda seized a couple of civilian planes and smashed them into the World Trade Center in New York. Some 3,000 people were killed. The kind of men who would dare such an act, noted US President Bush, "would not hesitate to use biological or chemical or nuclear weapons." For the first time, bio-chemical weapons loomed large as an instrument of terrorism to create fear and destruction in the civilized world. This forms the backdrop for this paper, which weighs the pros and cons on whether the al Qaeda has the motivation and capability to develop and use bio-weapons to carry out its mission of terror. A significant portion of the paper builds up the view that there is such an inclination, and that the likeliest targets are major US cities. The strongest candidate may be New York City, the possible terror attack to coincide with the traditional celebration of New Year's Eve. Part of the reasons is that in all the post-9/11 celebrations, the hundreds of thousands of Americans who joined the revelry came to challenge the terrorists to do their worst, invoking their sense of patriotism and hatred for terrorism. This constitutes a temptation that terrorists may not be able to resist. The most important section of the paper then sketches the possible actions that New York City and the federal government would take if and when such a bio-terror attack takes place. It also evaluates the wisdom and sufficiency of the preventive measures that the city and federal governments were compelled to undertake in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax scare. Among the questions we want to address is the preparedness and capabilities of the city and federal health systems to deal with a large-scale bio-chemical attack, which represents the new threat to world peace and security that the world's health and defense systems have little familiarity as yet. Can the authorities act with efficiency and dispatch to minimize the loss of lives and confine the damage Chapter 2 - Biochemical Weapons Biochemical weapons appeal to terrorists for three reasons: 1) they are easier and cheaper to acquire than nuclear devices and cause more casualties; 2) their effects on target population are hard to detect and counter; and 3) the threat of their use causes fear, which element the terrorists love most. The use of bio-weapons actually goes back to the siege warfare in Medieval Ages, among which was the recorded attempt to spread disease through dead horses at northern France in 1340. In 1346, cadavers of plague victims were dumped on the defenders at Caffa in Crimea, while human and animal manure was used at Karlstein in Bohemia in 1422. The most successful was said to be the bio-attack at Caffa, where a large number of the defenders came down with the Bubonic plague (24). On the American frontier, some of the disease outbreaks between the 18th and early 20th centuries might have been deliberately instigated (10). The best documented of those early bio-attacks took place at Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania at the height of the Pontiac rebellion in 1763, when British troops gifted the Fort Pitt defenders with blankets and handkerchiefs from smallpox patients. The latter-day known incident of that nature happened between 1957 and 1965 when land speculators and corrupt agents of the Brazilian Indian Protective Service introduced smallpox, measles, flu and tuberculosis into the American Indians on the Amazonian basin. For smallpox, fomites were used and for the other diseases the culprits had the sick whites mixed with tribe members (24). War records starting from the American Revolutionary War to the Cold War era also reveal the extensive use of bio-weapons. There was the story of how British troops attacked the Continental Army in Boston and Quebec on several occasions with smallpox by driving infected civilians into the enemy fold. In World War I, the Germans waged a covert bio-attack by having secret agents inject anthrax and glanders cultures into farm animals penned for shipment to Allied countries. Japan resorted to the same tactic during World War II mostly against the Chinese. In the 1942 Chekiang campaign, for example, retreating Japanese agents poisoned wells, sprayed the ground behind them with microbial cultures and left infected foodstuff for the advancing Chinese army. All this was revealed to the world after the war when the bio-weapons program of Japan fell into the hands of the US army in Tokyo (10). The worst incident of a bio-attack in contemporary times happened in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 19979-80, which had to do with anthrax. There were 10,700 cases, and 182 casualties, mostly from cutaneous anthrax, and few survivors were left at Rhodesia's Tribal Trust Lands, site of the attack. It was believed launched by the Selous Scouts of South Africa, which was then at war with Rhodesia. (24) Legal limits on the use of bio-weapons have been in place since 1925 through the Geneva Protocol, which was reinforced by the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, but these did not stop many countries from undertaking bio-weapons programs although on the sly. In deference to these protocols, the US and Britain ended their bio-warfare programs after the BTWC took effect in 1975. But to this day, the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at California's Monterey Institute of International Studies believes that there are at least 10 countries with active development programs for bio-chemical weapons, among them Iraq, North Korea and Syria (23). In 1995, the US government named 17 countries that continued to defy the 1972 BTWC. These consisted of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Bulgaria, India, South Korea, South Africa, China and Russia. Turning bacteria into a weapon, however, is inherently difficult. One needs millions of dollars for research and a large scientific infrastructure to produce and disseminate it (8). Thus, it was initially thought to be an undertaking that no terrorist group can afford or would bother with until letters with enclosed anthrax spores were mailed to US government officials and media men soon after 9/11. Indicating that bio-weapons have become the weapons of choice for terrorists, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederbeg told the US Senate why less than two weeks after 9/11: "Biological weapons are characterized by low cost and ease of access, difficulty of detection even after use, unreliable but open-ended scale of predictable casualties, and clandestine stockpiles and delivery systems." Lederbeg said the potential loss of lives per kilogram of a bio-weapon approaches that of nuclear weapon and the technology, though sophisticated, is less costly. Since 9/11, the world media has indeed chronicled some 56 separate incidents indicating al Qaeda's preoccupation with these weapons of mass destruction. What is disconcerting about all this are official admissions that there are neither sufficient safeguards nor adequate preparations for bio-terrorism. In the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, the US government conceded that its "defense is based only against chemical threats, which is fundamentally different with bio-weapons." (23) Chapter 3 - al Qaeda Military operations of Coalition forces in Afghanistan ousted the warlike Talibans. In the process, its al Qaeda backers were deprived of a secure sanctuary and operational base. With the al Qaeda leaders on the run, it was believed that the world had seen the last of the group's terrorist campaign since Bin Laden could no longer monitor and coordinate the operation and actions of his agents. Then the Bali nightclub bombing happened, followed by the bloody attack on Israeli tourists in Kenya, with the by now familiar al Qaeda signature showing in both incidents (1). What probably happened was that as the al Qaeda leaders moved to other areas hospitable to their cause, such as the frontier areas of Pakistan, they intermingled with other Islamic terrorist groups. These smaller Islamic groups seeking to identify with al Qaeda then began to initiate terror actions on their own using all available means within their disposal. One such group is the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiya, which claimed responsibility for the Bali bombing. Thus, Bin Laden and his trusted assistants may now be placing much more elaborate, complex, costly and more spectacular assaults, possibly on US or European soil (2), using agents of other terrorist groups. . There is a mountain of evidence supporting the theory that al Qaeda has been aggressively pursuing information and materials on chemical, biological and radiological weapons. In September 1998, for example, an al Qaeda operative named Mamdough Mamud Salim was arrested for attempting to purchase enriched uranium in Western Europe. Another al Qaeda agent was confirmed to have bought nuclear fuel in Bulgaria. Other activities related to al Qaeda's preoccupation with bio-chemical weapons: 1) al Qaeda members engaging in flight training for possible plane dissemination of bio-weapons; 2) attempts to purchase crop-duster planes; 3) a videotape recording experiments on dogs exposed to vapors from a white liquid that is believed to be sarin; and 4) a well-documented report in British media in September 2001 that al Qaeda agents acquired samples of anthrax, salmonella and e-coli from Czech facilities. Bin Laden himself has announced in videotapes that the "acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is a religious duty" of his organization (3). In sum, the al Qaeda threat of bio-terrorism is very real such that atomic scientist David Albright calls on authorities to stop the terrorist group before it obtains quantities of weapons of mass destruction (2). The three priorities suggested by Albright in this anti-terrorism campaign are: 1) locating and neutralizing scientists or technicians connected to al Qaeda, 2) accelerating efforts to find international "sleeper cells" of al Qaeda that may be mastering bio-chemical techniques, and 3) improving fissile material security. The US doctrine of preemptive strikes against terrorists and hostile states with suspected bio-chemical weapons is held as a step in the right direction. Chapter 4 - Anthrax Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus Anthracis, which thrives beneath the ground. The bacterium was discovered in 1876 by German biologist Robert Koch, who also established the bacterial cause of many other infectious diseases. Soon afterwards, French chemist Louis Pasteur confirmed the finding and went on to develop an anti-anthrax vaccine for sheep and cattle. Anthrax measures by only 2-6 microns in diameter. This microscopic size increases its chance of infecting the lower respiratory tract in both animals and humans (23). Anthrax is considered by military analysts as one of the most promising bacterial candidates for weaponization. It is easy to grow, stable, has good ability to infect people and is easy to conceal and deliver surreptitiously. There is no point in weaponizing a germ if you can't deliver it to targets (8). A terrorist in a wheelchair highly inoculated with antibiotics could conceal anthrax in a homemade sprayer under his tracksuit and wheel through a crowded area, spraying as he went (7). People can be infected with anthrax either by cutaneous or inhalation methods. Cutaneous anthrax, which enters through the skin, is only 20 percent fatal while inhaled anthrax is 90 percent lethal if untreated at the first signs (8). Experts consider anthrax an ideal bio-weapon for many reasons. For one, it can be aerosolized and dispersed as small-particle spores, which in turn can be modified as desired to cause lung infection. It is also resistant to decontamination, persists in the environment for prolonged periods and can be transported easily. Effective dispersion of anthrax spores can have the same devastating impact on a concentrated urban population as a nuclear device (23). UN inspectors were certain that Iraq produced anthrax on an industrial scale but many of the specimens could not be accounted for in the post-Saddam Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was in power, Iraq admitted to filling warheads with anthrax and has developed the so-called "Zubaidy" device for helicopter dissemination of the germ. Senior Iraqi biologist Rihab Taha also told the UN inspectors that one goal of Iraq was to develop a strain of anthrax that is resistant to antibiotic treatment, but obviously this experiment got nowhere. What the Iraqis may have succeeded in developing was an innovative one-step process of drying spores by mixing anthrax with aluminum-based clay or silica powder. There were two of such a device and one was destroyed in the takeover of Baghdad but the other was reported missing. (8) A possible scenario: a light aircraft flies over a major city going upwind. From below, people in the street notice a fine mist from the plane's undercarriage like some crop dusting scene from an old movie. They think no more of it and hours pass without any further incident. A few days later, the symptoms begin to appear. The people out in the street that day develop chills, deteriorating into splitting headache and high fever. Before long, nausea turns to vomiting, stomach pains and rapidly falling pulse, with progressive loss of blood. The first medical suspicion will be toxic shock but soon many of those who heard the plane's humming will be dead. When the news breaks, millions of people will be living in panic. (6) Characteristics & Effects of Anthrax Method of Infection: Weaponization Effects Lethality Inhalation (pulmonary) Aerosolization Gradual onset of flu-like symptoms, followed in 2-3 days by severe respiratory distress, uncontrolled bleeding Death usually within 24-36 hours. If not treated until symptoms appear, almost always fatal Cutaneous (skin) Aerosolization Lesions, aches, fever and nausea Treatable with antibiotics, only fatal to about 20% of untreated victims Intestinal Aerosolization Nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea 25-60% of those infected will die Here's what experts and specialized agencies view the fear factor of anthrax: US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases: "Anthrax represents the single greatest biological warfare threat in the minds of most military and counter-terrorism planners." World Health Organization 1970 Report: "About three days after the release of 50kg of anthrax spores along a 2-km stretch upwind of a city of 500,000, some 125,000 infections would occur, resulting in 95,000 deaths." Center for Disease Control and Prevention: "The ideal targets for an anthrax attack are highly populated areas, enclosed public spaces, shopping malls, office buildings, sports and entertainment arenas, mass transit, crops and livestock and water supply." American Council on Science and Health: "The government campaign against bio-terrorism seems to gloss over anthrax. We neglect the threat of anthrax at our peril." (23) Chapter 5 - Greatest Holiday New York Times Square is the point of convergence not only for New Yorkers but also for most Americans during New Year's Eve. To them, the traditional New Year revelry at the heart of New York is "the greatest holiday in the greatest city in the world," as typically described by 25-year-old Jessica Talavera who came all the way from her hometown in Leonia, New Jersey to join 500,000 other Americans who greeted the new year at Times Square on January 1, 2002 (20). That was barely four months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which New York City bore the brunt of the damage because of the total destruction of the World Trade Center. For this reason, there were initial speculations that the countdown for 2002 would witness a break from tradition such that the celebration would be subdued and sparsely attended. Times Square is a stone's throw away from Ground Zero and the temperature reader was also hitting zero at that particular time. But this did not dampen the interest of many Americans who came in droves both to continue a time-honored tradition and to respond to the call of then outgoing and well-loved City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani to help New York get back on its feet. People from all over the US joined New Yorkers at Times Square to demonstrate solidarity and strength. Mellonie Meitin, 30, from Miami told reporters: "I think it's important to celebrate here this year because of all that has happened, to show that we feel for the victims of the tragedy." When incoming Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped the ceremonial Waterford crystal ball on Times Square to signal the arrival of the New Year, some 7,000 police who mixed freely with the estimated 500,000 revelers were on heightened alert, ready to use their new anti-terrorist weapon - a radiation detector that could sniff out any hidden radioactive bombs (20). The thing is, military intelligence believes that the threat of future terrorist attacks will come less from radioactive bombs than from biochemical weapons, which appeal more to a terrorist group like al Qaeda because of their mass destruction capability and the relative ease by which they can be developed and delivered to the target population (3). The purpose of this section is to demonstrate that New York Times Square on New Year's Eve is a magnet for a biochemical terrorist attack because it gathers an unusually large number of Americans, and they converge in one setting precisely to defy terrorism. The greater the number of casualties in such a biochemical attack means greater demonstration effect and moral victory for al Qaeda. Chapter 6 - Crisis Response The Time magazine of January 31, 2002 painted a what-if scenario on an anthrax attack based on the cholera epidemic that hit New York in 1832. The circumstances differ but based on studies of anthrax from both epidemiological and military perspectives, there is a chilling familiarity in the expected damage and the city's probable response. In fact, it unfolded "like one of those bio-terrorism war games before 9/11 (16)." It started with one or two cases, then dozens. When the victims reached hundreds, local health officials sprang into action. Mobile hospitals were set up in schools, banks and offices. Incoming ships were stopped 300 yards offshore and vehicles were blockaded a mile outside town. City health officials with federal backing swept off through the city, soaping up streets, distributing medicines and imposing strict guidelines on food preparation. Eventually, the disease retreated but not before leaving 3,000 dead, about the same casualty rate that 9/11 wrought in New York. The focus of this section is to evaluate the efficiency of measures that the city health system is expected to undertake in the event the city is subjected to an anthrax attack, which is as lethal as cholera but both of them treatable if detected early. Following the 1832 cholera epidemic, New York's effective response to the crisis was adopted as model by the federal government as well as the rest of the American states. A compendium of the actions taken up during the crisis was institutionalized through the creation of new federal health agencies, new public hospitals and in 1870, the new office of the US Surgeon General (16). From then until the 2001 crisis on anthrax-tainted letters, it was believed that the health system was sufficient to respond to any statewide emergencies such as a bio-chemical attack. When the problem became a full-blown crisis, it exposed the shortcomings of the city's health and crisis response systems. New York's anthrax vigil began as soon as the first cases were positively diagnosed in Florida. The New York police and the estimated 65,000 physicians in the city were instructed to report and turn in suspicious cases and specimens. But when the specimens came, the city's handful of laboratory workers trained in bio-terrorism had a hard time telling the real thing from the hoaxes (11). Thus, a problem arose when a biopsy sample of the woman who handled the mail of NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw needed to be examined for anthrax spores. The case had to be brought all the way to Atlanta, site of the Rapid Response and Advanced Technology (RRAT) laboratory of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is the only facility in the world with such a capability. Even so, it took several hours before traces of anthrax were found in the biopsy sample, and only because of a new method developed by Sherif Zaki, top CDC medical examiner, who isolated a magenta-colored spot against blue cells. For two weeks early in the anthrax scare, the Department of Health and Human Services insisted that one needed to inhale all of 10,000 spores for the agent to be fatal. Later it was agreed that inhalation of fewer than 10 spores could be lethal, which makes the cleanup operations complex. A year and billions of dollars later, the US once more upgraded its public health systems involving laboratories, computers, scientific research and hospital personnel training (11). Most of these upgrading efforts were based on lessons learned from the anthrax scare. But is America ready for another mass mailing of anthrax letters or, worse, a contagious disease attack CDC Director Julie Gerberding's answer: "We have taken some giant steps forward, but we are not satisfied, we are not finished. There is more expansion and more work to do." The government acquitted itself well in controlling the anthrax spores but was adjudged to have done a "terrible job" of dispensing medical advice (16). Among the decisions said to be ill-advised were: allowing postal workers to continue breathing air in the sorting facility filled with anthrax spores; stocking up on Cipro, which many scientists believed to be unnecessary, even dangerous; hand-wringing on whether to order 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine; and allowing open speculations to spread about quarantines. Another example of inefficiency was the way the CDC people spent more time working on communication, which is important for both public relations and practical reasons. It was observed that the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, which functions as a sort of disease SWAT team, could not even afford such basic field equipment as two-way pagers. So when field personnel came upon unfamiliar diseases, there was difficulty in informing the doctors about the exact symptoms, the epidemiology and the best steps to take when patients turn up in their waiting rooms. Chapter 7 - Prevention When the 2001 anthrax crisis was declared over, the body count was only 5 with 12 cases of infection but it sapped the capacities of the public health systems in both New York City and the nation (11). As a result, the city government for its part has intensified its focus on bio-terrorism preparedness. First, the local health department was asked to develop plans and protocols to respond better to threats and emergencies anticipated from bio-terrorism, then the city set up its own Health Alert Network on bio-terrorism and emergency preparedness communications. The State Department of Health now boasts of 4,300 people at the central office, 4 regional offices, 3 field offices and 9 district offices across the state (21). On the part of the national government, the CDC has established a $90-million computer link that connects the federal center with every state and local health departments in the US. Another project in the pipeline is the establishment of a National Laboratory Research Network, a coast-to-coast diagnostic facilities system that would receive and analyze specimens from across the US. This would respond to such problems as those encountered during the anthrax crisis when incoming specimens overwhelmed most of the laboratories in the network. It was estimated that another $10 billion is needed to bolster the country's public health system to respond more efficiently to a similar anthrax attack. It can be said that whoever first posted the anthrax letter through the US mail did the country a favor, because at long last Americans are taking seriously a threat that has existed for years. (8) As an offshoot of 9/11, New York City has started to address the threat of future terrorist acts on a permanent basis. Under an anti-terrorist program called Omega, as many as 1,400 officers are assigned daily to security patrols, posts at bridges and tunnels, the city hall, landmarks and traffic checkpoints. NYPD has also created the position of Deputy Commissioner for Terrorism, formed a Counter-terrorism Task Force, and assigned doctors at police headquarters who are trained in biological, chemical and radiological weapons. In addition, police regularly undergoes a specialized training in anti-terrorism for future responses to attacks. The new police equipment includes protective suits, gas masks and more sophisticated sensors to detect chemical, biological and radiological weapons. (22) The key to survival from any anthrax attack is early detection and treatment, although the inhalational form is believed fatal and non-treatable. For the other forms of anthrax poisoning, the best antibiotic treatment is Ciprofloxacin hydrochloride, followed by Doxycycline, which should be administered early on. There is also a licensed vaccine that is safe and effective but this requires multiple doses over a long period and so needs an improved preparation. To make a new and better vaccine and make it available quickly for a variety of bio-terror agents like anthrax is precisely the goal of the Bush government's Project Bioshield (23). Because of the lessons learned from 9/11, the federal health system tasked to respond to emergencies also places equal attention now on prevention from vaccinating children to preventing exposures to lead and from curbing teenage drinking and drug use to evaluating family violence programs. The previous situation in which less than 2 percent of public health resources were allotted for disease prevention has been ameliorated (16). As Surgeon General David Satcher observed: "There's no better place in the world (than the US) to get sick. Our weakness is in preventing disease in the first place." Chapter 8 - Summary and Conclusion The preceding information tends to establish that bio-chemical weapons have attracted the interest of terrorists, as demonstrated by the US anthrax attack in late 2001 that used the mail to target American officials and media men. Al Qaeda leader Bin Laden himself announced in so many words that acquisition of biological weapons is a "religious duty." This interest showed in such verified al Qaeda activities as learning to fly crop-duster plans, purchase of enriched uranium and nuclear fuel and acquisition of anthrax, salmonella and e-coli bacteria. In effect, the intention is there. As to whether the terrorist group has succeeded in including bio-weapons in its arsenal, which the literature says requires considerable resources and scientific know how, everything is still subject to speculation. But if the 2001 anthrax attack is any indication, no one should ever dismiss the possibility. This paper agrees with renowned atomic scientist David Albright that the threat is "very real" and that the biggest imperative is to pin down and neutralize any al Qaeda scientists and technicians engaged in bio-weapons development and deployment. Going after terrorist sleeper cells that may be in the process of developing bio-attack techniques is just part of preventive actions that needed to be taken to avoid a bio-weapon-caused emergency that is expected to assume chilling proportions. Section 2 of this paper calculates the extent of the damage to be wrought by many of the known bio-chemical weapons, and section 4 makes the same prognostication on the effects of one particular bio-weapon that seems to be having the greatest appeal to terrorists - anthrax. Section 5 of the paper then provides an idea of the magnitude of such an attack if it is directed at the hundreds of thousands of Americans that traditionally gather at New York Times Square to greet the New Year. Such an emergency calls for the rapid conversion of hospitals, fire departments, public health offices and diagnostic laboratories into crisis facilities that can process high volumes of material for a sustained amount of time. The focus on bio-terrorism preparedness has intensified after 9/11, transforming the way public health is practiced. Now, the local health department in New York is working overtime to develop plans and protocols to respond to threats and emergencies anticipated from bio-terrorism. 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