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American Morning
Anthrax Investigation: Mystery Continues
Aired October 23, 2001 - 11:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We've been listening last hour to the secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, his question- and-answer session taking place in Washington. Let's break it down a bit.
Javed Ali, one of our experts on bioterrorism is now with us in Washington.
Good to see you, Javed. Good morning to you.
JAVED ALI, CNN BIOTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning, Bill.
HEMMER: You might have heard Tommy Thompson say we need to get ahead of the science. How are they doing thus far?
ALI: I think they're doing the best they can in a very difficult situation. One of the dilemma of these incidents over the past few weeks is the fact we haven't experienced one central disease outbreak in one particular geographic region; they've been small-scale incidents that have happened at various places up and down the East Coast. I think that has added an additional challenge to the response, at this point.
HEMMER: I think it seems rather simplistic, but I want to bring it up. Tommy Thompson said it again today; I heard it a couple of times, actually: If you come in contact with what you believe may be a suspicious package, and it gets on your body or hands, wash your hands, he says. Sounds easy. Is it that?
ALI: For any biological contaminant, whether it's bacillus anthracis or any other organism, one of the most effective ways of getting rid of that particular organism is just washing your hands with soap and water -- as long as you don't have a cut or an abrasion that could possibly serve as a route of exposure for the organism.
HEMMER: "The New York Times" -- and CNN has followed up on this story as well -- we want to shift our focus a little bit overseas -- there is a reports that there are tons of anthrax spores that were buried on an island in Uzbekistan. And apparently, an agreement has been reached between Tashkent and Washington, D.C. to safeguard this area. What more can you tell us about this, and how concerned should be?
ALI: I don't think the country should be necessarily concerned about the old Soviet Union biological weapons program or the stockpiles they may continue to have. But I think what that program showed was that during the Cold War, and certainly during the late '70s through late '80s, or maybe even up to early '90s, the Soviet Union had embarked upon a massive biological weapons program that dwarfed in terms of numbers, levels of sophistication, amount of material produced, anything that the United States even did.
HEMMER: We have heard that.
What other parts of the world? Do we have any idea on other areas that may pose a similar issue that we just talked about -- Uzbekistan one, but possibly in other areas of the world?
ALI: There isn't really a lot of good publicly available information with respect to other potential biological weapons sites. The most we know of outside of the former Soviet program is what we know from the Iraqi biological weapons program, and the UN arms control inspection body that was in Iraq up until 1998 was having some difficulty trying to account for everything Iraq had stated that they had developed, and there was never really a complete accounting of that.
HEMMER: Just to be clear on this, though, just to have those spores is not nearly good enough. You need to weaponize, for lack of a better word, take it from the ground and do a lot with it to make it effective.
ALI: Correct. Even having the material in and of itself, in whatever form that may be, doesn't necessarily make that material a weapon. You actually then have to design a weapon system, and here in the United States, we are seeing a very low-tech method of delivery, using the mail. But you would have to design a weapon system then to use with that material and put that weapon system onto target. So it is a fairly sophisticated thing.
HEMMER: Javed, is there going to be much fallout from the claims yesterday that postal offices in and around Washington should have been shut down, just like the Senate office was after Tom Daschle received that letter?
ALI: It's hard to say what the ultimate reaction will be, but I think, in the government's defense, they've been dealing with very dynamic, fluid situation. Things are changing almost on a daily basis. So I think now isn't really the right time to point fingers, but to assess what has happened today and to take the appropriate measures to prevent of these types of incidents.
HEMMER: They told me whoever did this was a pro, because whatever they did with that anthrax, they got it small enough so that it had the ability to seep out or leak out of this letter as it went through a conveyer belt or went through a machine through the postal system.
ALI: Right. And I'm not sure that the postal system as a whole was an actual target. They are right now a secondary target. So it's unclear what the objectives of the actual perpetrators are. But we're looking at the impact of these incidents to date on the postal system.
HEMMER: And just to point out what Tommy Thompson said, we have heard of some people being exposed to anthrax, and indicating they had three or four spores of anthrax in their noses -- but Tommy Thompson saying it takes about 8,000 for an infection.
ALI: Right. So even if someone contracted a small number of spores in nasal passage, you would need that 8,000-to-10,000-even- 20,000 spore range to get inside your lungs, actually to contract the pulmonary form of the disease.
HEMMER: Javed Ali, thanks again for handing out and being patient.
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