Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Saturday Morning News

How Anthrax Can Become a Weapon of War

Aired October 27, 2001 - 08:03   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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: You may be wondering who can make anthrax that can be used as a weapon of war. How much specialized equipment and expertise does it take?

Some questions about anthrax are answered in this report by CNN's Gary Strieker.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You're looking at a bioweapons lab here in America that was built right under the noses of U.S. law enforcement. Two years ago, agents for the U.S. Defense Department were given an assignment -- find out how easy it is to build a small plant to produce weapons grade anthrax.

DR. CRAIG SMITH, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST: And for about $1.6 million, they did proceed to obtain all the equipment, either new or used, from common public sources. During the project, while they were acquiring the equipment, no law enforcement agency inquired or was alarmed or suspicious of the activities.

STRIEKER: Using the equipment they bought the agents produced two pounds of a harmless bacteria. They could just as easily have made the same amount of anthrax. But those federal agents were scientists trained in bioweapons technology. There's much more to making anthrax than buying hardware.

SMITH: This is not someone who has spent a couple hours on the Internet and then goes out and buys some equipment and produces anthrax. This would still take a lot of basic education and training and some type of professional level experience.

STRIEKER: It all starts with a small amount of live anthrax culture in a petri dish, which is processed into a liquid slurry in a fermentation tank. The liquid is dried and fed into a milling machine that reduces it to a powder, tiny particles of spores between one to five microns in size, easily airborne and inhalable directly into a victim's lungs. All the equipment needed for the process is commercially available, what bioweapons specialists describe as dual use, equipment used to produce other products like pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

Experts now say the advanced form of anthrax powder found in the letter sent to Senator Daschle involves an even more sophisticated processing method, producing electrostatic free spores that are more likely to become airborne. Until now, that method was believed to have been perfected only in a few state research labs.

And there's one more level of lethal escalation with anthrax, a genetically altered strain resistant to antibiotics. But producing it requires an even higher level of science that experts believe would have to be state sponsored.

If there's any comfort to be found in all this, it's that so far the strain of anthrax used in recent attacks does seem to be treatable with antibiotics.

Gary Striker, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com