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CNN Live Sunday
Interview With Laurie Garrett
Aired February 09, 2003 - 17:25 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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: With the nation under a heightened terror alert, the border-to-border security net is tightening. Washington says under this Code Orange, there's the potential for attacks on so- called soft targets such as sporting arenas.
Is there a reason to fear a biological or chemical strike, though?
Laurie Garrett is the medical and science correspondent for the newspaper "Newsday," and she's also the author of a high profile book, "The Coming Plague, Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance."
Thanks for joining us, Laurie.
LAURIE GARRETT, "NEWSDAY:" Thank you.
LIN: All right. We've been under Code Orange for the last 48 hours, but nothing's happened. Thank goodness, knock on wood.
Did the government jump the gun?
GARRETT: We have no way of knowing. The warnings issued to us from Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary Ridge have been very vague, so what may be the basis for these warnings is not obvious.
LIN: Well, the Bush Administration has really been playing up the possibility, or at least their intelligence sources, saying that al Qaeda may very well be ready or preparing a biological or chemical attack.
Do you believe this to be true?
GARRETT: I have no basis for knowing whether it's true or not. I mean, people in Washington are saying everything imaginable could be due to al Qaeda or not due to al Qaeda.
I think we have a lot of cross-information and cross-intelligence going on and it's very, very difficult to determine what's at the bottom of it. We could be on Orange Alert, if for no other reason, than the fact that we're coming closer to engaging in war with Iraq.
LIN: The last time we were under Orange Alert, only one time before, it lasted a couple of weeks, until local law enforcement just got so beleaguered that they couldn't keep up the heightened state of alert. But in the meantime, the D.C. health department actually sent letters to local hospitals around the nation's capitol, warning them to look for signs of exposure to things like ricin and botulism and other chemical agents.
If there were to be an attack, realistically, which of any chemical agents do you think would be the most likely to be used?
GARRETT: Well, first of all, they're all pretty difficult to use on a mass basis, and I think we have to not scare ourselves to death here.
Ricin, for example, we don't know of any example of large-scale use of ricin. It's actually, ideally, an assassination instrument, not a mass scale instrument.
Botulinum, that would be about poisoning food supplies.
In terms of the classic nerve gases, they would probably be the easiest to mass release, but it would be very hard to do so undetected, in that it takes very large quantities of these gases to produce a significant impact in a social setting in a community.
So the idea that somebody could, you know, move an 18-wheeler truck loaded -- an entire tanker loaded with nerve gas into downtown Washington, D.C., undetected at a time when we have Orange Alert level and a very heightened level of concern in the District of Columbia, is somewhat inconceivable to me.
LIN: But it also doesn't mean that if there was an attack, that it would be a mass attack. I mean it's still possible that you could have terrorists spread out all over the country, striking individuals or even small groups in different locations and that still would cause mass panic, if reports were coast to coast.
GARRETT: Well, Carol, I guess the big lesson for us to all keep reminding ourselves of is that no one was anticipating the kind of impact that a handful of envelopes with some anthrax supports could have in the United States. Well beyond the very regrettable deaths of five individuals who were exposed.
We saw the entire U.S. postal system disrupted, and I recently spoke to the postmaster general. He has no ability to ascertain exactly how much this has ended up costing America because of all the ways that companies and individuals have changed their use of the U.S. postal service since the October releases of anthrax.
So a very, very low tech, simple approach can have impacts that go way beyond, you know, how many individuals may actually succumb or be sickened, and have an extraordinary impact on our economy.
LIN: Wow. Well, Laurie, from your research and a quick question here, are the hospitals ready? I mean, if something does happen, do you get a sense that the first responders know what to do and that they're ready across the country?
GARRETT: They're more ready than they were a year ago.
LIN: All right.
GARRETT: But are they ready?
LIN: Sometimes it's the test of reality.
GARRETT: I think that no one can anticipate how they will really behave when the time comes.
LIN: Yes, all right. Laurie Garrett, let's hope we don't have to find out. Thank you very much for joining us, Laurie Garrett from "Newsday."
GARRETT: Sure.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired February 9, 2003 - 17:25 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: With the nation under a heightened terror alert, the border-to-border security net is tightening. Washington says under this Code Orange, there's the potential for attacks on so- called soft targets such as sporting arenas.
Is there a reason to fear a biological or chemical strike, though?
Laurie Garrett is the medical and science correspondent for the newspaper "Newsday," and she's also the author of a high profile book, "The Coming Plague, Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance."
Thanks for joining us, Laurie.
LAURIE GARRETT, "NEWSDAY:" Thank you.
LIN: All right. We've been under Code Orange for the last 48 hours, but nothing's happened. Thank goodness, knock on wood.
Did the government jump the gun?
GARRETT: We have no way of knowing. The warnings issued to us from Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary Ridge have been very vague, so what may be the basis for these warnings is not obvious.
LIN: Well, the Bush Administration has really been playing up the possibility, or at least their intelligence sources, saying that al Qaeda may very well be ready or preparing a biological or chemical attack.
Do you believe this to be true?
GARRETT: I have no basis for knowing whether it's true or not. I mean, people in Washington are saying everything imaginable could be due to al Qaeda or not due to al Qaeda.
I think we have a lot of cross-information and cross-intelligence going on and it's very, very difficult to determine what's at the bottom of it. We could be on Orange Alert, if for no other reason, than the fact that we're coming closer to engaging in war with Iraq.
LIN: The last time we were under Orange Alert, only one time before, it lasted a couple of weeks, until local law enforcement just got so beleaguered that they couldn't keep up the heightened state of alert. But in the meantime, the D.C. health department actually sent letters to local hospitals around the nation's capitol, warning them to look for signs of exposure to things like ricin and botulism and other chemical agents.
If there were to be an attack, realistically, which of any chemical agents do you think would be the most likely to be used?
GARRETT: Well, first of all, they're all pretty difficult to use on a mass basis, and I think we have to not scare ourselves to death here.
Ricin, for example, we don't know of any example of large-scale use of ricin. It's actually, ideally, an assassination instrument, not a mass scale instrument.
Botulinum, that would be about poisoning food supplies.
In terms of the classic nerve gases, they would probably be the easiest to mass release, but it would be very hard to do so undetected, in that it takes very large quantities of these gases to produce a significant impact in a social setting in a community.
So the idea that somebody could, you know, move an 18-wheeler truck loaded -- an entire tanker loaded with nerve gas into downtown Washington, D.C., undetected at a time when we have Orange Alert level and a very heightened level of concern in the District of Columbia, is somewhat inconceivable to me.
LIN: But it also doesn't mean that if there was an attack, that it would be a mass attack. I mean it's still possible that you could have terrorists spread out all over the country, striking individuals or even small groups in different locations and that still would cause mass panic, if reports were coast to coast.
GARRETT: Well, Carol, I guess the big lesson for us to all keep reminding ourselves of is that no one was anticipating the kind of impact that a handful of envelopes with some anthrax supports could have in the United States. Well beyond the very regrettable deaths of five individuals who were exposed.
We saw the entire U.S. postal system disrupted, and I recently spoke to the postmaster general. He has no ability to ascertain exactly how much this has ended up costing America because of all the ways that companies and individuals have changed their use of the U.S. postal service since the October releases of anthrax.
So a very, very low tech, simple approach can have impacts that go way beyond, you know, how many individuals may actually succumb or be sickened, and have an extraordinary impact on our economy.
LIN: Wow. Well, Laurie, from your research and a quick question here, are the hospitals ready? I mean, if something does happen, do you get a sense that the first responders know what to do and that they're ready across the country?
GARRETT: They're more ready than they were a year ago.
LIN: All right.
GARRETT: But are they ready?
LIN: Sometimes it's the test of reality.
GARRETT: I think that no one can anticipate how they will really behave when the time comes.
LIN: Yes, all right. Laurie Garrett, let's hope we don't have to find out. Thank you very much for joining us, Laurie Garrett from "Newsday."
GARRETT: Sure.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
