From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda had progressed much further toward developing a particular biological weapon before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks than the United States realized, the presidential commission investigating intelligence on weapons of mass destruction found. The intelligence community was surprised by al-Qaeda's advances in a virulent strain in the disease, which the commission identified only as "Agent X" to prevent al-Qaeda from knowing what the U.S. government has learned.The discovery of al-Qaeda's work came only after the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan removed the Taliban from power, according to the report.
"Al-Qaeda's biological program was further along, particularly with regard to Agent X, than prewar intelligence indicated," the report reads. "The program was extensive, well-organized, and operated for two years before Sept. 11, but intelligence insights into the program were limited."It was not so advanced that al-Qaeda had a functioning weapon, the report says.
U.S. officials have previously said they found signs of al-Qaeda's work in anthrax weapons in Afghanistan, but it was not clear if Agent X referred to anthrax. Other diseases that may be turned into weapons include smallpox, plague and Ebola.
The work on Agent X was done at several sites in Afghanistan, including two with commercial lab equipment. Some intelligence information suggests cultures of the disease had been isolated and basic production was possible, the report reads, but notes this is uncertain information.
U.S. assessments of al-Qaeda's other efforts to acquire a weapon of mass destruction did not change substantially after U.S. and Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power after the 9/11 attacks, the report says. Al-Qaeda was studying nuclear weapons and contacted Pakistani scientists to discuss nuclear weapons, it notes.
"We found that just prior to the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Intelligence Community was able to correctly assess al-Qaeda's limited ability to use unconventional weapons to inflict mass casualties," the report says. "Yet when the war uncovered new evidence of WMD efforts, analysts were surprised by the intentions and level of research and development under way by al-Qaeda....
Should anyone be surprised by this? Lot's of things are not being told to us, and I am always amazed that if "Agent X" were a real threat, how could any US citizen prepare if we don't know what "Agent X" is. Another brownie point for the US intelligence network that isn't so intelligent.
Well it doesnt suprise me that 50 some micro biologist have "died" in the past couple of years
Were they killed for turning down contract work ?
or so they couldnt be part of an effort to find antidotes?
I dont know But it bears looking into.
I would get your smallpox vaccine updated, or just get innoculated for it if born after the late 1970's -when they stopped treating routinely for this scourge (since the disease was theoretically "eradicated" around that time).
Anthrax is too hard to disburse and too easily stopped after the infection with a spectrum of antibiotics, but, unless you are already vaccinated, smallpox would be a massive killer, maimer and disrupter of society if widely spread and not quickly detected- i.e. after 7 days, you're pretty much doomed. (Ebola and the rest are too hard to infect widely.)
Russia, the U.S. and The Netherlands used to hold the only samples/antidotes of this pandemic disease "for research", but, with the slovenliness of the post-Soviet labs, if wouldn't have been impossible for some smallpox samples to have been bribed loose by Bin Laden's gang. Let's hope the government has been stockpiling the vaccine, as they made noises about doing a few years ago.
Why do I doubt it...?
Check out-
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/pdf/smallpox-vis.pdf
The new smallpox vaccine uses mercury and causes adverse health effects.
The pre 1970's vaccine was formulated differently.
Fact is that I don't trust the new vaccines at all.
I served in the military for 26 years (special ops), and was innoculated yearly as a matter of course, against almost everything,and given boosters, I received given special innoculations before deployment into third world or iron curtain countries, for diseases like bubonic plaque.
But something happened after I retired in the early 1980's, and I very glad that I did retire then, the troops who have been innnoculated since at least GW I, have suffered serious, adverse health affects.
What worries me is that scientists dug up the frozen corpses (in Norway) of four people who died from the pandemic flu of the 1920's which took millions of lives world wide, extracted the virus from their lungs, and as we are begining to learn, these biohazard diseases are not well safequarded and are too easily let loose.
Anyway I don't think that the problem is small pox.
In fact there is a chance that most people alive today have a genetic immunity to smallpox.
Europeans developed an immunity to small pox, millenia ago, and then smallpox wiped out the native American community after the conquest, but there were survivors .. Those who survived had a genetic immunity to the small pox an immunity they passed on to their descendants.
Early settlers used small pox infected blankets to infect the native population, however the small pox was not deadly to the Europeans, a mild irritation like chickenpox, but deadly to the natives.
If small pox was so deadly it would have wiped out the Spaniards and English colonists, before they infected the natives of north, central and south America.
According to the Encyclopedia Americana, "the earliest attempt to control smallpox was by inoculation of material from the skin lesion of an infected person into the skin of a well person. This technique caused a mild case of true smallpox that made the patient resistant to any subsequent attack. This custom, first practiced in ancient China, was introduced into the Western world in the early 18th century. In America, the practice was advocated by the Boston physician Zabdiel Boylston. This method is dangerous, however, because it transmits the live virus of smallpox and can result in the spread of infection in a community." I also remember reading that some Russian orphanages had decades of no smallpox cases by utilizing this method prior to smallpox vaccinations becoming standard.
Just a bit of info that maybe be of practical importance based on the assessment of those who wish to do us harm.
Well, I'm so glad "we" found hundreds of Billions of dollars to pour into the ground in Iraq... instead of following-up on Alqaeda's biological weapons.
Yeah, Gaiour. There probably WAS a lot of immunity to smallpox... but now?
Regular readers will be glad to know that I am immune to smallpox. They tried innoculating me several times as a babe (they actually infect you, and before you can fight it off, the round scare that "we all" have on our upper arm forms) and I never had a sore rise up. It was quite a hassel as Poppa was a butcher and at each attempt he wasn't allowed to even touch me for at least a week. Finally the doctors gave up and said that I must have been immune.
So Gaiour, if so many of us are immune, why do I see so few adults without that telltale upper arm scar? I'm not challenging you; it's entirely likely that you are correct... I just want to understand.
KJ
eve-anne-g-
Jenner noticed that milkmaids, exposed to cowpox, a milder animal virus, did not get smallpox, so this methid was used for the first innoculations with the Europeans. Until the 'killed' smallpox method was devised later.
Giaour-
Mercury does seem to be a problem in many recent vaccines, and I don't know the latest about it in the smallpox 'reformulation', and if they've removed the trace poison as a preservative for these present batches. (It is supposed to be most damaging for fetal development, so the military vaccination syndromes noticed after the GW -and later- may be more an effect of unexpected interactions between different vaccines, than any one element in any of them -like mercury- alone.)
Still, a worst case scenario in the event of a bio-attack, with a mass innoculation (50 to 100,000,000) against smallpox, might be thousands of debilitating injuries and hundred of deaths from the vaccine 'impurities', natural allergic responses, etc..
While having NO innoculations could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths (or millions) and even more permanently ill (and "pocks" mutilated) citizens.
I got my scar on my arm from the old version, but I'll check through CDC, etc. to see what they have to say about any mercury problems in the new vaccines. If I find anything pertinent, I'll post it.
Don't know if 'acquired genetic immunity' can cope with a 'recombinant variola-virus mutation'. (300 million died in the 20th century alone from 'natural' smallpox before it was stopped in 1979, so it may constantly re-adapt to us, in a deadly tango.) Al-Qaeda bio-weapons researchers could also have cultured a new strain, and we might be as 'open' to it as the New World's hapless peoples were. Dying in the greatest accidental genocide in history. The Europeans looked on its a God's fellicitous design. (The smallpox blankets were a much later 'intentional' genocidal trick.)
Meanwhile-
Calling it "X" is a real big help.
Thanks government!
Giaour
Re: "Early settlers used small pox infected blankets to infect the native population...."
This appears to be a very sketchy statement. Check the following links as I'm not a historian. Bruce Rolston is very knowledgable on early Canadian and U.S. military history.
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2005_02_09.html#005205
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2002_09_27.html#000473
For the latter, scroll down to "FURTHER THOUGHTS ON BRITISH BIOWARFARE"