| Monday
October 29, 2001
There is a very great deal of interesting stuff in
yesterday's View and Mail.
This includes Microsoft's lamebrain thesaurus, exceeded in its stupidity
only by the StarOffice Thesaurus, and an elegant and free solution to the
problem.
I am hard at work on the column/feature for the new paper
edition of BYTE. It will be on the theme of the book, distributed
computing, and some of what I learned at recent conferences on that, as
well as a short picture of the history of the concept.
Over in another place I got into a discussion about the
sources of the anthrax. In the course of it someone said:
New Scientist's web site reports that
the anthrax particles in the Daschle >letter have a size distribution
that indicates they were processed by the >American weaponization
process, not the ones used in Iraq or the Soviet >Union. See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991490
and someone else said
>The people who've made up their
minds that it's Iraqis And Nobody Else are going to scream
"Disinformation!" at the top of their lungs.
I passed that by, but then I got to thinking, and I
composed a reply, which, on reflection, belongs over here:
Who is likely to need disinformation?
The New Scientist article says nothing new and quotes no one; it
speculates although giving the appearance of news.
Last night on TV the former head of the Iraqi bioweapons group said
they never managed to make weapons grade powdered anthrax. The UNSCOM
former chief investigator said they did. Which do you believe?
I know that Iraq has lots of reasons to want us to believe this stuff
did not come from Iraq. I presume the US has reasons not to want it to
look as if security was so lax that some of this stuff got out into the
world. And Russia has a heck of a lot of reason to not be suspected.
If there is NOT disinformation flowing about, that would be
astonishing, given the motivations of everyone concerned.
We know this much: the USSR developed a weapons grade anthrax because
it killed somewhere between 50 and a couple of hundred people in an
accident near Ekaterinberg (then Sverdlovsk). We suspect the US had some
since we seem to have gone into production of about a metric ton a year
for a couple of years before destroying the lot, and we probably wouldn't
have produced any that wasn't going to be effective. If we know anything
about the technical details of either the US or the USSR weapons --
particle size, milling methods, etc. -- I have seen no reliable reports,
and I certainly don't know those things. They are likely to remain highly
classified.
We don't know what the Iraqis managed, but we can say this: if they
couldn't produce weapons quality anthrax then it is EXCEEDINGLY unlikely
that a small group of any political persuasion from SDS Weathermen to
Aryan Nation could have done so: the resources of Iraq may be small in
comparison to the US or USSR but they are very large compared to all but a
few major companies, and enormous compared to fever swamp political groups
operating in hiding from their own government.
IF it is easy to produce than perhaps anyone could have done it,
although it would not be likely to be done in the few days from 9-11 to
its release; but in that case, the New Scientist argument isn't much use
since if it's easy to do we can't make much inference from it. If, as
seems likely, it's hard to do, then again, we know of only three possible
sources, US, Iraq, and former USSR.
Of those the US is least likely simply because we're pretty competent,
and there have never been rumors of US anthrax for sale or falling into
unauthorized hands. (I hate the very phrase US anthrax; I think there were
far better ways to deter its use than making that stuff. But that's me
personally speaking.) It's possible that some leaked out of the labs, but
it's not that likely.
The former USSR is leaky, their security is bad, and they are known to
have made quantities of weapons grade stuff. If it leaked it could go to
anyone with money. So far as I know there have been no rumors of USSR
Anthrax on the market. Still, it's more probable that it came from the
former USSR than the USA, no matter who ended up with it.
If Iraq made it, we know there were contacts between the 9-11 agents
and Iraqi intelligence, for what purpose we do not know. We know Iraq is
not a monolith and that agents within Iraq may hold Wahhabi sentiments
(which would not endear them to the Iraqi regime): the probability of
their passing out samples to their friends is not all that high, but
certainly not zero, and the probability that the stuff came from Iraq
seems higher than of the other two. That's a subjective assessment.
But the New Scientist article doesn't say very much to me one way or
the other, and I would very much expect there to be a very great deal of
misinformation and disinformation floating about in any case. Everyone
involved has good reason to make up stories and spread confusion.
In any event I really would like to see a better source than New
Scientist.
In summary:
Stealing a stash from the old US arsenal may have been possible, but
having it around, waiting for an opportunity like this, argues a patience
few political groups would have. Even if it proves to be a stolen American
stash, I would direct efforts to finding out who wanted to sell the stuff,
and who they sold it to, before concluding that this was the work of some
domestic group.
It takes a fair amount of twisted to come up with the scheme that seems
to be becoming popular now, that some "right wing" (whatever
that means: right wing usually favors strong government) group had a
stash, held on to it for years, never used it, and suddenly rushed to use
it after 9-11.
Now it's certainly possible that some nut kept a bottle of the stuff in
his freezer, half forgotten (and hoping that his kids didn't get it out
and serve it as tapioca pudding) and remembered it after 9-11 and decided
to galvanize the US into action by going to Florida with some of it and
then New Jersey with more and mailing it about, but that's a pretty far
fetched hypothesis compared to an organization: and of the organizations,
which is the most likely?
I'm willing to be convinced. If it can be traced to a small stash by a
domestic group the problem is a lot easier to solve than if it is an
effort by a state sponsored outfit. But I suspect a lot more resources
than any given nut group is involved. And I do hope the FBI is more
competent than it wants us to think it is just now.
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