Amerithrax (24 page)
The pathogens, in glass vials, were expressed to the Uni- versity of Baghdad, ostensibly for vaccine research. Instead they wound up at the Muthanna State Establishment, eighty miles northwest of Baghdad. Al-Muthanna was the huge chemical and biological weapons complex where the Iraqi bioweapons program had first begun in earnest. In March, May, and September 1986, the ATCC mailed the University of Baghdad six strains of botulinum, the single most poi- sonous substance on earth. Botulinum can cause dizziness, blurred vision, muscle weakening, and finally respiratory failure and death.
In 1987, TSMID began buying tons of yeast extract, bac- terial growth media (which looked like powdered milk) for anthrax. They started production deep in the desert thirty- five miles southwest of Baghdad at Al Hakam, Iraq’s exten- sive new biological warfare production facility in Jur Al Shakar near the Euphrates. Two years earlier, Al Hakam (code-named Project 324/subunit 900) had received fer- menters and two anthrax cultures from France’s Pasteur Institute. As they continued with their quest to weaponize anthrax, they filled seventy-five Scud warheads with the brown liquid concentrate. They readied twenty-five anthrax- filled bombs at a small airfield in western Iraq opposite the Israeli border. Work continued throughout the year under a government organization—the Technical Research Centre, which housed Biosafety Level 3 buildings and a forensic research lab and animal test centers.
Carefully disguised Iraqi-built fermenters were stored at Al Hakam. The top secret facility masqueraded as a chicken feed factory that produced only animal feed and “natural biopesticides.” In 1988, they also manufactured aerial bombs and 122-mm rockets. Saddam was able to purchase anthrax growth medium by the ton from the United King- dom. However, when Saddam attempted to order high- powered ventilation drivers from another British company, he was rebuffed.
In March, Iraqi warplanes dropped chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja and surrounding villages in northeastern Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war Saddam killed
Lethal glass vials filled with anthrax ended up in Al Hakam (one of the microbes, Strain 11966, had been de- veloped for germ warfare by the Institute in 1951). Sad- dam’s scientists turned the shipment into 2,200 gallons of anthrax spores. The numbers were staggering. Al Hakam alone concocted 18,000 gallons of anthrax culture and 1,300 gallons of concentrated botulinum. The facility set as its goal 11,000 gallons of anthrax and botulinum a year. Its scientists agglomerated the crude anthrax spores into a finer, longer- living form of dry, small particles perfect for aerosolizing. To reduce particle size to the respirable ideal, Iraq used “se- quential filters” in devices about the size of coffins and ben- tonite as an additive. The production setup was virtually identical to that used at the Institute during the 1950s.
Over at Al Fadhaliya scientists worked with fungi and at Khamisiyah Weapons Depot they stored nerve gases and wheat smut for destroying crops. At Al Walid Air Base in western Iraq they maintained a huge biological arsenal of R-400 bombs and buried another 157 bombs near Airfield 37 and Aziziyah. Other storage bunkers contained 1,850 gal- lons of wet anthrax.
It wasn’t until February 23, 1989, that the U.S. Com- merce Department got around to banning sales of anthrax to Iran, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. At least seventy-two shipments to Iraq had already been made. By 1990, al-Muthanna’s sci- entists were busily cooking up plague in twenty-gallon fer- menters, freeze-drying the bacteria, and storing them in glass vials. They produced several hundred gallons of the germs that cause gas gangrene and conducted inhalation and blast experiments on large animals—rhesus monkeys, sheep, and beagle dogs.
Al-Muthanna’s glass vials of anthrax ended up at Salman
Thursday, August 2, 1990, at 2:00 a.m., Saddam sent his tanks rumbling across the Kuwait border. Within a day, Iraq had seized control of Kuwait. Six days later, Iraq had an- nexed it as Iraq’s nineteenth province and moved its troops to Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia. Possession of Ku- waiti oil fields increased Iraq’s power within the Organiza- tion of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and threatened not only the world’s oil supplies, but the Mideast balance of power.
Immediately after the invasion, Saddam’s biowarfare teams at eighteen biological war sites all over Iraq begin loading warheads into cluster bombs and 122-mm rockets. Of the 157 bombs, 50 were filled with anthrax. Of the six- teen missile warheads, five were packed with anthrax. The bombs and warheads were shipped to Iraqi Air Force com- manders at four bases near Saudi Arabia and in western Iraq near Israel. They were to be used in case of nuclear attack. Spray tanks and drop tanks were readied for fitting to fight- ers, helicopters, and drones. At the ideal attack altitude of 275 feet, they could spray two thousand liters of anthrax into the prevailing winds sweeping northwest to southeast. Any displaced anthrax germs could drift toward Iran and Saudi Arabia where U.S. bases were.
On August 6, the U.S. Navy flashed its commanders an urgent warning. According to a CIA report, Iraq’s biowea- pons program, the most extensive and aggressive in the Arab world, was in advanced stages of development.
Bacillus an- thracis
might be available for weaponization. By year’s end the Iraqis could deploy numerous biologically filled aerial
bombs and artillery rockets effective against ships at dis- tances of up to twenty-five miles.
CIA experts cautioned: “Botulinum toxin and... anthrax bacteria lend themselves to covert dissemination because even small amounts placed in the food supplies are suffi- ciently toxic to kill large numbers of people. Iraq also could covertly use spray tanks or aerosol generators purchased for its chemical warfare program to create large toxic clouds of bacterial agents upwind of a target area.”
On August 7, 1990, American forces began moving into Saudi Arabia. Few soldiers were inoculated against anthrax. CIA analysts were apprehensive that if Saddam felt his per- sonal position was hopeless he might use anthrax against a military installation or major Saudi oil facility. The follow- ing day the Army surgeon general’s office recommended immediate inoculations against anthrax and botulinum. One hundred and fifty companies had been approved to manu- facture anthrax vaccine, but only fifteen possessed the equip- ment to do it.
The first effective vaccine, developed in 1955 at the In- stitute, had its shortcomings. Anthrax’s deadly nature pre- cluded testing on people and the immune systems of monkeys, mice, and guinea pigs, while resembling those of human beings, were not really reliable animal models (an- thrax vaccines intended for animals should not be used in humans). Researchers continued working toward a more precise correlation. The vaccine effectiveness, though effi- cacious in monkeys, had not been tested on humans. A handful of patients, after taking the series of shots, suffered serious reactions including brain damage and death. The ex- isting formulation was “highly reactogenic” and trials never actually resolved whether the vaccine protected against all strains of the anthrax bacillus, much less inhaled spores.
The FDA had only licensed the vaccine in 1970. On Christmas Eve 1984, David Huxsoll, head of the Institute, and Dr. Richard Spertzel, a top germ specialist there, dic- tated a crash paper calling for stockpiling enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate two million soldiers. Soon after, Gen. Maxwell “Mad Max” R. Thurman admonished that the mil- itary was seriously underprepared if American forces were
ever attacked by weaponized anthrax. Army Major Robert Eng also pleaded to build a stockpile, arranging for the pur- chase of 500,000 doses of anthrax vaccine—at least enough to provide 160,000 soldiers with the first three shots of a six-shot series. Thurman’s and Eng’s cries went unheeded. By the mid-1980s shortages of the vaccine were emerging. In 1988, the Army contracted to buy large quantities of anthrax vaccine—three thousand doses. A cell-free protec- tive vaccine had been produced for use in humans, a sterile filtrate from a culture of
B. anthracis
. A cell-free filtrate vaccine meant it contained no dead or living bacteria in the preparation. There was only one licensed manufacturer of anthrax vaccine in the nation, an antiquated lab operated by the Michigan Department of Public Health in Lansing. The government allowed the contractor five years to meet the
order.
The primary component of the Michigan vaccine, pro- tective antigen, prevents the disease by blocking the anthrax toxins from penetrating its host’s cells. But Michigan could not meet the demand. On the day Iraq invaded Kuwait, the lab had only produced enough vaccine to shield 150,000 of the 500,000 U.S. troops in the region. The antibiotics had to be administered within twenty-four hours of contracting anthrax, a disease that showed symptoms only after it was too late. The only answer was to inoculate the soldiers be- fore they set foot in the Persian Gulf region, but there was not enough time for the long series of shots. Soldiers would not have even partial immunity until after the war started.
On January, 17, 1991, at 2:38 a.m. local time, the first Allied air strikes against Iraq began. “Operation Desert Storm” first crippled Iraq’s ability to launch attacks. The Allies bombed Baghdad, leveled Salman Pak, flattened Taji, site of Iraq’s long-range missile program and a mustard gas facility, and obliterated Fallujah II, a chlorine and phenol plant for nerve agents and mustard gas.
By January 21, Allies saw no outbreak of disease in Baghdad, though balky, inaccurate detectors continued to signal signs of anthrax. Chemical alarms kept ringing. After five weeks of high-precision bombing, the coalition began a military ground assault on February 24. Within one hundred
U.S. stopped short of continuing to Baghdad to oust Sad- dam, a decision that would cause America great grief a de- cade later. One hundred and forty-seven U.S. troops were killed in combat, including thirty-five lost during errant bombing and friendly fire artillery strikes.
In March, Iraq accepted the terms of the cease-fire. As a condition of surrender they agreed to halt future nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons of mass destruction and to allow UN inspectors from thirty member nations to locate and destroy any surviving Iraqi biowarfare facilities. On April 6, Iraq accepted UN Resolution 687 requiring it to end its program of weapons of mass destruction, to declare all locations and all related research, development, and produc- tion, and to allow for monitoring and verification of com- pliance.
U.S. troops exploded Iraqi weapons depots without ad- equate precautions against fallout. Their full-body chemical protective gear, activated-charcoal outer garments, proved cumbersome. Nearly half the GIs’ gas masks fitted improp- erly. Biodetectors meant to find airborne spores were inef- ficient and any fallout and exposure might go undetected. Some of the captured Iraqi soldiers could have been carrying anthrax antibodies. The Institute’s suggestion was this—if any Allied troops died from anthrax in the Gulf region, their bodies were to be saturated with Clorox and sealed in special body bags. One hundred new bags were already in prepa- ration.
In the fall, veterans who had been on duty in the Gulf began getting sick. By 1998, ninety thousand Gulf War vets reported physical distress from something they had con- tracted while serving on active duty. They suffered periodic blurred vision, low-grade fever, rashes, stomach and intes- tinal distress, chest pain, increase in urination, diarrhea, nau- sea, constant chills, sores, running noses, heart problems, chronic flulike symptoms, and memory loss. The govern- ment claimed it was only “psychological stress.”
“This is the trade-off you are making when receiving this vaccine,” said Dr. Nass. “The vaccine presently available has caused long-lasting medical illness in a significant pro- portion of those who receive it. All existing doses are cur- rently under quarantine by FDA for manufacturing lapses. Even if FDA releases the quarantined vaccine for military or civilian use, the manufacturing lapses and risk of chronic illness ‘remain.’ The side effects of an unproven vaccine could cause more death and illness if widely administered.” The GIs had been given an antidote to Soman nerve gas— pyridostigmine bromide, atropine, and another chemical. Had the experimental drug PB sickened them? Or some un- known pathogen Saddam had been perfecting?
