Crossing the Threshold: The Increasing Threat of Biochemical Terrorism
Source: Intelligence Project
A microbiologist with neo-Nazi connections has provided
the extremist underground with a detailed blueprint for waging
biological terrorism.
Larry Wayne Harris, 44, of Columbus, Ohio, claims that
his self-published Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat To North
America is designed to help readers survive a biological attack. But
the scope and depth of information in the book also make it an
effective do-it-yourself manual for mass destruction through
biological terrorism.
Publication of the book comes at a time when the Patriot
movement is awash in rumors about impending biological warfare against
Americans. Harris, a lieutenant in the Ohio chapter of Aryan Nations,
actively promotes this theory.
Harris released his guide to plague warfare in late 1995
and is selling it for $28.50 over the Internet and on Florida
anti-abortion leader Jeff Baker’s short-wave radio broadcasts. He
plundered U.S. Army technical and field manuals for the material
included in the book.
Bacteriological Warfare is a solidly researched -- if
sometimes bizarre -- guide to the cultivation, retention and
deployment of biological agents. The 131-page book provides extensive
information on a host of deadly bacteria and the diseases they
produce. Special focus is given to five potent biological agents:
anthrax, bacillary dysentery, brucellosis, cholera and bubonic plague.
Harris also includes detailed instructions for preparing the
antibiotic terramycin, an essential substance in handling deadly
biological agents in substandard laboratory conditions.
A former member of the National Alliance, Harris came to
national attention in May 1995 after officials at a research
laboratory became suspicious of his purchase of four vials of
freeze-dried, bubonic plague cultures. They tipped off law enforcement
agents.
Authorities soon determined, to their amazement, that
the purchase and possession of this extremely virulent form of
bacterium was not illegal. Federal prosecutors were able to charge
Harris with three counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud
because he had given his Ohio employer’s state lab permit number for a
personal delivery to his home. In December 1995, he plea-bargained
down to one wire fraud count in return for a guilty plea.
Harris told authorities he bought the bubonic plague
cultures in order to concoct an antidote to the disease.
Heightened awareness
The publication of Bacteriological Warfare: A Major
Threat To North America comes at a time of heightened awareness of the
threat of biological and chemical terrorism. The anthrax and sarin
attacks in Japan by Aum Shinrikyo, a fanatical sect of antigovernment
zealots, have alerted security officials worldwide that the deployment
of biological or chemical warfare agents into a populated area is not
beyond the capabilities -- or the will -- of a small band of
enterprising terrorists. "The attack in Japan has global
implications," warned Yonah Alexander, an Israeli terrorism expert.
Counter-terrorism experts are currently conducting an
intensive dialogue on biological and chemical attack. Their research
highlights these dangers:
Biological agents can be delivered to a target in a
variety of ways, some requiring minimal technical skills.
Bacterium and viruses can be easily introduced into a
building’s ventilation system with small aerosol canisters or simple
insecticide sprayers. Dispersal of bacterium spores by explosive
devices or high-powered rocket warheads is feasible. Effective mass
destruction could be accomplished with a payload aboard a
single-engine Cessna like the one that crashed into the White House in
1995. (In his book, Harris describes the Cessna 150 as an ideal craft
for such a biological attack.)
"If one crazed amateur can violate the airspace of what
is supposed to be the most secure building in America and leave his
plane piled up a few feet below the President’s bedroom, a dedicated
terrorist can manage a successful airborne biochemical attack of any
major city in the country," says Michael Reynolds, senior intelligence
analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Cultivation of a biological warfare agent does not
require expensive equipment or a large space.
According to one specialist in the field, an investment
of $10,000 and a 15’ x 15’ room is all that is necessary to produce
enough bacterium to satisfy the requirements of a national arsenal.
Harris showed just how easy it is to obtain virulent bacterium through
the mail. Viruses and toxins useful to the terrorist can just as
easily be stolen.
"Approximately 1 million patients per year in the United
States and Europe receive botulinum toxin injections as therapy for a
variety of diseases," writes John F. Sopko, deputy chief counsel to
the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a recent issue
of Foreign Policy. "These deadly toxins, as well as the research that
supports their use, can easily be accessed by would-be proliferants or
terrorists without attracting the attention of most intelligence
sources."
Former Under Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig
observed in a January 1996 Institute For National Strategic Studies
report, "The argument that chemical weapons are too difficult for most
terrorists to manufacture was discredited when a CIA report concluded
that clandestine production of chemical and biological weapons for
multiple casualty attacks raises no greater technical obstacles than
does the clandestine production of chemical narcotics or heroin."
Small quantities of biological agents can be lethal.
Of these, the most deadly is anthrax. One gram of this
deadly organism produces 1 trillion spores -- an amount equivalent to
100 million lethal doses, according to the Institute for National
Strategic Studies report.
Law enforcement faces extraordinary difficulties in
solving biological and chemical terrorism cases.
"The alternative delivery methods for deploying
biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction usually leave few
clues to identify who is responsible," writes Sapko in his Foreign
Policy article.
The apocalyptic outlook of many terrorists today makes
such attacks much more likely. "Past assumptions that those in
possession of weapons of mass destruction are rational, informed
opponents who calculate the risks and benefits before using such force
do not apply when these groups are driven by ’divine intervention,’
messianic leadership, or suicidal instincts," writes Sapko.
The propaganda campaign
In the preface to his book, Harris recounts a fantastic
tale of a 1993 encounter with a female Iraqi microbiologist at the
Ohio State library. Harris writes that this woman -- called
"Mariam" -- was a member of a terrorist band preparing to unleash
biological attacks in the United States "some time in the next few
years."
Harris continues to spread this story of the "coming
biological attack against U.S. citizens" through video and audio tapes
that are sold in the January 1997 issue of The Patriot Report,
published by Christian Identity proselytizer George Eaton. According
to Harris, Iraqi agents are already in place throughout the country
ready to strike urban areas with plague and anthrax.
The Patriot movement today is rife with propaganda about
an impending biological attack on American citizens, possibly launched
by the federal government itself. This campaign ominously echoes a
propaganda blitzkrieg launched by Patriots and militias in the months
before the Oklahoma City bombing. By April 19, 1995, extremist
publications, fax networks and meetings were saturated with dire
warnings that "something big" was about to happen -- an operation the
New World Order in Washington, D.C., would carry out and then blame on
Patriots. "Today, the Patriot propaganda machine has laid the
groundwork for blaming an incident of biological terrorism on the
American government," says the Intelligence Project’s Reynolds.
Harris and an ad hoc group of writers and
quasi-scientists, including former U.S. Army nurse Joyce Riley, are
promulgating a theory known as "The Gulf War Syndrome Cover-Up" that
has gained widespread credence in the Patriot movement. They claim
that the U.S. government and the Pentagon deliberately exposed
American troops in the Persian Gulf War to biological agents which
then produced the mysterious malady afflicting veterans of the
conflict. Gulf War Syndrome is just one phase of a plan to reduce the
U.S. population through biological attacks on an unwitting public --
especially Patriots -- and leave the survivors under the yoke of the
New World Order, they further assert.
One of the earliest versions of this propaganda appeared
in a confidential memo circulated to Aryan Nations members nationwide
in mid-1995. The four-page document charged that an "extremely
contagious biological agent was transferred directly to Iraq who [sic]
used it on our troops during Desert Storm."
The Aryan Nations letter claimed this was done "under
the watchful eye of the [Z]ionist occupied government." Furthermore,
according to the neo-Nazi missive, "transmission to the civilian
population is very much to be taken for granted in the furtherance of
a Z.O.G. population control program."
To bolster his credibility, the Aryan Nations writer
appended a portion of a letter from Garth Nicholson, a Houston-based
research scientist whose questionable theories on the Gulf War
Syndrome are a cornerstone of the Patriot propaganda campaign.
Nicholson charges that "HIV-1 (the AIDS virus) was one of
approximately 10 such viruses constructed at Ft. Detrick, Md., as
biological weapons and field tested in Africa and Haiti.
Unfortunately, the experiment got out of hand." Nicholson’s version of
AIDS fits well within the extremist right’s "AIDS cover-up" conspiracy
that has been hawked for years by Patriot and racist newspapers.
Since January 1995, Identity news media including The
Jubilee, Aryan Nations’ Calling Our Nation and Dave Barley’s America’s
Promise have joined with other extremist right publications like
Militia of Montana’s Taking Aim, The Spotlight, The American’s
Bulletin, Anti-Shyster and The Free American in a massive
fear-mongering campaign warning of "biological genocide" at the hands
of the federal government. The articles in these publications are
nearly identical. The same material can be found on the American
Patriot Fax Network, short-wave broadcasts, videos, and at
Preparedness Expos and Identity meetings.
Extremists on the Right have long flirted with
biological and chemical warfare against U.S targets. Federal agents
found 33 gallons of cyanide when they invaded The Covenant, The Sword
and Arm of the Lord compound in northwestern Arkansas in 1985. CSA
leader James Ellison said he and extremist Bob Miles had discussed
poisoning municipal water supplies. Four members of the Minnesota
Patriots Council were convicted in 1995 of conspiracy to use the
deadly toxin ricin to kill federal agents and law enforcement
officers.
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