As a mandatory, force-wide countermeasure to the real threat of weaponized anthrax on the battlefield, the vaccine effort is unrealistic. It expands and distorts the use of invasive, dated medical technology to address perceived weaknesses in detection technology and external physical protection against biological attack. Born of a post-Gulf war panic over apparent weaknesses in chemical and biological [CB] warfare defenses, the AVIP is an unmanageably broad military undertaking built on a dangerously narrow scientific and medical foundation.

At best, the vaccine provides some measure of protection to most who receive it. Just how much protection is acquired, by whom, for how long, and against what level of challenge are questions DOD answers with an excess of faith but a paucity of science.

Many members of the armed forces do not share that faith. They do not believe merely suggestive evidence of vaccine efficacy outweighs their concerns over the lack of evidence of long term vaccine safety. Nor do they trust DOD has learned the lessons of past military medical mistakes: atomic testing, Agent Orange, Persian Gulf war drugs, and vaccines. Heavy handed, one-sided informational materials only fuel suspicions the program understates adverse reaction risks in order to magnify the relative, admittedly marginal, benefits of the vaccine.

As a military operation, the AVIP rests on weak conceptual and logistical footing. It suffers from poor planning, inflexible execution, and over-extended supply lines. As a health care effort, the AVIP compromises the practice of medicine to achieve military objectives.[i]

Given how flawed the program has been from its inception – and all of the documents involved are public records, most of which were created by the U.S. government itself – the most salient question becomes ‘why?’ Why would the DoD continue to push such a flawed program when the manufacturer long-ago provided sufficient reason to back away from the program and still save face? What I offer here is likely by no means the complete list of answers, but I have tried to compile all of the reasons and justifications of which I am aware because it is my view that all of these, or some combination of these and other reasons not seen, are contributing factors to the totality of what was done. It wasn’t some monolithic ‘conspiracy,’ but as with most bad ideas in government, the totality is a conjunction of interests and attitudes that conspire-without-speaking to deprive others – specifically military servicemembers and veterans in this case – of their humanity and their rights. I have also attempted here to offer both the DoD’s claims and rebuttals in order to place the entire anthrax vaccine program in a larger context that would roughly equate to “motive,” the essential (but not logically so) element of a case without which prosecutors will tell you it is awfully hard to ‘hang your hat,’ or a conviction, even in a ‘slam dunk’ case.

The reasons that the program was launched (and still survives) reflects a variety of considerations: political, personal, and philosophical. At their best, the motives are noble; at their worst, they’re just another instance of massive government corruption gestated by greed and sustained by ego. None of them alone – or even together – provide a justification for beginning or continuing the program, particularly considering that the AVIP violated numerous laws including, most importantly, servicemembers’ right to informed consent and to not be guinea pigs in a massive DoD experiment. Before looking in detail at the why, it is important to examine some of the rhetoric used by the DoD in regard to this program. These statements help illustrate the underlying philosophies and motivations of those driving the program at the highest levels of government.

In 1997, at the background briefing announcing the program’s launch, two high-ranking DoD officials presented a scenario to reporters, using a map to demonstrate a hypothetical attack on a U.S. military unit:

Now if the threat released an anthrax cloud through a long line release, aerosol release from an aircraft, upwind of our forces, and it drifted down over them, the fact that anthrax is 99 percent lethal in an aerosol inhalation delivery means, the warfighting strength of that corps would be at about 34 percent. Onset of symptoms in 24-72 hours. It’s lethal in five days. Pretty significant capability. Again, this is an aerosol release, exposed personnel who are unwarned – we have no detectors. They are unprotected. Because we have no warning they’re not in their MOPP suits with their mask on, and they are unvaccinated. Significant degradation to warfighting strength. Tremendous casualties.

The most frightening aspect about this press conference and these statements, to me anyway, is not their substance, but rather that that no one, not a single reporter, questioned or challenged these figures or assumptions. If it would be unethical to test human beings against an aerosolized anthrax attack, how does the DoD have these kinds of exact numbers for an aerosolized anthrax attack? Where did they come from?

In truth, each of these assumptions is contradicted by reality. In a March 17, 1998, Congressional committee hearing, Bernard Rostker, the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses, asserted that the DoD had a vehicle that could detect and sample for some biological agents. He called on an Admiral Cowan to discuss the BIDS (ph) vehicle and how many platoons there were. Here, Admiral Cowan replied that “. . . there are five platoons of the BIDS. Each one of them is seven vehicles, and each one of them covers a pretty substantial area. The CENTCOM plan was for two of those platoons. Of the five, one is active duty and the other four are reserve.”[ii]

It is impossible for high-ranking DoD officials, undoubtedly flag officers from the tone and content of the briefing, to claim in December 1997 that there is no way to detect these biological agents (“we have no detectors”) and then less than three months later (82 days actually) an Admiral to discuss “5 platoons of 7 vehicles each” that can detect biological agents. In fact, within the original briefing, after saying there were “no detectors,” one of the briefers backtracked and started explaining that

we have some capability… By and large, it is point detection. You find out you have the agent when you are there with your detector. That is in place now, and there’s more coming. Enhancements also are being developed where we get a standoff capability, so that we not only can see a cloud or an agent in the distance, we have the standoff to be able to detect and identify what it is before it gets to where the troops are, the service members, so they can take protective action, put on their masks that will protect them against those type of agents.[iii]

No one called the briefers on this blatant lie inconsistency. Additionally, the claims about the lethality of the anthrax bacteria in aerosolized form are so vastly overblown as to blow right past hyperbole and approach pants-on-fire exaggeration.

In 1979, there was an accidental release of anthrax in Sverdlosk, Russia, from a biological warfare plant. Professor Jeanne Guillemin, Sociology Department, Boston University, in her book about this incident observed that

Based on experiments with hundreds of monkeys done at Fort Detrick in the 1950s, the U. S. Army standardized a value of eight thousand inhaled spores as the dosage lethal for 50 percent of a human population receiving it, the so-called LD₅₀. But nowhere in Sverdlovsk was the case fatality rate 50 percent. Even at the ceramics factory pipe shop, apparently right on the centerline of the passing spore cloud, only ten of about four hundred and fifty workers fell ill and died, a fatality rate of 2 percent.”[iv]

Despite this, two flag officers are quoting a fatality rate that leaves only 34% of an entire Corps of troops intact. This claim is also being made of a population of hand-picked, 18-25 year-old, healthy young men (for the most part). This also assumes that an enemy aircraft or artillery shell perfectly releases the anthrax spores, undetected by anyone, no one is in their MOPP gear, nor does anyone suspect the release or take any action. Evidently, the unit is also standing still for this release, out in the open, in a desert environment with no trees, no buildings, nor any other obstructions that might prevent them from inhaling the spores. And it’s not windy, either. Nor is it raining. And the service members seem to not have the ability to use antibiotics because the DoD has not fielded the one treatment that is truly proven safe and effective: antibiotics.

To compound this fabricated scenario, these same DoD spokespersons go on to proffer the benefits after vaccination:

Now we’ve vaccinated. We don’t have any better detection, we don’t have any better protection, but what we now have is this force, on the ground, vaccinated. You can see, personnel without immunity is a little enclave. What that is is, they are in the proximity of the delivery of the agent and that proximity has caused them to be hit with a dose that overwhelms their immune system even with the vaccine. So if they’re very nearby, that is a potential. But the warfighting strength now with this protection is at 95 percent – a vast difference. With enhanced detection leading to protection, we can get that up to 99 percent plus. This is the first big step. Those casualties, again, are because of over-exposure to the attack.

There are several interesting bits of verbal legerdemain in these statements. First, there have never been any efficacy studies done with human beings against an aerosolized anthrax spores (or there would have been no need to modify the license, setting aside the ethics of such an experiment). The GAO has found that the animal correlates do not work very well, nor can they equate to human protection because antibody level does not correlate with immunity in those animal studies. How then does this officer assert that there will be a 95% success rate for vaccinated individuals? Based upon what scientifically validated evidence is this statement made? Furthermore, notice how for purposes of showing how good the vaccine is, the briefer adds that with “enhanced detection” the figure is up to “99 per-cent plus.” Now, why does his original hypothetical posit no enhanced detection? He has changed his original hypothetical in two variables, in prior detection and vaccination. One wonders how the original stationary Corps would have fared if they had put on their gas masks with the same enhanced detection that the vaccinated hypothetical got the benefit of. The answer should be 100% as the masks are supposed to be completely effective. Here the General compares apples to bacon, acts as if the differences prove his point, and no one in the audience says a word or asks a single question.

This hyping of the program appears to have been part of a concerted effort. Milton Leitenberg, Senior Fellow at the University of Maryland Center for International and Security Studies, commenting on the Secretary of Defense Cohen’s bioterrorism pronouncements, noted that such hype is

exaggerated and alarmist. They are probably even dangerous and counterproductive, since they virtually solicit and induce precisely what they portray as fearing . . . No agency of the U.S. government has prepared a threat analysis that provides indications that these events are imminent or even likely. Instead, various analysts have provided vulnerability projections and scenarios, which are always easy to concoct in the abstract . . . Either the advice reaching the secretary of defense and other senior officials on this subject is extraordinarily poor, or they are intentionally disregarding real-world experience.”[v]

All of which brings us to one part of the why.

Science journalist Daniel Greenberg offered a possible motive for hyping the threat of a biological terrorist incident.  “. . . [I]t should be noted that there’s a whiff of hysteria-fanning and budget opportunism in the scare scenarios of the saviors who have stepped forward against the menace of bioterrorism.”[vi] Professor Jeanne Guillemin reiterated this theme:

Cohen has said publicly that a bioterroism attack is a question of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ This is surely one of the most irresponsible statements of our times from a government official. . . the American public deserves better than being manipulated by the military-media scare industry. And maybe a future ‘Frontline’ [sic: ‘Nightline’] will educate us on how that $10 billion against terrorism is really getting spent.”[vii] (emphasis added)

As one might have guessed up-front, good old-fashioned, ‘filthy lucre’ provided billions and billions of reasons for the anthrax program’s inception and continued existence. Lots and lots of money was there for the taking – and not just short-term personal interests, either, although various individuals certainly made generational fortunes on the vaccine program. Bio-terrorism provides a virtually unassailable reason to pour taxpayer money into the DoD, which gets more than just a bigger budget for all of the possible treatments and measures surrounding it. As the quotes above show, it provides an entirely new reason for force structure changes, new units to respond to this “new” threat, and what person would question the necessity to defend against these kinds of threats?

In fact, events at the time show that the program received unanimous support: the 1996 Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment to the FY1997 Defense bill passed in the Senate by a 96-0 vote.[viii] One observer noted these same trends and pointed out the underlying dynamics.

Several factors inflamed the tenor of the US debate. The problem of terrorism truly began to crystallize for Americans when prominent buildings in New York City and Oklahoma City were bombed, sinking in even further with bombings of US targets in Saudi Arabia and Africa. The backdrop for these events was the revelation of frightening details about the extent of the bioweapons programs in Iraq and the former Soviet Union. Adding to the tinder, international terrorist Osama bin Laden threatened to acquire mass destruction weapons specifically to use against Americans. Other, more political factors, also fanned the debate, such as the vested interests of defense contractors and government offices in larger budgets, not to mention the desire of elected officials to be perceived as “doing something” about the problem.[ix]

In fact, at the same time that the anthrax program was being launched, two DoD military officials also briefed the press on how the AVIP and DoD would fit in with the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici bill. This amendment to the 1997 Defense Authorization Act included a provision that would allow military chemical-biological response teams (from both the Army and the Marine Corps) to aid civilian first responders. At a press briefing on April 16, 1997, two DoD officials explained that

DoD has a crucial, important, supporting role to the other agencies that are involved, and for whatever reason, the funding flows through the Department of Defense. So in many ways, not only do we have the role to support via the expertise that we have, but it so happens that in the legislation the funding, at least for the initial years here, flows through the Department of Defense.

In a broad sense we’re looking at 120 cities over three years. We’re looking at 27 cities to be assessed in FY97, and training to be initiated in about nine of those 27.

We’re looking at the emergency responder training aspects only of the legislation, and that’s in Title 14, subtitle A. There are several paragraphs in that piece of the legislation on the requirement for emergency or first responder training, and that’s what we’re focusing on here today.[x] (emphasis added)

Thus, the anthrax program had an even larger context, as part of military aid in civilian incidents of domestic terrorism. This is why the program was a “total force” program, including the Reserves and the National Guard. The inclusion of the National Guard received little debate, but it should be striking because such a program is unprecedented. National Guardsmen are part of each state’s own sovereign force for state purposes under Title 32, subject to the orders of each governor. It is only during a time of declared “national emergency” that these troops may be activated by the President and thus subject to federal control. This is extremely important legally because if a Guardsman is injured by the vaccine, there is a real question about legal remedies. While the federal government enjoys sovereign immunity under Feres, the states do not enjoy the same blanket immunity. That is why several states asked their legislators to make the program voluntary; it was how Tom Rempfer had found himself caught in the political world between an active duty commander and the Governor of Connecticut as his State Guard unit was preparing to be activated and their status changed from Title 32 to Title 10. The vaccines were a prerequisite for being called up to Title 10 status and flying sorties in some far-flung locale where the US was enforcing a no-fly zone. If a guardsman could prove in state court that the state issued an unlicensed vaccine that caused irreparable harm, what could the possible damage award by a jury be? And why would pilots flying thousands of feet above the battlefield even need to be protected from the threat of anthrax?

The DoD AVIP was part of PDD-63, which anticipated heavy DoD involvement in a “consequence management” (civil defense) role. One DoD official early in the program’s execution stated that

I think the key thing right now – it would be a very, very bad thing for DOD to not execute this really well for two reasons.

One is because we know we need to make available anthrax in theater. We know what kind of enemies we are up against. We have to be protected there. But very much more important point –  it goes back to the point that Mark has been making. There are a lot of other future possibilities we have to look at as well.  If we can’t do anthrax well, we will up visiting you a lot more times.  And that’s not a very pleasant experience for either one of us.”[xi]

This also reflects the premise that there were/are going to be more of these types of programs in the future. In fact, the AVIP is/was but the first in a series of vaccines that were/are part of Joint Vision 2010, the DoD’s plan for the military of the future, and a part of that plan is the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program, which currently (as of 2000) has some 20 vaccines in development, including an AIDS vaccine. The anthrax vaccine was supposed to be the “crown jewel” of the JVAP, paving the way for future vaccines, including the ‘possible’ mandatory vaccine of civilians. Yes, you read that right.

That program represents uncountable billions of dollars to drug companies making vaccines, such as BioPort. It also provides budget dollars to a military that increasingly needs to justify its size and even existence in the post-Cold War era. This, coupled with the DoD’s hype of the threat, has convinced Congressmen that the DoD could be useful in the civil defense role. Both the Marine Corps and the Army now have special Chemical and Biological Response Forces with special equipment and vehicles that are considered ‘first responders’ in the event of a biological attack, Posse Comitatus be damned (and ignored).[xii]

The bioterrorism threat, as a subset of the broader ‘terrorism’ threat, provides a monolithic enemy on which to focus the troops; a surrogate “evil empire” to replace the faded Soviet Union. The language quoted throughout this book by DoD officials bears this out. This threat also unifies the Armed Services because it transforms every servicemember into a potential target, making previously non-combatant fields essential members in the fight against anthrax. Every servicemembers’ body is the new battlefield and DoD believes it has the authority to command that space.

While it may seem hard to believe, it takes more than just the promise of money to make a program like this continue. Even senior military officers are unlikely to see any personal checks in their bank accounts as a result of this program, so there has to be something more at play for the DoD to have continued in the face of the evidence against the AVIP. As incredible as it seems, loss of face coupled with bureaucratic intransigence may account for a significant part of DoD officials’ unwillingness to back down and admit wrongdoing.

“It speaks to DoD culture more than anything else,” says a congressional staff aide who asked not to be named. “The Pentagon just does not have a corporate culture. Once they decided to go with this program (BioPort), they stuck with it, even though oversight indicated they had built their biodefense program on a foundation of sand, and they had an unreliable producer. The DoD is simply incapable of admitting a mistake. They genetically just can’t back out.”

The Pentagon and BioPort deny they made a mistake, of course, and they believe their problems will be solved, perhaps next week. Government sources close to the process say as early as Monday, the FDA will approve BioPort’s renovated facility, and enable it to resume shipments of the vaccine it has been stockpiling since 1999.[xiii] (emphasis added)

The DoD can be a particularly “linear thinking” agency when trying to push through pet programs and the AVIP is just one among a long list I could provide of bad ideas that DoD will ever refuse to admit was bad: the list of weapons and equipment procurement failures alone could fill volumes, from the Vietnam era M-16A1 to the canopy removal system (CRS) in my old aircraft (AH-1W), to an entire list of procurements and programs that I will leave to others to round out. This tendency to organizational arrogance even coupled with the budgetary considerations, however, could not explain the heroic lengths to which the DoD went to prop up a failing company and violate the rights of its service members.

The answer as to ‘why’ in this context is clearly not as simple or straightforward as proponents of the AVIP suggest. It is not, as they have stated, a simple matter of “classic deterrence.”[xiv] It is not, though the DoD continues to beat this drum, because of the “immediate” threat of anthrax. In fact, a GAO report at the time concluded that “the threat of a biological attack by anthrax remained the same as it was ten years prior to the program’s launch.”[xv] The State Department, with persons in as dangerous (possibly more so) positions as military members, made the same vaccine optional. In fact, a State Department fact sheet at the time stated that

The Department of State has no information to indicate that there is a likelihood of use of chemical or biological agent release in the immediate future. The Department believes the risk of the use of chemical/biological warfare (CBW) is remote, although it cannot be excluded. There are, of course, no guarantees. Until a threat becomes know, American citizens must make their own decisions with regard to those precautions they might take to avoid injury.[xvi]

Like any good scandal from the era, there is also/always the “Clinton angle.” Not only was there political pressure to “do something” about biological warfare, but the President himself, Bill Clinton, had a strong, personal interest in the issue. According to several sources,

Clinton became fixated on the emerging germ threat and ways to counter it among civilians, aides said. Influences are said to have included the Iraqi crisis, the Russian claims, the intelligence reports and a novel, “The Cobra Event” (Random House, 1997), about a terrorist attack on New York City with a genetically engineered mix of the smallpox and cold viruses.[xvii]

Clinton said he hoped that a major legacy of his Presidency would be to stave off unconventional attacks.[xviii]

. . . abandoning the vaccination program could unravel the administration’s entire response to biological threats, discrediting a major element of Clinton’s self-described legacy.[xix]

In addition to the incentives from the DoD, the anthrax program also apparently had political and personal ‘legacy’ considerations concerns of the President. Of course, like any good ‘Clinton Angle’ story, there was also the issue of payback for services rendered, which centered around one person: (retired) Admiral William Crowe, USN.

When Democratic governor and Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was running for office against noted WW2 veteran and youngest naval aviator George H.W. Bush, the discussion in and around the military was all about Clinton’s history of protesting the Vietnam War and how he could possibly command the respect of the Armed Forces. It almost seems quaint by comparison to more recent elections, but there was genuine angst in the officer corps about a Clinton Presidency.

The New York Times headline on September 19, 1992, was considered a blow to Bush, the Elder: “Former Military Chief Plans to Back Clinton.” Admiral Crowe was not only well-regarded and a widely recognized name, but he had been Bush I’s own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. At a time when people wondered if Clinton would be able to find a single notable general officer to publicly back his candidacy, Crowe’s public support was seen as a serious setback to Bush and a coup for Clinton.

As President Clinton worked through his first term, now-retired Admiral William Crowe was given the plum post of Ambassador to Great Britain, in which he served from 1994-1997. During his time there, he met and became friends with a gentleman named Fuad el-Hibri, who was an owner and manager in Porton Products, Ltd. Porton Down is the location of Great Britain’s equivalent to Fort Dietrich, Maryland, where the U.S. has its chemical and biological weapons testing and development. Porton Down’s DSTL – Defense of Science and Technology Laboratory – has been involved in chemical, biological and other weapons and experiments in the same way the Fort Dietrich has because it was set up as such. Indeed, much of the exact same experimentation conducted on U.S. soldiers detailed in this book previously has been mirrored in the UK, right down to the covert administration of LSD to soldiers in the 1950s and 60s and resulting lawsuits. Ironically, unlike the DoD’s reliance on the Feres doctrine and sovereign immunity, the British government actually settled its lawsuits and paid the servicemembers it experimented upon, in one case after a British jury found against the government. During the Gulf War, Great Britain also injected its soldiers with an anthrax vaccine that was manufactured by El-Hibri’s company.

By 1996 and 1997, after President Clinton’s re-election, the DoD began to ramp up its rhetorical concerns about bioterrorism. There was a move to begin looking for alternative manufacturers to the Michigan state-owned producer of the anthrax vaccine. William Crowe left his ambassadorship in 1997.

A 2005 article in the Daily Press explained how Crowe had come to be in such a position.

Until 1998, the nation’s only manufacturing plant for anthrax vaccine was owned and operated by the state of Michigan. The state agency that ran the plant was losing money, so the state put the operation and its license for making the anthrax vaccine up for bid.

Fuad El-Hibri, a 40-year-old German businessman with a Yale University management degree, formed a team of investors to buy the business, which included a $100 million contract with the Pentagon. His bid faced a problem, though: He and his father, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a wealthy international financier from Lebanon, dominated ownership of the company, which they named BioPort.

Both were considered friendly to the United States. Father and son had directed a company involved in Britain’s anthrax vaccine program and they had worldwide interests in cell phone networks and other ventures. But the U.S. government was not keen on letting a foreign-owned company control its anthrax vaccine. The only other bidder was also based overseas.

So Fuad El-Hibri played a trump card: A family friend, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. William Crowe, was made a director. Crowe put no money into BioPort but got about 10 percent of the stock, government records show. El-Hibri says Crowe immediately advised him to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Crowe’s advice was good, El-Hibri said. But Crowe’s connections were better: He was the military’s top officer during the Reagan administration, then endorsed Bill Clinton for president in 1992. Clinton made him U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, and while serving there, Crowe was close to the El-Hibri family, congressional testimony shows.[xx]

The article goes on to explain in detail what this book – and every public record – has already been shown: MBPI/MDPH/BioPort failed every single FDA inspection it had, yet Congress continued to appropriate funding at DoD’s behest, with taxpayers footing the bill to the tune of tens (and likely hundreds) of millions of dollars.

Endnotes

[i] House Report 106-556, “The Department of Defense’s Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program: Unproven Force Protection Measure,” Apr. 3, 2000, p. 2

[ii] Testimony of Admiral Michael Cowan, Mar 17, 1998 Senate Committee hearings

[iii] Dec 15, 1997 DoD background briefing

[iv] Guillemin, Jeanne, Anthrax, The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak, University of California Press, Berkely, CA, 1999, p. 241.

[v] Lietenberg, Milton, “False Alarm,” The Washington Post, August 14, 1999; Page A15.

[vi] Greenberg, Daniel S., “The Bioterrorism Panic,” Washington Post, March 16, p. A21.

[vii] Guillemin, Jeanne, “Scare Campaign about Biological Weapons is Itself a Threat,” Boston Globe, December 2, 1999, p. A27.

[viii] Debate Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 1997, US Senate, 26 Jun 1996, Congressional Record, page S6988, et seq.

[ix] Amy Smithson, “Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the US Response,” The Stimson Center, Report No. 35, October 2000, pg 12.

[x] DoD Background Briefing, April 16, 1997.

[xi] These remarks were either before Congress or in a DoD background briefing, but the citation is currently missing in action.

[xii] The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbid the use of the military (U.S. Army) to enforce domestic law in the aftermath of the Civil War.

[xiii] Laura Rozen, “The Anthrax Vaccine Scandal,” Oct. 15, 2001, Salon (available at https://www.salon.com/2001/10/15/anthrax_vaccine/

[xiv] DoD Background Briefing, Aug. 5, 1999 (the Defenselink website no longer appears to carry these, but the entire transcript is available for download here: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=1052)

[xv] GAO Report 99-148, p.2

[xvi] US Department of State, Fact Sheet Chemical – Biological Warfare; http://www.travel.state.gov/cbw.html – this link now returns a 404 error, but is also referenced for the same point by other authors with an Oct. 2001 date. The State Department has moved all of these somewhere that I currently cannot locate, but the Internet Acrhive (the wayback machine) has what appears to be the referenced page with dates through Sep-Nov 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20010912080322/http://www.travel.state.gov/cbw.html

[xvii] William J. Broad and Judith Miller, “Clinton Describes Terrorism Threat for the 21^st Century,” New York Times, 22 Jan 1999

[xviii] William J. Broad and Judith Miller, “Germ Defense Plan in Peril as Its Flaws are Revealed,” New York Times, 7 August 1998

[xix] Andrew J. Bacevich, Ph.D., “Bad Medicine for Biological Terror,” Orbis, Spring 2000, p.224

[xx] “How a Company cashed in on Anthrax,” Detroit Free Press, Bob Evans, Dec. 7, 2005. https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-anth-day4-bioportdec06-story.html