The Great Superterrorism Scare

Abstract

Last March, representatives from more than a dozen U.S. federal agencies gathered at the White House for a secret simulation to test their readiness to confront a new kind of terrorism. Details of the scenario unfolded a month later on the front page of the New York Times: Without warning, thousands across the American Southwest fall deathly ill. Hospitals struggle to rush trained and immunized medical personnel into crisis areas. Panic spreads as vaccines and antibiotics run short-and then run out. The killer is a hybrid of smallpox and the deadly Marburg virus, genetically engineered and let loose by terrorists to infect hundreds of thousands along the Mexican-American border. This apocalyptic tale represents Washington's newest nightmare: the threat of a massive terrorist attack with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Three recent events seem to have convinced the policymaking 6lite and the general public that a disaster is imminent: the 1995 nerve gas attack on a crowded Tokyo subway station by the Japanese millenarian cult Aum Shinrikyo; the disclosure of alarming new information about the former Soviet Union's massive biowarfare program; and disturbing