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Anthrax hoaxes cost United States dearly: report

Published: 08/03/2009 05:00

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A flood of anthrax hoaxes and false alarms have prompted the United States to spend more in bolstering biological defenses, it was reported on Sunday.

A Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) police officer (C) is washed down after a simulated infection of the Anthrax virus during a full-scale bio-exercise drill called “Gallant Fox 06″ outside the Pentagon in Washington, May 17, 2006.(Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)

Since the deadly anthrax mailings in 2001 following the 9/11 terror attack, the United States has spent 50 billion dollars to bolster biological defenses and the cost is raised by a flood of threats that ultimately prove harmless, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The 2001 anthrax mailing was America’s worst bioterrorist attack in which letters laced with anthrax spores killed five people, closed Congress and the Supreme Court, and crippled mail service for months.

No other anthrax attacks have occurred, but a flood of hoaxes raised the cost considerably through lost work, emergency evacuations, decontamination efforts, first-responders’ time and the emotional distress of the victims, said the paper.

That is often the hoaxer’s goal, the paper quoted experts as saying.

“It’s easy, it’s cheap, and very few perpetrators get caught,” said Leonard Cole, a political scientist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jewsey, who studies bioterrorism. “People do it for a sense of power.”

The FBI has investigated about 1,000 such “white powder events” as possible terrorist threats since the start of 2007, the paper quoted FBI spokesman Richard Kolko as saying.

The bureau responds if a letter contains a written threat or is mailed to a federal official.

“Some of these knuckleheads think because they’re not sending a dangerous substance, it’s not a crime,” Kolko said. “But it is a crime. We don’t treat a hoax as a joke.”

The FBI is trying to figure out who mailed about 150 letters late last year that contained powder and threatening notes. The envelopes were sent from the Dallas area to U.S. embassies in various countries and to most U.S. governors, according to the paper.

The paper provided a list of the recent targets: nearly all 50 governors’ offices; about 100 U.S. embassies abroad; 52 banks; 36 news organizations; ticket booths at Disneyland; Mormon temples in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles; town halls in Batavia, Ohio, and Ellenville, New York; a funeral home and day-care center in Ocala, Florida; a sheriff’s office in Eagle, Colorado; and homes in Ely River, New Mexico.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet

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