Germs: America's Secret War against Biological Weapons

Deadly germs sprayed in shopping malls, bomblets spewing anthrax spores over battlefields, tiny vials of plague scattered in Times Square—these are the poor man's hydrogen bombs, hideous weapons of mass destruction that can be made in a simple lab. In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg & Wm Broad of The NY Times uncover the truth about biological weapons & show why biowarfare & bioterrorism are fast becoming the worst national nightmare. Among the startling revelations in Germs: How the CIA secretly built & tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb, alarming some officials who felt the work pushed to the limits of what is permitted by the global treaty banning germ arms. How the Pentagon embarked on a secret effort to make a superbug. Details about the USSR's massive hidden program to produce biological weapons, including new charges that germs were tested on humans. How Moscow's scientists made an untraceable germ that instructs the body to destroy itself. The Pentagon's chaotic efforts to improvise defenses against Iraq's biological weapons during the '91 Persian Gulf War. How a religious cult in Oregon in the '80s sickened hundreds in a bio-terrorism attack that the government played down to avoid panic & copycats. Plans by the US military in the '60s to attack Cuba with germ weapons. Germs also shows how a small group of scientists & senior officials persuaded Bill Clinton to launch a controversial multibillion-dollar program to detect a germ attack on US soil & to aid its victims—a program that, so far, is struggling to provide real protection. Based on 100s of interviews with scientists & senior officials, including Clinton, as well as on recently declassified documents & on-site reporting from the former USSR's sinister bioweapons labs, Germs shows biowarriors past & present at work at their trade. There is the American scientist who devoted his professional life to perfecting biological weapons, & the Nobel laureate who helped pioneer the new biology of genetically modified germs & is now trying to stop its misuse. We meet former Soviet scientists who made enough plague, smallpox & anthrax to kill everyone & whose expertise is now in great demand by terrorists, rogue states & legitimate research labs alike. A frightening narrative of cutting-edge science & spycraft, Germs shows why advances in biology & the spread of germ weapons expertise to such countries as Iran, Iraq & N. Korea could make germs the weapon of the 21st century.