Is the U.S. Government making anthrax bombs in Utah?

[kpete]

Feature • February 23, 2006
Just Testing
Is the U.S. Government making anthrax bombs in Utah?

by Ted McDonough
..................

But something else was going on that March in the west desert that has some questioning the United States’ dedication to nonproliferation. Over at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds—the chemical depot’s Tooele County neighbor—procurement officers quietly placed orders for a system of bacteria-growing fermentors that would have made Saddam salivate.

According to government solicitation, the order called for four fermentors with a total capacity of producing nearly 3,500 liters of bacteria and the possibility of another five fermentors in the future. That is enough bacteria-making equipment to cook up about three-fourths the 8,400 liters of anthrax Iraq admitted to having produced for Saddam’s biowar program.

The order didn’t detail what Dugway wanted to grow, but at the same time, the secretive Army base put out feelers for a second set of fermentors and contractors willing to make 1,500-liter batches of a benign strain of anthrax called Sterne.

The request sent shockwaves through the community of government watchdogs and scientists dedicated to ensuring the biowar genie stays in its bottle. For, while the fermentors were ostensibly ordered for production of a nonlethal strain of anthrax, they could easily be used to produce vast quantities of the lethal strain as well.


http://www.slweekly.com/article.cfm/justtesting

[TexasLawyer]

1. Maybe they're making the WMDs that

we're about to "find." I've been waiting for 3 years for them to close this loop.