The Road to the Iraq War | 2. Terror

Summary

Slow Burn, Season 5: The Road to the Iraq War

Episode 2: Terror (April 28, 2021)

Host: Noreen Malone (Slate Podcasts)
Theme:
This episode explores the fear and paranoia that engulfed the United States in the wake of 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, tracing how uncertainty, imagination, and suspicion drove U.S. leaders toward seeing Iraq as the next primary enemy. The story dives into how a combination of war games, political pressure, media narratives, and bioterror panics contributed to the forging of false links between Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and terrorism, ultimately paving the psychological road to the Iraq War.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Prelude: War Games and Dark Winter

• [00:04–03:33]
  • Retired Air Force Colonel Randy Larson designed "Dark Winter," a 2001 war game simulating a biological terrorist attack.
  • The exercise imagined smallpox being released in the U.S., supplied by Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, plunging the government into chaos.
  • The simulation exposed how unprepared the U.S. was for such an event, both logistically and in terms of communication.
    • Randy Larson: “There's no way you can convince 300 million Americans to do something they don't want to do, that they don't think is in their own best interest.” [02:31]
  • Politicians were largely uninterested prior to 9/11; the threat was not seen as urgent.

2. The Shock of 9/11: A New Era of Fear

• [03:33–05:41]
  • 9/11 transformed the Bush administration’s priorities from domestic to security.
  • There was a rapid pivot in focus to terrorism, including threats of bioweapons.
    • Randy Larson: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” [05:25]
  • High-level briefings put biological weapons top of mind for White House staff.

3. The Anthrax Attacks: Heightening the Panic

• [16:01–24:33]
  • Anthrax-laced letters were sent to media and political offices; several died, and many were infected.
  • The attacks fueled widespread panic: people stockpiled antibiotics, officials worried about supplies.
    • Tom Daschle: “Yes. This created a new appreciation of how technology and circumstances have erased whatever sense of invulnerability we had.” [21:47]
  • Government officials themselves, including Dick Cheney, adopted extreme precautions (e.g., carrying hazmat suits).

4. Searching for the Enemy: Iraq and the Urge to Connect Dots

• [10:09–15:47]; [25:44–33:48]
  • Almost instantly, Pentagon leadership sought connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
    • Gary Greco: “I quickly surmised that a case would be built against Iraq and we would be going to war with them.” [11:38]
  • Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress played into these suspicions, eager to implicate Saddam.
  • Wolfowitz and others at the highest levels pushed the Iraq connection; even when CIA analyses refuted a link, theory persisted.
    • Robert Draper: “We need to go after Iraq … He is the head of the snake, and we need to cut that head off.” [14:06]
  • The White House and media began floating the idea that Iraq could be the unseen force behind anthrax.
    • John McCain: “…Some of this anthrax may, and I emphasize may, have come from Iraq. If that may be the case, then that's when some tough decisions are going to have to be made.” [28:11]

5. The Media and “Bentonite”: Fueling Suspicion

• [30:47–33:48]
  • Major news outlets, notably ABC News, claimed a chemical marker (bentonite) in the anthrax pointed to Iraq.
    • Brian Ross (ABC): “It is called bentonite ... it is a trademark of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program.” [31:05]
  • Later, this was proven false by scientists like Paul Keim—the anthrax strain in the attacks was not linked to Iraq.
    • Paul Keim: “We tested it, and it was not the same as the anthrax letters. And so that was a really important negative result.” [32:53]

6. Uncertainty, Overimagination, and the Push for War

• [39:23–41:22]
  • The administration’s logic shifted from proof to suspicion: if Iraq could build anthrax, it might do so in the future.
  • Paranoia and a climate of fear made anything seem possible, eroding critical thinking.
    • Robert Draper: “If 9/11 was a failure of the imagination ... what happened in the runup to war was an overreliance on the imagination.” [39:23]
  • By Christmas 2001 and early 2002, discussions and speeches turned public attention toward Iraq as the “axis of evil.”
    • George W. Bush: “States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction.” [40:36]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the visceral panic after the anthrax attacks:

  • Tom Daschle: “We were told the next day to bring the clothes that we were wearing … in a garbage bag so they could be disposed. Incredibly naive and ill informed, but that was what we were told.” [20:55]
  • Grant Leslie (Daschle intern on opening the anthrax letter): “I cut a little bit into the top of the envelope. I didn't even open it the whole way, but immediately when I cut, a puff of white powder came out ... I thought immediately that it could be anthrax.” [18:30]

• On the government’s search for an enemy:

  • Gary Greco: “We knew none of [the 9/11 hijackers] to be Iraqis, nor did we possess any evidence of their involvement.” [10:53]
  • Paul Keim (After conclusively ruling out Iraq’s involvement in the anthrax letters): “The scientists weren't surprised. They said, oh, yeah, that makes sense, that they were using the volume strain. ... The American type culture collection ... sold them that strain for $25.” [33:18]

• On how panic shaped foreign policy:

  • Noreen Malone (narrator): “The authorities told the public another attack could come at any moment, anywhere, but also not to panic or the terrorists would win.” [39:02]

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Timeline & Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:04 – Introduction and Dark Winter war game
• 01:45 – Simulating government/media response
• 03:33 – Bush pivots focus after 9/11
• 05:41 – Anthrax fear and public warnings
• 09:07 – Robert Draper on fear inside the White House
• 10:09 – Pentagon shifts attention to linking Iraq and 9/11
• 14:06 – Wolfowitz’s push at Camp David
• 16:01 – Anthrax case revealed in Florida
• 17:19 – Anthrax hits NBC, Tom Brokaw, and Capitol Hill
• 18:30-20:50 – Grant Leslie’s account of opening Senator Daschle’s anthrax letter
• 21:47 – Daschle reflects on changing perceptions of vulnerability
• 25:44 – Cheney publicly speculates about Al Qaeda and anthrax
• 28:11 – John McCain floats Iraq-anthrax connection on Letterman
• 30:47 – ABC’s bentonite report and public impact
• 32:53 – Paul Keim conclusively debunks Iraq link to anthrax
• 39:23 – Draper on imagination, overreaction, and Iraq
• 40:36 – Bush’s “axis of evil” State of the Union

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Closing Insight

The episode captures a nation frayed by real and perceived threats, collectively lurching toward an even larger and more consequential war. It shines a light on how fear—stoked by terrorism, media narratives, bureaucratic overreaction, and bad science—opened the door to the disastrous decision to invade Iraq, especially when critical thought was smothered by the imperative to “connect the dots.”

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For Next Episode

The series will delve deeper into the Bush administration's case for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how shaky intelligence and fear coalesced into irreversible action.

Transcript

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

On day six of the smallpox epidemic, 300 people have died. At least 2,000 are infected with smallpox. This is not a real news report. It's from a video that was commissioned for a war game in June 2001. The US smallpox vaccine supply continues to shrink as officials try to stretch limited stocks to cover the entire nation. The guy who came up with those phony news videos was a former fighter pilot.

[Randy Larson]

I am Randy Larson, Colonel, US Air Force, retired.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Larson taught at the National War College, a school run by the US Department of Defense. In the early aughts. He had a reputation for creating really good war games. Larson had specialized in classic scenarios where one country attacked another. But the nature of war was changing. A group of influential think tanks and academics brought on Larson to design a new kind of game, one that would show the government what it might be like if terrorists attacked the US with biological weapons. The smallpox war game was called Dark Winter.

[Randy Larson]

We had, I think, a dozen participants. You're seated around a table, and we would provide them briefings like they would get in a meeting in the White House during a crisis. We, we would provide those phony newscasts that we made to give them kind of situational awareness. Here's what's going on.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The Dark Winter simulation took place at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Former Senator Sam Nunn played the president. Longtime presidential staffer David Gergen played the national security advisor. And journalists were there too, playing themselves.

[Randy Larson]

We had a producer from CBS News. We had Judy Miller from New York Times. We had a reporter from npr.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

In the scenario that Larson imagined, Saddam Hussein had mobilized Iraqi troops for a possible invasion of Kuwait. The United States was deploying battleships to the Gulf in response. And then someone released smallpox at three locations across the U.S. so one of.

[Randy Larson]

The first things is, in that scenario, well, who would get the vaccine, and how could we get it to them quickly enough? And that was one of the big debates that we wanted to have around the table.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The participants in Dark Winter realized that it would be hard for federal and local governments to work together in an epidemic. Shutting down schools and large gatherings was complicated. Contact tracing was almost impossible.

[Randy Larson]

There's no way you can convince 300 million Americans to do something they don't want to do, that they don't think is in their own best interest.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The media spread dangerous misinformation in the Dark Winter scenario, like the notion that elites were getting a better version of the vaccine than ordinary people. The government closed the borders, the economy tanked, and there were outbreaks of mob violence. The resulting epidemic left A million people dead. The war game was designed with the idea that Al Qaeda was responsible for the smallpox outbreak. They'd gotten the virus from the Iraqi government. Most Americans hadn't heard of Al Qaeda at this point. Even the President wasn't paying much attention to them before 9 11.

[Randy Larson]

When George W. Bush came into office in 2001, it's my opinion that they were primarily focused on more Cold War sorts of threats. Not so much non state actors and not so much things like biological weapons.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The Bush administration knew that terrorism was a threat. A few WEEKS before the 2000 election, an Al Qaeda suicide bomber had attacked a US Navy destroyer off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 sailors. But almost no one thought that terrorism and fear of terrorism would determine U.S. foreign policy for the next decade. In the early days, Bush thought his presidency would focus on domestic issues.

[Randy Larson]

Both parties have been talking about education reform for quite a while. It's time to come together to get it done so that we can truthfully say in America, no child will be left behind.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

So in the summer of 2001, Randy Larson had a tough job. He was trying to sell half interested politicians on the dangers of Al Qaeda and biological warfare. One of the people he briefed on Operation Dark Winter was John Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

[Randy Larson]

Senator Warner comes in. He's taken off his jacket, he's taken off his tie. They had just done their last session. They're going on summer break. And he said, I'll give you 10, 10 minutes. I'm going on vacation. So I, I set my laptop computer and when I played that first phony.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

News clip, smallpox symptoms are being seen in 15 states, also in Canada.

[Randy Larson]

Senator Warner kind of leaned forward, looked at the screen. Ninety minutes later, Senator Warner still asking questions. When we were finished, John Warner said, that's the most frightening presentation I've ever seen.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

A little more than a month after that briefing, terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda did attack the US not with smallpox, but with hijacked planes. In a few hours, the Bush administration's focus changed.

[Randy Larson]

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

After 9 11, Randy Larson was invited to the White House. This time he spoke to a larger audience.

[Randy Larson]

Cheney and Scooter Libby and seven or eight other people from the White House staff there. And about 15 minutes into the presentation, Vice President Cheney asked, what does a biological weapon look like? Which I thought was a fascinating question, because by this time I'd Been doing presentations to general officers for seven years, and not one had ever asked that question. And I know not one of them had ever seen a biological weapon. But I reached into my briefcase and I pulled out a test tube and I said, well, sir, it looks like this, and handed it to him, and it was weaponized bacillus globegi. And I said, by the way, I did just sneak this into your office.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Public officials issued warnings about possible further attacks. Maybe Randy Larson had gotten through to them because they put the danger of biological weapons front and center. Here's Attorney General John Ashcroft.

[Randy Larson]

Yesterday, the FBI issued a nationwide alert based on information they received indicating the possibility of attacks using crop dusting aircraft to distribute chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction as potential threats to Americans.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

A lot of Americans got the message. On September 27, the New York Times reported that people were stocking up on Cipro, an antibiotic used to treat anthrax poisoning. The paper quoted an expert saying that an anthrax attack was considered unlikely. But unlikely didn't mean impossible.

[Randy Larson]

We do not yet know who sent the anthrax, whether it was the same terrorist who committed the attacks on September 11th or whether it was the other international or domestic terrorists. We do know that anyone who would try to infect other people with anthrax is guilty of an act of terror. We will solve these crimes, and we will punish those responsible.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

This is Slow Burn. I'm your host, Noreen Malone. It's impossible to talk about the US Invasion of Iraq without remembering the fear that overwhelmed the United States after 9 11. Americans learned new phrases like ground zero, weapons grade, and homeland security. We didn't want to fly in airplanes or go to shopping malls for fear we'd be targeted in the next attack. The nightly news was full of reports about bombs and disease and poison. It wasn't just ordinary citizens who were afraid. The people in charge of the country were afraid, too. They feared for their personal safety just like everyone else. But also, they felt like they'd screwed up, like they'd missed the warning signs before 9 11. And they had. They were afraid of screwing up again. Every decision they made in the fall of 2001 was inflected with that fear. A month after the towers fell, there was a new kind of terror. How did the Antarctic attacks affect a nation still reeling from 9 11? How did the Bush administration respond to a nationwide panic? And what did all that have to do with Iraq? This is episode two. Terror.

[Randy Larson]

Threats were coming in by the hour, by the day. A truck bomb was barreling down the Bol Baltimore Washington Parkway and headed toward where Bush was going to be giving a speech that the water supply and food supply at the White House was contaminated.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

That's Robert Draper. He's the author of a book about the lead up to the Iraq invasion, called to Start a War.

[Randy Larson]

And Bush was now receiving all this information in a way overcompensating for not having been curious enough about the threats to the homeland. Now he was curious, perhaps to a major fault.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Bush understood the whole country was afraid and that he needed to do something to reassure people. But in private, he was angry.

[Randy Larson]

Bush said as much one afternoon to some faith leaders who came to the White House on September 20th. He said to them, I'm having trouble controlling my bloodlust.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

How would that rage and fear get transformed into foreign policy?

[Randy Larson]

When working in my office, I felt the impact and the explosion of American Airlines Flight 77.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Gary Greco was a senior officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Greco was working in the Pentagon on 9 11.

[Randy Larson]

I stayed there in the Pentagon for the next three days and worked in the command center.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Intelligence officials identified the group behind the 911 attacks right away. It was Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization based in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the morning of September 12, Greco got a request from Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Secretary of Defense. Wolfowitz wanted to know about connections between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups.

[Randy Larson]

The note simply ordered provide information in paper format the history and assessment of Iraq involvement in terrorism since the Gulf War. By this time, we had received reporting from the FAA on the identity of the hijackers. And we knew none of them to be Iraqis, nor did we possess any evidence of their involvement.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Iraq did have some links to terrorist groups, especially Palestinian ones, but not really Al Qaeda. Gary Greco already knew that. So this was a weird request to get just hours after the planes had hit. Why was Wolfowitz scrounging around for this very specific kind of information about a country that seemed basically unrelated to the crisis?

[Randy Larson]

I quickly surmised that a case would be built against Iraq and we would be going to war with them.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Wow.

[Randy Larson]

You know, I just knew this was going to be the turning point.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile you heard from in episode one, was in California on 9 11. He was giving a talk there and his flight home was canceled. All the flights were canceled immediately after the attacks, and he found himself stranded in Santa Monica. While he was there, Chalabi and his top lieutenant got a call from someone in the administration, Robert Draper.

[Randy Larson]

Again, what they were asked was, hey, we're looking for. For anything we can on Saddam's ties to Islamic extremists and in particular, Al Qaeda. Do you have anything?

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi didn't have anything. After all, he was mostly focused on Saddam's atrocities against the people of Iraq. But if some powerful Americans wanted to connect Saddam to Al Qaeda, Chalabi was willing to get on board.

[Randy Larson]

And very, very soon, the Iraqi National Congress, Chalabi's group, was promoting the view that Saddam, in fact, was a major actor in the 911 attacks.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

So Paul Wolfowitz and other officials were looking for evidence that Iraq was involved in the attacks. But what about President Bush?

[Randy Larson]

It would appear that the idea that Saddam might have something to do with this was articulated by Bush for the first time the day after the attack on September 20th, 12th, when he turned to his national security counterterrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, and said, could you look into this? Could you see if Saddam had any involvement? And Clark did so and said, in essence, nope, he didn't have anything to do with it.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

That should have been the end of the search for a connection between 911 and Iraq. The question had been asked by people at the highest levels of government and answered by the people who were best positioned to know. But that wasn't the end. Three days later, Bush and his national security team were gathered at Camp David. They were talking about Afghanistan. That's where US Officials believed Al Qaeda's leaders were holed up. Iraq was not on the agenda, but Paul Wolfowitz thought it should be. Wolfowitz had been obsessed with Iraq for a long time. Here's the pitch he made at Camp David, according to Robert Draper.

[Randy Larson]

We need to go after Iraq. We need to go after Saddam. Saddam is in fact the terrorist in chief, as it were. He is the head of the snake, and we need to cut that head off.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Wolfowitz said there was good reason to believe that Saddam had been involved in the attacks. The CIA knew that Iraqi agents had met with Osama bin Laden in 1995. And Wolfowitz felt certain that Al Qaeda couldn't have pulled off something as complicated as 911 on its own. None of this went over well in the room. Someone pointed out that bin Laden had actually rejected Saddam's overtures back in the 90s.

[Randy Larson]

And Bush at that point basically said, okay. In fact, he explicitly said, we'll save Iraq for later. Those around the table thought it notable that Bush didn't simply say, forget about Iraq, but they also believed that that was basically the end of the subject.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Still, Wolfowitz Wouldn't let it go. Later the same day, he approached Bush and expanded on his pitch. He told the President that the US could oust Saddam with little effort. All you needed was a no fly zone and bombings that would cut Saddam off from Iraq's oil. He said the US Wouldn't need to send that many troops, that Iraqi dissidents could be trained to do the job themselves.

[Randy Larson]

Bush was very intrigued by this and in fact said to his secretary of defense the next day after the meeting, start looking into creative options for Iraq. And though nothing was decided then, a dialogue had begun.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The United States invaded Afghanistan on October 7th. It was a strike at the headquarters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban government that supported them. Meanwhile, in the United States, another terror attack had begun.

[Randy Larson]

A case of anthrax was confirmed today in Florida. The patient is a 63 year old man from Lantana, Florida. He's now hospitalized.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

On October 4, 2001, a photo editor at the parent company of the National Enquirer was diagnosed with anthrax poisoning. That man, Robert Stevens, died a day later. The spores that killed him had come through the mail. As the news got out, authorities in Florida were inundated with calls about suspicious powder. The city of Miami ran out of hazmat suits. The flu, like symptoms of anthrax, can show up within 12 hours to 5 days after exposure. But untreated, it infects the lungs and is often fatal within days. At first it wasn't clear if the case in Florida was an isolated incident. But then more letters laced with anthrax appeared in the mail addressed to the offices of U.S. senators and news outlets.

[Randy Larson]

Good evening. Tonight we find ourselves in the unusual and unhappy position of reporting on one of our beloved colleagues, a member of my personal staff who has contracted a cutaneous anthrax infection.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

One of the anthrax letters was sent to NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw. Two NBC employees contracted anthrax poisoning. Brokaw's personal assistant and the staffer who opened the mail. Brokaw himself was never exposed to anthrax, but he was now at the center of a big story. Here's Tom Daschle. In 2001, he was the Senate Majority Leader.

[Randy Larson]

Just that weekend I had been in New York and Tom Brokaw, who's a friend, a fellow South Dakotan, his office had opened up one and lo and behold, just a couple days later, it happened to me.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Grant Leslie was an intern in Senator Daschle's office. After 911 was a strange time to be interning on Capitol Hill one day was especially strange. I absolutely remember what I was wearing because it was a new outfit that I was very excited about, and it was the first time I'd worn it. It was a gray wool skirt and a burgundy silk blouse. On the day she wore the new wool skirt, there was a huge pile of mail. It was part of her job to open it. One letter in particular stood out because of the childish handwriting on the envelope. And I remember thinking, oh, this is going to be a fun one to open, because when kids. When little kids send letters, they're always really cute. So I was actually excited that I had gotten a good one. I cut a little bit into the top of the envelope. I didn't even open it the whole way, but immediately when I cut, a puff of white powder came out. Sort of think of baby powder, like if you squeezed a baby powder bottle and it would, you know, come up in your face in a puff and sort of land on your clothes. And basically that's what happened. She remembers the white powder showing up brightly on her new dark skirt. Well, I thought immediately that it could be anthrax, because we had certainly been briefed on it and of the news. I remember thinking immediately that I didn't want it to get on anyone else. So just reflexively, I held the letter down towards the floor because I didn't want to spill any more out than what had already gone all over me. Leslie thought it might be a hoax, that it could actually be baby powder. But she stood very still so it wouldn't spread. And a co worker called Capitol Police. They had also opened the envelope the rest of the way and read the letter out loud. So I remember hearing them read the letter because I hadn't read what was in the envelope. Oh, my God. And what did it say? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great. The powder was anthrax. 28 people had been exposed. Leslie took Cipro to treat her exposure, and she was given the option of going to the hospital or going home. She chose home. A week after Leslie's exposure, two D.C. postal workers died from anthrax poisoning. No one realized until it was too late that they had been exposed. We were in probably the best place for it to happen to, and we got treatment right away. It's so unfair that the postal workers and others who died were not in that position. So I think about that a lot. Tom Daschle wasn't in the office when Grant Leslie was exposed to the anthrax. And at first he wasn't allowed to Come back to work.

[Randy Larson]

Ultimately, they did allow me to come over and I hugged people and I began calling their families to tell them what the circumstances were. We were told the next day to bring the clothes that we were wearing. And because I had hugged everybody, the fear was that I had anthrax on my clothes. To bring those clothes into the Capitol building in a garbage bag so they could be disposed. Incredibly naive and ill informed, but that was what we were told. So I remember meeting with the staff and giving them a pep talk with all these bags of clothes in one corner.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

For Daschle, the anthrax letter in his office was a turning point. It changed the way he thought about risk and about America's place in the world. Were you scared?

[Randy Larson]

Yes. This created a new appreciation of how technology and circumstances have erased whatever sense of invulnerability we had. There are so many ways to deliver anthrax. Anthrax released in a subway system, anthrax released in a football field stadium. There were just so many different scenarios. And we understood that all those were possible. And frankly, they're still possible today.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

In total, five people died from the anthrax attacks and 17 got sick. Those numbers might not sound huge, but after 9 11, America was on edge. For the first time in 100 years, American streets have become the front lines.

[Randy Larson]

Of battle, with civilians facing an enemy both visible and invisible. Yeah, checking your mail just took on a new meaning.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

More and more people were stockpiling Cipro. Officials worried that there wouldn't be enough doses for those who were actually exposed to anthrax.

[Randy Larson]

People are coveting prescriptions.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Politicians exposed in the latest attack are.

[Randy Larson]

Exalting it by name. I've already taken one Cipro pill, and doctor doctors like la internist Samuel Fink.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Report being harassed by patients for refusing to dole it out like candy.

[Randy Larson]

I've been met with hostility. They want to protect themselves, their family, their dog, their other pets.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Politicians like New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had to contend with both the lethal attacks and the panic those attacks inspired.

[Randy Larson]

People should just not overreact to this. They should just. I know it's hard to say this, but you gotta keep saying it. That is to relax and deal and deal with it. Work with it.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Government officials knew they were at especially high risk. Dick Cheney in particular became fixated on the threat of bioterrorism. He began to bring a doctor with him when he traveled, and he carried a hazmat suit and a duffel bag. In the days after 9 11, there was so much concern about the safety of high ranking public officials that Cheney spent weeks at an undisclosed location. The undisclosed location became a public obsession in October. Cheney joked about it in a speech at the Al Smith Dinner, an annual event where politicians play comedian.

[Randy Larson]

There's been a good deal of speculation about our whereabouts in recent days. I might as well address the rumors right here tonight. We have not actually been living in a cave. And no, I did not sneak out for cosmetic surgery, although I'm not prepared to rule that out as an option.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The audience at the Al Smith Dinner didn't know it, but when Cheney made that joke, he actually thought he might have been exposed to a biological weapons attack. White House sensors had picked up what seemed to be trace amounts of botulinum toxin, a bacterial protein so lethal that a single gram could kill a million people. If the sensors were right, Cheney would have been exposed when he got the news. The Vice President was on Air Force Two headed to New York. He was freaked out, but there was nothing he could do about it if he had been exposed. So while scientists tested the substance on lab mice, Cheney went to visit ground zero, then delivered his bad comedy routine.

[Randy Larson]

At the White House. Karl Rove was overheard to say, we're sending Cheney to the Al Smith dinner and he's going to bomb.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

After the dinner, Cheney got word the mice had lived. The sensors were wrong. There hadn't been any botulinum toxin after all. But the anthrax that had poisoned other people was real. And Cheney had some strong ideas about who was sending it. Here he is on October 12, just five days after the US invaded Afghanistan.

[Randy Larson]

We know a number of things. We know that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization clearly have already launched an attack that killed thousands of Americans. We know that he has over the years tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction, both biological and chemical weapons. So you start to piece it all together again. We have not completed the investigation and maybe it's coincidence, but I must say I'm. I think the only responsible thing for us to do is to put proceed on the basis that they could be linked.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Coming so soon after 9 11, a lot of people guessed that the anthrax was Al Qaeda's next strike. And several of the letters, like the one sent to Daschle's office, contained what seemed to be radical Islamist threats. George W. Bush echoed his vice president. He said that there wasn't yet hard evidence that Al Qaeda had sent the anthrax letters, but they probably did.

[Randy Larson]

There's no question that anybody who would mail anthrax with the attempt to harm American citizens is a terrorist. And there's no question that Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. So it wouldn't put it past me that they're involved with it, but I have no direct evidence.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

That's what the Bush administration was saying in public. Privately. They were making one more leap. Al Qaeda had money and manpower, but it didn't have the kind of high tech labs you'd need to engineer bioweapons. Iraq might have those labs. It did have them. As recently as the early 90s. A lot of people thought Iraq might still have bioweapons capabilities. Remember in the scenario Randy Larson laid out for the Dark Winter exercise, it was Iraq that supplied the smallpox to Al Qaeda. George W. Bush believed that Saddam Hussein had probably provided the anthrax to Al Qaeda. He said as much to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It's not clear how he came to that conclusion. There was an appetite for that kind of speculation. People were scared. They didn't want uncertainty or doubt. A lot of people thought 9, 11 could have been prevented if the Bush administration had connected the dots. Now they were connecting the dots. They couldn't stop the anthrax attacks, but they could point fingers, paint a picture, give people a concrete idea of the enemy. If we knew who was behind the terror, maybe we could end it. Here's Senator John McCain on the late show with David Letterman.

[Randy Larson]

How are things going in Afghanistan now? I think we're doing fine. I think we'll do fine. The second phase, if I could just make very quickly, the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may, and I emphasize may have come from Iraq. If that may be the case, then that's when some tough decisions are going to have to be made.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Investigators had one main piece of evidence to help them figure out who was behind the anthrax attacks, the anthrax spores themselves. So they turned to scientists, people like Paul Keim. How did you first learn that there was a positive case of anthrax in the United States?

[Randy Larson]

Yeah, I get a call from the FBI.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Keim is a professor at Northern Arizona University, and back in 2001, he was running a DNA lab there. His research focused on anthrax.

[Randy Larson]

I got the call in the afternoon, maybe mid afternoon on a Thursday, and we worked all night. And by early in the morning, four or five in the morning, we were actually scanning our databases to try to see which strain in our database would match up with the pattern that we saw from The Robert Stevens sample.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Robert Stevens, the photo editor and first Antax victim, was still alive when Keim started working, but he died in the hour after the lab identified the anthrax. The Robert Stevens sample matched a strain of anthrax called the AIM strain. It was a kind of anthrax that had been developed in a lab rather than the kind that occurs in nature.

[Randy Larson]

Well, Dr. Fauci, a lot of attention is being paid to the form that these spores took and virulence of strain. Are there different genetic lines? Some that would make you more sick, more readily and others that would, I think. Well, yes, there are certainly that. But what people are talking about, the capability of the microbe, it's the grade of the spore and how they were refined and put in a way that's much more likely to disseminate in an aerosolized or airborne way versus one that's crudely made and just might clump to the ground and be much less dangerous.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Identifying the AIM strain was helpful, but it didn't solve the mystery. There were labs all over the world that could have made the anthrax, including more than a dozen in the US alone. But it didn't seem likely Al Qaeda had direct access to one of those labs. If Al Qaeda did have something to do with the attacks, they would have needed help. The next possible break in the case came from a different research laboratory. Those tests showed something Paul Keim's DNA lab wouldn't have seen.

[Randy Larson]

From three well placed but separate sources tonight, ABC News has been told that initial tests on the anthrax sent to Senator Daschle have found a tell tale chemical additive whose name means a lot to weapons experts. It is called bentonite.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

ABC News Brian Ross said that telltale additive was a huge clue. It meant that the spores were engineered so that they were just the right size to spread through the air and to lodge in the lungs. According to Ross, this meant the anthrax likely came from one particular enemy of the United States.

[Randy Larson]

It's possible other countries may be using it too, but it is a trademark of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. It does mean for me that Iraq becomes the prime suspect as the source for the anthrax used in these letters.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

A White House spokesman told ABC that no bentonite had been found in the anthrax. But in the days that followed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said serious people were still looking into the bentonite question seriously. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government denied having anything to do with the anthrax full stop. But they also refused to allow weapons inspectors into the country to confirm it. Here's Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz on October 23, 2001.

[Randy Larson]

Anthrax is existing in many, many countries.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

In the world, including the united. The United States is the major producer of anthrax. Singling out Iraq only is biased and is not just. Iraq's refusal to play along with weapons inspectors seemed extremely suspicious. Iraq had lied about its weapons capabilities before, and Saddam had praised the 911 attacks. It looked like he had something to hide. He In November 2001, the FBI sent the anthrax expert Paul Keim a sample of spores that they'd collected from an Iraqi Lab in the 1990s. If this was the same kind of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, that would mean Iraq was probably involved.

[Randy Larson]

And we tested it, and it was not the same as the anthrax letters. And so that was a really important negative result.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Keim told the FBI that the Iraqis used the volum strain of anthrax, not the aim strain, which was the one that had showed up in all the letters. So how did government officials react when you told them, no, the Iraqis don't have the aim strain?

[Randy Larson]

Well, I was, of course, talking to scientists, and the scientists weren't surprised. They said, oh, yeah, that makes sense, that they were using the volume strain. One of them even told me, and I've confirmed this, that the Iraqis purchased that strain from a US company back in 1985. The American type culture collection, which is in northern Virginia, sold them that strain. And I heard it was for $25, a handling fee.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

So who was right? On one side, there were the people talking about bentonite, the telltale additive that meant Iraq had to be involved in the anthrax attacks. And then there was Paul Keim, whose test showed Iraq couldn't be involved. Keim was right. The bentonite people were wrong. The other lab had misinterpreted what it found in the sample. There was no bentonite in the anthrax. That story wasn't public at the time, though, in 2001, and the scientist who had made the error had gone to the White House to brief officials. On October 24, Paul Keim's discovery was made public. It was a front page story in the New York Times, but even so, it didn't get much other media attention. The Times published that story three days before Christmas on one of the biggest travel days of the year. That same day, a man was arrested for trying to set off a bomb on a flight from Paris to Miami.

[Randy Larson]

Robin, that suspect has just been identified by the name of Richard Reed. He was carrying. It appeared that he was trying to set his shoes or wires attached to his shoes on fire. And at that point, the flight attendant.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The anthrax letters had stopped, and there was something new to fear. In November 2001, the FBI announced it had a suspect profile for the person sending the anthrax. A man, someone with a scientific background and access to technical equipment, who had some connection to Trenton, New Jersey. The FBI did not publicly speculate about his motives or nationality for years. No more information was revealed about this man. No arrest was made, and the case was never officially solved. Seven years later, in 2008, the FBI met with Paul Keim outside Washington. They had questions for him about an anthrax researcher he knew, one of the scientists who first worked with the Ames strain, the same type of anthrax that had been sent through the mail. Can you tell me a little bit more about Bruce Ivins, what he was like, what you remember of him?

[Randy Larson]

Yeah, you know, you're asking kind of a nerdy scientist to describe another nerdy scientist. So for me, he was pretty normal, you know, but my wife would probably say, no, he was a little nerdy.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Nothing seemed off or like, yeah, interesting, no. In 2008, Keim was stunned when the FBI told him that Ivins was their main suspect.

[Randy Larson]

They just sat there and thought, really, Bruce?

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

You know, does their case make sense to you? Does it add up for you?

[Randy Larson]

Well, so since then, of course, I was the chair of the National Science advisory Board for biosecurity. So I've seen all the evidence. And their case was based upon a lot of circumstantial evidence. You know, where were you? Where weren't you? Were you within driving distance of the mailboxes? Did you have access to the AIM strain? And Bruce did. But on the other hand, there was no confession. You know, there was no fingerprints on the letters. There was many, many things that would have been definitive evidence in court that didn't exist.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Here's some of that circumstantial evidence Keim was talking about. It wasn't just that Ivins was one of the first scientists to work with the AIM strain. The FBI identified genetic markers in the anthrax used in the letters that matched the anthrax from Ivins own lab. And the FBI thought that Ivins had a motive, too, one that had nothing to do with jihad. Investigators believed that Ivins might have been worried that no one would care about biological weapons anymore. That the funding for studying anthrax. His life's work might dry up. It wasn't a crazy thing for him to think. Paul Keim says he had the same thought in the days after 9 11. So the FBI's theory went. IVINS mailed the anthrax spores and wrote letters saying Allah is great to make sure everyone was scared of anthrax. If that was his plan, it worked. Everyone was scared. And that fear had far reaching consequences. Not long after the FBI called Keim in, Bruce Ivins died by suicide. Keim still isn't quite sure what to make of the whole thing.

[Randy Larson]

Bruce's suicide was not an admission of guilt or it shouldn't be interpreted that way. Now that doesn't mean he wasn't guilty either. But I'm just saying that you can't use his suicide as an admission of guilt.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Some experts still don't think Ivins was responsible for the attacks. It makes sense to them that the anthrax would have come from someone working in an American lab. But there are some technical details about the anthrax and Ivins work specifically that just don't add up for them. Still, a year and a half after Ivins died, the FBI closed the anthrax case.

[Randy Larson]

You know, one of the things I regret about the whole thing is that we weren't allowed to continue the analysis. So you know, that evidence could be investigated in much more sophisticated ways. But when they closed the case, they destroyed the evidence. So that's not even possible today.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

If the 911 attacks transformed the world overnight, the anthrax episode revealed what it was going to be like to live in that world. The authorities told the public another attack could come at any moment, anywhere, but also not to panic or the terrorists would win. In the months after 9 11, the people in charge were willing to believe almost anything.

[Randy Larson]

Robert Draper Particularly in the context of what had happened on September 11. Everybody was reluctant to rule anything out. The unimaginable had occurred and now it was time to start imagining like crazy. To me that's the real lesson of the Iraq Saga, that if 911 was a failure of the imagination, as has been often said, then what happened in the run up to war was an over reliance on the imagination.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

The White House knew there was no solid evidence connecting Iraq to the anthrax attacks. But Iraq could make anthrax or other bioweapons. It might want to use them against the United States someday soon. For the Bush administration it wasn't enough anymore just to be prepared. They wanted to go on the offensive. By Christmas 2001, George W. Bush was talking to the military's top brass about what an invasion of Iraq might look like after the holiday. In the State of the Union address, Bush and his speechwriters helped Americans focus on the next enemy.

[Randy Larson]

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

Next time on Slow Burn. The Bush administration goes all in on weapons of mass destruction.

[Randy Larson]

As soon as you got there, we had chemical detectors and our chemical alarms went off, so there was poisonous gas in the air. The thing about intelligence is you can find almost anything you want on a spectrum. I was told, come on, Jane, it's a rock. You know, if this, if he didn't do this, then he did something else. So, you know, why not we.

[Narrator (Noreen Malone)]

We just say this? Slow Burn is a production of Slate Plus, Slate's membership program. Slate plus members get bonus episodes of Slow Burn every week, where we'll go behind the scenes into making the show and air clips and interviews that we couldn't fit in here. On this week's bonus episode, you'll be hearing from Ann Curry, who covered the 911 attacks in the Iraq War for NBC. Head over to slate.com slowburn to sign up and listen now, it's only a dollar for your first month. We couldn't make Slow Burn without the support of Slate plus, so please sign up if you can. Head over to slate.com slowburn and one more note of business. Gary Greco, who you heard from earlier in this episode, wanted to be clear that he was speaking to us in his personal capacity, not on behalf of the dia. Slow Burn is produced by me, Jason De Leon and Sophie Summergrad, with editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Roth. Our mix engineer is Merritt Jacob. Brendan Angelides composed our theme song. The artwork for Slow Burn is by Jim Cook. Special thanks to Jared Holt, Allison Benedict, June Thomas, Derek John, Laura Bennett, Joel Anderson, Megan Kallstrom, Rachel Strom, Seth Brown, Chow Tu, Asha Saluja, Katie Rayford, and Avi Zettleman. Thanks for listening. If you're looking for new ways to get ahead, then you're our kind of person. We're Udemy and we help learners like you upskill in AI productivity, leadership and management, and more. Learn at your own pace from real world experts. You can also prep for certifications that show employers what you know upskill for the career you [e-mail] now back to your regularly scheduled listening.