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WASHINGTON-The United States has done too little to prepare for another potential domestic anthrax attack six years after spore-laden mail killed five people, a former CIA director and other experts said on Wednesday."I think we're very poorly prepared," James Woolsey, who headed the CIA from 1993 to 1995, said at a news conference to unveil a report by a security consulting firm warning of U.S. vulnerability to another anthrax attack.Anthrax is a sometimes fatal disease caused by Bacillus anthracis, a bacterium that forms spores. The spores can be used as a biological weapon and are most deadly when inhaled into the lungs. Experts have worried particularly about the possible release of an anthrax weapon in an urban setting. "Biological weapons have the potential lethality, if cleverly used, up in the range of hundreds of thousands of people and the range of millions-up in the range of nuclear weapons-but with relative simplicity of construction," Woolsey said."One is talking about assembling and operating something not much more complicated than a microbrewery attached to a restaurant," Woolsey said.In the weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, five people died and 17 others were sickened when anthrax spores were mailed in letters to media and government offices in New York, Washington and Florida. Those cases have not been solved.The report released by ExecutiveAction, a Washington-based risk management and security consulting company, concluded that the United States faces a high threat of an anthrax attack and remains largely unprepared.ExecutiveAction CEO Neil Livingstone, an expert on terrorism, said the United States needs to do more to develop an improved anthrax vaccine, better drugs to treat people exposed to the spores and better ways to detect them.To read more go to:
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