In October 1997, a United Nations special commission discovered evidence of bioweapons in Iraq; a month later, Iraq barred a U.S. team from inspecting suspect facilities, nearly precipitating war. On the bioterrorist front, in February 1998 two men were arrested in Las Vegas, Nev., for allegedly transporting anthrax bacilli for the purpose of creating a weapon. Authorities dropped the charges within days, however, when the FBI determined that the men had a vaccine strain, which they reportedly were stockpiling in case of attack by Iraq. And between the Iraq and Las Vegas incidents, President Bill Clinton announced last January in his State of the Union address his intent to strengthen the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) "with a new international inspection system to detect and deter cheating."
On the domestic front, more than 100 U.S. cities began biowarfare preparedness programs in the summer of 1997 as part of the federal ...
