In My Time - Dick Cheney [203]
BY THE SUMMER OF 2002, the anthrax attacks that had followed shortly after 9/11 had not been solved, and I had received numerous reports about terrorist interest in dangerous biological and chemical substances. In Principals Meetings we had discussed threats that might emanate from Russia’s former biological weapons program, whether from loose stockpiles of biological warfare agents or unemployed scientists. The war in Afghanistan had given us access to sites in that country that showed al Qaeda’s work on biological weapons to be further along than had been suspected.
My staff and I spent significant time on response measures, such as whether and how to produce, stockpile, and administer vaccines for anthrax and smallpox. We discussed vaccination against bioterrorist threats, a very controversial subject, even when applied to a well-defined segment of the population—such as the American military. There had been only limited use of the anthrax vaccine during the first Gulf War, and critics claimed it risked adverse side effects. I was among those who believed the risk was well worth taking, particularly for troops going into areas where the development of biological weapons had been reported. It seemed to me, however, that if the men and women of our armed forces were going to have to act on that belief, I should, too, and I received the vaccine series. I received a smallpox vaccine, as well.
Smallpox was a concern not only because it is disfiguring and deadly but because so many Americans were unprotected. Routine vaccination had ceased in 1972 after the disease was eradicated in the United States, but even those who had been vaccinated before were not necessarily safe because acquired immunity gradually declines.
During our first months in office, Scooter Libby and others on my staff had studied the results of an exercise, called “Dark Winter,” that had simulated the effect of a smallpox attack on the United States. A group of distinguished Americans acted the parts of the National Security Council, with former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn playing the president. The scenario they were given posited terrorist attacks with smallpox in Oklahoma City, with the infection spreading rapidly around the country and beyond. Despite the best efforts of exercise participants, sixteen thousand people were infected within two weeks, with seventeen thousand more expected to fall ill in the twelve days after that. These numbers represented just the first two generations of the disease. In the fourth generation, it was estimated, there might be as many as three million infected, with as many as one million dying.
One of the primary problems faced by exercise participants was a shortage of vaccine, which was, in fact, the situation in the United States in early 2001. My office began pressing the Department of Health and Human Services to get more vaccine produced and to make plans for its distribution. In October 2001 the department announced plans to increase the stockpile of U.S. smallpox vaccine to 300 million doses—one for every American.
On July 17, 2002, I flew to Atlanta with Scooter and my homeland security advisor, Carol Kuntz, for a daylong series of briefings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I met with the CDC smallpox experts, toured their anthrax laboratory, and received a briefing on biological warfare countermeasures. The men and women of the CDC, including the new director, Dr. Julie Gerberding,