U.S. officialU.S. official: Biological attack on U.S.
State Department terrorism specialist ranks biological attack as posing the greatest danger to the U.S. population, and that it will happen
There is a “very high” probability that a terrorist group will strike using nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, says Henry Crumpton, U.S. State Department counterterrorism coordinator. “I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of mass destruction) as very high. It is simply a question of time.” Crumpton said a biological attack was potentially the most troubling scenario. He said evidence from Afghanistan suggested al-Qaeda had been seeking to develop anthrax before the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. “It is not just the nuclear threat that bothers me,” he said. “I think, if anything, the biological threat is going to grow. As catastrophic as a nuclear attack would be, it would be self-contained. But if you look at a worst-case scenario for a biological attack, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it was a terrorist attack, and it would be far more difficult to contain.”
-read more in this AP report
