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Toxic Scenario
June 17, 2005
BOB GARFIELD:
This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
A couple of weeks ago, an op-ed in the New York Times raised a truly frightening scenario. It went a little something like this: terrorists buy a few grams of botulism toxin from an overseas black market lab, prepare it with the help of an online recipe, and pour a jug of this stuff into a milk tank at a dairy farm or on a parked milk truck.
The bad milk goes on to taint a hundred thousand gallons of milk at a processing plant, and is eventually consumed by hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting people, half of whom die a painful death from botulism poisoning.
The op-ed was written by Stanford business professor Lawrence Wein who had earlier detailed the toxic milk scenario in a much longer piece for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious science journal.
As it happened, that longer piece never saw the light of day. Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, explains why.
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
It was all set to be published. It had a publication date. And then the Department of Health and Human Services intervened, and they said, whoa - this paper is a road map to terrorism. Please don't publish it. And the Journal decided to defer publication until they could review the matter further.
BOB GARFIELD:
This argument, that some scientific research has to be suppressed because it can become a how-to manual for terrorists, has been forwarded before. In general, how do you feel about that kind of censorship before the fact?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
It is, of course, very troubling. It's also a, a challenging policy issue, because one has to consider the possibility that there is merit to the government claim. No one wants to create vulnerabilities that did not already exist.
On the other hand, sometimes in order to remedy a problem, you have to confront it explicitly, and the best way to do that, in many cases, is open publication.
BOB GARFIELD:
So Professor Wein said, "Okay, you're not going to publish my scientific paper. I'm going to, I'm going to go to another venue for this - the New York Times." The piece runs, quite alarming, but was not the last word on the subject.
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
Well, on close examination of the professor's argument, it became clear that there were serious problems with it - factual errors and exaggerations. For example, he argued that a terrorist could follow the instructions in an online Al Qaeda terrorist manual regarding the preparation of botulism toxin. But if you study that manual, it becomes clear that it does not contain instructions for how to obtain the toxic material and how to prepare it.
Two independent scientists, Milton Leitenberg and George Smith, they prepared an op-ed rebuttal that they submitted to the New York Times, hoping to correct those errors. Unfortunately, the New York Times said that, as a matter of policy, they do not publish rebuttals on the op-ed page.
BOB GARFIELD:
It's understandable that the Times has a no-rebuttal policy, because if it didn't, there would be no end to discussion of any subject, but, but when the stakes are so high, is this time for a newspaper to cling to a no-rebuttal policy?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
The New York Times obviously is entitled to run its newspaper as it sees fit, but I think that it will not realize its full potential for public service unless it provides a better way to correct errors and to engage conflicting perspectives.
BOB GARFIELD:
As the government does more and more to suppress publication in scientific journals and so forth about potential threats, have you detected a kind of reciprocal willingness by the popular press to be in the fear-mongering business?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
I think there is an unhealthy fear factor at work on all sides of the issue. The government is prone to assume worst case scenarios when it comes to information disclosure, and therefore to withhold more information than is necessary.
On the other side of things, I think there is a popular attraction to the lurid possibilities that are out there and a kind of eagerness to entertain extreme scenarios.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, the willingness to entertain doomsday scenarios isn't necessarily confined to the press. It's also going on, on the floor of the House of Representatives, [LAUGHS] as a matter of fact. Tell me the electro-magnetic pulse story.
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
As recently as last week, a member of Congress, Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican from Maryland, was warning that 100% of our potential enemies know all about electro-magnetic pulse. What is that? That is the effect of detonating a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere. It generates a pulse, which disables electric and electronic systems that are unshielded. Congressman Bartlett was warning that terrorists could simply launch a Scud missile - "simply" was his words,
[LAUGHTER]
from, from off the coast of the United States and disable all of our electronic systems.
Not only that, he argued, but we ought to immediately invest in a crash program to harden our electronic systems against such an attack. It is a completely far-fetched threat assessment, but there are no policy mechanisms in place to say, wait a minute, this is not anywhere near the top of the list of the problems we have to confront.
BOB GARFIELD:
Aren't you actually saying contradictory things, Steve? On the one hand, you applaud the open public discussion of potential threats. On the other hand, when someone does stand in the most public of forums to call attention to what he perceives as a threat, then you know, you're, you're kind of ridiculing it. Isn't it better that even the most far-fetched scenarios are discussed in public so that we can all weigh their relative importance?
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
Absolutely. And, and I, I don't think there is a contradiction. Publication's just the beginning of what should be a deliberative process. Everybody makes errors, and there's no shame in it. The important thing is to provide mechanisms where competing claims can be evaluated, errors can be identified and corrected, and what I miss is the error correction mechanism. That's where our deliberative process has gone astray.
BOB GARFIELD:
Okay, Steve. Well, listen, as always, thank you very much.
STEVEN AFTERGOOD:
Thanks very much.
BOB GARFIELD:
Steve Aftergood is the director of the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy.
copyright 2005 WNYC Radio
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