Preface
In December 1997， six years after the Persian Gulf War， the Pentagon
announced that it had decided to vaccinate its 2.4 million soldiers and
reservists against anthrax. It seemed to be a curious move. Saddam
Hussein s biological weapons program had been exposed more than
two years earlier. So what had changed? Was the decision driven by a
new， even more frightening danger from germ weapons? Was the
Clinton administration looking for an international issue on which it
could appear tough?
We set out to explore for the New York Times what had motivated
the decision. From the beginning， we worked as a team: a science
writer with a knowledge of weapons， a veteran foreign correspondent
who had tracked international terrorism， and an editor who had in-
vestigated the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. We were skep-
tical， well aware of how federal agencies often inflate such dangers to
justify their existence and budgets.
We quickly learned that the anthrax decision was part of a much
larger government effort to combat what officials believed was a
growing danger from germ weapons. Over the next three years， we
followed the story from Washington to Kazakhstan to Japan to Russia，
eventually deciding to write this book. The issues were as complex
and intellectually challenging as any we have ever examined， cutting
across science， intelligence， and foreign affairs. We came to see the de-
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