Smallpox Exercise Poses Big Question: Is Anyone Ready?

WASHINGTON — At 9:03 a.m., a TV broadcast reported an outbreak of smallpox in four European countries, and a terrorist group tied to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for spreading one of history's most dreaded diseases.

By midafternoon, as the president of the United States and leaders of major Western nations struggled to contain a cascade of horrors, authorities confirmed 3,320 smallpox cases across the globe. They warned of 660,000 potential victims, major political upheavals and a collapsing world economy in the weeks ahead.

That was the fake but terrifying scenario played out in a darkened hotel ballroom here Friday by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and 11 senior European diplomats and politicians. For seven hours, they grappled with a grim tabletop exercise that fused fact and fiction to help educate government officials about the growing threat of bioterrorism.

"The scenario we posited is very conservative," Tara O'Toole, head of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said at the close of the privately funded $250,000 session. "This could have been much worse. The age of engineered biological weapons is here. It is now."

The CIA agrees. The National Intelligence Council, the CIA's in-house think tank, warned in a report Thursday that terrorists were more likely to obtain and use pathogens and pestilence than nuclear weapons to cause mass casualties in the next 15 years.

The council based its assessment on dramatic advances in genetic research and biotechnology, the availability of scientific information and supplies on the Internet, and the emergence of sophisticated terrorist "groups, cells and individuals" who may be "particularly suited" to brewing lethal germs at home.

"Indeed, the bioterrorist's laboratory could well be the size of a household kitchen, and the weapon built there could be smaller than a toaster," the council wrote. "Terrorist use of biological agents is therefore likely, and the range of options will grow."

Because incubation periods typically can be measured in days or weeks, the report added, "an attack could be well underway before authorities could be cognizant of it."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration and Congress have poured billions of dollars into programs to upgrade security and develop vaccines to prevent or control epidemics. But critics say far more needs to be done to counter potential bioterrorism.