NOTORIOUS BIOTERROR FEAR SALESMAN STUMPS FOR OBAMA: Not the best choice in help
"Former Navy Secretary [under Bill Clinton] Richard Danzig will make stops in South Carolina [today] to talk about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's plans to keep America safe and restore its international reputation," read a press release from earlier this week.
"Danzig will answer questions from honor students at Myrtle Beach High School Friday afternoon and headline a community gathering at the Horry County Public Library in Conway that evening ... Danzig is the Sam Nunn Prize Fellow in International Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a consultant to the Department of Defense on terrorism, with a focus on bioterrorism."
Your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow informs readers Richard Danzig is many things -- a learned man, a lawyer, a former Rhodes scholar.
What he probably is not, however, is an expert on terrorism in the real world.
During his government tenure under the Clinton administration, Danzig was singlemindely focused on the threat of catastrophic bioterrorism. And the terrorism Danzig was concerned with had nothing to do with what was going on in the real world. It was all about potentials for apocalyptic attacks, the kinds of which have not taken place and which today lack little, if any, resemblance to terrorist threats as they are carried out.
In an analysis of the threat of bioterrorism published by Milton Leitenberg in 2005, the author wrote that potentials for attacks were "grossly oversimplified" during 1997. As they still are today, ten whole years later.
"Former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig's 1997 and 1999 papers contain an example," continued Leitenberg.
"[A kilogram] of anthrax, depending on meteorological conditions and means of delivery, has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a metropolitan area," wrote Danzig [as cited by Leitenberg].
"[Biological] weapons are so potent and cheap ... the technology is readily available ... so many of our enemies have biological warfare capabilities ..." continue some Danzig quotes.
"The years between 1995 and 2000 were characterized then, by -- spurious statistics (hoaxes counted as biological events); unknowable predictions, gross exaggeration of the feasibility of successfully producing biological agents, except in the case of recruitment of highly experience professionals, of which there was still no evidence as of 2000; the apparent continued absence of a thorough threat assessment; and thoughtless, ill-considered, counter-productive and extravagant rhetoric," concluded Leitenberg.
And after 9/11, virtually all attempts at thoughtful analyses of bioterrorism potentials, as well as evaluations of what terrorists might be able to do based upon objective scrutiny of their documents and materials, were overcome in favor of what Leitenberg calls "fact-free analysis."
In the late Nineties, Richard Danzig's advice and counsel on bioterrorism fit under this umbrella. And it would seem that in 2007, he is not particularly well chosen as someone who would explain Barack Obama's "plans to keep America safe [from terrorism] and restore its international reputation."
Danzig to stump for Obama. Press release.
Leitenberg source: Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat.
"Former Navy Secretary [under Bill Clinton] Richard Danzig will make stops in South Carolina [today] to talk about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's plans to keep America safe and restore its international reputation," read a press release from earlier this week.
"Danzig will answer questions from honor students at Myrtle Beach High School Friday afternoon and headline a community gathering at the Horry County Public Library in Conway that evening ... Danzig is the Sam Nunn Prize Fellow in International Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a consultant to the Department of Defense on terrorism, with a focus on bioterrorism."
Your friendly neighborhood GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow informs readers Richard Danzig is many things -- a learned man, a lawyer, a former Rhodes scholar.
What he probably is not, however, is an expert on terrorism in the real world.
During his government tenure under the Clinton administration, Danzig was singlemindely focused on the threat of catastrophic bioterrorism. And the terrorism Danzig was concerned with had nothing to do with what was going on in the real world. It was all about potentials for apocalyptic attacks, the kinds of which have not taken place and which today lack little, if any, resemblance to terrorist threats as they are carried out.
In an analysis of the threat of bioterrorism published by Milton Leitenberg in 2005, the author wrote that potentials for attacks were "grossly oversimplified" during 1997. As they still are today, ten whole years later.
"Former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig's 1997 and 1999 papers contain an example," continued Leitenberg.
"[A kilogram] of anthrax, depending on meteorological conditions and means of delivery, has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a metropolitan area," wrote Danzig [as cited by Leitenberg].
"[Biological] weapons are so potent and cheap ... the technology is readily available ... so many of our enemies have biological warfare capabilities ..." continue some Danzig quotes.
"The years between 1995 and 2000 were characterized then, by -- spurious statistics (hoaxes counted as biological events); unknowable predictions, gross exaggeration of the feasibility of successfully producing biological agents, except in the case of recruitment of highly experience professionals, of which there was still no evidence as of 2000; the apparent continued absence of a thorough threat assessment; and thoughtless, ill-considered, counter-productive and extravagant rhetoric," concluded Leitenberg.
And after 9/11, virtually all attempts at thoughtful analyses of bioterrorism potentials, as well as evaluations of what terrorists might be able to do based upon objective scrutiny of their documents and materials, were overcome in favor of what Leitenberg calls "fact-free analysis."
In the late Nineties, Richard Danzig's advice and counsel on bioterrorism fit under this umbrella. And it would seem that in 2007, he is not particularly well chosen as someone who would explain Barack Obama's "plans to keep America safe [from terrorism] and restore its international reputation."
Danzig to stump for Obama. Press release.
Leitenberg source: Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat.
posted by George Smith at 9:04 AM
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