<nettime> Re: A failure of vision?

[ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS <anastasios.kozaitis@verizon.net>]

I work in New York City at The Rockefeller University, and we were given 
the opportunity to hear a lecture yesterday on NYC's plans in case of 
emergency terrorism. The person who spoke to the University community was 
Jerry Hower, I believe, but I know that the spelling of his name is 
incorrect. He is the man who has developed NYC's emergency plan against 
terrorism. He admitted that he had thought through all types of 
terrorism--chemical, biological, and small bombs, etc. But, he said that 
unfortunately he never imagined a 767 flown into the WTC.

The chemical materials he discussed were:
Sarin
Tabun
VX
Soman
Cyanide
Mustard/Blistering agents

The biological materials:
Anthrax
Small pox
Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B (SEB)

He said that he is least concerned with chem warfare because it would take 
so much to contaminate a large body of the population, and he included the 
NYC water supply. They do test the water supply but not dynamically like 
the Israelis do, he admitted. He had just visited Israel to see how often 
and what types of testing the Israelis do on their water supply. But, NYC 
uses 1.2B gallons of water/day, and he believes that to contaminate the 
city's water supply on a level that would hurt a large body of the 
population is still very difficult. He did not, however, rule out targeting 
distinct areas of the city.

As for the biological warfare, he said that with anthrax, etc. we get a 
window of approximately 3 days. He is concerned with this, and believes 
that NYC will be a target of bio warfare rather soon. The city has created 
an algorithm to track the purchasing of certain over the counter products 
from pharmacies. The city knows how many types of diuretics, etc. are sold 
on a day to day basis, and a report is run every morning at 5:00 a.m. The 
Director of the Office of Emergency Management reads it first thing every 
day, he said. As soon as the numbers jump over a certain threshold, the 
stockpile is released. Every amublance in the city has vaccines for chem-bio.

I have been hearing people say that the "terrorists" have finished with 
NYC, that they will hit somewhere else next, which I do not believe, and 
Hower said he did not believe that in the least either.

--Ak


==========================
From: "Simon Huck" <huck@cyberday.de>
Subject: A failure of vision?
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 15:58:48 +0200

Terrorist assault against World Trade Center:
A failure of vision?

"Nobody could have imagined such an attack" was an often heard comment in
the days since September 11, 2001. That is a little incorrect: Some experts
developed already years ago scenarios, which even in detail forecasted
possible dimensions of an terrorist attack against the United States. John
Arquilla from Rand Corp., a Santa Monica based think tank mainly sponsored
by United States forces painted a picture how "the great cyberwar of 2002"
could force United States into a war "where the enemy is invisible, the
battles virtual, and the casualties all too real".

But even three captains of United States Air Force were already in autumn
1997 concerned with possible dimensions of an terrorist attack against
Washington D.C. Until recently this text, printed in summer edition of
"Aerospacepower Journal", was available online. Since some days the server
of United States Air Forec University is closed down. Cyberday´s Art Portal
therefore decided to make this important text available.
http://www.cyberday.de/news/ausgabe.php3?news=100028

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