America’s First Bioterror Event

While Carus admits that there, “is no commonly accepted definition of bioterrorism,” his survey requires a definition.109 Thus, for the purposes of his study, he stipulates that bioterrorism is, “assumed to involve the threat or use of biological agents by individuals or groups motivated by political, religious, ecological, or other ideological objectives.”110 Carus explains that many official definitions of terrorism tend to focus entirely on a particular set of motives – the intimidation of governments or societies. However, this focus ignores the possibility that, for some terrorists, the goal of mass casualty may be an end in itself. Here, Carus has in mind groups with what he calls “apocalyptic visions.”111 Such groups use violence

109

W. Seth Carus, “Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: the Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900,” (Working paper, National Defense University, Washington DC, 2001), 3, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a402108.pdf.

110 _{Carus, “Bioterrorism and biocrimes,” 3.} 111 _Ibid.

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in order to further, “millenarian visions of creating a better society.”112 He cites as an example a pair of teenagers from Chicago who, in 1972, formed a group called R.I.S.E. and planned to contaminate the water supply with Salmonella typhi as part of a racist plot to kill large numbers of Chicagoans and repopulate the city with whites.113 Additionally, Carus suggests that some terrorist have objectives that are not coercive but manipulative. That is, some terrorist attacks may be designed not to look like terrorist attacks. He specifically explains that, “in many instances success depended on the lack of appreciation that a disease outbreak was intentional.”114 This exception clearly fits the case of the Rajneeshee food poisoning. Thus:

A bioterrorist can include any non-state actor who uses or threatens to use biological agents on behalf of a political, religious, ecological, or other ideological cause without reference to its moral or political justice.115

That is, the root of bioterrorism is terrorists and the root of terrorism is ideology. What matters is motives. Carus intends to maintain the traditional motivations ascribed to terrorists themselves, but enlarge the set of possible activities that a terrorist might want to engage in. In this framework, a bioterrorist attack is nothing other than a biological attack perpetrated by a terrorist.

Any non-state actor with a motive beyond the crime itself qualifies as a terrorist, save when the ‘crime’ is nothing other than terrorizing. Carus extends his consideration of bioterrorists to include also biocriminals, both because he wishes to make a meaningful distinction between the two and also because both face similar obstacles in acquiring and using biological weapons.116 This second category, the biocriminal, is synonymous with “traditional

112 _{Ibid., 9.} 113 Ibid., 102-103. 114 _{Ibid., 3.} 115 _Ibid. 116 _{Ibid., 7.}

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criminal motives.”117 Such motives include murder, extortion, damage of crops, revenge, and the disruption of some activity or institution.118 Carus explains that even some criminals intend to terrorize their victims, but the terrorism is limited to the victim and therefore fails to qualify as proper terrorism. Interestingly, it is probably the case that Bruce Ivins, the case of interest in Chapter 4, would not count as a bioterrorist in Carus’ view as Ivins had no clearly demonstrated ideological motive.119 This represents a disconnect between Carus’ definition and the post-9/11 legal definition of terrorism in which use of any weapon of mass destruction, regardless of motive, qualifies as terrorism.120 Importantly, Carus’ report predates 9/11 as well as the Amerithrax investigation.

Carus’ report quite extensively lays out every potential case that might fit as a bioterror event. His report contains research on 270 alleged cases of bioterrorism (planned or carried out). Ninety of these are not confirmable and ruled out as conjecture (the aforementioned skeptical move). Ninety-seven of the confirmable cases are not clearly “criminal” or “terrorist,” and thus ruled out because the relevant motives are undeterminable. Twenty-seven of the cases include motives which Carus deems correctly understood as “terrorist”. In eight cases a biological agent was acquired, but in only five cases the agent was used. Two of the confirmed agent acquisitions happened after World War II.121 One of these was the various failed biological attacks carried out by Aum Shinrikyo; the other is the 1984 Rajneeshee food poisoning.122

117 _Ibid. 118

Ibid., 9, Table 2.

119 _{“Most of the motivations mentioned would lead to his characterization as a biocriminal.” Seth Carus, e-mail}

message to author, February 23, 2012.

120 _{Title VIII of the USA PATRIOT Act changed several aspects of the US Code of Justice relating to terrorism.}

One alteration was the inclusion of biological weapons as a weapon of mass destruction. Use of such a weapon is sufficient for prosecution under the terrorism statute. See U.S. Code 18 (2002), § 175.

121 _{Carus includes three events concurrent with or prior to WWII as bioterrorist activities: the use of anthrax-}

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Why the Rajneeshee and their outbreak are included in the category of bioterrorism as opposed to biocrime is not completely clear, but Carus’ description of the event and the group offers some clues. As he sees the group, the Rajneeshees, like the Aum Shinrikyo, are “religious cults with political agendas.”123 Thus, the Rajneeshees may qualify as a terrorist group since they have, in general, the kinds of motives which fit Carus’ framework. In this view, the food poisoning is a bioterror attack because it is a biological attack made by terrorists. Additionally, since the food poisoning was, in and of itself, designed as part of a larger plot to disrupt an election, the attack has an agenda beyond the attack.124 While Sheela may have enjoyed terrorizing the citizens, she was not targeting them specifically for revenge or extortion. Thus, the food poisoning was a bioterror attack because it was a biological attack made with terroristic motives. Perhaps the claims by the Rajneeshee that Sheela was engaged in both ‘medical’ and ‘political’ terrorism serve as support for the claim that the Rajneeshee under Sheela’s leadership are terrorists, but there is a circularity to Carus’ twin reasons. We’re willing to say that the Rajneeshees are terrorists because of their motives, but what warrants us in ascribing those motives to them other than the attack is not as well spelled out. That is, seeing the attack as terrorism would seem to act as evidence for the Rajneeshee being terrorists even as their status as terrorists helps us describe the attack as terrorism. Ultimately, the account of the event provided to federal investigators by Krishna Deva – the account in which he explains Sheela’s plans to rig the election – functions as the foundation for terrorist label. There was a political struggle going

use of a plant toxin by the Mau Mau African Independence movement in 1952, and a possible attack on German

forces by the Polish resistance during WWII.

122 _{Carus, “Bioterrorism and Biocrimes,” 8.} 123 _{Ibid., 28.}

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on between Wasco County and the Rajneesh and the outbreak was one of many events within that context.

Generally, there seems to be a presumption that we already know that the Rajneeshees should be included in the category. Carus explains in his introduction that, “[a]ccording to the FBI, there is only one instance in which a terrorist group operating in the United States actually employed a chemical or biological agent.”125 This instance is, of course, the 1984 food poisoning in the Dalles. Perhaps, then, Carus includes the Rajneeshee in bioterror category because it is already standard practice to do so, but the narratives from the 1980’s shown above cast some doubt on this position from a public point of view. Certainly we can imagine that the FBI had called it terrorism all along behind closed doors, but it is not at all clear that this was the case. Further, Carus’ citation for the FBI’s classification of the event as such is highly ambiguous. John P. O’Neill, former Chief of the Counterterrorism section of the FBI, testifying in 1995 before the Senate Committee on Governmental affairs on Weapons of Mass Destruction notes that even as the potential consequences of a catastrophic attack by a biological weapon are quite high:

…the only documented actual chemical-biological attack in the United States involved the use of a biological agent which occurred in Oregon in 1984, when two members of a sect produced and disbursed salmonella bacteria in restaurants in order to affect the outcome of a local election.126

Even as the attack is embedded amidst descriptions of terror attacks and terrorists, the Rajneeshees are never named, much less called terrorists. The materials for the attack are relevant, but are the attackers and their motives of like kind? Are they automatically terrorists

125

Ibid.

126 _{Testimony of John P. O’Neill, Supervisory Special Agent, Chief, Counterterrorism Section, Federal Bureau of}

Investigation, U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass

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for using biological weapons? Are they similar enough to Aum Shinrikyo in their agenda to be called terrorists? This is even more unclear in O’Neill’s testimony than it is in Carus’ explanations. As with the JAMA article, Carus’ report tends to obscure the inferential gaps through a combination of rigorous methodology, a cleaning up of messy narratives, and an appeal to external narratives (criminal investigators in the former case, O’Neill in this latter case).

What remains relevant for both O’Neill and Carus is that the Rajneeshees were able to do what the terrorist would need to do – acquire a disease agent, make enough of it to build a weapon, and use the weapon. Thus, the case is relevant to law enforcement even if it is not terrorism. Like Török’s move to associate the Rajneeshee with terrorism, Carus’ categorization of the event as a terrorist attack is meant to educate law enforcement on what is possible and, therefore, what they should be on the lookout for. With so few events in the category, there is no common type when it comes to motivation and action. While each group and their respective attacks/attempts face similar material obstacles, few are very similar in kind. Work must be done to bring them together, and Carus does that work by enlarging the motivational categories ascribed to terrorists. In once again shining the light on motivation, Carus continues the pattern that Török et al. participated in and Nixon started – what we need to worry about are particular kinds of people who are likely to be engaged in these particular kinds of activities. Nixon in gesturing toward the enemy, pointed outward, away from the United States. In the age of terror, however, the enemy is all around us. Yet, in Carus’ report, the rhetoric of defense becomes even more profound. By setting the Rajneesh alongside groups like the anti-Communist Minutemen and the Weather Underground (both of whom operated in the 1960’s and 1970’s), Carus shows

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that it has always been the case that we have been surrounded by terrorists.127 Understood this way, Nixon’s shift in policy to denounce biological weapons was not only a renunciation of the irrational motives of nations like the Soviet Union, but militants within the Homeland who have been with us all along. Carus and Török et al. work together to bring Nixon’s biothreat back to the homeland, and, by Carus’ account, by 1998 we already knew that this return had occurred.