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Scenes like this are no longer the stuff of movies.
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About the Program
Watch NOVA's Bioterror: Tuesday, November 13 at 8:00
p.m.
Go to letter from the producer
On September 11, 2001, the world was shocked by the
unprecedented attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
As we came to grips with the tremendous scale of the
tragedy, a new fear loomed that terrorists would strike
again with biological weapons. The first anthrax attacks on
American soil have now led to a media firestorm of
speculation and confusion. NOVA, in collaboration with the
New York Times and Granada Media, presents a special
program on the science of germ warfare that distinguishes
fact from rumor and delivers an authoritative,
up-to-the-minute analysis of the current threat. In
addition, the show reveals astonishing, previously unknown
details of the secret biological warfare programs conducted
by the Soviets and the U.S. during the Cold War.
NOVA's "Bioterror" is the product of more than two years of
intensive investigation and production efforts. The show
follows New York Times reporters and authors of the
best-selling book
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War,
Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, as they
delve into the murky past and alarming present of biological
weapons. NOVA viewers will accompany Miller as she visits
abandoned Soviet germ factories in central Asia that
produced enough biological poisons during the Cold War to
kill everyone in the world many times over. In Kazakhstan,
800 Soviet scientists toiled in perhaps the world's largest
bioweapons facility, built expressly for creating a new,
more lethal variant of anthrax.
With the implosion of the former Soviet economy, many of its
bioweapons experts have taken their skills elsewhere. We'll
meet two Soviet germ warriors who defected to the U.S. in
the early '90s. They'll detail how far the Soviet program
progressed and what we have to fear from their discoveries.
We'll also meet their American counterpart, the chief of
product development at the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick
facility, who will disclose the extraordinary clandestine
history of the U.S. program. Among the secrets revealed on
the show is a U.S. plan to spray so-called "incapacitating"
agents on the population of Cuba in order to make them too
sick to resist invading American forces. The
New York Times reporters also explore the evidence of
Saddam Hussein's undercover bioweapons program and
investigate its disturbing possible links to today's
terrorist groups.
Defending ourselves from a biological attack is a daunting
problem. To combat that threat, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has set up a futuristic
research program encouraging "extreme innovation." If it
succeeds, the research may not only neutralize a BW attack,
it could revolutionize medicine, too. But until such
advances are realized, the United States is far from
prepared. As recent events reveal, there is no single magic
bullet that will defend us against a biological assault on
American soil. NOVA and the New York Times present a
disturbing and groundbreaking search for answers.
Letter from Rocky Collins, producer of "Bioterror"
Back in January, long before biological weapons were a topic
of dinner conversations and the nightly news, Director Kirk
Wolfinger asked me to join him as producer and writer for
NOVA's "Bioterror." At that time, many experts told us that
germ warfare was a "low probability" event that would
nevertheless have huge consequences if it were to ever
occur. And they also reassured us that, while germ WARFARE
was a serious threat to humanity, biological TERRORISM was a
much more remote possibility. Terrorists aren't
sophisticated or organized enough to pull it off, they said,
and they wouldn't be willing to run the risk of killing
themselves in the process.
On September 11th, of course, everything changed. No one
wanted to underestimate terrorists after that.
Our film needed to change as well, and fast. Suddenly the
world needed to know what we knew about germ weapons. There
were several days of hair-pulling, of contacting our experts
to find out how much their minds had been changed by the
suicide highjackings that had destroyed the Twin Towers and
damaged the Pentagon.
The experts (and our collaborators at the
New York Times) told us that what America really
needed was something like the documentary we had set out to
make in the first place: an authoritative, scientifically
accurate overview of germ weapons. We needed to make a film
that would provide a global and historic perspective for the
fast-breaking news. But we needed to incorporate new
realizations about the goals and capabilities of terrorists.
Since September 11th we have been working seven days a week,
up to 18 hours a day. We have shot 13 new scenes and
interviews to take current events into account. I,
personally, have been spending half of every day on the
phone and reading newspapers to make sure that breaking news
of anthrax-filled letters doesn't overtake or invalidate
anything in our show.
NOVA always prides itself on absolute accuracy, but this
time we had an even greater responsibility to make sure we
had the facts right. We called on a team of advisers to view
the program, to look for facts, and to make sure that we
weren't inadvertently telling terrorists anything that they
didn't obviously know already.
The result is a unique, 90-minute documentary about what I
am now convinced is one of the most important issues facing
America today. It is a problem with no simple solutions. It
is a problem that we will have to face not as individuals,
but as a nation. My hope is that those who watch our show
will be better informed, and thus better able to participate
in the hard work that lies ahead to make us more prepared
against bioterror in the future.
Rocky Collins
November 8, 2001
Photo: Corbis Images
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| Updated November 2001
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