Letter sent to Tom Brokaw of NBC News

The Anthrax Letters
In the fall of 2001, the still-unknown perpetrator of the anthrax letter attacks managed to acquire or produce a highly refined preparation of dry, powdered anthrax spores. The total quantity was limited, however, and each letter contained only a few grams of material. Producing kilograms of dried anthrax, which would be required for a mass-casualty attack against an urban target, would entail much greater technical difficulties and hazards.

Aum Shinrikyo
During the early 1990s, the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan tried to employ biological agents to inflict mass casualties. The cult members included university-trained biologists, who obtained cultures of the bacteria that cause anthrax, produced them in substantial quantities, and released them in Tokyo on at least nine different occasions—with no apparent effect. The reason for this failure is that cult scientists made the mistake of using a harmless (non-virulent) veterinary vaccine strain of the anthrax bacterium. Were it not for this technical mistake, the biological attacks may have claimed many victims. Aum Shinrikyo subsequently produced and used small quantities of chemical nerve agents, such as sarin and VX, which are easier to deliver.

The Rajneeshees
In August and September 1984, a religious cult known as the Rajneeshees used a non-lethal biological agent against the inhabitants of a small town in Oregon, sickening several hundred people, some seriously.

The cult originated in Poona, India in the 1960s and was led by a charismatic guru named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In 1981, facing growing hostility in India, the group immigrated to the United States and purchased a ranch in rural Wasco County, Oregon, near the town of The Dalles, about an hour's drive east of Portland. About 4,000 cult members lived at the ranch, which was intended to be a self-contained commune with its own municipal services.

The Rajneeshees soon came into conflict with the government of Wasco County over a host of land-use issues. As a result, cult leaders plotted ways to gain control over the county commission in the November 1984 election. Yet how could the 4,000 members of the commune, many of whom were not U.S. citizens and hence were unable to vote, take over a county of 20,000 inhabitants, including some 15,000 registered voters?

After considering a number of different schemes, the cult came up with the idea of making a large number of local residents sick just before the election, thus reducing voter turnout to the point where the cult could win. To carry out this plot, cult members working at the Rajneeshee medical clinic obtained samples from a diagnostic kit of the Salmonella bacterium, a common cause of food poisoning, and cultivated the agent in laboratory glassware.

In September 1984, in a test of the proposed scheme to manipulate the upcoming election, cult members used liquid cultures of Salmonella to contaminate salad bars in ten restaurants in The Dalles. As a result, 751 local residents became seriously ill and 45 were hospitalized, although none died. Since many out-of-state travelers may have been infected at the ten restaurants, which were located near an interstate highway, the actual number of victims was probably much higher.

The restaurant contaminations appear to have been a test run for a planned biological attack on the town's water supply before the November election, but the cult decided to abandon the idea. A public health investigation of the September outbreak did not uncover evidence that foul play had been involved. The truth only emerged one year later, when the Bhagwan himself stated that cult members were responsible for the incident.