Judd Gregg: “I wanted to raise an issue which I believe is of very high significance of how we deal with the threat of biological…”

“I wanted to raise an issue which I believe is of very high significance of how we deal with the threat of biological attacks. This has been an issue I have been involved in for a considerable amount of time, having authored the first bioshield bill as the chairman of the HELP Committee at the time. Just weeks after September 11, anthrax attacks occurred in Florida, New York, and Washington. They killed five people, and they crippled the mail delivery system in several cities and required a cleanup that cost more than $1 billion. For all that, the President's Commission which just reported on weapons of mass destruction says we were lucky. We cannot really know whether we were exclusively lucky or whether this was the result of responsible effort to prepare ourselves for the next attack that we have not been attacked again or in a worse way, but the facts remain that the threat continues. The President's Commission makes obvious the finding that biological weapons are cheaper and easier to acquire than nuclear weapons, and they could be even more deadly.”