Just about a month after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the White House feared it had been struck by a biological weapons attack and that everyone in the building, including at the time Vice President Cheney, had been exposed and would die, former President George W. Bush writes in his new memoir.
Mr. Bush was away at the time, visiting Shanghai for an Asian summit in his first trip since the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. But when he called back to the White House using a secure video monitor in a blue tent set up to block Chinese eavesdroppers, the president was informed that a monitor had indicated the presence a deadly biological material.
“As soon as I saw Dick, I could tell something was wrong,” Mr. Bush writes, referring to the vice president. “His face was as white as his tie.”
Mr. Cheney explained: “Mr. President, one of the bio-detectors went off at the White House. They found traces of botulinum toxin. The chances are we’ve all been exposed.”
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, with Mr. Bush in China, asked about the time of exposure. Mr. Bush wondered if Mr. Powell was doing the mental math to figure out if he had been exposed when last in the White House.
Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said the F.B.I. was testing the suspicious substance on mice and would know in 25 hours. If the mice were running around, feet down, everything was fine, but if they were dead, feet up, “we were goners,” Mr. Bush wrote. “Well, this is one way to die for your country,” said Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser.
When the results came back the next day, they were negative. “Feet down, not feet up,” Ms. Rice told Mr. Bush.
Mr. Bush writes about the false alarm to remind readers of the atmosphere following the Sept. 11 when it seemed that anything could happen.
“Years later, incidents like the botulinum toxin scare can seem fanciful and far-fetched,” he writes. “It’s easy to chuckle at the image of America’s most senior officials praying for lab mice to stay upright. But at the time, the threats were urgent and real.”
Six mornings a week, he writes, he received a “threat matrix” report summarizing potential attacks, many of them frightening and haunting. “For months after 9/11,” he writes, “I would wake up in the middle of the night worried about what I had read.”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/bush-white-house-feared-it-had-been-hit-by-biological-weapon/