FREAK coincidence, the work of a disgruntled former employee or terrorists
dabbling in biological weapons as a foretaste of horrors to come? As New
杏吧原创 went to press, the US government still had no firm answers as to
how two men working in the same Florida building came to inhale anthrax. What
happens if the authorities do find evidence of a terrorism link? Telling the
world will score the public relations coup of making the bombing raids look
truly justified鈥攂ut only at the risk of spreading the kind of panic and
fear the terrorists would love to see.
No prizes for guessing how British officials would deal with such a dilemma.
Their ingrained passion for secrecy would tell them to clam up鈥攋ust as
they did when this magazine asked the government and its agencies about the
risks of nuclear terrorism
(see 鈥淭he nightmare scenario鈥�).
It seems we are not meant to know what
type of plane crashes nuclear facilities have been designed to withstand, or
what would happen if a plane did hit the high-level waste tanks at the
Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria. We cannot even be told whether there is
fire equipment on site capable of putting out a jet fuel fire. Instead we are
spoon-fed vague reassurances or told to mind our own business.
If the fear is that open discussion may give terrorists ideas, surely that is
to underestimate them. We already know they can be ruthlessly creative. If the
aim is to protect people from knowing the worst, surely that鈥檚 an insult to our
intelligence. It is our lives that are at stake after all. Waging war against
terrorists is no excuse for scaremongering. But nor is it a good reason to
withhold the facts about the dangers they pose. Just the opposite. If a
democracy is to sanction the use of military force, its citizens should know
exactly what it is they are going to war to prevent. Now is not the time for
cover-ups about anthrax or nuclear risks.
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