Anthrax threat shot down early in war
<<< Back to Vaccines
By MARK DUNN
07oct03
ANTHRAX was discounted as a threat by Australian military leaders 10 days before the Iraq war started.
A controversial anthrax inoculation program for Australian soldiers and sailors was secretly suspended before the first shots were fired. The fear of Saddam Hussein using anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction was a major factor in the war in Iraq.
But Australian defence chiefs rated the anthrax threat so low they ordered a complete stop to inoculations just two weeks after the invasion began on March 20.
They kept the decision from the Australian public, and 52 sailors and other personnel who refused the vaccine were told they were sent back to Australia for their own safety.
Anthrax formed a key plank in the push by President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" for military action against Iraq.
On January 30, President Bush said Saddam had failed to account for 25,000 litres of anthrax among other missing chemical warfare agents.
"If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning," President Bush said.
In a February 6 presentation to the UN, US Secretary of State Colin Powell held up a small vial and reminded Security Council members it took less than a teaspoon of anthrax to close the US Senate, kill two postal workers and shut down the postal system in 2001.
But confidential documents obtained by the Herald Sun under Freedom of Information show Australia's assessment of the anthrax threat changed significantly in the lead-up to the war.
On March 10, 10 days before the start of hostilities, the Australian Defence Force stopped its inoculation program for the next rotation of ships to the Middle East pending an anthrax review.
An HMAS Sydney crew, which formed part of a subsequent rotation, was inoculated in part to "maintain operational flexibility" and "to ensure consistency of health counter measures".
By early April, ADF chief General Peter Cosgrove told Defence Minister Robert Hill the vaccination program for most personnel had ceased.
"Defence has determined that the anthrax threat has reduced sufficiently to remove the need for anthrax inoculations for deployed personnel except for those involved in sensitive site exploitation," he wrote.
In a later memo to Senator Hill, General Cosgrove asked that details of the decision to stop inoculations for the majority of those deployed remain secret from the public.
"Force preparation requirements for deployed personnel remain an operational security issue and should not be made public," he wrote.
The defence papers also give an insight into the preparation for war, with briefing minutes showing anthrax vaccines were purchased in December 2002 -- a month before Prime Minister John Howard committed Australian forces to the campaign.
The documents warned public knowledge of vaccination preparations "could be misinterpreted as a Government decision to commit forces to operations against Iraq".
Suppressed from the material released to the Herald Sun were details of Senator Hill's own inoculation regime in preparation for his visit to the conflict zone.
Other documents were withheld because they contained sensitive security information.
Back to top of Document
