New York Times Sep 4

BBC/Susan Watts, March 2002:  The New York Times carried a major investigation which at any other time would have been a story of huge significance. .. It revealed (private) contractors have been involved in classified bio-defence projects .. in the first few days of September last year - immediately prior to the attacks of the 11th. 

NYT, Sep 4, 2001:  In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market.

At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials .. (that) demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs.

Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.

The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures.  Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.

BBC/Susan Watts, March 2002:  One - run by a contractor - Battelle - was to create genetically altered anthrax.

NYT:  (A)dministration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.

The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug, which was first created by Russian scientists.  A Bush administration official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final go-ahead later this month.