Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

ANTIABORTION TERORISM • 29stan daily Jang as well as in the mailbags of the U.S. embassy in Moscow,Russia. Altogether by mid-November, five people had died frominhalation anthrax and 17 cases of anthrax exposure were confirmedafter over 1,000 people had been tested for anthrax infection.All of the known contaminated letters originated in Trenton, NewJersey, and three letters contained threatening messages. Although theseletters were dated 11 September and contained slogans of a militantIslamic fundamentalist character, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) regarded these letters as possible decoys to disguise the work ofa domestic terrorist or terrorist group not connected with the WorldTrade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11, 2001. On 15October 2001 President George W. Bush requested Congress to appropriate$1.5 billion to buy antibiotics to treat up to 12 million people.Although the FBI originally identified one biomedical researcher,Dr. Stephen Hatfill, as a “person of interest” in 2002, he was nevercharged with any crime. After 2006 the FBI concentrated on havinggeneticists map the unique DNA sequence of the samples of anthraxrecovered as evidence, a process that cost over $10 million. Thisresearch identified the strain as one developed at the U.S. ArmyMedical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick,Maryland, whose administrators in turn identified a Fort Detrick scientist,Bruce Edwards Ivins, as a researcher involved in the study ofthe strain of anthrax that was used in the attacks. After Ivins was notifiedby the FBI that he was to be questioned in the case, he committedsuicide on 1 August 2008. On 6 August 2008 the federal prosecutorspublicly announced that Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the 2001attacks, as he was the only person known to have created and solelymaintained the strain of anthrax used in the attacks. This announcementdrew criticism from Ivin’s attorneys, who considered the evidenceto be circumstantial and the public announcement as violatingthe judicial norm of a presumption of innocence in the absence of anytrial. Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia,justified this announcement on the grounds that the prosecutors hadsufficient evidence to have convicted Ivins and also on the need tobring closure to the victims of the attacks and their relatives.ANTIABORTION TERRORISM. Controversy over the legalizationof abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in1973 has led to a large, grass-roots movement of antiabortion groups,