Britain’s Tony Blair and other European leaders have been provided with CIA projections of expected casualties from the “credible threat” of Iraq launching a smallpox terror threat.

The projections show:

• The likeliest targets are subway systems or cinema theatres in major cities.
  
  
• Airport concourses and trains.
  
  
• The projections suggest one terrorist infected with smallpox would – in an attack on a subway system like New York – cause “anything up to and over 15,000 fatalities.”
  
  
• The projection – based on a CIA computer model of the three states, New York, California and Florida – indicates that initial casualties would eventually claim “up to over one million deaths.”
  
  

Last weekend, Health Ministers from Britain, Japan, Mexico, Germany and the United States were all provided with the latest intelligence.

Britain has already placed an order of £50 million for 16 million smallpox vaccines.

Defence analyst, Ian Bramley, told Globe-Intel: “It is now accepted that Iraqi special agents will try to smuggle smallpox into all countries that support America’s attack on Saddam Hussein.”

The worst case scenario would be suicide terrorists infected with the virus.

Richard Sperzel, a member of the United Nations, UNSCOM, set up to inspect weapons in Iraq now believes there is a “real and present threat” that Iraq is equipped with a stockpile of anthrax.

UNSCOM believes the expertise and equipment needed for smallpox production has been provided to Saddam by China.

Bramley claims Iraq has created a vaccine for “camelpox” –which is even more deadly than smallpox.

The Iraqi vaccine is designed to provide protection for its own key people in the event of a retaliatory attack by Israel.

Israel is also believed to have a substantial stockpile of bio-chemical weapons at its top-secret Biological Research Institute in a Tel Aviv suburb.

Israel, while denying it would ever use such doomsday germs, admits that the Institute does research on the lethal viruses.

It has recently emerged that during the Persian Gulf War Saddam was ready to use smallpox against Allied troops.

He was stopped from doing so by threats of retaliation by the then US President, George Bush, Sr.

Roger Rofey, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, said: “The bio-terrorism threat to the United States from Iraq has significantly increased since September 11.”

Although smallpox has only claimed 300 lives in the 20th century, it is the most lethal disease on earth.

Caused by variola virus, it is spread from person to person in airborne droplets.

There are two forms: variola major and variola minor. Both cause flu-like fever, aching limbs and a puss-filled rash.

At that stage, individuals are at their most infectious. Death follows usually in days. There is no cure.

The disease has claimed some famous names: Queen Mary the Second of England; Tsar Peter the Second of Russia and King Louis XV of France.

In 1980 the World Health Organisation claimed that smallpox had been eradicated. The last natural case occurred in Somalia in 1977.

Until recently it was believed that the only known stocks of smallpox were in two high-security labs in the United States and Russia.

The CIA and Israel’s Mossad have concluded that both North Korea and China have created the virus.

“Saddam may be the first client for the smallpox,” said analyst Bramley.

Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence for a number of leading European newspapers (the Sunday Express, UK; El Mundo, Spain; Welt am Sonntag, Germany). His work is also syndicated internationally by World Wide Syndication. Any use of the above must carry a clear attribution to both Gordon Thomas and Globe-Intel. He is a Contributing Editor to Globe-Intel, an international newsletter devoted to intelligence matters.

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