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The Drama of Bioterror: Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Defense

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The Drama of Bioterror: Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Defense THE DRAMA OF BIOTERROR: PARANOIA AND THE RHETORIC OF DEFENSE By George Huston Gittinger BA, Tulane University, 2002 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2011 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2013 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication University of Pittsburgh 2014 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by George Huston Gittinger It was defended on November 15, 2014 Dr. Heather Douglas, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy Dr. Olga Kuchinskaya, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Dr. Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Dr. John Poulakos, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Dissertation Director: Dr. John Lyne, Professor, Department of Communication ii Copyright © by George Huston Gittinger 2014 iii THE DRAMA OF BIOTERROR: PARANOIA AND THE RHETORIC OF DEFENSE George Huston Gittinger, Ph. D. University of Pittsburgh, 2014 This study provides an account of how a rhetoric of bioterrorism developed and investigates its consequences. Currently, two competing ways of talking about bioterror, the skeptical and the paranoid, have been obscured because biosecurity researchers infrequently consider how particular historical and imagined events come to be defined as examples of bioterrorism. These rhetorical styles and their associated attitudes responded to a recurring problem in the history of biothreats – that there is rarely enough evidence to give clear accounts of the presence and origin of particular threats. As a result, conjectures become part of a unified history of bioterror, washing out the actual complexity of describing these rare events. The ease with which events of the late twentieth century are reimagined in the terms of the twenty-first century war on terror as well as the propensity for furious legislative and media response to the threat of bioterror allows real and imagined bioterror to capture a special place in the popular imagination. Bioterror taps into a problematic narrative that has structured the United States’ relationship with biological weapons since the 1960’s. To make visible these competing attitudes, this dissertation considers how acts of defining operate as rhetorical processes and how this process became exploitable in the specific case of biological terrorism. To that end, three major cases are considered: (1) President Richard Nixon intervened in a public, political debate about the dangers of biological weapons testing though an act of redefinition by which he renamed the US bioweapon program from "weapons development" to "defensive research" and successfully shifted from a rhetoric of offense to a rhetoric of defense with lasting consequences; (2) Biodefense experts in the 1990's redefined a nationally obscure salmonella outbreak in the 1980’s as the first bioterror attack on American soil; (3) Following the 2001 anthrax mailings, the FBI defined a government scientist as an object of suspicion, Othering him to the point of suicide. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. vii Preface ......................................................................................................................................... viii 1.0 Defending and Defining ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Paranoia and Skepticism as Dialectical Attitudes .......................................................... 15 1.2 Defintion, Abduction, and Drama .................................................................................. 18 1.3 Definitions at Work: Biorhetorics .................................................................................. 25 1.4 Definitions at Work: Communicating (Bio)Terror ........................................................ 32 1.5 Definitions at Work: Locating Risks .............................................................................. 37 1.6 Constructing and Interrogating A Rhetoric of Bioterror ................................................ 42 2.0 Relocating Suspicion ........................................................................................................ 46 2.1 The Reshaping of the Biothreat ...................................................................................... 47 2.1.1 Selection of Texts ................................................................................................... 55 2.1.2 In the Shadow of Dead Sheep ................................................................................. 57 2.1.3 Overwhelming Risks and the Shift Toward a Solution .......................................... 67 2.2 Relocating and Exporting Risks ..................................................................................... 74 2.2.1 An International Ban, But on What?....................................................................... 80 2.2.2 The National Security Council Review & The Way Forward ................................ 91 2.3 The Internal Drama ........................................................................................................ 93 2.3.1 The Rhetoric of Defense ....................................................................................... 108 2.3.2 From Guilt to Sterilization .................................................................................... 113 2.4 The New Biothreats: The Real Past/Imaginative Future .............................................. 115 2.5 Conclusion: The Relocated Biothreat and the Impossibility of Safety ........................ 122 3.0 Creating Bioterrorism ................................................................................................... 126 3.1 Intentional Contamination & Germ Warfare ............................................................... 130 3.1.1 Local Coverage ..................................................................................................... 135 3.1.2 National Coverage ................................................................................................ 151 3.1.3 One Event, Many Stories ...................................................................................... 156 3.2 The Rajneesh Bioterror Attack ..................................................................................... 159 3.2.1 Török’s Outbreak .................................................................................................. 161 3.2.2 America’s First Bioterror Event ............................................................................ 177 3.3 Conclusion: Bridging the Evidentiary Gap .................................................................. 183 v 4.0 Accounting for the Unaccountable ............................................................................... 190 4.1 The Mailings and Subsequent Investigation ................................................................ 195 4.2 Determining Responsibility ......................................................................................... 199 4.2.1 Ivins’ Suspicious Accusations .............................................................................. 201 4.2.2 Decoding Ivins’ Terrorist Acts ............................................................................. 208 4.2.3 The Meaning of Ivins’ Sloppy Science ................................................................. 221 4.3 The (Self)-Subordination of The Skeptic ..................................................................... 231 4.3.1 What the Skeptic Says Science Can’t Do ............................................................. 232 4.3.2 What the Paranoid Says Science Can’t Do ........................................................... 236 4.4 Conclusion: Accounting for the Unaccountable .......................................................... 240 5.0 Rationality and the Bioterrorist Imagination.............................................................. 244 5.1 Expertise at the Edge of Science and Ethics ................................................................ 245 5.2 Conclusions: Risk, Paranoia, and the Probable Impossible ......................................... 252 5.3 Problems and Prospects for an Alternative Rhetoric of Bioterror ............................... 260 5.3.1 Risk Analysis Models and Structural Prospects ................................................... 260 5.3.2 New Ways of Talking ........................................................................................... 265 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 273 vi List of Figures Figure 1 A Comparison of Ivins’ and the FBI's accusations ...................................................... 207 Figure 2 The Brokaw Letter ........................................................................................................ 216 Figure 3 Amerithrax Exhibit E, RMR-1029 flask ........................................................................ 222 Figure 4 Elements of risk assessment and risk management ...................................................... 261 Figure 5 A schematic
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