Preface<br >In December 1997， six years after the Persian Gulf War， the Pentagon<br >announced that it had decided to vaccinate its 2.4 million soldiers and<br >reservists against anthrax. It seemed to be a curious move. Saddam<br >Hussein s biological weapons program had been exposed more than<br >two years earlier. So what had changed? Was the decision driven by a<br >new， even more frightening danger from germ weapons? Was the<br >Clinton administration looking for an international issue on which it<br >could appear tough?<br > We set out to explore for the New York Times what had motivated<br >the decision. From the beginning， we worked as a team: a science<br >writer with a knowledge of weapons， a veteran foreign correspondent<br >who had tracked international terrorism， and an editor who had in-<br >vestigated the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. We were skep-<br >tical， well aware of how federal agencies often inflate such dangers to<br >justify their existence and budgets.<br > We quickly learned that the anthrax decision was part of a much<br >larger government effort to combat what officials believed was a<br >growing danger from germ weapons. Over the next three years， we<br >followed the story from Washington to Kazakhstan to Japan to Russia，<br >eventually deciding to write this book. The issues were as complex<br >and intellectually challenging as any we have ever examined， cutting<br >across science， intelligence， and foreign affairs. We came to see the de-<br >