Synopsis
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Anthrax War is a ground-breaking feature length documentary which illuminates one of the most important stories of our age – the threat that a terrifying Germ War Arms Race may now be beginning around the globe…
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Just weeks after 9/11, the United States was confronted with the frightening reality of biological terrorism. Anthrax-laced letters sent to government and media offices in Washington and New York spread fear and panic around the world. Millions were put at risk, scores were infected and five people died. For the first time in modern history, the United States Congress was shut down.
Our collective nightmare of germ warfare – the attack of invisible, deadly bugs – had come to life…
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Anthrax War takes viewers into the Bio-defense labs of the United States and the U.S. Military’s testing grounds in the deserts of the American southwest. The filmmakers travel to a top-secret military installation of the former Soviet Union where anthrax escaped thirty years ago, where civilians are still living with the consequences, and where biological weapons work may be continuing. They move on to the savannas of southern Africa, where they meet “Doctor Death” and his associates of the notorious Project Coast who experimented with anthrax and other designer germs during the Apartheid Era. And where the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks may have originated.
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As they travel to the world’s bio-war ‘hot zones’, the filmmakers encounter people confronting the new threat of germ warfare today – investigators, politicians, and journalists probing this nightmare world as well as scientists, legislators and citizen activists working to warn the world that biological arms proliferation will prove catastrophic.
Anthrax War is a wake-up call about what’s happening NOW…
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Anthrax War begins by exploring the 2001 Anthrax Attacks which triggered the FBI’s Amerithrax investigation, the largest in FBI history. The film reveals how the attacks have been helped make bio-defense a mega billion dollar global business, into which the US Government has poured at least $50 billion in the past six years – almost twice as much as the cost of the “Manhattan Project”, the U.S. World War 2 atomic bomb program.
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On the international chessboard, the world is on the brink of a new biological arms race, with Moscow, Beijing and Tehran assumed to be ramping up their own bio-defense programs.
While governments describe their measures as ‘defensive’, much of this research and development is necessarily dual use and can be used for ‘offensive’ purposes, which many say, is in violation of existing international treaties and, in the case of the United States, in violation of U. S. law.
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Amazingly, all of this remains hidden from public view, not covered by the mainstream media and off the political agenda.
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Germ weapons research and development, once the domain of secret government programs, is becoming a profitable enterprise for corporations, universities and medical foundations worldwide. New and virulent pathogens are being brought to life by scientists using the latest advances in nanotechnology and genetic engineering, paving the way for such horrors as ‘ethnic specific germ weapons’, never-seen-before ‘designer-bugs’ and emerging new epidemics.
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The film explores the horrific legacy of human experimentation, spanning decades and continents, in which germ weapons have been tested on unwitting members of armed forces and civilians alike.
Also probed are the mysterious deaths in recent years of several leading scientists working in this field. Bruce Ivins, David Kelly, Vladimir Pasechnik, Larry Ford and Frank Olson each died in violent or suspicious circumstances and have been linked to one of germ warfare’s darkest secrets, state programs developing new strains of anthrax.
The film reveals:
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1. Troubling questions about the FBI’s “solving” of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks. Many scientific experts are questioning the evidence presented that pins the blame on U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins who committed suicide..
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2. The FBI is withholding key information from the public about the attacks on national security grounds.
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3. New details about the suspicious deaths of five leading bio-weapons scientists, all working with anthrax.
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4. Links between secret programs in the U.S., U.K, the former Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa.
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5. Evidence that Doctor Death, who headed South Africa’s apartheid-era secret germ war program that developed agents for assassination and worked on a vaccine to sterilize blacks without their knowledge, received assistance from the U.S. and U.K. germ war establishments.
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6. The anthrax attacks have ushered a massive buildup of ‘bio-defense’ efforts worth more than $50 billion in U.S. Government contracts alone, much of which is flowing to politically connected bio-tech corporations.
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7. Hundreds of private labs and thousands of scientist are now handling the most dangerous pathogens with little effective oversight.
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8. The U.S. Government has put in place contingency plans to conduct biological warfare and that we may have entered a new dangerous biological arms race.
The filmmaker tracks down those directly involved: germ war experts scientists, spies and assassins – to uncover one of the most frightening and untold stories of our time.
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