25 Years After the Anthrax Letters, Biodefense Experts Warn America's Preparedness Has Eroded

Since the anthrax-laced letters mailed in the weeks after September 11, 2001 killed five people and sickened 22 more, the United States has spent a quarter century building institutions meant to stop the next biological attack before it starts. Marking that 25th anniversary this month, biodefense researchers and journalists are now asking whether those institutions still work, and several say the answer is no.

The anthrax letters, mailed from a location across from the Princeton University campus according to a retrospective published in The Hill, were addressed to media organizations including NBC News and the New York Post. The response led directly to the creation of the Federal Select Agent Program, which regulates dangerous pathogens, according to the Pandora Report, a biosecurity newsletter published by the Pandora Report's managing editor, Carmen Shaw. That program, along with the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, became part of the broader post-9/11 security architecture.

A new book argues the system has decayed

The Hill's retrospective, written by someone who worked inside New York City's emergency operations center during the 2001 anthrax scare, describes officials and aides demanding Cipro, the antibiotic used against anthrax exposure, within days of the attacks. "The senator wants his Cipro. Now," one aide reportedly said, according to the account.

That writer points to journalist Annie Jacobsen's new book, "Biological War," as evidence the threat has only grown since. The book, based on interviews with political, military and medical officials, documents Soviet-era engineered pathogen stockpiles and the global spread of biological research labs conducting high-risk "gain of function" work, according to The Hill's summary.

The Hill's op-ed also states that over the past 18 months the U.S. has shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and proposed further cuts, arguing this has stripped away epidemiological capacity, the trained staff who trace outbreaks before they spread, at the exact moment the threat is intensifying. That is a contested policy judgment rather than an established fact, and the sourced excerpt does not name which administration officials made those decisions or specify the dollar figures involved. It reflects one writer's argument, not a documented finding.

What was actually built, and what it cost

Not every part of the post-9/11 biodefense buildout has eroded. Texas Biomed, a nonprofit research institute in San Antonio, marked 25 years of operating the first biosafety level 4 laboratory west of the Mississippi River this year, according to Texas Biomed Magazine. The lab, which studies pathogens including anthrax and Ebola with no vaccines or cures, remains the only privately owned and operated BSL-4 facility in the country.

Professor Emeritus Jean Patterson, who helped lead its construction in the 1990s, said the design philosophy was deliberately simple. Fewer components meant fewer failure points, with redundant backup systems on every critical function from air-locked doors to wastewater treatment. Texas Biomed President and CEO Larry Schlesinger said the institute is now recognized as part of the nation's defense infrastructure for pandemic preparedness, partnering with the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

Threats have diversified beyond pathogens

The biological threat is not the only one security officials are reassessing on this anniversary. Michael Masters, National Director and CEO of the Secure Community Network, told Fox News Radio's Guy Benson Show that the intelligence failures before 9/11 pushed federal, state, local and community organizations to improve information-sharing. But Masters warned that artificial intelligence, online radicalization and both foreign and domestic non-state actors now require a different security posture than the one built after 2001, one that still protects religious freedom while adapting to faster-moving threats.

The Council on Foreign Relations raises a parallel question about the broader war on terrorism launched after the attacks. In a conversation with Walter Russell Mead, a Wall Street Journal columnist and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, CFR examines why the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, launched within 18 months of the attacks, did not produce a decisive outcome the way the U.S. response to Pearl Harbor did. Mead's discussion points to high civilian casualties, the use of "enhanced interrogation," and eventual American fatigue with "forever wars" as reasons the campaign failed to deliver a clear victory even as it reshaped U.S. foreign policy for two decades.

What comes next

The debate is not abstract. The Chemical Weapons Convention Coalition and the Arms Control Association are holding a virtual briefing on September 16 titled "Syria's Chemical Weapons Legacy: Current Issues and Challenges," moderated by George Mason University Biodefense Program Director Gregory Koblentz, examining how the fall of the Assad regime has left unresolved questions about Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles.

Whether Congress moves to restore epidemiological funding or the select-agent oversight system Jacobsen and The Hill's writer say has weakened remains an open question. No specific legislative proposal or agency budget document was cited in these accounts to confirm the scale of cuts described, and neither USAID's current leadership nor the Department of Health and Human Services has issued a public response to the claims raised in Jacobsen's book as of this writing.