WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- On the fifth anniversary of the anthrax attacks, lawmakers are calling for a comprehensive assessment of U.S. efforts to detect and deter biological threats.
Earlier this week, a broad bipartisan group from both chambers of Congress wrote to the Government Accountability Office. They asked auditors to check how the federal government is spending more than $18 billion developing technologies and systems to counter bio-war attacks, like the anthrax-laced letters sent to congressional offices and new organizations in late 2001, which killed five people.
Investigators have never determined who was behind the attacks.
"Having reached the fifth anniversary of the anthrax attacks, we believe Congress and the administration would benefit from a comprehensive assessment by the Government Accountability Office of currently deployed airborne or environmental biological threat detection technologies and those that are planned or under development," read the letter.
The signatories were led by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. But it was also signed by the Senate leadership of both parties; the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Judiciary and Appropriations Committees; and several House committee chairmen and their Democratic counterparts.
The Web site of Government Executive magazine quoted a congressional aide as saying the letter was prompted by another auditor's report earlier last month, which concluded the Department of Homeland Security did not have a sound scientific or technical basis for spending about $1.2 billion on equipment designed to detect nuclear material.
