Text I
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ANTHRAX : THE HUNT NARROWS
Nobody just waltzes into the U.S Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases. The lab, better known as USAMRIID, sits on the grounds of Fort Detrick, in
rural Maryland, about an hour north of Washington, and before you can even get close to
the mostly windowless concrete building, you have to get on the base itself. Employees
must flash their badges, and visitors must show two forms of photo ID─and open their
trunks and glove compartments─before guards will let them pass. To enter the lab itself,
armed security guards, present around the clock, must wave you through.
Why such scrutiny? USAMRIID handles the deadliest pathogens known to man,
including Ebola, Marburg virus, Rift Valley fever─and, of course, anthrax. It was at Fort
Detrick that the U.S. stockpile of biological weapons was manufactured in the 1960s, and
at USAMRIID that research into deadly germs was concentrated for the next three
decades.
But amid several positive steps last week in the nation’s recovery from the anthrax
attacks–a doubling of the reward for information to $2.5 million; news that scientists at
the Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland were close to making a genetic
fingerprint of the anthrax powder; the reopening of the freshly decontaminated Hart
Senate Office Building–USAMRIID itself was under attack. The Army was scrambling
last week to answer charges that controls inside the lab over the past decade were at best
lax and at worst scandalous. The reports added support to a growing suspicion that
whoever sent those anthrax letters may have had strong ties to USAMRIID or may even
have worked there in the past.
The Hartford Courant revealed last week that some 27 samples of anthrax, Ebola
and other pathogens were missing during a 1992 inventory at USAMRIID. According to
several former employees and at least one current one─as well as internal Army
documents released in response to a 1998 lawsuit and first made public in December─it
was surprisingly easy for employees to get hold of highly infectious bacteria. Walking
out with some in your pocket would have been no problem at all.
It is clear from the same documents that discipline and morale at the lab in the early
1990s were a mess. USAMRIID at the time was roiled by alleged racial and sexual
harassment, factions warring over the lab’s leadership, accusations of incompetence and
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even theft of research. One particularly nasty clique formed a “ Camel Club,” whose
symbol was a toy camel outfitted with outsize sex organs and whose members wrote lewd
limericks mocking co-workers and sponsored notorious hot-tub parties. In short,
USAMRIID had become a breeding ground for resentment and hateful high jinks.
At least two dissatisfied former employees are suing. Richard Crosland, 55, a
microbiologist suing for age discrimination after his 1997 layoff, worked primarily with
botulinum toxin. “ 7-Eleven had better inventory controls than USAMRIID,” he says.
“The inventories were pretty much a joke. People often just filled them in using last
month’s forms. In my 11 years there, they never once asked for my botulinum toxin
records. If I had taken it all home─which of course I didn’t─no one would have known.”
How can he be sure ? “After I was fired,” says Crosland, “I made three trips out the front
door, past security, and to my car, carrying boxes. No one ever checked what I was
taking with me.”
Another former employee, Ayaad Assaad, whose lawsuit over his 1997 dismissal led
to the release of the Army documents, says he got a call last year from security reporting
a power outage in the freezer; when Assaad explained he had not worked there in years,
the guard said his name was the only one on the security roster. Assaad also complains he
was the chief target of Camel Club harassment. The Army has confirmed the charge and
issued an apology.
But while he admits that there were problems at USAMRIID in the past, Colonel
Edward Eitzen, the lab commander, says the allegation of easy access to toxins and lax
security are grossly exaggerated. “However, “it would be very difficult to stop a
determined insider from removing samples even if you were stopping everybody on their
way out,” he concedes. “Of the 27 missing samples, 26 have been tracked down, he
maintains, and in any case, they had all been inactivated and were no longer infectious.
As for the Animal House behaviour, Eitzen chalks it up to a small group of people who
have since been disciplined. (Says one unrepentant former Camel Club member: “ What
I did on my own time was nobody’s business.”)
Assaad’s troubles, though, didn’t stop with his departure from the lab. In late
September, he was the subject of an anonymous letter that was forwarded to the FBI. The
note had highly specific details about Assaad and claimed he was preparing a biological
attack. It was sent before the first anthrax case broke.
The timing is deeply suspicious. And since Assaad is Egyptian born, he would seem
to make a perfect fall guy. FBI agents met with him on Oct. 3 and, after a 45-minute
interview, told him they were convinced the letter was a hoax. Assaad says he was sure
he was being set up by the real anthrax killer to take the blame for the attacks.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist who works with the Federation of
American Scientists on biological weapons issues, thinks Assaad may be innocent.
Moreover, based on her own analysis she has prepared a profile of the killer far more
detailed than anything the FBI has released. She thinks the killer is a middle-aged
American who works for a CIA contractor in the Washington area but has had access in
the past to the labs at fort Detrick. She believes he or she has been vaccinated against
anthrax and knows how to conceal forensic evidence. Says Rosenberg: “It’s highly
probable that the perpetrator is someone who was known to the lab, someone who was
thought to be O.K.” Based on the composition of the anthrax, she thinks, it is likely that
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the killer knows William Patrick III, the former Fort Detrick bio-engineer who holds
several secret patents on processes for weaponizing bacteria.
In the end, it may turn out that the dysfunctional environment and lax controls
at USAMRIID have nothing to do with the anthrax killer. But if not, all that means is this
particular ticking bomb didn’t go off.
Slightly adapted from: Time, February 4, 2002
Text II
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Don’t Waste Your Breath
The idea that the government should pay African Americans reparations to compensate
for the suffering of their slave ancestors has been kicking around for as long as I can
remember. It hit the front pages, thanks to David Horowitz, a right wing commentator
with whom I’ve tangled in the past. Following his familiar MO of attracting publicity by
attacking causes espoused by civil rights leaders, Horowitz took out tendentious ads in
college newspapers around the country, listing 10 reasons why reparations are “a bad idea
for blacks.” Predictably, a rumpus ensued on campuses from Duke to Wisconsin. The
fuss he started is just the kind of highly visible wrangling they need to prove that
reparations is an issue worth fighting about, not a pipe dream. If an archconservative like
Horowitz is so down on the idea, it must have merit.
I’ve always thought the fight for reparations was a waste of time─not out of
principle, but for practical reasons. Like nearly every black person I’ve discussed it with,
I consider the moral case for compensating African Americans for the crimes committed
against their forebears during 244 years of slavery to be unassailable. I even wrote a
column
about
how
much
it
would
take
to
settle
our
claim–
$24 trillion for the pain, suffering and unpaid labor of millions of slaves, deposited in a
trust fund that would underwrite education and economic development in impoverished
black areas. With funding like that, none of us would need affirmative action. Talk about
freedom!
There’s just one stumbling block: no matter how strong our arguments are, we’ll
never get white folks to pay up. Most white Americans are descended from people who
immigrated here after the Civil War, so they feel no need to atone. We couldn’t even
persuade Bill Clinton, who is practically related, to apologize for slavery, much less pony
up any cash. Is there any reason to think George W. Bush─let alone a majority in
Congress─would be more receptive?
As for going to court, we first have to get past all sorts of legal hurdles, such as the
doctrine of sovereign immunity, under which the government can be sued only if it
allows itself to be sued. Eventually we would bang heads with Clarence Thomas and his
like-minded colleagues on the Supreme Court. I’d rather take my chances speeding on the
New Jersey Turnpike in a BMW with Rodney King at the wheel and a blond hanging out
the window.
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My pessimism isn’t shared by Randall Robinson, head of the Washington-based
lobbying group TransAfrica, which led the battle to impose the economic sanctions that
helped topple white rule in South Africa. Robinson, who jump-started the reparations
campaign last year with his book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, predicts that
once blacks are unified behind the idea, whites can be persuaded to support reparations
campaign by an appeal to their sense of justice. ”I don’t think among rational people that
you can argue that a graver crime has occurred than slavery,” Robinson told TIME’s
Elaine Rivera. “Whites will come to recognize for moral and practical reasons that
reparations benefit the whole of society.”
That’s great. I’m all for identifying companies that profited from slavery and
paying damages to victims of racial brutality, but that’s a long way from collecting the
century-old debt that reparations proponents are seeking. Sure, the money from
reparations would help solve present-day problems like the black education gap, AIDS,
and the high incarceration fate among black youths─but we’ll never see it. We’ve got too
many issues to deal with to waste resources on a glorious lost cause.
From: Time, April 2, 2001
Text III
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Coca-Cola’s Holy Grail
In a vault in the bowels of a SunTrust Bank in Atlanta lies one of the most sacred secrets
in the business world: the 120-year-old formula for Coca-Cola. That is the one certainty
about the mysterious recipe. Everything else surrounding it–the need for a vote by Coke’s
board of directors to open the vault, for example–may be urban legend. Attempts to
confirm additional information with the Coca-Cola Co. are met with an obvious reply:
“Well, then it would not be a secret,” says company spokeswoman Crystal Walker.
Myth or not, at least three people recently risked jail time to breech the company’s air
of mystery. Ibrahim Dimsun, 30, and Edmund Duhaney, 43, could each face up to 10
years in prison after pleading guilty last week in a plot to sell Coca-Cola trade secrets to
Pepsi for $1.5 million. The men were co-conspirators in a scheme allegedly hatched by
Joya Williams–a former administrative assistant at Coca-Cola’s Atlanta headquarters.
The trio’s shenanigans fizzled when Pepsi alerted Coca-Cola, which then contacted the
FBI. Williams, 41, who had worked at Coca-Cola for 14 months and maintains her
innocence, is awaiting trial.
The alleged caper involved unspecified documents and samples of yet-to-be
introduced products, not the secret formula. But the incident is sparking fresh questions
about whether the formula is an actual trade secret or mystical marketing.
History suggests it’s a mixture of both. In 1886, John Pemberton, a pharmacist,
started Coca-Cola with a recipe he created in his lab. Pemberton sold the concoction a
few days later to Asa Candler, a businessman who helped transform the soft drink into a
success, which in turn, made competitors and consumers curious what exactly went into
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the irresistible drink, Some swore its main ingredient was cocaine, a claim which the
Coca-Cola Co. denies. Others were fascinated with rumors surrounding “7X”–the code
name for the blend of flavors in the beverage. By 1919, when the Candlers sold CocaCola to a group of investors, the secrecy surrounding the formula had become a
marketing tool. The new owners sealed the formula’s place in American pop culture
when they placed the recipe in the Atlanta vault.
Experts say it’s not impossible to decipher the formula and effectively clone Coca-Cola.
“Anyone could buy a Coke in a shop and do some powerful [chemical] analysis and have
a Coke match … but not 100 percent,” says Steven Pearce, a chemist and the president
of the British Society of Flavourists Council. Others in the industry say copying it is
pointless because it is not the secret, stupid–it’s the branding that has made Coke such a
success. Of course, Pepsi, whose formula is presumably not in a vault, isn’t doing so
badly either.
From Newsweek October 2, 2006
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QUESTION SHEET
Answer the following questions in complete sentences using your own words as far
as possible.
Text I.
Anthrax, The Hunt Narrows
1.
What is the purpose of the tight security at USAMRIID ?
2.
Account for the irony in paragraph 4 (The Hartford … at all.; ll. 22 – 27)
3.
Why according to the text was it very easy during the 1990s to remove
infectious bacteria from USAMRIID ?
4.
What contradictory statements are expressed in paragraph 8 ?
(But … business.; ll. 50 – 58)
5.
Why was Ayaad Assaad considered a suspect ?
6.
What is Barbara Hatch Rosenberg’s conclusion regarding Assaad ?
Text II
Don’t Waste Your Breath
7.
What is the main idea in paragraph 1 ? (The … merit.; ll. 1-10)
8.
Why according to the text are white Americans never going to pay the “debt” ?
9.
Name two reasons why a legal battle over reparations would be a long and
difficult process ?
10.
Text III
How does Randall Robinson contradict the writer’s view on reparations?
Coca-Cola’s Holy Grail
11.
Which point is made in par.1?
12.
What is implied by “…it’s a mixture of both.” ? ( line 18 )
13.
Explain the title.
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