Pentagon's anthrax plan has failed

WASHINGTON -- In unusually blunt language, Pentagon officials yesterday acknowledged the failure of their ambitious policy to inoculate all military personnel against the deadly anthrax virus.

At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, witnesses described blunder after blunder in the Pentagon's 2 1/2-year-old program. The most severe was a shortage of the vaccine caused by the mismanagement and financial problems of the only company licensed to produce it -- a company in which Retired Adm. William Crowe Jr., a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, controls an 11 percent stake.

Simply put, the hearing highlighted the anatomy of a failure. "There are no immediate fixes," said Maj. Gen. Randall West of the Marines, a senior Pentagon adviser on chemical and biological defense.

"We've got a crisis situation," Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the committee, replied tersely. He urged the Pentagon to "sit down with these folks" at BioPort Corp., the troubled company based in Lansing, Mich., that makes the vaccine, and buy them out.

Because of the vaccine shortage, the Pentagon is seeking a second drug company to make it. Thus far, officials said, there have been no takers. And even if a second supplier agreed to make it, it would take two to four years to begin production, they said.

Also, the Pentagon will decide by the end of the month whether to build its own plant, a process that would take five to seven years.

In late 1997, Defense Secretary William Cohen announced a plan to inoculate all 2.4 million active and reserve military personnel by 2003, because of the perceived threat of a biological weapons attack. Cohen himself has taken a full series of six vaccination shots.

Since then, about 445,000 military personnel have received at least one dose of the vaccine. But Tuesday, the Pentagon said that because of dwindling stocks, the program would cover only military personnel it considered most at risk: those deployed near the borders of Iraq and North Korea.

Pentagon officials insist that the decision to curtail the inoculations has nothing to do with concerns among some service members that the vaccine is unsafe and can produce adverse reactions. The witnesses yesterday testified that the vaccine was safe.

Two hundred to 300 service members have refused to take the vaccine, questioning its safety and the legal right of the Pentagon to force them to submit to the injections.