"Clinton began pushing the book on friends and fellow government officials, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and had Pentagon officials brief him on its plausibility. The response he got was not reassuring. From then on, in the words of one national security official, Clinton became "obsessed" with the threat of biological weapons."
"...Clinton's reading of Preston's novel reportedly led Clinton to issue an executive order directing drastically increased funding for research on the threat of advanced biological terrorist weapons."
"According to [Judith] Miller et al., President Clinton was so struck by the scenario depicted in The Cobra Event that he asked John Hamre, deputy secretary of defense, "whether he thought the novel's scenario was plausible. Could a terrorist unleash an unstoppable plague with designer pathogens?" (226). Subsequently, a committee was struck to investigate bioterrorist scenarios."
"In April 1998, as a result of having read the Richard Preston novel, The Cobra Event, the president held a meeting with a group of scientists and cabinet members to discuss the threat of bioterrorism. The briefing impressed Clinton so much that he asked the experts to brief senior officials in DOD and HHS. On May 6, they delivered a follow-up report, calling for the stockpiling of vaccines (an idea that was soon dropped.) The Washington Post reported with regard to the stockpiling proposal that 'Some administration officials outside the White House expressed surprise at how fast the president and his National Security Council staff had moved on the initiative .... noting with some concern that it had not gone through the customary deliberative planning process.' [11] Critics noted that not all scientific experts were disinterested; some stood to gain financially if the government invested large sums in developing technology against bioterrorism."
Note 11, above, is to Washington Post, 21 May 1998, p. A1.
