At war with warp

NEELY TUCKER & HELEN DEWAR

DOYLE MCMANUS & RONALD BROWNSTEIN: THE anthrax scare that has seized the nation’s attention underscores two unfamiliar aspects of the war against terrorism.

First, the test of victory will come at home, not abroad, this war won’t be won in Afghanistan, but when Americans feel safe to open mail or travel by air. Second, that may be a tall order for a government that learned how to handle foreign crises during the Cold War but has much less practice handling domestic crises.

‘‘There’s no question that right now we are in a period of the unknown,’’ Tommy Thompson, the usually buoyant secretary of Health and Human Services, acknowledged Wednesday.

And President Bush, on his way to an economic summit in Shanghai, China, deliberately avoided the issue. In a speech in Sacramento, Calif., Bush urged Americans to stand firm against terrorism, but gave more time to his tax cut proposals than he did to the threat of biological warfare.

The government’s first response to the anthrax problem has been confused and uneven — much like its initial response to the hijackings of four commercial airliners in the terrible morning hours of September 11. Some leaders, like Thompson, suggested there was little cause for alarm; others, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, seemed more worried. On Capitol Hill, the conflict of instincts would have been comical under any other circumstances: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., closed his side of Congress while Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., whose own office was infected, ordered business as (almost) usual.

Over the course of a dizzying day, reports and rumors flew. Traces of anthrax in New York Gov. George Pataki’s office in Manhattan and three new cases of exposure to anthrax in the office of Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., turned out to be real. A scare about white powder in a Capitol men’s room, and a worrisome package at a US consulate in Japan did not. And Hastert’s alarming report that anthrax was in the Senate ventilation system is still in doubt, awaiting further tests.
If the public sought clear answers about the threat — what kind of anthrax it was and how dangerous, how far it had spread, where it may have originated, how it could be treated — a cacophony of answers was available from a variety of authorities.

Part of the problem was that the investigation was still in its early stage, and that the FBI and other authorities did not want to release more information than necessary. But another part was that while federal and local government bodies have talked about terrorism for years, they were taken by surprise by its forms when it actually arrived.

As a result, a massive burden is being placed on government agencies that aren’t used to this kind of multifront emergency — and that are supposed to be coordinated by an untested Office of Homeland Security that is exactly 10 days old. This week, at least, Ridge was off to a slow start, hampered — as he acknowledged — by a lack of staff.

‘‘The problem with anthrax is we’re not sure if the central issue is public health, intelligence, border security or mail handling,’’ said Paul C. Light, director of governmental studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. As a result, the new White House Office of Homeland Security, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, is as good a coordinating mechanism as any other, he said.

So far, polls indicate that the public’s confidence in Bush remains high. But anthrax is causing at least moderate concern. That suggests that the domestic front may loom larger than the foreign conflict as Americans assess whether the war on terrorism is being won. — LATWP