Germ Boys and Yes Men

Germ Boys and Yes Men by
Jeremy Scahill, Nation Nov. 28, 2005. Part of the article reads:

But if Bush hoped to wipe away the stain of Katrina--and the memory of a hapless Michael Brown steering FEMA in circles while New Orleans drowned--he should have thought twice about bringing up the specter of a public health emergency, because the man responsible for coordinating the federal response to a flu pandemic or bioterror attack could well be the next Michael Brown.

Meet Stewart Simonson. He's the official charged by Bush with "the protection of the civilian population from acts of bioterrorism and other public health emergencies"--a well-connected, ideological, ambitious Republican with zero public health management or medical expertise, whose previous job was as a corporate lawyer for Amtrak. When Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently speculated, "If something comes along that is truly serious...like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence," many of those professionally concerned with such scenarios couldn't help thinking of Simonson. They recalled his own unsettling words at a recent Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on government response to a chemical or biological attack: "We're learning as we go."