The 2001 anthrax attacks in the US are one of those feverish blips in the west’s collective psyche, a story that dominated the news for a few intense weeks then faded, pushed aside by the larger kerfuffle in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Seeing that Netflix now has a feature-length documentary entitled The Anthrax Attacks: In the Shadow of 9/11, you would be forgiven for saying: “Oh yeah. The anthrax thing. What was all that about?”
To recap: less than a month after the twin towers came down, a man called Bob Stevens died, having inhaled lethal anthrax spores. It was the first such fatality on US soil for a quarter of a century, but not too much was thought of it until eight days later, when NBC News in New York received a letter contaminated with anthrax. The note was dated 11 September and consisted of crude threats, scrawled in the spindly capitals of an unstable kidnapper or serial killer: “TAKE PENACILIN [sic] NOW. DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL.” Similar letters were sent to the New York Post and two US senators; five people died, including two workers at a postal sorting office in Washington DC.
