TELEVISION

Bioterror hits home, sort of

By Noah Bruce

Did you happen to catch Bioterror on Nova Tuesday night? Did ya’ know the 90-minute special on germ warfare was produced by South Portland’s own Lone Wolf Pictures?

Bioterror is reported by the New York Times journalists —Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and Bill Broad — who wrote the bestseller Germs: Biological Terrorism and America’s Secret War (Simon & Schuster, 2001). The team interviews top experts in the field from the US and Russia and tells the story of the development of bio-weapons from its beginnings in the US to its expansion in the USSR and ultimate adoption by Iraq and terrorist cells around the globe. Reporter Judith Miller became a part of the story when she received a letter in the mail filled with a powdery substance that luckily turned out to be non-toxic.

According to Lone Wolf owner, and director of Bioterror, Kirk Wolfinger, “the show was originally going to be broadcast in February of 2002, but after September 11, we began to think about moving up the date. After the first anthrax letter arrived we said ‘We better get this on the air right away.’ ” A frantic work schedule ensued. “We were basically put on a 24/7 schedule,” says Wolfinger.

Not only did the timing of the show change, its content was altered as well. “It was intended to be a broad survey of biological weapons much as one would look at chemical or nuclear weapons and say ‘How dangerous are they?’ or ‘Are we thinking about using them?’ All of that changed September 11. The specter of these germ agents didn’t seem like a far-fetched concept. It became ‘maybe this is not a theoretical thing.’ Within two weeks you had 2 people dying of anthrax.”

Lone Wolf has produced about 10 documentaries for Nova, says Wolfinger, including a show on the search for a sunken ship and a special on the Judea Desert. If you missed Bioterror on Tuesday night, log on to Nova’s website at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/,ova/ or just hope they re-air the program.