Quantico :: A Novel by Greg Bear

For decades the United States government has recognized the value of the people in the entertainment media for their perspective on real-life threats, their ability to craft unforeseen scenarios, and their opportunity to influence the public. According to The Hollywood Reporter (Jan. 11, 2007), “J. Edgar Hoover conceived of something he called ‘The Dillinger Rule’—the FBI had great stories to tell, so Hollywood ought to tell them, and make sure that the FBI were the good guys. And he wanted to know about anything FBI-related that Hollywood had in the works”

More recently the government has consulted with novelists, screenwriters, and other members of the entertainment community to get their take on the threat of modern terrorism. Greg Bear has been tagged to participate in such conferences, and offers insights into his own experiences, and the way they have impacted his writing on novels such as Quantico.

In the summer of 2000, I was asked to speak at a conference on the future of law enforcement at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia—and what I heard and saw there formed the seed that later grew into Quantico.

I was no stranger to policy meetings, having worked with the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy in the eighties and nineties. In an odd way, I know more about conservative politics and personalities than I do about liberals—even though I tend to vote Democratic—because all of these committees and conferences were sponsored by Republican administrations, conservative-leaning law-enforcement groups, or the military.

I spent three days at the Academy, and was fascinated by the agents and other law enforcement folks I met. As well, I had a chance to tour the Academy, participate in training demonstrations, and hike around the grounds—beautiful woods and fields surrounding some very serious, but comfortable and well-appointed buildings. We stayed in the agent trainee dorms—the doors are always left unlocked when you leave your room—and ate in the FBI Cafeteria, and I took time during meals and breaks to speak with field agents with years of experience. What I heard from them about crime, politics, and the law enforcement life really sank deep.

I had met similar people, with similar levels of professional devotion, during my young days as a navy brat—my father is a retired navy officer. I saw that the law enforcement personality is similar to the military personality—in fact, the FBI and many police departments draw recruits from the military. And I thought—there’s definitely a book here, but I want it to be unlike any other novel about the FBI. I began my serious research with histories of the FBI, books by and about agents, homicide investigation manuals, criminal patrol textbooks—you name it.

I had two moments of twenty-twenty hindsight in September of 2001. When I heard that airliners had been hijacked and rammed into buildings, I immediately flashed back to all those times I had been allowed to board an airplane while carrying my Swiss Army knife. I saw very clearly how five men with pocket knives could capture an airliner—and yet, before then, despite my flashes of concern, I had not worked through such a possibility. As if turned out, they used box-cutters.

At the same time, the American Anthrax attacks occurred—and I suspected that somewhere out there in the American heartland, a Timothy McVeigh-type—a Ted Kaczynski type, might have acquired the expertise to produce weapons-grade anthrax spores through hard work, ingenuity, and the purchase of commonly available equipment and supplies.

I incorporated this into my thinking about Quantico.

Beginning early in 2002, I was asked to speak to and consult with various groups carrying out threat analyses. Nearly every branch of the government connected with defense, intelligence, and security was reaching out to hitherto untapped sources for ideas—including science fiction writers. They had all been caught by surprise on 9-11, and so they were tasking creative individuals to come up with unusual scenarios. Some of these conferences were open, and others were not; the general rule was that we could use at least some of the information we acquired (some ideas were too scary to reveal), but could not attribute our sources. During the first of these meetings, a seminar on Biodefense sponsored by the Secretary of Defense at Fort McNair, I made copious notes, and used them to work out details in my novel DARWIN’S CHILDREN—about how government works, political divisions within Congress, public health policy, crisis response, and so on.

In the spring of 2002, I was asked to speak on video from Seattle to a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and NASA conference on Global Foresight. (Joe Haldeman and Elizabeth Moon also presented video talks.) I suggested that the accelerating revolution in biotech and genetics would soon put impressive tools and power into the hands of people unaffiliated with major institutions—not in government, not in universities. Individuals and small groups of all sorts and all persuasions—some of whom might decide to become bio-hackers, to coin a phrase. People who care little for computer viruses, but are passionate about reconstructing and setting loose real viruses and other agents of deadly disease.

In my talk, I proposed the creation of a Biological Defense and Research Initiative, which would study these possibilities, as well as state-sponsored and terrorist activities using biological weapons—and fund research to both prevent such attacks and treat the diseases that might be released. (I doubt I was the first to suggest this—it’s an obvious idea. In fact, the term Biodefense Initiative starts popping up all over around this time.) Such an initiative, I thought, would also lead to better policies and treatments when facing natural epidemics.

(In April of 2004, President Bush formally launched his program for biodefense, and released this statement:

"Bioterrorism is a real threat to our country. It's a threat to every nation that loves freedom. Terrorist groups seek biological weapons; we know some rogue states already have them.... It's important that we confront these real threats to our country and prepare for future emergencies."

President George W. Bush
June 12, 2002

The details of the announcement can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040428-6.html)

In November of 2003, I spoke before the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, in the company of some of the world’s experts on viruses. A few months later, I addressed researchers at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, where I met with some of those same virologists and began discussing my “crackpot” ideas about Amerithrax. My sponsor at NCI gave me a tour of adjacent Fort Detrick—which at one time was the United States Army center for bioweapons research in the United States. The experience of walking under and around the infamous “Meatball”—the steel water-tank-shaped laboratory where volunteers were once exposed to pathogens under controlled conditions—was particularly chilling.


Photographs by Jeff Lifson • Click thumbnail for larger image

While in Frederick, I was introduced to NCI’s resident yeast expert, as well as to the Army’s foremost expert on anthrax. Neither seemed to find my ideas implausible—and that concerned me. If I had figured out workable if unorthodox techniques, then it seemed apparent that others, more dedicated—and less scrupulous—might have also done so.

I did not present my ideas to the FBI. The political atmosphere at the Agency had changed considerably since 9-11, and I suspected my theories would neither be welcomed, nor useful to their investigation.

Last year, after publication of Quantico in the United Kingdom—and five years after the American anthrax attacks—the FBI admitted that the strain of anthrax supposedly used by this killer--the so-called Ames strain—was not particularly special, and that the spores that killed five and shut down the U.S. Postal system and parts of the federal government, could have been prepared without government-level bioweapons expertise.

Extensive FBI investigations to date have not produced solid leads as to the identity of the American Anthrax killer.

Quantico is still current—still possible—both politically and scientifically.