October 23, 2014 | Quote
Could Terrorists Use Ebola to Attack the United States?
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“Say you’re coming from Iraq or Syria,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “You’d have to fly to west Africa, then find someone who has Ebola and contract it from them.”
That’s not as easy as it sounds, Gartenstein-Ross said, because medical officials are now quarantining Ebola patients. You’d have to slip through the barriers, convince the medical authorities and the local population that you have a reason to be there, hang around inconspicuously long enough to get infected by a contagious patient, exit the quarantine area without being stopped, and then get yourself on a flight to the United States without being stopped during a pre-boarding fever check.
Even then, you’d still be only half way to your goal. You’d still have to convince the U.S. authorities to let you in, even though you have just flown in from west Africa, a fact that now draws scrutiny, and despite the fact that you might already be on a terrorist watch list. “Your travel pattern will not look very good — even an unsophisticated security officer will be suspicious,” Gartenstein-Ross said.
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In sum, Gartenstein-Ross said, “there are better ways to kill Americans than to try to catch Ebola.”
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