Silent Boots, Silent Killer

1) Jimmy Choo, eat your heart out: When U.S. commandos sneak up on Osama bin Laden and put a cap in his turban, they may be wearing the fruits of the U.S. government's "Silent Boots" research project. Here are excerpts from a 1999 report prepared for the Department of State's Technical Support Working Group (whose mission is to "conduct rapid research, development, and prototyping of technologies insupport of counterterrorism and antiterrorism"). We're pretty sure the last thing a Special Forces member needs is to have his boots squeak on a cave floor. (9 pages)

2) Distributed back in October 1999, this is the United States Postal Service's internal "management instruction" for handling packages "allegedly containing anthrax." In light of the recent deaths of postal workers in the Washington, D.C. area, USPS brass may have failed to "minimize potential exposures through quick isolation and evacuation." (4 pages)