Profiling the attacker. The anthrax letters that struck down and disrupted lives in New York, Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., last fall embodied the fears of Rosenberg and many other bioweapons experts, who had long warned that the country was ill prepared to handle such an attack. Her 2 decades of work in bioweapons control have given Rosenberg deep ties in the community; almost immediately following the attacks, she began receiving unsolicited tips from U.S. scientists whose connections with federal programs prevented them from speaking publicly.

By early November, Rosenberg says that certain clues, including signs that the anthrax strain had come from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, convinced her that the perpetrator was an American. She went public with those thoughts on 21 November at a BTWC meeting in Geneva, asserting that New York City "has just been attacked, first by foreign terrorists, then by an American using a weaponized biological agent."

1. MOST LIKELY HYPOTHESIS
 
• The perpetrator is an American microbiologist who has access to recently-weaponized anthrax or to the expertise and materials for making it, in a US government or contractor lab. He does not live in or near Trenton, which is a stop on the Amtrak line that runs along the East coast. If he is smart enough to handle anthrax he is smart enough not to mail it from his home town. Trenton is probably accessible to him, however.
  
 
• The anthrax in the letters was made and weaponized in a US government or contractor lab. It may have been made recently rather than in the US BW program before Nixon terminated the program in 1969.
• Weaponization of dry anthrax after 1972, when the BWC was signed, could be construed as a violation of the BWC.....
  

F.B.I. agents yesterday questioned a leading proponent of the theory that the anthrax attacks were the work of someone linked to a federal laboratory or contractor, asking her about possible clues to the culprit's identity.

"They wanted to know whether I had ideas about who did it," said the expert, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York at Purchase and chairwoman of a biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists.

Dr. Rosenberg said that in response she had given the agents detailed information about ideas that she had sketched out in a paper posted on the federation's Web site.

I think I know who sent out the anthrax last fall.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York, thinks she has figured out a great deal about the person who mailed the anthrax that killed five people last fall.

• Insider in US biodefense, doctoral degree in a relevant branch of biology
• Middle-aged American
• Experienced and skilled in working with hazardous pathogens, including anthrax, and avoiding contamination
• Works for a CIA contractor in Washington, DC area
• Has up-to-date vaccination with anthrax vaccine
• Has clearance for access to classified information
• Worked in USAMRIID laboratory in the past, in some capacity, and has access now
• Knows Bill Patrick and has probably learned a thing or two about weaponization from him, informally
• Has had training or experience in covering evidence
• May have had an UNSCOM connection
• Has had a dispute with a government agency
• Has a private location where the materials for the attack were accumulated and prepared
• Worked on the letters alone or with peripheral encouragement and assistance
• Fits FBI profile
• Has the necessary expertise, access and a past history indicating appropriate capabilities and temperament
• Has been questioned by FBI

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a professor of molecular biology at the State University of New York and chair of the biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists, says she has shared her ideas on who is the likely culprit with the FBI, and now posts updates regularly on the Internet.  "I get a lot of calls _ some with very elaborate theories, although some people do not know the simple facts," she said.  She believes the culprit is going to turn out to be a middle-aged American, who is a government insider with a doctoral degree in biology and knowledge of sophisticated U.S. bio-defense programs, which he would need to make the anthrax.

In order not be made sick from the bacteria, he must have an up-to-date vaccination, and may be employed by a government contractor in the Washington, D.C., area, she said. That's a small enough group that the FBI should be zeroing in on a possible suspect, and she believes the FBI has already interviewed the culprit.

"Whoever knows this knows an awful lot _ it's going to be very embarrassing information that's going to come out in a trial," she said.

Although Rosenberg goes further than most experts in criticizing the FBI's anthrax investigation, her analysis of the case has become must reading for scientists and congressional staffers concerned about biodefense issues. (An FBI spokesman contacted by phone Thursday says the agency, too, is reading her work, but won't comment on it.) A microbiologist by training, Rosenberg worked as a cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and as a professor of biochemistry at Cornell Medical College. A decade ago, she founded the Federation of American Scientists' biological and chemical weapons program, which she now heads.

In her analysis of the details known about the anthrax attacks to date, she has built a persuasive and disturbing case that the anthrax culprit is a deep insider to the U.S. government's biological weapons program. Her conclusion is based on a collection of facts that point to a smaller and smaller number of individuals who could have met all the criteria for producing, handling and sending out the anthrax letters. The perpetrator seemed to have advanced expertise and experience in biological weapons like anthrax, for instance, and access to the technology to produce and refine it. He or she (but most think it's a he) probably would have had to have access to the anthrax vaccine, which is not widely available, in order not to succumb to the disease himself -- which means records of anthrax vaccinations, which require a yearly booster shot, would be available to further help identify the person.

Tuesday, February 19 - The Daily Princetonian contains an article titled "Investigators explore new anthrax suspect."  It contains this:

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg is the proponent of a new conspiracy theory.  Rosenberg, a molecular biologist leading an independent investigation into last fall's anthrax attacks on behalf of the Federation of American Scientists, said in a speech yesterday that many U.S. government insiders agree on one likely perpetrator whom they believe is responsible for the attacks.

Among others, the agents asked about a former Fort Detrick scientist who returned a few years ago and took discarded biological safety cabinets, used for work with dangerous pathogens. Like some other military lab workers, the scientist has expertise on weaponizing anthrax and has been vaccinated against it, sources say.

Reached by The Sun at his job with a government contractor, the scientist volunteered that he had been questioned by the FBI. He said he considered the questioning to be part of a routine effort to eliminate people with the knowledge to mount such an attack.

"I think they had a profile," the scientist said. "They had a bunch of people on the list. They have to rule people out. ... I certainly didn't appreciate getting called in. No one likes that. I'm one of the good guys."

Monday, February 25 - The Washington Times publishes an article titled "Suspect worked in U.S. lab."  The article contains this:

The FBI has known for more than three months that the person responsible for sending the letters was a U.S. citizen and, according to the sources, probably a former scientist connected to the government's biodefense program.

The government's chief suspect, the sources said, is believed to have worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., which has maintained stores of weapons-grade anthrax — commonly known as the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis.

Federal law enforcement officials denied a newspaper report that the FBI had a identified a scientist who once worked in a U.S. government laboratory as a chief suspect.

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said today that the F.B.I. had several "suspects" in the case, a characterization that law enforcement officials said went beyond the evidence uncovered thus far in the four-month investigation.

In fact, they said, the F.B.I. is still searching for clues that might point to a specific person. "It would be inaccurate to say that these people are suspects in the classic sense," one law enforcement official said.
...

"There is no prime suspect in this case at this time," said Bill Carter, a bureau spokesman.

Tuesday, February 26 - According to a Washington Post article titled "FBI Still Lacks Identifiable Suspect in Anthrax Probe":

The FBI has conducted anthrax tests in the homes, offices and vehicles of about a dozen people who have been investigated in the deadly anthrax mailings, but the individuals were cleared of suspicion after the tests came back negative, according to officials familiar with the government's probe.
...

Investigators keep a running list of as many as 20 people who are under scrutiny at any time. But no individual has remained on the list for more than a month, and none has emerged as a solid suspect, authorities said.
...

In a speech at Princeton University last week, Rosenberg said the FBI was focusing on a single scientist who had been fired twice from USAMRIID and was now working for a defense contractor in the Washington area. She said she learned of the suspect from law enforcement officials, whom she declined to name.

The FBI said yesterday that it has not identified a leading suspect in its 5-month-old anthrax investigation, denying a published report.

That's also the opinion of renowned forensic expert Henry C. Lee. Speaking as a knowledgeable outside observer, Lee said the dragnet tactics employed recently by federal agents point to an investigation that's still far from closing in on its prey.
...

Lee also said the FBI's move shows officials are confident that sending the samples to Fort Detrick does not risk dropping them into the hands of a potential suspect.

"These last two months, [FBI agents] have probably interviewed everyone at Fort Detrick and didn't find a suspect," he said. "They don't want to publicly rule anyone out, but their actions suggest that's what's going on. They don't think it's anybody who currently works at Detrick."

Wednesday, March 6 - According an article in The Frederick News-Post titled "Anthrax Story: Detrick Cleared":

No Fort Detrick scientist, past or present, is probably a suspect in the anthrax letter case, according to the Hartford, Conn., Courant.

The newspaper, which has been closely following the FBI investigation, said a renowned forensic expert believes Detrick personnel have been cleared.

Henry C. Lee said the FBI wouldn't be sending its anthrax investigation samples to Detrick for testing unless it had confidence in the Army's biowarfare research lab.

AN AMERICAN expert last night claimed last autumn’s anthrax attacks may have been the result of CIA research which went disastrously wrong.
...

Barbara Rosenberg, the director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Chemical and Biological Weapons Program, raised the possibility that the CIA could have ordered a “field trial” on the possible effects of delivering anthrax through the mail and the contents could have been used by whoever was responsible for the anthrax attacks.

Dr Rosenberg told the BBC’s Newsnight: “Some very expert field person would have been given this job and it would have been left to him to decide exactly how to carry it out.

One of the first steps we can take to reduce our vulnerability is to light a fire under the F.B.I. in its investigation of the anthrax case. Experts in the bioterror field are already buzzing about a handful of individuals who had the ability, access and motive to send the anthrax.

These experts point, for example, to one middle-aged American who has worked for the United States military bio-defense program and had access to the labs at Fort Detrick, Md. His anthrax vaccinations are up to date, he unquestionably had the ability to make first-rate anthrax, and he was upset at the United States government in the period preceding the anthrax attack.

Dr Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the biological warfare division at the Federation of American Scientists, first accused the FBI of foot-dragging in February with a scathing investigation that included a portrait of the possible perpetrator so detailed that it could only match one person.

Rosenberg said she knows who that person is and so do a top-level clique of US government scientists, the CIA, the FBI and the White House.

"Early in the investigation," Rosenberg told Scotland on Sunday, "a number of inside experts, at least five that I know about, gave the FBI the name of one specific person as the most likely suspect. That person fits the FBI profile in most respects. He has the right skills, experience with anthrax, up-to-date anthrax vaccination, forensic training, and access to the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (AMRIID) and its biological agents through 2001."

At this meeting, Professor Rosenberg, who had been granted no official authority by the FBI, no access to any forensic tests conducted on the anthrax letters or the FBI’s investigative file, and was “misinformed” about aspects of the investigation, explained to Senate staff members her theory of the case. [...]

It was clear that Professor Rosenberg was talking about Dr. Hatfill.

The meeting, which was requested by Rosenberg, lasted about 90 minutes. After Rosenberg left, Senate staff talked to FBI representatives for an additional 45 minutes.

"They discussed her letter, which has been online for sometime," said one Senate source, referring to writings posted on the FAS Web site. "She answered questions from the staff members and the FBI, but she was not asked, and did not identify, any individual in conjunction with her letter."

Monday, June 24 - According an article in the British newspaper The Guardian titled "Anthrax killer 'could grow more bacteria'":

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biological warfare expert at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and a vocal critic of the official investigation, has claimed that biodefence experts had told the FBI the identity of a likely suspect but that the bureau was keeping it secret, possibly because the suspect knows too much about US experimentation with germ warfare.

Mrs Rosenberg said the suspect, whom she does not name but describes in detail, was an American contractor working for the CIA, who suffered a career setback last summer that "left him angry and depressed".

"He must be angry at some biodefence agency or component, and he is driven to demonstrate, in a spectacular way, his capabilities and the government's inability to respond. He is cocksure that he can get away with it," she wrote in an assessment on the FAS website.

Frustration is growing in the US at the failure by authorities to arrest the culprit.

Californian Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer told Congress that too much time was being spent on creating an anti-terror bureaucracy, and not enough on finding the killer.

Staffers from the offices of Leahy, Daschle and other senators have in the past two weeks met with Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a bioweapons expert from the State University of New York who has for months criticized the FBI for what she calls a fragmented, mismanaged and profoundly unscientific investigation. Rosenberg believes the FBI knows who's behind the attacks but is trying to develop an impossibly airtight case.

Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation examined the apartment of Dr. Steven J. Hatfill near Fort Detrick, Md., after he consented to the search, the officials said. They had said before the search that Dr. Hatfill was not a suspect, and today's results seemed to strengthen that position.

Dr. Hatfill, 48, had been the subject of Web site gossip among scientists, journalists and other professionals about possible domestic suspects in last year's anthrax attacks. After reporters pursued him, he was fired in March from his job at Science Applications International Corporation, a contractor for the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency that helps the government with germ defenses. From 1997 to 1999, he worked at the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick.

He was interviewed by FBI agents and given a polygraph test early this year, which he passed, he said in an interview with The Sun in February.

Reached at his job with a government contractor, Hatfill said then that he considered the questioning to be part of a routine effort to eliminate people with the knowledge to mount an anthrax attack.

Tuesday's search came a week after Hatfill's name came up during a meeting between Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biological weapons expert from the Federation of American Scientists, and staff members of Sens. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., and Thomas A. Daschle, D-S.D., both of whom were sent anthrax-contaminated letters. FBI agents were present at the meeting, sources said.

The FBI obtained a copy of the secret anthrax report last week just before agents raided Hatfill's home in Frederick, Md., and a storage facility he maintains in Ocala, Fla.

The report describes a hypothetical anthrax attack, specifying an amount and quality of anthrax that is remarkably similar to what was sent to the offices of U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle last October.

In the case of Hatfill, it is unclear why FBI agents waited at least six months after they first questioned him to conduct a thorough search of his home. One possibility: a briefing last week for Senate staffers by biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg.

After its public show of investigative aggressiveness in Maryland Tuesday, and before the evidence had even been examined, bureau officials insisted the search of Hatfill's apartment hadn't produced anything significant.

The F.B.I.'s bumbling before 9/11 is water under the bridge. But the bureau's lackadaisical ineptitude in pursuing the anthrax killer continues to threaten America's national security by permitting him to strike again or, more likely, to flee to Iran or North Korea.

An extraordinary commentary published in Tuesday’s New York Times declares that the FBI is refusing to arrest or seriously investigate the most obvious suspect in the anthrax attacks last fall which killed five people.

The allegations made by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof are so serious that they deserve immediate and thorough public investigation. But so far, both the Bush administration and the media have remained silent on what is, without exaggeration, one of the most astounding articles ever to appear in a major American newspaper.

When someone expert in bio-warfare mailed anthrax last fall, it may not have been the first time he had struck.

In a column on July 2, I wrote about "Mr. Z," an American bio-defense insider who intrigues investigators and whose career has been spent in the shadowy world of counterterror and intelligence. He denies any involvement in the anthrax attacks.

On the date that the perpetrator chose for the B'nai B'rith attack, a terrorism seminar was under way in the Washington area and Mr. Z seemed peeved that neither he nor any other bio-defense expert had been included as a speaker. The next day, Mr. Z sent a letter to the organizer saying that he was "rather concerned" at the omission and added: "As was evidenced in downtown Washington D.C. a few hours later, this topic is vital to the security of the United States. I am tremendously interested in becoming more involved in this area. . . ."

Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, whose Frederick apartment was searched June 25 in the anthrax investigation, has a new employer who says the FBI told him the bioweapons expert is "not a suspect and not on any list" of suspects in the case.

Hatfill started July 1 as associate director of Louisiana State University's National Center for Biomedical Research and Training, which is supported by grants from the Justice Department to train emergency personnel to handle bioterrorist attacks.

Stephen L. Guillot Jr., director of the center, said he was contacted by the FBI a few days after agents searched Hatfill's apartment near Fort Detrick and a storage unit he had rented in Ocala, Fla.

There is a suspect, an individual named Steven J. Hatfill, 48. He is a medical doctor who had the means, the motives and opportunity to commit the crime. Hatfill also could benefit from the attacks and he pretends to knowledge that would make his arrest embarrassing to our government. All of this, the FBI denies.

We've learned that his former colleagues in the biodefense community brought Hatfill's name to the FBI's attention last October, shortly after the anthrax victims began dying. He recently had lost his security clearance through polygraph inconsistencies. Some investigators believe the FBI's amazing caution stems from Hatfill's loose connections to the late Ron Brown, President Clinton's commerce secretary. Others think that he was working for the CIA; and still others believe that the anthrax killings were a defense-related exercise that went badly wrong.

A top microbiologist in New York says FBI agents interviewing her Thursday asked whether a team of government scientists could be trying to frame Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army researcher whose apartment in Frederick, Md., was searched for a second time by FBI agents on Thursday.

I have never mentioned any names in connection with the anthrax investigation, not to the FBI, nor to media, nor to Senate Committees or staffs, not to anyone. I have never said or written anything publicly that pointed only to one specific person.  Anyone who sees parallels is expressing his own opinion.

It is the FBI that has gone out of its way to make one suspect's name public. I presume they must have had some good reason for doing that; only time will tell. But if the publicity was not an important part of their investigative strategy, I think it was reprehensible.

It's time for me to come clean on "Mr. Z."

Since May, I've written periodically about a former U.S. Army scientist who, authorities say privately, has become the overwhelming focus of the investigation into the anthrax attacks last fall. I didn't name him.

Hatfill v Ashcroft et al:  On June 27, 2008, the case was settled.  The government paid Dr. Hatfill $2.825 million in cash plus an annuity of $150,000 per year for 20 years.  The Settlement Agreement is HERE.

Hatfill v Foster, Vanity Fair & Readers Digest: A change of venue was granted to move the case from Alexandria, VA, to New York City and the case was handled there. The lawsuit was settled on or around February 23, 2007.  My "comment" for March 4, 2007, provides details.  (I think Dr. Hatfill probably won close to ten million dollars from this law suit.)

Hatfill v The New York Times: An appeal filed in the Hatfill vs The New York Times lawsuit  resulted in the dismissal being overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th circuit on July 29, 2005, and by the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on October 14, 2005.   According to the Docket, on November 8, 2005, the case was "stayed" while The New York Times filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.  That appeal was denied on March 27, 2006.  The final pre-trial conference occurred on schedule on November 16, 2006.  On October 20, 2006, Judge Liam O'Grady Ordered the New York Times to divulge 3 confidential sources.  The Times refused.  The case was dismissed in a Summary Judgment on January 12, 2007.  The appeals were heard on March 21, 2008, and the dismissal was upheld by the appeals court on July 14, 2008.  The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and was rejected by the Supreme Court on Dec. 15, 2008.

ANALYSIS

A lynch mob consisting of conspiracy theorists, people from the media and a few politicians attempted to lynch an innocent man, and they now blame the FBI for their own actions.