PURCHASE, N.Y. - Once again, with critical global interests at stake, the Bush administration has blocked action by the rest of the world - this time on a vital treaty to monitor the ban on biological weapons. 

After nearly seven years of negotiations in Geneva, what was intended to be the final session to complete the treaty ended Aug. 17 in disarray. The administration decision reverses a bipartisan drive since the Nixon era to augment international biological weapon controls. The reversal comes at a particularly critical time - when biotechnology is unleashing powerful discoveries that could be misused to tailor new diseases for deliberate spread as weapons. 

There are 143 countries involved in negotiating a treaty to monitor compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which outlaws development and possession of such weapons but has no verification provisions. Rejection of the biological weapons treaty follows an administration pattern of arrogance in conducting foreign policy that seems almost designed to create antagonism. 

To avoid another publicity fiasco like the one that followed its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the White House announced that the U.S. delegation would remain after rejecting the biological weapons treaty until the negotiating session disbanded in order to prevent other nations from reaching a biological weapons agreement among themselves.

The reasons given for rejecting the treaty are disingenuous and intended for a public audience that lacks sufficient technical information to evaluate them. The administration insists that the treaty is too weak even though its weak points reflect concessions insisted upon earlier by the United States.  It objects that the treaty would not catch cheaters with certainty, although the chief U.S. negotiator, Ambassador Donald Mahley, has testified in Congress that it would "complicate the efforts of countries to cheat."  And the administration claims that the treaty would threaten confidential national security and commercial proprietary information even though the treaty has greater confidentiality safeguards and is less intrusive than the Chemical Weapons Convention, signed by President Bush's father in 1993 and ratified by the Senate.

The administration's true motivation has been amply demonstrated since it took office: a philosophical aversion to the restrictions imposed by any treaty. 

Provisions for safeguarding confidential bio-defense and business information are necessary, of course, and their adequacy in the draft treaty is attested by the strong support of every U.S. ally and all of Europe, Latin America, Japan and many other countries.

During the drafting of the treaty, our allies consulted with and had the support of their biotech and pharmaceutical industries, many of them multinational corporations with headquarters or affiliates in the United States.  Americans will be a prime target if these weapons are ever used either strategically or as an instrument of terror. Even if they are never used, the proliferation of biological weapons could lead to the escape of deadly genetically engineered germs from laboratories and the permanent establishment of new and uncontrollable diseases in the biosphere.

There are no weapons that can "take out" an epidemic, nor are there any defensive measures for protecting the public from biological weapons. 

Although preparations for limiting or responding to a biological attack are important, we can't afford to turn down any measure that would contribute to prevention. Unilateral actions alone won't do it. 

Refusing to join the rest of the world may turn out to be a costly U.S. mistake. 

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg is chairwoman of the Federation of American Scientists' Working Group on Biological Weapons and a research professor of natural science at the State University of New York at Purchase.

NBC worker infection prompts fears media target of mail attack; 
Scares nationwide; 
Incident doesn't seem tied to Fla., FBI says

By Tom Pelton and Scott Shane
Sun Staff

October 13, 2001

An NBC News employee in New York became yesterday the fourth American to be discovered with a rare anthrax bacterium, raising fears that media companies may have been targeted for a biological attack through the mail.

The possibility that the anthrax cases in Florida and New York are part of a coordinated bioterrorism attack sent a chill across the nation yesterday. Buildings were evacuated, and top federal officials warned against opening suspicious mail. Scares involving spilled powder and unusual letters were reported all over the United States and Europe.

As an intensive investigation continued into three anthrax cases at a tabloid newspaper chain in Florida, federal officials evacuated NBC's third floor offices at 30 Rockefeller Center yesterday morning. Experts were analyzing powder found in a suspicious letter that the employee opened before a rash erupted on her skin.

The woman, an assistant to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, is in good condition with a form of the disease that is less deadly than the inhaled variety that killed a photographer at the Boca Raton, Fla., tabloid last week.

The FBI said it had no evidence linking the New York and Florida anthrax cases or tying them to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.  But Vice President Dick Cheney said, "The only responsible thing for us to do is proceed on the basis that it could be linked."

"We know that [terrorist leader Osama bin Laden] has over the years tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction, both biological and chemical weapons," Cheney said in an interview with PBS. "We know that he's trained people in his camps in Afghanistan - we have copies of the manuals that they've actually used to train people with respect to how to deploy and use these kinds of substances."

Medical experts said the sudden appearance in office buildings of a rare disease associated with livestock points toward criminal intentions. The similarity of targets and methods in New York and Florida has heightened suspicions.

The New York Times briefly evacuated its Manhattan offices after Judith Miller, a reporter who has written on bin Laden and bioterrorism, opened an envelope containing a white powder. Like the letter sent to NBC, the envelope sent to Miller was postmarked in St. Petersburg, Fla., the FBI said. Initial tests for anthrax were negative.

A similar scare occurred at the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, where the newspaper building was evacuated when a Halloween card was opened and found to contain powder, which proved to be harmless. Other false alarms were reported from a suburban Denver hospital, the State Department's Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Va., a Burbank, Calif., television station and a Microsoft office in Reno, Nev.

During a Washington news conference yesterday, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft called the possibility of bioterrorism "a threat that continues to darken our country." But he warned against panic.

"If individuals receive mail of which they are suspicious, they should not open it, they should not shake it," Ashcroft said. "They should leave the area of the mail and call the local law enforcement and health authorities so that the mail can be appropriately dealt with."

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson stressed again that anthrax is not transmitted from person to person and urged Americans not to become overwhelmed with fear. "Don't be intimidated. The terrorists want to scare us, and they want to affect our daily life and see us living in fear," Thompson said. "We cannot let them succeed. We need to live our lives and just be more aware as we go about our business."

At post offices in Baltimore and nationwide, security measures in place since Sept. 11 were heightened yesterday. They're inspecting packages and letters before they're delivered, focusing particularly on high-profile companies and individuals.

"Up until this time, we have not ever seen an incident where actual biological hazards have been transmitted through the United States mails," said Ken Newman, deputy chief of the U.S. postal inspector's office. He said fraudulent threats and hoaxes will be investigated and prosecuted.

In the New York case, NBC News reported that a letter addressed to Brokaw and containing white powder was opened Sept. 25 by his assistant.

Three days later, the woman developed a low-grade fever and a rash. She went to see a doctor, who gave her an antibiotic, Cipro. Yesterday morning, biopsy results showed that she had the cutaneous, or skin, form of anthrax, New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani said at a news conference.

Although early tests of the powder did not reveal any anthrax, those tests may have been inadequate because the sample was so small. More testing is under way, and federal officials said they believe the letter was the likely source of the woman's infection.

After learning of the biopsy results, officials sealed off NBC's third-floor offices. About 200 employees, including Brokaw, are being tested for anthrax and given antibiotics as a precaution, said an NBC spokesman.

Thirty-five investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were sent to New York to take samples from NBC offices and conduct interviews, authorities said.

Blocks away, at The New York Times offices, Miller opened a letter, spilling a white powder, said a reporter who was nearby. Colleagues said the substance smelled like baby powder. Soon after, Miller's work area was sealed off and three men in hazardous-materials suits and a man with a gas mask arrived. The newsroom was evacuated for 2 1/2 hours.

In Boca Raton, Fla., yesterday, where test results have come back for 965 employees and visitors to the American Media Inc. building, no new anthrax cases were reported. One employee, Robert Stevens, died of inhaled anthrax last week, and two others have been exposed. Because traces of anthrax were found in a mailroom receptacle, investigators said yesterday that they are testing postal workers who sort mail for the tabloid newspapers.

Hoax letters and packages containing harmless powder have become frequent in recent years. Gary W. Long, a biologist formerly at the Naval Medical Research Center, said he and his colleagues tested nearly 500 suspicious envelopes containing powder for the FBI, the Secret Service and other agencies in the late 1990s. None contained anthrax, he said.

Anthrax is a bacterial disease that has been found in cattle and sheep for centuries. It is usually transferred when animals eat dirt that has bacteria in it left from the decay of another infected animal.

Anthrax among humans occasionally pops up among farm workers and others who handle wool and hides, but it is extremely rare in the United States. The last case of cutaneous anthrax was in a 67-year-old North Dakota man last year who had handled the carcasses of infected cows.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said it would be relatively easy for a potential terrorist to obtain the anthrax bacteria from the carcass of an infected animal or from one of several labs around the country.

Until the mid-1990s, any laboratory scientist interested in a sample of the bacteria for research purposes could write to the American Type Culture Collection in Rockville, Md., and receive a culture. Dozens of labs around the country had the cultures, which were not kept under lock and key.

Because of fear of terrorism, the federal government tightened control of anthrax and other dangerous pathogens in 1996, limiting access to licensed laboratories. But controls are more lax in many other countries.

According to a 1999 report, 17 countries have bioweapons programs, most of which are likely to involve anthrax.

"Years ago, there were almost no restrictions on anthrax for laboratory purposes," Fauci said. "But now it's a high-security item."

If a terrorist were to obtain a petri dish with the bacteria growing in it, he could starve the bacteria and the anthrax would revert to a spore form that would look like a powder, Fauci said. This powder would be potentially deadly, Fauci said.

In its purest form, the powder would be white, odorless and hard to see when blown into the air, said Calvin Chue, a research scientist with the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies.

People touching the powder could become infected through small cuts in their skin, Fauci said. This cutaneous infection would create skin lesions that would turn into black scabs.

Such infections are rarely fatal, though if left untreated about 20 percent of cases lead to a deadly blood infection.

But the inhaled form of anthrax is far more dangerous. The act of ripping open a letter with anthrax in it could stir up enough spores to infect the lungs, said Fauci.

Within two to 60 days, a victim would develop flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough and chest pains. About 80 percent of people who contract the inhaled form die within days.

Only 18 cases of inhaled anthrax have been reported in the United States this century. The last one before the Florida photographer was in 1976, according to the CDC.

Sun staff writers Gady Epstein, Michael James and Michael Stroh contributed to this article.

Letters to NBC, Microsoft subsidiary tested positive; 
5 more in Fla. exposed; 
Still no evidence incidents are linked; reports spread panic

By Michael Stroh
Sun Staff

October 14, 2001

Two suspicious letters - one delivered in New York and another in Nevada - have been found to contain anthrax, while five more employees of a Florida tabloid publisher have tested positive for exposure to the rare and deadly bacteria, officials announced yesterday.

FBI and health officials, who say they still have no evidence that the incidents in the three states are linked to the Sept. 11 terrorists or to one another, lead a criminal investigation that is rapidly widening in scope and complexity.

At a New York news conference yesterday, officials said a threatening letter addressed to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw and postmarked Sept. 18 from Trenton, N.J., was the likely source of the anthrax that sickened an aide to the news anchor.

Initially, authorities had focused on a suspicious powder-filled letter sent from St. Petersburg, Fla., to NBC. But that letter - along with a similar one sent to The New York Times - tested negative for anthrax spores.

In Nevada, meanwhile, a letter sent to Microsoft Licensing Inc., a Reno subsidiary of the software giant, was found to be contaminated with anthrax, Gov. Kenny Guinn said yesterday. The letter, which contained a check from Microsoft to a vendor in Malaysia and pornographic pictures, had been tested twice before. Results had been inconclusive or negative.

Thus far, none of the six people who touched the envelope or were nearby when it was opened Friday are known to be infected or showing signs of illness, Guinn said. The letter is being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for analysis.

"This is a very, very low risk to public health," Guinn said.

As criminal investigations in New York and Nevada get under way, federal agents in Florida continue piecing together how anthrax was introduced into the headquarters of American Media Inc., the Boca Raton publisher of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids.

Investigators suspect that the deadly pathogen might have arrived in a letter or package because traces of anthrax were found in the company's mailroom and two mailroom workers were found to have been exposed to the bacteria.

The only other place anthrax was located in the building was on the computer keyboard of Robert Stevens, a photo editor who died Oct. 5 of inhaled anthrax, the most serious form of the disease.

Yesterday, the tabloid company learned from the CDC that five more employees had been exposed to anthrax, said spokesman Gerald McKelvey.

More than 1,000 employees and visitors to the American Media building have been given nasal tests for anthrax in the past week.

As a precautionary measure, CDC officials are also testing about 20 mail sorters who work at three post offices that serve American Media

In New York, officials are closely watching a second NBC employee who is exhibiting a fever, rash and other symptoms of anthrax. The employee, who has not been identified, is being treated with antibiotics while officials await test results.

About 200 NBC employees, including Brokaw, are being tested for exposure to anthrax since Brokaw's aide, Erin M. O'Connor, was found Friday to have developed the cutaneous, or skin, anthrax, a less serious form of the disease.

O'Connor developed a rash on her chest several weeks ago, health officials said. When it worsened, she consulted a doctor Oct. 1, who prescribed the antibiotic Cipro. Health officials learned Friday from skin biopsy results that she had anthrax.

O'Connor was one of several NBC employees thought to have handled the tainted letter, which contained a sand-like substance.

There was some confusion about why investigators in New York only learned about the Trenton letter yesterday, while the St. Petersburg letter sent to NBC Studios was turned over to the FBI on Sept. 26, the day after it was received.

NBC Chairman Bob Wright explained at a news conference that the Trenton letter was accidentally filed in a folder where the company keeps other threatening letters. Wright added that it was not unusual for employees to get such letters.

But after learning of the anthrax case Friday, FBI officials evacuated some NBC offices at their Rockefeller Center headquarters and began a criminal investigation. That's when they discovered the Trenton letter, which had no return address and contained threats that authorities would not specify. It is not clear when the Trenton letter arrived at NBC.

The discovery of the source of exposure provided some relief to nervous NBC employees. "Now we have identified the missing link, so to speak, the actual cause of the anthrax that created this whole situation," said Wright. "So we are no longer dealing with an unknown time, date and place and that is very important."

The New York Times briefly evacuated its Manhattan offices for several hours Friday after reporter Judith Miller opened an envelope containing a white powder. Like the letter sent to NBC, the envelope sent to Miller was postmarked in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The preliminary tests conducted on The New York Times letter by the New York City Department of Health were negative. Results from additional tests by the CDC were not expected until Tuesday, said Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.

The anthrax mail attacks in New York and Florida - and now Nevada - have continued to fuel fears across the country. Law enforcement agencies continued to be inundated by panic calls about suspicious mail and powdery substances.

A US Airways flight from Charlotte, N.C., to Denver was diverted yesterday to Indianapolis after a flight attendant found a powdery substance on the plane. Tests by the state health department found the substance to be harmless.

In Maryland, the New Market Post Office was temporarily closed yesterday when a postal employee noticed a suspicious letter addressed to the White House. The letter leaked a powdery substance and was "stained, had no postmark and no return address other than 'England,'" said Inspector Eric Kocay.

Frederick County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to the post office, along with FBI agents and members of the Secret Service. But the substance appeared to be nothing dangerous, according to the sheriff's office.

"We're answering some of the strangest calls we've ever received," said a Frederick County Sheriff's deputy. "One woman overheard two people not speaking English on her cell phone - and she wanted us to do something about it."

Another suspicious-envelope incident forced the evacuation of T. Rowe Price's Building Four at its investor center in Owings Mills yesterday around 10 a.m. Fire officials said an employee called police shortly before 10 a.m. and reported an envelope, in the mail room, with a "white powder" inside. The substance has yet been identified.

Hazardous materials crews arrived at the scene and turned over the envelope to the FBI for analysis. No injuries or symptoms were reported, fire officials said.

Federal officials warned yesterday that anyone caught perpetrating a hoax would be prosecuted.

Sun staff writer Michael Scarcella and wire reports contributed to this article.

Small-scale success with anthrax assault

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff

October 18, 2001

To turn anthrax from an animal disease into a bioterror weapon capable of killing large numbers of people is a demanding scientific task that requires some knowledge of microbiology and lab equipment, according to experts and scientific reports.

The still-incomplete information released about the anthrax mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office in Washington, as well as to news media offices in New York and Florida, shows only that the attackers mastered the steps necessary to mount a small-scale biological assault.

Their most significant achievement was to grind anthrax spore to the size at which it quickly disperses in the air, specialists say.

But officials do not know whether the attackers have access to large quantities of anthrax spores or a delivery system capable of infecting large numbers of people.

Confusion was widespread yesterday after news media reports that the anthrax delivered to Capitol Hill was "high-grade" or "professional."

Such terms are imprecise, and experts said yesterday that it is impossible to know what they mean until detailed results of tests done on the anthrax samples are made public.

A top Army biodefense official, Maj. Gen. John Parker, said yesterday that the anthrax from Daschle's office consisted of "pure spore." He said the anthrax strain had not been fully identified but was not resistant to antibiotics.

The letters sent to Daschle and NBC News, which the Associated Press said included advice to take medication, seemed designed to sow panic, not to kill, according to several experts. Nor was the tiny quantity of anthrax that can be delivered by letter capable of mass killing.

"With a letter, you're not going to infect a lot of people," said David R. Franz, a veterinarian who spent 23 years as a top official in the U.S. Army's biological defense program at Fort Detrick. "And it's not covert. It gives you a chance to treat people."

David Siegrist, who studies biological terrorism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, agreed. "It doesn't appear these guys' concern was to infect as many people as possible," he said.

Dangerous particle size

But both men said that if the anthrax spores delivered to Daschle's office lodged in the nasal passages of 34 Capitol Hill employees, as tests indicated yesterday, the attackers have achieved a particle size that is very dangerous.

"A little bit of perturbation caused by opening the envelope was enough to put the particles into the air," said Franz, who is now at the private Southern Research Institute in Frederick.

He cautioned, however, that a person with detectable particles in his nose would not necessarily have inhaled enough anthrax spores into the lungs to cause a full-blown case of the disease. In any case, the Senate employees exposed to the bacteria are taking antibiotics and should not get sick, he said.

"Weaponizing" anthrax - turning it into a form that can be used to kill - is a multistep process that begins with the acquisition of bacteria. Some natural strains of anthrax are far more virulent than others, so a terrorist might seek a particularly deadly strain.

But the seed bacteria could be obtained with relative ease - stolen from a lab, purchased from a microbiological supply house abroad, diverted from a nation's bioweapons program or collected at the site of an animal anthrax outbreak.

A sick animal's blood is loaded with bacteria, and living anthrax spores can be dug from the ground where infected animals were buried, even after a century has passed.

The bacteria might be exposed to one or more antibiotics and bred to make it resistant to treatment. That would make the anthrax more dangerous, but might also interfere with its virulence and other characteristics, said Franz, so a terrorist might not attempt it.

The next step would be to increase the volume of bacteria by growing more. To produce a relatively small amount, anthrax could be grown in a lab on a common growth medium such as blood agar, a substance made from ocean algae enriched with blood. A single plate could produce enough anthrax to put poison in many envelopes.

To make enough germs to kill thousands of people, terrorists would need a much larger, more sophisticated fermentation tank, carefully controlling temperature, nutrients, oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Such tanks were built for past U.S., British, Soviet and Iraqi weapons programs, and they were capable of producing hundreds of gallons of anthrax slurry.

"It's not like you just pour all the ingredients into a blender and turn it on," Franz said. "It's not only a science. It's an art."

Preserved by drying

Whether prepared on a small plate or in a big tank, the anthrax would then be dried by freezing it or warming it. "Anthrax is easier to dry than some things because it's so stable," Franz said. "It can take a little heat."

Exposure to air and deprivation of nutrients also converts the bacteria to the spore state - an extremely hardy form designed to survive drought and age.

"That's the way it survives. It's like a plant making seeds," says Dr. William M. Nelson, a former government scientist and now president of Tetracore Inc., a Gaithersburg company that makes anthrax test strips.

But the dried spore mixture contains large grains and clumps. So it must be "milled," or ground into particles. For a weapon designed to produce inhalation anthrax, the ideal particle size is about 1 to 5 microns. A micron is one thousandth of a millimeter; a typical human hair is 50 microns wide.

"If it's too big, your nose filters it out. If it's too small, it may just go in and go back out without lodging in the lung," Nelson said.

Anthrax is considered one of the most dangerous biological agents partly because, once the spores are dried and milled, they can be placed in a sealed container and transported from one country to another. As long as they are protected from heat and light, they will live for weeks or months.

Delivery is unpredictable

Most experts consider the final step - delivery - to be the most difficult. To kill on a large scale, the anthrax powder must be released in such a way that an aerosol cloud of a certain density settles onto crowds of people.

And to get a fatal dose, each person would have to inhale roughly 5,000 to 10,000 spores deep into his lungs.

The spores could be poured from the roof of a tall city building, sprayed from a hand-held sprayer, released in a subway or delivered from a crop-dusting plane equipped with special nozzles. But the results would be highly unpredictable and much would depend on the weather.

"Meteorology is everything," Franz said. On a windy, sunny day, the sun could kill much of the anthrax and the wind dilute it to levels that would not infect anyone. But under certain weather conditions, the particles could become an invisible, odorless aerosol, spreading at just the right density to kill on a frightening scale.

A 1993 report by the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment estimated that the release of 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds) of anthrax spores upwind of Washington could kill 130,000 to 3 million people.

That is the catastrophe scientists fear could lie at the end of the road that started this month with a few envelopes of suspicious powder.

Investigators note similarity to those Brokaw, Daschle got; More spores found in D.C.

From Staff And Wire Reports

October 21, 2001

A letter mailed to the New York Post has tested positive for anthrax and is similar to anthrax-laced letters sent to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, police said late yesterday.

The letter addressed to "Editor" was postmarked Sept. 18 - as was a contaminated letter sent to Brokaw - and bore a Trenton, N.J., postmark like the letters to Brokaw and Daschle. The letter to Daschle was postmarked Oct. 9.

The handwriting on the Post letter is similar to that found on the two other letters, according to statement released by New York police and the FBI.

Police found the unopened envelope late Friday night during an investigation launched after a Post employee tested positive for the bacteria. The letter, which contained a small amount of a powdery substance, has been sent to Maryland for testing.

Meanwhile, anthrax was found in the mailroom of a House office building yesterday, while a man who works at a Washington post office that processes letters bound for Congress was hospitalized with a possible anthrax infection.

Investigators who began testing House and Senate offices earlier this week after an anthrax-laced letter arrived at Daschle's office in the Hart Senate building found anthrax on a mail-bundling machine at the Gerald R. Ford House Annex, Capitol police said yesterday.

The annex handles mail for the Longworth House Office Building, where more than 100 lawmakers have their offices. The annex also houses the Congressional Budget Office and a child care center, but no anthrax was found outside the mailroom.

The unidentified postal employee worked at Washington's central post office, which had handled the Daschle letter. Mail headed for lawmakers' offices passes through the post office on Brentwood Avenue in Northeast Washington before being routed to either the House or Senate.

Washington Health Commissioner Ivan Walks declined to identify the man, but said his symptoms were "suspicious" and that he was being tested for anthrax while under treatment at Fairfax Hospital.

Officials said it was too early to draw any links between the sick postal worker, the anthrax finding at the Ford building and the letter that arrived at Daschle's office. Twenty-eight people who worked in or near the office tested positive for anthrax exposure and were placed on antibiotics.

The developments, however, raised the possibility that a second letter contaminated with anthrax was sent to Congress - this one passing through the Ford Annex before making its way to a House office. Officials, however, said one letter could have contaminated others while passing through mail-handling equipment.

Dr. John Eisold, a physician for the Capitol, said employees in the Ford mailroom will be tested and treated if necessary.

Eight people in the United States are known to have contracted the disease, including a man in Florida who died. The others are on antibiotics and are expected to recover.

The discovery of anthrax in the Ford building seemed to validate the decision by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, to adjourn the House on Wednesday and order its office buildings cleared. The Senate - its members saying they didn't want to send signals of panic - remained in session until Thursday afternoon, though its offices were closed.

Rep. Peter T. King, a New York Republican, told CNN yesterday that the Senate's action was "pompous, posturing windbagging."

House and Senate office buildings were closed Wednesday to allow for environmental testing. Work was to continue through the weekend, but it was unclear yesterday whether the houses would go back into session Tuesday as planned.

In Trenton, FBI agents and other investigators interviewed residents and swabbed mailboxes for clues to the source of anthrax-laden letters sent Brokaw and Daschle.

Residents in Ewing Township were shown photos of the letters and asked whether they recognized the handwriting, whether they had noticed anything suspicious lately, seen any cars with out-of-state licenses or knew any chemists living among them.

Some were asked whether they routinely left outgoing mail in their personal mailboxes for their letter carriers to pick up or typically dropped it in a public box.

"It stops you in your tracks," said Charlotte Kaplan-Piepszak, 48, who pointed to a double-bagged bundle of mail that she picked up at the post office last week but will keep on her back porch until she is sure its safe. "When the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York, New York being 70 miles away, that's close. This is in our own back yard."

Investigators swarmed over the neighborhood after skin anthrax was diagnosed in a mail carrier, a prompt, friendly, pony-tailed woman residents knew as "Terry." Agents hope to trace the sources of two contaminated letters she may have handled, sent to Brokaw and Daschle. They have seized several mailboxes in the past few days.

On Friday, officials said a second New Jersey postal worker has developed skin anthrax - a 35-year-old postal worker from Levittown, Pa., who worked at the regional distribution facility in nearbyHamilton Township, N.J. He was in stable condition yesterday and was responding well to antibiotic treatment, a hospital spokeswoman said. Test results were pending on a third postal worker, a maintenance employee who worked on mail-sorting machines at the Hamilton facility.

Employees at the West Trenton post office in Ewing Township and at a regional processing center in Hamilton Township, 20 miles away, began a seven-day regimen of antibiotics yesterday as recommended by the state health department.

Yesterday, President Bush said there remained no evidence that the anthrax letters were linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But he vowed to fight whoever is behind them. 

By Michael Stroh
Sun Staff

October 26, 2001

Investigators offered new details about the anthrax used in the deadly mail attacks yesterday, as the bacteria sickened a State Department mail worker and federal officials widened the hunt for contamination to hundreds of mailrooms and post offices along the East Coast.

Test results from the spores mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle "confirmed our worst suspicions," Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said yesterday. The bacteria were the most concentrated and highly refined of the samples linked to the attacks in Washington, New York and Florida. Spores found in a New York Post letter, in contrast, were as chunky as "Purina dog chow" under the microscope, one expert said.

"Clearly, we are up against a shadow enemy," Ridge said at a White House briefing, "people who have no regard for human life who are determined to murder innocent people."

The toxic trail of bacteria leading from a contaminated Washington mail facility expanded yesterday to a new area postal facility. A State Department employee who works at an off-site mailroom in Sterling, Va., has inhaled anthrax, the most lethal form of the disease, Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams said yesterday.

The 59-year-old man, who worked on the receiving dock, is being treated at Winchester Hospital in Winchester, Va.

Also, a test for anthrax in a mailroom in the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring came back positive yesterday, said Charles Dasey, spokesman for U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command. The institute, which doesn't care for patients, is three miles from the hospital at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dasey said the mailroom at Fort Detrick in Frederick which exchanges mail with the institute, also was being tested.

Like many government mailrooms in the Washington area, the Sterling station receives its mail from the now-quarantined Brentwood sorting facility. After learning of the employee's illness yesterday, the State Department shut down mail deliveries as a precaution. Testing and treatment of workers were under way.

The number of Americans examined or prescribed antibiotics for anthrax exposure since the attacks began last month reached about 10,000 yesterday. Three people have died, all from the inhaled form of the disease, and 12 other cases of both inhaled and less serious cutaneous anthrax have been confirmed.

With so many hospitals and agencies involved, and some places using different definitions for suspected cases, the human casualties of the attack have proven difficult to track. At hospitals in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, dozens of patients have been evaluated for suspicion of anthrax. Ten have suspicious symptoms, while another 23 have a clinical illness, but their conditions are most likely not related to anthrax, according to Washington officials.

In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Hospital admitted a truck driver who has a skin lesion that suggests anthrax. GBMC discharged two patients yesterday and admitted another, a 51-year-old male postal worker.

Doctors treating the rare disease were given new guidelines yesterday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised physicians to treat inhaled anthrax with a cocktail of up to three antibiotics, including Cipro. Previously, treatment consisted of only a single antibiotic.

As Washington leaders moved to reassure a shaken city by reopening two Capitol Hill office buildings, public health officials were struggling to determine how widely anthrax had spread through the U.S. postal system.

Federal officials announced yesterday that they were expanding testing for contamination to all government mailrooms in Washington, additional private area businesses that receive bulk mail and 200 post offices from Washington to New York.

It was unclear if testing would be performed in the Baltimore area. Postal officials said Tuesday that environmental testing was planned at the Fayette Street post office, the Calvert Street annex and a Frederick facility. But officials said yesterday that they knew of no plans for those stations. In New York, anthrax was found yesterday on four mail-sorting machines at a Manhattan processing station that handles millions of parcels daily, the Postal Service said.

Other anthrax hot spots turned up in Washington yesterday. Anthrax spores were found in several new areas of the Hart office building on Capitol Hill, including an air conditioning filter, a stairwell and a freight elevator. Daschle announced that one wing of the building would be sealed off indefinitely, a move expected to affect at least a dozen or so of the 100 senators with offices there.

The challenge to public health officials is figuring out how to seal off the contaminated area while enabling staffers to safely occupy the rest. Anthrax spores in Daschle's letter were a little more than a micron wide, a size that would allow them to slip through most standard filters. There are 25,000 microns in an inch.

"I am very confident that we will be able to seal it," Daschle said of the affected area.

The anthrax-filled letter that passed through Brentwood, killing two workers and sickening two workers, is the suspected source of contamination at three congressional office buildings and a remote White House mail facility at Bolling Air Force Base. As of yesterday, 300 employees and visitors to that facility have all tested negative for anthrax exposure, according to Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman.

The continuing spread of anthrax is worrying public health officials, who are struggling to understand how the spores might have traveled. The infection of a State Department mail clerk only deepens the mystery. Officials said the clerk, who was in guarded condition, did not come into contact with the Brentwood station or the Daschle letter.

That raises the possibility that more than one tainted letter had been sent to the nation's capital -- or that the Daschle mail had somehow tainted another letter. "We cannot say that it was just one letter," said Chris Murray, an FBI spokesman.

Behind the scenes, government scientists at Fort Detrick and other laboratories admit they are struggling to tease clues from the minuscule quantities of anthrax recovered from the toxic letters.

So far they have determined that samples from Florida, New York, New Jersey and Capitol Hill are all the so-called Ames strain. The scientists know that the anthrax sent to Daschle was more concentrated and highly pure, suggesting a more advanced knowledge of biological weapons. The tiny particles make it more likely the bacteria could be dispersed in the air and inhaled more readily.

"When we look at these spores under the microscope, they are highly concentrated and very light. If given some energy from wind or clapping or motion in the room, they will drift in the air," said Maj. Gen John Parker of the U.S. Army's Medical Research and Material Command, which is analyzing the material.

The letter sent to the New York Post, one of three recovered by investigators that bear a Trenton, N.J. postmark and held anthrax, contained spores that were "clumpy" and less concentrated, officials said. A similar letter sent to NBC in New York had too little anthrax to be analyzed, Ridge said. Investigators haven't turned up the letter presumed to have delivered anthrax to Florida tabloid publisher American Media Inc., the site of the first fatal anthrax attack.

On the positive side, none of the anthrax DNA from the letters has been altered to render it immune to antibiotics. "The good news is this strain is susceptible to all the antibiotics we have in the U.S.," said Parker.

Despite these insights, the investigation appears to be characterized more by what government scientists don't know than what they do. Does the difference in quality of anthrax in the letters suggest more than one perpetrator? Does the fact that the strains of anthrax have matched prove there is only one?

"We don't have the answers," Ridge said.

Of the 1,200 or so known anthrax strains, Ames might be among the least useful to investigators trying to narrow down their list of suspects. The strain, experts say, is common in laboratories and animal populations across the United States and Europe.

Lawmakers who have received classified briefings said investigators do not know where the anthrax in the letter attacks came from.

"I know that there has been a great deal of speculation about Iraqi involvement," said Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "As of this point, there has not been a clear identification of an Iraqi role either in the Sept. 11 attacks or in the anthrax issue."

A report yesterday in The Washington Post said only Russia, Iraq and the United States are known to be capable of producing the sophisticated anthrax of the kind linked to the Daschle letter.

While the wait for answers might be anguishing to a nervous public, the White House is trying to emphasize that there can be no timeline for test results.

Sun staff writers Diana Sugg, Allison Klein, Gail Gibson, Frank D. Roylance and wire services contributed to this article.

Bioterror: Organisms made at a military laboratory in Utah are genetically identical to those mailed to members of Congress.

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published December 12, 2001

For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people, government sources say.

Until the anthrax attacks led to tighter security measures, anthrax grown at Dugway was regularly sent by Federal Express to the Army's biodefense center at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, where the bacteria were killed using gamma radiation before being returned to Dugway for experiments.

The anthrax was shipped in the form of a coarse paste, not in the far more dangerous finely milled form, according to one government official.

Most anthrax testing at Dugway, in a barren Utah desert 87 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, is done using the killed spores to reduce the chance of accidental exposure of workers there.

But some experiments require live anthrax, milled to the tiny particle size expected on a battlefield, to test both decontamination techniques and biological agent detection systems, the sources say.

Anthrax is also grown at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, where it is used chiefly to test the effectiveness of vaccines in animals.

But that medical program uses a wet aerosol fog of anthrax rather than the dry powder used in the attacks and at Dugway, according to interviews and medical journal articles based on the research.

The wet anthrax, while still capable of killing people, is safer for laboratory workers to handle, scientists say.

Dugway's production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.

Scientists familiar with the anthrax program at Dugway described it to The Sun on the condition that they not be named.

The offensive program made hundreds of kilograms of anthrax for bombs designed to kill enemy troops over hundreds of square miles.

Dugway's Life Sciences Division makes the deadly spores in far, far smaller quantities, rarely accumulating more than 10 grams at a time, according to one Army official.

Scientists estimate that the letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle originally contained about 2 grams of anthrax, about one-sixteenth of an ounce, or the weight of a dime.

But its extraordinary concentration - in the range of 1 trillion spores per gram - meant that the letter could have contained 200 million times the average dose necessary to kill a person.

Dugway's weapons-grade anthrax has been milled to achieve a similar concentration, according to one person familiar with the program.

The concentration exceeds that of weapons anthrax produced by the old U.S. offensive program or the Soviet biowarfare program, according to Dr. Richard O. Spertzel, who worked at Detrick for 18 years and later served as a United Nations bioweapons inspector in Iraq.

Lab security measures

No evidence linking the Dugway anthrax to the attacks has been made public, and there might well be none. Army officials say the anthrax there and at Fort Detrick has long been protected by multiple security measures.

The FBI has extensively questioned Dugway employees who have had access to anthrax, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Agents also have questioned people at Fort Detrick and other government and university laboratories that have used the Ames strain of anthrax found in the letters.

Still, the analysis of the genetic and physical properties of the anthrax mailed to Daschle and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy has caused investigators to take a hard look at Dugway's anthrax program.

First, the genetic fingerprint of the mailed anthrax is indistinguishable from that of the Ames "reference strain," which is the strain used most often at Fort Detrick and Dugway, according to a scientist familiar with the genetic work.

Researchers led by Paul Keim at Northern Arizona University have compared the two samples and found them identical at 50 genetic markers - the most sensitive genetic identification method available.

That does not mean the mailed anthrax necessarily originated from an Army program, because Ames anthrax has been widely used at government and university laboratories in the United States and overseas.

Shipped without records

While some sources have estimated Ames might have been used in as few as 20 labs, one scientist who has worked with anthrax said the total cannot be known exactly, but is probably closer to 50.

"Until the last few years, a graduate student would call up a friend at another lab and say, 'Send me Ames,' and they'd do it," the scientist said. "There wouldn't necessarily be any records kept."

Ames is similar to but distinct from the Vollum1B strain of anthrax used in the old U.S. offensive biological weapons program.

The genetic testing proves the mailed anthrax was not left over from the old program, most scientists agree.

Even more provocative than the genetics are the physical properties of the mailed anthrax. While some scientists disagree, many bioterrorism experts argue that the quality of the mailed anthrax is such that it could have been produced only in a weapons program or using information from such a program.

Link to Dugway base

If true, that would greatly limit the field, increasing the likelihood of a link to the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years.

Dugway, which is larger than Rhode Island, has been a military testing ground since World War II, when military officials selected it for its remote location in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert.

The Dugway anthrax program was launched in the early 1990s, shortly after the Persian Gulf war reawakened U.S. military commanders to the threat from biological weapons.

Iraq is known to have built a major bioweapons program that included anthrax in its potential arsenal.

According to Dugway's Web site, the proving ground's Life Sciences Division has an aerosol technology branch and a biotechnology branch, both of which use a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory designed to contain pathogens.

Anthrax and other dangerous germs at Dugway are guarded by video cameras, intrusion alarms, double locks and a buddy system that does not permit workers to handle the agents alone, according to one scientist.

But Dugway does not have a gamma radiation machine, which is why its anthrax has been shipped to Detrick for irradiation.

Dr. David L. Huxsoll, who headed Detrick's biodefense program in the 1980s, said vaccines and detection systems must be tested against aerosolized anthrax if troops are to be prepared for biological attacks.

                    "When you're building a program to defend against biological weapons on the battlefield, you have to be prepared for an aerosol exposure," he said.

Not a treaty violation

Milton Leitenberg, an expert on bioweapons at the University of Maryland, said he was not aware of the Dugway anthrax production.

But he said making a few grams of weapons-grade anthrax for testing defensive equipment would not violate the international convention on biological weapons.

The treaty bans the production of bioagents "of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective and other peaceful purposes."

"There's no specific limit in grams or micrograms," Leitenberg said. "But if you got up in the hundreds of grams, people would be very, very skeptical."

The FBI's investigation, called Amerithrax, has focused on the possibility that the anthrax terrorist might be a loner in this country with some scientific training.

The Sun reported Sunday that in two months, none of the hundreds of FBI agents on the case had contacted the Army retirees who produced anthrax in the 1950s and 1960s.

Yesterday, one of those anthrax veterans, Orley R. Bourland Jr. of Walkersville, got a call from the White House Office of Homeland Security seeking information.

The FBI had not made contact with several veterans interviewed yesterday. 

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

Military laboratory in Utah says powder is all accounted for

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff

December 13, 2001

The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground confirmed last night that it has produced dry anthrax powder in recent years but said the anthrax has been "well-protected" and is all accounted for.

The Dugway statement was issued in response to an article in The Sun yesterday revealing that the Army facility in the Utah desert has produced weapons-grade anthrax identical in important respects to the anthrax used in the postal attacks.

The statement is the first admission that any U.S. government program has produced the lethal dry
powder since the offensive biological weapons program was closed in 1969.

"This is very significant," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist who heads a working group on biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "There's never been an acknowledgment that any U.S. facility had weaponized anthrax."

Rosenberg, who has theorized that the anthrax in the letters might have come from a U.S. government program or contractor, said Dugway's assurances about security do not necessarily rule out leakage of the tiny amounts used in the bioterrorist attacks.

"The question is, could someone have gotten hold of a very small amount and used it in the letters?" said Rosenberg, of the State University of New York.

5 deaths since October

The term "weapons-grade" means that the anthrax particles are tiny enough - 1 to 5 microns - to be readily inhaled and deposited in the lungs.

A sufficient dose produces inhalation anthrax, which is blamed for killing five people since October.

Some of the anthrax produced by Dugway has matched the fine particle size and extraordinary concentration of the powder mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, estimated at close to 1 trillion spores per gram, according to a government scientist.

In addition, the mailed anthrax is genetically indistinguishable from the Ames strain used by the Army, the most sophisticated test methods show.

Neither the physical nor the genetic match proves that the terrorist used anthrax from Dugway.

Ames-strain anthrax has been used in numerous laboratories, and a person with microbiology training and access to the right equipment might have been able to concoct the deadly powder.

But many experts think it more likely that the attacks are linked to a government program, either in the United States or another country.

Staff questioned by FBI

The FBI appears to be taking seriously the possibility of a link to Dugway. Personnel working with anthrax, all of whom have been vaccinated against the bacteria, have been questioned at length by investigators.

A government official familiar with the Dugway program said about a half-dozen scientists there have the expertise to make dry anthrax. No one with such expertise has left the program in recent years, the official said.

The unsigned, two-page Dugway statement e-mailed to reporters last night says scientists there "routinely" make anthrax to test decontamination methods and equipment designed to detect biological agents. It confirms The Sun's report that most experiments use simulants or anthrax spores inactivated by radiation, but certain tests "must be performed with live agents."

It gives no details about the strain, production methods or physical qualities of the anthrax made at Dugway for aerosol testing.

'Rigorous tracking'

The statement confirms that anthrax in the form of a paste has been shipped for irradiation to the Army's biodefense center at Fort Detrick in Frederick. It says the shipments followed "stringent federal regulations" and never involved dry anthrax powder.

"All anthrax used at Dugway has been accounted for," the statement says. "There is a rigorous tracking and inventory program to follow the production, receipt and destruction of all select agents. The facility is well-protected with robust physical and personnel security systems."

The statement says the Army is cooperating with the FBI and "will not comment further on any aspect of its bio testing program" until the investigation concludes.

The Environmental Impact Statement prepared in 1992 for the Life Sciences Test Facility at Dugway, where much of the work is done, lists some of the biological agents to be used there. They include not only anthrax but also the bacteria that cause the diseases tularemia and Q fever, as well as the virus that causes Venezuelan equine encephalitis.

3 ounces at a time

For bacteria such as anthrax, the facility is limited to growing 100 milliliters, or 3 fluid ounces, at a time. The maximum concentration of spores would be 10 billion per milliliter, according to the Environmental Impact Statement.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed 18 cases of anthrax since October, including 11 inhalation and seven cutaneous, or skin, cases. No new case has been reported since that of 94-year-old Ottilie Lundgren, a Connecticut woman who died Nov. 21. 

Ex-scientists detail Detrick experiments

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published December 23, 2001

In an attempt to make America's biological arsenal more lethal during the Cold War, the Army collected anthrax from the bodies or blood of workers at Fort Detrick who were accidentally infected with the bacteria, veterans of the biowarfare program say.

The experiments, during the 1950s and '60s, were based on long experience with animals showing that anthrax often becomes more virulent after infecting an animal and growing in its body, according to experts on the bacteria and scientific studies published at the time.

Former Army scientists say the anthrax strain used to make weapons was replaced at least once, and possibly three times, with more potent anthrax that had grown in the workers' bodies. But some of the key scientists who did the work more than four decades ago are dead, and records are classified, contradictory or nonexistent, so it is difficult to establish with certainty the details of what happened.

The use of human accident victims to boost the killing power of the nation's germ arsenal is a macabre footnote to a top-secret program designed to destroy enemy troops with such exotic weapons as botulism, smallpox, plague and paralytic shellfish poison.

The offensive bioweapons program was launched during World War II and ended by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969.

Today, after a few grams of mailed anthrax have killed five people, sickened 13 others and disrupted the postal system and government, the old program's gruesome potential for destruction seems unimaginable. But at the time, fearing correctly that the Soviet Union had an even larger bioweapons program, Army scientists were driven to come up with more and more lethal disease strains.

"Any deadly diseases, anywhere in the world, we'd go and collect a sample," said Bill Walter, 76, who worked in the weapons program from 1951 until it closed.

Walter was involved in anthrax production from selection of seed stock to the dry, deadly spore powder ready to be loaded into a bomb; his final job was as "principal investigator" in a lab that studied anthrax and other powder weapons.

Walter believes the original weapons strain of anthrax, a variety called Vollum after the British scientist who isolated it, was upgraded with bacteria collected from three Detrick workers who were accidentally infected. Two of them died.

His recollection is supported by another veteran of the anthrax program, 84-year-old James R.E. Smith. A third bioweapons veteran, William C. Patrick III, confirms two of the cases but says he is not sure about the third.

"Anthrax gets stronger as it goes through a human host," said Walter, now retired in Florida. "So we got pulmonary [lung] spores from Bill Boyles and Joel Willard. And finally we got it from Lefty Kreh's finger."

William A. Boyles, a 46-year-old microbiologist, inhaled anthrax spores on the job in 1951 and died a few days later. Seven years after that, Joel E. Willard, 53, an electrician who worked in the "hot" areas where animals were dosed with deadly germs, died of the same inhalational form of the disease.

The third anthrax victim, Bernard "Lefty" Kreh, was a plant operator who spent night shifts in a biohazard suit, breathing air from a tube on the wall, using a kitchen spatula to scrape the anthrax "mud" off the inside of a centrifuge. One day in the late '50s or early '60s, his finger swelled to the size of a sausage with a cutaneous, or skin, anthrax infection.

Kreh went on to become a nationally known outdoors writer and expert on fly fishing. He did not know that the bacteria that had put him in Fort Detrick's hospital for a month had gone on to another life, too - as a sub-strain of anthrax bearing his initials.

"We called it 'LK' - that's what we'd put on the log sheets for each run," Walter said. A "run" was an 1,800-gallon batch of anthrax mixture, grown in one of the 40-foot- high fermenters inside Building 470, which stands empty at Detrick, its demolition planned.

"Lefty's strain was rather easy to detect," Walter said. When a colony of bacteria grew on growth medium, he recalled, "it came out like a little comma, perfectly spherical."

Surprised by his role

Orley R. Bourland Jr., 75, who worked as a plant manager, said anthrax from Kreh's finger was isolated and designated "BVK-1," for Bernard Victor Kreh.

Walter said he assumes the initials in the log sheets were shortened by someone who knew the source of the new sub-strain of anthrax never went by his formal name. Yet in the secret, compartmented biological program, Kreh himself does not recall ever being informed of the use to which his government put his illness.

"You're kidding," Kreh said. "I'll have to tell my wife." He doesn't remember which finger it was, he said, but he does remember that his wife, Evelyn, could see him only through a glass barrier designed to keep any dangerous microbes contained during treatment.

At 77, Kreh, who lives in Cockeysville, lives the full life of a fishing celebrity, writing magazine articles, taking VIPs on fly-fishing expeditions and endorsing products. A former outdoors columnist for The Sun, he credits his 19 years at Fort Detrick with giving him time to develop his expertise. Because of the rotating night-shift work, he said, "Two out of three weeks I could hunt and fish all day long."

The available evidence confirming the use of bacteria from the two men who died, Boyles and Willard, is less complete. W. Irving Jones Jr., 80, of Frederick, a biochemist, remembers his supervisor, Dr. Ralph E. Lincoln, giving him an unusual request some months after the electrician's death.

"Dr. Lincoln had me pull a sample of Willard's dried blood," Jones said. "We were able to grow [the anthrax bacteria] right up. And it was deadly," a determination he made by testing it on animals.

Jones said he cannot confirm the recollection of others that Willard's sub-strain of anthrax was used for a new weapons strain. That might well have happened, he said, if animal tests showed it to be more virulent than the existing weapons strain, the only means of checking potency at the time. But like any secret program, the Army's biowarfare operation was run on a "need-to-know" basis, and weapons development was not his bailiwick, Jones said.

Contradictory evidence

The evidence on Boyles is contradictory. Patrick, who joined the bioweapons program in 1951, the year the microbiologist died of anthrax, said unequivocally that the Vollum weapons strain was altered by passage through Boyles' body and became Vollum 1B.

"That's where Vollum 1B came from," said Patrick, of Frederick, who eventually headed Detrick's product development division. "It's 1-Boyles."

A review of scientific papers on anthrax published by Fort Detrick scientists in the 1940s and '50s offers indirect support for Patrick's contention. The Vollum strain found in the early Detrick papers is first replaced by a Vollum sub-strain called "M36," produced by the British biological weapons program by passing the Vollum strain through a series of monkeys to increase its virulence.

Then, in the late 1950s, references to the M36 variant of Vollum give way to references to "the highly virulent Vollum 1B strain." No 1A strain seems to have existed. Nor is there an explanation of the 1B sub-strain's origin - a break with the standard practice in describing sub-strains derived from passage through animals.

On the other hand, a medical report prepared by the Army 18 years after Boyles' death states that live anthrax bacteria "could not be (and never was) cultivated from blood, sputum, nose and throat, or skin at any time during the illness, not from tissue and fluids taken at autopsy."

The cause of death was confirmed by an autopsy finding of bacteria resembling anthrax in the brain.

The absence of live bacteria may have a simple explanation. Doctors say a person with inhalation anthrax who is given intravenous antibiotics might soon show no live bacteria, even though the person might still die of toxin produced earlier by the bacteria. But if the medical report is accurate, it appears to rule out the possibility that the weapons strain included bacteria collected during or after Boyles' illness.

It is possible that after Boyles' death, blood taken early in his illness was found to contain anthrax. Or, anthrax spores, which are not killed by antibiotics, might have been found in his lungs after death.

Scientists say it is possible, but not certain, that one pass through a human host would boost the virulence of anthrax. Repeated passes through a particular species usually increase the bacteria's lethality toward that species, said David L. Huxsoll, who oversaw anthrax vaccine tests as commander of the Army's biodefense center in the 1980s.

"If you pass it through a rabbit repeatedly, it will kill rabbits, but it won't kill a cow," Huxsoll said. In humans, "you could have a switch toward more virulence on one passage, but it wouldn't necessarily happen."

Officials of the biological defense program at Fort Detrick, where Vollum 1B is still used to test vaccines, do not know of any connection to the accidental human infections, said Caree Vander Linden, spokeswoman for the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. One account passed down by a former staff member was that Vollum 1B was produced by passage of the Vollum strain through rabbits, she said.

If the "B" actually stands for Boyles, it's news to William Boyles' family. Natalie Boyles said Friday that her husband, Charles M. Boyles, William's son, had never heard of such a thing.

Kenneth E. Willard, Joel Willard's son, said the same. "Shock would be my first feeling," Willard said on hearing the evidence described in this article. "Second would be that my mother or I should have been made aware of it, if it happened. We should have been given more information all along."

But secrecy governed everything in the program, including the deaths, because the American bioweapons makers had a keen awareness of the threat from their counterparts in the Soviet Union, occasionally supplemented by detailed information.

"We used to get intelligence reports telling me what my Russian counterpart was doing," Walter said. "Our rate and the Russian rate was the same - about 7 kilograms of dry anthrax a week."

Another parallel exists. If the United States took advantage of tragic accidents to make its anthrax deadlier, those experiments were mirrored at least once in the Soviet program. Far larger than the U.S. effort, the Soviet biowarfare program was also secretly continued after 1972, when the nations signed a treaty banning such work.

According to Ken Alibek, a former deputy chief of the Soviet program who defected to the United States in 1992, a scientist named Nikolai Ustinov accidentally pricked himself while injecting a guinea pig with Marburg virus in 1988. He died an agonizing death two weeks later.

"No one needed to debate the next step," Alibek wrote in his 1999 book Biohazard. "Orders went out immediately to replace the old strain with the new, which was called, in a move the wry Ustinov might have appreciated, 'Variant U.'"

Copyright © 2001, The Baltimore Sun

Bioterrorism riddle, $1.25 million reward stimulate interest

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff

January 6, 2002

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.

"He had to be an insider in the U.S. biological defense program," she says. Not only that: He is a microbiologist. He probably lives near Washington. And for those who want details, she has laid her reasoning out on the Internet.

To Richard M. Smith, a computer security expert in Massachusetts, the nine-digit ZIP codes on the anthrax letters could be a crucial clue - as well as the ersatz return address, a made-up elementary school. If the attacker used the Internet to collect his information, Smith says, he might have left an electronic trail.

Orley R. Bourland Jr., a Fort Detrick retiree who once made anthrax for the Army, has hunted the Web to see whether the equipment needed to make the powder is widely available (yes) and consulted with colleagues to judge whether a person working alone could physically have performed the necessary tasks to do so (probably not).

In the absence of visible progress in the three-month FBI hunt for the anthrax-mailing terrorist, an informal army of detectives has joined the quest. Among them are distinguished scientists, eager amateurs, bounty hunters and conspiracy theorists of every stripe. Solving the mystery has become a game that anyone can play.

For encouragement, there's the $1.25 million reward offered jointly by the FBI and U.S. Postal Service for solving the case.  Government sources say the prize will soon be upped to $2 million, a possible sign that investigators are stuck.

But the people who have become enthralled by the anthrax whodunit don't seem to have the money first in their minds.

A 'fascinating' mystery

"When this anthrax thing came up, I found it just fascinating," says Ed Lakeof Racine, Wis., a 64-year-old retired computer system designer who writes screenplays. "All these facts were scattered all over the place. But no one was putting them together."

So Lake took on that job himself, putting together an extensive anthrax investigation Web site, which he updates and corrects as new evidence is reported.

"There are so many clues out there - so many odd things," Lake says. "It's 7 o'clock in the morning and I'm getting up, and suddenly an idea will hit me."

Rosenberg, 63, who has headed a biological weapons working group for the Federation of American Scientists since 1989, says she joined the chase partly because of her deep concern about the danger of biological terror.

"If news coverage and public awareness just fade away because they never catch the person responsible, I think that would be regrettable," she says. But that's just part of her motivation: "It really is interesting to try to put the clues together."

Getting the public involved

If there has been an onslaught of unofficial investigation, that might be partly because the FBI encouraged it. From early on, it solicited help from the public, adding a red button labeled "Submit a Tip" to the elaborate Web site it has dedicated to the
"Amerithrax" investigation.

Along with a flag--draped logo, photos of the anthrax letters and sound files of FBI experts discussing the case, the Web site includes a lengthy handwriting and behavioral analysis of the perpetrator.

The proposed suspect is an adult male loner with scientific training, it says, who "is a non-confrontational person, at least in his public life. He lacks the personal skills necessary to confront others. ... He may hold grudges for a long time, vowing that he will
get even with 'them' one day."

Never before has the FBI made public such extensive material on an unsolved case, spokeswoman Tracey Silberling said Friday. That is partly because of the new technical possibilities offered by the Internet, but mostly because of the nature of the anthrax probe, she said.

"In the interest of public safety and educating the public about the threat, we've made as much information as possible available," Silberling said. "We're also seeking the public's assistance by making information available that might ring a bell with someone."

Silberling said the bureau has received "hundreds of tips" from the public, but declined to say whether any have proved useful.

Flawed reporting

If the FBI's lack of evident progress has drawn criticism, so has the media coverage of the case, which has often been erratic.

Even the most respected news organizations have reported details about the mailed anthrax or the investigation that quickly proved unfounded.

On Dec. 19, for instance, ABC's World News Tonight led its broadcast with a story saying the FBI was investigating a scientist who had been fired twice by Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based government contractor. The story was picked up by wire services and printed in many newspapers, including The Sun.

But the next day the story was denied by U.S. officials, who noted that the accurate part - that a man twice fired by Battelle had made anthrax threats - had been published two months earlier in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The FBI determined that the man had no connection to the mailings, officials said.

ZIP code clues

With the FBI mostly mum and no certainty from the news media, citizens have felt emboldened to do their own work, invariably using the World Wide Web. Some have shown quite a knack.

One such sleuth is Smith, 48, who has earned a reputation in the computer world for helping to track down people who have loosed certain damaging computer viruses on the Internet.

In the anthrax case, in addition to analyzing the nine-digit ZIP codes, he has dissected the return address on the bacteria-laced letters mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick J. Leahy: "4th GRADE, GREENDALE SCHOOL, FRANKLIN PARK, NJ 08852."

Smith found that while the school doesn't exist, the elements of the invented address all suggest familiarity with three adjacent small towns in New Jersey.

In addition to his own research, Smith has created "The Anthrax Conspiracy Theories Page," including links to the work of fellow detectives.

Interestingly, the most active unofficial investigators, including Rosenberg, Smith and Lake, have independently reached similar conclusions as to the motive behind the attacks.

'Bioevangelist' theory

They say the perpetrator is most likely someone with experience in the bioweapons arena who believed the U.S. government and public were oblivious to the magnitude of the potential threat from bioterrorists.

The person mailed the letters in the belief that only an actual attack would sound the necessary alarm, they say.

Such a scenario - call it "the bioevangelist theory" - would account for two pieces of evidence: the attacker's expertise about anthrax and the vague notes included in the letters vowing "Death to America" and declaring "Allah is Great."

Some Islamic scholars say that message was most likely written not by a Muslim militant, but by someone trying to sound like a Muslim militant.

That would fit the theory perfectly: A misguided American bioweapons expert trying to arouse the public might want to direct the blame at al-Qaida-style terrorists, who he believes pose the real threat.

"Somebody in the know says, 'This stuff is so dangerous, and we're not treating it with the right amount of concern,'" Smith says. "'So why don't I give a demonstration?'"

Rosenberg says such a notion was occasionally aired jokingly in the small circle of those  who worried about biological terror prior to Sept. 11.

"There have been a number of occasions when we've said in frustration, 'What we need is a biological weapons attack to wake the country up,'" she says.

The public evidence - that the mailed anthrax was the Ames strain used in U.S. biodefense research, and that it was prepared with great expertise - points to a U.S. military or government contractor program, Rosenberg says.

"I think it's somebody who's got a screw loose," Rosenberg says. "But I think the existence of the U.S. [biodefense] program made it possible."

A wider conspiracy

Inevitably, among those outside the FBI at work on the anthrax case are some who believe the mailings are only a tiny part of a far, far broader conspiracy.

One vague theory that has been bandied about on the Web links the anthrax attacks to the recent deaths of five microbiologists, including a Harvard scientist who had worked with Ebola and other viruses and a defector from the Soviet biological weapons program.

But the Web postings do not even speculate as to how the deaths might be related.

"The problem is, people connect the dots too easily," says Smith, the ZIP code investigator. "There are maybe 100,000 microbiologists out there, so some of them are dying all the time."

A more detailed conspiracy has been outlined by Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, a dentist who runs a small publishing company, Tetrahedron Publishing Group, in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Horowitz has bombarded reporters and government officials for weeks with lengthy e-mails that propose a financial motive for the attacks, such as sale of drugs and vaccines.

Among his favored culprits are Battelle, the defense and CIA contractor, and Bayer AG, the maker of Cipro, the antibiotic widely used to treat or prevent anthrax infection. (Both companies deny any connection to the attacks.)

Noting recent media reports discussing Battelle's anthrax research and speculating about a financial motive for the letters, Horowitz believes he is making progress.

"We've gotten a sense in our office that even though no one gives us credit, we are making a huge difference," he says.

Still, reports in what he calls the "slow-as-a-tortoise mainstream news media" have a long way to go to catch up with the spidery plot diagrammed on his Web site, which ties the anthrax as well as "AIDS genocide" and vaccines for smallpox and West Nile virus to a score of government and corporate conspirators.

Horowitz's anthrax theories might have been neglected by the media because he presents them on the same Web site where he hawks software for "computer-generated prayer" and numerous alternative cures, including "Body Oxygen" and "Clustered
Water," which it calls "probably the greatest breakthrough in health science produce development this century."

Determined to be heard 

But Horowitz, 49, who often notes his Harvard University master's degree in public health, says he will not be deterred until he exposes the "military-pharmaceutical industrialists."

"Even if I hadn't committed my whole life to saving lives through public health, it's my duty as an American," he says.

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

Biodefense funding creates quandary
Increase designed to fight terror also raises risk of attack

By Scott Shane, Sun Staff

Even as the FBI investigates a possible link between U.S. biodefense programs and last fall's anthrax attacks, a flood of new funding for bioterrorism research promises to increase rapidly the number of labs and people with access to such lethal pathogens. 

Some scientists say that without new limits and tougher regulations, the law of unintended consequences could come into play. The biodefense research boom could lead to diversions of organisms or expertise for new terrorist attacks, making Americans less safe rather than safer.

"Each one of these labs in essence becomes a full-service shopping center for someone who wants to get hold of a lethal agent for nefarious purposes," says Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University chemist who helped spark a debate among scientists with a letter he co-wrote last month to the journal Nature calling for new restrictions. He says the number of laboratories approved to work with potential bioterrorist pathogens should be "fewer than five nationally," a drastic decrease from the scores of labs doing such work.

He acknowledges that, with the federal government budgeting $2.4 billion in new money for bioterrorism preparedness, scientists aren't rallying to support him.

"No one wants to say anything that is likely to decrease funding," he says. "This money is going to attract applications from institutions that have no experience with these pathogens and no previous interest in them." 

"It's a sticky problem," says Michael Mair, a molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. "The question is how to provide for security while not putting shackles on scientists. Science works best when there's a free flow of ideas."

The problem is illustrated by the situation of Ebright's co-author on the letter to Nature. Nancy D. Connell, director of the Center for Biodefense at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, is calling for tighter regulations even as she prepares her lab in Newark to handle dangerous organisms in bioterrorism research. The first supplies of such microbes, including the Bacillus anthracis bacteria that cause anthrax, are expected to arrive next month, she says.

In preparing her lab for the new work, Connell has voluntarily contacted local law enforcement agencies and imposed strict security rules. A "buddy system" will ensure that no scientist is left alone with the dangerous agents, and advance approval will be required for night and weekend work, she says. 

But most of those precautions are not required by law. They should be, Connell says.

Connell, an associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, says she believes research on bioterrorism agents is important. She knows some colleagues may see her as trying to slam the door to bioterrorism research just after her lab has gotten approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to ship and receive dangerous pathogens. 

But unless rules are tightened, "we're concerned that the increased research could actually decrease security," she says. 

As a possible model, scientists point to the far stricter regulation of radioactive materials by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state agencies. NRC inspectors, for example, conduct surprise inspections of university laboratories, showing up unannounced to check inventories and record-keeping. 

"Universities know exactly how much they have of every radioisotope and where it is," Ebright says. That's not the case with biological agents. After the anthrax attacks, some universities discovered poorly secured anthrax samples with few records of where they had come from or how they had been used. 

That's because handling of deadly biological pathogens was not regulated until 1997, when an anti-terrorism act required labs that wished to ship or receive certain "select agents" to go through a demanding registration process with the CDC. The select agents are a nightmarish arsenal including 13 viruses, 12 toxins, seven kinds of bacteria and four other organisms. 

There are a little more than 250 labs nationally that are registered to receive the select agents, and the number is growing at about one lab a week, says Jonathan V. Richmond, director of the CDC's office of health and safety. Since 1997, more than 1,500 shipments of such organisms have been reported to the CDC, he said. 

But the regulation has many holes, scientists say. Labs that were using select agents in research before 1997 do not have to register, and the CDC can't keep up with the required lab inspections, they say. Bills pending in Congress would close some of the loopholes and tighten oversight.

Richmond says the CDC may not be the right agency to police the burgeoning bioterror field. "CDC's whole mission in life is to be part of the scientific effort, to be collegial with the people we work with," he says. "If CDC pushes the regulatory side too hard, that collegial element could dry up." 

He suggests that the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice might be better suited to regulate labs.

Some scientists are skeptical about the need for more regulation. Steven M. Block, a biophysicist at Stanford University, notes that many of the lethal agents can be obtained from natural sources -- notably Bacillus anthracis, which infects cattle and other animals in dozens of countries.

"Anyone bent on obtaining anthrax doesn't have to raid Fort Detrick or a university lab," Block says. A natural source for the anthrax used in last fall's attacks can't be ruled out, though the FBI appears to be aggressively pursuing a possible connection to Army labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick or Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. 

Block says he is worried about the possibility of attacks -- but that's why he wants to see more work on drugs, vaccines and defenses against genetically altered organisms. "I think we should encourage research on these pathogens, not discourage it," he says.

Mair, at the Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, says regulation of radioactive materials may not offer a precise model for bioagents.

For one thing, a radioactive isotope is always decaying -- left alone, it becomes less of a problem over time. But biological agents can grow. A gram of Bacillus anthracis recorded in January may be a kilogram by March. 

Inspections, too, are far harder. Radiation experts can use a Geiger counter to check a lab, determining instantly where radioactive substances are stored. But biological agents, stored in test tubes inside freezers, usually don't have a distinctive appearance. "If a vial is intentionally mislabeled, there's no way to know what it is without actually culturing it," Mair says.

Elisa D. Harris, a bioweapons expert at the University of Maryland and former National Security Council official, is helping lead a project at the university's Center for International and Security Studies to design an oversight system for bioagents. 

"I'm afraid of an enormous increase in classified research in U.S. government and even university labs," she said. "That would stimulate concerns in other countries about whether we're really doing the work for defensive purposes." 

Staff at Fort Detrick, records at Dugway draw new interest; 25 sites have had spores 

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published February 22, 2002

In recent weeks, FBI agents investigating the anthrax attacks that killed five people last fall have questioned a dozen biodefense scientists at Fort Detrick about former colleagues who have come under suspicion, according to employees of the Army's research institute in Frederick.

At the same time, agents were poring over entry records to the high-security laboratory at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the only U.S. facility known to produce the kind of dry, fine-particle anthrax powder like that used in the mail attacks.

But even as investigators pursued possible links between military research and the anthrax-laced letters, they were learning of more laboratories that have had the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks. At last count, 25 such labs were identified, including facilities in at least five foreign countries - and investigators think there are more, said sources familiar with the work.

Five months after a terrorist turned the daily mail into a deadly biological weapon, one of the most extensive murder investigations in U.S history seems to be moving in two directions at once. While agents are aggressively following up on tips about suspicious people, the FBI is also casting a national net for clues and even pursuing leads overseas.

Just days before the FBI interviews at Fort Detrick, which set off fevered speculation among scientists who study the world's most dangerous germs, officials had doubled the reward in the anthrax case to $2.5 million. Investigators had distributed thousands of fliers near Trenton, N.J., where the anthrax letters were mailed. They had requested help from the American Society for Microbiology, telling its 40,000 members in an e-mail, "It is very likely that one or more of you know this individual."

And the FBI is adding to its list of labs and researchers that have handled anthrax. On Jan. 30, a grand jury subpoena went to a lab at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, demanding records of all anthrax at the lab and people with access to it for the past 10 years - or 20 years for dry, powdered anthrax, said Nancy D. Connell, director of the university's Center for Biodefense, where anthrax work is planned but none has taken place.

The FBI will say little about the investigation it has dubbed "Amerithrax." "The FBI is vigorously investigating the mailing of anthrax letters and hoax letters," bureau spokeswoman Tracey Silberling said yesterday. She added only that the FBI has not identified a leading suspect.

Still, a picture can be pieced together from people familiar with the bureau's actions, most of whom will speak only on condition of anonymity.

Biodefense experts at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick have been consulted regularly by the FBI about the anthrax spore powder that sickened at least 13 people in addition to killing two Maryland postal workers, a tabloid photo editor in Florida, a hospital worker in New York City and an elderly woman in Connecticut.

But late last month, when a team of agents from the FBI's Washington, Baltimore and New York field offices arrived at Fort Detrick, the agents clearly had a different mission. They asked "pointed questions" about a few people they appeared to consider potential suspects, said several employees.

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."

The scientist acknowledged that several years ago, with Army permission, he took three biosafety cabinets that were being discarded at Fort Detrick, but he said they were for use in a classified Defense Department project that he could not discuss.

The FBI's attention to possible perpetrators with ties to U.S. biodefense laboratories has set off water-cooler gossip at Detrick and Dugway. Scientists discuss present and former colleagues they consider secretive, eccentric or vengeful.  Some recall statements or actions that have come to seem suspicious only in retrospect.

The FBI's focus reflects a paradox at the heart of the case: Most of the Americans with the technical knowledge to create a bioweapon that by all accounts was prepared with diabolical skill are those whose job is to defend the country against such weapons.

The FBI has turned to those same biodefense experts to find clues in the powder.

One government official says that despite the extraordinary concentration and purity of the powder, with an estimated 1 trillion spores per gram, chemical analysis has not pointed to a specific source. Scientists have not been able to rule out the possibility that the powder might have been diverted from Dugway, the official says.

Genetic analysis, conducted at Northern Arizona University and the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, at first established that the mailed anthrax has almost the same genetic fingerprint as the Army's Ames strain, acquired in 1981 from a heifer that died in Texas. (The "Ames" designation came from a researcher's mistaken belief that the sample came from Ames, Iowa.)

Now researchers led by Paul Keim at Northern Arizona are trying to find tiny variations among different labs' samples of Ames anthrax.  Keim said at a Las Vegas meeting last week that he has had some success. But the work is not complete, and it remains to be seen whether it will help pinpoint a source.

Part of the challenge is collecting Ames samples from the 25 or more labs that got the strain directly or indirectly from the Army. Government experts doubt it is possible to identify every place with Ames stocks - particularly overseas, where investigators know five countries had samples but believe the real number is higher.

Some outside scientists, frustrated that the FBI has reported little progress, have raised questions about the pace or direction of the investigation.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist who heads a working group on bioweapons for the Federation of American Scientists, has claimed on the federation Web site and in a talk at Princeton University on Monday that the FBI long ago identified a former government scientist as a "prime suspect." Agents haven't taken action, she says, because the suspect did secret bioweapons work the U.S. government does not want revealed.

Wrong, said Silberling, the FBI spokeswoman. "It is not accurate that the FBI has identified a prime suspect in the case," she said.

Other outsiders, by contrast, fear the bureau focused prematurely on a U.S. source for the anthrax attacks. Richard O. Spertzel, a longtime Fort Detrick scientist who later worked as a United Nations biological weapons inspector in Iraq, argues that he has seen no scientific evidence to rule out a foreign source.

"There's nothing concrete at all pointing to a domestic source," Spertzel said. He said he believes a connection to Iraq's germ-weapons program is more plausible, citing highly technical manufacturing details. He also finds intriguing a cryptic September article in a newspaper run by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's son Uday about a "virus" that would "attack the raven," which he calls a common Iraqi symbol for the United States.

Though White House officials have said the FBI is focusing on a domestic source, one law enforcement official insisted that no scenario, domestic or foreign, has been ruled out. Some FBI agents are working overseas, guided by CIA intelligence, officials say.

No one would be happier to find a foreign source than the U.S. biodefense establishment. Officials at Dugway and Detrick - where infighting and lax security in the early 1990s have been aired recently in an age-discrimination lawsuit - say their records show no missing anthrax.

But the very nature of such biological organisms makes it impossible to be certain. The anthrax letters collectively contained less than half an ounce of powder, experts say, which could have been grown from a few microscopic spores. A glass vial containing either prepared powder or seed spores could have been smuggled out of even the highest-security lab, scientists say.

"Unless you're going to strip search everybody every day," Spertzel said, "you can't prevent it." 

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

Agency denies focusing on former scientist at Fort Detrick lab

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published February 26, 2002

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

"In our investigation we have interviewed hundreds of persons, in some instances more than once," said FBI spokeswoman Tracey Silberling.  "It is not accurate, however, to say the FBI has identified a prime suspect."

She spoke in response to an article in The Washington Times yesterday, which reported that the FBI has "focused on" a scientist who previously worked at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the Times article had been "overreaching," adding that "unfortunately, there are still several suspects."

A law enforcement official who asked not to be named later said Fleischer's statement was not meant to imply that the field of possible suspects has been narrowed to a small number of people.

"The names and numbers are constantly changing," the official said.  "People come up on the radar screen and they're checked out and they go off the radar screen."

The Sun reported Friday that in late January and early February, a team of FBI agents from the Washington, Baltimore and New York field offices spent several days at USAMRIID, the U.S. government top biodefense research center. They asked scientists about former colleagues who have come under suspicion in the search for the person who mailed anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and sickened 13 others last fall.

For example, at Fort Detrick, the FBI asked about a former scientist who returned a few years ago to take three biosafety cabinets that were being discarded. Such cabinets are used to work with dangerous germs, and some colleagues found the request unusual.

But the scientist told The Sun last week that the cabinets were for use in a classified Defense Department project. Yesterday, Fort Detrick spokesman Chuck Dasey confirmed that, saying the cabinets were "old and nonfunctional" and went to the Army's Special Forces Command to help train soldiers to recognize equipment that might be found in a bioweapons facility.

Even as agents have pursued specific tips about individuals, the bureau has continued to cast a wide net for tips. Last month the FBI and U.S. Postal Service distributed fliers in the area around Trenton, N.J., where the anthrax letters were mailed and appealed for information in an e-mail to 40,000 microbiologists.

The e-mail and fliers imply that the FBI is looking for an American with knowledge of anthrax, and Fleischer said yesterday, "All indications are that the source of the anthrax is domestic."

But the law enforcement official said no possibility, including a possible foreign source, has been ruled out. 

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

U.S. official cautions against linking anthrax and Sept. 11 attacks

By Scott Shane
Sun Staff

March 24, 2002

A top federal bioterrorism official said yesterday that he found "awfully suspicious" the fact that a Sept. 11 hijacker sought treatment for a lesion resembling cutaneous anthrax.

Dr. Donald A. Henderson, commenting on a report in The New York Times yesterday, cautioned that there isn't necessarily a connection between the hijackers and the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people last fall.

He said there's no way of proving that hijacker Ahmed Alhaznawi was suffering from anthrax in June when he visited an emergency room in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because no culture was taken.

But Henderson, director of the office of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, noted other evidence that the hijackers might have been preparing for a biological or chemical attack. Another hijacker, Mohamed Atta, explored the availability of crop-dusting aircraft and visited a Florida pharmacy seeking help for his red, irritated hands, conceivably caused by use of disinfectants.

Still, most or all of the anthrax-laced letters were mailed from New Jersey on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9, after the hijackers were dead. And there are other reasons to believe the attacker was an American, he said.

"The letters and their targets don't fit very well with politically unsophisticated foreigners," said Henderson. "Are these just weird coincidences? They could be."

The revelation that Alhaznawi was seen for an anthrax-like lesion only deepens the mystery around the anthrax attacks, which remain unsolved after nearly six months of investigation by hundreds of FBI agents and U.S. postal inspectors. The Times reported Alhaznawi's treatment yesterday, as well as the fact that U.S. officials had discovered an uncompleted laboratory in Afghanistan believed to