Select Agents
University Labs Are Found Noncompliant With Security Rules for Bioterror Agents

by Lois Ember

Several university laboratories working with some of the deadliest biological agents are not complying fully with regulations to safeguard these so-called select agents from accidental release or intentional theft. The Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General reviewed the compliance of 15 labs with select-agent security regulations for the 12 months beginning in November 2003. Assistant IG Joseph J. Green would not tell C&EN how these 15 labs were selected from the pool of 96 labs working with such select agents as the anthrax bacteria and botulinum neurotoxins.

Eleven of the 15 unnamed labs were out of compliance with regulations in at least one of five areas. Eight of the 11 labs, for example, had weak inventory and/or access records. Six labs had weak access controls, including procedures for access to select-agent areas, and/or weak security plans.

Three of the 11 labs had poor emergency response plans, the IG reports. Such plans are critical because "most of the labs working with select agents are located in urban areas," says Edward Hammond, director of the U.S. Office of the Sunshine Project, a bioweapons watchdog group.

Overall, five of the 15 labs studied were not in compliance in three areas, and one lab complied with none of the regulations. There is no indication in the IG report that any of these labs were sanctioned.

Out-of-compliant labs should, "at a minimum," have their federal support withdrawn or lose "eligibility for future federal support," says Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright, who monitors select-agent studies.

Chemical & Engineering News
 ISSN 0009-2347
 Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society 

By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 1, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Eckard Wimmer knows of a shortcut terrorists could someday use to get their hands on the lethal viruses that cause Ebola and smallpox. He knows it exceptionally well, because he discovered it himself.

In 2002, the German-born molecular geneticist startled the scientific world by creating the first live, fully artificial virus in the lab. It was a variation of the bug that causes polio, yet different from any virus known to nature. And Wimmer built it from scratch.

The virus was made wholly from nonliving parts, using equipment and chemicals on hand in Wimmer's small laboratory at the State University of New York on Long Island. The most crucial part, the genetic code, was picked up for free on the Internet. Hundreds of tiny bits of viral DNA were purchased online and assembled in the lab.

Wimmer intended to sound a warning, to show that science had crossed a threshold into an era in which genetically altered and made-from-scratch germ weapons were feasible. But in the four years since, other scientists have made advances faster than Wimmer imagined possible. Government officials, and scientists such as Wimmer, are only beginning to grasp the implications.

"The future," he said, "has already come."

Five years ago, deadly anthrax attacks forced Americans to confront the suddenly real prospect of bioterrorism. Since then the Bush administration has poured billions of dollars into building a defensive wall of drugs, vaccines and special sensors that can detect dangerous pathogens. While government scientists press their search for new drugs for old foes such as classic anthrax, a revolution in biology has ushered in an age of engineered microbes and novel ways to make them.

The new technology opens the door to new tools for defeating disease and saving lives. But it is also possible to transform common intestinal microbes into killers. Or to make deadly strains even more lethal. Or to resurrect bygone killers, such the 1918 influenza. Or to manipulate a person's hormones by switching genes on or off. Or to craft cheap, efficient delivery systems that can infect large numbers of people.

"The biological-weapons threat is multiplying and will do so regardless of the countermeasures we try to take," said Steven M. Block, a Stanford University biophysicist and former president of the Biophysical Society.

The Bush administration has acknowledged the evolving threat, and last year it appointed a panel of scientists to begin a years-long study of the problem and has sought to boost bioterrorism preparedness in other ways:

• A network of hundreds of sensors is in major cities to detect the release of dangerous pathogens.

• Regulatory reforms and other incentives have been adopted to speed the development of new drugs.

• Millions of doses of antibiotics and other drugs are ready for use after an attack.

• Money and other resources have been distributed to help cities and states prepare.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declined so far to police the booming gene-synthesis industry, which churns out made-to-order DNA to sell to scientists. Oversight of controversial experiments remains voluntary and sporadic in many universities and private labs in the United States, and occurs even more rarely overseas.

Bioterrorism experts say traditional biodefense approaches, such as stockpiling antibiotics or locking up well-known strains such as the smallpox virus, remain important. But they are not enough.

Wimmer's artificial virus looks and behaves like its natural cousin — but with a far reduced ability to maim or kill — and could be used to make a safer polio vaccine. But it was Wimmer's techniques, not his aims, that sparked controversy when news of his achievement hit the scientific journals.

Wimmer's method starts with the virus' genetic blueprint, a code of instructions 7,441 characters long. The entire code for poliovirus, and those for scores of other pathogens, is available for free on the Internet.

Armed with a printout of the code, Wimmer places an order with a U.S. company that manufactures custom-made snippets of DNA, called oglionucleotides. The DNA fragments arrive by mail in hundreds of tiny vials, enough to cover a lab table in one of Wimmer's three small research suites.

Using a kind of chemical epoxy, the scientist and his crew of graduate assistants begin the tedious task of fusing small snippets of DNA into larger fragments. Then they splice together the larger strands until the entire sequence is complete.

The final step is almost magical. The finished but lifeless DNA, placed in a broth of organic "juice" from mushed-up cells, begins making proteins. Spontaneously, it assembles the trappings of a working virus around itself.

As the creator of the world's first "de novo" virus — a human virus, at that — Wimmer came under attack from other scientists who said his experiment was a dangerous stunt. He was accused of giving ideas to terrorists, or, even worse, of inviting a backlash that could result in new laws restricting scientific freedom.

Wimmer counters that he didn't invent the technology, he only drew attention to it. New techniques allow the creation of synthetic viruses in mere days, not weeks or months. Hardware unveiled last year by a Harvard genetics professor can churn out synthetic genes by the thousands, for a few pennies each. But Wimmer continues to use methods available to any modestly funded university biology lab.

"Our paper was the starting point of the revolution," Wimmer said. Wimmer believes traditional terrorist groups such as al-Qaida will stick with easier methods, at least for now. Yet al-Qaida is known to have sought bioweapons and has recruited experts, including microbiologists. And for any skilled microbiologist trained in modern techniques, Wimmer acknowledged, synthetic viruses are well within reach and getting easier.

The person who mailed anthrax spores in 2001 remains at large

By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)

WASHINGTON - The mysterious figure who dropped four deadly, anthrax-filled letters into the mail in October 2001 made it relatively easy for the government to save lives.

The letters, inscribed with messages such as "Death to America," served as clear warnings that the fine powder should be tested. The powder's arrival in envelopes, rather than an aerosolized spray, limited the spores' dispersal.

While response workers were able to hold down casualties and cleanse a contaminated Senate office building, the attack dealt sobering lessons about how far the spores can spread and how lethal they can be.

A New York nurse and a 94-year-old Connecticut woman later died, apparently after coming in contact with contaminated mail, demonstrating that even small numbers of spores can kill people who aren't strong and healthy. Antibiotics were given to about 30,000 people.

Ultimately, moon-suited cleanup workers used chemical sprays to kill anthrax in 23 facilities, including trace levels in mail rooms at the U.S. Supreme Court, the CIA and a remote facility handling White House mail. The cost: $227 million.

Since the attack, the Postal Service has irradiated all congressional mail to kill spores and germs. Congressional mail now takes three weeks to reach Capitol Hill.

As for the perpetrator, the FBI has long suspected it was an American, perhaps someone involved in U.S. bio-terrorism research. Bureau Director Robert Mueller said recently that he remains "optimistic that we will solve the case," but he declined to discuss specifics.

Man dies from 'rare anthrax bug'

A 50-year-old man is believed to have died from the first case of anthrax in Scotland for almost 20 years.

The man, named locally as Christopher "Pascal" Norris, died in July and later tests showed the acute infectious disease was the most likely cause.

NHS Borders said his home at Black Lodge in Stobs, near Hawick in the Scottish Borders, had been cordoned off and an incident control team set up.

The victim made drums with materials such as untreated animal hides.

He died on 8 July in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

After a series of tests at laboratories in England, experts identified anthrax as the most likely cause for septicaemia.

Anthrax is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis.

It most commonly occurs in animals such as cattle, sheep and goats but can also occur in humans when they are exposed to infected animals.

Health Protection Scotland said it was not passed from person to person.

"All appropriate precautions are being taken to deal with the house and its contents," said a HPS spokesperson.

"NHS Borders is tracing the man's relatives and other individuals known to have had access to the building.

"They are being assessed for risk of infection, with appropriate action being taken for each individual as required."

The effects of anthrax

"To put this in perspective this is the first death from anthrax that has occurred in the UK for something like 30 years, so it is a very unusual situation," said NHS Borders medical director Dr Ross Cameron.

"There is no risk to the general public - it's an isolated case.

"There has been one death and the contacts we have followed up have shown no signs of symptoms of any illness."

The last laboratory-confirmed case of anthrax in Scotland was in 1987 and affected a young girl who later recovered.

Leading bacteriologist, Prof Hugh Pennington said he was very surprised to hear someone could have died from anthrax in the UK.

He added that it would have been possible to have become infected from imported animal hides.

'Very rare'

"It's very rare for people to get infected from it, never mind to die from the disease," he said.

"People working in the wool industry used to be prone 50 years ago.

"The disease occurs in the wild in Africa and Asia and used to get imported.

"But it is now very uncommon in the UK due to better cleansing procedures.

"If this man was working with imported animal hides that had been infected, then that makes sense." 

MUSICIANS who have bought a bongo drum in recent months have been urged to investigate its history following the death of anthrax victim Christopher "Pascal" Norris.

Although it is believed that the 50-year-old did not sell the drums he made, it is feared that people who he gave them to as gifts may have sold them on.

Health chiefs investigating the outbreak today urged anyone who thinks they own something that he may have made to double-bag it and call the NHS Borders helpline.

Meanwhile, experts from the biochemical warfare defence laboratory Porton Down and staff from the government's decontamination service (GDS) converge on Stobs, near Hawick, have been decontaminating Mr Norris's home.

Since tests revealed Mr Norris' anthrax infection last Friday, health chiefs have been to trace people who visited his home or acquired items from within it.

A second human case of anthrax infection has emerged in Saskatchewan.

More than 663 animals have died in what health officials have called the worst anthrax outbreak in decades.

However, human infections are much more rare.

Yorkton-area veterinarian Ken Wood contracted the cutaneous type of the disease last week and is being treated with antibiotic ointment.

Wood said he scratched some welts on his ankle after he had been testing dead cattle for anthrax.

He said he must have had anthrax spores on his fingers at the time and that's how he got an infection.

'Just a mild irritation'

"A week later, the thing becomes an inch and a half in diameter and gets this black spot, which is typical for cutaneous anthrax," he said Wednesday. "Just a mild irritation is all it is. I guess it is a bit itchy."

Woods said he was surprised he got the infection because he used safety measures.

"Even though I did take precautions, wearing gloves and so forth. But I guess it can still happen," he said.

Thanks to the antibiotics, the infection has almost healed, he said.

The first case of human anthrax infection this year occurred last month, when a Melfort-area farmer was affected. He had the same kind of infection as Wood and has since recovered.

There are other types of anthrax infections that result when spores are inhaled or ingested. It's those varieties that have killed horses, cows and other livestock on the Prairies this summer.

Officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency say the outbreak is slowing. There had been no new cases of animal deaths in Saskatchewan in CFIA's last report on Tuesday.

Scientists who decontaminated Capitol Hill in Washington after senators there were mailed anthrax after the 11 September attacks began hunting for spores of the deadly infection at an artist's Borders home yesterday.

Five experts from Sabre, a New York-based company, joined a team from the Health Protection Agency's Laboratories at Porton Down to establish the source of the anthrax that killed Pascal Norris.

The 50-year-old, who made drums from animal skins, died on 8 July and was the first person to die from anthrax in Britain for 30 years.

A total of 71 people who were in contact with Mr Norris before his death or who attended his funeral wake in his home have since been prescribed antibiotics as a precaution.

However, none was showing symptoms of infection and Dr Andrew Riley, the director of public health at NHS Borders, said yesterday that none was at any risk.

Police yesterday sealed off the roads leading to Mr Norris' isolated home, Black Lodge, at Stobs in the countryside outside Hawick.

Paramedics stood by as the two teams dressed in full body protection suits and breathing through respirators entered the building in shifts.

It was the first time the artist's home had been opened up since his death from anthrax was confirmed in the middle of last month.

The house has been surrounded by an 8ft high steel fence.

Large yellow signs warning of a toxic danger have been fixed every 20 yards along the new perimeter.

The potential danger to anyone entering the scene was so high that the paramedics yesterday set up an inflatable decontamination unit to clean down the scientists each time they exited Black Lodge.

The teams from the US and Porton Down worked independently of each other yesterday to gather samples and are not expected to finish at the site until the end of the week.

The samples from both teams, the majority of which will be animal hides as these are thought most likely to be the source of the anthrax spores, will be taken to Porton Down for tests.

It is suspected that Mr Norris breathed in anthrax spores while stretching animal hides taut over frames to make his drums.

According to a source at Health Protection Scotland, when the artist shaved the animal skins to make them smooth he created thousands of tiny vibrations that shook free the spores and sent them flying into the air around his face.

Dr Riley said he expected the results from the tests in four to six weeks.

He defended the time being taken by the authorities to get to the bottom of the source of the deadly anthrax infection. He said: "All the agencies involved are working meticulously and we think getting this right means it is time well spent."

Friends of Mr Norris have said they doubted he had been importing animal skins from overseas, they have also said they did not believe he had been making drums to sell commercially.

Mark Entwistle, who had been a friend of the dead man for ten years, said: "He was a committed Buddhist. He wouldn't have killed something just to make a musical instrument but he wouldn't have been against using something that had died naturally or in an accident."

Five people died as a result of the Washington anthrax campaign which began when spore-laden letters were posted on 18 September and 9 October, 2001, to media organisations in New York and Florida, and to the offices of Tom Daschle, then the Senate Democratic leader, and a colleague, Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont.

The letters included photocopied notes referring to the 11 September attacks and Islamic rhetoric. No-one has been convicted over the campaign.

NHS Borders has set up a helpline for anyone who visited Mr Norris' home at Black Lodge, Stobs, Hawick and who has yet to make contact with them. The helpline is on 08000 282 816.

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 8, 2006

A federal judge in Florida has dismissed a freelance photographer's lawsuit seeking more than $2 million for celebrity photographs contaminated in the anthrax attack on a tabloid publishing house in 2001.

The Virginia-based photographer, Greg Mathieson, claimed to have lost about 1,400 photos stored at the Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters of American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Star, and Weekly World News. Among the photos were images of President Clinton and his family, Princess Diana, and Frank Sinatra, Mr. Mathieson said.

Mr. Mathieson said a photo editor for American Media promised to pay $1,500 for each photo lost, regardless of fault. However, in an August 23 opinion, Judge Donald Middlebrooks said that oral agreement could not supersede written "term sheets" that accompanied the photos.

The anthrax contamination at American Media is believed to be linked to a series of anthrax-laden letters received in 2001 in Senate offices and by press outlets, including ABC, CBS, NBC, and the New York Post. No one has been charged in connection with the mailings.

by Iain Hollingshead
Saturday September 9, 2006
The Guardian

The media is slowly cranking into gear for the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, but the anthrax scares that followed soon afterwards have largely been forgotten. Five years later, the crime still remains unsolved.

While the strikes on the twin towers turned modern aeronautical technology into weapons, the anthrax attacks used the more old-fashioned nexus of "snail mail". Four letters, all containing the same Ames strain of anthrax, were sent to the New York Post, the TV channel NBC and two democratic senators.

Dated 9.11.01, but posted sporadically over the next few weeks, the letters - predictable denunciations of Israel and America - were written in childish capitals. The two letters to the media also advised them to "take Penacilin [sic] now". Identical messages to the senators contained a fictitious return address, the fourth grade of Greendale School in New Jersey. "You die now," stated the letter. "Are you afraid?"

Both senators survived, but five people did die, including two postal workers. Mass hysteria ensued when 17 more people were hospitalised. In Montana, specks of flour on hotdog buns were reported to the police as evidence of anthrax. Sales of the antibiotic Cipro went through the roof. Capitol Hill was closed for weeks, forcing staffers to set up offices in the back of their cars. The Washington Post branded them "wimps" for abandoning their desks.

The rest of the world endured a huge escalation in anthrax hoaxes. Clean-up costs in the US came to over $1bn. The FBI launched a huge investigation, called Amerithrax. After ruling out a possible al-Qaida link, it focused on domestic terrorists and then the US biodefence programme. To date, no one has been arrested and only Steven J Hatfill, a physician and bioterrorism expert, has been publicly identified as a "person of interest". After losing his job in the fallout, Hatfill issued a legal writs against the government and media organisations.

An FBI spokesperson now confirms that "two dedicated squads" are still working full-time on the case. Their profiling, however, appears worryingly vague. The suspect is apparently a "non-confrontational person, at least in his public life". He is likely to "prefer being by himself more often than not. If he is involved in a personal relationship, it will likely be of a self-serving nature." Members of the public are helpfully warned not to "open, smell or taste" suspicious packages, especially if "mailed from a foreign country" or containing "protruding wires".

In the absence of anything more concrete, it is not surprising that conspiracy theories abound. One of the more convincing explanations for the lack of progress on the scaled-down Amerithrax operation is that the suspect is privy to embarrassing government secrets. A Newsnight programme in 2002 featured one expert who believed it was a botched CIA project attempting to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail. It has even been suggested that the killer was a misguided patriotic individual wanting to demonstrate the US's lack of preparedness for such an attack.

If so, he has certainly achieved his aim. In the wake of the attacks, George Bush announced a threefold increase in funding for research against biochemical threats. Last March, more than 700 US scientists signed a letter protesting that public health research was suffering as a result.

By Joseph Farah
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Nobody talks much about the anthrax attacks that hit America just after Sept. 11, five years ago today.

No one was ever charged. The investigations seemed to go nowhere.

You might recall the FBI focused all of its suspicions on an American scientist – Steven Hatfill, a microbiologist and bioweapons expert. He never worked with anthrax but reportedly had associates who worked with the Ames anthrax strain. The Ames strain was laced into five letters and mailed to several media outlets and congressional offices in September and October 2001.

The case against Hatfill was always weak. Thus, he was never charged. I believe he sued the New York Times over what certainly appeared to be a crusade to frame him.

Meanwhile, in the rush to point the finger at a non-Muslim American, the real bad guys got away.

Do you want to know what I think after five years of observation? I think the anthrax was Iraqi in origin and spread by the 9/11 hijackers before they went to meet their imaginary virgins in the sky.

If I'm right, the anthrax attacks represented three compelling reasons for our eventual invasion of Iraq:

    * It would mean Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion.

    * It would mean Saddam Hussein participated in a WMD attack on America.

    * It would mean that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden did indeed work together in planning the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world.

What's the evidence?

ABC News reported in October and November 2001 that at least five experts had identified a substance called bentonite that was used to upgrade the anthrax found in the letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle's Washington office. ABC's experts, as well as former U.N. inspectors that worked in Iraq, claimed that bentonite "was a trademark of the Iraqi germ warfare program."

ABC wasn't the only news agency that reported the bentonite discovery. The Wall Street Journal also claimed it was detected in the anthrax mailings that nearly paralyzed the country. Another clue is a little-known piece of evidence – a report by Dr. Christos Tsonas at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who treated Ahmed al-Haznawi, one of the 9/11 hijackers for a lesion that he thought "was consistent with cutaneous anthrax."

The way the FBI handled the story of Tsonas' encounter with al-Haznawi, which was related to the agency in several interviews, appears perplexing, as does its handling of another related incident examined below. A spokeswoman for Holy Cross Hospital said in response to a request for information about the incident, "We cooperated with the FBI and other authorities. At their request, we will not discuss the matter. ... We have nothing to say."

A team of microbiologists and weapons-grade anthrax experts interviewed Tsonas and investigated the report. They concluded her diagnosis made sound medical sense and said it "raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks." That hijacker, by the way, lived near the headquarters of American Media International in Boca Raton, Fla. It was that company's photo editor, Robert Stevens, who became the first fatality in the anthrax letter attacks.

Then there is the report of pharmacist Gregg Chatterton in Delray Beach, Fla. He told investigators that two of the 9/11 hijackers came into his store, Huber Drugs, looking for medication to treat irritations on Mohamed Atta's hands. Chatterton, whose pharmacy is not far from American Media International's headquarters, recalled that Atta said, "My hands – my hands burn; they are itching."

There's more. Remember those controversial alleged meetings that took place between an Iraqi agent and Mohamed Atta in the Czech Republic?

The high-ranking Iraqi intelligence operative was Ahmed Khalil Sar al-Ani. Acording to Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek, Atta met with him "at least on one occasion, perhaps more." Other sources say there were as many as four meetings. Weeks later, on April 22, 2001, al-Ani was expelled from the Czech Republic.

Several European newspapers reported in October and November 2001 that FBI teams were dispatched to Prague to investigate. An unnamed "Western intelligence official" was quoted in the London Times as saying: "If it can be shown that Atta was given a flask of anthrax, then the link will have been made with Osama bin Laden and Iraq."

Later, the German newspaper Bild claimed that, according to Israeli security sources, Atta was given anthrax by al-Ani, "which he took back to the U.S. on a flight to Newark, N.J." I know what you're thinking now. Why on Earth would the Bush administration want to see this overwhelming evidence covered up? Why wouldn't the Bush administration, which has been under fire for years for "lying" about the evidence against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida, want this information out there before the American public?

In fact, the White House, from the beginning, has gone out of its way to deny the Iraq link to the anthrax attacks. Then spokesman Ari Fleischer strangely even took issue with the ABC News report – later backing down.

A couple possibilities occur to me. This is where pure speculation enters the picture – so be warned. Until now, I've given you nothing but established facts. But I know the facts I have provided here are sure to raise questions – questions I can't necessarily answer with hard evidence.

What if it turned out the U.S. government had first provided Iraq with anthrax?

Well, in fact, that seems to be the case. During the 1980s, the U.S. government allowed biological pathogens to be sold to the Iraqi government, as I have previously reported. Export records provided by the American Type Culture Collection lists several pages of biological substances sent to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education. Included on the list for May 1986 is a shipment of "Bacillus Anthracis (ATCC 14185) V770-NP1-R. Bovine Anthrax, Class III pathogen (3 each)."

Still there is more. Remember bentonite? It turns out one of the largest manufacturers is (get ready for this, Michael Moore) a subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer.

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His latest book is "Taking America Back." He also edits the weekly online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.

By Eliot Kleinberg
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006

WEST PALM BEACH — Maureen Stevens says the federal government probably knows who killed her husband.

She believes it's not telling because that might reveal things the government doesn't want revealed. 

 Nearly five years after Bob Stevens' death, the first in the anthrax attacks that terrified a nation, "I want to know what happened," his widow, who's sued the government, said tearfully Wednesday at her lawyer's office. "I want to go into court and find out what happened. What information's obviously there. The truth is there."

Bob Stevens of Lantana, a photo editor for Boca Raton-based tabloid The Sun, died in October 2001, after he apparently opened mail laced with the deadly substance.

The government said in February 2002 that it had a "short list" of 18 to 20 people who had the knowledge, equipment, access and motive to obtain and "weaponize" anthrax. Richard Schuler, Stevens' attorney, said Wednesday it might be fewer than a dozen.

Stevens filed suit in December 2003, alleging that security lapses at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., led to her husband's death. A federal judge refused to dismiss the case and it's been in front of a federal appeals court for nearly a year. The government has argued that proceeding with the suit would jeopardize the ongoing search for the killer.

In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said he could not comment because the suit is still active.

Stevens said she's had only two contacts with the FBI since shortly after her husband's death. Agents talked with her in West Palm Beach in July 2003.

And she and families of the other four people confirmed killed by anthrax met with FBI agents in Washington in November.

Stevens said the agents told the families they were getting close to solving the case and that she felt positive after that meeting. But, she said Wednesday, "It was just lip service. I don't want to say things like this, but I do feel that."

And, Schuler said, "To only get with families once in five years, and to give what's only window dressing, I believe is a disgrace."

Debra Weierman, spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, said the "Amerithrax" task force is still active, with about 20 investigators working on it full-time.

"The FBI considers this case to be a priority," Weierman said.

Stevens said she still believes the case will be solved.

"I have to be patient," Stevens said.

But, she said of her suit, "What else do I have?" Do I stand on a street corner and ask everybody to ask the government for answers? It's not going to happen."

By Peter Franceschina
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted September 14 2006

It's been nearly five years since her husband became the first victim in a series of anthrax attacks, and Maureen Stevens is still praying for answers.

She still gets emotional when she talks about her husband, Robert, but she says she could go on for hours about what a funny, interesting and engaging man he was.

 His loss is still acute, made all the more painful by the fact that no one has been arrested in his death. Or in the subsequent anthrax attacks that killed four others and sickened an additional 17 people, despite what the FBI has called the largest investigation in its history.

"I'm a positive person. I have to believe it will be [solved]," Stevens said Wednesday. "I just have to be patient."

Stevens generally shuns the media spotlight, but she fears her husband will be forgotten. So for the past two years she has hosted a news conference to talk about him, the anthrax investigation and the $50 million lawsuit she filed against the federal government seeking answers about its stymied investigation.

"I don't want to talk today. I don't want to talk any day. It's not easy for me," she said in her soft, lilting British accent. "I live with this every day. My husband is gone."

Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor with the tabloid The Sun, worked in the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton. He was the first person to fall ill with inhalation anthrax in the weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. He opened a letter at work that spilled out a fine white powder, and then came down with flu-like symptoms.

Maureen Stevens awoke a few nights later to find her husband of 27 years out of sorts.

"He was up in the middle of the night and wandering around, and he wasn't coherent, so I just took him to the hospital. They checked him out. I thought we were OK. All the tests were coming back negative -- all the things, stroke and everything else, because that was my initial thought," Stevens said.

Robert Stevens went into the hospital on Tuesday and was dead by Friday, Oct. 5, 2001. Stevens said she was the last to know he had been infected with anthrax. By then, the FBI and postal inspectors were investigating.

She has only met with FBI agents twice to discuss the case since the early days of the investigation. She said that agents met with her and her family in July 2003, and that she and a group of other anthrax victims and family members met with FBI officials in November in Washington.

She said they were provided few details about the investigation. "We didn't get a lot of answers," she said.

Stevens was frustrated enough over the lack of information to file a $50 million wrongful death suit against the government in February 2003, alleging the anthrax was most likely taken from a U.S. Army laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

So far, the lawsuit hasn't gone anywhere. U.S. Justice Department attorneys successfully delayed Stevens' attorney from proceeding with the suit for six months by convincing a judge it would endanger the investigation and national security. After that time was up, government lawyers sought to have the case thrown out. The judge ruled against the government, which then took that decision to an appeals court, where the case sits.

Stevens vows not to give up.

"What else do I have? Ask the government for answers? That's not going to happen. So this is the only way I have," she said.

Stevens, a devout woman, doesn't dwell on the fact that she doesn't know why her husband was killed, but anger occasionally flashes because she doesn't know more.

"I don't get angry every day. I do once in a while when certain things make me angry, but I cannot live like that. So we're waiting now to hear from the [appellate] judges and we will go on from there," she said.

A spokeswoman in the FBI's Washington field office, which is overseeing the anthrax investigation, could not be reached for comment.

While Stevens waits for answers, she still has the memories of her husband. He was a wonderful cook, liked to lift a pint with his British ex-pats, and loved pinball. An avid fly fisherman, he removed the barbs from his hooks to give the fish a fighting chance. "So when he caught them he knew he caught them," his wife said.

Stevens has one memento she never wants to lose: her husband's voice on her answering machine.

"Sometimes I even call myself so I can hear his voice."

Peter Franceschina can be reached at pfranceschina@sun-sentinel.com or 561-228-5503.

By Suzanne E. Wilder
The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — Almost five years have passed since a local man was struck down by anthrax.

In that time, David Hose Sr. has received few answers about how he inhaled the potentially lethal bacteria spores that have left him on government disability — and about what the government can do for him.

Hose, 64, apparently inhaled anthrax while working as a mail supervisor at a U.S. State Department mail facility in Sterling in October 2001.

In the days that followed, he suffered spells of sweating, muscle and joint pain, and vomiting.

He went to Winchester Medical Center, where doctors obtained blood samples and sent him home with prescriptions for Cipro, an antibiotic that targets the bacteria, and cough syrup with codeine.

On the next day, doctors called Hose to say his blood tests confirmed that he had contracted anthrax. He was in intensive care at the hospital for weeks.

The next year, he was struck with a severe case of pneumonia and was hospitalized for more than a month.

Investigators said Hose probably inhaled the spores from a letter addressed to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., that had been accidentally routed to the State Department facility.

During 2001, 22 people became ill and five died as the result of anthrax-laden letters sent through the mail, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Months after Hose’s initial hospitalization, doctors said he might be able to return to work by January 2002.

But his health problems have continued. He becomes tired after walking more than a few minutes and spends most of his days watching C-SPAN on television.

“I feel better than I did,” Hose said in an interview on Thursday. He takes nine prescription drugs for a variety of problems with his lungs, sinuses, and heart, and to deal with pain and sleeping.

“The sac around my heart and lungs is scarred so bad,” he said. “There’ll be periods when my heart acts up like crazy.”

He credited God — and a nation’s prayers — with helping his recovery: “The only way I lived through it was God.”

And he has become somewhat of a celebrity, appearing on CNN and in major publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Hose filed a $12 million lawsuit in 2003 against the federal government for his health problems and the disruption to his life, but he has seen little progress.

He said many of the officials involved have refused to talk, citing national security concerns. And he hasn’t heard from his attorneys in months.

The government did not arrest anyone for sending the anthrax-laden letter, and Hose is skeptical about the government’s knowledge of the incident.

He said he is suspicious about how someone obtained access to the highly-dangerous bacteria. And he spoke harshly about the government in general, criticizing problems with education, drugs, homeland security, the CIA, nuclear weapons, and the nation’s general awareness of current conditions.

“The whole United States has got their head in the sand,” he said.

During the last five years, Hose said, he has had plenty of time to think about these things. He rarely leaves the house, and has a “very slow” lifestyle.

“We don’t go anywhere, really,” said his wife Connie.

She listens to his governmental complaints quietly, agreeing as he says he is “driving my wife nuts” with it.

But he knows he can sound like a conspiracy theorist: “I’m sorry, I’m a little paranoid about this.”

But, he added later: “If you can disprove anything I’ve said, have at it.” 

By ERIC ROSENBERG
Copyright 2006 Hearst News Service

WASHINGTON — Five years after anthrax killed five people and introduced America to high-tech bioterrorism, one of the biggest crime mysteries of our times remains unsolved.

FBI agents and U.S. postal inspectors have pursued hundreds of leads and interviewed scores of scientists who work with the deadly anthrax bacteria, but the investigation now appears to be languishing.

"No matter what anybody says, if it is five years out, and we are not even seeing any smoke from the investigation, then I would say definitely that this case is cold right now," said Christopher Hamilton, a former FBI counter-terrorism official who worked on the anthrax investigation and is now a counter-terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a non-partisan think tank. "This thing is just sitting out there with nothing happening."

The murders-by-germ in the weeks immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks added to the nation's anxieties and triggered a massive hunt for the perpetrator who used the mail to spread the bacteria.

Hundreds of FBI personnel worked the case at the outset, struggling to discern whether the Sept. 11 al-Qaida attacks and the anthrax murders were connected before eventually concluding that they were not.

A senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation insisted that "the investigation is still ongoing and intensely active." The official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said there "are a number of pending and very important leads that are being pursued."

There are 23 FBI agents and 12 postal inspectors on the case, dubbed the Amerithrax investigation inside the FBI, he said.

The anthrax investigation began after a Florida photojournalist died on Oct. 5, 2001, from an infection produced by the bacteria. Within days, anthrax-laced letters were uncovered at news outlets in New York City and at the Washington office of Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., then the top Democrat in the Senate. In November, anthrax turned up in a letter sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The letters contained similar handwritten notes. The letter to Leahy read: "You cannot stop us. We have the anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."

In addition to the Florida victim, two U.S. postal workers in Washington, a New York hospital worker and an elderly Connecticut woman died from anthrax-borne infections.

The federal government reacted by shutting some congressional offices and the Supreme Court building, while postal facilities throughout the U.S. were put on high alert.

The anthrax attacks led governments and businesses around the nation to devise new safety procedures for handling mail. Some mail handlers wore surgical masks and plastic gloves for protection.

Mail sent to government offices in Washington is irradiated to destroy any dangerous bacteria.

Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacteria and only rarely infects humans. However, the anthrax used in the attacks had been finely milled to make it more easily inhaled, thus increasing its lethality and suggesting a high degree of scientific competence.

Inhaled anthrax can trigger a deadly infection by swelling body parts, flooding the lungs with fluid and igniting internal hemorrhaging.

The FBI has spent much of the ensuing five years in efforts to identify the laboratory where the anthrax — dubbed the Ames strain — originated. This is a challenging task because the Ames strain has been widely studied in research centers.

The FBI has enlisted the help of 29 government, commercial and university laboratories to develop a profile of the anthrax used in the attacks. They are looking for a microbial fingerprint based on the theory that different scientists use different production techniques to make anthrax spores, and these varied production techniques impart different chemical and physical signatures.

(09-20) 04:00 PDT Washington -- Five years after anthrax killed five people and introduced America to high-tech bioterrorism, one of the biggest crime mysteries of the 21st century remains unsolved.

FBI agents and U.S. Postal Service inspectors have pursued hundreds of leads and interviewed scores of scientists who work with the deadly anthrax bacteria, but the investigation now appears to be languishing.

"No matter what anybody says, if it is five years out and we are not even seeing any smoke from the investigation, then I would say definitely that this case is cold right now," said Christopher Hamilton, a former FBI counterterrorism official who worked on the anthrax investigation and is now a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. "This thing is just sitting out there with nothing happening."

The murders-by-germ in the weeks immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks added to a jittery nation's anxieties and triggered a massive hunt for the perpetrator who used the U.S. mail to spread the bacteria.

Hundreds of FBI personnel worked the case at the outset, struggling to discern whether the Sept. 11 al Qaeda attacks and the anthrax murders were connected before eventually concluding that they were not.

A senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation insisted that "the investigation is still ongoing and intensely active." The official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said there "are a number of pending and very important leads that are being pursued."

Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office, which is leading the investigation, said "the FBI considers this case to be a priority" and that FBI Director Robert Mueller has asked for briefings every Friday on developments.

The FBI and Postal Service have conducted 9,142 interviews, issued over 6,000 subpoenas and executed 67 search warrants in the investigation, she said.

There are currently 17 FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors working the investigation, and two additional FBI agents are being added next month, she said.

One high-profile change is that the FBI's longtime lead investigator on the case transferred earlier this month to run the agency's field office in Knoxville, Tenn.

The anthrax investigation began after a Florida photojournalist died on Oct. 5, 2001, from an infection produced by the bacteria. Within days, anthrax-laced letters were uncovered at news outlets in New York City and at the Washington office of Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., then the top Democrat in the Senate. In November, anthrax turned up in a letter sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The letters contained similar hand-written notes. The letter to Leahy read: "You cannot stop us. We have the anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."

In addition to the Florida victim, two U.S. postal workers in Washington, a New York hospital worker and an elderly Connecticut woman died from anthrax-borne infections.

The government reacted by shutting some congressional offices and the Supreme Court building in Washington, while postal facilities throughout the U.S. were put on high alert to watch for anthrax-tainted mail. Some government buildings were closed for months to allow for costly cleanups.

The anthrax attacks led governments and businesses around the nation to devise new safety procedures for handling mail. Some offices asked mail handlers to wear surgical masks and plastic gloves for self-protection.

To this day, mail sent to government offices in Washington is irradiated to destroy any dangerous bacteria.

Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacteria and only rarely infects humans. However, the anthrax used in the attacks had been finely milled to make it more easily inhaled, thus increasing its lethality and suggesting a high degree of scientific competence by the perpetrator.

If not treated rapidly with antibiotics, inhaled anthrax can trigger a deadly infection by swelling body parts, flooding the lungs with fluid and igniting internal hemorrhaging.

The FBI has spent much of the ensuing five years in efforts to identify the laboratory where the anthrax -- dubbed the Ames strain -- originated. This is a challenging task because the Ames strain -- named for a lab at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa -- has been widely studied in research centers around the country.

To narrow the list of suspects, the FBI has enlisted the help of 29 government, commercial and university laboratories to develop a profile of the anthrax used in the attacks. They are looking for a microbial fingerprint based on the theory that different scientists use different production techniques to make anthrax spores, and these varied production techniques impart different chemical and physical signatures.

In the course of its anthrax probe, the Justice Department announced in 2002 that Stephen Hatfill, a medical doctor and biowarfare expert, was a "person of interest" to investigators.

Hatfill was never charged and has denied any involvement in the attacks; he is suing the Justice Department and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who publicly identified him as the "person of interest."

Anthrax for the Memories -The Washington Post's "rowback."
By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, at 8:31 PM ET

The Washington Post's lead story Monday morning—"FBI Is Casting a Wider Net in Anthrax Attacks"—reports the FBI's current belief that the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks that killed five people "was far less sophisticated than originally believed."

Law-enforcement authorities inform the Post that "the conventional wisdom about the attacks turned out to be wrong," specifically, "the widely reported claim that the anthrax spores had been 'weaponized'—specially treated or processed to allow them to disperse more easily."

The piece fails to name any publication that played a role in establishing "weaponized" anthrax as the "conventional wisdom," a startling omission given that the Post contributed to the notion with a Page One piece in its Oct. 28, 2002, edition titled "FBI's Theory On Anthrax Is Doubted." 

The 2002 Post story, written by Guy Gugliotta and Gary Matsumoto, questioned the FBI's theory (which appears to be very similar to today's theory) that a "single disgruntled American scientist prepared the spores and mailed the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people last year." The 2002 piece quoted at least eight scientists or biological warfare "experts" on the record to argue that the anthrax spores used in the postal attacks were of "such sophistication and virulence" that they would "require scientific knowledge, technical competence, access to expensive equipment and safety know-how that are probably beyond the capabilities of a lone individual."

The experts in the 2002 story theorized that only a country with a bio-war program could have produced the anthrax, and also that it might have been stolen or given to the attacker. The story cited unnamed investigators who said "the spores had been coated with silica to make them disperse quickly," and that "the uniformly tiny particle size and the trillion-spore-per-gram concentration" of the spores convinced "researchers" that "whoever weaponized the spores was operating at the outer limits of known aerosol technology."

To be fair to the Post, it wasn't the only publication to advance the idea that the spores used in the postal attacks were sophisticated and weaponized. For example, see this Nov. 12, 2001, New Yorker article, which asserts that the spores were "weaponized" and coated with an "anti-caking material that allows the spores to float free." Controversial author Laurie Mylroie made a similar assertion about the spores having been coated with silica in her book Bush vs. the Beltway: The Inside Battle Over War in Iraq. (To find the Mylroie passage, use Amazon's "Search Inside" feature and search for "teflon.")

But for the Post to carry on for 1,300 words about misconceptions without mentioning its role in creating them is a kind of "rowback." A rowback is defined as "a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error."

If the Post intends to overturn the conventional wisdom, it should also report its role in creating that conventional wisdom. The hook for Monday's piece is an article published in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology by FBI scientist Douglas J. Beecher titled "Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores." In it, Beecher criticizes the 2002 Post piece as an example of an article implying that the postal anthrax powders were "inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone."

Perhaps the oddest thing about the play given today's Post story is that it isn't even a scoop. On Sept. 22, the Hartford Courant published a Page One piece about Beecher's anthrax article. 

By Helen Kennedy
New York Daily News
(MCT)

WASHINGTON - Five years after the still-unsolved anthrax mail attacks killed five people and panicked the nation, the mystery is widening instead of narrowing.

Scientists now say the anthrax wasn't "weaponized" after all - meaning the substance was less sophisticated than first believed and, thus, could have been concocted by a much broader pool of suspects.

Officials initially had said the anthrax was mixed with an additive to aerosolize it - a complicated and dangerous process that could only have been pulled off by a handful of scientists with military training and access to sophisticated labs.

But, writing in a scientific journal last month, FBI microbiologist Douglas Beecher called those statements "a widely circulated misconception" and said the anthrax was, in fact, "simple spore preparations" - although remarkably pure and still the work of an expert.

The FBI would not comment, but the assistant director of the Washington field office, Joseph Persichini, released a statement saying agents "remain fully committed" to bringing the anthrax mailer to justice.

"Despite the frustrations that come with any complex investigation, no one in the FBI has, for a moment, stopped thinking about the innocent victims of these attacks," Persichini said.

"There is confidence the case will be solved," he said.

No suspects have been identified apart from former government scientist Steven Hatfill, who was not charged and is suing to regain his good name.

The 2001 letters were sent to media offices in New York and Florida and two Democratic senators in Washington.

None of the targets was hurt. Instead, the victims were mail handlers and people who opened deadly mail contaminated by spores that leaked from the terrorist's envelopes.

The low-grade reign of terror continues to haunt American workers. Bankers in Denver were stripped and scrubbed down Monday after five capsules containing a yellow powder fell out of an envelope with no return address. Tests showed it was not anthrax.

Congressman wants FBI anthrax briefing

By DONNA DE LA CRUZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- A New Jersey congressman said Wednesday it should have taken the FBI days, not years, to determine the anthrax used in 2001 that killed five people was much less sophisticated than believed.

Democratic Rep. Rush Holt asked FBI Director Robert Mueller for a classified briefing about the status of the bureau's investigation into who was behind the attacks.

Several published reports this week said the FBI had acknowledged the anthrax used in the attacks was commonly available and not weapons-grade.

In his letter to Mueller, Holt said the FBI's failure to determine what kind of anthrax was used meant that "resources were diverted and countless agents wasted their time investigating a small pool of suspects, instead of the broader search we now know was needed."

The FBI has conducted 9,100 interviews and issued 6,000 subpoenas.

Holt asked Mueller to have Douglas Beecher, a scientist in the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit, testify before the House Intelligence Committee.

Beecher recently wrote an article in a scientific journal saying there was "a widely circulated misconception" that the anthrax spores were made using additives and sophisticated engineering akin to military weapons production.

FBI spokesman Bill Carter said he did not know if Mueller had received Holt's letter.

The anthrax attacks, in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, killed five people across the country and sickened 17. There were five confirmed anthrax infections and two suspected cases in New Jersey but no fatalities.

Published: September 28, 2006
WASHINGTON The FBI denied on Thursday that it overestimated the potency of anthrax spores used in mailings that killed five people in 2001.

The bureau also rejected a request for a classified briefing on the case from Democratic Rep. Rush Holt. Citing media reports, Holt said Wednesday the FBI should have determined in days, not years, that the anthrax was less sophisticated than initially believed.

Shortly after the attacks, media reports said the spores contained additives and had been subjected to complex milling, both techniques used in anthrax-based weapons, to make them more lethal. Early this month, there were media reports that the FBI belatedly learned that those techniques had not been not used, and the anthrax was not enhanced.

Bureau officials say the early reports of weaponized anthrax were misconceptions, and more recent reports misunderstood how early the FBI was able to analyze the spores accurately.

"The FBI and its partners in this investigation have never been under any misconceptions about the character of the anthrax used in the attacks," Assistant FBI Director Eleni P. Kalisch wrote Holt on Thursday. "On the contrary, since the earliest months of this investigation, we have consulted with the world's foremost scientific experts on anthrax and relevant bio-forensic sciences, both inside and outside the FBI. While there may have been erroneous media reports about the character of the 2001 anthrax, the FBI's investigation has never been guided by such reports."

In a letter Wednesday to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Holt had requested a classified briefing on the investigation.

Kalisch rejected the request on two grounds:

Although Holt and other members of Congress got updates and briefings in 2002 and 2003, Kalisch said the FBI and Justice Department decided to stop briefing members of Congress after sensitive investigative information was reported in the media citing congressional sources.

Because this is a criminal investigation rather than an intelligence activity, a briefing of the House Intelligence Committee, of which Holt is a member, would be inappropriate, Kalisch wrote.

A spokesman for Holt said the congressman had not yet read Kalisch's letter.

Holt had written Mueller that the FBI's delay in determining what kind of anthrax was used meant that "resources were diverted and countless agents wasted their time investigating a small pool of suspects, instead of the broader search we now know was needed."

The FBI has conducted 9,100 interviews and issued 6,000 subpoenas in the case.

Holt asked Mueller to have Douglas Beecher, a scientist in the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit, testify before the House Intelligence Committee.

In April, Beecher wrote an article published in a scientific journal in August saying there was "a widely circulated misconception" that the anthrax spores were made using additives and sophisticated engineering akin to military weapons production.

The anthrax attacks, in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, killed five people across the country and sickened 17. There were five confirmed anthrax infections and two suspected cases in New Jersey but no fatalities. 

Analysis - Five years passage has eroded much of the received wisdom on the anthrax attacks. And many of the characters who took central stage are either gone and discredited, or not talking.

Judith Miller, an alleged expert on bioterror by way of her pre-9/11 book, "Germs," was often on Larry King to contribute her opinions. In a piece published in the New York Times and Guardian on October 15, she related how she'd become a part of the case upon receiving a hoax letter containing a white powder, mailed from St. Petersburg, FLA, not far from where the first anthrax infection killed a man.

Today Miller is toast, paid to go away for bringing shame upon the Times with bad reporting on the fruitless US hunt for WMD's in Iraq.

Miller's "friend and mentor," Bill Patrick, the nation's Dr. Disease from its Cold War bioweapons operation, has also gone dark. Voluble and ubiquitous in the newsmedia with descriptions of his experiences in bioweapons production during the initial hysteria, he clammed up when the FBI turned inward, looking at the attack as something that had possibly come out of the US bioweapons/biodefense industry or someone connected to it.

Former Federation of American Scientists bioterror guru, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who went Oliver Stone with conspiracy theory, allegedly fingering microbiologist Steven Hatfill to the FBI, wound up on the outs with FAS.

Nicholas Kristof, originally brimming with what was said to be inside dope on whodunit, named Hatfill on the opinion pages of the New York Times, but doesn't see fit to opine on it any more. Sued along with his newspaper for defamation by Hatfill, he's covering Darfur, perhaps as atonement.

And while the FBI seems stalled in its hunt for the bioterrorist, it hasn't impeded the publication of good science on the anthrax letters.

To this end, we point you to the forbiddingly entitled "Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores," by Douglas J. Beecher of the FBI's Hazardous Material Response Unit in Quantico, VA.

Published in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a peer-reviewed journal, the article is fascinating for the many things it says about mailed anthrax, specifically that which was found in a letter mailed to Senator Patrick Leahy. (While the abstract is on the web, the entire article won't come free to journal non-subscribers until four months from now. However, it has been circulating behind the scenes and we just happen to have a copy.)

The article goes into detail on the FBI unit's analysis of a huge volume of Congressional mail and the uncovering of the Leahy letter in just three days. It was a fine effort, when you slog through the dust-dry science, the FBI team employing brains and good old-fashioned determinative microbiology.

Beecher's team reasoned that potentially contaminated letters could be found by taking advantage of the mail's original separation into large plastic bags. Spores would be suspended in bag air by shaking and then sampled through freshly cut holes, swabbing the results directly to culture plates.

"Nearly all growth that occurred under sampling conditions . . . was B. anthracis," writes Beecher. The method allowed the FBI to quickly winnow out bags that contained anthrax spores. And then very roughly quantify them as to how hot they were in pathogen with respect to each other.

What they've laid out, in clear hard science, was that the Leahy letter was exceedingly dangerous.

Generally speaking, other letters found to be heavily contaminated, but not purposely loaded with anthrax powder, passed through the same sorting machine within one to two seconds of it and the poisoned letter sent to Tom Daschle.

Not only did cross-contaminated mail shedding of spores create an extreme danger but "[t]he capacity of [uncontaminated] envelopes to accumulate and retain dried spores was also remarkable . . . "

One graph showing concentration of spores found in the FBI's analysis room air shows an obvious spike, linked to the time when the bag containing the Leahy letter was opened.

This led Beecher to conclude: " . . . it appears that it is virtually impossible to intentionally place dried spores within a standard envelope without heavily contaminating its outside."

The Applied and Environmental Microbiology paper is unintentionally hard, thankfully so, on the media's old favorite bioterror experts.

In 2001, the wizard of Soviet bioweapons, defector Ken Alibek, spent some time clowning for the media, recommending that people could iron their mail to sanitize the anthrax. When simply agitating the anthrax letters produced extreme hazard, it was atrocious advice.

"I thought about what Bill Patrick, my friend and bio-weapons mentor, had told me: anthrax was hard to weaponize," wrote Judith Miller back in 2001, too.

"To produce a spore small enough to infect the lungs took great skill. Bill knew that firsthand. He had struggled to manufacture such spores for the United States in the 1950s and 60s as a senior scientist in America's own germ weapons program . . . "

More nonsense. No bentonite, no silica. Nothing to tie it to a particular weapon-making process or regime.

Beecher writes, " . . . a widely circulated misconception is the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. This idea is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone."

The scientist found that such things didn't matter.

Even if the anthrax powder appeared to be in clumps, "some fraction is composed of particles that are precisely in the size range that is most hazardous for transmission of disease by inhalation." And that number is a large one.

While these findings seem to open the range of suspects to those with lesser capability than those with experience from state-run bioweapons programs, this might not necessarily be the case. It seems reasonably clear that some of the scientists from old state-run bioweapons programs may not have been as knowledgeable as they let on. That doesn't mean everyone is the same.

And because the Leahy letter was so dangerous to handle, one might argue that either the anthraxer was either extremely lucky or someone with a significant amount of training, possibly equivalent to those who worked in the FBI's hotroom.

If the FBI knows, either way, it's not telling. But we can thank them a great deal for the open science. 

George Smith is a Senior Fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a defense affairs think tank and public information group. At Dick Destiny, he blogs his way through chemical, biological and nuclear terror hysteria, often by way of the contents of neighborhood hardware stores.

By Peter Franceschina
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted October 1 2006

When Bob Stevens, a tabloid photo editor in Boca Raton, died of anthrax poisoning five years ago, he became the first U.S. casualty in a new era of bioterrorism threats.

In the days and weeks to follow, four others who contracted anthrax through handling tainted mail died -- two postal workers in Washington, D.C., a New York City hospital stockroom employee and an elderly Connecticut woman. At least 17 others fell ill but survived during the uneasy autumn following the 9-11 attacks.

 Whoever devised the deadly letters slipped back underground -- there have been no anthrax mailings since. The attacker transformed the American consciousness, partly because a potential biological attack seemed remote, until it became a reality.

Hoax letters once tossed in the trash without a thought now merit a full hazardous materials response. Biodefense is a government priority, with billions of dollars dedicated to it. Even as some experts say anthrax would be the easiest biological weapon for terrorists to deploy, others say the threat is low because of the difficulty in obtaining, producing and dispersing it.

What disturbs some bioterrorism experts is the lack of positive signs the FBI will ever solve the mystery.

"It's been five years now. I don't see a solution forthcoming," said Bill Patrick, a former military anthrax researcher.

That uncertainty hangs over Maureen Stevens, who lost her husband of 27 years. Bob Stevens, 63, fell ill and was hospitalized on Oct. 2, 2001. He died three days later, and Maureen Stevens has no more answers today than she did then.

"I just want to know how it could happen, as much as how it happened, how easy it was for someone to do this," she said recently. "I would really like to know how they did it, why they did it, and what they hoped to achieve."

Though the investigation appears stalled, the FBI says the "Amerithrax" investigation remains a priority, with 17 agents and 10 postal inspectors assigned to the case.

"Despite the frustrations that come with any complex investigation, no one in the FBI has, for a moment, stopped thinking about the innocent victims of these attacks, nor has the effort to solve this case in any way been slowed," Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director of the FBI's Washington Field Office, said in a recent statement.

The FBI initially focused on scientists who worked within U.S. biodefense programs with access to government strains of Ames anthrax and sophisticated labs.

It now appears the person or group behind the attacks didn't require specialized scientific training to manufacture the anthrax, opening up a much larger pool of suspects. Some experts had characterized the anthrax as "weaponized" to make its spores smaller, lighter and more deadly.

An FBI scientist, Douglas Beecher, recently published an article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology saying the spores didn't get special coatings to make the anthrax disperse more effectively.

"A widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production," Beecher wrote in the journal's August issue.

The FBI's first public comment on the nature of the anthrax is drawing attention from a scientific community that at times has been divided on how technologically accomplished the attacks were.

Patrick says the perpetrator knew his business, at least to the degree that an effective, deadly spore was produced.

"I don't think it's something you can go into your basement laboratory to do," he said.

The first batch of letters went to media outlets -- the three major television networks and the New York Post in New York City, and to tabloid publisher American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, which publishes the Star and National Enquirer, and where Bob Stevens was a photo editor at the now defunct The Sun.

That anthrax was not as refined as the spores in two letters postmarked Oct. 9 and sent to U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The senate letters also had higher concentrations of anthrax -- experts believe the perpetrator got better at producing the spores. The FBI's Beecher wrote that even microbes left in a cruder state than weaponized spores can be dangerous.

"You can use fairly simple methods to make a fairly sophisticated powder," said David Siegrist, a bioterrorism expert at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Virginia.

For a time, the FBI focused on a former biological weapons researcher, Steven Hatfill, whose apartment was searched twice in the summer of 2002. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft called him a "person of interest," but no charges were filed. Hatfill is now suing the government.

The anthrax mailings radically changed some government priorities, increasing biodefense spending from roughly $150 million in the late 1990s to an estimated $7.5 billion last year, according to one study.

The U.S. Postal Service was forced to install machines around the country to detect anthrax and biological agents.

The increased biodefense spending is being used to study the threat and the best ways to respond to an attack. Almost $1 billion is earmarked for a new anthrax vaccine and an antitoxin, and an older vaccine and antibiotics are being stockpiled. Shipments of the new vaccine have been pushed back until at least 2008.

The first responders to any biological threat now receive more specialized training for such an event. Training is coordinated between local, state and federal agencies.

"South Florida in particular has the largest number of hazardous material technicians in the state," said Mike Jachles, a spokesman for Broward County Fire-Rescue.

But there are some bioterrorism specialists who believe the threat is overblown.

"I don't believe there is any great threat," said Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies. He said government officials and others are deliberately exaggerating the threat, even though no terror organizations have demonstrated the ability to carry out such attacks.

Peter Franceschina can be reached at pfranceschina@sun-sentinel.com or 561-228-5503.

Bioterrorism
Anthrax Redux
FBI scientist says powders in 2001 attacks contain pure, but untreated spores
by Lois Ember

In what is believed to be the most extensive public FBI statement to date on the 2001 anthrax attacks, an FBI scientist debunks much of the widely reported claims about the anthrax powders mailed to two U.S. senators and several news organizations. Those attacks killed five people and sickened 17 others.

Typical of earlier assessments, scientists and physicians published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May 2002 describing the Senate anthrax powder as "weapons grade" and having "high spore concentration, uniform size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping."

But FBI scientist Douglas J. Beecher refutes that description (Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2006, 72, 5304). He writes that "a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production." On the contrary, he writes, the anthrax powders in the letters "were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents." The FBI would not make Beecher available for interviews.

Harvard University molecular biologist Matthew S. Meselson is one of several scientists asked to examine electron micrographs of the powders and confirms Beecher's statement. Meselson tells C&EN that he "saw no evidence of anything except spores."

Meselson also says that "on a small scale it is not difficult" to produce preparations of high purity—up to 1 trillion spores per gram in some of the anthrax-letter powders. A skilled scientist possessing the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis used in the 2001 attacks could have produced such material using "basic microbiological lab equipment and supplies," he says.

The highly virulent Ames strain, first isolated in the U.S. and engineered as a weapon by scientists in the U.S.'s former bioweapons program, is now so globally distributed that the FBI has had to cast its net for the perpetrator more widely. Although the five-year-old investigation appears to be mired, Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office, says the bureau's "commitment to solving this case is undiminished." He insists "the case will be solved."

by Michael Stebbins • Posted October 2, 2006 01:19 AM 

The outcome is well documented: four to five letters mailed, 22 anthrax infections, five deaths, and at least one murderer.

The investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks is one of the largest and most expensive in history—in five years, the FBI has conducted 9,100 interviews and issued more than 6,000 subpoenas. It's not as if the agency has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs.

More impressive than the thousands of interviews is the forensic setup that led to the identification of the fourth letter, which was addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). (The first three letters were opened by staff members of Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), Tom Brokaw at NBC News, and The New York Post.) In a paper published in the August issue of a relatively obscure journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Doug Beecher of the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit describes how the agency was able to quickly build a 6,000-square-foot biohazard containment facility to screen more than two hundred 55-gallon drums full of mail from Capitol Hill. 

Inside the barrels were 642 separate bags of mail. Each was swabbed for the presence of anthrax. After taking air samples from the 20 bags that tested positive, one proved to have a very high concentration of anthrax spores. Each piece of mail from the 20 bags was photographed against a window to get an idea of its contents.

As soon as the envelope containing the powder-laden letter to Senator Leahy was held up, the investigators knew they'd found a fourth letter.

It had taken them only four days to devise a large-scale forensic screening for a biological agent, inspect a tremendous amount of mail, and identify the letter, all under extremely hazardous conditions.

Perhaps the most significant revelation in Beecher's article is that the anthrax spores were not coated with silica or any other agent designed to increase aerosolization of the spores. This means that the anthrax was almost pure spores, making it less likely that it was produced by someone with specific bioweapons experience. Despite this evidence, many press reports, including one from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, indicated the anthrax was produced by someone who knew how to weaponize it.

"[The] persistent credence given to this impression fosters misconceptions," Beecher wrote in his article, "which may misguide research and preparedness efforts." But it was the FBI that decided not to clarify the coating issue, in essence allowing the perpetuation of conspiracy theories about the source of the anthrax and the traits of the assailant. 

Due to Beecher's revelation, the press is now asserting that the FBI is widening their investigation to include people with microbiological expertise, but not bioweapons experience. Yet the FBI has reduced the number of fulltime investigators working on the case to 17 from more than 30 two years ago.

The FBI has yet to disclose how they found the mailbox from which the letters were mailed. Yet according to a source familiar with the investigation, a team of investigators, who worked at night so as not to alarm residents, took samples from 628 mailboxes in the Trenton, NJ area and tested for any trace of anthrax. In July of 2002, 10 months after the letters were sent, they identified a mailbox across the street from the Princeton University campus that still housed live anthrax spores.

As a direct result of the letters, the Federal government dramatically increased biodefense spending, which included increasing anthrax research funding by over a thousand-fold. In addition, in July 2004, Congress passed Project Bioshield, a $5.6 billion fund to "improve medical countermeasures protecting Americans against a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) attack." 

Part of the funding from Project Bioshield was earmarked for the development and stockpiling of a new vaccine against anthrax. (The old vaccine consisted of six shots administered over 18 months and had nasty side effects, including death.) But, because of a lack of an established market and the general high maintenance associated with government contracts, no major pharmaceutical companies stepped up.

Naturally, the government awarded a single $887 million contract for 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine to Vaxgen, a company that has never brought a product to market and was recently barred from the NASDAQ due to accounting irregularities. Scientific stumbles further hampered production of the new vaccine, delaying delivery beyond 2007 and kicking off a lobbying battle between VaxGen and Emergent, the company that produces the old vaccine. Millions of lobbying dollars later, the government contracted Emergent for a total of 10 million doses of the old vaccine at a cost of $243 million.

Most experts would be hard pressed to call Project Bioshield anything but a disaster.

Terrorism experts predict that we will see a significant event on U.S. soil in the next few years. Nonetheless, our election-bound Congress will leave this session without having passed a new biodefense bill that fully addresses our ongoing problems with public health preparedness.

At least we know the FBI can quickly respond to new bioterror attacks. They just may not tell us what they've found.

Michael Stebbins is the author of Sex, Drugs & DNA: Science's Taboos Confronted and the Director of Biology Policy at the Federation of American Scientists. He still thinks Anthrax is a cool name for a band.

Five years after anthax-tainted mail thrust a local post office to the forefront of a national bioterrorism attack, Rep. Rush Holt has called on federal investigators to meet with postal employees and update them on the status of their investigation into the deadly attacks.

In a letter sent to the FBI yesterday, Holt, D-Hopewell Township, demanded answers for employees at the Hamilton post office that processed the tainted mail that killed five people nationally. 

 "Clearly the folks most directly affected by this are the postal workers themselves who were moving that mail," said Pat Eddington, a spokesman for Holt. "The FBI owes them an explanation. They should be told whether this case is close to being solved and if there is anything they can do to preclude this from happening again."

The Route 130 postal facility was closed for more than three years following the 2001 attacks.

Yesterday, Hamilton Mayor Glen Gilmore echoed Holt's call. He said the men and women at the Route 130 site live with lingering fears that the attack could happen again.

"They know whoever did this is still out there," Gilmore said. "They deserve a briefing on where the investigation stands."

Holt demanded the local meet ing five days after the FBI rebuffed his request to share classified information on the investigation with a congressional intelligence panel.

Holt called for that briefing in the wake of media reports that the FBI had overestimated the sophistication of the anthrax spores used in the mailings, leading the agency to erroneously conclude the at tacks were carried out by a government scientist or someone with ac cess to a U.S. biodefense lab.

"This error meant that resources were diverted and count less agents wasted their time investigating a small pool of suspects, instead of the broader search we now know was needed," Holt wrote in a Sept. 27 letter to the FBI.

Holt, a scientist, called the FBI's investigation botched from the start, and demanded the FBI answer to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he sits.

 In a Sept. 28 response, the FBI denied it had ever overestimated the potency of the anthrax, saying the press had erroneously reported that the anthrax was of military weapons grade but that the FBI had known early on that it had been of a more common variety.

The agency refused to provide a congressional briefing, saying information from previous such briefings had been leaked to the press. 

 Yesterday Holt fired off another letter to the FBI, reiterating his request for a briefing and adding a request for a meeting with local postal workers.

"...They were on the front lines of this bioterrorism attack and are owed an update," Holt wrote. "I propose that we invite the U.S. Postal Service to make a presentation as well, and open the meeting to the general public."

The FBI did not immediately comment on Holt's latest letter.

The deadly anthrax attacks occurred within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The Hamilton mail facility handled at least four anthrax-laced letters in a one-month span. The letters, sent to NBC News, the New York Post and U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., spread anthrax spores throughout the Hamilton building.

The attacks left five area postal workers ill with anthrax, including four who worked inside the Route 130 facility. All five postal workers and a Hamilton accountant, who contracted anthrax from contaminated mail, recovered, but five people died and 17 were sickened across the nation.

The Route 130 building was closed immediately after the at tacks. In Oct. 2003 it was fumigated with chlorine dioxide and reopened in Feb. 2005.

Contact Lisa Coryell at lco ryell@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5709.

Hunt for anthrax killer still going on

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID AND MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS

WASHINGTON -- More than 1,000 biological detectors are sniffing mail across the country for dangerous contamination as the hunt goes on for whoever put anthrax in letters and killed five people just after the Sept. 11 attacks.

An anthrax case in Florida, reported five years ago Wednesday, brought the first hint of what turned out to be contamination of mail that reached Washington, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey and raised fears nationwide.

Last month, FBI Director Robert Mueller said agents are still working on the aging anthrax case, and he declared it "will be solved and the person or persons responsible will be brought to justice."

"From the outset we have been open to any and all theories, and the investigation continues on any and all theories," he said.

The Postal Service has taken action in an effort to prevent a repeat.

"We have fully deployed the fleet of bio-detection systems" on canceling machines at 271 mail processing locations, Postal Vice President Tom Day said in a telephone interview.

A modified version for larger, flat mail items will be put into service next year, he said.

Installation of the current system cost $800 million, provided by Congress, and the post office is spending about $70 million to operate it. That annual cost is expected to climb to $120 million.

The detectors check for anthrax and two other biological hazards, which Day declined to name.

Among those killed in 2001 were two postal workers at Washington's Brentwood mail processing facility. Day said workers now are trained to look for suspicious packages and call in postal inspectors if they detect something unusual.

Among the things that make a package suspicious are leaking powder and liquids. In addition, there are other telltale signs that the agency does not like to discuss for fear of tipping off terrorists.

Last week, the FBI denied it had overestimated the potency of the anthrax spores used in the killings.

Shortly after the attacks, there were reports that the spores contained additives and had been subjected to sophisticated milling - both techniques used in anthrax-based weapons - to make them more lethal. But bureau officials now say the early media reports of weaponized anthrax were misconceptions.

If the anthrax used was less sophisticated than originally thought, that opens up a wider field of potential suspects.

A small number of people in the U.S. and abroad are being looked at by investigators because they fit some criterion, such as access to anthrax, said one official who declined to be identified because authorities are reluctant to discuss the details of ongoing investigations.

Neither that official nor any others involved with the case would discuss the status of Steven Hatfill, the former Army scientist once described by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "person of interest" in the case. Hatfill has sued the government, alleging that leaked statements about him damaged his career.

Currently there are 17 FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors assigned to the case. Investigators have conducted more than 9,100 interviews, issued more than 6,000 grand jury subpoenas and completed 67 searches.

Most of the time when powder is leaking from a parcel, it turns out to be food, such as flour or baking powder, or perhaps a pill that has gotten crushed, Day said.

When packages leak, it may be because people ship things that should not go through the mail, such as parts of dead animals.

"They deep freeze them and, unfortunately, the dry ice is exhausted and we've had a number of cases where red liquid is oozing from the parcel," Day said.

Despite the installation of the detectors, many postal workers feel not enough has been done, according to William Burrus, president of the American Postal Workers Union.

The units that have been installed are effective, Burrus said. But not all mail is processed in postal facilities, he said. Some is prepared in advance by large business mailers and dropped off for delivery.

So far, the detectors have conducted more than 3 million tests, screening some 60 billion pieces of mail with no false alarms. Postal contractors and the Defense Department worked together to come up with the system.

Asked if any real biohazards have been detected, Day said: "That, you would have heard about."

Replaceable cartridges in the system do the actual tests and run an automatic self-check. If that self-check indicates a problem, the sample is routed to a different cartridge. All the cartridges are connected through a secure broadband network so they can be monitored.

 By Alison Walker
News-Post Staff
FREDERICK -- Five years after anthrax was used in lethal mail attacks, the federal government still has few answers and considerable work to prepare for a similar attack.

Letters containing powdered anthrax spores were mailed to media outlets in New York and Florida and to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The attacks resulted in five deaths and 17 anthrax infections. Officials first announced a confirmed case of inhalation anthrax Oct. 4, 2001, in a Florida photo editor who died the next day.

Dubbing the case "Amerithrax," the FBI investigation placed a Fort Detrick lab under national scrutiny.

The case remains unsolved.

Delays

The source of the anthrax has eluded investigators, and experts say the perpetrator may never be found.

Luciana Borio, an infectious disease expert, said anthrax is more difficult to trace than many bacterial agents. Ms. Borio is a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity.

"The difficulty we have with biothreats is there is no return address, there is no signature," she said. "It's almost impossible to identify who did it."

The genetic makeup of anthrax is not unique to its geographic origin, said Steven Hinrichs, who directs the University of Nebraska's Center for Biosecurity in Omaha. Finding such a geographic correlation would allow investigators to link an anthrax sample to its place of origin.

"Identifying genetic differences (among samples) has been difficult, and they may not even exist," he said.

Col. David Franz is the former commander of the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID.

While bullets from a gun can be traced to the gun that fired them, he said, similar techniques don't exist in biology.

Suspect pool

Reports that the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was less sophisticated than once thought could extend the pool of suspects beyond the U.S. biodefense community, and could further complicate the FBI investigation.

Douglas Beecher is a scientist in the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit. The theory that the spores were manufactured military-style was a misconception, he said in an August scientific journal.

These revelations may indicate the perpetrator wasn't a member of the U.S. biodefense community, The Washington Post reported in late September.

Media reports after the attacks said the anthrax was made with additives and complex engineering, a combination known as weaponizing. Investigators looked for a biodefense insider with the ability to produce such a product.

Col. Franz, the former USAMRIID commander, told The Frederick News-Post on Monday the anthrax mailed to Sen. Daschle was probably not weaponized, but it was still high quality.

"Whoever purified it and dried it had to know  what they were doing," he said.

The anthrax was clean, with little debris, Col. Franz said. The sample contained individual spores, which would take significant skill to produce, he said.

Mr. Hinrichs, the Nebraska biosecurity expert, said inhalation anthrax that isn't weaponized is still a serious infectious threat.

"(The anthrax used in 2001) was certainly effective enough," he said, referring to the five people who died from exposure to the agent.

It is possible that weaponized anthrax would have infected or killed more people than in 2001, Dr. Hinrichs said.

Investigators are also widening the scope of the anthrax case to outside the United States because the strain of anthrax used in the attacks has been found in labs around the world.

Fort Detrick

The FBI's investigation initially focused on USAMRIID, the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick.

USAMRIID was strongly linked to Ames strain anthrax. The lab was the first to use the Ames anthrax strain for research -- and gave the strain its name -- in the 1980s.

In June 2002, the FBI named former USAMRIID researcher Steven J. Hatfill "a person of interest."

Agents searched Mr. Hatfill's apartment across the street from Fort Detrick. They searched a frozen pond in the Frederick watershed in late 2002 for evidence used in the 2001 attacks, and drained the pond in June 2003.

Mr. Hatfill has pursued a lawsuit against the government, trying to find employees at the FBI and the Justice Department who leaked his name to reporters during the anthrax investigation. He is also suing several news organizations for libel.

Preventing threats