Dr. Steven Hatfill declared yesterday that he has never been to Princeton, N.J. - even as FBI agents showed his picture to people in the town where they believe last year's anthrax letters were mailed.

"I just spoke to him, and he categorically denies that he's ever been in Princeton," said Pat Clawson, a friend and private eye who is serving as Hatfill's spokesman. "He couldn't find it on a map, and he doesn't even know where it is in New Jersey."

Clawson said he didn't know offhand where Hatfill was when the deadly anthrax letters were mailed, killing five, "but the FBI certainly does, because he voluntarily gave up his diary and travel calendar months ago."

The FBI calls Hatfill, 48, "a person of interest" - a milder version of suspect - but his is the only photo being shown to potential witnesses, and the only criminal search warrant sought in the case was for his apartment.

Hatfill, a biodefense expert who worked for secret government virus programs, claims he is being made the "fall guy" for a stalled FBI investigation. There is no hard evidence against him, but fellow scientists gave his name to the FBI months ago because his résumé is padded, he lived in Rhodesia during a suspicious anthrax outbreak there and he has flunked lie-detector tests, though not on questions about the anthrax letters.

Probers this week found old anthrax spores in a mailbox at the intersection of Nassau and Bank Sts. in downtown Princeton and believe that's where letters were dropped in one of two mailings, Sept. 18 and Oct. 9.

This week FBI agents have shown people in the area pictures of Hatfill, asking, "Did you see this man here the third week of September?"

Some people were concerned that they didn't realize the mailbox had been tainted for nearly a year. "I've been using that ...box," said Carmen Guagliardo. "It's worrisome. I feel sorry for the mailman."

Letter carrier Cleveland Stevenson, 46, who serves the mailbox daily, was pretty calm. "I don't feel it's anything new," he said. "I just use gloves."

Clawson said there was "zero similarity" between Hatfill's handwriting and the addresses written in slanted block capitals on the anthrax letters, and he blasted the technique of showing only Hatfill's picture instead of multiple photos to "eliminate false identifications."

"This is a TV show being brought to the American people by the same producers who gave us Waco and Ruby Ridge and Richard Jewell and Wen Ho Lee," Clawson said. 

Hatfill was in the Trenton area attending a conference with another scientist in late November, Clawson said. "But that wasn't the time frame of the anthrax letters," he said.

He said Hatfill, who just moved to Louisiana to take an academic job after losing his security clearance, is being stopped on the street for autographs.

Hatfill novel depicts terror attack
By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - An unfinished novel by a scientist being scrutinized in last fall's anthrax-by-mail attacks centers on a terror scheme to spread deadly bacteria in Washington, but the story written in 1998 differs in important ways from recent real-world events.

The 198-page novel, mostly finished, describes a paralyzing attack against the White House and Congress in which dozens of people sicken or die, including the fictional president and top congressional leaders. But the unpublished book, on file at the U.S. Copyright Office, does not involve anthrax or mailings.

The co-author, former Army biological weapons researcher Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, is one of about 30 scientists who have drawn the attention of law enforcement officials investigating in the attacks, although only Hatfill's name has become public.

Hatfill, 48, has denied any role and criticized the FBI and news media for engaging in what he described as personally damaging speculation and innuendo.

Hatfill's novel, "Emergence," has raised suspicions at the FBI. A U.S. law enforcement official on Tuesday characterized the work as an "interesting coincidence at this point." The FBI found a copy of the novel on Hatfill's seized computer.

It was registered for a copyright in 1998 by Roger Akers, a friend of Hatfill's who said Tuesday that he had proofread it for Hatfill and, with his permission, copyrighted it in both their names.

Hatfill's fictional villain is a Palestinian terrorist, Ismail Abu Asifa, paid by Iraq to launch a biological attack against Washington. The novel opens in Antarctica, where 10 members of a South African research team die from a strange sickness.

"Eight years later, a similar disease sweeps with explosive effect through the members of the U.S. congressional House and Senate," Hatfill wrote in the opening synopsis. "The nation's leadership is paralyzed and panic ensues as members of the executive office begin to show symptoms."

Asifa flies from England to Washington Dulles International Airport planning "to strike terror deep into the heart of the most powerful nation on Earth."

Once in Washington, Asifa buys supplies for $387 to grow bubonic plague bacteria - "not a high price to strike terror in the government of a country this large." The bacteria in the attacks is yersinia, not anthrax.

Hatfill's villain infects the White House using a sprayer hidden inside a wheelchair during a public tour. The president is sickened before he departs for a trip to Moscow, and within days the illness spreads to top congressional leaders.

In his plot, the White House becomes the "House of Death."

But Asifa also accidentally infects himself and ultimately stumbles into the path of a car, dying six days later in a hospital.

"For all its wealth and power, the United States ... was actually an incredibly easy target for biological terrorism," Hatfill wrote. But Hatfill noted that U.S. experts were sufficiently well trained to detect attacks that his villain "would probably have only enough time to perform one attack and observe its early effects."

"It was unlikely with his present resources, that he would be able to kill more than a few hundred people at most," Hatfill added.

Also Tuesday, the FBI in New Jersey showed merchants near a mailbox that tested positive for anthrax exposure the photograph of a man and asked if they had seen him in the area last fall. A local architect, Ross N.A. Woolley, said investigators showed him a picture of Hatfill with a mustache, much like a photograph widely shown in the media.

The FBI declined to say whether the person in the photo was Hatfill.

The idea for the novel was hatched several years ago at a dinner party where a group of journalists and former military men got to talking about bioterrorism, said Pat Clawson, a friend of Hatfill's who was there.

"We started kicking it around, that would be a cool novel to write - let's have a bioterrorism attack on Washington and Congress," said Clawson, who is serving as Hatfill's spokesman.

The FBI has searched Hatfill's apartment in Frederick, Md., twice, as well as his car, a storage locker in Florida and the home of his girlfriend.

Law enforcement officials have described Hatfill as a "person of interest," not a criminal suspect.

While declaring his innocence publicly this week, Hatfill emphasized that his background is in the study of viral diseases such as Ebola, not bacterial diseases such as anthrax.

Hatfill previously worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick, Md., once home to the U.S. biological warfare program and repository for the Ames strain of anthrax that was used in the attacks.

                      ---

Associated Press Writer Laura Meckler contributed to this report.

By Toni Locy
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- A lawyer for a former Army scientist under scrutiny in last fall's deadly anthrax attacks filed complaints this week over the FBI and Justice Department's handling of the probe.

Victor Glasberg, a lawyer in Alexandria, Va., said Wednesday that he sent letters Tuesday to the offices of professional responsibility at the FBI and Justice Department to request an investigation into leaks of damaging information about Steven Hatfill, who denies any role in the anthrax attacks.

''What's most disturbing is the openness, the porousness, the publicness of this investigation,'' Glasberg said. ''It's totally inappropriate.''

Meanwhile, FBI agents canvassed the streets of Princeton, N.J., this week with a photo of Hatfill. Authorities said Monday that a mailbox on a main street in Princeton had tested positive for anthrax. Princeton merchants said the FBI wanted to know whether anyone had seen Hatfill in the vicinity.

Hatfill, 48, was a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. The institute was once home to the U.S. biological warfare program and repository for the Ames strain of anthrax that was mailed to media outlets and two U.S. senators. Five people who were exposed to the anthrax died.

But Hatfill has said he worked with viral diseases such as Ebola, not bacterial diseases like anthrax. The FBI says Hatfill is not considered a suspect, but authorities, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, describe him as one of about 30 ''persons of interest'' in the case.

''Then where are the pictures of the other 29 people and why aren't they being shown?'' said Pat Clawson, a friend of Hatfill's.

Clawson blasted the FBI for showing only Hatfill's picture to merchants whose businesses are near the tainted mailbox on Nassau Street, in front of the Princeton University campus. By showing only Hatfill's photo, Clawson said, the FBI is attempting to create ''the framing effect'' to encourage potential witnesses to identify Hatfill.

Glasberg said he believes that the FBI wants to catch the anthrax killer. ''But with regard to Steven Hatfill, what they are doing is totally upside down, inside out and wrong.''

''One has got to question whether there's a rush to judgment to find somebody, anybody, and worry about minor matters like guilt or innocence later,'' Glasberg said.

The Associated Press reported that several Princeton merchants said agents spent two days showing the picture and questioning employees about whether they remembered seeing the man in that area last September and October, when the anthrax attacks occurred. They said the agents didn't reveal the man's identity.

Newark FBI special agent Bill Evanina said, ''We are canvassing the general area just as we would do in any investigation.''

Glasberg said Hatfill has never been to Princeton. 

The lawyer also said Hatfill's handwriting does not resemble that on the letters to the media and Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Last fall, federal authorities began testing 600 mailboxes in New Jersey after it was determined that anthrax letters were routed through a processing center in Hamilton. The center handles mail dropped into the Nassau Street box in Princeton, which is the first box to test positive for anthrax spores, a law enforcement source said Wednesday.

The source cautioned that tests have not been completed on several other mailboxes. If none tests positive, the source said, investigators could then conclude that the anthrax-laden letters were all mailed from the Nassau Street box.

The Johannesburg Mail & Guardian
Friday, August 16, 2002

Two months ago an Internet search for information about Steven Jay Hatfill would have produced less than a dozen results, confined to scientific research bearing his name.

This week surfers can choose from close on 7000 "hits", ranging from a 50-page diatribe by the Jewish Defence Organisation -- which dubs the American doctor "Steven Mengele" and challenges him to sue for defamation -- to reports in French, German, Spanish, Danish, even Vietnamese.

The reason for the sudden surge of data about the 48-year-old former United States government bio-warrior is that he has jumped from being one of 30 "persons of interest" to the main focus of FBI investigations into last year's anthrax-by-mail attacks, which killed five people.

Amid the details of Hatfill's life that have emerged since the end of June are links to the right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) and service with the former Rhodesian security forces. Last weekend Hatfill and the three Washington lawyers he has hired went public for the first time since the FBI turned its spotlight on him, accusing agents of turning his life into a "wasteland" by deliberately leaking "irrelevant" information about his past to the media and making him the scapegoat for their failure to find the real culprit behind the anthrax attacks. 

Hatfill has consistently refused to answer questions from the press.

But while Hatfill and his attorneys were at pains to proclaim his innocence and lash out at investigators, they refused to talk about his past. Yet it is precisely what he did, when and for whom that have raised most of the questions now being asked.

On August 1 the FBI searched his apartment in Frederick, Maryland, for the third time in seven months. They have also searched the home of Hatfill's girlfriend and a storage locker in Ocala, Florida, where his parents used to own a stud farm. So far neither the searches nor lie-detector tests or hours of questioning have produced any solid evidence that Hatfill sent letters containing weapons-grade anthrax to US senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy last November, but the circumstantial case is mounting against the man who gave firearms training during the late 1980s to members of jailed AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche's shock troops, Aquila.

Hatfill, who was born in St Louis, Missouri, lived in South Africa for 10 years after qualifying as a doctor at the University of Zimbabwe Medical School in 1983. He claims to have spent 14 months in the Antarctic as a member of the South African research team, that he served the South African Air Force as a consultant flight surgeon from 1991 to 1993, and lists two master's degrees and a doctorate in molecular cell biology from Rhodes University among his qualifications. Last Sunday, however, his attorney, Victor Glasberg, said Hatfill had submitted a thesis to Rhodes and "thought" he had been awarded the doctorate, but had since learned that this didn't happen and had amended his CV accordingly.

While working in the department of haematology at Stellenbosch University for three years during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hatfill made no secret of his AWB links, using the Milnerton Shooting Association's shooting range in Table View, Cape Town, to train members of Aquila. When a colleague recognised Hatfill in a newspaper photograph of Terre'Blanche surrounded by his uniformed bodyguards, the photo was pinned up on a laboratory noticeboard, "where it remained for some time, and led to Hatfill boasting that he was Aquila's weapons trainer in the Western Cape".

Another former colleague says Hatfill alienated a number of staff members in the radio-biology laboratory, because "he always carried a 9mm pistol and constantly boasted about his military past". Female colleagues particularly disliked Hatfill "because he used to invite them to 'poke and puke' parties".  According to Lothar Bohm, professor of oncology at Stellenbosch, Hatfill was unpopular because "he just did not respect other people's lives or their work or their needs in the lab. He was the kind of person who would go into the labs late at night and take pieces of equipment without asking."

Edward Rybicki, associate professor in Cape Town University's microbiology department, said Hatfill would "talk about running around in the bush and throwing grenades in Zimbabwe ... boast about shooting up the ANC's offices".

How much of what Hatfill claims is true is open to debate. The exact dates and nature of his activities in South Africa -- and throughout his career -- are vague and filled with anomalies. His CV is riddled with gaps, suggesting that he is either a liar or that his records have been fudged to hide clandestine activities and account for "missing" periods of time. Even his American military records were censored before being released to the media, and there is growing speculation that Hatfill was recruited by a covert US agency while an undergraduate at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, in the early 1970s, and worked as a double agent throughout his service in crack units such as the Rhodesian Special Air Service and Selous Scouts, and while in South Africa.

Hatfill emerged as the prime suspect behind the anthrax attacks when the FBI learned in June that he and a colleague, Joseph Soukup, commissioned a report in February 1999 from US bio-terror expert William Patrick III on how a hypothetical anthrax attack could be launched by mail, and how it would best be dealt with. At the time, Hat-fill was working for an American defence contractor, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).  Although the report uncannily mirrors the actual attacks following the events of September 11 last year, right down to the amount -- 2,5g -- of anthrax that could be placed in an envelope without causing it to bulge, and specifies the same number of spores and microscopic particle size as were found in letters sent to the US senators, it was not turned over to investigators by SAIC at the time of the anthrax scare.

It was not until June 20 that the FBI obtained a copy of the top-secret report, and a week later agents and bio-hazard teams spent more than a day searching his home, removing computer components and half a dozen black refuse bags of videotapes, books and files. On August 1, armed with a search warrant, the FBI searched the apartment again, along with trash cans outside the building, after receiving unspecified "new information".

Among the many unanswered questions about Hatfill is why, at least until a fortnight ago, he continued to live in an apartment at Detrick Plaza, a civilian complex inside the security perimeter of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, home of some of the deadliest pathogens known to man. Hatfill worked as a virologist at Fort Detrick only from September 1997 to January 1999, but continued to have access to laboratories there and at another military bio-war facility, Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, until at least March this year. Hatfill claims his work at the institute focused on finding new treatments for the killer Ebola and Marburg viruses, but the FBI says he is one of "only a handful" of scientists who had both access and the detailed knowledge needed to culture and weaponise the highly lethal concentrated dry powder anthrax spores posted to the politicians.

Just two months before the first anthrax victim died in Boca Raton, Florida, last October, Hatfill's security clearance was cancelled by the US Department of Defence. His employers, SAIC, were given no reason for the sudden withdrawal, and sacked Hatfill as a result. He told former colleagues that he had applied for a higher security rating in order to bid for a top-secret government job, and was required to take a lie-detector test, which he failed "on aspects of his earlier activities in Rhodesia". Hatfill allegedly complained that the polygraph was carried out by "amateurs" incapable of "understanding what Cold Warriors like himself had to do in Rhodesia".

Several of Hatfill's acquaintances said he had hinted over the years at having been involved in the world's worst recorded anthrax outbreak, which killed at least 180 of more than 10 500 human victims between 1978 and 1980 in the Rhodesian Tribal Trust Lands. The outbreak is believed to have been caused deliberately by Rhodesian security forces with the assistance of the late Professor Bob Symington, head of the anatomy department at the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine in Harare and father of a crude but effective bio-warfare programme launched against guerrilla fighters and confirmed in recent years by senior ex-Rhodesian military officers.

It was Symington who arranged for Hatfill to study medicine in Zimbabwe and served as his mentor. Although serving at the time as a signaller with US Special Forces, Hatfill went to Zimbabwe in 1976 after spending eight months as a "health assistant" at a Methodist mission hospital in Kapanga, Zaire. In October 1976 he married chief medical missionary Glenn Eschtruth's daughter, Caroline. In April 1977 a group of Cuban-led mercenaries invaded the mission station from Angola, and while eight Americans were later evacuated unharmed, Eschtruth was executed and buried in a shallow grave. Although his marriage ended after less than two years and Hatfill did not even know his wife had given birth to a daughter, Kamin, until she herself had a son in 1996 and tracked her father down, he often told colleagues his father-in-law's brutal murder had "caused me to undertake some actions other people wouldn't understand". However, when Hatfill told the story he claimed Eschtruth had been killed by "terrorists in Rhodesia".

Details about Hatfill's war experiences are shrouded in mystery, starting with the fact that he could not have simultaneously served as a member of the US's "Green Berets" and two Rhodesian military units without high-level official sanction. US military experts say it would also be "just about impossible" for anyone with known links to the last white regime in Zimbabwe and the AWB in South Africa to have gained employment at Fort Detrick -- one of the most sensitive facilities within the US military -- unless this, too, was part of an official plan.

Whatever the truth about Hatfill's background, FBI and media interest have caused his newest employer, Louisiana State University, to suspend him on full pay for 30 days before he starts his next job: training emergency personnel and federal agents -- possibly including some of those involved in the investigation against him -- on how to deal with a bio-terror attack. 

Thursday, August 15, 2002

By BILL CAHIR 
The Express-Times 

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt on Wednesday demanded that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation explain what Holt describes as foot-dragging in the investigation of anthrax mailings that originated in the Princeton area last fall. 

Holt, D-Hunterdon, in a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, claimed he was dismayed to learn that the bureau only last week had identified a mailbox on Nassau Street in Princeton that had tested positive for anthrax. 

The second-term lawmaker noted that the anthrax-laden letters had been mailed with Trenton postmarks and had passed through the Hamilton postal facility. Five people were killed while 12 were sickened.

"It now appears that it has taken the FBI nearly a year to test all of these mailboxes (around the Hamilton facility) for anthrax," Holt wrote. "One does not need to be a trained criminologist to know that identifying where the tainted envelopes entered the mail stream should be a primary goal of the FBI investigation." 

"Failure to test all mailboxes and other paths certainly hurts a criminal investigation and it also fails to close the possibilities that there are still infectious quantities of anthrax in the system," Holt continued. "I have some doubt whether the FBI has even now tested all the mailboxes feeding Hamilton for anthrax." 

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the congressman's letter, claiming the bureau as a general matter does not respond through the news media to members of Congress. 

Holt in his missive asked that Mueller provide a chronology explaining when the mailboxes feeding the Hamilton postal facility were tested. 

The Democrat also sought "an explanation of the methodology" the FBI was using to choose mailboxes and other sites that it was testing for anthrax spores. 

Holt insisted that he receive an update, perhaps through a face-to-face meeting with Mueller, "within the next few days." 

The anthrax scare, which shocked lawmakers and closed congressional offices for several months last fall, including Holt's, gradually has evolved into a worsening black eye for the FBI. 

The bureau has made no arrests. A former U.S. Army scientist, meanwhile, has denied his involvement in the anthrax mailings. Dr. Steven Hatfill also has denounced federal authorities for identifying him as a person of interest to the government. Hatfill, of Alexandria, Va., has proclaimed his innocence and has stated that he was appalled by the bio-terrorism that succeeded the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Turning the spotlight on the FBI
By Daniel Schorr 

WASHINGTON ­ We thought the FBI's practice of manipulating the news media against its targets had gone out with J. Edgar Hoover, but apparently not. Dr. Steven Hatfill, the germ scientist, has been left to contend with suspicion of involvement with anthrax. That suspicion appears to have been orchestrated by an FBI suffering from a tattered reputation in the war against terrorism. 

Dr. Hatfill, who worked in the Army's biological research center in Maryland, was one of many persons questioned by the bureau in its unrewarding search for the mailers of the anthrax letters that killed five people. The FBI stresses that he is not a suspect, only a "person of interest." But twice his home was searched and each time the news media were tipped off in advance, coming with cameras, satellite trucks, and helicopters. The public was left to surmise that he was more than just a person of interest.

Last weekend, Hatfill did something unusual. He launched a retaliatory media strike. He called a news conference to denounce the federal authorities for a smear campaign trying to make him the fall guy for their failure to solve the anthrax puzzle. The FBI denied any such intention.

In the past, targets of FBI media campaigns have found it difficult to respond. Richard Jewell, a security guard at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park in 1996, spotted an abandoned knapsack that turned out to contain a pipe bomb. Before it could be disarmed, the device exploded, killing one person, injuring more than a hundred. Soon, Mr. Jewell was under surveillance, his apartment searched with the media on hand, and he was designated in the press as the FBI's "prime suspect." Eventually he was recognized as the hero, not the villain, of the episode and was left to recover his reputation by lawsuits against his newspaper and television defamers.

Wen Ho Lee, Los Alamos scientist, was under an FBI espionage investigation for 10 years with periodic leaks to the press. He spent 278 days in solitary confinement before the government gave up and accepted a guilty plea on a minor charge. Federal Judge James Parker denounced the FBI and the prosecution for misleading him and made a public apology to the defendant.

Wen Ho Lee's book is titled "My Country Versus Me," and it blames the FBI for the end of his American dream. Whether Steven Hatfill ultimately turns out to be innocent remains to be seen. But he has done what no FBI target has done before: summon the news media to proclaim his patriotism and to put the FBI on the defensive for its manipulation of the all-too-eager media.

Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

A close look at the anthrax attacks reveals the deadly bacteria could only have been produced by a covert bioweapons program in violation of international law.  Is that the reason why the FBI hasn't been able to catch the killer?

Somewhere out there in America is a would-be mass killer. Someone who has killed five people already, injured many more and set off a nationwide panic -- and who may well be poised to strike again. 

Remember the anthrax attacks? Back in October 2001, they regularly led the news as fear of anthrax gripped the nation. Five people died. 

Approximately two dozen victims developed full-blown infections.  Many more were exposed, but were treated in time to avoid becoming ill. Tens of thousands at risk of exposure were prescribed antibiotics as a precaution. Many developed qualms about opening mail. 

The FBI launched an investigation of the attacks, widely believed at first to be more terrorism by Al Qaeda. But as the preponderance of evidence gradually grew to show that the attacks have domestic roots -- the attacker is profiled by the FBI as a "lone wolf" type with a personal agenda -- rather than international terrorism linked to al Qaida or Iraq, the news receded from the front. The evasive silence by baffled law-enforcement officials on the case caused the story's retreat to the neverland of media coverage.

Now as the anniversary of the attacks approaches, the investigation remains an embarrassing failure. The problems with the investigation lie with the circumstances that made the attack possible, not with the cleverness of the attacker. 

One of the many puzzles in the case is why the FBI pursued a case theory of international terrorism for three months -- until the trail went stone cold -- and then, when the domestic roots of the attack became glaringly public, suddenly switched to a theory the attacks were the work of a "lone wolf" working in isolation. The puzzle is what led the FBI to conclude that only one person was involved -- and at the same time have no clue as to who that single isolated individual could possibly be. 

The killer or killers, however, remain at large. Indeed, as the trail grows colder daily, the likelihood anyone will ever be brought to trial becomes more faint ... unless the attacks resume. 

The attacker's elusiveness so far is a direct product of the incredibly dangerous nature of the anthrax itself. Among the few things we know about the killer is that he is well trained in microbiology and handling biowarfare agents. Along with the letters to various public figures in which the anthrax was delivered, he left behind virtually none of the usual clues -- hairs, fibers, smudgeprints -- that help forensic scientists narrow the investigation in most such cases. The care required to avoid exposure to such a powerful toxin -- one that has killed two victims in New York and Connecticut by routes that remain obscure -- make it virtually certain the attacker never had physical contact with the letters after they were filled with anthrax. 

However, there is the anthrax itself. Importantly enough, just the fact of its use provides important evidence about the killer. And from the sample used by this killer, there are five clues that emerge clearly -- clues that eventually may reveal his identity: 

* We know the culprit used a particular strain obtained from USAMRIID at Fort Detrick 

* We know the letters contained about seven to ten grams of material, of which roughly two to three grams were weaponized spores 

* We know the spore powder was remarkably pure in the later attacks, less so in the earlier ones 

* We know the range of particle sizes and the method used to make the dry powder 

* Finally, the spore powder contained chemical additives developed specifically for weaponization

Very little information about the anthrax has been made public by federal authorities, despite repeated pledges of disclosure by the White House, the Office of Homeland Security and the FBI. Much of the information appearing in the press is attributed to unnamed sources or "officials speaking on condition of anonymity" and very little hard information can be traced to on-record sources.  Unfounded speculation, conflicting reports and uncorrected misinformation are common. Erroneous reports of links between the anthrax case and the Sept. 11 attacks continue to be publicized, though none of these supposed connections have panned out. 

Was the anthrax produced domestically, as part of an undisclosed biological weapons program? If so, how did it come to be used to commit a series of murders that threw the country into an uproar? Was the attacker acting as an agent of a foreign government? Or was the crime an extortion plot that got out of hand? Was the motive political? Or was it intended to inspire a spate of funding for research into bioweapons? An attempt to erode American inhibitions on the first use of nuclear weapons?  Or even an attempt by criminals to establish credentials in the international black market in weapons? And finally, might the attacker simply be insane and his motives purely idiosyncratic? 

None of these questions can be answered until those responsible are brought to justice. The publicly available evidence, such as it is, casts little light on whatever motive impelled the crimes. 

It is widely acknowledged that there is a link between the murderer and biological weapons research. But we don't know who mailed the anthrax. We don't know who made the anthrax. We don't know who stole the anthrax from USAMRIID -- or how. We don't know if those are the same people or different.  And if they are different, we don't know what the connection between them might be. We don't even know if there might be more than one person involved. There is a lot we don't know. 

But thanks to the anthrax, there are a few things we do know. 

The problem, however, is where these clues inevitably lead. Tracing the anthrax, it has become clear that in order for the case to be solved, the FBI must take the lid off the nation's bioweapons-development program. And with a bevy of national-security issues at stake -- not to mention a host of political realities -- that makes the solution of the anthrax case by federal agents a critical test of the reorganization of the FBI. 

Six other countries also have the Ames strain

The first clue is the use of the Ames strain of anthrax.  Ames is one of the more virulent strains and is used in research to "challenge" vaccines. Anthrax is one of the least genetically diverse bacteria known. As of the beginning of this year, there were less than two hundred genetically identified strains, a fraction of the diversity found in other bacteria. 

Highly sensitive DNA tests using both genomic sequencing and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing shows that the attacker's anthrax is identical to a strain used in biological weapons research. The DNA test results were complete sometime in February, but the results were kept from the public until mid-May. 

Only a handful of laboratories do anthrax research, but until 1997, the exchange of samples between researchers was both common and informal. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passed a law requiring all transfers of biological agents to be registered with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. The transfer documents are open records under the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA requests unearthed by the Washington Post show that USAMRIID distributed samples of the Ames strain to about a dozen researchers.

To date, about fifteen locations in the United States and another half-dozen in other countries are identified as receiving the Ames strain from USAMRIID. Some of them appear to have shared samples with others still unknown. In addition to this distribution, there could be specimens of anthrax in many places, none of which are labeled "Ames," but which are the same strain. Nobody really knows. So the use of the Ames strain is weak evidence for prosecution, but it shows a direct link between the attacker and research connected to USAMRIID. The real question is how direct is the connection. 

The second clue is the quantity of the anthrax used in the attacks, which was also noteworthy largely because of the nature of the sample. 

The total amount of material used in the letter attacks was about seven to ten grams. Earlier reports lean to the higher numbers and the later reports cite smaller amounts. Of this, most was comprised of harmless, dead vegetative cells and other non-infectious debris, but roughly two to three grams were pure spores -- a fact that stops researchers in their tracks. Growing anthrax bacteria is one thing, but turning living vegetative cells into dormant spores is something else. 

Producing quantities of vegetative cells is difficult, but not incredibly so. The problem lies in getting the vegetative cells to turn into spores without killing them. Making purified spores in quantity is a difficult and complex task -- not just hard to do, but hard to discover how. An amateur could conceivably grow live anthrax bacteria. But it is unlikely someone could independently rediscover how to purify and dry spore powder without drawing on knowledge and techniques gained from experience in weapons research. 

Weapons production works in enormous quantities of anthrax. Under these conditions, producing pure spores is relatively easy. The attacker's anthrax was roughly 75 percent non-infectious material. This was probably due to the attacker working with a relatively small quantity in weapons terms. In medical research, the quantity produced by the attacker is considered enormous. 

Growing purified spores in larger than microscopic quantities is strongly associated with bioweapons research and development. Spores are only of interest for examining inhalatory infection, a subject of mostly military concern. Even then, only tiny quantities are necessary. A lethal dose of inhaled spores is about 1/100,000th of a gram. Anthrax research for non-military purposes rarely if ever uses spores. Producing quantities of spores is the object of weapons-related research.

Thus the quantity of spores is a second, and even more substantive, link between the attacker and weapons research. The overwhelming odds are that if the attacker produced the anthrax, he found out how to do it from contact with military research. 

It also suggests that similar weaponized anthrax powder may have existed at some as-yet undisclosed laboratories. Whose laboratory and where it is located will be critical information in a criminal trial. 

One Batch or Two? Particle Size in the Anthrax Mailings

The third clue from the spores is ambiguous -- namely, the anthrax used by the attacker varied in purity. It seems likely there were two batches of letters; three letters mailed in mid-September to New York and Florida, followed by two letters mailed in early October to Washington, D.C. The anthrax for the New York mailings was not very high in purity; those batches contained about 10 percent anthrax spores. The powder in the Daschle and Leahy letters is remarkably pure, consisting almost entirely of viable spores. 

The composition of the Florida anthrax is critical to the case. It appears to have been intermediate in purity between the New York and Washington, DC samples. It was more concentrated than the New York anthrax and contained a sufficient amount of aerosolized spores to cause three inhalatory exposures (one fatal and one nearly so), numerous trace instances of contamination in post offices, and a distinct pattern of airborne and non-airborne contamination in the American Media, Inc. offices. The epidemiological evidence shows that it was mailed at the same time as the New York letters. The great significance of these facts has been consistently overlooked. 

Maj. Gen. John Parker, commander of the division that includes USAMRIID, says the New York samples were considerably less pure than the Daschle sample. "Times ten difference," according to Gen. Parker. According to the testimony of Dr. Kenneth Alibek, the former head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons research program, before the House International Relations Committee, the impurities included dead vegetative anthrax cells. 

The Daschle and Leahy samples were reportedly nearly-pure spores. However, the anthrax used in U.S. and Soviet weapons was not this pure. The impurities in the military anthrax were mostly due to the milling process used to reduce the size of the particles to the tiny size necessary to enter people's lungs. This milling debris would dilute the anthrax with killed or damaged spores. Its absence in the Senate samples is highly suggestive of a spray-drying process -- a recent innovation in anthrax-weapons research. 

The high purity of the anthrax is an indication the attacker knew critical details of weaponization technology and was familiar with the process. It's unlikely anyone would be able to produce such a pure result on the first try. That suggests the quantity used in the attacks was only one of several batches, some of which may have been failures. What happened to the earlier trial batches? Why does it appear the attacker had such a small amount, compared to the quantity necessary to perfect the process? 

Most importantly, how do the five samples of anthrax in each of the letters compare to each other?  Are they different portions of a single batch or do they differ in their essential chemical and physical characteristics? 

Clearly NOT the kind of anthrax used by the military

The fourth clue is the size of the anthrax particles. The earlier mailings used coarser powder than the later ones. There is conflicting information about the size of the particles. All of the envelopes were tightly taped to seal the seams and openings. It appears the anthrax that escaped in the mail leaked through the paper, not through openings or seams. To pass through the microscopic pores in the envelopes' paper, the particles would have to be smaller than 50 microns. To get into the lungs, anthrax particles have to be smaller than 10 microns (a single spore is about 1 micron). The tightly taped envelopes worked as filters, passing only the deadliest size of particles. 

The only inhalatory infections were related to the letter sent to Florida and the two letters sent to Washington, D.C. Tiny amounts of fine powder leaked out of the Florida letter in the mail, enough to be detected in several post offices, but not enough to make people sick. The pattern of contamination in the American Media, Inc. offices suggests a mixture of coarse and fine particles. Three people at the AMI offices were exposed to airborne particles. One died, one became very ill and one received antibiotics before an infection developed.  The two who became ill are believed to have handled or opened the letter. 

Neither of the two letters sent to New York can be tied to any inhalatory infections, but they did cause several cutaneous infections. Those letters contained coarse granules -- according to one eyewitness, the New York anthrax was like sand, not fine powders. 

The known dates of initial infectious symptoms occur first in New York and are followed by the deaths in Florida. The New York infections (not including Kathy Nguyen's anomalous death in late October, which appears to be linked to the Washington DC anthrax letters) were cutaneous -- not inhalatory -- and there is no evidence of airborne transmission with the anthrax in the New York letters. The onset of infections in Florida followed several days after the initial symptoms appeared in New York. The difference between the Florida and New York anthrax samples will have to be explained during any prosecution of the attacker. 

Given what is known about how anthrax can be weaponized, the most likely (but not the only) explanation is that the anthrax used in the attacks was dried and weaponized as a single batch and the separation into different particle sizes and purities occurred after the spores were dried. This conclusion, if supported by additional evidence, has the corollary that the envelopes were filled in the following order: New York, Florida, Washington, D.C.. 

Some reports -- which appear to be leaks from a FBI/CIA briefing given to senators on the morning of October 25 -- say the particle size of the Washington D.C. anthrax was between 1 and 5 microns or between 1.5 and 3.5 microns. The same anonymous reports claim that the anthrax was "milled" -- ground into a fine powder. The narrow range of particle sizes and use of milling are typical of the older processes used by the U.S. and Soviets during their offensive weapons programs. It is now clear the anthrax used in the attacks is distinctly different from the anthrax made and stockpiled for military use. 

None of the reports of milled powder with a narrow particle size range have identified sources speaking from direct knowledge. Nor do these reports discuss the varying purity and particle size between the early and late letters. Yet these unsubstantiated hearsay reports have been continuously repeated in describing the powder. It now appears these leaks from the Senate briefing were wrong in several details: the quoted range of particle size is too small and the anthrax used in the attacks was not milled. The misinformation about the particle size and milling continues to be repeated in news reports. 

A weapons research program is the most likely source

Three Office of Homeland Security press conferences given by Tom Ridge and others between October 25 and October 29, beginning immediately after the closed Senate briefings, contained little specific information. This is the only official source of information on the characteristics of the anthrax powder, and the specific size range of the particles was not disclosed. Overall, the information given out at the Homeland Security press conference was vague, muddled and created more speculation than answers. It did not settle the questions about the size of the anthrax particles or the process for producing the powder. It did, however, confirm the presence of weaponization additives. And unlike all but one other instance, the White House press conferences featured identified sources speaking on the record. 

Dr. Kenneth Alibek -- a Russian scientist who worked at the very top of the Soviet anthrax program and defected to the United States in the early 1990s -- is a third source of information about the anthrax powder. On December 5, Dr. Alibek and two other experts testified before the House International Relations Committee about the anthrax attacks. Of the three, only Alibek claimed to have direct knowledge of the investigation. He said he had been shown "pictures" of anthrax from two of the letters. 

Alibek identified what he called the "first sample" as being largely contaminated with vegetative cells; these would be dead anthrax bacteria that didn't turn into spores. This "first sample" was probably the New York Post anthrax, though Alibek did not make that clear. The second set of pictures were of the Daschle anthrax. An anthrax spore is about one micron in diameter. Alibek said the Daschle sample had particles ranging from one to fifty microns in size. This size range is typical of powders produced by spray-drying, but not of milled anthrax. 

Alibek unequivocally said that the particles showed no signs of milling. Alibek's testimony about the particle size has not appeared in any news reports, though some stories have described other parts of the hearing. To date, though, Alibek has declined interview requests to discuss what he calls "detective questions" about the anthrax. 

Following the completion of the tests on the Leahy sample, unidentified sources were cited repeating the details about the range of particle sizes, the lack of milling debris and the presence of chemical additives. The newer information about the Leahy anthrax further reduced the likelihood of the older military process (which is what was described in the Senate leaks) being used by the attacker. Most significant among the Leahy results was the report of individual coated spores being observed in the sample -- something that had never been observed with the older military process. 

The two different descriptions of the anthrax powder correspond to the two ways of weaponizing anthrax into a dry powder. At least one of the descriptions is wrong. The anthrax used in the attacks is either one description or the other or neither -- but not both. The leaks from the Senate briefing describe the drying and milling process used by the U.S. and the Soviets. Alibek appears to be describing a spray-drying process similar to one the Iraqis were experimenting with a decade ago. 

The United States is known to be intensely interested in this newer technology for weaponizing anthrax. 

Both the milling and spray-drying processes have been reproduced by the United States in several recent "defensive" research programs. The CIA has done extensive research on biological munitions and production processes. Two of these efforts have been identified as Project Jefferson (actually a broad program involving many separate projects) and Clear Vision, the reproduction of a Soviet anthrax bomb. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has built a pilot plant in Nevada capable of producing anthrax as part of Project BACHUS (Biological Activities CHaracterized by Unconventional Signatures.) Reportedly, this project acquired milling equipment, though DTRA has denied it was used for weaponization. The publicly- acknowledged work at BACHUS used Bacillus globuli, a less-dangerous "simulant" of anthrax. And the U.S. Army has been producing small quantities of weaponized anthrax for several years at the Dugway Proving Grounds. Prior to the disclosure of these activities, the U.S. government has routinely denied such research has been taking place. 

Use of the Ames strain, quantity, purity and particle size: These four points are strongly suggestive of weapons research being the source of the anthrax used in the attacks, but none of them are conclusive in and of themselves. Together, they paint a very strong circumstantial picture. 

It is unlikely that a loner, even with a strong background in microbiology, could produce five grams of purified anthrax spores with fine particle sizes. It's possible, but it would be very difficult and time-consuming to independently reproduce the results of years of research from highly specialized military programs. If the attacker had access to secret technical information about weaponizing anthrax, the difficulties become less of a barrier. If he had experience with the process, they practically disappear. 

The use of the Ames strain, the quantity, the purity and the particle size suggest the attacker had access to secret bio-weapons research. But there is nothing about these facts that points unequivocally to a source for the anthrax. 

The telltale link to the world of bioweapons

The fifth clue implicating weapons research is the most damning -- namely, the presence of chemical additives. Without going into the details, this is the one part of the weaponization process that lacks other uses or applications and is unique to producing biological weapons. These additives are necessary to produce small particles from the spore slurry. They were detected in the anthrax used in the attacks by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), a very sensitive test for chemical composition. These additives were discussed in the leaks from the Senate briefing, as well as at two Homeland Security press conferences. They also are mentioned in the still-secret FBI report on the Leahy sample. 

In mid-April, some facts from the analysis of the Leahy anthrax sample were leaked to CNN, U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek magazines. All three reports are based on anonymous sources. They disagree as to whether the weaponization additives are previously known or unknown to U.S. researchers, but they all agree that the additives are present. 

Chemical additives are a crucial part of the weaponization process. The specific chemicals are a tightly held secret (which should not be disclosed to the public). But the particular combination of ingredients would be strong evidence if the attacker used a formula similar to one developed in recent U.S. bioweapons research. The EDS testing is sensitive enough to identify the elements present in the anthrax powder. In some circumstances, it can also identify the chemical compounds themselves. So again, the critical information is not a mystery to the investigators, though it is not being made public. 

The bioweapon world's secretive environment protects the killer

These five clues sum up what is publicly known about the anthrax used in the attacks.  Together, they strongly suggest the attacker had access to either the technical information or the product from biological weapons research. The Ames strain from USAMRIID, amount of spores, purity, particle size and chemical coatings point to a well-funded and sizable research program with government support. The investigators know the composition of the additives, a highly restricted and specialized area of research. They also know whether the powder was milled or spray-dried, which means they know the type equipment which must have been used to make the anthrax. 

All of the questions posed in this article have answers. Many of the answers have been known to the investigators since late October, less than a month after the attacks became known. They have not been publicly disclosed nor has there been any explanation for this secrecy. The FBI investigation has been an embarrassing failure and it has taken many wrong turns. Some of the general information about the anthrax powder should be made public. There are details which can be revealed that could aid the investigation without revealing technical secrets -- and this kind of information may very well jog the memory of witnesses who can provide valuable leads. 

The secrecy surrounding the anthrax is central to the mystery of how this investigation has gone so wrong. Some facts are clear about the case. The weaponization process used by the attacker is newer and more sophisticated than allowed under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which specifically forbids developing new weapons. The attacks have shown how small quantities of a biological weapon are sufficient to be used as a strategic offensive weapon. The problem with the investigation may not be the attacker's attempts at concealment, but what the existence of the anthrax itself implies. 

And that is that somewhere -- in an environment insecure enough to allow diversion to criminal use -- secret, illegal and unauthorized research has developed new and dangerous ways to proliferate biological weapons. If that secrecy can also shield a murderer and a traitor, then murder is not the only crime the FBI should be investigating. 
 

Paul de Armond is research director at the Public Good Project, a privately-funded research network. In 1995, de Armond was the first source to identify the Oklahoma City bombing as domestic right-wing terrorism. He has written about crime and political conflicts which threaten democracy. His most recent works include an analysis of the WTO protests in Networks and Netwar: the future of crime, terrorism and militancy (a much longer version first appeared in Albion Monitor) and a discussion of right-wing domestic terrorism and weapons of mass destruction: Hype or Reality? The 'New Terrorism' and Mass Casualty Attacks (Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, 2000).

An FBI forensic linguistics expert believes the US anthrax attacks were carried out by a senior scientist from within America's biological-defence community. 

Professor Don Foster - who helped convict Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and unveiled Joe Klein as the author of the novel Primary Colors - says the evidence points to someone with high-ranking military and intelligence connections. 

Speaking about the investigation for the first time, Prof Foster told the BBC he had identified two suspects who had both worked for the CIA, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and other classified military operations. 

Controversially, Prof Foster says the killer is likely to be highly patriotic individual who wanted to demonstrate that the US was badly prepared for an act of biological terrorism.

The weapons-grade anthrax was posted in letters just days after the 11 September terror attacks, leaving five people dead, 18 injured and 35,000 forced to take precautionary antibiotics. 

The professor says he does not believe the killer will strike again as he has achieved his goal. 

He explained: "To that end his misplaced patriotism has worked. Today millions of government dollars have gone into research and anthrax antibiotics are now available to the public." 

Agency rivalry?

However, he fears the investigation is now being hampered in its gathering of vital documents that could lead to the killer. 

Prof Foster says investigators need examples of the suspects writing to analyse their style and use of language - which the professor believes is as unique as DNA and could unveil the perpetrator. 

He said: "It's very frustrating. Ordinarily with the FBI if there's some documents needed - known writings - boom, they're on my desk the next day. 

"My two suspects both appear to have CIA connections. These two agencies, the CIA and the FBI, are sometimes seen as rivals. 

"My anxiety is that the FBI agents assigned to this case are not getting full and complete co-operation from the US military, CIA and witnesses who might have information about this case." 

Killer 'diverting suspicion' 

Prof Foster was given four letters recovered by investigators to analyse for clues to the killer's identity. 

"As I worked through these documents it became apparent that USAMRIID was ultimately the best place for the FBI to begin looking for a suspect," he said. 

All of the letters contain the following messages "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". All were dated 11 September, a clear reference to the terror attacks. 

But while investigators searched for links between the anthrax attacks and al-Qaeda, Prof Foster immediately suspected that dating the letters 11 September was merely a ruse to throw the authorities off the scent. 

He says: "When an offender gives you some piece of information that's just completely unnecessary and that, in this case, is inaccurate, it becomes immediately suspect. 

"It becomes a statement of 'Here's what I want you to believe about this document'." 

Prof Foster also says the killer seems to have tried implicating two former USAMRIID scientists who had left the laboratory in unhappy circumstances by posting the letters from near their homes in New Jersey. 

He says only someone in contact with a senior insider at USAMRIID would have known how the two scientists left the lab and that they would then be likely targets for the FBI investigation. 

He says: "They are looking at someone who's a little bit higher up the food chain, who would have to have access to personnel information." 

Deliberate mistakes

The professor also identified a number of mistakes and misspellings in the letters which he suspects are a deliberate ploy to confuse investigators. 

The author of the anthrax letters tells his victims to take penicillin. Not only is penicillin the wrong antibiotic to take, the killer also misspells the word. 

Prof Foster says: "You mean to tell me this guy is dealing with anthrax, a trillion spores a gram, and he thinks penicillin is going to be the antibiotic of choice? 

"There's something very fishy about that misspelling there, that this particular word should be misspelled and it should be misspelled in such an unconvincing way. 

"It looks like an attempt on the offender to say 'Hey, don't think I'm a scientist, don't think I know anything about antibiotics'." 

The FBI have placed a number of scientists under intense scrutiny and recently questioned US scientist Dr Steven Hatfill in connection with the attacks. 

Dr Hatfill strenuously denies any involvement in the attacks saying: "I have never worked with anthrax; I know nothing about this matter." 

The FBI's investigation continues. 

By Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
Aug. 19, 2002

''Is (the anthrax) resistant to their vaccine? To our vaccine? We don't know.''

-- Anthrax expert Arthur Friedlander SERPUKHOV, Russia -- The genetically engineered strain of anthrax locked in an old Soviet bioweapons lab in this rural district near Moscow is especially feared for its potential as a tool of terror. Officials in Washington can't wait to bring it to the United States.

The Pentagon wants the anthrax because it reportedly resists vaccines, but Russia has balked at repeated requests for a sample. U.S. officials worry that the strain may defeat inoculations given to troops and medical workers who would be on the front line in a biological attack by terrorists or an enemy state. They want to test it and, if necessary, develop defenses.

The U.S. government has spent years seeking a sample. Russian officials have failed to fulfill two contracts in which they agreed to provide a sample of the strain and data on its makeup in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. grants to study its vaccine resistance. That is just a fraction of millions of aid dollars sent to former Soviet bioweapons labs to foster reciprocal biodefense research.

The previously unreported tug of war over the anthrax represents a significant snag in a new era of security cooperation between Washington and Moscow. In May, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed a mutual pledge made last fall to expand joint work on biodefense. But a lack of U.S. access to the unparalleled stocks of Soviet-made bioweapons agents inherited by Russia stands as a major hurdle.

The altered anthrax is among thousands of pathogens at Russian labs that once supported the secret Soviet biowarfare program. U.S. officials fear that the germs -- or the science behind them -- could fall into the hands of America's foes. They're eager to study how the most dangerous ones work and how to defeat them.

Several strains are on the U.S. wish list, including two particularly nasty smallpox types from the Soviet collection of more than 100 varieties of the virus. But the altered anthrax has been pursued with the most vigor -- and money.

When scientists at the lab in Serpukhov revealed in 1997 that they had altered the anthrax's DNA to make a vaccine-resistant strain, the lab already had received about $2 million in U.S. aid to help it shift to cooperative research with peaceful or defensive applications.

More U.S. cash followed: first, to pay for additional study of the new anthrax strain in exchange for a sample; then, to pay for deciphering the strain's genetic code, which would yield clues to its virulence. U.S. aid even paid to replace the lab's decrepit security system.

Still, the United States hasn't yet received the strain or the genetic code that it paid to decipher. 

''Is it resistant to their vaccine? To our vaccine? We don't know. The vaccines work differently -- they're made differently,'' says Arthur Friedlander, an anthrax expert at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the Pentagon's biodefense lab at Fort Detrick, Md. If the strain can, in fact, beat the U.S. vaccine, he adds, ''it would be of enormous interest to find out how.''

Without a sample, U.S. scientists can't assess how big a threat the anthrax may pose. It also is hard to know whether the strain can be replicated by any of a dozen or so nations and terror groups believed to be building biological arsenals.

The logjam isn't simply a matter of Russian intransigence.

Rules set up roadblock

The United States and Russia have no formal agreement on exchanging dangerous pathogens, and Russian export rules bar their shipment. The controls were adopted last year amid U.S. complaints that Russia needed tougher laws to prevent proliferation of bioweapons technology. No one anticipated the rules would be a roadblock to pathogen exchanges for joint biodefense work.

Russian officials say the rules supersede the aid contracts promising access to the engineered anthrax. U.S. officials want the contracts honored, but the State Department and the Pentagon differ on how to press the matter.

Some U.S. officials say the export control issues cited by Russia in withholding the anthrax are legitimate, noting that U.S. samples of similarly dangerous pathogens also have not been shared. Others say that because Russia takes U.S. aid, it should be more cooperative.

Since 1994, well over $20 million in U.S. aid has gone to joint projects that provide peaceful work for former Soviet bioweapons facilities. The strategy aims to keep cash-strapped labs and scientists from selling their services to rogue states or terrorists. At the same time, the assistance is meant to allow U.S. agencies to tap the labs' expertise on everything from vaccine research to epidemiology. Getting to study Soviet bioweapons strains is a key U.S. goal.

The strain-exchange problem has reached top U.S. diplomats and defense officials. But talks with Moscow have yielded no deal.

''It's a very serious concern,'' says Peter Jahrling, lead scientist at the Fort Detrick lab and a top federal adviser on joint biodefense work in the former Soviet Union. ''We're making a significant investment with no assurance that we're going to get any of these strains or even the genome of these strains.''

Questions of intent

The story of the engineered anthrax illustrates the secrecy and suspicion shrouding the vestiges of the Soviet bioweapons program.

The strain was created at the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology, called Obolensk for the town it occupies in the Serpukhov district. The lab was a jewel in the bioweapons network, specializing in anthrax and other bacteria.

Officials at Obolensk say work on the strain began after Russia's then-president, Boris Yeltsin, admitted in 1992 that the Soviets had run an illicit bioweapons program and banned such work. The goal, they say, was to decipher the disease-causing properties of anthrax bacteria from the Soviet collection in an effort to improve vaccines.

''We were trying to find out the nature of the pathogenicity of the original strain,'' says Vladimir Volkov, deputy director of Obolensk. ''If you understand the nature of the pathogenicity, you can develop a better vaccine.  We were working openly on this; we did not hide it.''

Indeed, top U.S. scientists knew of the anthrax work in 1995, but alarms didn't sound until late 1997, when Obolensk scientists published a journal article noting the strain's vaccine resistance. Some U.S. officials questioned whether the strain was created with an eye toward its use as a weapon -- an objective barred under rules governing recipients of U.S. aid. But there was no evidence that U.S. aid to the lab directly financed the anthrax project, so officials focused their energy on getting a sample.

The questions of Russian intent reflect broader concerns about the old Soviet bioweapons network.

U.S. officials fret about Russia's refusal to catalog its thousands of strains of biological agents, from fearsome Marburg and Ebola viruses, which cause fatal internal hemorrhaging, to highly virulent plague bacteria.

Some also suspect that certain labs may still be doing weapons work, especially four facilities, now run by Russia's military, that don't admit outsiders.

''There are a lot of questions about what is going on at some of those facilities,'' says Gordon Oehler, founding director of the CIA non-proliferation center, which checks the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Oehler has regularly advised the government on security matters since retiring from the CIA in late 1997 to join Virginia-based defense contractor SAIC.   ''Many of us don't believe Russian leaders have total control over what the military does,'' he says.

But the civilian-run Obolensk is seen more as a proving ground for the idea that former Soviet weapons labs can be American partners. It uses U.S. aid for everything from vaccine studies to research on drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The catch is that much of the joint biodefense work at Russian labs also can have weapons applications. There's a fine line, for example, between finding vaccines for a pathogen and finding ways to make a pathogen resist vaccines.

Chasing the unknown

It's unclear whether the engineered anthrax from Obolensk would make a good weapon. U.S. scientists have been told by their counterparts at the Russian lab that the strain isn't very stable, meaning it's tough to keep alive, and would be hard to reproduce.

But anthrax is a pathogen of choice for states and terrorists seeking bioweapons. In Iraq, for example, international arms inspections after the Gulf War found a robust anthrax-making program. So, there is no ignoring a strain that may beat the U.S. vaccine.

''We've vaccinated millions of soldiers; we have to know if our vaccine would be efficient against it,'' says Raymond Zilinskas, a former U.S. bioweapons inspector in Iraq who still advises federal agencies.

''It seems unlikely that a terrorist group or a country like Iraq could duplicate the strain easily,'' adds Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. But he notes that U.S. officials know of at least one Iraqi with expertise in such work, so the possibility must be considered.

Officials initially hoped to get a sample directly from Obolensk, which already was getting U.S. assistance when its scientists published their work on the anthrax strain in 1997.

U.S. officials quickly ponied up $55,000, including a $28,000 grant to the new strain's chief developer, for the lab to do more study of the altered anthrax's infectious qualities. The aid contract with Obolensk stipulated that the lab would provide a sample of the strain as part of the cooperative research.

Obolensk had earlier given the U.S. some more benign pathogens, but when it came time for the anthrax strain to be exchanged, officials at the lab said they lacked government approval. 

With the issue mired in Russian bureaucracy, the Pentagon made a parallel push in 1999 to get the strain's genetic sequence, a blueprint of its makeup.

Officials contracted with Obolensk, again through the International Science and Technology Center, to pay $325,000 for more analysis of the strain and to decipher its genome. The lab agreed to share the results.

Again, the contract has not been fulfilled. The sequencing was done this spring, but U.S. scientists don't have the data. Russian officials say the sequence is subject to the same export rules they used to withhold a sample of the anthrax.

''It's not in Obolensk's power to resolve this,'' says Volkov. ''Our criteria for exchanges are no less rigid than the Americans'. There must be an official request at the governmental level; there has to be an agreement'' saying it will not be transferred to a third party from labs in the United States.

Investing in security

The struggle over the anthrax fuels a growing recognition that a strain-exchange pact is needed for the Bush-Putin vision of cooperative biodefense work to succeed.

''It's going to be more and more of a problem because we really need to work with some of these more dangerous pathogens, especially anthrax and smallpox,'' says a U.S. Embassy official in Moscow. ''There are a lot of logistical concerns, just moving these strains from Moscow to the U.S. and vice versa. We need to determine who'll get access to the strains, how they will be used.''

The matter has gone to the National Security Council and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Talks have intensified recently with top Russian officials.

 But it's a tough issue, compounded by both sides' inclination to keep a tight hold on their knowledge of bioweapons and their ability to defend against them. Many officials blame the anthrax hang-up on midlevel bureaucrats with a Cold War mindset.

''Maybe if people at the top bang some heads together, something will happen,'' says Jahrling at Fort Detrick. ''I don't have a lot of hope. Secrets are secrets. The Russians have theirs, we have ours. A lot of people don't want to share.''

Much of the cooperative work now going on centers on less dangerous strains, such as plant and animal viruses and bacteria, and research on vaccines and disease diagnosis. Such projects have applications in biodefense, but some U.S. officials want to ratchet it up.

Meanwhile, the influx of U.S. aid at Obolensk has brought progress on at least one concern with the altered anthrax: keeping it safe.

Obolensk is one of several former Soviet bioweapons sites where U.S. aid has brought big improvements in security. The Pentagon has spent nearly $1 million for fences, electronic sensors, cameras and vault upgrades at the lab, still one of Russia's chief bacteriological research sites. Similar investments were made at its Siberian counterpart, called Vector, a viral research site.

''We call those quick fixes,'' says Thomas Kuenning, head of cooperative threat reduction programs at the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. He notes that such work has occurred only at ''the most vulnerable locations'' among scores of old Soviet weapons labs.

The enhanced security at Obolensk has eased concerns about the engineered anthrax being stolen. But U.S. officials remain worried by their lack of knowledge about the strain -- and the possibility that an enemy could recreate it, perhaps with the help of an insider at the lab. 

Reassurances from Obolensk are little solace.

''The Americans are our partners now,'' says Volkov, and the anthrax issue ''will resolve itself'' over time. Until then, he adds, ''it's locked up tight -- thanks to the American assistance.''

Anthrax probe troubling

Tuesday, August 20, 2002 - The FBI's handling of the Steven J. Hatfill case is troubling not because of what it has revealed about the former Army biological researcher, but for what it has shown the public about federal law enforcement. 

Americans would like to believe that their law-enforcement agencies can both track suspected bad guys and still honor  basic human rights.

But in at least two previous high-profile cases, the FBI ignored the fundamental tenet of American law that a person is innocent until proven guilty. After the 1996 bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the summer Olympics,  the FBI focused heavily on part-time security guard Richard Jewell, nearly wrecking the man emotionally and certainly damaging his career. Later, evidence showed that Jewell had nothing to do with the bomb. The FBI has not, by the way, ever arrested the person it suspects is the real culprit.

More recently, the FBI kept Wen Ho Lee behind bars for nine months, claiming that the Los Alamos researcher had stolen sensitive national security information. But the evidence never supported the most serious allegations, Lee eventually accepted a very watered-down plea bargain, and the FBI had enough egg on its face to make a year's
worth of omelettes.

Now, 10 months after last fall's deadly anthrax mailings, the FBI is focusing on a series of unusual aspects of Hatfill's life. It cannot be said with any certainty at this point whether Hatfill is wholly innocent, as he publicly proclaimed last week, or somehow linked to the anthrax-tainted letters.

What is obvious, however, is that the FBI's public focus on Hatfill has been heavy-handed and unprofessional.

For example, it's very common for police to show pictures of a suspect to people who live in the neighborhood where a crime has occurred. FBI agents recently showed Hatfill's photo to people who live near where traces of anthrax reportedly were found on a New Jersey mailbox. But any testimony arising from this inquiry might be tainted, and thus
unusable in court: Hatfilll's face has been all over TV and the newspapers for weeks, so it would be understandable if some citizen mistakenly told the FBI that the guy kinda looks familiar. Whether the FBI has any firmer evidence than it has made public is unknown. As it is, the FBI seems so eager to show itself doing something, anything, to combat terrorism that it may be tempted to ignore good law-enforcement practices and even violate basic human rights.

Americans want thorough and energetic investigations into potential terrorism attacks. We do not, however, want any modern-day witch hunts.

Michael Mayo

August 20, 2002

When Dr. Steven J. Hatfill stood before a battery of microphones and cameras nine days ago to deny involvement with last year's anthrax attacks, Jordan Arizmendi felt a pang of empathy. "Welcome to the club," he thought.

Arizmendi doesn't know if Hatfill had anything to do with the bioterror mailings that killed five, but he's one of the few people who knows what Hatfill is going through.

For a few days last October, shortly after anthrax killed a photo editor for a tabloid weekly published in Boca Raton, Arizmendi was Hatfill.

America thought he did it. He was a summer intern at the National Enquirer who had "mysteriously disappeared." He wrote a cryptic e-mail in his last week that said, "You'll all remember me by the little tricks and treats I hid." He had dark skin and a foreign name.

"It all happened so quickly," Arizmendi, 24, said Monday. "The media just jumps on you."

So he's being careful not to jump to conclusions this time.

Hatfill, an ex-Army scientist who specialized in biological warfare, has become the subject of intense scrutiny and suspicion. The FBI has raided his apartment twice in recent months. Investigators, journalists and even bloodhounds have sniffed through his life, from the Beltway to Zimbabwe.

But Arizmendi knows not to believe everything he hears and reads. Experience has taught him. He knows how things can be twisted, how a name with roots in the Basque region of Spain can be reported to be Middle Eastern or Sudanese. He knows how an innocuous e-mail can be misconstrued as a dark warning. He knows how an oblique reference to bagels and cream cheese can be confused with a deadly biological agent.

He's able to look back and laugh about it now. He calls it "my five minutes of fame."

"It didn't really scar me in any way," said Arizmendi, who graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a communications degree and now works at Boater's World in Pompano Beach. "I got to go on the CBS Morning Show with Bryant Gumbel.  That was phat. That's why I'm a little hesitant to compare my case with Hatfill."

But Arizmendi recalled some scary moments when he realized that "the college intern of Middle Eastern descent" authorities sought was him.

"I thought my future was over," Arizmendi said. "That first day I was just praying my name didn't get out." The FBI came for him in the middle of an on-campus job interview with Disney. "Tall guys in suits," Arizmendi said. "They asked me what I knew about anthrax. I said, `Isn't that the hair band from the '80s?' That's when they ruled me out as a terrorist mastermind."

The e-mail sounded more sinister than it was, inspired by a similar note his brother once sent at the end of a summer law internship. Arizmendi was going to send it to just a few workers near his desk, but then discovered the mass-mailing button. He thought it would be funny for people who didn't know him to get it. The treats he wrote about? Bagels he brought from Einstein's.

When Hatfill went public to maintain his innocence last week, Arizmendi sat down to write his thoughts: "The notorious and exclusive Terrorist Suspect Club has inducted yet another member... [Dr. Hatfill, if you are cleared] eventually this entire memory will fade away. But it'll never be erased from your mind completely, and you'll always be a bit skeptical of your neighbors' smiling faces.

"Hysteria forces people to do ugly things. Just as Richard Jewell's life was turned upside down [after the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing], and mobs of people had careers shattered in the height of the McCarthy era, when society is frightened there must be people to point fingers at."

So what does Arizmendi want to do? Become a journalist, naturally. "Know of any jobs?" he said. "I'm a real fast typer." 

Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

State Department funded SAIC anti-terrorism contract 

By JOAN McKINNEY 
jmckinney@theadvocate.com 
Advocate Washington bureau 
Published on 08/22/02

WASHINGTON -- LSU scientist Dr. Steven J. Hatfill has accurately reported that he continued to work on a State Department-funded anti-terrorism project this year, after his difficulties with a CIA polygraph test and after his firing by a federal defense contractor.

LSU placed Hatfill on paid administrative leave on Aug. 2 after the FBI had searched his Maryland residence twice in connection with its investigation into the anthrax mailings last year. LSU is waiting for the results of a background check before it decides if Hatfill can keep his newly acquired, $150,000-a-year post as associate director of LSU's bio-terrorism training program for public-safety personnel.

In interviews, spokesmen for the State Department and for Science Applications International Corp., Hatfill's former employer, confirmed that Hatfill worked on an SAIC-State Department contract this spring, after LSU hired him. They said they did not know, or would not comment on, the circumstances of Hatfill's departure from SAIC.

Privacy laws forbid SAIC from revealing that information, SAIC spokesman Benjamin A. Haddad said.

Hatfill's attorney, Victor M. Glasberg of Alexandria, Va., has said SAIC fired the scientist in March, citing the CIA polygraph results that were then already several months old.

At a news conference Aug. 11, Hatfill said he believes he lost his job at SAIC because of publicity surrounding the FBI's investigation. Hatfill proclaimed his innocence and said he's the "fall guy" for the FBI's inability to close the nearly year-old anthrax case.

Hatfill was dismissed from SAIC in March and was on the LSU payroll by the end of April. Still living in Maryland, he was an adjunct professor who prepared course materials for training police and other emergency workers who respond to terrorist attacks.

Hatfill was promoted to the associate director's job on July 1.

At his news conference, Hatfill said that, in February, a reporter called him about the anthrax case and then later called his employer, SAIC.

"Shortly, thereafter, SAIC laid me off. … On leaving SAIC, I took a job with LSU to work with a group of universities on important federally funded programs for biological defense. Ironically, I was called back to SAIC on numerous occasions to assist with projects I had started, as well as help with new projects. SAIC eventually had to contract for my continued services through LSU."

In a phone interview immediately after Hatfill's news conference, Haddad said, "… To the best of my knowledge, we have not compensated him in any fashion since he left our employment."

Haddad said Hatfill might have been "working on things that we were working on in conjunction with LSU, but we were not compensating him."

In a followup e-mail statement, Haddad added that SAIC "knew that Dr. Haddad would be working on the State Dept. contract. … SAIC knew that the job fit Dr. Hatfill's skill set and that the Dept. of State wanted him on the job. Therefore, SAIC had expectations that Dr. Hatfill would be working on this contract. But, again, the final decision on that was left to his employer, LSU."

LSU and SAIC are partners in several federally funded contracts, according to SAIC and the university. In some cases, SAIC is the lead contractor and LSU is a subcontractor; in others, their roles are reversed.

 SAIC is the lead contractor on the State Department contract in question in the Hatfill case. The contract involves protecting the State Department's facilities and personnel from chemical and bio-weapons. While he was still at SAIC, Hatfill "helped create the program" for the State Department, according to Haddad.

The public affairs office for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security confirmed that SAIC holds that contract, and that Hatfill worked on it after he went to LSU "for a brief period of time, probably for about a month, from April to May of this year."

Through a public affairs officer, the bureau said, "He (Hatfill) was on the SAIC payroll. Then he left SAIC and went to LSU. … He became a contract worker with SAIC while at LSU.. I don't know who gave him the paycheck."

It's not clear if Hatfill's work on the SAIC-State Department contract has any bearing on the anthrax case.

His attorney has said that the continued association among Hatfill, the State Department and SAIC proves that some government officials and former work colleagues did not consider Hatfill a security threat, even after the CIA polygraph incident. The CIA test did not cover issues in the anthrax case, and its ambiguous results covered incidents from Hatfill's past in South Africa, Glasberg has told the Washington Post.

Without naming Hatfill publicly, a New York professor who's prominent in weapons-control circles has charged that unnamed "officials" have tried to help one anthrax suspect overcome a recent career setback. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg made that allegation in a June article for redflagsweekly.com.

Rosenberg also has attacked the FBI. She has charged that the FBI is moving slowly in the anthrax case because some government officials and private contractors want to shield suspects who know about secret U.S. government programs to develop biological weapons.

Hatfill once worked at the Army's bio-weapons laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., and he has done private contracting work in several bio-terrorism areas.

Rosenberg has announced her suspicions in a speech at Princeton, in newspaper interviews and in her own articles.

Rosenberg is a research professor of environmental science at the State University of New York and previously was an associate professor of biochemistry at Cornell Medical School and a cancer researcher at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She chairs the Federation of American Scientists' working group on biological weapons. She has said her views do not represent the federation's.

Citing a Maryland newspaper's account, Hatfill said Rosenberg reportedly discussed him in private interviews with federal investigators.

"I don't know Dr. Rosenberg," he said. "I have never met her. I have never spoken or corresponded with her. To my knowledge, she is ignorant of my work except in the broadest of terms."

At the press conference, Glasberg said Hatfill and Rosenberg disagree on U.S. policy toward the international Biological Weapons Convention. Rosenberg favors inspections of U.S. biological weapons facilities. Glasberg said Hatfill has opposed that, because he fears exposure of U.S. companies' trade secrets.

The Justice Department has confirmed that Hatfill is a person of interest in the anthrax case. However, the FBI denies having used that terminology, will not disclose what information, if any, it has to implicate Hatfill, and did not respond to Hatfill's news conference.

Hatfill said that the FBI also has polygraphed him, during the early stages of its anthrax investigation.

"After reviewing the polygraph charts in private, the polygraph examiner told me I had passed and he believed I had nothing to do with the anthrax letters," Hatfill said.

Before Hatfill's employment at LSU, SAIC and LSU already had cooperated on various State Department contracts for about 10 years, according to SAIC spokesman Haddad.

In addition, at the time of Hatfill's employment, LSU's Division of Continuing Education -- which hired Hatfill -- had its own relationship with the State Department. It has a State Department contract to train foreign security forces in counter-terrorism measures. The training is conducted by LSU's national center for biomedical research, where Hatfill is the newly hired associate director.

In a series of interviews over the past two weeks, LSU spokesman Gene Sands said it will take some time to sort out information about Hatfill and about federal contracts shared by SAIC and LSU. These contracts may be held by several LSU departments, not only by the Division of Continuing Education, Sands said.

Science Magazine - Aug. 22, 2002

A veteran of the bioweapons treaty wars has taken on a leading role in pressing the FBI to find out who mailed the anthrax letters. 

Representatives from nongovernmental organizations were supposed to sit quietly in the gallery as the delegates to a 4-week conference last summer in Geneva debated how to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) protocol. But that rule didn't stop molecular biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg from plopping herself down in a seat on the main floor. "I just walked in; nobody said anything," explains Rosenberg, who serves as chair of the Federation of American Scientists' (FAS's) working group on biological weapons verification. Members of the U.S. delegation were unhappy with the ad hoc seating arrangement, however, and forced her to move back to the gallery.

Rosenberg's supporters and detractors already knew she was a hard-nosed and vocal activist who's unmovable once she takes a stand. "Barbara obviously makes no bones about her views," says Stephen Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City and a longtime friend. A government scientist who's battled Rosenberg for years puts a sharper edge on his description of her: "What she brings [to discussions] is an attitude."

That attitude has helped Rosenberg become one of the most visible critics of the FBI's investigation into the anthrax mailings last fall that killed five people and sickened at least 17 others. Less predictably, she also has become the leading nongovernment authority on who might have committed the crimes. Coming soon after the 11 September terrorist attacks, the mailings heightened the country's sense of vulnerability from abroad. But within weeks, Rosenberg asserted in a very public setting that the attacker was an American -- specifically, a scientist with access to a federal lab that studies biological agents. The FBI's actions in the case have since converged with that profile, in particular, shining a spotlight on Steven Hatfill, a microbiologist who earlier this month vehemently proclaimed his innocence and accused the government and the media of ruining his life (Science, 16 August, p. 1109).

How did a 70-something academic--she's an environmental science professor at the State University of New York (SUNY), Purchase--and bioweapons expert come to take on such a prominent role in this manhunt? Rosenberg professes surprise at the attention she's received, saying simply, "From what I knew the FBI knew, I knew they should be farther along" in their investigation. "That's why I began making statements."

Her motivation, she says, is to deter future assaults by helping solve the first deadly bioweapons attack within the United States. But her profile of the attacker also jibes with other stances she has taken. They include support for a protocol to strengthen the BTWC by advocating inspections to assess bioweapons production--a protocol from which the United States recently walked away (Science, 24 August 2001, p. 1415). She also opposes building more bioweapons labs.

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

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

Rosenberg declines to explain why she chose that venue. But her voice rises in anger when she recalls how U.S. officials refused to join with other delegations at the November meeting. "[The U.S. was] accusing everyone else of having bioweapons, when the attack was coming from our program. ... I felt that it was necessary to point out."

Rosenberg came to believe that the scientist-perpetrator didn't intend to kill--after all, she says, the attacker warned that the letters contained anthrax or that the recipients should take penicillin--but rather nursed a grievance against the government for unfairly neglecting the U.S. bioweapons program. Since November, her theories have been widely disseminated over the Internet and in the media.

Earlier this year, Rosenberg wrote that the FBI had a suspect in mind but was reluctant to pursue him because "the suspect knows too much and must be controlled forever from the moment of arrest." She has since grown more circumspect about a possible conspiracy, saying, "I can only speculate as to why" the FBI hadn't been more aggressive.

That view still doesn't sit well with some scientists, although few are willing to criticize her in public. "My feeling is that if there is such a conspiracy, the FBI is not a part of it," says Steven Block, a biophysicist at Stanford University who has advised the U.S. government on bioweapons. Some scientists also felt that it wasn't a coincidence that Rosenberg's profile of the attacker fit one person. "She just seems to be too anxious to pin this on [Hatfill]," says Peter Jahrling, a senior USAMRIID researcher, who says Rosenberg's comments about the case led him to decide early on that she had Hatfill in mind. Rosenberg maintains that she never named Hatfill or anyone else in comments to the FBI or in her statements.

Rosenberg zealously preserves the anonymity of her sources, saying only that they are government scientists and other insiders. Those within and outside government labs agree that her sources seem knowledgeable. Jahrling, however, suggests that Rosenberg doesn't have many friends in the government's biodefense labs because she opposes their planned expansion.  Any expansion, she has argued, just adds to the pool of scientists with the means to pull off another bioweapons attack.

Both admirers and detractors agree that she has pushed the FBI forward.  "Without question, she's influenced this investigation," says Block, who also strongly suspects that the culprit, if not a U.S. citizen himself, has ties to the U.S. bioweapons program. Privately, scientists who support Rosenberg praise her for taking on what they call a thankless job.

Rosenberg, whom the conservative Weekly Standard ridiculed as "the Miss Marple of SUNY/Purchase" in a recent article, maintains that the importance of finding out who sent the anthrax-tainted letters demanded her involvement and that her celebrity is purely accidental. Mark Wheelis, a microbiologist at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the FAS working group that Rosenberg runs, agrees that she generally shuns the limelight.  But her determination, he notes, serves her well here: "The toughness is not part of her normal manner; it's a reserve she can draw on when it's called for."

And what if she's wrong? Rosenberg concedes that interrogating Hatfill might not help the FBI crack the case. But she quickly reverts to character. Even if that's true, she says, "the broad principles and the things I've said, I stand behind."

Surveillance 'borders on confrontational' 

By JOAN McKINNEY 
jmckinney@theadvocate.com 
Advocate Washington bureau 
Published on 08/25/02

WASHINGTON --- The FBI surveillance of LSU scientist Steven J. Hatfill, who has moved to Baton Rouge, "borders on the confrontational," a spokesman for Hatfill said Saturday.

The FBI has used "a cavalcade of vehicles," and Hatfill "is driving around Baton Rouge with FBI agents two or three feet off his bumper," said Pat Clawson, a Virginia-based friend of Hatfill's.

Hatfill occasionally has tried to speak with the FBI agents, but they have ignored him, Clawson said.

The U.S. Justice Department describes Hatfill as a person-of-interest in the anthrax mailings that killed five people last fall.

Hatfill has said he's innocent and has accused the FBI of making him "the fall guy" for its slowness to solve the case.

Hatfill worked at the Fort Detrick, Md., U.S. Army research center for biological warfare from September 1997 to September 1999.

Hatfill has also done some private contracting work in several bio-terrorism areas.

Hatfill says he has not worked with anthrax, but said he has studied it.

LSU is running a background check on Hatfill after placing him on paid leave from his $150,000-a-year job as associate director of its National Center for Biomedical Research and Training.

That center, funded by the Justice Department, trains law-enforcement and other public-safety personnel in counterterrorism and the response to bioweapons attacks.

Hatfill's leave, imposed Aug. 2, runs for 30 days.

Clawson said Hatfill believes that university officials may say something about his case in the next week.

Hatfill will have a news conference today in northern Virginia where he will make a statement to LSU officials, release some documents and talk about ethical issues related to some law-enforcement officials, Clawson said.

Until recently, Hatfill lived in Maryland while he worked as an adjunct professor for LSU, preparing course materials for the bioterrorism training center.

He was promoted to the associate director's job July 1 and was preparing to move to Baton Rouge when the FBI conducted its second search of his Maryland residence and LSU placed him on leave.

Hatfill moved to Baton Rouge about two weeks ago and has spent his time setting up a new household and "watching TV," Clawson said. Meanwhile, FBI surveillance has become more aggressive, he said.

The FBI's Washington field office is conducting the anthrax investigation. A spokesman for that office, Chris Murray, declined Saturday to comment on Clawson's description of the agency's actions.

According to Clawson, documents to be released by Hatfill today will include:

· Payroll records from a former employer that will help support Hatfill's claim that he was not in New Jersey when anthrax letters were mailed from there.

· Photographs of the apartment of Hatfill's girlfriend, taken after FBI agents searched it. Hatfill has claimed that the FBI treated his girlfriend roughly and left her apartment in disarray. Hatfill and his girlfriend took the photographs, Clawson said.

By Terri Somers 
Staff Writer 
Posted August 26 2002 

BOCA RATON -- The FBI plans to go back into the shuttered former Boca Raton headquarters of American Media Inc. in a renewed attempt to gather evidence that could help investigators figure out how the deadly anthrax spores spread through the building last October.

Sources said investigators expect to spend about two weeks in the building, which was the first of several sites around the country found to be contaminated last fall.

FBI officials are expected to provide more details, including what brought them back to the building and what they'll be doing, at a news conference this morning in Boca Raton.

The AMI building on Broken Sound Boulevard has been quarantined since Bob Stevens, a photo editor for AMI tabloid The Sun, died from anthrax exposure on Oct. 5. Subsequently, four others died and 18 were sickened by contaminated mailings in New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Connecticut.

Anthrax from contaminated mail shut down the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., for months.

The FBI now is questioning former U.S. Army scientist Dr. Steven J. Hatfill in connection with the attacks. Hatfill has denied any involvement and on Sunday said the FBI had accepted his offer to undergo a blood test to determine whether he had been exposed to anthrax or vaccinated against it recently.

Top intelligence officials have said the FBI's investigation into the attacks has been troubled since its first days in Boca Raton. FBI sources have said that when the obvious avenues of investigation -- such as fingerprints or analysis of the envelopes -- failed to pan out this winter, the bureau decided to go back to the basics.

In May, the FBI and the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry wanted to go back into the building for about 10 days for further investigation, including an examination of how the air-handling system spread the bacteria. But AMI Chairman David J. Pecker refused to allow them entry until his company received a proposal on what they planned to do.

Anthrax spores were found in 84 locations in the AMI building, according to a summary report released Nov. 30 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Seventy-eight percent of the contaminated samples were taken from the first floor, where the building's mail room was located, the report said. Investigators found 66 anthrax-laden samples on the first story -- including 35 taken from desks, computers and keyboards, file cabinets and mail slots. Spores were found in another 31 samples vacuumed from the floor.

Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams, Police Chief Andrew Scott and Gov. Jeb Bush met with FBI officials in late June to discuss the investigation, but no one would provide any details of that meeting.  U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, is among those pushing to have the federal government take over and clean up the building.

As a courtesy, federal officials recently notified the Palm Beach County Health Department that they planned to enter the quarantined building, said Tim O'Connor, a spokesman for the department. O'Connor did not know on Sunday whether the federal authorities had received AMI's permission to enter the building or if they were doing so with a court order.

Pecker could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Staff Writer Ryan Pastrovich contributed to this report, which was supplemented by The Associated Press..

Terri Somers can be reached at tsomers@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4849. 
 

Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel