Washington (AP) - Disclosure of what the FBI knows about the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks could enable terrorists to engineer biological weapons to escape detection, the FBI says in documents filed in response to a lawsuit by a scientist labeled a "person of interest" in the case. 

Citing the criminal investigation and national security concerns, the Justice Department is trying to persuade a federal judge to delay the lawsuit filed by Dr. Stephen J. Hatfill, who contends the government invaded his privacy and ruined his reputation by leaking information to the media implicating him in the attacks. 

Hatfill has denied any role in the attacks and his lawsuit seeks to clear his name and recover unspecified monetary damages. 

Richard L. Lambert, the FBI inspector in charge of what is being called the "Amerithrax" investigation, says in a court document that Hatfill's lawsuit could jeopardize the probe and expose national secrets related to U.S. bioweapons defense measures. 

"In the hands of those hostile to the U.S., this valuable intelligence could aid state sponsors of terrorism or terrorist organizations in their efforts to genetically engineer or alter their anthrax bioweapons to 'spoof' or escape detection," Lambert said. 

Disclosure also would make public the vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. government installations to bioweapons attacks and expose sensitive intelligence collection sources and methods, Lambert said. 

There is no proven link between terrorist groups and the October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others. The government has, however, repeatedly warned of al-Qaida's interest in using anthrax or other chemical and biological weapons to mount attacks. 

In the FBI document, filed Nov. 21 in U.S. District Court in Washington, Lambert calls the anthrax probe "unprecedented in the FBI's 95-year history" because of its scope and complexity. In all, the investigation has consumed some 231,000 agent hours, he said. 

Lambert described the investigation as "active and ongoing" and said agents' work is divided between checking into individuals who could be linked to the attacks and an intensive scientific effort to determine how the spores themselves were made using "cutting-edge forensic techniques and analysis." 

The court papers stop short of confirming that Hatfill is among those being investigated. 

Hatfill was labeled a "person of interest" in the probe in August 2002 by Attorney General John Ashcroft and says in his lawsuit that FBI agents have had him under surveillance around the clock. 

That surveillance - which once led agents in a vehicle to run over Hatfill's foot on a Washington street - has dropped off in recent weeks, according to one person close to Hatfill and two federal law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The officials, however, cautioned against drawing the conclusion that Hatfill no longer was of interest to investigators. 

Lambert said in the court document that Hatfill's lawsuit could force the FBI to divulge its "interest in specific individuals," who could then destroy or hide evidence, flee the country, intimidate witnesses or make up alibis. None of these individuals are identified. 

The Justice Department is seeking to delay Hatfill's case until a decision is made on a forthcoming government attempt to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. Hatfill's lawyers were preparing a response Tuesday opposing the delay. 

Hatfill's lawsuit is seeking unspecified monetary damages from Ashcroft, the FBI and Justice Department and other current and former officials. His lawyers contend that the government linked him to the attacks to make it seem that the investigation was making progress. 

Hatfill once worked as a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. Hatfill says he never worked with infectious diseases such as anthrax, however.

Journal of Bacteriology

Knowledge could lead to new vaccines, treatments, detection and decontamination technologies

ANN ARBOR, MI - In the age-old battle between man and microbe, it pays to know your enemy. This is especially true for Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax. Tiny spores of this highly infectious pathogen can survive drought, bitter cold and other harsh conditions for decades, yet still germinate almost instantly to infect and kill once inside an animal or human host. 

In a collaboration funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the National Institutes of Health, scientists from three major research institutions - the University of Michigan, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), and The Scripps Research Institute - are working together to identify the genes and proteins involved in anthrax's deadly metamorphosis. Their work provides information other researchers can use to develop new vaccines and treatments targeted at specific points in the complex process of anthrax growth and spore formation. 

The first results of the collaboration's work will be published as the cover story in the Jan. 1, 2004 issue of the Journal of Bacteriology and posted Dec. 18, 2003 on the journal's web site. This study is the first analysis of a bacterial pathogen using the combined investigative tools of genomics and proteomics. It is also the first study to document, at a molecular level, all the genes and proteins involved in B.anthracis spore formation. 

Major findings of the study include: 

  *   When compared to other bacteria, anthrax spore formation is an unusually complex and intricate process. 
  *   Up to one-third of all the genes in the Bacillus anthracis genome are involved in spore production. 
  *   Genes are expressed in five discrete phases over a five-hour time period. 
  *   Each mature anthrax spore contains about 750 individual proteins.

"The most surprising result of this study is the degree of dedication this organism devotes to making its spore," says Philip C. Hanna, Ph.D., an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology in the U-M Medical School and the paper's corresponding author. "It may require one-third of the entire genome. This shows how important the spore is to this organism's life cycle. The spore allows the anthrax bacterium to survive conditions that would kill most other living things." 

Using cutting-edge techniques of functional genomics and proteomics analysis, scientists in the collaboration were able to shed new light on the molecular biology of the anthrax spore," says Scott N. Peterson, Ph.D., one of several scientists from The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, MD who are co-authors on the paper. 

"Until recently, we only knew how the anthrax spore was made on a microscopic level. We could see different structures forming, but didn't know precisely what went into making them," says Nicholas H. Bergman, Ph.D., a research investigator in the U-M Bioinformatics Program and a primary author of the paper. "Now we have a much clearer view of how the spore is assembled, and exactly what it is made of." 

Bacillus and Clostridium (the bacterium that causes tetanus) are the only bacteria that can shut down normal metabolic functions and convert rapidly into dormant, protective spores when environmental conditions make it impossible for them to otherwise survive. 

Scientists have been studying anthrax spores since 1876, when they were first described by the pioneering German bacteriologist, Robert Koch. Like a golf ball, anthrax spores are made of many layers of material, which protect DNA in the core. 

The spore's tough outer coat is surrounded by a loose-fitting layer called the exosporium. When the spore gets inside a human or animal host - the first step in the infection process - sensing agents in the exosporium signal the spore to "hatch," or germinate, and start producing more bacteria. 

TIGR scientists used DNA microarray technology to monitor gene expression changes in Bacillus anthracis over time as cells transitioned from growth to spore formation. "Since the spore is the infectious particle of the anthrax bacterium, it made sense to focus initially on the molecular biology of the spore," says Peterson. 

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA used advanced proteomics analysis technologies to identify proteins expressed in anthrax spores. "Proteomics experiments can reveal the expression and localization of proteins in microorganisms," says John R. Yates, Ph.D., a professor of cell biology at Scripps Research. "This is important, because some of these proteins may be promising targets for future vaccine development." 

Hongbin Liu, Ph.D., a former Scripps Research post-doctoral research fellow and the paper's first author, adds that the study "clearly demonstrates the benefits of combining genomics and proteomics in a single study. The combined approach helped deepen our understanding of the complexity of spore growth and sporulation." 

Microbiologists at the U-M Medical School were responsible for working with the bacteria to study how it infects and causes disease in its human host. U-M scientists worked with an attenuated strain of B. anthracis, which was modified to make it safe to handle in university laboratory facilities. U-M also provided the bioinformatics technology and expertise required to analyze the large amounts of data generated by the study. 

The collaboration's scientists identified 2,090 B. anthracis genes, of nearly 6,000 in the entire genome, which appear to be involved in spore formation. Gene activity occurred in five overlapping waves spread across a five-hour time period, but actual construction of the spore didn't begin until the fourth wave of gene expression. 

According to Hanna, this suggests that a surprising number of gene products in the spore itself are not produced during spore formation, but rather are scavenged from the vegetative bacillus during the process. 

"Think of these proteins as the supplies required to build a house - like lumber, nails, and shingles," says Hanna. "Many of these proteins already exist in the bacillus and can be recycled to create the spore. The first step is not to produce them, but simply to collect them all in one place and then re-pack them into a spore. Other accessory genes contain instructions for making regulatory proteins and enzymes, which are tools the anthrax bacillus uses to construct its spore." 

Data from the study indicates that proteins produced during the large, fifth wave of gene expression also become part of the spore itself. These include enzymes the spore needs for rapid germination, virulence factors and proteins that help the bacterial cell survive in a new host environment. 

"When it enters the body, the spore has all the digestive enzymes it needs packed inside," explains Hanna. "Immediately after germination, the cell can start eating, multiplying and spreading throughout the body." 

Complete data from the collaboration's study of the genome and proteome of B. anthracis spores has been posted on the National Center for Biotechnology Information's Gene Expression Omnibus database at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?dg=geo., where it will be freely available to the scientific community. Hanna stresses that, while the data will be extremely valuable to biomedical researchers, it has no value related to the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. 

"We want our results to be available to all university and corporate researchers developing anthrax spore countermeasures," says Hanna. "The scientific skills and technologies developed by the collaboration can now be focused on the next stage of anthrax infection - interaction with the host." 

In the next phase of their research, collaboration scientists will examine changes in gene expression and protein synthesis that occur when the anthrax bacillus enters immune system cells in the host. 

"The spore is the infectious agent of anthrax. It's how the bacterium persists in the natural environment, and it's what terrorists would manipulate in a bioterrorism attack," says Brendan Thomason, a U-M graduate student and a co-author of the paper.  "In order to understand how the bacterium causes disease and discover new methods for anthrax treatment and prevention, scientists need a more thorough understanding of the intricacies of the spore." 

Additional collaborators in the research study include: Shamira Shallom, Alyson Hazen, David A. Rasko, Ph.D., Jacques Ravel, Ph.D., and Timothy D. Read, Ph.D., from TIGR, and U-M research associate, Joseph Crossno. 

                                              ###

Journal of Bacteriology, Vol.186, pp. 164-178, Jan. 2004 

Contact: Sally Pobojewski, pobo@umich.edu, (734) 615-6912 (U-M) 
Robert Koenig, rkoenig@tigr.org, (301) 838-5880 (TIGR) 
Jason Bardi, jasonb@scripps.edu, (858) 784-9254 (Scripps Research)

Targeting Spread Of Deadliest Arms

U.S. Proposes U.N. Resolution Curbing Transfer of Weapons

By Colum Lynch, Washington Post Staff Writer

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 16 -- The Bush administration launched its campaign to halt the spread of the world's deadliest weapons to terrorists, providing key U.N. Security Council members with a draft resolution Tuesday that would outlaw the transfer of biological, chemical and nuclear arms to individuals and groups instead of to countries.

The move comes nearly three months after President Bush vowed, in a Sept. 23 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, to lead international efforts at the United Nations to curb the trafficking of such weapons. The draft resolution is designed to close gaps in a series of international treaties aimed at limiting the spread of weapons.

Citing concerns that "these weapons could be used by terrorists to bring sudden disaster and suffering on a scale we can scarcely imagine," Bush urged the Security Council to adopt a resolution that could criminalize the proliferation of such weapons and compel governments to strengthen their export controls.

The U.S. initiative has been stalled for months by interagency quarrels in Washington over the extent of the Security Council's role in managing the anti-proliferation campaign. U.N. diplomats said it is unlikely that the resolution would be put to a vote before the end of the year.

The four-page draft resolution, which was presented Tuesday afternoon to the representatives of China, Russia, France and Britain, calls on U.N. members to criminalize the proliferation of weapons and to "refrain" from providing support to non-state entities attempting to "acquire, manufacture, possess, transport" chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. It would also require all governments to establish "domestic controls" for tightening their borders and curbing the export and financing of such weapons.

Although the U.S. text urges states to "combat by all means" the spread of such weapons, it contains no enforcement mechanism that would empower the council to impose sanctions against countries that fail to comply.

Britain and Russia had favored the inclusion of an enforcement provision, called Chapter Seven, to give the resolution more teeth, according to U.N. diplomats. But some administration officials were concerned that it would provide the Security Council too powerful a role in monitoring the illicit trade, the diplomats said. Instead, the United States intends to cite the resolution to bolster its bilateral and regional efforts to curb the spread of the world's deadliest weapons.

In a major development, potentially as significant as the capture of Saddam Hussein, investigative journalist Richard Miniter says there is evidence to indicate Saddam’s anthrax program was capable of producing the kind of anthrax that hit America shortly after 9/11. Miniter, author of Losing bin Laden, told Accuracy in Media that during November he interviewed U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay in Baghdad and that he was "absolutely shocked and astonished" at the sophistication of the Iraqi program. 

Miniter said that Kay told him that, "the Iraqis had developed new techniques for drying and milling anthrax — techniques that were superior to anything the United States or the old Soviet Union had. That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world." Miniter said there are "intriguing similarities" between the nature of the anthrax that could be produced by Saddam and what hit America after 9/11. The key similarity is that the anthrax is produced in such a way that "hangs in the air much longer than anthrax normally would" and is therefore more lethal. 

Nevertheless, the FBI has been operating on the assumption that it was produced by a disgruntled American scientist, perhaps in a basement. The FBI wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating the possibility that the anthrax letters were packaged underwater in a Maryland pond in a special device of some sort. 

In a development that has received little media attention, an article in the November 28th issue of Science magazine focuses on the testimony of experts that the nature of the anthrax used against America constituted a major advance in biological weapons technology. The article notes that analysts in the U.S. Army detected silica coatings on the anthrax sent to the U.S. Senate and that special chemicals were used to enhance its ability to form a lethal aerosol. One of those was a super-specialized binder chemical used to keep the silica particles in place on the surface of the spores. 

One of the experts quoted in the article told us that, "In my opinion it would be impossible to manufacture a powder like this without state-sponsorship… These are super-specialized areas—and once it is understood just how difficult it is to process powders with these coatings, it becomes immediately obvious that only a highly disciplined state-sponsored program could have achieved this." 

Many reports in the media, including Washington Post reporter Marilyn Thompson’s book on the anthrax attacks, have claimed that the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks was a U.S. "military strain" and was therefore probably made in the U.S. But experts say the Ames strain was provided to laboratories around the world. The expert told us that, "Far too much focus has been placed on the genetic and DNA analysis of the senate anthrax" which has identified it as the Ames strain. "The real key to finding out who did it is not the DNA analysis, but the analysis of the coatings that were used." He said David Kay should be looking for scientists in Iraq who have developed this technology. 

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at aimeditor@yahoo.com

Joseph Straw
New Haven Register, Washington Bureau 
01/05/2004

WASHINGTON — Around the nation, hundreds of laboratories handle the types of toxins —  anthrax, ricin, smallpox and plague — and scores of others that aspiring bioterrorists would love to possess. 

The war on terror brought security at such labs to the fore, and with passage in 2002 of a federal bioterrorism preparedness law, federal agencies set out to evaluate the labs and issue certifications to facilities they deem safe.

However, the process has raised questions about how many labs actually hold the "select" agents that most concern federal officials, and where.

Together, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected late last year that they would field a total of 2,470 applications from labs seeking security certification.

As of Dec. 31, they had received just over 500. The USDA anticipated 1,653 applications and has received 112.

USDA spokesman Claude Knighten said the disparity arises from the agency considering all labs that could conceivably harbor any of the 84 agents on the CDC’s list.

"When the Bioterrorism Act passed, we tried to cast a broad net. We just included every lab we thought could be using these toxins. That was the reason we estimated, and why the number was so large," Knighten said.

However, Asha George, managing director of the non-profit ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, said that scrutiny of all agricultural and public health labs nationwide is needed.

"The thing is I don’t think we know who’s got what anymore. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a lab, but they put the stuff on dry ice, and then it sits there for decades. They don’t keep as good track as they once did," said George, a specialist in the areas of public health and counterterrorism.

"It’s going to be time-intensive … but we need to check all of this out," George said. "They’re getting the scientific community to understand that just because they’re doing research doesn’t mean someone with evil intentions won’t come in and steal the stuff."

CDC spokesman Von Roebuck said his agency only plays an advisory role in facility security evaluations and background checks.  Officials with its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to inquiries, nor did the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security.

The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, where research is conducted on Eastern Equine Encephalitis, one of the CDC’s select agents, has received federal certification, while the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, located in Long Island Sound 12 miles south of New London, has received provisional certification.

Provisional certifications "reflect security evaluations that are near completion," said USDA spokesman Ed Curlett.

North Carolina State Public Health Laboratory Director Lou Turner said that what substances laboratories have "is always a question."

"Many labs have added cardkey access; security cameras; armed guards, etc. Funding is an issue, but it is being addressed regardless," Turner said.

While federal funding is en route to states and laboratories for defense against theft and use of biological agents, money to prevent and prepare for chemical attacks is lacking, said Jody DeVoll, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents 460 labs and individuals around the country.

"There’s a significant gap in our preparedness for chemical terrorism as opposed to biological terrorism," DeVoll said.

While federal officials answer inquires about specific facilities, they declined to release a list of the facilities that applied for certification.

Research at Plum Island focuses on foreign livestock diseases, including foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever, both among the CDC’s select agents.

Plum Island, operated by the USDA but now under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, was the subject of a critical report issued in September by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Congress’ independent, non-partisan investigative agency.

The GAO found that security improved at Plum Island since 9/11, but remained insufficient, leaving the site vulnerable to attack or theft of pathogens. 

The report stated that administrators had not assessed threats or developed a plan of response to a terror attack, and that the island’s armed guards do not have statutory authority to carry guns and make arrests.

The FBI had completed more than half of the 9,000 planned background checks on workers employed at sensitive labs by late last year.

Joseph Straw can be reached at jstraw@nhregister.com or at (202) 737-5654.

By John Murawski, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 13, 2004

BOCA RATON -- The real-estate investor who bought the vacant, anthrax-laced building here at a fire sale price of $40,000 is set to announce that a corporate tenant has agreed to occupy office space at the infamous site of the nation's first bioterrorism strike.

David Rustine of Crown Cos. in Boca Raton also will reveal today the method and schedule for decontaminating the quarantined three-story office in the Arvida Park of Commerce. 

The developments give new life to a building many believed was uninhabitable because of stigma and insurance liability. 

"Any time you bring a major company into Palm Beach County that didn't have a presence before it's a positive move for the community," said John Taylor, vice-president of Consultants in Disease and Injury Control, the Atlanta concern overseeing the cleanup project. "We had meetings with the prospective tenant and explained the (decontamination) process to them."

The announcements come nine months after Rustine bought the building from American Media Inc., the supermarket tabloid publishing empire. AMI vacated the building on Oct. 8, 2001, three days after Bob Stevens, a part-time photo editor for the Sun died from a case of inhalation anthrax. 

Mail room worker Ernesto Blanco became gravely ill with inhalation anthrax but eventually recovered and returned to work.

Rustine would not comment Monday. Rustine had said from the outset that he would salvage the building and instill confidence in its safety by making his company its first tenant.

His biotechnology contractors have spent months reviewing plans and perfecting a strategy for the nation's largest anthrax cleanup after local officials had lobbied for a federal bailout. 

"Number one, if we just moved with this plan for cleanup, we'd be making a step in the right direction," said Mike Arts, president of the Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce. 

Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams concurred: "It's a positive announcement for the long-awaited cleanup of the AMI building. It's a potential safety hazard and it's off the tax rolls. The city has been seeking to correct that for 2 1/2 years."

In July, Rustine's team filed preliminary plans to enter the building and survey its contents. The team planned to pull out computer hard drives and soak them in bleach and vinegar. 

That meant the destruction of all intellectual property as well as personnel records, business plans, buyout offers, libel claims and the vast network of paid informants for The National Enquirer, National Examiner, Globe, Sun and Weekly World News.

Trapped inside is AMI's photo library with 5 million images, 4.5 million pages of press clippings and about 600,000 pages of bound periodicals dating back three decades. 

Among the likely casualties if the building is gutted: a $50,000 cash fund for emergency travel and for easing the consciences of reluctant informants. That money was left in the building when the office was abruptly sealed off and abandoned in 2001.

New Giuliani company will occupy former anthrax building

JILL BARTON
Associated Press

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's consulting firm and the company that decontaminated anthrax-infested buildings in Washington will team up to clean a similarly infected building here and use the space as their new headquarters.

Sabre Technical Services, which decontaminated two post offices and the Hart Senate Building after other anthrax attacks in 2001, will join Giuliani Partners to create Bio-ONE.

The new company will occupy the 65,000-square foot facility by early next year once the decontamination is complete.

"This is a building that was incapacitated by a person or persons who sent anthrax here," Giuliani said. "It will now be a building that's going to be at the cutting edge of making us safer, healthier and giving us a process to deal with possible further attacks by terrorists or perverse people."

The building was owned by American Media Inc., the publisher of The National Enquirer and its sister tabloids, when it became the site of the nation's first anthrax attack in October 2001. The facility has been quarantined since anthrax sickened and killed Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, the first of five Americans to die of anthrax from spore-tainted letters. No arrests have been made.

AMI sold the building last April for $40,000 to Crown Companies president David Rustine, ridding itself of the responsibility of 24-hour security and cleanup after federal efforts to take over the building and multimillion dollar decontamination stalled.

Bio-ONE plans to market its expertise in crisis management and response, along with the decontamination procedures it has developed.

The company will fumigate the building with chlorine dioxide, which kills anthrax spores and also is used to disinfect drinking water and treat fruits and vegetables, using a mobile generator developed by Sabre. The process will take only 24 hours but plans must first be approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

John Mason, Sabre president and CEO, said the generator could clean the water supplies for a city as large as Miami if it were infected in an emergency.

FBI investigators believe anthrax came into the building with a letter and spread when anthrax-laden papers passed through photocopy machines.

Investigators have entered the building hundreds of times and collected more than 5,000 hazardous samples, but the investigation has stalled and no suspects have been named.

Giuliani said company officials will cooperate with investigators, though the FBI has turned the building over to the new owner.

Cleanup costs have been estimated by lawmakers at $10 million to $100 million, which was the cost of clearing anthrax out the Brentwood Post Office in Washington. But Bio-ONE officials declined to say how much they think the decontamination would cost.

Giuliani said he will remain in New York at his Times Square headquarters of Giuliani Partners, but he will spend some time at his Bio-ONE offices, which will house about 100 employees.

He said the cleanup not only would help Boca Raton by removing a public nuisance, but also would help provide reassurance to a nation still shaken by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"To have this building fully remediated, have it be perfectly safe, to actually be able to occupy it with Sabre as part of Bio-ONE is going to give me a feeling that we've come full circle, and that we can handle these things," Giuliani said. "Although terrorism has to be something we have to be very concerned about, it just means we have to learn more, we have to be more effective, we have to be brave and we have to move forward. And this will be a symbol of all that."

Building 470 dismantling complete

The dismantling of Building 470 is complete. 

Workers completed the process in December by backfilling and cleaning up the work area, grading the alley on the east side of where the building once sat and rebuilding the walls of two buildings that were located just inches from where the seven-story building once sat. 

Building 470 was completed in 1953 at a cost of $1.3 million. As part of the nation's Cold War defense against the continuing threat of biological warfare, the building served as a pilot plant for production of bacteria with potential as weapons: Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax; Francisella tularensis, the cause of tularemia, or rabbit fever; and Brucella suis, which causes brucellosis, sometimes called undulant fever. 

Most of the people who live in Frederick County have heard stories about Building 470. Dr. George Anderson of Southern Research Institute, an internationally recognized expert on Bacillus anthracis, exhaustively reviewed documents on 470 and interviewed many of the men, some still residing in Frederick, who once worked in the building. 

"We can put the most frightening of those urban legends to rest," Anderson said. He learned that no one working in Building 470 died of anthrax, although three workers elsewhere on Fort Detrick died of infection from agents that were being researched as biological weapons. The records show that two men working in other buildings died of inhalation anthrax, and one died of Bolivian hemorrhagic fever. 

Many heard of a large spill in Building 470. In 1958, a technician, trying to pry open a stuck valve at the bottom of a 3,000-gallon fermentor, unintentionally released approximately 2,000 gallons of liquid Bacillus anthracis culture. Because of the design of the building and the safety measures in place, the technician was able to isolate the spill to one room. There was no contamination of Fort Detrick or the community, and no one, including the technician, became ill. The outcome of the story is testament to the effective biological safety practices that were pioneered during those early days at Fort Detrick. 

When the United States renounced biological weapons in 1969, many buildings (but not Building 470) that had been dedicated to biological warfare research were deeded to the National Cancer Institute, decontaminated and renovated for cancer research. The institute also received about 70 acres on Fort Detrick to serve as a campus for the National Cancer Institute. 

Building 470 was vacated and decontaminated and was used as a storage facility since 1971. 

"The Army took 1,300 samples during the decommissioning of the building [1970-71] and all those samples were negative [for any evidence of Bacillus anthracis]," said Carol Shearer, project manager for the dismantling. "There were two rounds of gas decontamination using formaldehyde, and the closed systems [e.g., fermentors] were all steam-sterilized. Drains and other piping systems that they could not reach with steam were cut and then bleach was pumped up into them, and the bleach was then left to sit [in the pipes] to get anything that was in there. This was a very, very extensive decontamination." 

In 1988, the National Cancer Institute acquired Building 470 and hoped it could be converted to research laboratories. After feasibility studies were completed, the consensus was that the building's design was outdated and modernizing it would not be cost-effective. The building stayed vacant and continued to be used as a storage facility. 

Over time, the building deteriorated and became a safety hazard because of the structural instability of the masonry and the structural steel framework. National Cancer Institute officials decided the building should come down. 

The success of the earlier decontamination was re-verified in October of 2002. Tests on an additional 790 samples revealed no trace of live or dead Bacillus anthracis. The samples were analyzed by either conventional culture methods or by polymerase chain reaction, a more sensitive test involving DNA. 

"What all this means for our task at hand is that we have a building that is safe to take down," said Shearer, an expert in dismantling former bioweapons facilities in the former Soviet Union. "Our main concern, then, is not anthrax, but noise and vibration - and most importantly the disruption of science in the adjoining and adjacent buildings." 

Throughout the process, safety inspectors monitored the site. In an update briefing in mid-October, Shearer said that about 2,250 samples had been taken and tested for Bacillus anthracis. 

"We've run out of places to test," she said. "Now we're doing air samples." 

Controlled Demolition, Inc., the firm chosen for the dismantling work was sensitive to the needs of NCI-Frederick and Fort Detrick, working inside the building as much as possible and at night and weekends when noise would be less likely to disturb the work being performed here. 

The last phase of the project involved removing the remaining parts of Building 470 brick by brick because it was so close to Buildings 431 and 469. Walls of the latter buildings were studded out and waterproofed because they lay only inches from Bldg. 470. 

Calculations in November indicated that more than 900,000 pounds of debris had been removed from the site and 535,000 pounds of equipment and metal were removed for smelting. Most of the rubble was sent to the Frederick landfill, while the metal went to Conservit in Hagerstown and then shipped to North Carolina for smelting. 

 --Information taken from the National Cancer Institute-Frederick Web site and November newsletter, The Poster 

Anthrax kills nine cows in western Saskatchewan, farm quarantined

NEILBURG, Sask. (CP) - A farm in western Saskatchewan has been quarantined after anthrax was discovered in a cattle herd. 

Nine cows have died from the disease, said Dr. Jim McLane, district veterinarian with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The remaining animals in the 250-head herd will be vaccinated once the weather warms up. In rare cases anthrax can be spread to humans, so the family that lives on the farm and the veterinarian who performed the autopsies on the dead animals have been given antibiotics, McLane said. 

"I would like to stress that this is an isolated, individual farm problem and it's not an industry problem," he said. 

"We've taken the proper regulatory actions to prevent animals from leaving the farm." 

Anthrax is a fatal bacterial disease in sheep and cattle. In the rare cases it is transferred to humans, it usually affects the skin and lungs. 

People can get the disease by inhaling anthrax spores, but that requires close contact. 

Saskatchewan isn't the only Prairie province that has found anthrax in cattle. Manitoba has seen three outbreaks in cows over the last four years. The last case was in August when eight animals died. 

In 2000, a Minnesota farm family became ill from eating their own anthrax-infected cattle. 

Anthrax is also found from time to time in bison from Wood Buffalo National Park that straddles the Alberta-Northwest Territories boundary. 

Neilburg is about 230 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

By Kathy Bushouse
The Sun-Sentinel
January 30, 2004

A Boca Raton company is claiming the planned cleanup at the former American Media Inc. building is a violation of a patent it received for an anthrax decontamination product. 

Custom Biologicals Inc. of Boca Raton sent a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday to Sabre Technical Services and Giuliani Partners -- the partners of new venture Bio-ONE that announced plans this month to clean up and occupy the former tabloid headquarters. 

Custom Biologicals is asking that Bio-ONE delay using any cleanup process that is part of Custom Biologicals' patent. 

At issue is Sabre's plan to use heat and humidity to get the anthrax spores' protective coats to soften, allowing bacteria-killing chlorine gas to penetrate. The first claim listed in Custom Biologicals' patent, issued Dec. 2, is that bacteria spores are first rendered harmless by "providing sublethal heat and/or adding a chemical activating agent." 

"If they manipulate the environment to open that spore up, then it violates our patent," said Chuck Baugh, Custom Biologicals vice president. "We have to stand and protect our patent. We have a lot at stake here." 

Sabre president John Mason said his company is planning nothing different at the building on Broken Sound Boulevard in Boca Raton than what was done at other decontamination sites. Sabre's first anthrax cleanup was at the Hart Senate office building in Washington, D.C., in November 2001. That was two months before Custom Biologicals submitted its patent application. 

Mason said there's no correlation between what's in the patent and Sabre's process. 

"To be an issue, we'd have to see that the technology we used really relates to their patent," Mason said. "At this point, we don't see that." 

Baugh said Sabre's prior cleanups don't violate the patent, because there wasn't a patent in existence then. But its future plans at the AMI building could be a violation, he said. 

Though no plans have been submitted at this point, Baugh said decontamination details outlined to the media are similar to what is contained in Custom Biologicals' patent. Its invention, Cleanthrax, is an anthrax-killing additive that also boosts the effectiveness of typical household disinfectants, Baugh said. 

For now, Baugh said, the company simply wants to talk with Sabre officials and see if they can reach an agreement. No lawsuit has been filed. 

Custom Biologicals hopes to license its technology and views Sabre as a potential customer, Baugh said. 

"The best-case scenario, now people know what our patent is," he said. 

Patent attorneys say if Custom Biologicals takes legal action, and if Sabre has clear and convincing evidence that Custom Biologicals' process isn't unique -- the patent could be jeopardized. Richard Byrne, a patent attorney in Pittsburgh, said that Sabre attorneys could argue in court that Custom Biologicals shouldn't have gotten a patent because such processes already existed. 

"The burden of establishing infringement is on the patent owner," he said. 

But if the company doesn't assert its patent, that could stir up competitors, said Dan Monaco, a patent attorney in Philadelphia. 

"Nobody's going to take your patent away from you if you do nothing with it, but if you don't enforce your patent, other people may get the idea to get into the business and compete with you," he said. 

Jeff Kempter, senior adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency anti-microbials division, said the patent dispute isn't the agency's concern. 

Sabre has yet to submit detailed cleanup plans to the EPA, Kempter said. He said the general process outlined so far already has been used at three other sites: the Hart building and at postal facilities in Washington, D.C. and Trenton, N.J. 

Staff Writer Neil Santaniello contributed to this report. 

Kathy Bushouse can be reached at kbushouse@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6641.

By Alan Gomez, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004

WEST PALM BEACH -- Federal attorneys are citing national security concerns in asking a Palm Beach County judge to delay a lawsuit filed by the widow of the nation's first anthrax victim, saying it could undermine one of the "largest and most complex investigations in law enforcement history."

In motions filed this week in federal court, lawyers for the government said, "... a stay of this civil suit is necessary to avoid compromising the United States' active investigation of the anthrax attacks of fall 2001 and to avoid public disclosure of sensitive information concerning biological weapons such as anthrax."

Unable to reach a resolution with the plaintiffs, federal attorneys are facing a March deadline to respond to the lawsuit filed by Maureen Stevens, whose husband, Bob, died after being exposed to anthrax while working as a photo editor at American Media Inc. headquarters in Boca Raton.

Wednesday's request to Federal Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley was for a six-month delay, and then for an opportunity to review whether another delay is necessary.

Maureen Stevens filed the lawsuit in September, seeking $50 million in damages for herself and her three children.

Her attorney argued in the suit that U.S. officials failed to secure a Maryland laboratory where the deadly bacterium was stored. The suit bases its claims on a memorandum that names the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., as the source of the Ames anthrax strain that Stevens believes infected her husband.

The Stevenses' attorney, Richard Schuler, said at the time that the family was frustrated over the government's stonewalling tactics, taking months to turn over an autopsy report, denying them access to DNA tests and even denying them money from the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund.

In the government motion and a 114-page memorandum supporting their request, federal attorneys said Stevens' hope for a speedy investigation would undercut what has become a monumental investigation into a series of crimes that crippled the country.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the country was sent into another panic as anthrax-laden letters and numerous hoax letters appeared across the nation, including media outlets in New York and Boca Raton and congressional buildings in Washington. Twenty-two people were infected with anthrax, five people died and 30,000 were treated with antibiotics to protect against anthrax infection.

In an affidavit attached to the motion, Richard Lambert, the FBI's inspector in charge of the FBI/U.S. Postal Service investigation known as "AMERITHRAX," explained the breadth of the ensuing investigation.

Federal agents have responded by putting in 251,000 agent-hours -- the equivalent of 97 work years -- interviewing more than 5,000 people and serving more than 4,000 subpoenas, Lambert said. The affidavit says the investigation has yielded "subjects of the investigation" and says that a "specific forensic signature is continuing to emerge which characterizes the anthrax used in the attacks."

Opening the files in the Stevens case, federal attorneys argued, would only hinder that investigation and possibly keep law enforcement from catching the responsible parties.

"Plaintiff's frustration that the murder of her husband remains unsolved and her desire to help the United States' investigation to succeed are understandable," the motion reads. "Unfortunately, however, the means that plaintiff seeks to employ -- stripping the investigation of its secrecy and conducting her own parallel investigation via this civil suit -- would be extremely harmful rather than helpful. Litigation of this suit also would pose a significant risk of disclosing classified or sensitive information relating to the acquisition, development, and use of weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax, a risk that independently justifies a stay."

Federal attorneys also included a March 2002 memorandum from White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to all executive departments and agencies calling on them to review their records to ensure sensitive information is being safeguarded.

No hearing has been scheduled for the government's request.

alan_gomez@pbpost.com

WEST PALM BEACH
U.S. asks to defer anthrax lawsuit

National security concerns are cited as the government asks a federal court to postpone a lawsuit from the widow of a tabloid editor who died in the first of a series of anthrax attacks in 2001.

BY JILL BARTON
Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH - The federal government is citing national security concerns in asking a federal court to delay a lawsuit from the widow of a man killed in the nation's first anthrax attack.

The government asked the court to put off the proceedings 'to avoid compromising the United States' active investigation of the anthrax attacks of fall 2001 and to avoid public disclosure of sensitive information concerning biological weapons such as anthrax.''

In their motion filed Wednesday, attorneys for the federal government said they were unable to resolve their concerns with Maureen Stevens, who sued the federal government in September, alleging that lax security at an Army lab caused her husband's death.

Robert Stevens, an editor for The Sun tabloid, is believed to have contracted anthrax from a tainted letter sent to the Boca Raton headquarters of American Media Inc. He died October 5, 2001, from inhalation anthrax, a rare and particularly lethal form of the disease.

Anthrax was also sent through the mail to media outlets in New York and a congressional building in Washington, killing four others and sickening more than a dozen people.

Maureen Stevens is seeking more than $50 million in what is believed to be the first lawsuit aiming to hold the federal government accountable for producing and mishandling the deadly strain of anthrax that the lawsuit says killed her husband.

Her attorney, Richard Schuler, was not available for comment late Friday.

Schuler has said that he believed DNA tests on the anthrax found at Stevens' office would prove it was an exact match to the anthrax produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.

The lab develops vaccines and drugs to protect service members from biological warfare agents and has become a focus of the investigation because it is the U.S. military's main anthrax research center.

Schuler has been denied access to the DNA tests.

Stevens sued the government because she wanted to force authorities to take action on their languishing investigation and provide answers to the victims' families.

By Kathy Bushouse
Staff Writer - The South Florida Sun-Sentinel

February 3, 2004

A federal judge will decide whether national security concerns trump a Lantana widow's lawsuit against the U.S. government for more information about the 2001 anthrax attack that killed her husband.

But it's doubtful that national security claims alone will quash Maureen Stevens' wrongful-death case, legal experts said Monday.

U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley will determine whether to grant Justice Department attorneys' request for a six-month delay in Stevens' wrongful death case. Government attorneys filed a motion last week that contends sensitive information and intelligence about the ongoing anthrax investigation and the nation's military could get out through Stevens' case.

The decision could hinge on how much detail Justice Department attorneys are willing to give about the government's anthrax investigation, said Bruce Rogow, a constitutional-law professor at Nova Southeastern University.

"Before making a decision I think [a judge would] need to have more than just the government's statement of its belief that this will impede an investigation," Rogow said.

The national-security issue is the same argument used by Justice Department attorneys in a lawsuit brought by Dr. Steven Hatfill, a scientist considered a "person of interest" in the government's 21/2-year anthrax investigation.

A hearing on the government's motion is scheduled for Friday in Hatfill's case. Stevens' attorney, Richard Schuler, said he would respond this week to the government's request.

The defendants can request as many postponements as they want, so long as the judge agrees.

Bob Stevens, a photo editor for tabloid publisher American Media Inc., died Oct. 5, 2001, from inhalation anthrax. His was the first death in a wave of bioterrorism attacks that killed five people. A cleanup plan at AMI's former offices in Boca Raton is pending.

Stevens' family filed a $50 million wrongful-death claim in February 2003 against the government, and later that year filed the federal lawsuit. Stevens also has a wrongful-death case pending in Palm Beach County Circuit Court against two companies with access to the anthrax bacteria.

Federal attorneys wrote that in both Stevens' case and Hatfill's cases, private details becoming public would have a chilling effect on the FBI's investigation: Possible suspects could destroy information, witnesses could be harassed, and others, fearing intense media scrutiny, would be less willing to cooperate if they had information to share.

Terrorists also could gain information about military installations and make potential targets of those locations, wrote FBI Special Agent Richard L. Lambert, chief of the joint FBI-U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigation dubbed "AMERITHRAX."

"All of the foregoing outcomes will seriously and adversely affect the FBI's ability to effectively and efficiently conduct the AMERITHRAX investigation," Lambert wrote. "It is not possible to proceed ... without divulging sensitive information that will compromise and frustrate the AMERITHRAX investigation."

Lambert wrote that there are 28 FBI special agents and 12 U.S. Postal inspectors working full-time on the anthrax investigation. The group has conducted 15 searches, interviewed more than 5,000 people and served more than 4,000 subpoenas, he wrote.

Justice Department attorneys claim in the motion that FBI agents have spent 251,000 man-hours investigating the attacks.

Schuler said it isn't Stevens' intent to interfere with the investigation, but called the request "a stalling game."

"The investigation is 21/2years old. They haven't made one arrest," Schuler said. "... We certainly don't want to interfere with the investigation but on the other hand, the investigation doesn't seem to be going anywhere."

Before filing the lawsuit, Schuler said he filed numerous Freedom of Information Act requests with the government, and received no responses. His hope is that he'll get more information about the investigation through subpoenas.

However, the government could request protective orders that could keep a person from giving a deposition, or that deposition could be limited, Rogow said.

Attorneys for the government could update the judge on their progress without revealing anything to Stevens and her attorney by giving Hurley -- a President Clinton appointee -- some details in private, Rogow said.

If the information is particularly sensitive, it can be sealed from public view, Rogow said.

"Without a little more information, the judge is put in a blind bind," he said.

If federal attorneys are able to put forth a good argument, Hurley could approve a six-month delay, said Joe Little, a law professor at the University of Florida.

"It's my guess that the judge will give the government a good bit of leeway on the matter, especially since it is an ongoing investigation," Little said.

He doubted the case would be delayed for too long.

"Ultimately, I think the court will try to find a way to get the case moving," Little said. "It might require some compromise and limiting of things that the plaintiff is able to discover, for example."

Kathy Bushouse can be reached at kbushouse@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6641.

By Neil Santaniello
Staff Writer
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

February 14, 2004

BOCA RATON · The company decontaminating the former American Media Inc. building could begin preliminary anthrax-cleanup steps this weekend if it receives a go-ahead from county public-health officials. 

Operating from the parking lot of the three-story former tabloid news building, Bio-ONE on Friday was waiting for final approval of four one-page work plans, plus a more elaborate document detailing how it will safeguard cleanup workers entering the anthrax-tainted structure. 

"They're moving quick, that's for sure," said Tim O'Connor, county Health Department spokesman. He said the company had proposed starting initial work Friday, a mark it couldn't hit. 

The plans transmitted electronically to health authorities Thursday outlined janitorial and reconnaissance work preceding the main cleanup operation -- fumigating the building with chlorine dioxide gas.

Workers entering the 67,500-square-foot building on Northwest Broken Sound Boulevard will demagnetize and disable computer hard drives and soak them in a microbe-killing bleach solution. They'll use paper shredders to destroy files and documents that belonged to the publisher of the National Enquirer and Star, dampening them in bleach as well to avoid raising dust -- and any lurking anthrax spores. 

After trashing electronic and paper files, crews will seal them in plastic bags with duct tape and keep them on-site until a disposal solution is finalized, company officials said. 

AMI did not ask the company to spare photos, records or anything else, said Douglas Stutz, incident commander for Sabre Technical Services, which created Bio-ONE with a security consulting firm formed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. 

"It's a combination of both cleanup and what AMI wants done" with its old property, said Karen Cavanagh, Sabre general counsel. 

Workers will photograph the building interior, fixtures and furnishings with disposable cameras. That will help them become more familiar with the building layout and map out a careful anthrax-nullification plan, Stutz said.

"It's a very simple work plan. It's very simple work to start with," said Stutz, who holds a doctorate in veterinary medical science and oversaw Sabre's anthrax cleanup efforts on Capitol Hill.

While some of the AMI interior work could be done within a few days, Bio-ONE has not specified when it will move to the investigative phase, gathering anthrax samples by wiping surfaces and vacuuming in the air. 

That effort will help determine the extent and location of remaining anthrax. The cleanup team already is armed with information on that from a prior entry by federal regulators, said Stutz, who works from an RV parked on the site. 

The earlier information shows "a fair amount of positive hits, scattered, but primarily on the first floor," he said. "I can't vouch for its accuracy at this point. In nature, [the spores] survive a long time." 

The company, using 15 to 20 workers initially, could not go in Friday because of minor questions that state and federal health officials had on its work and safety plans, feedback that had to be delivered to Bio-ONE, O'Connor said. But "if everything falls in line" they could get start-up approval this weekend, he said. 

O'Connor said the county won't sign off alone on the entry plan until it receives nods from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and federal public health authorities. A county public health official likely will be posted at the site during the operation, he said. 

Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantaniello@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6625.

Anthrax cleanup starts at former site of American Media

Associated Press
 

BOCA RATON, Fla. - The cleanup has begun at the former American Media Inc. building, the first target in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people.

Crews from Bio-ONE Solutions LLC spent Saturday setting up decontamination areas in the basement of the tabloid publisher's former headquarters and preparing for more-involved scouting trips on other floors Sunday and throughout the week.

More than a dozen people made trips in and out of the building during the preliminary survey, spending about an hour each inside then coming out for decontamination and checks of their vital signs, said Sandra Schuh, a director with Sabre Technical Services LLC.

Sabre is half of Bio-ONE, a new decontamination company created with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's security consulting firm. Bio-ONE will make its headquarters at the building once the cleanup is complete later this year.

Once the setup work is complete, teams will focus on shredding documents and destroying files and computer hard drives. They will also take pictures of equipment, furniture and other fixtures left behind inside the building when American Media workers had to evacuate in October 2001.

The building was the home of the National Enquirer, Star and Weekly World News tabloids, but American Media sold it last year.

The facility has been quarantined since anthrax sickened and killed Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, the first of five Americans to die of anthrax from spore-tainted letters. No arrests have been made.

Other buildings that were contaminated with anthrax, including the Hart Senate office building and the Brentwood postal center in Washington, D.C., have been cleaned and reopened. Sabre handled cleanups at those buildings, as well as at a contaminated center in New Jersey.

                   ---

Information from: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, http://www.sun-sentinel.com

NewsDay
February 17, 2004, 7:07 AM EST

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) _ FBI agents investigating the 2001 anthrax scare recently interviewed a scientist from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in connection with the deadly mail attacks, according to a document obtained by The Hartford Courant. 

Investigators wanted to know whether the scientist, whom the newspaper did not name, was responsible for an anonymous letter mailed to the FBI during the anthrax scare that suggested another EPA scientist was a potential terrorist. 

Federal agents summoned the scientist to their Washington field office last week. The scientist told federal investigators Wednesday that he had nothing to do with the letter, but the document indicated that he might be subjected to a lie-detector test. 

Anthrax-laced envelopes were mailed in the fall of 2001 to government and news media offices, including those of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Five people died and 17 others were sickened in those attacks. 

The anonymous letter was sent Sept. 26, 2001 from a northern Virginia mailbox. It accused Egyptian-born scientist Ayaad Assaad of being a "religious fanatic" with the "means and will" to launch a bioterrorist attack against the United States. 

Federal investigators have always said the letter had no bearing on their hunt for the anthrax killer. 

FBI Director Robert Mueller is briefed each week on the progress of the investigation, dubbed "Amerithrax" by the bureau. The FBI considers the case one of the most complex in its 95-year history. 

Assaad's lawyer, Rosemary McDermott, said that Assaad has not been questioned by the FBI since Oct. 3, 2001, when he was shown the letter naming him as a terrorist threat. McDermott said her client was cleared of any suspicion at the end of that interview. 

Assaad is convinced that anonymous writer is connected to the person who mailed the anthrax letters, and that the warning was intended set him up as a scapegoat. 

It is unclear whether last week's interview of Assaad's colleague is simply a search for fresh leads in the case or whether the FBI has been quietly hunting for the source of the anonymous letter for years. 

FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

Suspect profile is only clue agency has after 2 years

By Frank James
Washington bureau

March 2, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The FBI's profile of the mastermind behind the anthrax attacks envisions an unsociable suspect who holds grudges and seeks revenge long-distance but lacks the personal skills for face-to-face confrontations.

Yet after expending millions of dollars and thousands of hours searching for him, authorities appear no closer to finding the criminal who sent anthrax through the mail shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Moreover, if the investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings is an indication, the search for suspects in recent mailings of deadly ricin to the White House and Senate could be long and frustrating.

In the 28 months since the letters containing anthrax were discovered on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, hundreds of FBI agents have worked on the case. Hundreds of present and former government workers have taken lie-detector tests. Investigators have spent millions of dollars, including $250,000 to drain a pond in rural Maryland, in search of evidence.

Still, the FBI has not found whoever mailed the anthrax that killed five people and sickened at least 17 others.

"The investigation remains intensely active," said Debbie Weierman, an FBI spokeswoman who offers a list of numbers to prove her point: 28 FBI agents and 12 U.S. postal inspectors assigned to the case; 15 searches conducted; more than 5,000 people interviewed; and more than 4,000 subpoenas served.

Still, experts say the FBI has hit a wall in its investigation. That is all the more unsettling given the crime's proximity to the Sept. 11 hijackings, though no known link has pointed to the involvement of Al Qaeda.

Focus of inquiry questioned

Leonard Cole, author of "The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story," is loath to fault the FBI because of factors beyond the agency's control, including the lax regulations on laboratories handling anthrax until the 1990s.

But he questions the bureau's focus on a lone, domestic perpetrator as the villain.

"By focusing on the likely perpetrator in the manner that the FBI has done, [it] may have allowed other areas to be less carefully examined that deserve more scrutiny," Cole said.

The FBI has focused on a former Army bioweapons researcher, Steven Hatfill, 50, as a "person of interest" in the case.

Authorities have placed Hatfill under 24-hour surveillance. Agents searched his current and past homes. The pond agents drained was targeted because Hatfill had reportedly visited that area. Hatfill's foot even was run over by a vehicle driven by an FBI agent watching him in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood.

Weierman would not say whether the former researcher is still being watched, and Hatfill's lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.

Hatfill, who has never been charged with a crime, has denied involvement with the anthrax incidents. His lawyer previously said the FBI targeted Hatfill because it was growing desperate.

Other high-profile federal cases also have taken years to solve.

In the 1980s, seven people in the Chicago area died after ingesting cyanide-laced pain relievers purchased off store shelves. The case, known as the Tylenol murders, remains unsolved after nearly 22 years.

In the Unabomber case in which 23 people were injured and three others killed, it took the FBI nearly 18 years to capture Theodore Kaczynski. The big break in finding the bomber--now age 61 and sentenced to life in prison--came only after his brother provided law-enforcement officials with the crucial tip.

During the wave of anthrax attacks, the bureau had said the perpetrator was likely a poorly socialized adult male like Kaczynski, who was found in 1996 living at a remote cabin in Montana.

Cole thinks the FBI investigation of the anthrax mailings may have been overly influenced by the Kaczynski case at the expense of other possible angles.

The psychological profile of a likely suspect found on the FBI's Web site seeking tips in the anthrax case says the perpetrator could be "a non-confrontational person." It also makes these points: "He lacks the personal skills necessary to confront others.  He chooses to confront his problems `long distance' and not face-to-face. He may hold grudges for a long time, vowing that he will get even with `them' one day.

"There are probably other, earlier examples of this type of behavior," the FBI profile continues. "While these earlier incidents were not actual anthrax mailings, he may have chosen to anonymously harass other individuals or entities that he perceived as having wronged him. He may also have chosen to utilize the mail on those occasions."

Possible Al Qaeda tie-in

Cole is intrigued by circumstances of the anthrax attacks that could point to a Sept. 11 connection. For instance, several of the Al Qaeda hijackers were known to have lived in New Jersey, where the anthrax mailings were postmarked.

The first building contaminated in the 2001 anthrax attacks was the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton, Fla., where a photo editor died after inhaling spores.

Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers had searched for an apartment through a real-estate agent whose husband was a top American Media executive. What's more, one of the hijackers subscribed to at least one of the supermarket tabloids published by company, Cole said.

Cole has also noted that six of 19 hijackers lived near the American Media building.

Also, a South Florida emergency-room physician recalled seeing a patient, thought to have been one of the hijackers, who had a black skin lesion on his leg consistent with cutaneous anthrax.

Thomas Inglesby and Tara O'Toole, two biodefense experts affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed the physician's observations and concluded what he saw could have been caused by cutaneous anthrax, though others have questioned that conclusion.

Last year, Hatfill sued the Justice Department; the lawsuit is pending.

As the ricin incident in early February shows, even a prepared workplace like Capitol Hill is still vulnerable to a potential bioterrorist attack.

American City Business Journals (http://kansascity.bizjournals.com)
Date: 2004-03-02

Mark Kind
Staff Writer

More than a decade before the 2001 anthrax attacks on Senate Democrats and TV news celebrities, the current chief biological scientist at Kansas City's Midwest Research Institute was killing guinea pigs at an Army research lab with the same strain of anthrax.

"We did a number of experiments with it with guinea pigs," David Franz told a seminar audience March 1 at MRI as part of the nonprofit private research organization's 60-year anniversary commemorative lecture series. "It happened to be the hardest strain to protect against in guinea pigs."

The former United Nations weapons inspector said "the public doesn't know" who weaponized the Senate anthrax in 2001, but it was "very high-quality material" consisting of more than a trillion spores a gram, which was better than billion-spore material at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The Ames strain had come to USAMRIID in 1983, and by 1987 it presumably had been distributed to other research labs, Franz said. Five more labs in the United States and Great Britain received the material from USAMRIID after 1987, when Franz held leadership positions at the lab. That makes it hard to pin blame on anyone for the strain's escape from government research to terrorist use.

"We know what strain it was, and yet how many post-docs have gone through all those labs?" he said. "It becomes a matter of intent and trusting people. The forensics is very difficult, as we know."

Although the anthrax-laced letters described themselves as an escalation of the terror attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers and a wing of the Pentagon, the FBI reportedly identified a former U.S. Army colleague of Franz's as a "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks about a year later, in August 2002.

Although the anthrax killed five people, no charges have been filed. Targets of the attack in the Senate and among newscasters escaped harm, but a tabloid photo editor in Florida was among the dead. Other victims apparently became infected after the pathogen contaminated other mail at postal facilities.

The attacks were carried out "very simply and almost eloquently," Franz said, and resulted in President Bush proposing .8 billion for bioterrorism research the following year.

"The increase has never been that steep," he said. "It was quite a plus-up."

The scare resulted in renewed vigilance and research into bioweapons defense, he said.

"So some good will come out of this, whether or not we have a bioterrorism event," Franz said.

Franz is a native of rural Buhler, Kan., and a graduate of Kansas State University's veterinary school. He became head of MRI's biological research in November but works on MRI's biosecurity and biodefense projects from an office in Frederick, Md. He worked at USAMRIID from 1987 to 1998.

He also became the first director of the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center at K-State in November. He said that job has given him new insight into the ease of attacking agriculture with an agent that could discredit the quality of U.S. products worldwide and decimate the agricultural economy.

"I'm amazed, in a way, that biological agents haven't been used, especially in the agricultural area," he said.

REACH MARK KIND at 816-421-5900 or mkind@bizjournals.com.

By Peter Franceschina
Staff Writer

March 11, 2004

The FBI is at a crucial stage in its investigation into the anthrax attacks that killed five people and poisoned 17 others, with investigators hoping that an emerging biological signature will identify the source of the anthrax in the next six months, a Justice Department attorney told a federal judge on Wednesday.

"The FBI is fully engaged in a very intensive investigation," said Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Bucholtz, referring to the attacks in the fall of 2001. "We all wish this investigation were simpler and resolved already."

Bucholtz told U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley in West Palm Beach that he could not say that a suspect would be arrested in that time frame. The government is asking Hurley to put a wrongful-death lawsuit on hold for those six months in order not to interfere with the investigation.

The lawsuit was filed in December by Maureen Stevens, the widow of Boca Raton tabloid photo editor Bob Stevens, 63, who on Oct. 5, 2001, became the first person to die from the anthrax poisonings.

Maureen Stevens and her attorneys have said they want to use the lawsuit in part to find out what the government has done in the investigation. They allege the anthrax came from a government bio-weapons lab, likely the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.

West Palm Beach attorney Robert Schuler, who represents Maureen Stevens, said he hopes the FBI can progress to the point that a suspect is identified, but he said he doubts that will happen soon.

"We certainly want their investigation to succeed," he said after the hearing.

The largest biological attack in U.S. history took place in the weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, when anthrax-laced letters were sent to news media offices in Boca Raton and New York City, and the Senate offices of Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The FBI contends the lawsuit will encroach on national security issues and seriously jeopardize the investigation if details are made public. The Justice Department contacted Hurley before Wednesday's hearing in an effort to deliver a confidential briefing on the case, but Hurley said he didn't respond to the request.

Bucholtz said the FBI wants to apprise the judge ofdetails that the government doesn't want made public. Schuler did not object to that, and Hurley said he will issue a ruling after receiving the material.

One measure of the secrecy surrounding the investigation: The Justice Department will send the briefing by courier, and Hurley must return it to the courier after reviewing it.

In his questioning of Bucholtz about the lawsuit's potential ramifications on the investigation, Hurley appeared to suggest that some aspects of the case could go forward without hurting the investigation.

Schuler wants to question former Fort Detrick employees about security measures at the lab and reports that biological agents were lost or stolen, but Bucholtz said that could involve national security issues.

National security concerns would have to be addressed regardless of the status of the investigation, Hurley said. Earlier, Bucholtz told the judge that the government was "not ready to stipulate the source of the anthrax was Fort Detrick or anywhere else." He said the anthrax grown in the lab has been shipped to other sites over the years.

Although Schuler said neither he nor Stevens is conspiratorially minded, he noted that concerns about the direction and effectiveness of the FBI's investigation have been publicly raised by scientists and professors who have consulted on the case.

Despite Schuler's assertion, one of his recent court filings alluded to a British news account last year containing one of the more sensational claims made about the investigation.

"There is also the disturbing fact that British government sources have stated they had classified information indicating that American authorities had chosen to assassinate the anthrax attacker rather than bring him to trial," Schuler wrote.

The judge said he trusted that the FBI is doing the best it can. "It's hard to believe the government would be slack in the investigation, given the enormity of the threat," he said.

While courts have determined that civil suits can't be postponed indefinitely, Schuler said some cases can take years to be solved. He brought up the case of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, whose mail bombs continued for 17 years until his brother recognized the writings contained in Kaczynski's "manifesto."

"I was thinking about that as you were talking," the judge said.

The Justice Department also has tried to stall a lawsuit filed by former Fort Detrick bio-weapons expert Steven J. Hatfill, identified as a "person of interest" in the investigation by Attorney General John Ashcroft. Hatfill is suing the government to halt
his 24-hour surveillance and to clear his name. He has denied any involvement in the anthrax poisonings and contends government leaks have ruined his reputation.

Last month, the federal judge hearing Hatfill's suit, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, said Hatfill's attorneys could begin requesting information from the government. The judge came to that determination even after getting a confidential status report.

"The problem I'm having, to be very candid, is that I could see us here this time next year in the exact same posture that we're in now," Walton said.

Information from The Baltimore Sun was used in this report.

Peter Franceschina can be reached at pfranceschina@sun-sentinel.com or 561-832-2894. 

By Dr. Lawrence Sellin
A UPI Outside View commentary
Published 3/13/2004 2:39 PM

WASHINGTON, March 13 (UPI) -- On Feb. 23, the Washington Times reported the FBI official in charge of the probe into the 2001 anthrax mailings said the investigation still has top priority among the bureau's unsolved cases but acknowledged the anthrax sender may never be caught.

"Despite our very, very, very best efforts, we still might not be able to bring it home," said Assistant Director Michael A. Mason, who heads the FBI's Washington field office investigating the case.

This is in stark contrast to the Nov. 17, 2001 comments of James Fitzgerald of the FBI Academy's Behavioral Analysis Unit, reported by CNN: "I'm very positive that before too long we'll have some real good information, and the investigation will lead us to the person who is responsible for this."

What went wrong?

Perhaps it had more than a little to do with the FBI's basic assumption, which stated that they were dealing with a single suspect who fits a profile similar to serial bombers like "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski.

Fitzgerald said his analysis of the anthrax-laced letters sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post suggested that the anthrax mailer acted alone and may have used as little as $2,500 worth of lab equipment to produce the anthrax. The FBI also believes this person is not connected to those behind the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

How one can reach such conclusions based on the meager and, to some extent, contradictory nature of the content of the anthrax letters is difficult to guess. Unless, of course, you believe it must be a Kaczynski-like individual.

From this false assumption all the "logic" of the subsequent investigation flows.

The FBI produced a profile of the anthrax mailer who was described as a lone person living within the United States who had experience working in labs and was smart enough to produce a highly refined and deadly product.

If employed, he is likely to be in a position requiring little contact with the public or other employees. He may work in a laboratory.  He is apparently comfortable working with an extremely hazardous material. He probably has a scientific background to some extent, or at least a strong interest in science.

He is a non-confrontational person, at least in his public life. He lacks the personal skills necessary to confront others. He chooses to confront his problems "long distance" and not face-to-face. He may hold grudges for a long time, vowing that he will get even with "them" one day and prefers being by himself more often than not.

In other words, Ted Kaczynski with germs.

This conclusion was presumably strengthened by the identification of the Ames strain of anthrax as the causative agent. The Ames strain came from an infected animal in Texas, cultured in Ames, Iowa, and found its way to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., in about 1980. Therefore, the culprit had to be someone in the United States.

All this invariably led to Stephen Hatfill, who, we soon learned, had worked at Fort Detrick, had a shady past involving Rhodesia and South Africa, behaved suspiciously and had a questionable résumé. Lacking sufficient evidence to name Hatfill as a suspect, the FBI anointed him with the freshly minted label of "person of interest."

But Hatfill is no Kaczynski.

During the last two years he has been called a lot of things, but few would describe him as a "non-confrontational person" and, given his extensive activities in the bioterrorism arena, not exactly a person who "prefers being by himself more often than not." So much for the profile. In any case, the FBI has not compiled a case against Hatfill sufficient to arrest him.

The most concrete result of the FBI's efforts will likely be a lawsuit against the U.S. government.

The folks at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., might have done well to examine that elephant standing in the middle of their living room -- al-Qaida. Unfortunately, accepting this alternative renders the profile and their investment in it irrelevant.

We are aware of al-Qaida's continuing efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And the timing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and the anthrax letters is entirely consistent with a "second wave" theory. 

But what about those letters from which Fitzgerald at the FBI deduced so much? 

In one of the letters, the word "We" is used as in "We have this anthrax." The simplest explanation is a conspiracy, not a lone male. And the writing was certainly not done by a native English speaker. Sure, it could have been an "opportunist" as the FBI claims, covering his tracks by blaming it on some foreigners. But to what end? There has been no follow-up, no further demands.  The opportunist theory also assumes that an individual perpetrator would be extremely well-prepared for a Sept. 11-like event and would be able to execute a complex attack in the span of one week.

One popular theory suggests that it was a frustrated scientist trying to draw attention to the threat of bioterrorism or even profit from an increase in bioterrorism funding. That assumes quite a quantum leap in logic: to commit murder to achieve an altruistic goal or to commit murder and then depend on the vagaries of the grant funding process.

Yes, it's all a bit of a stretch, but it fits the profile.

Probably the most significant error the FBI committed was its cavalier dismissal of the cutaneous anthrax infection of Ahmed Al Haznawi, one of the hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

On June 25, 2001, Al Haznawi was treated for a dark lesion on his leg that he said he developed after bumping into a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Christos Tsonas, an emergency room physician at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., thought the injury was curious, but he cleaned it and prescribed an antibiotic for the infection.

In October 2001, after the first confirmed anthrax case, Tsonas was shown pictures of black anthrax lesions by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. It was concluded by these experts that for Al Haznawi's wound, anthrax was "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available."

Nevertheless, Assistant FBI Director John Collingwood played down the possible anthrax connection. "This was fully investigated and widely vetted among multiple agencies several months ago," he said in a written statement in March 2002. "Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had been."

It is interesting to note that no anthrax was present anywhere Ottilie Lundgren of Oxford, Conn., and 61-year-old Kathy Nguyen of New York had been, both of whom died of inhalation anthrax.

Another clue related to the timeline of the anthrax attacks occurred in late August 2001. Gregg Chatterton, a pharmacist in Delray Beach, Fla., said he had told the FBI that two of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for something to treat irritations on Atta's hands. According to Chatterton, both of Atta's hands were red from the wrists down including the palms. They weren't blistering -- they were simply red as if you had taken your hands and dunked them in a bucket of bleach or something. Marwan Al-Shehhi also needed something for "a cough."

This occurred immediately prior to the dates when all the hijackers bought their flight tickets, Aug. 24-31. The date of the attack was set for "9-11-01" as written in the anthrax letters. Was this the time the letters were prepared, and were Atta and his co-conspirators involved in their preparation and hand-off to the mailers?

Many people have been perplexed by the FBI's apparent focus on domestic terrorism, because the bulk of the evidence seems to point to a foreign connection. It is unlikely, however, that al-Qaida had the capability to produce such a high quality product. The FBI itself was unable to reproduce a similar product through back-engineering. Therefore, it had to come from another source.

The Ames anthrax used in the attack could have been pilfered from Fort Detrick, the British Biodefense Establishment at Porton Down or any one of about 20 other labs in possession of that particular strain. It is believed that the Soviet Union had the Ames strain, and Iraq and Russia continued to have high-level military meetings involving biological warfare at least into the mid-1990s. 

Other countries with presumably active biological warfare programs such as North Korea or Iran are potential sources, among others. Given the relatively small amounts involved, sale through black market intermediaries remains a possibility.

Detailed analysis of the anthrax in the letters indicated that it was about two years old at the time of the attack. Did Iraq have such a capability within two years of the attack, or was it processed elsewhere? It makes sense that Saddam Hussein, wanting both revenge and to operate clandestinely, would choose a strain of U.S. military origin. A finished product could have been transferred to Iraq and passed to Mohammed Atta in April 2001 via an Iraqi Intelligence operation in Prague. Other routes into the United States could have been easily used at later dates. Was there more than one batch delivered?

For many, there is still no convincing published evidence supporting the hypothesis that a lone domestic terrorist was the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks, while there is substantially more evidence pointing to a non-domestic source. The precise timing of the anthrax letters, first mailed within a week of 9/11, and the success of the perpetrators in eluding capture both suggest
a sophisticated level of planning not usually associated with an opportunistic attack. 

--

(Dr. Lawrence Sellin has conducted research involving the development of medical defenses against chemical and biological weapons. He has also served in military assignments dealing with weapons of mass destruction.)

--

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of issues.  The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

April 2, 2004
ANCHORS: BOB EDWARDS
REPORTERS: DAVID KESTENBAUM

BOB EDWARDS, host:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

Two court cases are providing a rare look inside the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks of 2001. The investigators had not revealed many specifics, but documents and discussions from these court cases show that the FBI is putting considerable emphasis on a forensic analysis of the anthrax spores in the hope that even at this late date science will lead them to the killer. Officials told one lawyer they expected to have new results within six months. NPR's David Kestenbaum reports. 

DAVID KESTENBAUM reporting:

Richard Schuler says this is one of the stranger cases he has dealt with as a lawyer. In December, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of Maureen Stevens. She is the widow of Robert Stevens, the first of five people to die in the attacks. She is suing the federal government, alleging that poor security at one of its bioweapons facilities allowed anthrax bacteria to fall into the wrong hands. The unusual part about the lawsuit, Schuler says, is that the attorneys for the government showed a secret document to the judge as part of their defense. He says it was carried under the guard of a federal
marshal.

Mr. RICHARD SCHULER (Attorney): It was in a canister and it was brought to the judge in our case while the federal marshal stood by while he read it, then it was put back in the canister and they swooped away with it.

KESTENBAUM: Schuler says he has no idea what the document said.

Mr. SCHULER: Nothing, other than what the government represented. That it was a document that contained references to national security secrets.

KESTENBAUM: An apparently similar secret document was also shown to the judge in a second lawsuit. That suit is being brought by bioweapons scientist Steven Hatfield who has been a focus of investigation in the case. Hatfield is also suing the government. He says the FBI and Department of Justice ruined his reputation and leaked information about him to the press.

On Monday, Hatfield sat in a federal courtroom in Washington, DC, and got some bad news. The federal judge overseeing the case said that based on the secret document, he would put part of the case on hold for six months. The judge said the document showed the government was involved in a, quote, "complicated process," and added that this, quote, "may be one of the more complicated investigations in the history of the department," end quote.

It seems likely the document describes the ongoing forensic work, work aimed at pinning down which lab the anthrax came from. Richard Schuler says that in February, he got a surprise visit from a team of government officials because Maureen Stevens' husband was killed in the crime, the officials gave them an update on the investigation. The officials said they were putting high stock in science to solve the case, but Schuler is not reassured.

Mr. SCHULER: They told us back in June when they came down here that they thought in six months that the science would give them the answers that they needed. Now eight months later, they're telling us, 'Well, science is going to give us the answers, that we need in another six months.' So I don't know whether it's just a staling tactic, you know, or what.

KESTENBAUM: Some scientists also have their doubts about how useful such research will turn out to be. Court documents filed by the Department of Justice say that 28 FBI special agents are working on the case full-time and that eight are scientists with PhDs. The document also says most scientific initiatives are scheduled to be completed within the next six months. The stay ordered by the judge in Hatfield's case is for six months. Dan Richman is a professor law at Fordham University School of Law.

Professor DAN RICHMAN (Fordham University School of Law): If you're to take this affidavit on its face, and actually I do, this looks like a massive investigation that regrettably has not yielded any final conclusions, but it's being pursued with every resource the bureau and the Postal Inspection Service has to bring.

KESTENBAUM: Richman says that even if Steven Hatfield and Maureen Stevens don't win their cases, they've already achieved something: They forced the government to let two judges, two independent observers, get a look at the investigation.

Prof. RICHMAN: There now will be a place where the government will have to go not every day and it looks like not even every month but from time to time and present some sort of clear indication that this is an ongoing investigation.

KESTENBAUM: Reggie Walton, the federal judge hearing Hatfield's lawsuit, has expressed sympathy for Hatfield on several occasions. The Department of Justice did have Hatfield fired from his last job in biodefense. The DOJ says it has the authority to do that because the job depended on government funds. Judge Walton said that, quote, "Hatfield has been injured. To keep him in limbo indefinitely is a problem." At the end of this week's hearing, he ordered the Department of Justice attorneys to update him on the status of the investigation over the coming months. Afterward, Hatfield snuck out of the courthouse to avoid the TV cameras.

As the media prepare the nation for Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to the 9/11 commission, we should all be asking ourselves why the post-9/11 anthrax attacks haven’t been solved. This is a glaring intelligence failure that exposes our continuing vulnerability to foreign attack.

We know who committed the 9/11 attacks. But who carried out the anthrax attacks? The liberal media find no political profit in going after this issue because Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were among those urging the FBI to waste time and resources pursuing a former U.S. government scientist, Steven Hatfill, in the case. That is exactly what Attorney General Ashcroft and the FBI have done. So what is to be gained, from the media point of view, in attacking the Bush administration over this?

Steve Coll, author of The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, recently commented that the Bush terrorism policy before 9/11 resembled the Clinton policy. This is the nub of the problem. That’s why former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke’s criticism of Bush and praise of Clinton demonstrate his phoniness. Like CIA director George Tenet, Clarke was a holdover from the Clinton administration. For whatever reason, he wants to make the matter into a partisan political controversy. The media have gone overboard in obliging him.

The obvious fact, which Bush supporters must concede, is that both the Bush and Clinton administrations didn’t take the terrorism problem seriously enough before 9/11. The CIA had commissioned a 1999 study warning that al Qaeda could crash airplanes into government buildings, including the Pentagon. The CIA had evidence of such a plot dating back six years before 9/11. Not only couldn’t the CIA and FBI stop the attacks, they couldn’t even stop the terrorists from coming into the U.S. and taking flight training on U.S. soil. The unanswered question is whether some foreign terrorists on U.S. soil also carried out the anthrax attacks.

For his part, Hatfill filed suit against Ashcroft, who had labeled Hatfill a “person of interest” in the case. That designation and the media coverage have destroyed his life and career. Nevertheless, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton has delayed a trial on Hatfill’s complaint. AP reported that Walton said, “At some point, Dr. Hatfill is going to have to have his day in court. I don’t think that point has occurred yet.”

It’s been two and a half years since the anthrax attacks occurred. This probe has included the draining of a Maryland pond, at a cost of $250,000, in order to find “evidence” of the crime. Investigators found an old bicycle, a gun and a minnow trap that some anonymous government sources tried to portray as a biological warfare device.

In a story about Walton’s decision, the Washington Times reported that, “Government lawyers said Mr. Ashcroft’s reference to Mr. Hatfill as a ‘person of interest’ during an August 2002 news conference was an attempt to make clear that the bioweapons expert was not a suspect.” The government statement is absolute hogwash. There is no question that the government regarded Hatfill as a suspect. That’s why the FBI kept him under 24-hour surveillance and followed him around Washington in a car, even running over his foot on one occasion.

The Times noted that the government wants his suit dismissed on the grounds that allowing it to go forward “will compromise and frustrate” the anthrax probe and could give Hatfill and others “a voyeur’s window” into the probe’s workings. That’s just another justification for a cover-up to conceal failure.

Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court recently voted unanimously to sanction the government’s refusal to release photographs of the body of Clinton White House lawyer Vincent Foster, who died under mysterious circumstances in July 1993. Accuracy in Media has published an investigative report by chairman emeritus Reed Irvine indicating that the death was a murder, and that several government investigations, including the one run by the ardent “Republican” Kenneth Starr, into the death were flawed.

Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was absolutely correct when she said that the Court decision was a “setback to the public’s right to know.”

In the Foster case, as well as the anthrax matter, both political parties would prefer for their own reasons not to pursue the truth. Journalists pretend to believe in the “right to know” but are content to go along with the cover-ups.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report. 

Threat of anthrax worries author most

The Kansas City Star

So wrote Ken Alibek in his book Biohazard. He was among the Soviet scientists watching the doomed monkeys in the late 1980s.

He rose to the rank of army colonel while working as deputy director of Biopreparat, a pharmaceutical company the Soviets used as a cover for biological weapons development.

As the Soviet