Nations should be prepared for chemical, germ strikes
 

Bronwyn Brunner tries on a gas mask at Kaplan's Surplus Store in San Francisco. There has been a surge in gas mask sales since the attacks in New York and Washington.
 

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

GENEVA, Sept. 24 —  Scientific advances have made it possible for terrorists to kill millions of people with biological or chemical weapons, the World Health Organization warned in a report released Monday. The agency urged nations to prepare for the possibility of such strikes.

      "THE MAGNITUDE of possible impacts on civilian populations of their use or threatened use obliges governments both to seek prevention and to prepare response plans," said the WHO’s report "Health Aspects of Biological and Chemical Weapons."
     The agency rushed out a draft of the 179-page report in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States after receiving calls from governments asking for advice on how to combat germ warfare.
     "The threat of these things is real," David Heymann, WHO’s executive director for communicable diseases, said.  "There are agents out there that if they were used in an area where there were millions of people ... could infect a great number of them."

CROP-DUSTERS GROUNDED

     WHO’s report comes as U.S. federal authorities have twice grounded crop-dusting planes amid fears that terrorists could use them following the attacks on New York and Washington. 

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      Employees of a Florida fertilizer company said a group of Middle Eastern men repeatedly asked about crop-duster planes in the months leading up to the terrorist attacks. An employee identified one of the men as Mohamed Atta, believed to be one of the suicide hijackers in the terrorist attacks.
      The report said modern technology had made large-scale attacks with diseases or poison a reality.  For example, the WHO report noted "the advent of ‘genetic engineering’ offers ... means of producing novel and perhaps more efficacious biological agents and toxins as compared with those of past weapons programs."
     Even though the threat is small, the potential effects are devastating.
     If a small number of people in a large city were infected with a disease that took several days to show itself, they would infect many more before they even knew they were ill. If the outbreak came in a city with a large airport, the disease could go all over the world, Heymann said.
      "Vulnerability to biological agents exists chiefly because of present inability to detect their presence in time for prompt masking or sheltering," the report warned, but added, "rapid detection methods based on modern molecular techniques are now being brought into service."
     Heymann said preparing for a bioterrorism attack is much the same as preparing for the natural spread of a disease and needs strong public health planning.
      The United States in particular is working to improve its public health monitoring and reaction system at the moment, he said. 

September 24 —

Bioterrorism expert Mark Osterholm says the United States is vulnerable to attack with biological weapons.

     Michael Osterholm, state epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of Health, told NBC’s "Today" Show on Monday that the United States is unprepared to deal with attacks with biological weapons.
     "We live in a new world order, biological weapons have been developed and will be delivered," he said.  "Unfortunately, what we’re hearing on the Hill right now is that most of the resources dedicated to this will now go largely to the military. That’s going to leave us still very unprepared from a public health perspective."
      "We’re talking about the difference between what we saw in New York City, where it was a horrible situation with more than 5,000 fatalities but the [medical] system wasn’t overwhelmed because there were only 4,000 or 5,000 wounded people," he said. "Imagine now 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 people presenting for medical care in the New York medical system. That’s what biological weapons can do and that’s what we as a nation are largely unprepared to deal with."

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION URGED

   The Italian health ministry said Monday it was putting together a rapid response group to "coordinate preventative operations" in light of the "delicate international situation."  Italy already has designated a secure laboratory and isolation facilities, it said. 

      The WHO report said countries needed to cooperate because an attack could easily overwhelm the resources of a single nation. It also called for all countries to sign and enforce the U.N.’s treaties on banning biological and chemical weapons.
     During the Cold War, The United States and the former Soviet Union built vast germ-warfare stockpiles. In July, the Bush administration pulled out of negotiations to enforce the biological weapons ban. 

MSNBC
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, May 17 — Billboards in Louisiana where a serial killer is loose display the image of a grim-faced man with bushy eyebrows, and the title “person of interest.” When Maryland police discovered three bodies last month, they put out an alert for a “person of interest” — the suspected shooter. “Person of interest” has no legal basis but it has become a new part of American law enforcement vernacular.

MORE VAGUE than suspect or target, person of interest can apply to anyone who might have knowledge that police want. Critics complain it is a subtle way of calling someone a suspect, and authorities acknowledge the distinction is hard for people to make.

While not in law books or law enforcement manuals, the expression has popped up ever since Attorney General John Ashcroft used it last year to refer to Steven Hatfill, an ex-Army scientist, in the anthrax-by-mail case. Hatfill, who has not been charged, denies any involvement in the unsolved attacks and says Ashcroft’s characterization of him has destroyed his life.

The term now can be found nearly every week in newspaper headlines and heard in police news conferences.

“It seems like it’s becoming part of the legal lexicon,” said Jonathan Shapiro, an Alexandria, Va., attorney who represented Hatfill. “It’s a way for the Justice Department to tiptoe around the fact they’re crushing someone, ruining their lives, and not get sued by it.”

Bradford Berenson, a Washington attorney now in private practice after two years as a White House lawyer, said it is a catchall phrase to describe nonsuspects.

“They’re saying, ‘We’re worried about this person, we’re suspicious of this person, but we don’t have any hard evidence that they’ve done anything wrong,”’ Berenson said. “It’s almost the equivalent of saying ‘potential suspect.”’

SEEKING A DEFINITION 

He said the term may be more widely used, especially in terrorism cases.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, demanded an explanation after the expression’s debut. An assistant attorney general responded in a letter that person of interest was used by unidentified FBI sources in response to speculation that Hatfill might be a suspect in the anthrax mailings that killed five people in 2001. The lawyer said it is a commonly understood term for someone who is not a suspect.

But FBI spokesman Bill Carter said it is not an FBI term and is not used by agents to classify people under investigation.

Grassley said at the time that the phrase was unprecedented and not supported by formal policy or evidentiary standard. “Government agencies need to be mindful of the power they wield over individual citizens, and should exercise caution and good judgment when they use that power,” Grassley said.

It is so obscure that it shields law enforcement from lawsuits such as those filed by exonerated 1996 Olympic bombing suspect Richard Jewell. He was investigated by the FBI after he spotted the backpack that held a bomb that exploded in Atlanta.

Jewell’s attorney, L. Lin Wood of Atlanta, said police owe an explanation when singling out someone in a criminal investigation.

“I don’t think the government ought to be placing those labels on individuals,” said Wood, who also represents the family of JonBenet Ramsey and former Rep. Gary Condit, who was romantically linked to murdered intern Chandra Levy.

‘A SILLY, MEANINGLESS TERM’?

Lawrence Goldman, a New York City attorney and president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that by saying “he’s just a person of interest, wink wink,” police are shielded from embarrassment if they end up arresting someone else.

“If you think about it, it’s a silly, meaningless term,” he said.

But Goldman acknowledged officers might have an easier time getting confessions that will survive appeals from persons of interest instead of suspects who are on notice that they are under suspicion.

Richard Uviller, a Columbia Law School professor and former prosecutor and Justice Department lawyer, said the term is not necessarily bad.

“It seems to me we really need a term to describe a person who might turn out to be a witness and might turn out to be a suspect, but at this stage is only thought to be a person who knows something,” Uviller said.

In Baton Rouge, La., Cpl. Mary Ann Godawa said the billboards and fliers have not brought forward a man seen in the vicinity of one of five murders linked to the serial killer.  But it has stirred up speculation that he is the murderer, Godawa said.

“We said person of interest. Everyone else heard suspect,” she said.

NBC - 9/4/2003

MATT LAUER, co-host: 

It's been almost two years now since anthrax was sent through the mail in this country, killing five people and spreading fears of biological terrorism. Still no one has been arrested for the crime. In the October issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Don Foster, an English literature professor at Vassar College, looks at the investigation and comes up with some interesting conclusions of his own. 

Don Foster, good morning. Nice to have you here. 

Mr. DON FOSTER (Author of Vanity Fair Article on 2001 Anthrax Attacks): Good morning, Matt. Good to be here. 

LAUER: Let's get to the basics right now. How does an English literature professor from Vassar end up working with the FBI on some fairly high-profile cases like the Unabomber, JonBenet Ramsey, the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing? How did that happen? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, for generations, literary scholars have had to decide who wrote what because so many literary texts were first published without author's names. And over the years, scholars have developed techniques for looking at spelling and source material and... 

LAUER: Word choices, vocabulary, return addresses on envelopes, all that sort of thing? 

Mr. FOSTER: Exactly, and come up with authors for a text. 

LAUER: So October 2001, your phone rings, it's the FBI. They start to talk to you about being a part of the anthrax investigation. When you saw the letters that they presented you, you immediately discounted foreign terrorism, why? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, one wants to decide first what can be learned from the information we've got here, and this writer says, "Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great." That sounds like it might be an Islamic terrorist. The first incident was down in Palm Beach, Florida, where Bob Stevens died where many of the terrorists had been located. The next letters turned up being mailed from New Jersey where other 9/11 terrorists were located. So this looks like maybe it could be associated with terrorists... 

LAUER: Maybe, but... 

Mr. FOSTER: ...but there are some warning signs. 

LAUER: Yeah, what were the warning signs? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, for example, the--the writer didn't mail these letter on 9/11, but puts
"9/11" at the top. It's someone who wants the authorities to think that these letters have
something to do with 9/11. The letters were very carefully sealed as if to prevent the anthrax from getting out of the envelope along the way. 

LAUER: Yeah, I think outside there's Scotch tape on the back, right? 

Mr. FOSTER: And then inside is a warning--yes, and inside is a warning, you know, "Get medical treatment." So this looks like someone who didn't really want to kill someone but wanted to send some kind of a message or a warning. 

LAUER: All right, so when you looked at the letter that was sent to Tom Brokaw here at NBC, and we'll put a graphic up of--of what we have of that, what stood out immediately in your mind? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, the--there's--when you have just such a short letter like this, there's not going to be too many indicators of who might have written it, so you want to look at what clues you do have. And there were few in the Brokaw letter. We got a few more on the Daschle letter. 

LAUER: Let's take a look at what we have on the Daschle letter and what--and what stood out in your mind from this? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, for example, the envelope. It was mailed, supposedly, from students at Greendale School. That tells you a couple of things. One is that it's someone who may know that school kids in America do, in fact, send letters to their senators. 

LAUER: And they're not suspicious because, oh, it's just another group of school kid letters. 

Mr. FOSTER: Yes, exactly. It's not something that an al-Qaeda terrorist from Afghanistan or whatever is likely to do. And then there's the--the name itself, Greendale School. This could be someone who attended a Greendale School or who had read about one or lived near a Greendale School in the past. There's a question of where the addresses came from. Where did this offender get the addresses for Senator Leahy and Daschle? 

LAUER: You start to gather all this information in your own investigation, and it leads you to what I guess would best be described as your own person of interest in this investigation, and that person of interest is Steven Hatfill, who's a name we've heard--his name is one we've heard with the investigation for the last year or so. Give me his 10-second resume. Who's Steve Hatfill? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, he's--he got his start in biological issues as a medical student in Africa, in Rhodesia, in 1970s. During that time, he professed doing combat duty with Selous Scouts who were later identified as having been responsible for the worst anthrax outbreak in--in--in human history with 11,000 cases in just two years. 

LAUER: While he doesn't confess to working with anthrax directly, he's worked with anthrax stimulants? 

Mr. FOSTER: Anthrax stimulants are--are bacteria that are used by military researchers that have the properties of anthrax. And Hatfill has professed a good deal of experience with those.

LAUER: And--and he's been labeled a person of interest by those investigating the anthrax attacks. You do not say he is the suspect in the case, but is it fair of me to say you connect enough dots along the way that you intentionally lead the reader in his direction? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, I don't do anthrax spores, I just follow the paper trail. And in this case, the--the paper trail made Steven Hatfill a--certainly a person of interest to me. 

LAUER: So what's the most compelling piece of evidence against him, in your opinion? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, the--I think what's been happening now is that forensic evidence and the linguistic and documentary evidence are kind of focusing on the same person. The task force guys and woman are--are very hard-working, dedicated agents, and they feel they're one spore away from an arrest. If we don't find that one spore, then we want to look closer at the documentary trial, which I think also leads to Hatfill as person of remarkable interest. 

LAUER: Of remarkable interest. OK, you've upped the ante there. We asked his lawyers for a comment, they've declined. Are you concerned? I mean, he's already filed suit against the government. Are you concerned that you might be targeted with a lawsuit by Steven Hatfill?

Mr. FOSTER: Well, of course, everyone should be concerned. What we want to be sure of that we don't make assumptions that Steven Hatfill or any other American scientist was involved in this terrible attack, but consider the evidence fairly and objectively and not jump to conclusions. 

LAUER: I want to also mention in addition to looking at the letters that actually contained anthrax, you--you looked very carefully at the hoax letters as well. 

Mr. FOSTER: Yes. When--when you get something like this, you want to find out where else have we had someone threatening to do something like this. And as it turns out, even through we're in the 21st century, the FBI does not yet have an archive of threat letters. And... 

LAUER: So, in other words, they--they have all the real anthrax letters in one pile, and
they--and they put the others in kind of a--an area where they don't pay much attention to them? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, they're--we get so many of these, and they're scattered about the country.  The FBI is now taking steps to create a national archive of threat letters so that when you get an incident that's threatening a--a leader, threatening an anthrax attack, whatever, you can look and find other documents that would be similar. What I had to do was to actually go to news archives and find evidence of similar incidents in the past. 

LAUER: And did you trace any of those hoax letters and connect them possibly to Steven Hatfill as well? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, what needs to be done still is to gather all of these documents. There
are--there are many that are related to abortion clinic attacks, there are others that are just pranks by teen-agers, but there are some incidence of a particular interest which choose particular targets, including NBC, that use similar language to the anthrax letters. 

LAUER: And just in 10 seconds left, would you be surprised if in the next year or so Steven Hatfill's arrested by the FBI? 

Mr. FOSTER: Well, I--I--I think the FBI will get its man, whoever that might be. The FBI does a very good job, and they do want to solve this case. 

LAUER: Well put. All right, Don Foster, thanks very much. I appreciate it. 

Mr. FOSTER: You're welcome.

WASHINGTON - Detectives hunt a criminal’s fingerprints. Scientists hunt a germ’s genetic fingerprints. Tracing the origin of bioterrorism takes both specialties. So the FBI is teaming up with public health experts and other scientists to create a national laboratory network dedicated to this field of “microbial forensics,” analyzing evidence from crimes committed with germs.

It's the same type of partnership invoked in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax-by-mail attacks. Although that case remains unsolved, the FBI consulted experts in anthrax genetics to learn that the type used was the virulent Ames strain, narrowing the probe to people with access to that particular microbe.

Formally establishing a laboratory network for future investigations promises to enhance the field, said Dr. Steven E. Schutzer of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, who is helping to draft quality-assurance guidelines for lab participants.

In Friday’s edition of the journal Science, FBI scientist Bruce Budowle, who is heading the project, and Schutzer describe the lab plans and call for scientific critique of the quality guidelines.

“Scientists can play a substantial role in thwarting the use of bioweapons,” by developing ways to detect them and trace their origin, they wrote.

Scientists from government agencies and university laboratories nationwide will participate in the network, with a hub at Fort Detrick, Md., they wrote.

One goal is to have on-call all the necessary experts on a particular bioweapon — for some types, there may be only one or two specialists in the country — whose home labs know how to handle evidence so that it’s admissible in court, Schutzer said.

Another goal is to foster research ensuring all the analytical methods used are scientifically solid, he added.

“It’s an unusual law-enforcement partnering with scientists,” he said.

POSTED: 2:02 pm EDT August 5, 2004
UPDATED: 4:40 pm EDT August 5, 2004

LAVALETTE, N.J. -- A house at the Jersey Shore was surrounded Thursday by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI is looking for the person responsible for the deadly anthrax attacks that terrorized the nation three years ago.

The postal inspection service joined the FBI in searching homes in Ocean Beach, just north of Point Pleasant, and in Wellsville, N.Y., southeast of Buffalo.

The house in New Jersey belongs to an older couple in Connecticut, but it is their son whom the FBI said it is interested in. NBC 10 is not identifying the man, but he is in 40s and at one time he was president of the American Council of Emergency Room Physicians. Sources told NBC 10 that he does have some expertise in anthrax. Sources say he was given a polygraph test and it came back inconclusive.

Federal sources told NBC 10 News that the doctor has been of interest to investigators in the past. However, those sources said the doctor is not high on the list of suspects. Investigators conducted the raids Thursday in an effort to completely cross him off the list of suspects, the source told NBC 10 News. No charges have been filed.

At this point, no one is saying what, if anything, has been found in the homes. However Gov. Jim McGreevey released a statement saying the FBI told him there was not danger to public health or safety in the area of the search.

In the fall 2001, someone used the U.S. mail to spread anthrax. Some of those anthrax-tainted letters were processed at a postal facility in Hamilton, N.J.

There were at least five confirmed anthrax infections and two suspected infections in New Jersey. There were no fatalities in New Jersey.

For more than two years, Steven Hatfill has lived life in legal limbo. Publicly branded a “person of interest” in the anthrax case, he’s never been charged with any crime. Now Hatfill is striking back, in a libel lawsuit against one of his many armchair accusers.

Court documents show that Hatfill has filed suit against Donald Foster, an English professor at Vassar College who wrote about Hatfill in the October 2003 issue of Vanity Fair. Hatfill claims Foster and other defendants defamed him by leaving “no doubt in the minds of reasonable readers that he was imputing guilt for the anthrax attacks (as well as some anthrax hoaxes) to Dr. Hatfill.” The lawsuit seeks $10 million in damages and, along the way, makes folly of a novel investigative tool called “literary forensics.”

In the fall of 2001, someone mailed anthrax-laced letters to two U.S. senators and to a number of media organizations, including NBC News. The finely milled anthrax spores were remarkably buoyant, and five people who inhaled them were killed.

Foster's ‘literary forensics’

Enter Donald Foster. A practitioner of “literary forensics,” Foster is perhaps best known for fingering the author of the political novel “Primary Colors.” Foster is skilled at identifying the authors of anonymous texts by examining word usage, grammar, punctuation and slang. His usual suspects, he jokes, are dead poets — Shakespeare and Wordsworth. But in October 2001 the FBI contacted the English professor to examine some documents in the growing anthrax investigation.

Foster eagerly jumped in, examining letters the FBI sent him and then snooping around on his own. “I searched for stories of past so-called hoaxes — and uncovered a trail of seemingly related biothreat incidents,” he writes. After months of Internet research and collaboration with molecular biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Foster says he became interested in virologist Steven Hatfill: “Steven Hatfill was now looking to me like a suspect, or at least — as the FBI would denote him eight months later — ‘a person of interest.’ When I lined up Hatfill’s known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud,” Foster writes in Vanity Fair.

One example Foster cites took place in August 1998, in Wichita, Kan., when someone spread powder throughout several floors of the Finney State Office Building. Without presenting evidence that Hatfill was anywhere near Kansas in 1998 or that his handwriting matched that of the author of an anonymous letter later taking credit for the threat, Foster seems to draw a link. He notes that the Finney building is “40 miles southeast of Southwestern College, Hatfill’s alma mater.” Hatfill graduated from Southwestern in the 1970's.

Hatfill’s legal response

“Each of these implied accusations is false,” Hatfill's lawsuit states, and the article “betrays complete inattention to even a rudimentary sense of balance or fairness toward Dr. Hatfill.”

The lawsuit also attacks comments made prior to publication of the article, that suggest Foster at first believed a foreigner was responsible for the anthrax mailings. In a Dec. 26, 2001, article in The Times of London, for example, Foster says: “It is my opinion that the documents are at least compatible with that of a foreign speaker of Urdu or Arabic — although it's quite possible that it's someone using it as a smokescreen. There are some other indications that this person may be a Pakistani.”

The suit concludes that Foster failed to mention any contradictory statements in the Vanity Fair piece “because Foster’s purpose was to portray ‘literary forensics’ as a valuable technique and Don Foster as a skilled practitioner of that technique.” It takes Vanity Fair’s editors to task for not challenging Foster’s methodology and conclusions: “When a professor of English literature says that he has identified a criminal who has eluded the FBI for two years, deep skepticism is warranted.”

Foster concedes in Vanity Fair that when the FBI first approached him, “I was perfectly willing to believe that the anthrax was ‘garden variety’ and that it had been sent by Muslim extremists.” He changed his mind, he writes, after plotting Hatfill’s travels next to the delivery dates of several suspicious hoax letters, reading old interviews of Hatfill in which he warned how easy it would be to carry out a biological attack and after reviewing Hatfill’s unpublished novel, "Emergence." The novel, Foster writes, revolves around an Iraqi virologist who launches a bioterror attack on the United States.

The coincidences are too much for Foster, as is the FBI’s incompetence in the case. He writes: “I have worked with the FBI for only six years, on no more than 20 investigations. But never have I encountered such reluctance to examine potentially critical documents.” Foster concludes that Hatfill is not being unfairly targeted like Richard Jewell, an early FBI suspect in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. The FBI is on the right track with Hatfill, Foster writes, referring to the unemployed scientist as “my suspect.”

Don Foster is out of the country and did not return a phone message. His lawyer would not comment to NBC News. A separate lawyer representing Conde Nast Publications, which publishes Vanity Fair, stands by the story. “We intend to vigorously defend the story,” the lawyer tells NBC News, adding that Conde Nast has until Oct. 20 to file a response to the suit in federal court.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors heard an earful Thursday from the federal judge handling a lawsuit against the government brought by Steven Hatfill, the man publicly identified by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the anthrax case.

Hatfill claims the U.S. Justice Department violated his privacy by leaking his name to reporters and harassed him to the point that he can't get a job.  But Thursday the government asked for a delay of at least six more months before any depositions of federal officials can begin in his civil case, saying Hatfill's lawsuit would interfere with its sprawling anthrax investigation.

In court, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said he'd consider the request but indicated he thinks the government has stalled already. Hatfill has "the right to vindicate himself, so he doesn't have this taint hanging over his head," Walton said.

In an extraordinary rebuke, Judge Walton, a Republican appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, took the Justice Department to task for failing to indict or clear Hatfill after nearly three years of investigation.

Thundering from the bench, Walton told a federal prosecutor: "If you don't have enough information to indict this man, you can't keep dragging him through the mud." He added, “That's not the type of country I want to be part of. It's wrong!"

Hatfill was not present in court Thursday. His lawyer, Thomas Connolly, argued that FBI leaks to the media have smeared his client's reputation. A federal prosecutor, Elizabeth Shapiro, said that top Justice Department officials have been trying to stop the whisper campaign against Hatfill. "Leaks have occurred. We don't know who made those leaks," Shapiro said.

Three years have passed since the first anthrax letters were sent through the mail, first to news organizations, including NBC News, then to the U.S. Senate. FBI agents say it's one of their most complex investigations ever.

A spokeswoman for the FBI revealed new figures to NBC News showing the scope of the probe. She says FBI agents have now conducted more than 6,000 interviews, served almost 5,000 subpoenas and searched four dozen separate locations.

In a potentially key new development, the FBI say its agents have now determined that 16 U.S. laboratories actually had the strain of anthrax used in the attacks and the bureau has identified more than 1,000 employees of those labs who had access to it, all of them since questioned.

The most recent analysis, NBC News has learned, has further narrowed the number of potential source labs to four, though officials decline to specify which facilities are on that list.

The FBI remains optimistic that scientific analysis of the spores will help lead to the anthrax mailer, but some experts aren't so sure.

In one sign that there's still a long way to go, the FBI has not yet ruled out the possibility that the anthrax was made overseas.

Jim Popkin is NBC's senior investigative producer. Pete Williams is NBC's justice correspondent.

By Casey Chamberlain
Executive Assistant
NBC News
September 13, 2006

NEW YORK - Every September, like many, I feel sick and frightened around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But it was the weeks following September 11th that would forever change my life. During that time, I was the victim of terrorism when I opened a letter containing a lethal amount of anthrax.

You may remember hearing about Tom Brokaw’s assistant who got sick after coming in contact with a letter containing a deadly amount of anthrax. I was the person who first opened that letter, before Tom's assistant became sick. You have not heard my story.

Around September 18, 2001, I headed to work as a desk assistant at ‘NBC Nightly News.’ One of my jobs was opening Mr. Brokaw’s mail. There was one letter that looked as if it were written by a child. Something seemed unusual. I’d never seen a letter containing a granular substance. I mentioned the strange letter to my friends. 

Nothing happened for about 10 days. Then one Friday night my throat began to swell up. A cold, I thought. But it worsened over the weekend. My glands were soon enormous. Monday morning came and my face was barely recognizable. I went to the doctor, who said it was a reaction to my Accutane medication, and I should rest in bed. For the next few days, I felt like an awful virus was running through me.

A few days later, I went back to work, but I still felt a bit off. My glands were still swollen. A week or so after I was sick, Mr. Brokaw’s assistant became sick. Both of our symptoms were unusual. Authorities became involved. When Bob Stevens died at the American Media Building in Florida at the end of September, the pieces slowly began to come together.

On Oct. 12, having planned on heading into the office late after an appointment, I was surprised to hear from one of my bosses early in the morning. She asked that I head into the office as soon as possible. Immediately, I knew there was something about the letter that was terribly wrong. I soon learned why I had been sick — anthrax poisoning. Like Mr. Brokaw’s assistant, I had contracted cutaneous anthrax.

The events over the next few months changed my life. I had carried anthrax back on my clothes and had contaminated my home. I chose to have all of my things destroyed. I lost my most personal belongings. All my precious pictures and mementos. I worried I might die.

I’ll have to see doctors the rest of my life.

Every day I wonder: Who sent the letter? There have been some leads. But the case remains unsolved. If authorities find the person who sent this letter, I hope I have the opportunity to tell him how my life was changed forever. Every time I hear the word terrorism or anthrax, it makes me sick. I often become a bit paranoid and feel as if people are staring at me. Whenever various media outlets alert Americans about “a white substance” that was found or some chemical smell or spill, the speculation that these things might be anthrax conjures up many negative emotions. I’ll never have an overall sense of security again. That’s what I lost. But what I gained was the deep, true appreciation for my family, friends, and co-workers, whose support was incredible.

Despite the hardships, I know I’m the lucky one. I survived 9/11. I survived anthrax. Five people died from inhaling anthrax, and others contracted both inhalation anthrax and cutaneous anthrax.

With the case unsolved five years later, I feel compelled to share my story. I have never gone public before, never wanting to draw attention to myself. Only those close to me before knew my story. Simply writing this story is cathartic, because I feel I am a voice for those anthrax victims who are no longer living. They do not have the chance to remind the world that this case remains unsolved.

By Jim Popkin and the NBC News Investigative Unit
Senior Producer
NBC News
Updated: 4:18 p.m. ET Sept 18, 2006

WASHINGTON - The top FBI official in charge of the investigation into the deadly anthrax attacks has left the case, NBC News has learned. Richard "Rick" Lambert had been the inspector of the so-called AMERITHRAX case since September 2002, and had run every aspect of the five-year-old investigation. Just last month, he was transferred to the Knoxville, Tenn., field office of the FBI as its special agent in charge, according to the FBI.

Lambert was the public face of the case, and his transfer is sure to fuel speculation that the massive investigation has stalled. No one has been arrested, five years after the first anthrax-laden envelopes were mailed from a New Jersey post office, and officials familiar with the case tell NBC News that no criminal charges are expected to be filed anytime soon. 

Lambert was not available for comment Monday, but an FBI official tells NBC it's unfair to read too much into his transfer. The case "is not stuck in the mud," the FBI official says, adding that it's standard practice in the FBI to rotate senior officials on and off major cases. (A series of senior FBI agents ran other high-profile investigations, including the hunts for serial bomber Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber, "Ted" Kaczynski.)

Later Monday, the FBI plans to issue a press statement stating that hard work on the case continues. The FBI will say that it is one of the largest, most complex cases in its history and the the FBI is "committed to solving the case."

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS, NBC TV, 7 PM, OCTOBER 5, 2006:

"Investigators tell NBC News that the water used to make them came from a northeastern U.S., not a foreign, source."

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS, NBC TV, 7 PM, OCTOBER 5, 2006:

***
The Anthrax Attacks:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: One of the often-forgotten anniversaries in the war on terrorism - it was five years ago today that a photographer in Florida became the first person to die from what was to become a wave of anthrax attacks throughout the United States mail. Five people were killed; 17 others were made sick. One letter was sent here to NBC News.

Our justice correspondent, Pete Williams, reports tonight on what investigators now know and what they don't.

PETE WILLIAMS: Within days after a photo editor at a Florida tabloid, Bob Stevens, opened a letter bearing a suspicious power, he was dead, the victim of highly dangerous anthrax mailings, the first postmarked just a week after the 9/11 hijackings. His widow wonders if the killer will ever be caught.

MAUREEN STEVENS (widow of anthrax victim): I would really like to know, you know, how they did it. Why they did it. What they hoped to achieve.

PETE WILLIAMS: But five years later, not a single arrest. Some who had worked the case complained the trail had gone cold. It's one of the largest FBI investigations ever with more than 9,000 interviews, 6,000 subpoenas, and 67 separate searches. The FBI insists this case remains active.

The anthrax spores themselves, recovered from one of the letters found before it was opened, have yielded a surprising amount of information. Investigators tell NBC News that the water used to make them came from a northeastern U.S., not a foreign, source. Traces of chemicals found inside the spores revealed the materials used to grow them. And scientists have also mapped the entire DNA chain of the anthrax hoping to narrow down the laboratories where it came from.

But one possible clue evaporated. The FBI concluded the spores were not coated with any chemical to make them hang longer in the air.

DAVID SIEGRIST (bioweapons expert): Because there was no evidence that the powder was highly engineered in a military fashion, that increases the universe of potential suspects that could have done this.

PETE WILLIAMS: As for Steven Hatfield, once called 'a person of interest' in the case, his lawyers are now gathering evidence in their lawsuit against the government for leaking his name.

Tonight officials say no arrests are near in a case where even cutting edge science has yet to produce a breakthrough.

Pete Williams, NBC News, Washington.

POSTED: 5:22 pm PDT October 17, 2006
UPDATED: 9:31 am PDT October 18, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- It was five years ago this month that America learned firsthand what bioterrorism is. In a series of anthrax attacks, five people died and 17 more were infected. NBC4's Kelly Mack reported on answering the question, 'Are we any safer now from such a threat?'

Following is a verbatim script from the on-air report.

KELLY MACK: In response to the anthrax attacks of 2001, a team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, headed by Dr. Adrian Ponce, developed the BSM 2000, a high-tech bacterial spore monitor that can detect deadly anthrax spores in the air. It was based on NASA technology that ensures spacecraft leaving Earth for Mars are sterile.

But in the years since the BSM 2000 was unveiled at JPL, the relatively inexpensive microwave-oven-sized device has been installed in only a handful of public areas. The distributor of the BSM 2000 blames when he calls a "creeping complacency" in the American public.

JACQUES TIZABI, UNIVERAL DETECTION TECHNOLOGY: What this country got in October of 2001 was a sampling of what bioweapons are like.

MACK: Indeed, just last month an FBI scientist revealed that, contrary to public impression, the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was not weapons grade. That scientist added that such "erroneous preconceptions may misguide research and preparedness efforts and detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations."

AMIR ETTEHADIEH, UNIVERAL DETECTION TECHNOLOGY: Anyone with a master's degree in biology could have manufactured that anthrax.

MACK: The FBI has never made an arrest in the anthrax attacks.

To be sure, the U.S. government is spending enormous time and money trying to secure America from any kind of terrorist attack. Earlier this month Congress passed legislation to beef up security at the country's ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach. But nowhere in that legislation is there mention of the importance of detecting potential biological toxins.

TIZABI: There's nothing there on bioweapons. It's just really radiation.

MACK: In the meantime experts are hoping to develop technology like the BSM 2000 to detect not just anthrax, but smallpox and plague that are two other potential biological weapons.

Their concern, however, is that such potentially life saving technology will never actually be installed and used.

TIZABI: If we haven't learned the lesson to expect the unexpected, then we haven't come anywhere at all in this war on terrorism.

MACK: Perhaps Americans should not forget what former CIA director George Tenet said at the Sept. 11 hearings: an airborne anthrax attack is the number one biological threat to this country. And hoping that the threat never materializes may not be enough.

By Jim Popkin
Senior Producer
NBC News Investigative Unit
October 24, 2006

WASHINGTON - Congress and the FBI are now openly battling over the pace and direction of the anthrax investigation.

Late Monday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a damning six-page letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting a briefing on the FBI investigation, now five years old.  The letter faults the agency for its handling of the case, saying "the FBI has little in the way of results to show for its work."

Meanwhile, in an unusual move, the FBI's top lobbyist has informed members of Congress that the bureau will no longer brief them on the case. The FBI's Assistant Director for Congressional Affairs wrote, "After sensitive information about the investigation citing congressional sources was reported in the media, the Department of Justice and the FBI agreed that no additional briefings to Congress would be provided."

FBI on defense

FBI critics consider the letter rich irony, since the FBI itself is under attack for leaking key details of the case to the media.

In the fall of 2001, someone mailed anthrax-laced letters to two U.S. senators and to a number of media organizations, including NBC News. The finely milled anthrax spores were remarkably buoyant, and five people who inhaled them were killed.

After the anthrax incident, Dr. Steven Hatfill was publicly branded a “person of interest.” He’s never been charged with any crime and has since brought a libel and defamation suit against columnist Nicholas Kristof and The New York Times.

On Oct. 20, a federal magistrate judge ruled that The New York Times must reveal the names of the confidential sources on whom Kristof relied for a series of columns about the anthrax case. The judge revealed that two of Kristof's unnamed sources were FBI agents.

Meanwhile, the FBI recently installed a new team of top investigators to head up the anthrax case. Sources familiar with the case tell NBC News that the new managers are looking anew at all possible suspects, with a much broader focus than before. The sources say that the previous head of the case, inspector Richard Lambert, was moved to a new position within the FBI, in part because he had focused too much on Hatfill.

Grassley's letter picks up on that, stating that Lambert's transfer to a Tennessee FBI office "raises questions about why he was replaced [and] the focus of the FBI's investigation under his leadership." Lambert now is the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's field office in Knoxville, Tenn.

Lambert did not return several phones calls seeking comment.