Five Years Later, Anthrax Questions Swirl Anew at FBI

Nobody has been arrested for the anthrax mailings of 2001, but many people have paid for the crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been frustrated. Careers have crumbled. Taxpayers have gotten socked for billions of dollars to shore up bioterror defenses that some experts say still fall short.

Now, an analysis from the FBI itself, buried in a microbiology journal, is raising more questions about the investigation.

In the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI scientist Douglas Beecher sought to set the record straight. Anthrax spores mailed to politicians and journalists in September and October 2001, Beecher wrote, were not prepared using advanced techniques and additives to make them more lethal, contrary to "a widely circulated misconception."

The notion the anthrax spores were "weaponized" had fueled conjecture that only a government insider could have carried out the operation.

Beecher's article suggested a much wider universe of potential suspects -- who showed they could kill without highly refined spores.

"A clever high school student" could make such a preparation, according to Ronald Atlas, former president of the American Society for Microbiology and co-director of the Center for Health Hazards Preparedness at the University of Louisville.

The Beecher paper has left Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wondering if the killings, which further shook a nation already reeling from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, will ever be solved. He blames the FBI for "botching" the case.

In the anthrax attacks, Steven Hatfill, a virologist who had worked for the government, landed in the cross-hairs. Labeled a "person of interest" by officials but never charged, the scientist claims the public probe has made him unemployable. He is suing the government and media outlets.

Kenneth Berry's career also unraveled after the FBI searched a Dover Township, N.J., summer home he was visiting in 2004. Berry was a doctor from upstate New York who started an organization for training emergency workers to deal with biochemical attacks. He never was charged, either.

Holt also chides authorities for taking nearly a year to discover anthrax traces in a mailbox near Princeton University. That mailbox, where letters laced with anthrax bacteria may have begun their journey in 2001, is on a route that feeds the Hamilton Township postal center where anthrax letters were processed.

In a letter to Holt, FBI Assistant Director Eleni Kalisch declined to give a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. Kalisch claimed sensitive information was leaked from classified briefings more than three years ago, and described the anthrax case as a criminal matter not subject to the committee's oversight.

Some cases take time to crack, Kalisch wrote. Seventeen FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors remain on the "Amerithrax" beat. The FBI said the anthrax investigation has spanned six continents and generated more than 9,100 interviews, 67 searches and 6,000 subpoenas.

Early on, the FBI hoped that analysis of the spores would point to the lab that prepared them. But Beecher's article underscores difficulties of such microscopic sleuthing. Particle sizes, for instance, may not yield as many clues as some expected.

Over time, after being handled and exposed to different conditions, particles "may not resemble the initial product," Beecher wrote.

Yet the FBI is confident, and has forged scientific ties and advances to help prevent future biological attacks, said Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, on the FBI's Web site.

Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist, still thinks the anthrax attacks were an inside job because they used a virulent form of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis, which only a few biodefense- or intelligence-related labs were thought to possess.

"Whoever did it is an insider," said Ayaad Assaad, a toxicologist with the Environmental Protection Agency, who formerly worked at an Army biodefense center at Fort Detrick, Md. "It started with anthrax. Now it's ricin, and God knows what's coming."

Ed Lake has tracked the case closely, self-publishing a book, "Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks, The First Three Years" and moderating a Web site. Lake is convinced the FBI knows the perpetrator but lacks evidence to prosecute. He believes the killer is a scientist from central New Jersey who wanted America to gird for an al-Qaida bioterror attack in the wake of Sept. 11.

"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake, referring to hand-printed letters, bearing New Jersey postmarks, sent to NBC and the New York Post.

Leon Harris retired last year from the Hamilton Township postal center. He too suspects the bad guys are home-grown and will be caught.

"I don't care if it takes 10 years," the Air Force veteran said. "They're going to find them."

Ernesto Blanco agreed. He survived inhalational anthrax that killed his friend Bob Stevens, a colleague at a tabloid in Florida, five years ago this month. Blanco, now 79, returned to his mailroom job at American Media Inc. in 2002.

"I am positive they will catch them," Blanco said. "I have faith in what they are doing."

Sept. 18: Postal facility in Hamilton Township, N.J., processes anthrax-laced letters to NBC News in New York and the New York Post.

Oct. 5: Bob Stevens, photo editor at Florida tabloid the Sun dies from inhalational anthrax.

Oct. 9: Hamilton Township facility processes anthrax letters to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy. Both letters have return address of fictitious "Greendale School" in Franklin Park, N.J.

Oct. 16: U.S. Senate closes; employees are tested for exposure to anthrax microbes.

Oct. 31: Kathy Nguyen, who worked in a New York City hospital supply room, dies from anthrax.

Nov. 21: Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Conn., dies from anthrax. Authorities suspect her mail was contaminated by other mail.

Early on in the Amerithrax investigation, The FBI
erred at a fork in the road. Domestic or Foreign?
They committed themselves too deeply into the
"Super-Patriot" theory. The notion that a right-
winged, domestic insider was the perpetrator.
That this lunatic believed he was ultimately
doing his country a favor by alerting it with
a small scale BIO-attack before it was actually
struck with a full scale and debilitating attack.

This overcommitment by the Bureau, at the expense
of nearly all other possibilities, has cost us all
nearly five years and huge sums of money, in a
fruitless investigation.

Yes, the Bureau has given itself one big science
lesson in biology and its' potential for terror,
but it has come no closer to discovering who the
actual culpritS were. It has so overly-committed
itself to the Domestic theory, that it continues
to spin it wheels trying to prove its' flawed
assumptions. They have also destroyed the good
names of some scientists in the process. Seems
they have only been successful in highlighting
those who are NOT guilty of this crime.

In those hurried day after September 11th, the
Bureau was inundated, overwhelmed and besieged by
the investigation task at hand. The FBI's terror
unit, then only a small division, promptly had
over 50% of the Bureau's resources working on
the 9/11 terror attacks. Much was missed or
remains unknown. Even the 9/11 REPORT has large
gaps and unknowns within when it come to activities
of the hijackers and their associates.

"We have some planes"

"We have this Anthrax"

Such subtle, but haunting links are ignored at
our peril.
On Tuesday, September the 11th, and on the dates
of the Anthrax mailings, Al-Qaeda use the American
System against itself:

They trained terrorist hijackers and they brewed-
up batches of Anthrax. Airline tickets were
purchased as well as prepaid postage envelopes.
The hijackers boarded the planes and the germ
was sealed in the envelopes. The planes took off
and the letters were placed in that Princeton mail
box. Our airline service and our postal service
were now the delivery systems for terror. The only
alterations that were made to those systems were that
lethal agents of disruption and destructing were
added to the vessels. Bin Laden and company must
find it extra humorous that M. Atta and his ilk,
were actually flight trained in our schools and
that the Bacteria used was of American origin.

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