This seems to indicate that Van Harp knew who was doing some of the leaking, so he wasn't interviewing agents of the FBI. The leak was within the DOJ.
Newsweek's article about the bloodhounds was printed about this time. The FBI could have told Seikaly, Seikaly could have told Newsweek, and Newsweek could have put it in their August 12 issue which was actually published about a week earlier than that date.
So, if Van Harp executed his sting operation about 7 or 10 days before this email, everything falls in to place.
This is interesting stuff, but it's also very easy to misinterpret. On the 13th they're saying that the Washington Field Office (WFO) "opened the investigation and assigned it to a separate squad," but there's no indication of when that happened. All we know is that he's talking in the past tense. It seems very reasonable that it could have been 7 to 10 days prior if they already know that no agents were interviewed.
From: KENNETH KOHL
To: HARP, VAN, HESS, JOHN J., LAMBERT, RICHARD
Van / Rick / Jack
Yesterday, ABCNEWS.COM ran another Brian Ross article on the anthrax investigation (attached). The report states that “Federal investigators on the anthrax task force continue to focus on former government Steven J. Hatfill as the man most likely responsible for the bioterror attacks last year that killed five people, even though they have found no hard evidence linking him to the attacks.” The source of the story are described as “several officals who attended a recent task force summit meeting in Washington [who] talked with ABCNEWS on the condition of anonymity.”
The most disturbing aspect of the article is that the “officials are quoted as saying that [about 5 lines redacted].
***
[Comment: the quote redacted relates to the FBI’s plan to re-interview other current and former government scientists (i.e., under a non-Hatfill theory).
So Mr. Seikaly’s leak had the effect of letting the folks re-interviewed know they were under suspicion].]