Larry Wayne Harris and William Job Leavitt Jr. were arrested by the FBI on Wednesday night in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb and were charged on Thursday with possessing a deadly germ for use as a weapon. The two-count complaint alleges conspiracy to possess and possession of a biological agent.
The FBI did not discuss a potential motive.
It identified Harris, 46, of Lancaster, Ohio, as a white separatist who last summer spoke of a plan to release bubonic plague on New York City subways, causing "hundreds of thousands of deaths" in a massacre that would ruin the economy, surprise the military and be blamed on Iraqis.
Last year, Harris pleaded guilty to a count of fraud after he was accused of illegally obtaining freeze-dried, inactive bubonic plague bacteria through the mail from a Maryland laboratory.
Harris, the author of a self-published book called "Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America," said he never intended to hurt anyone and was sentenced to 18 months of probation.
The Leavitt/Harris "anthrax" was veterinary anthrax vaccine, not anything remotely approaching an actual terror weapon. There was no threat to public safety to "avert." Those clowns ultimately got convicted of mail fraud, not any form of bioterrorism.