As FBI Conducts Probe Into Bioterrorism, An Informant Fights to Get His Job Back
By ROBERT S. GREENBERGER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 20, 2001
Several years before biological terrorism became an urgent national concern, Daniel Rupp met a man at a gun show selling manuals for making biological and chemical weapons that mentioned using anthrax against enemies.
Mr. Rupp told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, considering it his civic duty. But when he kept trying to help the bureau get information about the man, he ended up getting fired from his investigator's job at the Federal Public Defenders office for Kansas.
In one of the many unusual episodes that has come to light in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the FBI has been seeking information about the man, Timothy Tobiason, and Mr. Rupp has filed a lawsuit over losing his job. While there is no evidence of any tie to recent terrorist attacks, the episode demonstrates how difficult it is to distinguish real threats from what may be odd but perfectly legal behavior.
Mr. Tobiason couldn't be reached to discuss Mr. Rupp's lawsuit or the FBI's interest in him. He told the Omaha World Herald recently that authorities have questioned him and seemed satisfied that he wasn't involved in the anthrax attacks; that couldn't be confirmed. No charges have been filed against him.
Law-enforcement officials have kept some track of his whereabouts; they know, for instance, that Mr. Tobiason was at gun shows in Iowa and Texas last month. And in a general way he fits parts of the profile of the kind of person they want to find: Mr. Tobiason, according to people who know him, is a divorced loner with grievances against several people, including federal officials. He said the U.S. Patent Office wrongly denied him several patents he applied for. An acquaintance said he had skills as a chemist.
One law-enforcement official said that while Mr. Tobiason produced the manuals himself, some of the text appears to have been cribbed from information available in libraries or over the Internet. Still, after the terrorist attacks, an FBI agent contacted the sheriff in Mr. Tobiason's county and asked him to check on him. On Sept. 15, before Sheriff Anthony McPhillips had time to get there, Mr. Tobiason had the water service cut off at his trailer home, in Silver Creek, Neb., and drove away in his brown van.
Mr. Rupp, a gun collector, first met Mr. Tobiason at a gun show in Wichita, Kan., in mid-1997. He says Mr. Tobiason told him he was selling the manuals because he believed people needed to know about all the weapons that might be used against them.
Mr. Rupp bought the manuals, which also contained accounts of Mr. Tobiason's grievances against lawyers, federal courts and others over business reverses he had suffered in the 1980s in the feed and soybean businesses.
In June 1998, Mr. Rupp met Mr. Tobiason again at another gun show. This time, according to Mr. Rupp's court filings in his wrongful-termination suit, Mr. Tobiason also was selling manuals about anthrax. According to Mr. Rupp, Mr. Tobiason said he had grown his own anthrax culture medium using Jello. In an "author's footnote" to one of his manuals, Mr. Tobiason said he had been told by federal undercover agents that the U.S. government could kill him anytime it wants. "My response so far has generally been to tell them that I could kill them six months after I am dead with nothing more than a Christmas card with anthrax," the footnote said.
Alarmed, Mr. Rupp notified the FBI, which had an office in the same Wichita building as his office. Mr. Rupp said FBI officials urged him to stay in touch with Mr. Tobiason and to keep them apprised. An FBI agent's deposition in Mr. Rupp's case says he was asked to let the agent know what else Mr. Tobiason said if they met again.
When Mr. Rupp told his employer about his meeting with the FBI, he was ordered to end his contact. "We told him that it was good he had reported to the FBI, and that the FBI from there on should take on the investigation," said David Phillip, the Federal Public Defender for Kansas and Mr. Rupp's boss. "The nature of our office is to defend people charged with crimes," and even the appearance of working with the FBI would wreck the office's credibility with clients, Mr. Phillips said.
But because the FBI wanted more information on Mr. Tobiason, Mr. Rupp said, on June 16, 1998, he wrote a letter to Mr. Tobiason at his post office box in Silver Creek. He said he had some ideas for settling Mr. Tobiason's quarrel with the government and urged him to not take any action until they met again. Mr. Tobiason wrote back nine days later that he planned to be at another gun show in Wichita in September. He added: "Dan, I have already decided an effective and quite appropriate solution to both the justice system and the government's actions." Mr. Rupp gave the letter to the FBI. Bureau officials won't comment on the matter.
In early September 1998, the two men met again. Mr. Rupp says the FBI wanted him to assess Mr. Tobiason's "state of mind."
On Sept. 14, 1998, Mr. Phillips and other officials told Mr. Rupp that because he had continued to cooperate with the FBI despite their orders, he must resign or he would be fired. Two weeks later, his employment was terminated. He filed a lawsuit against his former employer.
"I was pretty stunned," Mr. Rupp said. "I really couldn't understand how they thought they could fire someone for reporting a crime and trying to help prevent a disaster."
Write to Robert S. Greenberger at bob.greenberger@wsj.com1
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