letter attacks
Army reproductions hurt theories of foreign culprit
By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published April 11, 2003
Army scientists have reproduced the anthrax powder used in the 2001
mail attacks and concluded that it was made using simple methods,
inexpensive equipment and limited expertise, according to government
sources familiar with the work.
The findings reinforce the theory that has guided the FBI's 18-month-old
investigation - that the mailed anthrax was probably produced by
renegade scientists and not a military program such as Iraq's.
"It tends to support the idea that the anthrax came from a domestic source
and probably not a state program," said David Siegrist, a bioterrorism
expert at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. "It shows you can have
a fairly sophisticated product with fairly rudimentary methods."
The new research, carried out at the Army's biodefense center at Dugway
Proving Ground in Utah, raises the disquieting possibility that al-Qaida
and other terrorist groups could create lethal bioweapons without
scientific or financial help from a state. The Bush administration had cited
the possibility that Iraq might supply weapons to al-Qaida as a key reason
for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
"It would be better for our country if they'd concluded that [the mailed
anthrax] had to have been made in a big facility with a lot of biowarfare
experts," said David R. Franz, a former Army biodefense official and
consultant on bioterrorism.
But Richard O. Spertzel, a biowarfare expert and former United Nations
weapons inspector in Iraq, said he has heard that the Dugway research
failed to match exactly the purity and small particle size of the mailed
anthrax. Though he has no involvement in the case, he believes the FBI
would be wrong to rule out Iraq or other states as the source of the
deadly powder.
Van Harp, assistant FBI director in charge of the Washington Field
Office, who oversees the anthrax investigation, declined to comment on
what he called "uninformed speculation" about the anthrax research.
But Harp said 50 investigators are still working on what the bureau calls
the Amerithrax case, backed by "a huge scientific effort."
"We're making progress," he said.
The anthrax-laced letters were mailed on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9, 2001,
from a Princeton, N.J., mailbox and addressed to media organizations and
two U.S. senators. The attack killed five people and sickened at least 17
others, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to clean up
government offices and postal facilities.
FBI and Postal Inspection Service agents initially considered a link to the
Sept. 11 hijackers or Iraq. But after genetic analysis showed the anthrax
was derived from the Ames strain used in the U.S. military biodefense
program, investigators concentrated their effort on a domestic source.
Agents interviewed and conducted polygraph tests on scores of
employees at the U.S. military biodefense research centers at Fort Detrick
in Frederick and at Dugway Proving Ground.
Since last summer, they have focused much of their effort on Dr. Steven J.
Hatfill, a former Fort Detrick bioweapons expert, repeatedly searching his
Frederick apartment. In December and January, the FBI launched an
extensive search in woods and ponds outside Frederick, an effort sources
said was aimed at finding discarded biological equipment or other
evidence.
Meanwhile, the FBI's Amerithrax task force ordered an exhaustive
battery of scientific tests on the anthrax. Outside scientists say researchers
probably have used chemical analysis to trace the water and nutrients
used to grow the anthrax to a particular geographic area.
As part of the scientific sleuthing, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III
announced in November that investigators were trying to "reverse
engineer" the mailed anthrax.
Several sources discussed the work with The Sun on condition of
anonymity. One investigator said that with about a dozen samples
completed, scientists have matched the mailed powder closely enough to
conclude it was made with "a pretty small operation" that cost "no more
than a few thousand dollars."
The perpetrator would have needed expertise in microbiology to separate
the dormant anthrax spores from the living vegetative cells, to dry the
spores without killing them and to mill the product, the source said.
But the methods used point more to a makeshift lab than a professional
operation, the source said. One clue pointing away from a state program
was the absence of any additive to neutralize the spores' electrical charge
and make them float more freely.
Such additives or coatings, including glass-like silica, were routinely used
in past U.S., Soviet and Iraqi bioweapons programs, and some accounts
have suggested that silica was present in the mailed anthrax. But more
thorough testing disproved that.
"Everybody was looking for a coating, but there wasn't one," the
investigator said.
The government is retaining detailed data on the various anthrax samples
produced, creating a reference library to help track the source of powder
used in any future anthrax attack.
Meanwhile, FBI agents still appear to be scrutinizing Hatfill, 49, a
physician who became a lecturer and consultant on bioterrorism in the late
1990s. He has adamantly denied any connection to the anthrax letters and
suggested the FBI has persecuted him because it can't find the real culprit.
Two weeks ago, two agents visited Insight magazine reporter Timothy W.
Maier in Washington to ask him about an interview he conducted with
Hatfill in 1998. They seemed particularly interested in a photograph
printed in Insight that year of Hatfill posing in bioprotection gear,
demonstrating "how a determined terrorist could cook up a batch of
plague in his or her own kitchen using common household ingredients and
protective equipment from the supermarket," as the caption put it.
Maier said he was surprised it had taken so long after the FBI first started
showing an interest in Hatfill before they looked into the article and
photograph.
Critics of the FBI's efforts have pointed to other delays. In August, New
Jersey Congressman Rush D. Holt blasted the bureau for taking nearly a
year to test New Jersey mailboxes before finding the contaminated box in
Princeton.
But last week, after a new FBI briefing, Holt seemed far more impressed.
"Although I have been critical in the past of the conduct of the FBI's
investigation, I am pleased to report today that the investigation seems to
be making progress," Holt said. "The FBI has narrowed its search. That's
about all I am permitted to say at this point."
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