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Whodunit?
Foreign vs Domestic
The domestic terrorist theory has been receiving wider attention in recent days and sparked debate among experts not affiliated
with the investigation.
Robert Ressler, a former supervisor of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, believes agents should be looking for a home-grown
bioterrorist.
"It is probably a person working in some lab somewhere," said Ressler. "And the hostility, the mental dysfunction,
was present, but the triggering event (on Sept. 11) is what I think caused the person to do this."
"It appears that it is a domestic person or group; that is the prevailing thought," a ranking law enforcement
source said."
December 2, 2001
New York Times
A NATION CHALLENGED: THE GERM ATTACKS;
Inquiry Includes Possibility of Killer From a U.S. Lab
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER
... Some see the attacker as home-grown -- perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia group -- while others discern
a conspiracy by a state like Iraq or a foreign terrorist group. In the United States, there are probably scores of laboratories
and contractors and hundreds of people who have access to essential anthrax ingredients and recipes. The insider avenue of
inquiry is consistent with the official profile of the suspect, released on Nov. 9 by the F.B.I. The profile describes a man
with a strong interest in science who is comfortable working with hazardous material and has "access to a source of anthrax
and possesses knowledge and expertise to refine it."
Separately, a private expert in biological weapons, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, has recently published a paper contending
that a government insider, or someone in contact with an insider, is behind the attacks. Though not an expert on criminal
profiling, Dr. Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York, has testified on biological weapons before
Congress, advised Bill Clinton when he was president and made addresses to international arms control meetings, including
one a few days ago in Geneva.
Law enforcement officials said Dr. Rosenberg's assertion might turn out to be well founded, though they emphasized that
the investigation was still broadly based. One official (unnamed) close to the federal investigation called the Rosenberg
theory "the most likely hypothesis." Referring to her paper, the official said, "I might not have put it so
strongly, but it's definitely reasonable."
Other analysts, including some scientists and experts in germ weapons, expressed more skepticism of the theory that it
had to be an insider, contending that the skills and knowledge needed to produce the type of anthrax in this attack were widely
available. The paper laying out Dr. Rosenberg's thesis was distributed on Thursday by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute, an arms control group. Dr. Rosenberg, who is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the Federation of American
Scientists, a private group in Washington, has argued repeatedly that states, not individuals, tend to have the wherewithal
to make advanced biological weapons. International treaties that prohibit that work, she believes, are thus critical. Dr.
Rosenberg contends that the Ames strain probably did not originate in 1980 or 1981, as is often asserted, but arose decades
earlier and was used in the secret American program to make biological weapons.
She agrees with a conclusion, reached by some experts knowledgeable about the investigation, that the anthrax powder distributed
in the attacks by letter was treated in a sophisticated manner so it floated easily, as was done in the old American offensive
weapons program, unlike Colonel Friedlander's defensive program, which uses the wet anthrax. "All the available information,"
she said, "is consistent with a U.S. government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for
the U.S. weaponization process."
Dr. Rosenberg contended that the anthrax used in the attacks either originated in the weapons program itself or was made
by someone who had learned the recipe. The killer, Dr. Rosenberg concludes, is "an American microbiologist who had, or
once had, access to weaponized anthrax in a U.S. government lab, or had been taught by a U.S. defense expert. (early peak
into the story Wm. Patrick taught Hatfill?) Perhaps he had a vial or two in his basement as a keepsake." The paper, "A
Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the Mailed Anthrax," dated Nov. 29, is based on interviews with
federal and private experts, published reports and scientific articles.
Few details of the insider investigation are known. But federal agents are already interrogating people in the military
establishment that replaced the old program for making biological weapons. The facilities for that effort, in western Maryland,
are major repositories of the Ames strain of anthrax, the particularly virulent form that federal officials have identified
as the type used in the attacks that killed five people. Col. Arthur M. Friedlander, the senior research scientist at the
Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., said in an interview on Friday that officials there were cooperating with
federal investigators. "They've asked us about personnel who had access," he said, speaking reluctantly. "They
didn't talk to me about my personal experience," said Colonel Friedlander, a physician and leading anthrax expert. "They
asked me about other personnel."
He went on to dismiss the insider idea as improbable. Whoever made the killer anthrax, he said, "clearly knew what
they were doing." "But to make the leap that this came out of a government lab is somewhat large," he added.
He emphasized that no one in his organization, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a leader in developing
germ defenses, even knew how to make dry anthrax, as was found in the letters used in the attacks. Instead, he said, scientists
there used wet anthrax, which is far easier to make. It is used in developing vaccines and testing their effectiveness. "We
haven't had an offensive program for a long time," Colonel Friedlander said. Nobody at the Army's laboratory, he added,
"has that kind of expertise."
... Some see the attacker as home-grown -- perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia group -- while others discern
a conspiracy by a state like Iraq or a foreign terrorist group. In the United States, there are probably scores of laboratories
and contractors and hundreds of people who have access to essential anthrax ingredients and recipes. The insider avenue of
inquiry is consistent with the official profile of the suspect, released on Nov. 9 by the F.B.I. The profile describes a man
with a strong interest in science who is comfortable working with hazardous material and has "access to a source of anthrax
and possesses knowledge and expertise to refine it."
"
...At Harvard, Ms. Stern also finds some logic in suspecting the media attacks may have a domestic origin. "Right-wing
extremists," she said, "are obsessed with biological warfare." She has studied a former member of a neo-Nazi
group who in 1997 was arrested -- though the parole- violation charges were later dismissed -- for claiming, falsely, that
he had "military-grade" anthrax in his possession....
Some terrorism specialists outside law enforcement lean toward the example of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who built
intricate bombs in his Montana hideaway and escaped detection for years. They theorize that an angry loner with the requisite
scientific expertise may have decided to piggyback on the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. "Any terrorist worth the name
would realize it was a good time to strike," said Harvard lecturer Jessica Stern. "Right-wing domestic extremists
want to undermine American citizens' faith in the government. They want to prove to the American people that the government
isn't serving their interests."
"Investigators are searching for a pattern in the attacks, aware that the extreme right has long held much of the
national media in contempt. Letters containing anthrax bacteria reached the highest- ranking Democrat in Washington and the
New York offices of NBC, ABC and CBS, as well as the New York Post and a Florida-based tabloid, the Sun. FBI Director Robert
S. Mueller III said Friday that the bureau is not tilting either way in its suspicions."
October 15, 2001
New York Times
In Anthrax Probe, Questions of Skill, Motive;
Some Terrorism Specialists Suspect an Angry Loner With Scientific Knowledge
Analysts who monitor militias and political movements on America's far right doubt that any known domestic group was capable
of launching the deadly anthrax that has left four people dead and at least 12 others sickened. "American groups on the
right tend to be small and poorly organized," said Mark Pitcavage, who directs fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League.
"If it turns out to be a domestic extremist source, the odds are more likely it would be an individual or a small group
of individuals, rather than an organization."
Senior officials (---unnamed as usual) at the FBI and CIA have told reporters privately that they believe the anthrax
bacteria likely came from a U.S. source. (---Ames is an “American” bacteria, inapt division proceeds...).
That contention, challenged by others who suspect an overseas conspiracy, leaves open a very large question: Who in the United
States had the skill and the motivation to wield a germ as a weapon?
Some terrorism specialists outside law enforcement lean toward the example of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who built
intricate bombs in his Montana hideaway and escaped detection for years. They theorize that an angry loner with the requisite
scientific expertise may have decided to piggyback on the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. "Any terrorist worth the name
would realize it was a good time to strike," said Harvard lecturer Jessica Stern. "Right-wing domestic extremists
want to undermine American citizens' faith in the government. They want to prove to the American people that the government
isn't serving their interests."
Investigators are searching for a pattern in the attacks, aware that the extreme right has long held much of the national
media in contempt. Letters containing anthrax bacteria reached the highest- ranking Democrat in Washington and the New York
offices of NBC, ABC and CBS, as well as the New York Post and a Florida-based tabloid, the Sun. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller
III said Friday that the bureau is not tilting either way in its suspicions.
In recent days, high-ranking bureau and CIA officials have said the composition of the anthrax-laden powder and the "totality"
of the evidence convinced them the conspiracy originated in the United States, either among American militants or foreign-born
opponents of the United States and Israel. (Ie, could be AQ, Hamas, whomever. Letters were mailed in New Jersey) With little
evidence in hand, federal authorities are still considering the possibility the attack was undertaken by a militant Islamic
cell or individual connected to, or inspired by, the Sept. 11 plotters.
... Some see the attacker as home-grown -- perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia group -- while others discern
a conspiracy by a state like Iraq or a foreign terrorist group. In the United States, there are probably scores of laboratories
and contractors and hundreds of people who have access to essential anthrax ingredients and recipes. The insider avenue of
inquiry is consistent with the official profile of the suspect, released on Nov. 9 by the F.B.I. The profile describes a man
with a strong interest in science who is comfortable working with hazardous material and has "access to a source of anthrax
and possesses knowledge and expertise to refine it."
__________________________________________________________
Anthrax Missing From Army Lab
January 20, 2002
By JACK DOLAN And DAVE ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writers
Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army's biological warfare research
facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there,
documents from an internal Army inquiry show.
The 1992 inquiry also found evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab late at night to conduct unauthorized research,
apparently involving anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the
mystery researcher, who left the misspelled label "antrax" in the machine's electronic memory, according to the
documents obtained by The Courant.
Experts disagree on whether the lost specimens pose a danger. An Army spokesperson said they do not because they would
have been effectively killed by chemicals in preparation for microscopic study. A prominent molecular biologist said, however,
that resilient anthrax spores could possibly be retrieved from a treated specimen.
In addition, a scientist who once worked at the Army facility said that because of poor inventory controls, it is possible
some of the specimens disappeared while still viable, before being treated.
Not in dispute is what the incidents say about disorganization and lack of security in some quarters of the U.S. Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases - known as USAMRIID - at Fort Detrick, Md., in the 1990s. Fort Detrick is
believed to be the original source of the Ames strain of anthrax used in the mail attacks last fall, and investigators have
questioned people there and at a handful of other government labs and contractors.
It is unclear whether Ames was among the strains of anthrax in the 27 sets of specimens reported missing at Fort Detrick
after an inventory in 1992. The Army spokesperson, Caree Vander-Linden, said that at least some of the lost anthrax was not
Ames. But a former lab technician who worked with some of the anthrax that was later reported missing said all he ever handled
was the Ames strain.
Meanwhile, one of the 27 sets of specimens has been found and is still in the lab; an Army spokesperson said it may have
been in use when the inventory was taken. The fate of the rest, some containing samples no larger than a pencil point, remains
unclear. In addition to anthrax and Ebola, the specimens included hanta virus, simian AIDS virus and two that were labeled
"unknown" - an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret.
A former commander of the lab said in an interview he did not believe any of the missing specimens were ever found. Vander-Linden
said last week that in addition to the one complete specimen set, some samples from several others were later located, but
she could not provide a fuller accounting because of incomplete records regarding the disposal of specimens.
"In January of 2002, it's hard to say how many of those were missing in February of 1991," said Vander-Linden,
adding that it's likely some were simply thrown out with the trash.
Discoveries of lost specimens and unauthorized research coincided with an Army inquiry into allegations of "improper
conduct" at Fort Detrick's experimental pathology branch in 1992. The inquiry did not substantiate the specific charges
of mismanagement by a handful of officers.
But a review of hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, signed statements and internal memos related to the inquiry
portrays a climate charged with bitter personal rivalries over credit for research, as well as allegations of sexual and ethnic
harassment. The recriminations and unhappiness ultimately became a factor in the departures of at least five frustrated Fort
Detrick scientists.
In interviews with The Courant last month, two of the former scientists said that as recently as 1997, when they left,
controls at Fort Detrick were so lax it wouldn't have been hard for someone with security clearance for its handful of labs
to smuggle out biological specimens.
Lost Samples
The 27 specimens were reported missing in February 1992, after a new officer, Lt. Col. Michael Langford, took command
of what was viewed by Fort Detrick brass as a dysfunctional pathology lab. Langford, who no longer works at Fort Detrick,
said he ordered an inventory after he recognized there was "little or no organization" and "little or no accountability"
in the lab.
"I knew we had to basically tighten up what I thought was a very lax and unorganized system," he said in an
interview last week.
A factor in Langford's decision to order an inventory was his suspicion - never proven - that someone in the lab had been
tampering with records of specimens to conceal unauthorized research. As he explained later to Army investigators, he asked
a lab technician, Charles Brown, to "make a list of everything that was missing."
"It turned out that there was quite a bit of stuff that was unaccounted for, which only verifies that there needs
to be some kind of accountability down there," Langford told investigators, according to a transcript of his April 1992
interview.
Brown - whose inventory was limited to specimens logged into the lab during the 1991 calendar year - detailed his findings
in a two-page memo to Langford, in which he lamented the loss of the items "due to their immediate and future value to
the pathology division and USAMRIID."
Many of the specimens were tiny samples of tissue taken from the dead bodies of lab animals infected with deadly diseases
during vaccine research. Standard procedure for the pathology lab would be to soak the samples in a formaldehyde-like fixative
and embed them in a hard resin or paraffin, in preparation for study under an electron microscope.
Some samples, particularly viruses, are also irradiated with gamma rays before they are handled by the pathology lab.
Whether all of the lost samples went through this treatment process is unclear. Vander-Linden said the samples had to
have been rendered inert if they were being worked on in the pathology lab.
But Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a former Fort Detrick scientist who had extensive dealings with the lab, said that because some
samples were received at the lab while still alive - with the expectation they would be treated before being worked on - it
is possible some became missing before treatment. A phony "log slip" could then have been entered into the lab computer,
making it appear they had been processed and logged.
In fact, Army investigators appear to have wondered if some of the anthrax specimens reported missing had ever really
been logged in. When an investigator produced a log slip and asked Langford if "these exist or [are they] just made up
on a data entry form," Langford replied that he didn't know.
Assuming a specimen was chemically treated and embedded for microscopic study, Vander-Linden and several scientists interviewed
said it would be impossible to recover a viable pathogen from them. Brown, who did the inventory for Langford and has since
left Fort Detrick, said in an interview that the specimens he worked on in the lab "were completely inert."
"You could spread them on a sandwich," he said.
But Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York who is investigating the recent
anthrax attacks for the Federation of American Scientists, said she would not rule out the possibility that anthrax in spore
form could survive the chemical-fixative process.
"You'd have to grind it up and hope that some of the spores survived," Rosenberg said. "It would be a mess.
"It seems to me that it would be an unnecessarily difficult task. Anybody who had access to those labs could probably
get something more useful."
Rosenberg's analysis of the anthrax attacks, which has been widely reported, concludes that the culprit is probably a
government insider, possibly someone from Fort Detrick. The Army facility manufactured anthrax before biological weapons were
banned in 1969, and it has experimented with the Ames strain for defensive research since the early 1980s.
Vander-Linden said that one of the two sets of anthrax specimens listed as missing at Fort Detrick was the Vollum strain,
which was used in the early days of the U.S. biological weapons program. It was not clear what the type of anthrax in the
other missing specimen was.
Eric Oldenberg, a soldier and pathology lab technician who left Fort Detrick and is now a police detective in Phoenix,
said in an interview that Ames was the only anthrax strain he worked with in the lab.
Late-Night Research
More troubling to Langford than the missing specimens was what investigators called "surreptitious" work being
done in the pathology lab late at night and on weekends.
Dr. Mary Beth Downs told investigators that she had come to work several times in January and February of 1992 to find
that someone had been in the lab at odd hours, clumsily using the sophisticated electron microscope to conduct some kind of
off-the-books research.
After one weekend in February, Downs discovered that someone had been in the lab using the microscope to take photos of
slides, and apparently had forgotten to reset a feature on the microscope that imprints each photo with a label. After taking
a few pictures of her own slides that morning, Downs was surprised to see "Antrax 005" emblazoned on her negatives.
Downs also noted that an automatic counter on the camera, like an odometer on a car, had been rolled back to hide the
fact that pictures had been taken over the weekend. She wrote of her findings in a memo to Langford, noting that whoever was
using the microscope was "either in a big hurry or didn't know what they were doing."
It is unclear if the Army ever got to the bottom of the incident, and some lab insiders believed concerns about it were
overblown. Brown said many Army officers did not understand the scientific process, which he said doesn't always follow a
9-to-5 schedule.
"People all over the base knew that they could come in at anytime and get on the microscope," Brown said. "If
you had security clearance, the guard isn't going to ask you if you are qualified to use the equipment. I'm sure people used
it often without our knowledge."
Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab building at night was Langford's
predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being
let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according
to a report filed by a security guard.
Zack could not be reached for comment. In an interview this week, Rippy said that she doesn't remember letting Zack in,
but that he occasionally stopped by after he was transferred off the base.
"After he left, he had no [authorized] access to the building. Other people let him in," she said. "He
knew a lot of people there and he was still part of the military. I can tell you, there was no suspicious stuff going on there
with specimens."
Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy,
Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born
Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination.
Assaad said he had believed the harassment was behind him until last October, until after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
He said that is when the FBI contacted him, saying someone had mailed an anonymous letter - a few days before the existence
of anthrax-laced mail became known - naming Assaad as a potential bioterrorist. FBI agents decided the note was a hoax after
interviewing Assaad.
But Assaad said he believes the note's timing makes the author a suspect in the anthrax attacks, and he is convinced that
details of his work contained in the letter mean the author must be a former Fort Detrick colleague.
Brown said that he doesn't know who sent the letter, but that Assaad's nationality and expertise in biological agents
made him an obvious subject of concern after Sept. 11.
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