(Part of UPI's Special Report on Sept. 11)
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Nearly a year after anthrax-laden letters took the lives of five people, the FBI appears stymied, bereft of serious suspects and openly retracing investigative steps taken months ago.
The frustrations of the anthrax case compound the difficulties of an agency already under severe criticism for failing to following leads that might have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and worn to a frazzle trying to shift decades of operational priorities to concentrate on terrorism.
What the public still does not know about the anthrax attack is nearly as staggering as what is known. It is not known who sent the letters or why. It is not known how they chose their targets or whether there were other letters that simply were not discovered as the government stopped and sequestered mail last fall. It is not known when, where or whether the perpetrator or perpetrators would strike again.
During the months of investigation several possible suspects have been mentioned in the news media, the FBI briefly detained and released several people last fall, but the bureau has not sought charges against any individual. Over the past nine months, the FBI conducted searches of the apartment of bio-warfare expert Steven J. Hatfill, who worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.
Attorney General John Ashcroft on Aug. 22 labeled Hatfill a "person of interest" in the case but he has not been arrested. Hatfill, a medical doctor, repeatedly has said he is innocent of any connection to the anthrax attacks. He charged Aug. 25 this label has destroyed his life, shredded his reputation and exposed him to threats and ridicule.
It also apparently cost him his job. Louisiana State University said Sept. 3 it had fired Hatfill as associate director of the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training. The university said it made no judgment about Hatfill's guilt or innocence regarding the FBI investigation but decided it was in the best interests of the school's mission to terminate the relationship. Hatfill was hired by LSU in July and put on administrative leave with pay on Aug. 2 after a second FBI search of his apartment.
Hatfill said his girlfriend's apartment also was searched and trashed by FBI agents in the process and she was pushed and jostled by two women agents. She was held for several hours without being informed she was free to go.
Hatfill in turn has been at the center of swirling controversy among various media-styled "experts" who have provided conflicting analysis of the case and chided the FBI for going too slowly on the one hand or being overzealous on the other.
The attack that started all this was dazzlingly simple. At least five letters were mailed containing what investigators now call "weapons grade anthrax."
Envelopes for four have been recovered: inexpensive 3-by-5 inch plain stock envelopes sold by the post office with hand-lettered addresses made to look like a child's printing.
Two, one addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and the other to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., carried a return address of "4th Grade Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ 08852" and were postmarked Trenton, N.J., on Oct. 9, 2001. There is no Greendale School in that area of New Jersey.
Two other letters, similar in style and quality, with no return address, were addressed to "NBC TV -- Tom Brokaw" and "NY Post" and were postmarked in Trenton on Sept. 18, 2001, less than a week after the Sept. 11 bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The letters were recovered from the mail of Brokaw and the New York Post.
The letters caused five people to die, another 18 to be hospitalized and more than 35,000 to be treated with antibiotics to prevent infection. The government spent millions of dollars cleaning buildings where anthrax had been found.
The dead and the ill almost undoubtedly were unintended victims, perhaps because whoever mailed the envelopes did not realize the United States Postal Service sorting machines would cause the deadly anthrax dust to escape and spread to other mail.
Initially, the first victim of what turned out to be the most serious bio-terror attack in American history looked like a case of a hiker's bad luck.
Anthrax is not an unusual disease -- the bacteria is found naturally in some cattle and farm workers frequently get it from sheep and other animals. So when 63-year-old Floridian Bob Stevens came down with inhalation anthrax it was assumed the avid outdoorsman contracted it when he stopped to drink from a stream during a recent vacation. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson and others repeatedly assured the public at the time the case was nothing to be worried about.
But Stevens died on Oct. 5, only four days after he became ill, the first anthrax fatality in more than 30 years. When two of Stevens' fellow employees at Lantana, Fla.'s American Media Inc. were found to have been exposed to anthrax and spores were discovered on a keyboard in an office, the building was closed. Employees of the firm, which publishes the Sun and the National Enquirer, two super-market tabloids, were given antibiotics and 60 FBI agents were pressed into the investigation.
Coming as it did, within weeks of the terrorist attacks, there was immediate speculation it was another operation of the al Qaida and Osama bin Laden.
The anthrax mailer had written notes in block printing inside the envelopes:
"09-11-01 You cannot stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great." The New York Post letter also suggested the recipient "take Penacilin Now" and penicillin was misspelled.
On Oct. 12 Vice President Dick Cheney said the anthrax investigation "should proceed on the basis that it could be linked" to terrorism and President George W. Bush told reporters whether al Qaida or not, anyone who circulated anthrax was a terrorist.
The letters kept coming in rapid succession in October. They contaminated postal equipment at the main mail handling facility in Washington, killing two postal employees. Spores from the initial letters contaminated post offices and letters, including State Department mail sent overseas -- ultimately shutting down a portion Congress; one Senate office was closed for weeks, and the mail-handling facility was only reopened this summer.
The anthrax attacks added to Washington's feverish terrorism alert. The White House was closed to visitors, mail to Congress and the White House was re-routed and screened and often not delivered at for days and weeks.
If the anthrax attack had shown anything, it was how unprepared the government was to handle a bio-terrorism attack. There were conflicting and alarming briefings, shortages of Cipro, the suggested antibiotic, and hurried government calls for serum for smallpox and preparations to defend against other biological or chemical weapons.
At an Oct. 16 news conference FBI Director Robert S. Mueller complained the bureau had responded to more than 2,300 incidents or suspected incidents involving anthrax or other dangerous agents. "As all of you know," he told the reporters, "an overwhelming majority of these incidents have been false alarms or practical jokes."
The fear was fed further when it was discovered Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, had inquired in Florida about renting a crop dusting aircraft. One of the most deadly methods of anthrax attack would be to spread the dust from a low flying aircraft. Depending on the wind and weather conditions, an aerial attack could kill thousands. There was vast speculation about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which had been found to have supplies of anthrax in the Persian Gulf War, was supplying the deadly agent to the attackers in the United States.
Government investigators announced the anthrax in the letter to Daschle was the grade used for weapons. The anthrax spores in the letters were particularly deadly because they had been treated so they would linger in the air where they could be breathed in.
The victims seemed so unlikely. A 61-year-old hospital worker in the Bronx and a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut died, a 7-month-old baby whose mother worked at ABC in New York became ill but survived, as have the other 17 people who became infected.
Then on Nov. 9, the FBI shifted the nation's whole focus on the anthrax letters by announcing a "linguistic" and "behavioral" assessment of the letters did not seem to indicate Middle Eastern terrorists. The FBI described the perpetrator as "an adult male" who has a "scientific background to some extent or at least a strong interest in science" and "may work in a laboratory."
The killer "has access to a source of anthrax and possesses knowledge and expertise to refine it."
He did not select the victims randomly, the FBI said, "He made an effort to identify the correct address, including zip code, of each victim and used sufficient postage to ensure proper delivery of the letters. The offender deliberately 'selected' NBC News, the New York Post, and the office of Sen. Tom Daschle as targeted victims (and possibly AMI in Florida). These targets are probably very important to the offender. They may have been the focus of previous expressions of contempt which may have been communicated to others, or observed by others."
The FBI pleaded for anyone who recognized these traits in someone or the handwriting to come forward.
The announcement focused attention on the U.S. government's own extensive anthrax weapons development and on a person with conservative attitudes who may have had contempt for Democratic senators and the news media.
From this time on, the FBI seemed to concentrate heavily on the Fort Detrick laboratory. On Jan. 13, for instance, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told reporters the "primary direction of the investigation has turned inward" toward domestic terrorists.
Van A. Harp, an assistant director of the FBI who heads the agency's Washington field office, directs the investigation, code-named Amerithrax. Chris Murray, spokesman for FBI's Washington Field office told United Press International there are two squads, each with roughly a dozen agents plus support staff and analysts, dedicated to the investigation. The Washington office also can task agents in other field offices to aid them. Working closely with the FBI are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the Environmental Protection Agency and United States Postal Inspection Service, as well as state health, law enforcement and environmental agencies.
The original reward for information in the case has been more than doubled from $1 million to $2.5 million.
Murray, however, declined to discuss any specific aspect of the investigation, including rumors surrounding possible suspects.
Media reports have been all over the place on the number of suspects. Quoting unnamed sources, news reports have said the FBI pared down a list of 140 scientists in the bio-warfare field to variously 20, 30 or 40 persons.
On Feb. 5, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, trained in molecular biology and a research professor of environmental science at the State University of New York, published a commentary entitled "Is the FBI dragging its feet?"
Rosenberg is the founder of the Federation of American Scientists Chemical and Biological Weapons program, which volunteers scientific expertise to efforts to control the spread of chemical and biological weapons.
Rosenberg claimed the FBI seemed to be taking vast and time-consuming unnecessary steps -- like circulating a letter to some 40,000 microbiologists in the country -- that distracted it from concentrating on suspects in the U.S. weapons program.
She suggested the bureau might be moving slowly because the government was trying to protect secrets in the weapons program. She told UPI in August she had revised that theory somewhat and concluded the bureau was simply incompetent.
Her analysis contained the following "Possible Portrait of the Anthrax Perpetrator:"
"-Insider in U.S. biodefense, doctoral degree in relevant branch of biology.
-Middle-aged American.
-Experienced and skilled in working with hazardous pathogens, including anthrax, and avoiding contamination.
-Works for a CIA contractor in Washington, D.C. area.
-Has an up-to-date vaccination with anthrax vaccine.
-Has clearance for access to classified information.
-Worked for USAMRIID laboratory in the past, in some capacity, and has access now.
-Knows Bill Patrick (the U.S. scientist credited with creating the newest process for making weapons grade anthrax) and has probably learned from him informally.
-Has had training or experience in covering evidence.
-May have had an UNSCOM (the United Nations Commission that overseas Iraq's disarmament) connection.
-Has a private location where the materials for the attack were accumulated and prepared.
-Fits FBI profile.
-Has been questioned by the FBI.
In April, David Tell, writing in the conservative newsletter, The Weekly Standard, filed a 10-page, point by point analysis of Rosenberg's work, deriding her as the "Miss Marple" of the anthrax case. He also criticized the FBI's profile that he finds wrongheaded.
At the time he wrote, the FBI had not named its profiler but in August, an English literature professor at Vassar, Don Foster, told the BBC he was one of the people who wrote the profile.
Foster said his credentials for this sort of forensic work included assisting the FBI in investigating Unabomber Ted Kaczinski and discovering that Joe Klein, a Newsweek reporter, had written the book "Primary Colors" about the Clinton campaign under the name "anonymous." Foster, too, said he believed the suspect worked in the U.S. bio-warfare defense industry and that the CIA and Defense Department might not be cooperating with the FBI.
Hatfill, a 48-year-old bio-warfare specialist who worked at USAMRIID for two years, has accused of Rosenberg of circulating his name to the news media as the person who most closely fit the profile she published. He said he never met Rosenberg. Rosenberg confirmed to UPI she has not met Hatfill.
Certainly at least one newsman, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, has relied upon elements of the profile and wrote on several occasions about a "former U.S. Army scientist" who he called "Mr. Z."
Hatfill claims after Rosenberg met with Daschle in June and with FBI officials to espouse her ideas, and despite the fact he had cooperated with the bureau for several months, the investigation of him became both more public and intense.
Hatfill said he has been kept under almost constant physical surveillance and his apartment was searched in June. A storage unit was also searched. In a widely publicized operation on Aug. 1, law enforcement officers searched his apartment once again, as well as the apartment of his girlfriend. The FBI also searched a storage facility in Florida belonging to his parents.
Pat Clawson, a former CNN reporter and a volunteer spokesman for Hatfill, claimed the tactics undertaken by the FBI in regard to Hatfill appear to be out of the norm. He said they were similar to the way the bureau publicized a suspect in the bombing of the Olympics in Atlanta who was never charged.
Rosenberg told UPI she has never given Hatfill's name to the news media nor named any suspects, but she acknowledged meeting with the FBI and discussing possible perpetrators in June.
After Hatfill identified himself as the Mr. Z in Kristof's columns in August, Kristof acknowledged in a column on Aug. 13 the Mr. Z he had in mind was indeed Hatfill.
As September opened, Hatfill had not been charged and FBI agents had gone back to the Florida building where Stevens was overcome and were searching it again.
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(This article is part of UPI's Special Report on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks).
