Amerithrax (62 page)
She will not make a statement.”
He returned to describing a day in the life of a person of interest. Hatfill claimed he was openly followed by agents, in cars and on foot, twenty-four hours a day. The simple act of driving down to the store for a pack of gum had created a parade of FBI cars, following as near as two to four feet from his rear bumper. The FBI told Hatfill’s closest friend that they had concrete evidence that he had mailed the an- thrax letters and asked him to confront Hatfill in order to
obtain a confession. Later, the friend tearfully asked Hatfill if their allegations were true.
“In complete violation of normal investigative procedu- res,” said Dr. Hatfill, “the FBI have circulated only my pho- tograph at a crime scene, a photographic one-man lineup, in an attempt to find someone to testify that they remember seeing me in the area almost a year ago.”
He told the crowd that he could never win as a person of interest. His love of country and the work he had done on behalf of the nation’s security had been turned against him by means of a “ridiculous suggestion” that his patriot- ism had prompted him to murder five innocent persons so that a statement could be made regarding the nation’s lack of preparedness against a biological attack. All this re- minded Hatfill of Kafka’s novel,
The Trial
.
“Perhaps,” he said, “that story is the source of Mr. Kris- tof’s ‘Mr. Z.’ [Kafka’s protagonist is named ‘K.’].” All the above is what it’s like living as a person of interest desig- nated by John Ashcroft. Again, the Justice Department has told the press that there is no evidence that I’ve committed a crime. I have to contend with a moving target of rumor, innuendo, fantasy, half-truths, and now the super-duper bi- onic bloodhounds that the FBI recently pulled out of a hat.” He discounted the Justice Department’s repeated claims that it was making meaningful progress in the anthrax in- vestigation. He laid out the facts in the case and asked what
any of them had to do with him.
“We know,” he said, “that four anthrax letters were mailed September 17 and 18, and October 8 and 9, 2001. On these days, as indeed for many weeks after September 11, I and my colleagues at SAIC were working overtime in our McLean, Virginia, office on national defense issues. My time sheets from the company, which are being distributed here, show that on these days I worked respectively fourteen hours; thirteen and one-half hours; thirteen hours; and eleven and one-quarter hours at the office. Yes, I know, it’s possible that time cards could have been altered. Well, I’ll tell you SAIC goes to extreme lengths to ensure this process can’t happen. In addition, the FBI long ago interviewed all of my colleagues at SAIC, and each confirmed that I was,
like them, continuously hard at work in the office during this entire period.”
Dr. Hatfill suggested alternative methods to get around these time lines. He could have surreptitiously driven to Trenton or Princeton from the D.C. area, mailed the letters, and returned unnoticed. With luck, he might have made the eight-hour round trip in time to return to work unnoticed and exhausted and work another thirteen-hour day.
He explained he was living and working in the D.C. area during the entire time when the anthrax letters were mailed. Hatfill said that Ashcroft should know that while the anthrax letters were mailed from New Jersey and the first anthrax incidents occurred in Florida, he had not set foot in either state in September or October 2001.
“We know, by the way, that some of the 9-11 terrorists did,” he continued. “The FBI’s focus on me seems to have eclipsed the need for appropriate inquiry into elementary, scientific aspects of the anthrax investigation. It took the FBI seven months after the letter attacks before they turned to assistance to Bill Patrick, the top dry-powder biological war- fare expert in our country. How sensible is that? What in- quiries have been made into who received the Ames strain of anthrax at any time prior to the fall of 2001? Until the mid 1990s, regulation of the traffic in dangerous bacterio- logical pathogens was very poorly controlled and poorly documented.”
Hatfill said that it still had to determine if the anthrax powder in the letters was prepared by sophisticated methods known only to select scientists or by more crude methods using information readily available on the Internet.
“Speaking of the Internet, the American people should know that the complete top-secret recipe for making small- pox into a sophisticated dry-powder biological weapon was recently posted by the U.S. government on the Internet by mistake for several weeks. Thank God the document in question has finally been removed from the Internet, but not before anyone with an interest, foreign or domestic, would have had time to view it and download it.”
Like many in the Amerithrax investigation, Hatfill be- lieved that scientific input into the hunt for the anthrax
“The test measures antibody levels,” he explained, “which would mark either my exposure to anthrax recently or a recent anthrax vaccination, not one that I’ve had two years ago. At long last, the government has agreed to my proposal, and I’ll shortly be providing blood samples as I originally suggested. I hereby openly request the FBI make public the full results of these forthcoming tests, their con- clusions based on these tests, and the scientific basis for the tests and the conclusions.”
Hatfill claimed that he had earlier offered to give the FBI handwriting samples for examination. As in the case of the blood tests, he had requested the results, including all work sheets and analyses, be made public when completed and asked the media to press for their release.
“The one certain progress that the FBI has made in this investigation,” he said, “is its inability to find any evidence connecting me with the anthrax letter attacks. This is after an eight-month inquiry, and Lord knows how much taxpayer money has been poured into this effort to uncover my pre- sumed guilt... If the FBI does not have me as a person of interest, then what does it have?”
Dr. Hatfill answered his own question. He said the FBI has a stalled investigation, characterized by a lack of proper scientific investigation and expertise. He criticized the Bu- reau’s single-minded dedication to the use of “so-called pro- filers.”
“Remember,” he scoffed, “these are the folks that de- scribed the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, as a well-dressed manual laborer. It has a lack of the most basic understanding of the relevant biology by many front-line and senior FBI investigators. It has an investigation that is characterized by the apparent avoidance of any major avenue of inquiry, ex- cept the one decided upon by the attorney general. Most importantly, it is driven by a compelling and overwhelming desire that the FBI look good at any cost, regardless of the price in individual freedom, due process, common decency,
This label had caused painstaking inquiry into his past and given the authorities incentive to justify massive finan- cial expenditure and thousands of man-hours during their pursuit of him. Hatfill decried their heedless exposure of himself, their defamation of him as a murderer.
“For these reasons, even as I stand before you proclaim- ing my innocence of this terrible crime, I believe I shall yet pay a price for having been named a person of interest. If Steve Hatfill isn’t the anthrax killer, well, he spit on a gov- ernment sidewalk or littered in front of a government build- ing somewhere, something he shouldn’t have done. I should imagine that a great many Americans, including a host of our nation’s political, social, and intellectual leaders [would] be at serious risk of some sort of prosecution under these circumstances.”
As he concluded, he cautioned the nation against the FBI’s increased powers under the Patriot Act. He wondered aloud what America would be like in a decade or two. He asked if it would be like the America he loved and would risk his life to defend. He asked the fourth estate, if the nation might someday evolve into a society where un- charged persons of interest live in fear of damaging police and media intrusion? He recited the slogan of the American Civil Liberties Union, one he never thought he would. “But I must tell you,” he said, “after what I have been through, I wholeheartedly embrace its motto: ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’
“My story is not all sad and negative. I have been buoyed beyond words by the support of my family, friends, past and current colleagues, and even strangers, who, since my first news conference, have warmly greeted me on the streets or in letters. I thank my employer, Louisiana State University, for its incredible sensitivity in balancing its obvious insti- tutional needs in light of my status as a person of interest with my own personal needs and circumstances. Thank you. As poorly as my own government and much of the press
MARK
Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said im- mediately after the press conference that the department would not respond to Hatfill’s “personal” attack on the at- torney general. “The investigation is ongoing and we cannot comment further,” he said. Gail Collins, editorial page editor of the
New York Times
, said that in conversations with his lawyer on Friday she had invited Dr. Hatfill to submit a column for publication. Responding, she said, “We have confidence in our columnists.”
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, Glasberg said the FBI had “violated elementary rules of fair- ness and decency.” He also objected to the FBI’s “in-your- face surveillance” that quickly became harassment.
U.S. News & World Report
said, “The FBI has seized Hatfill’s travel records and datebooks and new clues may yet come to light. But if now, Hatfill may be no more than a larger-than-life man whose past seems to hint at dark se- crets. In the world of bioweapons research, that’s not so unusual. As one insider notes wryly: There’s a lot of strange people who work in biodefense. No matter the outcome, Dr. Hatfill’s name should never have been leaked unless he was an actual suspect. In the end he might be another Richard Jewell or Wen Ho Lee and the most wronged man in Amer- ica.”
As the anniversary of 9-11 approached, the close-knit biowarfare community was still saying that a disgruntled former employee at the Institute was the likely perpetrator of the anthrax letters. A public service announcement for the 9-11 anniversary was called “Main Street.” It showed a row of houses and aired a voice-over saying, “On September 11, terrorists tried to change America forever.” The scene altered to one of the same houses, all now displaying Amer- ican flags. “Well, they succeeded,” says the announcer.
Anthrax had come like a thief in the night. Amerithrax had struck in the blaze of a busy street. Like a thief the
On Monday, August 26, 2002, suspicious powder spilled from a smaller-than-usual envelope opened by former Vice President Al Gore’s office manager, Mary Patterson. The room where she opened the letter was quarantined and a Hazmat squad investigated. Firefighters dumped drums of cleaning solution into the sewer outside the building that housed Gore’s office. Gore, on vacation in northern Cali- fornia with his family, phoned his staff to check up on their safety. His spokesman, Jano Cabrera, said the envelope, postmarked from Tennessee, was stamped on the back,
this letter has not been inspected by the corrections de- partment
. The Department of Corrections said it was its policy to stamp letters that had not been inspected, but the wording the department uses was different from that on the Gore letter. No suspects were identified and no one was tested. The letter turned out to be a hoax.
And so a year later, were cities and communities better prepared to handle a terrorist attack involving biowarfare agents? Experts at the first meeting of the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Council on Public Health Preparedness didn’t think so. While national drug and vaccine stockpiles had been increased, understaffed and underfunded local health departments still lacked the ability to deliver the vac- cines.
AT
the dust site at Ground Zero, high winds made a mourn- ful benediction. The 9-11 anniversary in New York drew near. Shuttered, the tan three-story building on Broken Sound Boulevard in Boca Raton huddled behind a fence. The silent, still, and deserted AMI building was approaching an anniversary too. It had been under federal quarantine since October 7 of the previous year. AMI Chairman David Pecker said the building remained exactly the same as it was when employees were suddenly evacuated. “It’s like it’s fro- zen in time,” said Pecker. “It’s almost the anniversary of Bob Stevens’s death and his family wants to know who’s responsible. I’m hoping that they really can find something.” All of the employees were off Cipro now and had been since December. Many had abandoned their medication because of unpleasant side effects. Tim O’Connor of the Palm Beach County Health Department was certain now that the mass administration of Cipro had proved to be the correct deci- sion. “Originally,” he told the press, “we were all figuring that it would be isolated to an office or a little area just in the mailroom and Stevens’s desk. The fact that they found it everywhere means there’s a good chance that someone else would’ve gotten sick if we hadn’t taken those steps.”