Amerithrax (63 page)
On Monday, August 26, 2002, the FBI returned, planning to spend two weeks inside the plant. Over the winter, high- tech analysis of the anthrax envelopes for fingerprints had failed to pan out. A gnawing feeling they had overlooked some clue had brought them back (as criminals often do) to the scene of the crime. The agents, convinced that evidence
The FBI and the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (a unit of the CDC focused on managing public health hazards) had prepared newly designed, dis- posable chemical suits with air masks and latex boots for detectives to wear inside AMI. One reason the EPA wanted to go back into the building was to further examine how the air handling system had spread the bacteria. Any lessons learned could be applied to the ongoing decontamination of the Brentwood and New Jersey mail facilities. They were still not certain how the deadly spores had spread through- out.
“Unlike other sites where anthrax hit in 2001,” said Hec- tor Pesquera, special-agent-in-charge of the Miami division, “this is a site where no letter has been found, no delivery vehicle has been found. All of a sudden there was anthrax in that building. There must be a vehicle that introduced anthrax into that place.” Why was there no trail of spores leading out of the building? The FBI was resuming its search for the letter or other delivery vehicle that had carried the disease into the AMI building and fatally infected Bob Ste- vens. Some officials believed the letter was still there and that new techniques would allow a more complete search. There could be more than one. Most of the AMI employees thought the Lopez letter had been incinerated. That was the way the publishing house got rid of its own waste. Pesquera said in reply to a question that the new probe at the AMI building “has nothing to do with Mr. Hatfill.”
“We’re looking for large quantities of spores in order to chemically characterize those spores and compare them against the spores found in the Senators Leahy and Daschle
letters,” said Dwight Adams, assistant director of the FBI’s laboratory division.
Only a month earlier AMI had tentatively agreed to the new search when the FBI introduced its plan in a meeting at the tabloids’ new offices at T-Rex Technology Center. The details and logistics had been worked out and finalized a few days before the search. One day in advance, AMI saw a rough draft of the search warrant. An earlier version had authorized the seizure of “business records, computer files or other papers that might explain the motive, method or intent.”
AMI was “heavily lawyered” by Williams and Connolly, a powerful Washington firm, to defend its legal rights and protect against libel suits. Its confidential informants had to be kept confidential. “It is not our desire or intention,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Kohl, “to remove any doc- uments, business records or other objects from the AMI building that may compromise your journalistic sources. If, at that time, you feel that any items taken during the search exceed the scope of the search warrant or the limitations imposed by this letter, you may contact me directly and I am confident that we will be able to resolve the matter to the satisfaction of AMI.” Pecker got his “anti-snoop pledge” in writing, a modification of the search warrant that forbade the FBI to snoop through reporters’ private files or remove notes or other unpublished material from the building. “Computers are off limits,” he said.
The FBI wanted access to AMI’s back issues, bound vol- umes of the
National Enquirer
,
National Examiner
,
Globe
,
Sun
, and
Weekly World News
. They were there in the dust of the deserted building. “Our desire is to review back issues and databases (published material only) to determine whether any past article published by AMI may be relevant to the motive for the anthrax mailings,” wrote U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr., clarifying the earlier search warrant. AMI decided agents could search those issues, but limited the search to fourteen days.
According to Dwight Adams, the FBI would try to find letters presumably thrown out in the trash by using new techniques of microbial forensics. “The quantity of spores
In November 2001, the EPA had listed the eighty-four locations of spores found inside AMI. Seventy-eight percent of the contaminated samples were taken from the first floor and the mailroom. Sixty-six positive anthrax samples (thirty- five from desks, computers, keyboards, cabinets, and mail slots; thirty-one vacuumed from the floor) were on the first story. The last search had focused near the mailroom. Now the entire 67,000-square-foot building was to be searched.
“Last year, we were in the building for a different rea- son,” said Pesquera. “It was not as comprehensive an in- vestigation as the one we are planning. It was more of a public health concern investigation. This investigation will be scientifically driven for a criminal investigation,” Judy Orihuela, a spokeswoman for the FBI field office in Miami, said. “Before, when we were there, we took samples. My understanding is that they want to be more thorough.”
Adams listed what they wanted to accomplish. “Number one,” he said, “we hope to do a very comprehensive, de- tailed assessment of the spore contamination throughout the entire building. Number two, a very detailed assessment with regard to the mailroom in particular. Number three, we are looking for a dissemination device, such as a letter or letters, again, to generate new leads for the investigation. And then finally, we’re looking for large quantities of spores in order to chemically characterize those spores and compare them against the spores found in the Senators Leahy and Daschle letters.”
Agents believed their new methods could identify the anthrax source at the site. Where was that anthrax-laden let- ter? Who had it been addressed to and would that knowledge give investigators a clue to Amerithrax’s identity and mo- tive? If the letter was located, said an agent, “We’ll look at the postmark and work it backwards to determine the loca- tion of the initial mailing. A collection box or post office.”
They were thinking of the anthrax envelope’s pores— bigger than the largest Daschle anthrax clusters. How ef- fortlessly the powder could escape individual letters to con- taminate the general mails. “It had to be one of the most porous materials,” an official said of the attack envelopes. “Whether that was by chance or design, I have no idea.”
The next day, Tuesday, August 27, moon-suited inves- tigators, working in pairs, entered AMI, a return anthrax experts labeled “a prayer.” Only federal agents and an air- conditioning repair crew hired by AMI had been inside since October 7. Tim O’Connor of the Palm Beach County Health Department said, “[AMI] has been virtually untouched since the incident.” Agents reentered the building in coordination with a team of several dozen investigators—scientists from the CDC and the Toxic Substances Agency.
“What I have heard is there may be some follow-up ac- tivities [by the FBI] once we leave the facility,” said Elwin Grant, a spokesman for the Atlanta CDC. They wanted to conduct useful tests to thwart the effects of any future an- thrax attacks. “We’ve put together a proposal to go into the building to do an examination which would have real-world utility,” said spokesperson Kathy Skipper, who added that the AMI building would provide an ideal laboratory to ob- serve anthrax in an office setting. “Should anything like this happen again, the tests would help us better understand how the material moves, who might be most at risk from a letter that came through the system, where the anthrax is likely to disperse, and how might it disperse,” she said. Agents in portable, white, positive-pressure space suit protective gear made their way through the desolation of the sealed ghost town. White pleated fumigating tubes trailed behind them like tails, making their progress ungainly. Could they find
the deadly letter and if so, would it hold the missing clue that might lead them to Amerithrax?
The movements of the intruders stirred microscopic an- thrax tumbleweeds. Some spores held fast, trembling like the last leaves of fall. Pecker had been right. Nothing had changed. The breeze fluttered the crayon drawings still on Stevens’s computer. Unfinished stories were strewn on desk- tops. The fish tanks had long gone bone dry and the fish themselves were dust. The detectives photographed and sur- veyed the layout of the headquarters before searching more thoroughly for evidence. A year ago they had used a random method. This time they were searching in grids.
Over the first weekend investigators concentrated on the third floor. On Labor Day, they worked to complete sam- pling the third floor by that night. Then it would be on to collect more evidence on the first and second floors. Also on Monday, the U.S. Justice Department sent Stephen Guil- lot, Hatfill’s supervisor at LSU, an e-mail. It read:
Steve, This is a follow-up of the phone conversation you had with Darrell Darnell [an ODP official] earlier this afternoon. I want to reiterate that the Office of Justice Programs/Office for Domestic Preparedness directs that Louisiana State University Academy of Counter- Terrorist Education cease and desist from utilizing the subject matter and course instructor duties of Steven J. Hatfill on all Department of Justice funded programs.
On Tuesday, September 3, testing inside AMI confirmed that copier paper contaminated by the mail had spread spores to every copy machine on all three floors. The de- tectives were still searching the building on Tuesday while Dr. Hatfill was fired from the NCBRT’s federal program at LSU to train emergency workers. That was Justice’s right. Hatfill’s $150,000 salary was financed with federal grants and the Justice Department maintained management over- sight and control on programs they funded. The center re- ceived 93 percent of its budget from the Justice Department. Hatfill was offered no explanation by Guillot. Under the contract no justification was required.
“Justice Department officials,” wrote the
Washington Post
, “effectively blackballed Hatfill by instructing LSU to prohibit him from working on the university’s government- funded programs.” The legality of the firing was an issue that might go to court as might every other aspect of the targeting of Dr. Hatfill.
Dr. Hatfill’s spokesman Pat Clawson said the firing from LSU was an attempt to pressure Hatfill into a false confes- sion. “We’re stunned to learn of this,” he said. “We’re out- raged. Blacklisting by the government is offensive and un-American. Obviously, Ashcroft wants to bring blacklist- ing back to the federal scene. Where was the due process? They fired him. No reason. No severance. No nothing. Just good-bye.” It was a lot like Wen Ho Lee’s firing and every- one knew how that had turned out. Hatfill said, through Clawson, “LSU did not even have the decency to phone me directly. They did not even tell my supervisor or coworkers. This could have been decided a month ago.
“Why did they wait until I moved all of my furniture and all my possessions to Baton Rouge?” On Wednesday, Sep- tember 4, Stephen Guillot, the man who had hired Hatfill, was also fired by LSU. The apparent reason: Guillot didn’t tell his senior bosses about the e-mail he had received. Com- menting on the firing LSU chancellor Mark Emmert said, “The university is making no judgment as to Dr. Hatfill’s guilt or innocence regarding the FBI investigation... Our ultimate concerns are the ability to fulfill its role and mission as a land-grant university.”
The EPA directed two manufacturers to stop selling products that claimed to guard consumers against anthrax. Aerotech Laboratories of Arizona and American Security and Control Inc. of Virginia had been hawking their unap- proved, unregistered pesticides over the Internet, the EPA said. Aerotech’s product, Modec Decon Formulation, was sold as part of the company’s advertised bioterrorism re- sponse kit. Aerotech claimed the pesticide would decontam- inate and “mitigate chemical and biological weapons agents.” American Security was enjoined to stop selling Easy Decon Spray, which the company boosted as a “per-
sonal incident anthrax and biological and chemical decon- tamination sprayer.”
Amerithrax had drastically changed the landscape of America, whether he meant to or not. He was not insane, they knew that much. “You could not be delusional, hearing voices, and do this, absolutely not,” said Candice DeLong. “Legally insane, meaning they are suffering from a severe mental illness, the most severe being schizophrenia, like Chase [the Sacramento Vampire], and that is an illness char- acterized by auditory hallucinations. So the voices are telling you to do things or that you are a bad person. Usually ac- companied by some kind of delusion. Now a delusion is a strong belief in something that has no basis in fact and de- spite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s very dif- ficult to convince a schizophrenic their delusion is not real, because it’s real for them. Chase’s delusion was that his blood was drying up and he had to replace it or he would die. And that’s why he killed animals and people—to get the blood.