Amerithrax (66 page)
And what of Amerithrax? On Wednesday November 5, 2003, a sensor in an automatic mail-sorting machine at the Anacostia Naval mail facility triggered alarms for anthrax spores on one of 20,000 pieces of mail handled daily. As soon as warnings sounded the mail sorter shut down. Anacostia Station (along with Southwest and Friendship Stations) had been part of the original chain of mail facilities cross- contaminated by anthrax spores leaking from the Daschle and Leahy anthrax letters. The Postal Service immediately closed eleven neighborhood post offices in Washington D.C., Mary- land, and Virginia. All were serviced by the contractor who transported mail to Anacostia. Five people working near the sorter were offered antibiotics. A follow-up test indicated 138 anthrax spores were present. After the initial field test, eight air samples were sent for testing at the Institute at Fort De- trick. One tested positive, the other seven negative. Two days later further tests proved the Anacostia alarm had been a false positive. This time it was not anthrax. Immediately afterward, alert screeners at an offsite mail processing facility inter-
On January 30, 2004, coarse-grained ricin in a plastic- lined envelope was mailed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s office. Three days later screeners found the poison clinging to the blades of a letter-opening machine in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Authorities shut down the fourth-floor mail room and cleansed it with diluted bleach. Sixteen exposed employees were quarantined and decontam- inated with showers. As hours passed none of the workers showed any symptoms. Filters installed after the 2001 an- thrax attacks had kept the powder from entering the venti- lation system.
The senate office buildings were closed for the rest of the week. “The anxiety isn’t there [this time],” Senator Dianne Feinstein told the press. “We’ve had to cope with all of this before, cope with getting a gas mask, knowing where it is, how to put it on. That’s a very stark thing in itself, something that is brand new in American society... and we really had to cope, I think, with the knowledge that we are targets. And by we, that’s everybody, everybody who works in a federal office building. Washington remains a target. Los Angeles is a possible target, Las Vegas is a pos- sible target, just to name a few.”
In London, MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, warned the British Parliament of a specific threat of a bio- logical attack with anthrax or ricin. The Al Qaeda network had targeted the House of Commons. In response Parliament voted to erect a permanent $2 million glass security barrier between the lower chamber of parliament and its public gal- lery. In San Francisco on February 9, a man pled guilty to mailing an anthrax threat to the federal immigration service. The envelope, filled with white powder, forced the service to evacuate its mailroom. The maximum penalty for the of- fense is life in prison and a $250,000 fine.
On March 9, Human Genome Sciences, Inc. in Rockville, Medicine, announced that its experimental antianthrax drug appears safe for human use. Three days later the U.S. gov-
Iraq’s connection to the anthrax mailings now seemed nonexistent. In 2002, the CIA’s National Intelligence Esti- mate had confidently stated, “Baghdad has established a large-scale... BW production capability, which includes mobile facilities.” But by 2004 tips by “eyewitness” Iraqi informants describing Saddam’s mobile bioweapons labs were mostly discredited with the exception of three tractor- trailers thought to be for the production of hydrogen. Nor were any of Saddam’s elusive WMD (including anthrax) found in Iraq.
As for Al Qaeda’s links with anthrax, they too were widely disparaged. Mohammad Atta’s meeting in a Prague transit lounge with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the 9-11 attack may not have taken place at all. Ahmad al-Ani, a veteran spy now in U.S. custody, re- pudiated the meeting between himself and Atta. Czech au- thorities also disclaimed any meetings between Atta and any Iraqi intelligence officials “who may or may not have given him anthrax bacteria.” Though some Czechs still stand by the meeting, it now appears that Atta was in the U.S. at the time. Reports of an Al Qaeda “anthrax program” in Kan- dahar and Indonesia might also be unreliable. There is no proof that the Osama bin Laden network ever acquired WMDs other than ricin and cyanide.
Bob Stevens’s widow, Maureen, frustrated by the gov- ernment’s silence on almost every detail surrounding the Amerithrax investigation, found herself stonewalled. Des- perate to reinvigorate the investigation, she fought to obtain autopsy reports that would provide more information about causes leading to her husband’s death. Through her West Palm Beach lawyer, Richard Schuler, she is pursuing a
Dr. Hatfill had filed a defamation lawsuit against the gov- ernment on August 26, 2003, in U.S. District Court in Wash- ington, but was running into as many roadblocks as Maureen Stevens. In a nutshell, Hatfill was accusing top Justice and FBI officials of violating his constitutional rights and raising suspicion about him “without formally naming him as a sus- pect or charging him with any wrongdoing.”
“This lawsuit is not just about Steven Hatfill,” said at- torney Thomas Connolly, who is representing Hatfill for free. “It is about the enormous power government officials have.... Whatever the government can legally do to Steven Hatfill, it can legally do to any of us.” Hatfill sought unspe- cified monetary damages for violations of his privacy and his Fifth Amendment right to life, liberty, and property by interfering with his employment prospects. He was worn down by round-the-clock FBI surveillance. In May 2003, his foot had been injured by a tailing car, reportedly part of a six-to-ten-vehicle motorcade that boxed him in front, back, and sides as he drove about. For his trouble, he got a five- dollar ticket for “walking to create a hazard.” Hatfill, like Mrs. Stevens, was also meeting unusual delays in litigation. Something was brewing. Between January and March 2004 there was a decided flip-flop. During a January 26 hearing, U.S. Judge Reggie Walton had been disinclined to postpone Hatfill’s defamation lawsuit. “Until proved other- wise Dr. Hatfill is an innocent man,” he said. “I totally un- derstand how his life has been... virtually destroyed.” And the following month Michael Mason of the FBI Washington Field Office was very candid. “Despite our very, very best efforts we still may not be able to bring it home,” he had said. While admitting that the investigation still has “top priority” he had acknowledged that the anthrax mailer may
never be apprehended.
Then on Monday March 29, 2004, the
Washington Post
revealed that confidential information had recently been pro- vided to Judge Walton. The Justice Department told him that
Judge Walton gave the matter grave consideration, then ruled that the Amerithrax investigation should be allowed to proceed “in an unfettered way.” “I have to give them the opportunity to continue their investigation,” he said. “It ob- viously needs to be solved if it can be solved. I know there is going to be something occurring in the near future.”
Thus, the government’s request to postpone Hatfill’s law- suit for six more months was granted. One proviso was that Judge Walton would be briefed on the new information on July 6, 2004. Richard Lambert, the FBI supervisor leading the investigation since Van Harp’s retirement, explained that the FBI had top scientists around the world narrowing the focus from Dugway to Detrick to the precise lab where the anthrax had been prepared. From the lab they might back- track the weaponized anthrax to Amerithrax in his true iden- tity.
There was some good news in the end. Federal takeover of the anthrax-contaminated AMI building in Boca Raton won approval of both houses of Congress. The government agreed to pay one dollar to purchase the tabloid plant and then cover the cost of cleaning it. And who could forget the fluttering blue tent covering the entire Brentwood Mail Fa- cility? The mammoth Washington postal facility had a new name these days. It had been renamed in honor of the two slain postal workers, Thomas L. Morris and Joseph Curseen, brave men on the front lines of a strange new kind of war.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(www.bt.cdc. gov/ Agent/ Anthrax/ Anthrax.asp). Detailed analysis and medical records of Amerithrax’s victims, including X rays and examples of inhalational and cutaneous anthrax.
CDC Reports on the First Ten Bioterrorism-Related Inhal- ational Anthrax Cases Reported in the United States from October 4 to November 2, 2001. Research done by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Cedars Medical Center, Miami, Florida, USA; Virtua Health, Mount Holly, New Jersey, USA; Winchester Med- ical Center, Winchester, Virginia, USA; Lenox Hill Hospi- tal, New York City, New York, USA; and Palm Beach County Department of Public Health, West Palm Beach, Florida, USA.
Researchers on the CDC reports included: John A. Jernigan, David S. Stephens, David A. Ashford, Carlos Omenaca, Martin S. Topiel, Mark Galbraith, Michael Tapper, Tamara
L. Fisk, Sherif Zaki, Tanja Popovic, Richard F. Meyer, Con- rad P. Quinn, Scott A. Harper, Scott K. Fridkin, James J. Sejvar, Colin W. Shepard, Michelle McConnell, Jeannette Guarner, Wun-Ju Shieh, Jean M. Malecki, Julie L. Gerberd- ing, James M. Hughes, Bradley A. Perkins, and members of the Anthrax Bioterrorism Investigation Team.
Sherrie Bruce, Rebecca Dixon, Anexis Lopez, Pat Mc- Connon, Carmen Resurreccion, Kay Vydareny, the labora- tories of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, the
J. Aguilar, M. Andre, K. Baggett, B. Bell, D. Bell, M. Bowen, G. Carlone, M. Cetron, S. Chamany, B. De, C. Elie,
M. Fischer, A. Hoffmaster, K. Glynn, R. Gorwitz, C. Greene, R. Hajjeh, T. Hilger, J. Kelly, R. Khabbaz, A. Khan,
P. Kozarsky, M. Kuehnert, J. Lingappa, C. Marston, J. Nich- olson, S. Ostroff, T. Parker, L. Petersen, R. Pinner, N. Ro- senstein, A. Schuchat, V. Semenova, S. Steiner, F. Tenover,
B. Tierney, T. Uyeki, S. Vong, D. Warnock, C. Spak, D. Jernigan, C. Friedman, M. Ripple, D. Patel, S. Pillai, S. Wiersma, R. Labinson, L. Kamal, E. Bresnitz, M. Layton,
G. DiFerdinando, S. Kumar, P. Lurie, K. Nalluswami, L. Hathcock, L. Siegel, S. Adams, I. Walks, J. Davies-Coles,
M. Richardson, K. Berry, E. Peterson, R. Stroube, H. Hoch- man, M. Pomeranz, A. Friedman-Kien, D. Frank, S. Bersoff- Matcha, J. Rosenthal, N. Fatteh, A. Gurtman, R. Brechner,
C. Chiriboga, J. Eisold, G. Martin, K. Cahill, R. Fried, M. Grossman, and W. Borkowsky.
The FBI Amerithrax Page
(www.fbi.gov/anthrax/amerithrax links.htm). The FBI enlists the public’s help, reproducing the letters and envelopes, and detailing the opening of the Leahy letter. This is the best Bureau website yet.
The Anthrax Cases Analyzed by Ed Lake. (www. anthrax investigation.com). An invaluable resource and clearing- house for every idea on the Amerithrax case.
TIGR: The Institute for Genomic Research (www.tigr.org). Important groundbreaking work which provided major clues in the Amerithrax investigation and provided a direction for the detectives.
Dr. Timothy Read, a researcher at the Institute, has worked for several years to decode the genome of the anthrax bac- terium, choosing an Ames strain of anthrax that came from the British biological-warfare laboratory at Porton Down. “Comparative Genome Sequencing for Discovery of Novel Polymorphisms in
Bacillus anthracis
.” Science Reprint, Volume 296, pp. 2028-2033, June 14, 2002. Working with Dr. Read were Steven L. Salzberg, Mihai Pop, Martin Shumway, Lowell Umayam, Lingxia Jiang, Erik Holtzapple, Joseph D. Busch, Kimothy L. Smith, James M. Schupp, Daniel Solomon, Paul Keim, and Claire M. Frazer.
An astonishing two-part series on the Amerithrax case by Laurie Garrett,
www.newsday.com., 7–8 October 2002.