FBI's anthrax probe explores possibility that insider is culprit

By William J. Broad and Judith Miller
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

December 2, 2001

The FBI has expanded its investigation of the anthrax attacks to include the laboratories of the government and its contractors as a possible source of the anthrax that has infected and killed five people, say scientists and law enforcement officials.

Although theories about the culprit have focused mainly on domestic loners and foreign states or terrorists, law enforcement officials are now also examining the possibility that the criminal may be a knowledgeable insider.

Asked if the FBI was investigating U.S. military and nonmilitary laboratories that held the anthrax strain used in the attacks and individuals associated with such centers, a law enforcement official replied, "Certainly."

The official said, "We are aggressively investigating every possible lead and every possible avenue," adding that it was "logical."

Few details of the insider investigation are known publicly. But federal agents are known to be interrogating the military establishment that replaced the nation's old program for making biological weapons.

The facilities of that program, in western Maryland, are major repositories of the anthrax strain used in the attacks.

Col. Arthur Friedlander, the senior research scientist at the Army's biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., said in an interview Friday that officials there were cooperating with federal investigators.

"They've asked us about personnel who had access," said Friedlander, speaking reluctantly and offering no details.

"They didn't talk to me about my personal experience," said Friedlander, a physician and leading anthrax expert. "They asked me about other personnel."

He went on to dismiss the insider idea as improbable. The person who 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 emphasized that no one in his organization, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a leader in creating germ defenses, even knew how to make dry anthrax, as was found in the letters.

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," Friedlander said. Nobody at the Army's lab, he added, "has that kind of expertise."

A dozen or two U.S. laboratories are said to have the Ames strain, though no one knows for sure because researchers over the decades have shared such pathogens informally. Military laboratories like the one at Fort Detrick, as well as military contractors, are central to the Ames network, as they have often pioneered the nation's research on vaccines and other defenses against germ weapons.

The United States began its military program to make germ weapons during World War II and over the decades developed many ways to spread many diseases. A top agent was anthrax, a gallon of which was strong enough to kill 8 billion people.

President Richard Nixon, after renouncing germ weapons in 1969, championed a global treaty that, starting in 1975, banned such arms.

Since the start of the anthrax attacks, federal officials, scientists and amateur sleuths have scrambled to identify the source. Some see the attacker as home-grown -- perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia group -- while others discern a conspiracy by a nation, such as Iraq, or a foreign terrorist group.

The current avenue of inquiry is consistent with the official profile of the suspect, released on Nov. 9 by the FBI. 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 lethal attacks.

Though not an expert on criminal profiling, Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York, has testified on biological weapons before Congress, advised President Clinton and addressed international arms control meetings, including one a few days ago in Geneva.

Law enforcement officials said Rosenberg's assertion might turn out to be well founded, though they emphasized that the investigation was still broad-based. One official 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 that it was an insider, contending that the skills and knowledge needed to produce the type of anthrax in this attack were widely available.

The paper detailing Rosenberg's thesis was distributed Thursday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an arms control group.

Rosenberg, who conducts research at State University of New York and is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, has argued repeatedly that nations, not individuals, have the wherewithal to make advanced biological weapons. International treaties that prohibit that work, she believes, are critical.

Rosenberg reasoned that the Ames strain probably did not originate in 1980 or 1981, as is often asserted, but arose many decades earlier and was used in the secretive U.S. program to make biological weapons.

She noted a conclusion reached by some experts knowledgeable about the investigation, that the anthrax powder distributed in the letters was treated in a sophisticated manner so it floated easily, as was done in the old U.S. offensive program.

The killer, 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 how to make it. 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.

Rosenberg's theory is already getting attention in Europe, where the environmental group Greenpeace Germany is citing it.

A U.S. official sympathetic to the thesis said the Ames strain might have come from a place other than a military lab.

"There are other government and contractor facilities that do classified work with access to dangerous strains," the official said. "But it's highly likely that the material in the anthrax letters came from a person or persons who really had great expertise. We haven't seen any other artifacts that point us elsewhere."

Asked if the FBI was close to closing in on such a laboratory or individual, a law enforcement official replied, "We refuse to comment on that."

Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.