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By Howard L. Rosenberg ABCNEWS.com March 12 — That ominous cloud of anthrax Pentagon bio-defense planners fear may fog some future battlefield could actually have a silver lining for Lansing, Mich.-based Bioport Corp. — and for its most visible corporate director, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. That’s because the company is the only licensed U.S. manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. Less than a month after it took over the business from the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute (MBPI) last September, Bioport landed an exclusive $29 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to “manufacture, test, bottle and store the anthrax vaccine.” According to former Central Intelligence Agency military analyst Patrick Eddington, the estimated $60 million worth of anthrax vaccine Bioport is expected to produce for the Defense Department over the next five years could just be the beginning. “The Pentagon has a $322 million, 10-year program to develop at least three, and perhaps as many as a dozen additional biological warfare vaccines,” Eddington told ABCNEWS. “These have never really been tested, and most importantly, no one has provided data to validate the threat.” Vaccinations Begin Whether or not the threat of any biological attack — including one with anthrax — is valid or not, last May the Defense Department began a program to vaccinate all 2.4 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines against the anthrax bacterium. The Pentagon pays $4.70 per shot and each member of the armed forces is supposed to get six shots over an 18-month period. That’s a huge, guaranteed market for Bioport’s product. Less than a year ago, Bioport’s predecessor, MBPI, was under fire from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for sloppy record-keeping after an inspection report raised questions about the anthrax vaccine’s potency and sterility. The FDA even threatened to revoke the facility’s license. Just a few months later, Bioport emerged as a leading bidder to take over the troubled company and purchased MBPI for $25 million after the Pentagon promised to ante up $15 million to renovate the plant. Bioport’s Multinational Directors Bioport Corp. was created solely to take over the assets of MBPI by Adm. Crowe, his partners in a company called Intervac L.L.C. and a group of former managers of the Michigan-based institute. It is Intervac that has the most interesting history. According to Crowe’s associate and spokesman, Jay Coupe, Crowe owns 22.5 percent of Intervac shares, though he hasn’t “invested a penny” in the venture. Another 30 percent of Intervac shares are owned by Nancy El-Hibri, a mother and homemaker in suburban Maryland and the rest of the company is in the hands of “I&F Holdings,” a company directed by Nancy El-Hibri’s father-in-law, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a Venezuelan citizen, and her husband, Fuad El-Hibri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent. Fuad El-Hibri appears to be the real day-to-day director of Intervac and is listed by Dun & Bradstreet as the “chief executive” of Bioport. Mrs. El-Hibri laughed when questioned by a reporter for ABC about Intervac and referred the network to her husband who did not return a call. Experts in defense policy suggested that the Pentagon would be highly unlikely to approve the sale to a foreign national of a company that is the sole manufacturer of a vaccine considered vital to national security. Indeed, Coupe stresses that between Mrs. El-Hibri and Admiral Crowe, the majority of the stock in Intervac is held by Americans, since Mrs. El-Hibri is a U.S.-born citizen, her husband Fuad was educated at Yale and has applied for U.S. citizenship and Admiral Crowe “served this country for 51 years” including two terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan administration and as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1994-1997. How Bioport Finds the Admiral According to Coupe, when Crowe returned from England in 1997, he was approached by Fuad El-Hibri’s father, Ibrahim El-Hibri. The elder El-Hibri, whom the admiral had met a decade before, invited Crowe to serve on the board of Intervac. “The admiral is commonly referred to as the person who bought this,” says Coupe, “and while I don’t want to minimize his involvement, he’s had no financial involvement either way — giving or getting any money.” Coupe says that Crowe’s ownership of Intervac stock gives him a 13 percent share of Bioport. Coupe took umbrage at the suggestion by anthrax vaccine critics that Crowe was profiteering on the vaccine’s production: “The idea that he would do anything to jeopardize the American troops he led for half a century is ridiculous. He spends a lot of time working on Bioport because he wants to make sure it works and they produce a good product. Both he and I have been vaccinated against anthrax. He believes in the anthrax vaccine and vaccination. He also believes the threat {of anthrax as a weapon} is real.” The Bioport anthrax vaccine production line is currently operating and going through tests. The company expects to begin producing the vaccine for distribution to the Defense Department this summer. 
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S U M M A R Y A single company, Bioport Corp. stands to make a lot of money from U.S. government contracts to manufacture the anthrax vaccine.
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