The Hatfill Case: Essential Background

An anthrax outbreak in the U.S., just what the Federation of American Scientists has been waiting for.

Having spent a lot of time on the arms-control wars over the past 30 years, I'm well acquainted with the Federation of American Scientists. Its mission is promoting arms control with a scientific twist, nicely illustrated with the huge anthrax outbreak near a suspected Soviet biological weapons facility at Sverdlovsk in 1979.

"Because the world scientific-medical fraternity is a close one," a statement by the FAS council said, nations can't expect to conceal secret large weapons accidents or arms-control violations. "We have not the slightest hesitation in stating that American scientists (and other citizens) should monitor the compliance of the United States," it continued, calling on Soviet scientists to explain what happened at Sverdlovsk, "either in submissions to scholarly journals" or by telling "foreign and domestic colleagues."

In 1986, the Soviets did arrange a Sverdlovsk visit by Harvard's Matthew Meselson, sometime FAS chairman and godfather of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; he later hosted a return delegation. Soviet scientists explained that the anthrax epidemic was the result of tainted meat, and displayed slides and autopsy photos. In a FAS publication, Mr. Meselson pronounced himself satisfied, calling for a "careful and objective review" of the U.S. view of the event.

But of course, the Soviet scientists were lying. Sverdlovsk was precisely what the CIA and arms-control skeptics had argued, a ghastly bioweapons accident in a program that blatantly violated the treaty. Mr. Meselson admitted this in a 1994 article in Science magazine, notable for omission of any hint of mea culpa.

The FAS mentality survived the Cold War. It was aghast when the current Bush administration scuttled a protocol to the 1972 convention, on the grounds that it would invite harassment of U.S. pharmaceutical plans without enforcing the treaty elsewhere. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who had succeeded Mr. Meselson as the leading FAS spokesman on biological weapons, said "Rejection of the protocol would be a stunning mistake that would defy U.S. security interests."

This extensive background may seem a little academic, but it is absolutely essential to understand the current controversy swirling around Steven Hatfill, the bioweapons scientist who called a press conference to complain that he was "the currently designated fall guy" for the anthrax letters in the wake of September 11. Everyone involved understands that he was designated the fall guy not so much by the FBI but by none other than Barbara Hatch Rosenberg of the FAS.

In November 2001, a month after the rash of anthrax attacks, Ms. Rosenberg was already telling an audience in Geneva that New York "has been attacked, first by foreign terrorists, then by an American using a weaponized biological agent." She assured listeners that the anthrax "was derived, almost certainly, from a U.S. defense laboratory."

She has spent the months since looking for the guilty American, posting her progress on the FAS Web site, and asserting that the FBI knew the perpetrator and was dragging its feet in arresting him. Her postings were amplified by a series of New York Times columns by Nicholas Kristof. Neither mentioned Dr. Hatfill's name--a peculiar coyness. When Mr. Kristof writes that "Mr. Z" is a bioweapons expert who was in Rhodesia in 1978-1980 he is certainly not protecting himself legally. In the words of the libel precedents, his articles were clearly "of and concerning" Steven Hatfill.

To judge by Ms. Rosenberg's "possible portrait," however, she does not intend to stop with Dr. Hatfill. One bullet point says, "Knows Bill Patrick and has probably learned a thing or two about weaponization from him, informally." Another says, "Has a private location where the materials for the attack were accumulated and prepared." Mr. Patrick is a leading bioweapons scientist and expert on weaponizing anthrax, and Mr. Kristof helpfully adds that the private locations "may be safe houses operated by American intelligence."

So the full agenda is to prove that Dr. Hatfill concocted his anthrax with the help of leading bioweapons scientists and in intelligence facilities. In a Salon interview on the FAS Web site, Ms. Rosenberg charged that the FBI was slow to arrest the suspect because, "This guy knows too much, and knows things the U.S. isn't very anxious to publicize." That is, that these secret facilities have been used to violate the Biological Weapons Convention, as another arms-control advocate in the Salon article explicitly charges.

Conceivably, of course, in her perfervid quest for U.S. complicity, Ms. Rosenberg could have stumbled on some truth. Dr. Hatfill is a flamboyant character, who was indeed in Rhodesia during an anthrax epidemic there. Which lie-detector tests he passed or failed is yet to be sorted out, but it seems he was being culled from the bioweapons program. Unlike the Unabomber, however, he does not seem an obvious nut case. And so far the closest thing to direct evidence against him is the report by Newsweek and Mr. Kristof that bloodhounds exposed, somehow, to the anthrax envelops bayed, or something, in Dr. Hatfill's apartment.

As for the anthrax, Ms. Rosenberg opens her analysis by excluding any source except 13 American and two British laboratories known to have had the Ames strain identified in the letters. No one but a dissident American, she tacitly assumes, could steal or bribe specimens from these labs. We know that in 1988 Iraq obtained at least seven anthrax strains through commercial channels, and that a request for the Ames strain was turned down by the British lab at Proton Down shortly after two Iraqi scientists attended a program it had sponsored.

The FBI was impressed, if we are to believe Newsweek and Mr. Kristof, by the bloodhounds. But it was not impressed when a Florida physician said he'd treated one of the September 11 hijackers for a skin lesion the doctor now believes was anthrax. At the FBI big personnel changes are under way, including the retirement of the counterterrorism chief. The Bush administration needs to make sure this means the FBI will stop being led around by the FAS. Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on

If I were a scientist in the relevant field and someone put my name on such a web site, I would sue them, the FAS and their relevant insurance companies. You don't let such BS go unchallenged unless you are broke.

Hatfill is now unemployed and if not broke probably close to it.

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