February 20, 1998
FBI informant says he doesn't know why men had anthrax
Copyright 1998 Las Vegas SUN
Online exclusive
By Denise Cardinal
LAS VEGAS SUN
Ronald Rockwell, the man who notified Las Vegas authorities about two men allegedly transporting anthrax, said he didn't know what the two men planned to do with the deadly biological agent.
"They just said they had military-grade anthrax," Rockwell told the Las Vegas SUN on Friday afternoon.
The two men -- Larry Wayne Harris, 46, of Lancaster, Ohio, and William Job Leavitt Jr., 47, of Logandale -- were charged with conspiracy to possess and possession of a biological agent for use as a weapon. The alleged anthrax is being tested at a government facility in Utah.
The two were arrested at the Royal Center for Advanced Medicine, 2501 N. Green Valley Parkway, about 7:40 p.m. Wednesday. A beige Mercedes-Benz, allegedly transporting the anthrax, was taken to an Army biological center in Dugway, Utah. A hearing on whether to release the pair on bail was delayed until Monday to give lawyers more time to prepare.
Rockwell said Leavitt approached him a few months ago, asking about a device that Rockwell invented called the AZ58 ray tube. According to Rockwell, the tube kills all bacteria through frequency vibrations.
"We (Leavitt and Rockwell) talked a lot about my work," he said. "I was going to turn the AZ58 over to him once I showed him how it works. Then he was going to have all the heavy testing (done) over in Frankfurt, Germany."
Rockwell said that Leavitt planned on producing more AZ58 ray tubes in Frankfurt, and the two were working on a contract where Rockwell would get 10 percent of the profits. He was asking for $20 million without the contract.
Harris came into the picture, Rockwell said, as someone that Leavitt hired as a microbiologist to test the tubes. But Rockwell became suspicious after he noticed the two changing their stories, he said.
"There were inconsistencies," he said. "Leavitt was inconsistent in referring to where the two were and when." Rockwell decided to contact authorities after he discovered that the two had anthrax, he said. He thought that if they wanted to test the ray tube, they would use a more common bacteria and became nervous when they told him they had the deadly bacteria, he said.
The actual tubes of anthrax, he said, weren't in 14 flight bags as reported earlier. Rather, they were in black leather cases in the trunk of the car, labeled with masking tape and marked biological, he said. One of them, he continued, was partially opened and it looked as though it contained some sort of medical files, not vials of anthrax.
"I was looking for someone to take this technology forth to mankind because it is so powerful," he said. "They didn't tell the truth on what they were going to really use on this test."
SUN Staff Writer Art Nadler contributed to this report.