Five Years Later, Anthrax Questions Swirl Anew at FBI

Nobody has been arrested for the anthrax mailings of 2001, but many people have paid for the crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been frustrated. Careers have crumbled. Taxpayers have gotten socked for billions of dollars to shore up bioterror defenses that some experts say still fall short.

Now, an analysis from the FBI itself, buried in a microbiology journal, is raising more questions about the investigation.

In the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI scientist Douglas Beecher sought to set the record straight. Anthrax spores mailed to politicians and journalists in September and October 2001, Beecher wrote, were not prepared using advanced techniques and additives to make them more lethal, contrary to "a widely circulated misconception."

The notion the anthrax spores were "weaponized" had fueled conjecture that only a government insider could have carried out the operation.

Beecher's article suggested a much wider universe of potential suspects -- who showed they could kill without highly refined spores.

"A clever high school student" could make such a preparation, according to Ronald Atlas, former president of the American Society for Microbiology and co-director of the Center for Health Hazards Preparedness at the University of Louisville.

The Beecher paper has left Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wondering if the killings, which further shook a nation already reeling from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, will ever be solved. He blames the FBI for "botching" the case.

In the anthrax attacks, Steven Hatfill, a virologist who had worked for the government, landed in the cross-hairs. Labeled a "person of interest" by officials but never charged, the scientist claims the public probe has made him unemployable. He is suing the government and media outlets.

Kenneth Berry's career also unraveled after the FBI searched a Dover Township, N.J., summer home he was visiting in 2004. Berry was a doctor from upstate New York who started an organization for training emergency workers to deal with biochemical attacks. He never was charged, either.

Holt also chides authorities for taking nearly a year to discover anthrax traces in a mailbox near Princeton University. That mailbox, where letters laced with anthrax bacteria may have begun their journey in 2001, is on a route that feeds the Hamilton Township postal center where anthrax letters were processed.

In a letter to Holt, FBI Assistant Director Eleni Kalisch declined to give a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. Kalisch claimed sensitive information was leaked from classified briefings more than three years ago, and described the anthrax case as a criminal matter not subject to the committee's oversight.

Some cases take time to crack, Kalisch wrote. Seventeen FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors remain on the "Amerithrax" beat. The FBI said the anthrax investigation has spanned six continents and generated more than 9,100 interviews, 67 searches and 6,000 subpoenas.

Early on, the FBI hoped that analysis of the spores would point to the lab that prepared them. But Beecher's article underscores difficulties of such microscopic sleuthing. Particle sizes, for instance, may not yield as many clues as some expected.

Over time, after being handled and exposed to different conditions, particles "may not resemble the initial product," Beecher wrote.

Yet the FBI is confident, and has forged scientific ties and advances to help prevent future biological attacks, said Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, on the FBI's Web site.

Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist, still thinks the anthrax attacks were an inside job because they used a virulent form of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis, which only a few biodefense- or intelligence-related labs were thought to possess.

"Whoever did it is an insider," said Ayaad Assaad, a toxicologist with the Environmental Protection Agency, who formerly worked at an Army biodefense center at Fort Detrick, Md. "It started with anthrax. Now it's ricin, and God knows what's coming."

Ed Lake has tracked the case closely, self-publishing a book, "Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks, The First Three Years" and moderating a Web site. Lake is convinced the FBI knows the perpetrator but lacks evidence to prosecute. He believes the killer is a scientist from central New Jersey who wanted America to gird for an al-Qaida bioterror attack in the wake of Sept. 11.

"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake, referring to hand-printed letters, bearing New Jersey postmarks, sent to NBC and the New York Post.

Leon Harris retired last year from the Hamilton Township postal center. He too suspects the bad guys are home-grown and will be caught.

"I don't care if it takes 10 years," the Air Force veteran said. "They're going to find them."

Ernesto Blanco agreed. He survived inhalational anthrax that killed his friend Bob Stevens, a colleague at a tabloid in Florida, five years ago this month. Blanco, now 79, returned to his mailroom job at American Media Inc. in 2002.

"I am positive they will catch them," Blanco said. "I have faith in what they are doing."

Sept. 18: Postal facility in Hamilton Township, N.J., processes anthrax-laced letters to NBC News in New York and the New York Post.

Oct. 5: Bob Stevens, photo editor at Florida tabloid the Sun dies from inhalational anthrax.

Oct. 9: Hamilton Township facility processes anthrax letters to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy. Both letters have return address of fictitious "Greendale School" in Franklin Park, N.J.

Oct. 16: U.S. Senate closes; employees are tested for exposure to anthrax microbes.

Oct. 31: Kathy Nguyen, who worked in a New York City hospital supply room, dies from anthrax.

Nov. 21: Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Conn., dies from anthrax. Authorities suspect her mail was contaminated by other mail.

Real quick on "out of the way" ~ after about 7 PM no one puts mail in street collection boxes on Friday evening, through Monday morning.

You will find one or more such boxes in every commercial district. No one is watching them after hours. Besides, no one is going to be concerned if a carload of Arabs pulls up to a street collection box and drops in a letter (before 9/11).

The Freeper you refer to was probably The Great Satan.

Personally, I think he may have been right. He got a lot of opposition for his ideas on FR, and eventually might have lost his temper over it. I never read the posts that got him banned, but I thought he brought a lot interesting ideas to the table.

The FBI (and the U.S. government as a whole) would certainly not have wanted to panic the U.S. population, so they would have had a motive to insist it was a home grown source.

The best argument AGAINST Saddam's involvement is that the spores were supposedly not that difficult to make. The FBI seems to have reversed itself and now says it was "simple", so the odds that it was "home grown" have gone up (unless you believe the FBI is lying). But even if it was "simple", it does not rule out Saddam. I remain skeptical.

No, I'm not saying embossed envelopes are handled differently (in theory). Rather, it has to do with the O and D, origin/destination charactristic of the mail ~ in this case we are talking about individual to individual letters. They are in a distinct minority of mail types.

Plus, major mail generation (and mail collection) operations occur BEFORE 7 PM Friday evening. USPS doesn't even process mail on Sunday although it does fly it around the country, or dispatch it on trucks.

People do not mail much stuff on the weekends. It's easy for the handful of pieces entered late on a Friday evening (after last prayers at the mosque) to get lost for a few days ~ in fact, the system is virtually designed to ensure that this happens!

My thesis is that everything happened normally, and that the terrorists could not possibly have anticipated things going down this way.

"IF the anthrax arrived at AMI other than the US mail, why then would Stephanie Daily and Ernesto Blanco be the only two other persons who tested positive."

Blanco worked the mailroom. Stephanie opened some letters. But Bob Stevens had nothing to do with the mailroom. It's Stevens that the letter theory doesn't fit.

Sure, the anthrax *could* have been sent via a letter (though no such letter was ever found), but it could also have come in through tainted cash.

Cash follows funny paths that could easily have crossed by all three AMI employees.

And then there is the question....why just those two senators?

Same deal as AMI and the NYT. The perps are foreign born Arabs. They do not understand our culture at all. Atta didn't either. One of the most telling insights is the account of the USDA woman who interviewed Atta on the spray plane deal. Atta thought she could open the safe behind her and dish out the money.

I had a Danish roomie in college who also thought the tabloids were an important, respected part of our culture. She said...they were up there by the cash register, so they must be important.
If those two senators were in the news a great deal, then they also must be important. If the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was intended for the White House, then there was no need to send a letter there. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have sent one there.

Your cash theory is interesting, however does not bear out. Stevens would have carried the cash out of the building and distributed it in the community and on vacation in North Carolina.

There are no reports that I know of anywhere else of infections in those areas. Only the locations where the mail would have arrived and been opened, examined and then discarded. I think they routinely destroyed all the mail they got each day in an incinerator.

Bob Stevens would have been the recipient of some of the mail. He was a photo editor. Reportedly he had the habit of holding things very close to his face so he could see. This would enhance the travels of the spores.

They also say that Otillie Lundgren ripped her junk mail up and Kathy Nguyen loved to smell everything.

One of my most difficult battles in working with this thesis is getting across to my fellow Freepers that AMI publications are:

1. NOT America's most important newspapers, and

2. They ARE, on the other hand, extremely influential, particularly with people with limited skills in English.

It's not even a class thing ~ more cultural.

My theory (admittedly with no evidence to back it up) is the Islamic terrorists found out the building was the center of "American Media, Inc", and being ignorant of our culture as has been correctly noted, thought that they had hit the nerve center mother lode of American journalism. It wouldn't surprise me much if they really believed that they could cripple the American press by taking out this building. They thought they could cripple our economy by attacking the World Trade Center.

But regardless of whether or not I'm right about this, from the beginning it never made one iota of sense that a sophisticated American scientist who presumably lives and/or works somewhere in the northeast corridor would for some strange reason choose THAT place to send an anthrax letter to, along with Congress and some major media outlets.

"But regardless of whether or not I'm right about this, from the beginning it never made one iota of sense that a sophisticated American scientist who presumably lives and/or works somewhere in the northeast corridor would for some strange reason choose THAT place to send an anthrax letter to, along with Congress and some major media outlets."

I'm with you right there. Why on earth choose tabloids that run stories about Dolly Parton giving birth to aliens to send your anthrax powder to? A US scientist or insider just doesn't do that. And then there's the JLo letter - beyond bizarre! Why choose to write JLo's name on a letter full of anthrax? Of course, Ed Lake simply denies that the JLo letter did contain anthrax. But what are the chances of a letter containing pink colored powder to arrive at AMI the same week as another real anthrax letter? Note PINK colored powder, not white. Guess what color anthrax powder is often described as being?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1005-02.htm

The anthrax buried on Vozrozhdeniye Island is a pink powder that was designed specifically to infect humans.

And there was a person, not sure if he was a hijacker, or a friend of the hijackers that had a subscription to one of their publications in SPANISH.

I can see them checking the wrong box.

But you are right....lots of pictures, maybe they even learned some English from reading the thing.

The lone male American scientist would only think of the NYT and the AMI building if he used darts on encyclopedias.

The way I looked at it was exposure. If the perps managed to infect all of the copies of The Star, The Enquirer, etc etc, and those publications were set next to the long lines at the check out counter, the maximum coverage would occur.

Certainly everyone had exposure to the copies. What they didn't know was that they are NOT published in that building and sending a letter to that building would not infect all that are distributed throughout the country.

Of course, Ed Lake simply denies that the JLo letter did contain anthrax.

I don't "simply deny" it. I provide the facts and evidence which clearly says that J-Lo letter did NOT contain anthrax:

1. According to AMI's #1 newspaper, The National Enquirer, the J-Lo letter was opened on the third floor. According to the CDC, the third floor is the least contaminated floor in the building. The link to their report is HERE.

2. Bobby Bender, who is the person who opened the J-Lo letter, was not one of those contaminated by anthrax.

3. Bender carried the opened J-Lo letter all around the third floor, yet that floor was the least contaminated floor and he was not contaminated.

4. Stephanie Dailey, the person who opened the REAL anthrax letter and was contaminated by the REAL anthrax letter, was on vacation when the J-Lo letter was opened, so she could not have been contaminated by the J-Lo letter.

5. The area where Stephanie Daily opened the REAL anthrax letter was the MOST contaminated area in the AMI building.

For anyone to believe the J-Lo letter contained anthrax, they must totally ignore the FACTS.

There's one problem with that theory. The diagrams of the three floors of the AMI building do not show any place for printing presses. It seems pretty clear that the actual newspapers were printed elsewhere.

"Stephanie Dailey, the person who opened the REAL anthrax letter and was contaminated by the REAL anthrax letter..."

No anthrax letter was ever recovered from Stephanie's mail, or Bob Steven's mail, or from any AMI mail.

It is therefore **undetermined** if the AMI infections were from the mail. Infections can come from other sources (e.g. cash, contact with the terrorists, etc.).

There was and is no known "real anthrax letter" sent to AMI.

"Your cash theory is interesting, however does not bear out. Stevens would have carried the cash out of the building and distributed it in the community and on vacation in North Carolina."

Unknown. Stevens could have made change for someone inside the AMI building. Or lost a bet. Or paid a debt. Or handed out cash for someone to go grab donuts for the Office. Or any of a thousand different ways for his tainted cash to have crossed several AMI employees' hands.

Incredible, you cite the CDC article as your authority that the JLo letter didn't contain anthrax, and yet that article concludes it DID contain anthrax! You should work for the FBI. I seem to remember they recently published a paper citing an article in Science magazine as authority that the spores contained no additives, when the Science article actually stated the spores DID contain additives. And we all know the FBI lab's reputation for honesty and integrity.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol8no10/02-0354.htm

The index patient’s infection most likely occurred from inhalation of B. anthracis spores following a primary aerosolization, i.e., spores released into the air after opening a spore-containing letter. This scenario is consistent with co-workers’ recollections that the index patient held a letter containing powder over his computer keyboard, as well as environmental samples showing contamination at his keyboard, an incoming-mail desk near his workspace, and his mailroom mailbox.

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