Ex-CIA Microbiologist Reveals Iraqi Plot to Attack US With Biowarfare by 2002 [Please read]

[The following are excerpts from a video of Larry Wayne Harris, a former microbiologist with the CIA, describing details of future plans by Iraq to attack the US with biowarfare. Portions of the tape discuss plans of Iraqi terrorists in detail, which could be used by copycat terrorists reading this; therefore I have omitted certain portions. Short passages of sensitive material are replaced with ********** and longer sections with brackets summarizing what was discussed. Harris displays and explains biowarfare equipment confiscated from an Iraqi terrorist cell in the United States, and since they are still operating here I omitted the details of its confiscation-JS]

Hello. My name is Larry Wayne Harris, and I am a registered microbiologist. I was born and raised in the hills of southwestern Virginia, having lost my parents when I was a very small boy. I was adopted by my paternal grandparents... Many times while I was growing up my grandparents told me stories of the great swine flu epidemic of 1918... [J]ust about everyone in the community was literally down with the flu. [L]arge numbers of people were dying. At first the undertaker could keep up, but very shortly, they simply could not keep up any more...Soon, individual graves could not be dug fast enough. Soon entire families or parts of families had to be buried in a single grave. In a few days...they had to start putting the bodies into a coal mine and started stacking them up like cordwood...They would hook up the horses to a large freight wagon, and they would go house to house, calling "Bring out the dead, bring out the dead." Once the swine flu had burned itself out there were nearly twenty million dead.

I had fallen in love with microbiology when I was a small boy, vowing to my grandparents that I would become a microbiologist when I grew up, so that I might be able to prevent a great plague like this from ever happening again...During my senior year in high school, I went to the army recruiter and told them, I would enlist when I graduated if he could find me a place I could work in a microbiology laboratory. A few days later I got a letter from a recruiter who informed me, that he had located a laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, where I was stationed. A few days after graduation, I enlisted in the army, and after basic training I was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I worked my way through Aberdeen in military biological warfare and defense. I was always defense. I was never offense. I would have absolutely nothing to do with offense...After finishing up my tour in the military, I was released from the military, and I returned to college. I went to Ohio State University. And while at Ohio State University, there was another laboratory that adjoined itself to Ohio State, which is known as the Betel (sp?) Institute. While at the Betel Institute, we also did research into biological warfare. And as it happened in 1972, when I first got out of the military, we had signed treaties banning all forms of offensive and defensive biological warfare. Biowar was considered a great harm to the world at large, and so we banned it. They simply just banned it.

What actually happened then, was that the military started to, took the biological warfare entity, they busted it up and broke it up into large numbers of very small little cells all over the United States. It seems like the treaty that was signed was between individual nations, it had nothing to do with private corporations. And so, I studied through at Ohio State University, basically, working part-time at a laboratory, just getting my expertise at microbiology. After graduating, I went down south, Florida area, worked in a small private laboratory for many years, as a clinical microbiologist. In 1984 I was recruited back by the Company, the Company being the Central Intelligence Agency, worked in a small reference laboratory. And while at that laboratory, we started seeing some very unusual microbes. Basically, the bacteria that we were starting to observe was that, if the CIA went out in the field somewhere and they found a microbe, and they thought that it may have been used as a biological warfare agent, they would bring it back to a reference laboratory, ours was one of many, and see if one, could this have been a biological warfare agent; could this have been genetically engineered? In other words, it didn't happen in nature, wasn't just a combination in nature. This is something that happened in nature, or actually engineered. And then, how do we find the backdoor? "Backdoor" being a way to treat it.

In the laboratory in the later eighties, we were told that the Ayatollah Khomeni was getting ready to use biological warfare in an offensive manner against one of our allies, the Iraqis. And we were starting to train the Iraqis on how to defend against biological warfare. And so, I had several Iraqi students in my laboratory and we were training them, and this one young girl there, a lady, a nice lady, named Miriam Arif, and we were teaching them how to defend against biological warfare. And in 1988 we got ahold of an unusual organism, it was a mycoplasma. We tested the mycoplasma, it was Mycoplasma fermenens, which was a common soil microbe, but it had incredible evasive properties. We ran an HPLC on it, high pressure liquid chromagraph, which gives us a fingerprint of the bacteria, and after we ran the fingerprint, we would stockpile it in our computer, find out what to treat it with, and go on to the next microbe.

In 1991, when the Gulf War was starting to go on, all the Iraqi microbiologists in our laboratory were gone, of course, they were considered a security risk. Early in '91, I started seeing some very unusual symptoms coming in. And there was a hospital up in Mansfield, Ohio and I was friends with the epidemiologist there...and he asked me "Larry would you mind coming up here, we've got some very unusual patients coming in. Some of the craziest symptoms I've ever seen in my life. We're sending out samples from these patients to many different laboratories, and we're at odds with what's going on. We don't know what's happening."

And so I said "Sure, no problem." So I went up, and they had two girls there, two young ladies, and these young ladies were very, very badly off and ill...I took a couple of blood samples from each one of them, went back to the laboratory,... ran an HPLC on it. When I ran the HPLC, I fed it into the computer. The computer gave me a match, and showed that in 1988 that we had, it was a biological warfare agent. And I was very concerned about these ladies being contracted with a biological warfare agent. And so, I started making some inquiries, large numbers of inquiries. To my surprise, the Centers for Disease Control told me just forget about it. They were on top of it, it was a new strain of virus coming into here Don't worry about it.

But I didn't. And I started running through my computer scans and found out you could treat it with ordinary tetracycline. Viruses you can't treat with tetracycline. And I told the pulmonary specialist at Mansfield, "Go ahead and use tetracycline on the ladies." And their symptoms started clearing up...

After their symptoms started clearing up, I started making more inquiries about this, this agent. And my section chief said "Larry, drop it. We want you to drop it right now. Forget about it." And so after I started looking more in depth into it, in the latter part of July of '91, I came into the laboratory on a Friday morning, and the laboratory was gone. The area, the whole laboratory had been literally cleaned out. Totally cleaned out. They handed me my personal effects in a black plastic bag and they said goodbye. And as luck would have it, all the time when I would go through and doing research, I'd always keep a notebook. Write down my research in notebooks and stuff of this nature. And when a notebook got full in the laboratory I'd bring it home and throw it in the bottom of the closet. Forget about it, and go on. That day when I left the laboratory, I had all my notebooks. And also I took the opportunity when I left the laboratory to go back to college. I wanted to go back to college and take some advanced courses in microbiology, which I did.

And so in September of 1991, I reentered Ohio State University, and started taking courses in advanced microbiology, which actually was in preparation for taking my National Registry of Microbiologists' Certification Exam. I soon entered a clique of nontraditional students whose average age was around 40. In that clique was the delightful young lady known as Miriam Arif, which we worked with in the laboratory before. We soon became very close friends. Miriam, like I said, was from Iraq, and was here studying microbiology. She had a very unusual background. One of her close relatives, General Arif, was President of Iraq, and in April of 1966 he was killed in a helicopter accident. There was a long succession of military coups and now Saddam Hussein and the Republican Guard were in power. In these coups her family had not faired too well. She said several of her family members had been hanged, and that at the present time she felt that it was safer for her to be in America, until she could do something that would make her very famous back in Iraq. And so I kind of chuckled it off and stuff of this nature. And let's fast forward to February of 1993.

I had arrived early in order to get a parking spot in a rapidly-filling student parking lot and was having coffee in a small vending area in the bottom of the Med Tech building where the Med Tech courses were taught. The vending area that morning was deserted except for Miriam Arif. I will never forget the way her eyes looked that morning, very tired and glossy, and I had little doubt that she had gotten any sleep since the World Trade Center had been bombed. This was the Monday after. She must have thought that her arrest was imminent, and for the whole time she kept rambling on-it was as if she was in a daze. She was silent for a few minutes, then said, "Larry, you're a dear and trusted friend. And what I'm going to tell you over the next few minutes you can use to protect yourself and a few friends. Because when it comes my time to act, I do not want your death to be on my conscience. You obviously do not know the danger you face concerning the emergence of biological warfare as being a major threat to North America." She went on to state that nearly all emerging countries, Libya, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, were actively pursuing a germ warfare program, and were scrapping their nuclear program. There were too many reasons for this. The first being the complexity and cost of acquisition of sufficient nuclear stockpiles to be meaningful. The second reason is that biological warfare is anti-personnel warfare, not anti-material warfare, and that housing, buildings, factories, and other structures remain intact and can be used in a very short time.

I asked her if she had actually seen the Iraqi's germ warfare facilities, offensive, and she gave a resounding "Yes. Very much so." She went on to state that Iraq uses the plain-Jane approach, and that Iraq has a very large stockpile of biological agents on hand, and special bombs, and was developing rockets that would spread the infection over very large areas. They had two separate areas of biological operations: one foreign, one regional. The regional are all facilities located around small airstrips around the country [America] and are deliberately designed not to draw much attention. These airstrips will not handle large to medium aircraft, in fact, are designed for a single class of aircraft. These aircraft are single engine high-winged turboprops and can be used for crop dusting. [See latest warning from the FBI to crop dusters to watch out-JS] The regional biological operations would take only a couple of days to get into operation if they're using anthrax, or a couple of weeks if they're using plague. The chemostats, which are what they're using to grow the bacteria located in these facilities, can be explained away as holding tanks for agricultural spray products that are kept empty. And there'd never be [any] question in case they were ever questioned. In order to get them in operation, [Harris then describes the simple procedure involved to incubate the bacteria for dispersion.]

Miriam further stated that these aircraft have exceptionally long range, and that only one aircraft was located at each facility, and that if the aircraft was lost, a replacement aircraft would be flown in from another facility. They are kept very small, and very difficult to detect. And I asked her why they didn't see any germ warfare being waged during the Gulf War, and she said, responded, "We did, we did use germ warfare." The Iraqi military adhered to, in part, the Soviet military doctrine, which is, the Soviet military doctrine's modus operandi is chemical warfare should be conducted with mixed agents. Mixed agents, often referred to as cocktails, are intended to enhance the capacities of nerve agents, and defeat precautions taken by the enemy. The cocktails can be made by combining a mixture of biological toxins, nerve agents, dessicants and some biological agents such as bacteria or fungi. Miriam stated that she had personally worked in a germ warfare laboratory and that they had developed and used Mycoplasma fermenens, later called incognitus, and in which had inserted an HIV envelope gene. The genetic manipulation rendered a relatively benign mycoplasma much more invasive and pathogenic and capable of infecting many organs and tissue systems of the body simultaneously. This can, by the way, be very effectively treated with tetracycline. Miriam also stated that they had isolated a form of Ebola virus which took 3 to 7 years to kill you, and in the next few years hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans and their families would start dying.

And I asked her, why didn't Iraq use these biological weapons during the Gulf, the fast-acting biologicals? And she said they were afraid, that the Gulf War, if we use the fast-acting biologicals against the United States [they] would respond with thermonuclear weapons. And I said, "Miriam you stated that myself and the North American people were in grave dangers of biological agents being used against us. Would you elaborate?" And to this she replied, "A few hours ago, a band of fanatics blew up the World Trade Center. I am sure that my beloved Iraq did not do this thing. For when it comes time to payback, I'm sure we will demand at least one American life, for every one of my countrymen that you butchered. And we are not going to settle for some silly old building." And I asked her, "Do you know how such an attack will be carried out?" To this she responded, "Don't be silly, of course I know. For you see, all operations will be batch operations. For unlike the very complex chemostats where you have to have a constant output, and once you're up and running, with a batch operation all you need is a sterile vessel, from say a test tube up to 10 liters. ********** The vessel of choice that would be used would be a metal spray can. You know, like the ones they use to spray bugs with, like the exterminators use. The one that has a little air pump in the middle. All you gotta do once you're ready is pump it up and you're ready. **********"

And I asked her, what would be the most likely targets. And to this she responded, "For one thing, there will not just be one target, but many hundreds of targets, simultaneously across the United States. Primarily these targets will be metropolitan areas, and other inviting targets will be like the air ducts of large office buildings, or say large gatherings of people like a stadium, or just sticking the tube out of the side of a building and just letting it spray, who's going to notice a little more mist coming off the side of the building? Several cells, each cell has ten men and one woman, to act as a carrier, will be using aircraft venturis **********. These will be mounted underneath the cars, and spray tanks are in the cars, with a tubing going down to the venturis. The venturi acts like a carburetor, and when the car gets around 60 mph, one opens the valve, and a fog of death will be coming up behind the car. Other cells will be using the same venturis mounted in light aircraft to attack whole cities at a time.

I asked her, how would they get the culture, the bacterial culture? To this she replied, "It is very easy for a woman to hide a small sealed vial of dehydrated culture inside a body cavity and get it into North America. What are they going to do, take every woman that enters into the country and have some little room in an airport and make them go and lie down on a table and have their feet up in the straps and have someone look up their privates? I think not." And I asked her, "Why not use something you can obtain in this country without going through all that?" To this she replied, "There is, this is where the real irony is, for you see, Iraq bought all the dehydrated vials from companies right here in the United States, who shipped them to Iraq. These same vials are the ones that the Iraqi women are being brought back into this country, to use against the country." Miriam stated that she had made several trips back and forth between Irag and the United States. Every time that she came back into the United States, she was carrying a vial of the dehydrated anthrax, either anthrax or bubonic plague.

And one thing I asked her, the microbes of choice, and she said bubonic plague and anthrax. She said "For plague is very easy to work with. We will take a proper amount of antibiotic, and then we're safe to work with it. Once you're finished, you can very easily clean up any spills with disinfectant, and if you miss any, any will be dead within a couple of days. The anthrax will be used for specially-trained cells to attack big cities. These cells have to be extremely careful and have a lot of advanced training. If you get some on your clothing, and you happen to inhale it several years later, it could kill you. So they will have to strip thoroughly and shower, and leave every article of clothing behind. And what will be worn on attack will be left behind. The only other bacteria that will be considered was typhoid fever and cholera, and these were mostly nuisance."

I then asked her, "When she thought the attacks would begin?" and she responded "Sometime in the next few years. The attacks are centered on three Muslim holy days that are coming up. For over twenty years the Muslim sufis have been saying that the Great Satan would strike the heel of Allah sometime in the '90s. When they struck the heel of Allah, that would start off a Muslim timetable, three holy periods would arise. When the third holy period had arised, the Muslims will have reconquered the world. The first of these come up in July of '97. Because you see, Kuwait, which they considered, was the heel of Allah. The Great Satan, they considered to be the United States. The next will be sometime in the year 1999, the next one [in] 2001. One thing is certain, before the year 2002, the country's population will be down to less than 50 million."

Then, after we talked with Miriam that morning, Miriam seemed to be a lot calmer, easier, and she said, "Larry, why don't you meet me this afternoon up on the third story of the main library, where we can have some privacy? I need to slip back to my apartment. I want to get you something I want to show you." That afternoon, I met Miriam in the main library, and we found a secluded place in the towers. Miriam opened her briefcase and took out a map of the United States that had been divided up into grids. Each grid had a number, the latitude and longitude designations. Miriam stated that these grids were cells already in place. And hundreds of cells will be in place before July of '97. Miriam took out another map and it was a map of this nation's power grid. On the map were little blue squares, that upon closer examination, these were power plants. Beside each square was a number; latitude and longitude. Miriam stated that these were cell designations. Miriam stated this country's electric power was [Miriam goes on to describe what Iraq sees as the Achilles' heel of our power system, and how they plan to bring down the power grid.] [T]he numbers are the cells' members whose job before they head back to Iraq is to take out those **********. The latitude and longitude ********** are so precise that if it became necessary they could lay in an 80mm mortar. Miriam then took out of her briefcase a set of blueprints, and she said "This is a little goodie that Iraq has come up with **********." [Miriam then goes into great detail of the manufacture of a bazooka accurate to 200 yds. The units can be made mostly with basic materials obtained from a local hardware store.] Miriam stated that each cell was equipped with twenty units. And then she kind of said with a snicker: "Made in America."

Miriam stated she had no problem telling this because no one will ever believe me. She stated that she was on the move and would probably not see me again, and to please give her at least a week before I started asking any questions, for she knew my curiosity would get the better of me. She closed her briefcase, got up and headed for the elevator, stopped and turned around and put her hand out, in a gesture like Spock from Star Trek, and said "Live long and prosper." She turned into the elevator and was gone.

A few days later, I started a barrage of phone calls to the FBI, CIA and just about everyone I knew to call, but Miriam was right. No one believed me. Every bureaucrat that I called was simply not interested. I called CDC back and after phone tag was finally transferred to Fort Collins, the vector division. I told him what Miriam had told me, and they responded that they thought I'd been watching too many science fiction movies, and not to worry about it. I asked him if there was a contingency plan if this ever occurred. They said that they did, and I asked them if they'd send me a copy. They said that they would, but after a couple of weeks, nothing arrived. So I called them back. After several weeks, no contingency plan. I put them on spot, and finally asked them, "Why do you not send me a contingency plan? And if there is no contingency plan, so state." Finally the Centers for Disease Control stated that in 1972, all biological civil defense programs had been scrapped. There are no contingency plans. The United States is wide open....

[A] visting English microbiologist who had written several papers on advancing germ warfare, would be lecturing there [at Ohio St.] in a few weeks. On March 1993 I attended the lecture...The lecturer went on to state very clearly, that in the next few years, the United States could almost certainly look forward to massive amounts of biological warfare being used on the United States...

[Harris went on to write his own book about defending against biological warfare. He was contacted by the Pentagon who debriefed him. He recounts the following.]

And so I went and visited a place which is just west of Columbus, Ohio, for a military debriefing. We had a whole team of scientists, engineers, Air Force, Army, other high-ranking officers. During the debriefing, they would give you a series, a lie-detector test, if you would. Which is, they will ask you a question, several questions they know you're going to answer truthfully. They get a voice-stress analysis, a voice print. And when you get the voice print, they will then ask you a series of other questions, and they will analyze the prints that they get on your future questions, answers to future questions, on your initial one. That is known as a voice-stress analysis.

And so, they started asking me a series of questions, the interview lasted almost six hours. After about five hours, the girl who was monitoring the voice-stress analysis, she had to get up to go the bathroom to puke. She came back white as a ghost and she said "The needle has not varied, not one bit, for five hours. He is telling the truth." We started pouring in the numbers, what would happen if the Iraqi cells, we knew there was 100 cells in 1993. If the 100 cells would release the biologicals, what would be the actual outcome to the United States?...

What proof do we have that this is happening? A young lady with the Pentagon, told me that in October... of '96, they followed two Iraqi females in from Baghdad coming into Vancouver, Washington. They were taken off an aircraft in Vancouver, Washington where they took them in and did a body cavity search. One girl, they recovered a vial of anthrax, the other girl was carrying a vial of bubonic plague...

We started running the numbers. We took the numbers and fed it into the computer. After we fed it into the computer, the numbers, we started asking the question, "How many people are we going to lose?" What we found out, what the computer models showed us, if we have only 100 cells in the continental United States, and these 100 cells give us 1000 points of release...We fed it into the computer. What the computer models showed us was that, if we know the day of the attack, if we know the hour of the attack, if we know the minute of the attack, as we stand right here, right now, we're going to lose 180 million people. If we do not know the day of the attack, but only start knowing when people start dropping dead, we could literally lose upwards of 230 million people.

Now they said OK, what would be the long-term effects? Let's just go with bubonic plague...Within 48 hrs. after it's sprayed out it will start drying up and dying...But anybody who catches the plague, every person who catches the plague... every cough they have they spew out more bubonic plague into the air. If they hit a city with bubonic plague, the people spread out from that city, wherever they go with bubonic plague, every area they go into, they spread more bubonic plague. Now people will say, "Well, but you have antibiotics, well, treat it." Yes, we do. We have a major problem, however. That major problem is the availability of antibiotics. This comes from straight from ********** of the Pentagon, also we worked with the Michigan Biological Institute. If they hit a single city, let's just say New York City right now. With, let's just say bubonic plague. Just bubonic plague. With the way our current medical practices are set up in the United States, and this is what the Pentagon officials told me...with the casualty management team,... they use a process known as triage. Triage, meaning three. When your patients are coming into the hospital, you will divide them into three different categories. Category, one, they need minor first aid. Category two, moderate to heavy treatment. Category three, extremely heavy treatment. And most of them they're going to lose. You see, with bubonic plague or anthrax, once you start showing the symptoms, once the symptoms manifest themselves, you're dead. Right off the bat...One thing my contacts at the Pentagon that dealt with triage said that, if the Iraqis would hit a single American city, like New York City, with our current medical procedures, that we're using right now, it would strip this nation of its entire antibiotic supply. The procedures we have right now is that you take the worst patients first. But you've got to remember, is that once you start showing the symptoms, you're dead. So which means, only the patients, people coming to the hospital, only those people who are bringing the people who are sick are the ones who should be given the antibiotics. The ones who've already got the symptoms, they're dead. Quite frankly, they're dead.

Now with anthrax, once it's released, unlike plague, plague once it's released into the air, within 48 hrs. it's going to start dying. Plague's going to start dying. Anthrax, on the other hand, has got a little bit longer shelf life. We had an island off the Scottish coast where we experimented with an anthrax bomb back in the 40s. It's about six acres square, and I've been told it's about flat as a pancake. We've tried every known procedure known to mankind to decontaminate that island. And that island is still off limits and it's flat as a pancake, six acres square. You see, the shelf life of anthrax spores is approximately 5,000 years. Now, if you hit a city, say like New York City or what have you, the question becomes, how do you decontaminate it? If we could not decontaminate an island, that was six acres square, how do you decontaminate a city? The situation is, you do not decontaminate the city. Quite frankly, what happens, the city becomes uninhabitable.

Also, the Pentagon told me, flat out, that they have already run contingency plans on Washington, D.C. They said right now, we have, in Washington, D.C., one hospital that is set up to take care of biological casualties. That hospital had two doctors and two beds. Out of the doctors' own mouths, they said "We would have tens of thousands of people die waiting for treatment." Quite frankly, we have no warning equipment, stuff of this nature.

Now, what the Pentagon told me, that the casualty management team, if we lost 4,000 people in a single day, it would literally overwhelm everything we had, it would panic us out of existence. Now a single container, let's just go to New York City, let's just take New York City as an example. We're going to run a little tape about just what would happen in New York City if someone used a single container of anthrax and a commercial paint sprayer which is very inefficient.

[Plays a video narrated by Bill Curtis of A&E]
Curtis: "White House Security experts have examined just such a scenario. A small ship, sailing just off Manhattan, up the Hudson River, could disperse anthrax spores using an industrial paint sprayer. Within 48 hrs., over 400,000 people would die. Long before then the boat would have been destroyed, the terrorists would have escaped." ...

[Harris resumes]
If they would hit a single city, New York City, with a single container of anthrax, just one, we are going to lose upwards of 400,000 people. But see that's with a commercial paint sprayer. This thing [gesturing to a chemostat unit confiscated from an Iraqi cell unit] is far more efficient than a commercial paint sprayer...With this little unit here you might even go as much as 1 million people...

Now, the question is, this is from the Pentagon, what do you do with the bodies? Our mortuaries are set up right now, that if, for so many deaths per thousand people...The problem is disposing of the corpses. You see, with anthrax, if a person dies, in place, and you leave the bodies laying around, they will decompose. After they decompose, the wind starts blowing through them, the remains and the anthrax spores start coming up into the air again...

SUN Profile: Harris' troubled past includes mail fraud, white supremacy

February 23, 1998 at 10:14:35 PST
By Larry Henry
LAS VEGAS SUN

Larry Wayne Harris, who was arrested in Henderson this week after supposedly carrying enough deadly anthrax germ to "wipe out" Las Vegas, has a troubled history with fatal biological material.

Harris also is aligned with a racist, anti-semitic movement that refers to Jews as the "children of Satan" and blacks as "subhuman mud people."

A registered microbiologist who holds art degrees from Ashland University and Ohio State University, Harris, 46, who was born in Richlands, Va., was thrust into national notoriety in 1995.

In May of that year, he was arrested at his Lancaster, Ohio, home with three vials of freeze-dried yersinia pestis, an organism that causes bubonic plague.

The bubonic plague killed one-fourth of Europe in the 1300s but now can be treated with antibodies.

Harris' samples, which were inert, were in the glove compartment of his Subaru. None of the vials had been opened.

Harris reportedly paid $240 for the samples and received them via Federal Express from American Type Culture Collection, a lab in Rockville, Md.

Harris allegedly told scientists in Maryland that the samples were for his own lab, which he said had approval from Ohio authorities, and was called Small Animal Microbiology Laboratory.

However, Ohio law enforcement officials discovered that Harris did not have a lab license, and he was arrested.

Harris was charged with three counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud. The wire charge was based on phone calls and faxes to the Maryland lab.

Harris plea bargained in December 1995 to one count of wire fraud. In April 1997, he was placed on 18 months of probation and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. The other three charges were dismissed.

Harris told authorities he needed the samples for research on his self-published book, "Biological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America."

The 131-page book is available on the Internet for $28.50.

In the book, Harris tells of a happenstance meeting at Ohio State University in 1991 between him and another student, an Iraqi woman named Mariam, who became a friend.

Harris wrote that he learned from Mariam that Iraq and other Middle East countries planned to spread biological disease in the United States.

Harris has said germ-carrying rats and aircraft could be used to spread disease.

In the book, Harris says the Cessna 150 is an ideal aircraft for biological attacks. That is the same model that crashed into the White House in 1995.

Harris, who claimed to have worked for the CIA from 1985 to 1990, discusses the supposed Middle East plot on a $4 cassette called "Germ Warfare in the U.S."

Harris has maintained that his book and other materials are instructions on how to survive biological attacks.

At a fair in Ohio to promote his book, Harris told people at his booth to take antibodies against the bubonic plague, which could kill millions.

"I am a scientist," he has said. "I am absolutely of no harm to anyone. I never, never intended to hurt anyone."

Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which operates Klanwatch, has monitored Harris because of his affiliation with Aryan Nations and other white supremacist groups.

While Ohio police were searching Harris' home in 1995, they discovered a certificate stating that Harris was a lieutenant in the Aryan Nations, a white separatist organization founded in prisons and based in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

Tim Bishop, a national organizer for Aryan Nations, told an Ohio newspaper that Harris joined the group in 1994.

Harris told The Columbus Dispatch before an appearance in Lancaster Municipal Court that he was a member of the Christian Identity Church, a pseudo-religious sect that preaches neo-Nazi beliefs.

Potok said Christian Identity, which is the Aryan Nations' church, has about 50,000 members and believes that "Jews are the biological children of Satan and blacks are subhuman mud people."

The Rev. Richard Butler of Christian Identity told the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette in 1995 that the Bible wants white people to "be separate and to have domination over the earth."

"You don't put chicken hawks in with chickens," Butler said, "and you don't put a fox in with rabbits. You have to separate them as God intended."

In May 1995, Ohio television station WBNS-TV reported that Harris was questioned in 1993 about perceived threats toward President Clinton.

It also reported that Harris, a former well and septic tank inspector, was a member of the National Alliance, a white supremacist group that is believed to have influenced Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Harris has claimed he no longer belongs to the Aryan Nations, but one official told the SUN Harris is not a member because he was kicked out.

"They don't like their members going to prison," the official said. "It's bad PR."

Potok said Harris is a concern also because of his book on germ warfare and his history with biological agents.

The FBI complaint issued after his arrest in Henderson said Harris in the summer of 1997 "told a group of plans to place a 'globe' of bubonic plague toxins in a New York subway station, where it would be broken by a passing subway train, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths."

The complaint also said Harris displayed a vial of military-strength anthrax in room 921 of the Gold Coast hotel-casino and said it could "wipe out the city."

Potok said Harris since 1995 has traveled the country inoculating his friends against anthrax.

Harris' web-based book on apocalyptic warfare urges people to stockpile antibiotics. One doctor said that Harris' recommendation for tetracycline, an antibiotic effective for treating anthrax, is five times the normal dose.

The American Society of Microbiology said today it "expects that all members will use their knowledge and skills for the advancement of human welfare and deplores the misuse of microbiological sciences."

Harris is a "registered microbiologist," meaning he is certified by the National Registry of Microbiologists under ASM.

According to the ASM requirements, Harris meets the minimum level of knowledge and has taken a minimum number of microbiology courses with a year's experience in a laboratory.

To become registered, Harris passed the ASM exam.

That shows Harris knows basic microbiology and his way around a lab, ASM spokesman Jim Sleewa said today.

Source: Las Vegas SUN and wire reports

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