Profile of a Killer

The New York Times ^ | January 4, 2002 | By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Shermy]

Mr. K's first article.

[Elmo Lincoln]

The Anthrax Files

By Nicholas D. Kristof

New York Times | Opinion

Friday, 12 July, 2002

When someone expert in bio-warfare mailed anthrax last fall, it may not have been the first time he had struck.

So while the F.B.I. has been unbelievably lethargic in its investigation so far, any year now it will re-examine the package that arrived on April 24, 1997, at the B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington D.C. The package contained a petri dish mislabeled "anthracks."

The dish did not contain anthrax. But a Navy lab determined that it was bacillus cereus, a very close, non-toxic cousin of anthrax used by the U.S. Defense Department.

Anybody able to obtain bacillus cereus knew how to spell "anthrax." An echo of that deliberate misspelling came last fall when the anthrax letters suggested taking "penacilin."

The choice of B'nai B'rith probably was meant to suggest Arab terrorists, because the building had once been the target of an assault by Muslim gunmen. In the same way, F.B.I. profilers are convinced that the real anthrax attacks last year were conducted by an American scientist trying to pin the blame on Arabs.


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