A former government biologist whose Maryland apartment was searched for anthrax commissioned a 1999 study on how a bioterror attack could be carried out by mail.
The study, meant to help improve defenses against bioterrorism, described what would happen if an envelope of weapons-grade anthrax were opened in an office. Letters containing anthrax that were mailed last October to offices of media organizations and Democratic senators killed six people and panicked the nation.
The FBI says Dr. Steven Hatfill, 48, who worked in the government's secret Fort Detrick bioweapons labs in Maryland until 1999, is not a suspect and volunteered his apartment for a search last Tuesday to clear his name. But some critics of the FBI investigation have been urging closer scrutiny of Hatfill for months.
Hatfill could not be reached, but he has told reporters he was given a letter by the FBI declaring he is not a suspect. The Associated Press reported the FBI has been unable to place Hatfill near Trenton during the time the anthrax letters were mailed there.
The Baltimore Sun, which first reported on the study Hatfill commissioned while working at a defense contracting firm, said he left a bitter phone message saying attention from the feds and reporters cost him his job in March.
"I've been in this field for a number of years, working until 3 o'clock in the morning, trying to counter this type of weapon of mass destruction, and, sir, my career is over at this time," Hatfill said.
The feds insist Hatfill is just one of a pool of 20 to 30 microbiologists being scrutinized because of their expertise.
But his apartment — like those of two dozen other scientists — had been searched before. Agents this week also went through a storage shed he rents in Florida.
Hatfill, whose resume includes Army Special Forces training, stints in Zaire and Antarctica, a bagful of advanced degrees and work with the world's most deadly viruses, has long warned of bioterror threats.
Epidemic Killed 200
Hatfill's expertise and access to the germs are not the only reasons he is fighting off suspicions.
He was in Zimbabwe, detailed by the Army to the government's clandestine military squad during the civil war of the late 1970s, when Zimbabwe saw the world's largest cutaneous anthrax epidemic. About 10,000 people were infected and 200 died in an epidemic that some researchers think was caused by biowarfare.
Hatfill attended the University of Zimbabwe Medical School in the capital Harare, where he lived near the Greendale Primary School. Investigators have noted that the return address on two of the anthrax letters was a fictitious "Greendale School."
Hatfill's security clearance was suspended by the Pentagon last Aug. 23 for unknown reasons. The contractor, Science Applications International Corp., says it let him go in March because it had not been reinstated, not because of press inquiries, the Baltimore Sun reported.