By Michael Rosenwald, Boston Globe Staff, 11/24/2001
ederal agents are closely monitoring the disappearance case of Harvard biology professor Don C. Wiley because of his research interests in a number of potentially deadly viruses, including Ebola, the FBI said yesterday in Memphis.
Wiley's whereabouts remained a mystery yesterday, a week after his car was found on a bridge over the Mississippi River. His family continued to insist that the noted biologist, whose papers explored the workings of some of the deadliest viruses in the world, would not have killed himself.
William Woerner, the acting assistant special agent in charge of the Memphis FBI office, said his agents became interested in the case after learning of Wiley's profession, then made their interest known to Memphis detectives.
''His line of work and field of expertise [are] what prompted our call to them,'' Woerner said, adding that his office was concerned ''given our state of affairs post-Sept. 11.''
Federal authorities are paying close attention to potential bioterrorist threats. The Ebola virus - about which Wiley was a national expert, along with HIV and influenza - is a hemorrhagic fever that causes the body's fluids to ooze out of tissues and orifices.
Ebola is highly contagious and lethal, killing between 50 and 90 percent of people infected in known outbreaks. There is no vaccine.
Wiley's wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir, said that while she is baffled by her husband's disappearance, she did not think it was related to his work or papers, which can be found on his lab's Web site.
''That just doesn't seem plausible,'' Valgeirsdottir said. ''I mean, there are a lot of kooks out there, and I don't know for a fact that this wasn't the reason, but you'd have to have someone who read his Web site and decided they found something interesting.''
Woerner said he wasn't sure whether top FBI officials in Washington had been notified about Wiley, who has been missing since Nov. 16. ''It's very likely that Washington has been notified, but I can't confirm that,'' he said.
Memphis police have control over the investigation, Woerner said.
Lieutenant Walter Norris of the city's homicide squad refused to confirm whether detectives were considering Wiley's profession as a reason for his disappearance. ''We're checking anything that can be thought of,'' he said. ''Some things the FBI can help us on, so there is involvement there also.''
Norris said there were no developments in the case yesterday. Authorities continued to patrol, in boats and helicopters, the area of the Mississippi River where Wiley's rented car was found nearby early in the morning of Nov. 16.
Based on her daily communications with Memphis police about her husband's case, Valgeirsdottir said, she thinks investigators are focusing on the river. ''They've mentioned that maybe it was an accident, that he fell in, or that he jumped, but clearly they are focusing on the river as being the site to whatever happened,'' she said.
She recently learned that there was some small damage to the car, but said she did not know what it was. Memphis police refused to confirm or deny there was any damage.
Norris said missing-person cases are not unusual in and around the city. ''People come up missing all the time,'' he said, ''and a lot of times they turn up.''
If Wiley somehow wound up in the river and drowned, it could be weeks or even months before a body is found, Norris said.
Wiley has not been seen since about midnight on Nov. 16, when he attended a banquet with colleagues on the scientific advisory board of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital at The Peabody hotel in Memphis.
Police discovered his rented Mitsubishi Galant at 4 a.m. on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which is a five-minute drive from the hotel. The car was pointed toward Arkansas, and police have said the car was probably there no longer than 15 minutes before an officer saw it, because a stopped vehicle would have backed up traffic on the two-lane bridge. There was no sign of a struggle.
''This whole thing,'' Valgeirsdottir said, ''just doesn't add up.''
Michael Rosenwald can be reached at mrosenwald@globe.com.
Richard Preston outlines bioterrorism threat in ISU speech
November 18, 2001 By TAMMY JOHNSON
of the Journal Star
NORMAL - Illinois State University President Victor Boschini had high praise for an author who visited the school last week.
"He's brilliant, he's funny and he scared the hell out of me," Boschini said.
Investigative journalist Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone" and "The Cobra Event: A Case Study in Biological Terrorism," both books on bioterrorism, warned students, faculty and administrators about the real threat of bioterrorism in the United States.
Preston's words may have failed to instill a real sense of fear in Americans a few months ago, but the large crowd remained dead silent Tuesday after he wrapped up the last of several true stories on deadly viruses.
While Preston focused largely on the global threat of smallpox, he also addressed questions about the latest anthrax scare.
He criticized the government for wasting time after the first anthrax outbreak. Lives were lost unnecessarily, he said, because officials assumed natural causes were behind the anthrax.
He also was "outraged" when "The Cobra Event," a 1997 novel on biological weapons and terrorism, failed to generate enough attention from government officials.
Instead, the book was paid lip service, he said. "At some important level, the government wasn't getting it."
"The Cobra Event" centers on a young doctor who works with a secret FBI team to stop bioterrorism in New York City.
Preston said his novel and the current anthrax situation have several parallels.
For example, the attacker in Preston's novel is a serial terrorist. Similarly, the FBI believes one person - likely someone with a scientific background - is responsible for mailing the anthrax.
Although the novel is fictional, it is backed by three years of research. Preston said he decided to turn the project into a novel when some of his most important FBI sources refused to talk unless they remained anonymous.
Preston's earlier book, "The Hot Zone," was a best-selling nonfiction book that eventually led to production of the movie "Outbreak."
"The Hot Zone" documents a natural outbreak of the Ebola virus near Washington, D.C., in 1989.
Preston said he wondered why the government knew so much about the deadly virus. He later learned the former Soviet Union had Ebola stored in missiles aimed at the United States.
But smallpox is a far greater threat, he said, and the former Soviet Union was thought to have large amounts of it as well.
North Korea, Iran and Iraq also have experimented with smallpox as a weapon, and Syria, Israel, India, China and Pakistan also may have researched the possibility of using it.
The highly contagious virus has a one-in-three fatality rate, Preston said, adding that one person with smallpox would constitute a global emergency.
To make matters worse, little of the vaccine is available, although there is a concerted effort to make more, he said.
Smallpox is expensive and difficult to use as a biological weapon, Preston said. Anthrax, on the other hand, is a good biological weapon because it's cheaper and requires less skill to make.
In addition, with the help of silica - a substance found in potato chips to keep them from getting soggy and sticking together - anthrax in its powder form dissipates into the air.
Despite his warnings, Preston left audience members with a few positive words and some suggestions for the future.
The United States has the most powerful biotechnology in the world and is working on technology that would instantly detect viruses such as smallpox and anthrax, he said.
More funding for such research and increased respect for public health officials would further protect Americans from bioterrorism.
He said the public health community needs additional money to better prepare itself for the emergence of diseases.
ISU freshmen Nicole Wenzel and Lauren Zajac said Preston's warnings put a bit of a scare into them, but not because of the recent anthrax cases. Instead, they are frightened by the idea that other countries may have stockpiles of the bacteria.
"I'm more scared of smallpox than anthrax because there isn't a cure and there are limited vaccines," Wenzel said.
David Williams, ISU associate vice president of Information and Technology, said Preston believes it's his mission to warn Americans about smallpox.
"And he's good about putting it into lay terms so it gets people's attention," he said.