MD thinks terrorist had anthrax
Florida physician says he treated hijacker for lesion that researchers believe was skin form
Sunday, March 24, 2002
BY MARK MUELLER Star-Ledger Staff
A Florida doctor who treated one of the Sept. 11 hijackers for an unusual lesion last summer believes the man may have been infected with anthrax, a theory recently backed by a panel of bioterrorism experts.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, based in Baltimore, wrote in a memo to federal officials last month that cutaneous, or skin, anthrax was the most likely diagnosis for Ahmed Alhaznawi, said Tim Parsons, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins' school of public health.
The development, first reported yesterday in the New York Times, provides another intriguing, if strictly circumstantial, link between the hijackers and the anthrax-tainted letters that killed five people and sickened more than a dozen others last fall. At least four tainted letters passed through a Hamilton Township mail-processing facility.
The FBI has known of the doctor's conclusions since October, but exhaustive investigation has so far yielded no proof that the hijackers possessed the deadly bacteria, Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the bureau in Washington, said yesterday.
"We've looked at this issue and vetted it through multiple agencies, and we have no evidence to support that the hijackers had ever come into contact with anthrax," Bresson said. "It doesn't change anything."
While the FBI has reached no definitive conclusions, agency profilers have worked up a portrait of the anthrax killer as a "lone wolf" domestic scientist with access to a well-equipped laboratory and military-grade anthrax.
But the findings by the Florida physician, Christos Tsonas, gained new attention with the interest by the Johns Hopkins researchers, who interviewed Tsonas about his brief examination of Alhaznawi in the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale.
Alhaznawi -- one of the hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, the plane that took off in Newark and crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside -- arrived at the hospital in June with Ziad Jarrah, Flight 93's pilot. Both men, living in Florida at the time, would later take up residence in Paterson.
Alhaznawi told Tsonas he had bumped into a suitcase two months earlier, resulting in a dark lesion that remained on his leg. Tsonas treated the lesion -- slightly less than an inch wide, with red, raised edges -- by removing the scab and cleaning it, the Times reported. He then gave Alhaznawi a prescription for Keflex, a widely used antibiotic, and sent him away. While Tsonas considered the lesion odd in a young man with no history of diabetes, he told the Times he didn't think about the visit again until two FBI agents, bearing photos of Jarrah and Alhaznawi, came to see him in October.
Investigators had found the antibiotic among Alhaznawi's belongings, tracing it back to Tsonas.
By then, the anthrax attacks were in full bloom, the number of victims and public fear growing by the day.
Tsonas revisited his scant records of Alhaznawi's visit -- he had taken no cultures -- and decided the ulcerous mark was consistent with cutaneous anthrax, which leaves telltale lesions on its victims. Tsonas shared his theory with the FBI.
Months later, the doctors at the Johns Hopkins center backed Tsonas' view, sending to federal officials a memo calling anthrax infection "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available."
"Such a conclusion of course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks," the memo said.
Tsonas, in a statement, said yesterday he would have no further comment beyond what he told the Times. Calls to the Johns Hopkins doctors were not returned. A spokeswoman for the Fort Lauderdale hospital would say only that officials were cooperating with the FBI.
The theory that Alhaznawi contracted anthrax contributes to circumstantial evidence indicating some link between Sept. 11, the world's deadliest terrorist attack, and the anthrax mailings, the nation's first brush with modern bioterrorism.
Several of the hijackers, Alhaznawi among them, attended flight school near the Florida tabloid where the first anthrax victim, Robert Stephens, worked as a photo editor. The hijackers also lived in the area, some of them finding their apartments through a real estate agent who was married to the tabloid's editor.
Further suspicion was raised when a Delray Beach pharmacist told authorities Mohamed Atta, the terrorist plot's suspected ringleader, sought out medication to treat an angry rash on his hands. Atta also had been inquiring at local airports about crop-dusting.
While those actions present a tantalizing chain of clues, they don't add up to proof. They also don't explain who might have mailed the letters for the hijackers, who died a week before the first tainted notes were postmarked.
Bresson, the FBI spokesman, said yesterday that while the agency remains open to all ideas, investigators are leaning heavily toward a domestic suspect.
Kevin Donovan, the former chief of the FBI's New Jersey office, spoke more explicitly about that theory in an interview with The Star-Ledger two weeks ago, shortly after he had been promoted to the bureau's New York office.
Donovan called the likely suspect a U.S. resident with "significant scientific background."
The tainted letters, sent to Capitol Hill and to media organizations in New York, were postmarked Sept. 18 and Oct. 9. All had passed through the Hamilton mail-sorting facility, leading authorities to suspect the sender knows the area.
"I don't know if it's someone currently in New Jersey," Donovan said. "But we all believe it's someone with a familiarity with the Trenton area, who's been in and out of here, either through previous employment or currently."