Steve Hatfill, Anthrax, And Bushwah

This isn't going to be a cute column. It may be a bit long. Some things need saying, so I'm going to say them.

Recently stories have appeared in the press implying that Steve Hatfill, among other things a former ebola researcher at the Army's biological-warfare research center at Fort Detrick, Md, sent the notorious anthrax-bearing letters to people around the country. The implication is that he is a murderer.

I know Hatfill socially, though we are not intimate. We met years back in Washington at a party held by a common friend. We have the occasional beer, bump into each other every year or so at parties, and infrequently participate in minor pub crawls.

Hatfill interested me because, aside from being good company, he was smart and knew a great deal about things technical, as for example ebola. I regard him as a friend, and will continue to do so until it is established that he has been killing people, which I think unlikely.

My involvement: In August of 1997, I published in the Washington Times a column I wrote with Steve's help on the vulnerability of the US to biological terrorism. At the time I was writing a weekly police column. Terrorism fit. The column re-emerged in connection with the Hatfill-as-murderer stories.

Since then, though on vacation in Mexico, I have gotten email from countless media outlets asking for interviews about him: The New York Post, Nightline, the New York Times, and such. In most cases I begged off. I know what television is, and know better than to subject myself to its directed editing. However, I have followed the stories. Overall the coverage has been contemptible, being half stampede and half lynch mob.

When the professional crosses into the personal, writing gets difficult. Personally, I'd trust Steve with my life. Journalistically, I can't tell you he didn't do it. How could I know? I don't think he did, but that is a judgment, not a fact. Jeff Dahmer seemed to be a nice fellow until you learned of his grazing habits. Neither can I prove that you didn't do it, or that Steve isn't a robotic space-alien disguised as an ebola researcher.

I can tell you, however, that the stories have embodied every trait that makes people detest the press. They have been mostly innuendo. They rely almost totally on unnamed sources, and largely fail to make sense. Many have been of the sort that run, "Sources say that Smith was seen walking past the parking lot. The next day a body was found there." The reader is invited to make the connection.

As one example chosen from many, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, one of those who emailed me about Hatfill, wrote in a column about "Mr. Z," recognizably Hatfill.

Asks Kristof, "Have you [the FBI] examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 19789-79?"

Hatfill is now promoted to mass murderer. No evidence, no facts, just the leading question. The implication is one of guilt by geography. Hatfill went to medical school in Zimbabwe and served in the Selous Scouts. Kristof doesn't have the guts to make an accusation, or the honesty to admit that he has nothing to go on--so he relies on innuendo. Welcome to journalism.

Personally, before I implied that anyone had endeavored to kill many thousands of people, I'd want a tad better evidence.

I am not familiar with the incident in Zimbabwe. However, anthrax comes in three varieties: intestinal, cutaneous, and "inhalation." The inhalation variety, the only one useful in warfare, doesn't sicken people. It kills them. If ten thousand people die of inhalation anthrax, there is no doubt that it has been done deliberately. Did they? Kristof doesn't say.

If it wasn't the inhalation variety, what was it? Kristof doesn't say. How you give 10,000 farmers intestinal anthrax isn't obvious. How clear is it that the incident, if any, was in fact deliberate? What did Hatfill have to do with it? The reporting is so bad as to be meaningless.

Laura Rozen, in The American Prospect, June 27, writes that genetic "analysis of the letter-anthrax suggested that it was indistinguishable from a strain developed by USAMRIID [i.e., the US Army.]" Unstated implication: Hatfill had access to the bug, so he must be guilty. Is this plausible? Hatfill would of course know that the bacillus would be DNA-sequenced and immediately traced to military sources. Why would he use a traceable variety? Conceivably he is secretly a space-alien psychotic android killer-bot. Stupid he isn't.

"Suggested that it was indistinguishable…."? That is careful reportorial weasel-wording. Was it indistinguishable, or was it not? Was the strain available elsewhere also? Anthrax has been the subject of all manner of research by civilian scientists. They get specimens from somewhere, probably ordinary biological supply houses (though I don't know).

Kristof also says, "FBI profilers are convinced that the real anthrax attacks last year were conducted by an American scientist trying to pin the blame on Arabs." I see. Then it really makes sense to use a variety identifiably developed by the US military, doesn't it? Exactly what Arabs would have.

Virtually all of the sources given in these stories are anonymous. "FBI profilers, " "some of Hatfill's colleagues," etc. Now, I'm in the journalism racket. I know about anonymous sources. There's a saying, "You can bullshit the fans, but you can't bullshit the players." When anonymous sources exist, and they don't always, they have agendas, which the reader doesn't know about, and they play stupid reporters like cheap pianos.

Reporters, characteristically, are writing about things they don't understand. I'd give heavy odds not one in 500 knows purines from pyrimidines, PCR from RFLP, electrophoresis from a performing bear. Such things are the baby talk of genetics.

Aside from the shoddy reporting, a tremendous naiveté runs through this stuff. Kristof berates the FBI for not having an expert compare the handwriting on the letters with Hatfill's. This implies that Hatfill wouldn't know that handwriting is distinctive. Likely, don't you think?

Another story reported that one of the letters had been mailed from near Hatfill's residence. A child of ten knows about postmarks. Kristof wants the stamps DNA tested to identify whoever licked them. Does he think that Hatfill, a first-rate bio-research guy, doesn't know about DNA sequencing? All of this is smear by unsubstantiated implication.

Speaking as a sometimes reporter, the stories stink. If there is solid evidence that Hatfill is guilty, then publish it. But lame journalism craftedly skirting the libel laws doesn't cut it.

"where was Hatfield sitting when the letter to Daschle came in the mail...the anthrax letter...the letter with UK stamps on it?"

The letter Daschle received from London was a copycat hoax mailed long after the anthrax story broke. The real anthrax letter was mailed from Princeton, NJ.

There are a number of facts in the case, which lead rapidly back to both major political parties and their "inside the Beltway" sources of information, so to speak.

Makes it difficult to find a solution to the problem, which does not open up the "politics of personal destruction" and advance further campaign slogan-eering.

Reply 17 mentions the pathway to the left, and other stories to FR indicate some reliance by the right, on Mr. Hatfill's reflections, so to speak.

Well, OK, try this:
The actual owners of the Sun, the National Enquirer, and all such horses in the stables of American Media, Inc., are personal friends of Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore's Florida Presidential Campaign[er] in 2000: William Daley.
A passerby in the store might not think so, because of the "breadth" of the news?papers' content, but another person (or persons) focused upon that American "axis of evil" might bother to know such information

You have alot of non-facts here. The Daley, Bill Clinton and Hillary vector is a list of people who DID NOT recieve an anthrax letter. You simply threw in Daschel and Leahy (actual anthrax recipients) to make a tenuous connection to the Sun newspaper which does not exist. However strangely you wish to connect your 'dots' no right winger is running around thinking 'I really want to get Daschel, Leahy and the Sun newspaper.'

More likely is that the person who sent a letter to Mohammed Atta's former landlord was in fact Mohammed Atta.

My gut feel is that the entire Hatfill episode only proves that the FBI and US Media are still locked in their 'right wing militia' mode. Much of what we've seen so far manages to repeat the 'Hatfill as grenade throwing, mercenary wanna-be'. The next report then goes to his losing his job and becomming a threat because of that.

That logic could make a lot of us look like terrorists if it were selectively outlined in the press.

The facts stated are correct; the owners are personal friends of those listed. A good reference librarian at a sizeable business reference section in a library can confirm same.

We report; you decide.

Below may confirm some of what I said on post # 18

...... 2/28/98 item in Slate's International Papers, which covers the foreign press:

"The Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro led Thursday with the 'revelation' that both the United States and France had supplied Iraq with strains of the anthrax bacillus in the mid-1980s, just when Saddam Hussein was starting the production of biological weapons. It said that the American Type Culture Collection in Rockville, Md., and the Pasteur Institute in Paris had responded favorably to Iraqi requests for the bacillus for research purposes. Britain, which was also approached, had refused to help, it said."

>The facts stated are correct; the owners are personal friends of those listed. A good reference librarian at a sizeable business reference section in a library can confirm same.

>We report; you decide.

The guilt by linking methodology doesnt get anywhere. Daley knew Clinton, Clinton was a friend of Daschel. Daley owned the Sun. Hatfill hated Daschel, therefore he sent an anthrax letter to the Sun. That's a strech. Here's something alot more simpler. Mohammed Atta sent an anthrax laden thank you card to his former landlord. Much simpler, a better explanation of the facts.

None of the letters were mailed from Princeton. At worst the letter collection box in Princeton found to have been contaminated with anthrax probably got it from the "flat tray" placed in the bottom by the collections driver when he picked up mail. This is a normal practice.

I have been pointing to this problem of contaminated "flat trays" for a good number of months now. In fact, I recall predicting that we would continue to have this sort of thing pop up for years as long as any of the trays initially contaminated were kept in service.

I'm not aware of any of the letters being mailed internationally. Care to clarify?

The actual anthrax letter opened Oct. 15, 2001.

Hoax letter to Senator Daschle [in #7] was received and opened by Sen. Daschle's office in the Capitol on Jan. 3, 2002, after a delay for irradiation. The letter was mailed from the UK. The envelope contained a powder and a threatening letter unlike those that were mailed with anthrax, according to the FBI. This letter was mailed much later than the others, sometime in late Nov., a month after the other hoax letters and the anthrax letters had been reported. Whether the letter was addressed in block printing, like the anthrax letters, has not been revealed.

It is rather unlikely the perpetrator would send a hoax letter from his trip to a foreign country. For what purpose; to narrow down the circle of suspects? But....why did someone mail the earlier anthrax letters; and what was in the criminal's mind?

Here's something alot more simpler. Mohammed Atta sent an anthrax laden thank you card to his former landlord.

Only problem is that you don't buy this particular kind of anthrax from K-Mart.

Why not? Saddam Hussein ordered some mail-order a few years back, along with the plague and a host of other goodies in a little sampler pack. Straight from Maryland.

The Chinese ordered some US nuclear technology; you'd think thet wasn't available at K-Mart but access to it was even easier- the Clinton administration gave it to them on a silver platter.

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