Chapter 3

THE SUSPECTS

Dr. Steven Hatfill—Sorry We Ruined Your Life…Our Bad

Steven Hatfill was the first primary target of the task force’s investigation into the anthrax attacks. Dr. Hatfill had been employed from 1997 to 1999 at USAMRIID, the Department of Defense’s go-to lab for biological warfare research. Accusers indicated that Dr. Hatfill had in the past boasted to coworkers that he knew how to weaponize anthrax, quizzed colleagues on their knowledge of the topic, and repeatedly stopped people in the hallways to warn them about the dangers of anthrax as a biological weapon. (So now, I guess having your professional scientific opinions vindicated by real-world events makes you a bioterrorist.) While later in his career Dr. Hatfill was involved in bioterrorism research and training, the core of his work was virology—the study of viruses. Oops…anthrax is a bacteria.

In the first four months of the investigation, eight individuals allegedly brought Dr. Hatfill’s name to the attention of the FBI as someone they suspected of being involved in the attacks.

One of these individuals was Don Foster, a professor of English at Vassar College and a self-styled literary detective who had identified Joe Klein as the author of the anonymously written novel Primary Colors. Dr. Foster identified Mr. Klein by examining punctuation and other linguistic fingerprints in the book. Foster had since consulted with the FBI on investigations of the Unabomber and Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park bombing, among other cases, and he was asked to analyze the anthrax letters for insights as to who may have mailed them.

According to an article in The Atlantic, Foster found an interview Dr. Hatfill had given while working at the National Institutes of Health in which he described how the bubonic plague could be made and used in a bioterror attack. (Never mind it was Dr. Hatfill’s job to know such things.) Foster also learned that Hatfill had written an unpublished novel about a fictional bioterror attack on the nation’s capital. (What else would a government bioterrorism researcher write a novel about?) Add in Foster’s discovery that Hatfill had been in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during an anthrax outbreak there in the late 1970s and that he’d attended medical school near a Rhodesian suburb called Greendale—the same name as the fictional school in the return address of the anthrax letters—and Foster formed the opinion that Hatfill was a viable suspect in the attacks. (All this from an English professor at a liberal arts college.)

Simultaneously, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist and expert on biological weapons, published at least two articles on the internet describing her opinion about the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks. Dr. Rosenberg maintains that she never mentioned any individual by name in her posts. I haven’t read them, so I can’t say. But in any case, she believed that Dr. Hatfill was possibly the perpetrator.

Foster and Rosenberg met and compared notes in April 2002 when neither had been able to interest the FBI in their theories about Dr. Hatfill. Two months later, according to Foster’s account reported in The Atlantic, Rosenberg met on Capitol Hill with Senate staff members and described the theories she and Foster had developed. Special Agent Van Harp, the senior FBI agent on the Amerithrax investigation, reportedly attended the meeting, along with other FBI officials. It is unclear from sworn deposition testimony if Dr. Hatfill’s name was mentioned specifically by Rosenberg during this meeting.

“Did she mention Dr. Hatfill’s name in her presentation?” Hatfill’s attorney, former federal prosecutor Thomas G. Connolly, asked Harp during a sworn deposition.

“That’s who she was talking about,” Harp testified.

In a June 2002 search of Dr. Hatfill’s apartment in Frederick, Maryland, investigators discovered detailed anthrax production protocols, some of which matched techniques used by the United States Army to produce anthrax for the now-defunct US Offensive Weapons Program. Also recovered from Dr. Hatfill’s apartment was an anthrax simulant powder.

Dr. Hatfill also appeared to know the specific steps for using the mail to disseminate anthrax, having commissioned, through his job, a risk assessment report from a renowned bioweaponeer, which described in detail the tactical effectiveness of an anthrax letter sent through the US mail, including the specific quantity of anthrax that could be packed into an envelope without arousing suspicion. In 1999, after going to work for SAIC (according to Wikipedia, Science Applications International Corporation, Inc. is an American company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, that provides government services), Hatfill (again, in the scope of his job) had a hand in developing a brochure for emergency responders on how to handle anthrax hoax letters.

Multiple PowerPoint presentations used by Dr. Hatfill prior to the attacks specifically depicted an anthrax letter attack scenario, one of which contained a slide entitled “Multiple Hoax Mailing Trends” that referenced: “Single letter containing WMD threat sent to multiple targets. Letters similar in content and point of origin. Letters delivered to…Government Agencies…News Agencies.”

Dr. Hatfill also aroused suspicion early in the case because pharmacy records from Frederick, Maryland, revealed that he filled multiple prescriptions for the antibiotic Cipro, the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of inhalational anthrax. He filled those prescriptions in January, July, September, October, and November of 2001, including refills of the antibiotic two days before each of the anthrax mailings. It was later determined that Dr. Hatfill had undergone sinus surgery and required the antibiotics.

I couldn’t find numbers for Cipro use in 2001. The earliest year I could find statistics for was 2013. According to ClinCalc.com, in 2013 alone, 7,189,976 prescriptions for Cipro were filled in the US for 4,976,306 patients. So, I think it’s fair to say that Dr. Hatfill was not the only person taking Cipro in the summer and fall of 2001.

Early in the investigation, agents determined that isolates of the Ames strain were accessible to any individual at USAMRIID with access to the biocontainment or “hot” side of Building 1412, including but not limited to Dr. Hatfill.

Later in the investigation, RMR-1029 was identified as the original material from which the anthrax powder used in the mailings was derived. Because Dr. Hatfill—who left USAMRIID two years before the anthrax attacks—never had access to the area in which RMR-1029 was stored, he was ultimately eliminated as a suspect on June 27, 2008.

The Five-Million-Dollar Screwup

Hatfill sued the government for damages associated with inappropriately leaking his name to the press as a person of interest in the investigation in violation of the Privacy Act. The suit was settled by the US Department of Justice for $2.825 million in cash plus a twenty-year annuity paying $150,000—for a total of $4.6 million along with an unequivocal public exoneration of Dr. Hatfill of any involvement in the anthrax attacks. The settlement was essentially a multimillion-dollar consolation prize for the years of personal hell and career decimation Dr. Hatfill had endured at the hands of the relentless FBI and media machines.

Dr. Bruce Ivins

Next up in the batter’s box of evil government scientists accused by the Amerithrax task force of perpetrating the attacks was Dr. Bruce Ivins.

Dr. Anthrax

Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins was a senior microbiologist in the Bacteriology Division of USAMRIID. Dr. Ivins began his work with Bacillus anthracis at USAMRIID in 1980. At the time of his suicide, he had been employed there for the preceding twenty-seven years. He was considered one of the nation’s leading experts in the growth, sporulation, and purification of Bacillus anthracis. This assessment was confirmed by his more than fifty professional publications regarding anthrax.

Once the task force concluded that RMR-1029 was the source of the spores used in the attack, their overarching position was clear: whoever mailed the letters had access at some point to RMR-1029. That person must have either had direct access to the source flask, which was created and controlled by Dr. Ivins and maintained in the walk-in refrigerator in his lab, or to a sample of RMR-1029 provided by Dr. Ivins.

It’s Your Baby, You Mail It

Dr. Ivins created RMR-1029 in his lab, B-313 in Building 1425 of USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. He also stored flasks of RMR-1029 in the walk-in cold room there. By all accounts, Dr. Ivins was the sole custodian of this material. Investigators allegedly interviewed every coworker of Dr. Ivins and every researcher at USAMRIID with access to the cold room in which RMR-1029 was stored, and everyone reportedly agreed that no one at USAMRIID legitimately used RMR-1029 without the authorization and knowledge of Dr. Ivins. According to the investigative summary published by the task force, they effectively investigated and cleared everyone with access to RMR-1029—everyone besides Dr. Ivins.

Blaming Their Own Expert

Dr. Ivins had the skills to execute the attack. Dr. Ivins’s own comments upon examining the evidence supported the conclusion that the anthrax spores used in the attack letters were created in a high-tech lab by someone with knowledge and experience. These comments came in a report Dr. Ivins made to the task force after they asked him to inspect the Daschle letter. (Yes, you got that right…the task force was asking Dr. Ivins to consult on the anthrax case because he was the leading expert in the field.) Dr. Ivins wrote, “If this is a preparation of bacterial spores, it is an extremely pure preparation, and an extremely high concentration. These are not ‘garage’ spores. The nature of the spore preparation suggests very highly that professional manufacturing techniques were used in the production and purification of the spores, as well as in converting the spores into a very fine powder.”

Drying anthrax spores requires either a sophisticated drying machine called a speed-vac concentrator, or a whole lot of time and space to let the spores air-dry in a lab. Because drying anthrax is a major violation of a truckload of international treaties, using any of these methods out in the open at a facility like USAMRIID where everyone knows the rules would have immediately sounded alarm bells.

The Lonely Speed-Vac Dryer Repairman

The record is rife with considerable contradiction about whether or not Dr. Ivins knew how to use a sophisticated drying machine that may have been employed to dry the spores sent in the mailings. Evidence purportedly exists showing he purchased a drying machine for USAMRIID, attended at least one class on how to use the machine, and agreed to instruct a colleague on its operation. However, in other correspondence, Dr. Ivins flatly denied knowing how to use the equipment.

To be continued….

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