The working theory behind the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation into who is responsible for last fall’s anthrax attacks — that a U.S. biological scientist with connections to the government is the culprit — is misguided, said political commentator David Tell in this week’s issue of the Weekly Standard (see GSN, April 9).

“Two weeks ago, numerous published reports suggested that the FBI has recently lost a fair bit of confidence in the focus of its investigation.  The universe of potential suspects, ‘law enforcement sources’ now say, actually numbers in the ‘thousands,’” Tell said.  “Nevertheless, the government continues to expect that the one guilty man among those thousands will turn out to be an American biological researcher of some kind.”

Tell criticized the theories of Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a State University of New York microbiologist, who has said the FBI knows who is responsible for the attacks, but refuses to move against them for fears that he or she could reveal information embarrassing to the government (see GSN, March 4).  The media also has wrongly used Rosenberg’s theories to indicate the identity of the FBI’s potential suspect, Tell said (see GSN, Feb. 25).

“Except that the poor man turns out to be a former Ohio laboratory technician who has never done bacteriological research of any kind — and whose unfortunate history of alcoholism has lately reduced him to working in a Milwaukee-area bowling alley,” he said.  “Which bowling alley has no known ties to the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.”

“Barbara Hatch Rosenberg’s theory is crackpot,” Tell said.

Technical Qualities

It is still unknown whether the anthrax used in the attacks is the same as that produced in U.S. weapons laboratories, as some have claimed, according to Tell.

To create anthrax spores that would disseminate better, U.S. weapons scientists were reported to have coated the spores with silica, which kept them from sticking together.  Iraqi and former-Soviet Union weapons scientists used an additive called bentonite.  Scientific analysis of the spores used in the attack found no evidence of aluminum, a sign of bentonite, but did find traces of silica, Tell said.  This has led some, such as Rosenberg, to assume the spores used in the attack came from a U.S. biological weapons laboratory, he said.

Silica, however, is nothing more than sand, one of the most common substances on Earth, Tell said.  “Bentonite” is only a term for clays derived from volcanic ash, all of which are silica compounds and do not necessarily contain aluminum, he said.

“In other words:  Trace amounts of silica in an anthrax powder are consistent with the presence of bentonite,” said Tell.  “And the absence of aluminum from that powder is not enough to exculpate any foreign germ-warfare factory thought to have used bentonite in the past.”

There has also been an increase in the amount of known information as to the dispersal patterns of anthrax spores once airborne, according to Tell.  It is now known that lethal amounts of spores will spread over a wide area regardless of whether they have been coated with a chemical to keep them from sticking together, he said.

“So whoever was responsible for last fall’s bioterrorism wouldn’t have needed to add silica to his anthrax powder at all,” Tell said.

Silica can, however, be used in a process to manufacture anthrax, which Iraq is believed to have done, Tell said.  U.N. weapons inspectors have found that Iraq used a spray-drying technique that involves silica instead of milling anthrax into a fine dust, he said.

Genetic Information

It also has not been decisively shown that the strain of anthrax used in the attacks is the U.S. “Ames” strain, as reports have said, according to Tell (see GSN, Feb. 27).  The term “strain” is a generic term with no set meaning — any set of microbes with genetic similarities can be called a strain, he said.

“How closely related they must be — at what level of analysis should a set of microbes be subdivided into ‘strains’ — is a subjective judgment,” Tell said.  “Is your second cousin ‘family’ or merely distant kin?”

While experts have been able to match the DNA taken from the anthrax spores that caused the first casualty of the attacks — American Media Inc. employee Robert Stevens — and match it to the known genome of the Ames strain, there is still a large margin of error, Tell said (see GSN, April 23).  Because anthrax bacteria mutate so slowly, different anthrax strains have been identified through differences in a tiny number out of more than 5 million DNA nucleotides, (see GSN, April 10).  This means that most anthrax strains cannot be distinguished from one another outside the current margin of error for DNA sampling, which is one wrong nucleotide in every 100,000 examined, he said.

Even if the anthrax strain used in the attack were found to be the Ames strain, that information alone would not tie it to a U.S laboratory, according to Tell.  The Ames strain occurs naturally and can be found in dead animals and the soil both in the United States and abroad, he said.

Many foreign research facilities also have worked with the Ames anthrax strain, Tell said.  While Rosenberg has only identified a British government laboratory and a Canadian military laboratory as having stockpiles of the Ames strain, it also known that French and Russian scientists, among possible others, have worked with the Ames strain in their research, he said.

Iraqi scientists as well are known to have attempted to obtain samples of various anthrax strains, including the Ames strain, Tell said.  Two Iraqi scientists were turned down in their attempt to obtain Ames strain from the British Porton Down facility, but they were able to purchase anthrax-ready bacterial growth medium from a British commercial supplier, he said.  They also were known to be successful in obtaining nine other strains from the Institute Pasteur and a U.S. company, as well as two variants of the Vollum anthrax strain, according to Tell.

Letters

The FBI has concluded that a native English speaker wrote the letters sent along with the anthrax during last fall’s attacks, Tell said (see GSN, April 18).  The FBI, however, did not explain why the letters were written in block text with the first letter of every noun being slightly larger, he said.  This could mean that whoever wrote the letters was more familiar with a language that does not use upper and lower cases, such as Arabic.  They also might have spent time in Germany, the only country where every noun is capitalized, and where Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and other al-Qaeda terrorists lived for a time, Tell said.

The FBI has also determined that the lack of physical evidence, such as fingerprints or saliva, on the letters and the envelopes could mean that the person who sent them had expertise in covering up evidence, according to Tell.

“Actually, though, all [the perpetrator] exhibited was a bare minimum of human brain function and an animal instinct for self preservation,” he said.  “Ask yourself:  Would you be willing to touch with your bare hands, much less lick with your tongue, an envelope containing two billion spores of the universe’s most dangerous bacterium?  The question answers itself.”

The FBI also has agreed with Rosenberg’s theory that because two of the letters warned the recipients to begin taking penicillin, it implies that the person was a U.S. scientist who wanted to prevent his fellow Americans from becoming sick, according to Tell.  Nobody familiar with anthrax and its treatment, however, would prescribe penicillin for an anthrax infection, he said.

Rosenberg also has not been able to come up with a credible motive for the attacks, Tell said.  She has speculated that the person responsible wanted to see an increase in defense spending that the attacks would be likely to cause, which would not be a goal of anti-U.S. terrorists.  The Sept. 11 hijackers, however, also must have known that their attack would have caused a massive U.S. military buildup, Tell said.

“Perhaps Mohamed Atta, too, was a rogue, right-wing subcontractor for the CIA?  Rosenberg’s logic is elusive,” Tell said.

Who Is It???

The FBI cannot make the definitive case that the person responsible for last fall’s anthrax attack is a U.S scientist with some connection to the U.S. defensive biological weapons program, Tell said.

“The possibility is far from foreclosed that the anthrax bioterrorist was just who he said he was,” said Tell.  “A Muslim, impliedly from overseas, who thought the events of ‘09-11-01’ were something to be celebrated — and who would have been doubly pleased to see ‘you die now’” (David Tell, Weekly Standard, April 29).

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