Many leads, many dead ends
Frustration inside the FBI's anthrax investigation: a so-far perfect crime
What the FBI thinks is this: Whoever sent the letters probably lived in or knew the Trenton area where several of the letters were mailed. The perpetrator probably is a single, older white male with a grudge against the U.S. government. He may be a full-fledged or amateur scientist, who may not have intended to kill. Agents think this is so because he had meticulously taped the edges of the envelopes and included warnings of lethality plus advice on antibiotic cures. They surmise that he may have acted to send a message that the federal government should invest more in biodefense--or perhaps to somehow profit from that investment.
That theory has narrowed the massive scope of the FBI investigation. The bureau began with a daunting universe of more than 20,000 scientific labs including government defense facilities, biopesticide labs, and drug companies. The FBI says it is still interested in the possibility that, say, someone who knows how to make B. thuringiensis (a common grub- and beetle-killing organic pesticide) could also have made the killer anthrax bacterium. But they also are looking very closely at the government biodefense labs.
A confounding factor has been the scientific community's lax security practices in handling of pathogens, often traded informally at scientific conferences. Even the government's own U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., now both a source of expertise and one focus of the FBI investigation, has had repeated security breaches. And there were no records of which lab had what strain of anthrax. The FBI now has helped develop a database.
Lab work. The anthrax from the Leahy letter brought other challenges: so many tests to conduct but so little evidence. Scientists wanted to first irradiate the anthrax to destroy its virulence, to protect the investigators, but fretted that might skew the tests. So they experimented first on the pesticide B. thuringiensis because of its similarity to B. anthracis.
The next question was where to conduct the tests. The FBI lab expertise is in "human forensics," investigating conventional murders, says Mark Wheelis of the University of California-Davis, adding, "This is an entirely new area." FBI officials say they turned to premier federal labs for help and created a scientific advisory panel of 20 top scientists. But the FBI, often faulted for its secrecy, managed to anger and alienate many outside experts, especially in the biodefense community.
One of the FBI's strongest critics is Barbara Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists. She asserts that the FBI for months has known who did it, was foolish to cast such a wide net, waited too long without arresting a suspect, and has placed unrealistic hopes on the genetic testing. "It's a stalling mechanism," Rosenberg told U.S. News. "I suppose they don't want the suspects to think they're close on the trail." Rosenberg speculates that the FBI is hobbled by the secrecy involving the government's own biodefense programs. "I hope it's not because they are hesitant to point the finger at someone," she says. That infuriates investigators. "It's insulting anyone would suggest we are sitting on evidence," fumes one FBI official. "This is murder; five people are dead."
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