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Cia anthrax Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/archive/newsid_1873000/1873368.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/archive/newsid_1873000/1873368.stm
Anthrax attacks 14/3/02
A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that
there was a secret CIA project to investigate
methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went
madly out of control.
The shocking assertion is that
a key member of the covert operation may
have removed, refined and eventually posted
weapons-grade anthrax which killed five
people.
In the wake of Sept 11th, the anthrax attacks
caused panic throughout the States and
around the world. But has the FBI found the
whole case too hot to handle? Our science
editor Susan Watts reported from Washington.
SUSAN WATTS:
America's anthrax attack last autumn was
second only to that on the Twin Towers in the
degree of shock and anxiety it caused...Some
even say the anthrax letters triggered
sub-clinical hysteria in the American
people...yet this, the first major act of
biological terrorism the world has seen remains
an unsolved crime...
Initially the investigation looked for a possible
Al-Qaeda or Iraqi link, then to a domestic
terrorist, then inwards to the US bio-defence
programme itself. But in the last four or five
weeks the investigation seems to have run into
the sand...There have been several theories as
to why ...
Three weeks ago Dr Barbara Rosenberg - an
acknowledged authority on US bio-defence -
claimed the FBI is dragging its feet because an
arrest would be embarrassing to the US
authorities. Tonight on Newsnight, she goes
further...suggesting there could have been a
secret CIA field project to test the
practicalities of sending anthrax through the
mail - whose top scientist went badly off the
rails...
DR BARBARA ROSENBERG:
FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS:
Some very expert field person would have been
given this job and it would have been left to
him to decide exactly how to carry it out. The
result might have been a project gone badly
awry if he decided to use it for his own
purposes and target the media and the senate
for his own motives as not intended by the
govt project...but this is a possibility that I
think needs to be considered
WATTS:
And another leading bio-defence analyst has
already sketched out a similar profile for the
kind of person likely to be behind the anthrax
attacks...
MILTON LEITENBERG:
CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL & SECURITY
STUDIES:
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND:
I would think it was somebody who had this
kind of experience, and I think the word that I
used for you was 'a cowboy' when we first
spoke, that simply means in the United States
someone who feels such bravura in his actions,
he feels he's a free actor, he can decide what
should be done and what shouldn't be done,
and what the reason is.
WATTS:
In recent weeks, the focus of the investigation
has been the US army medical research
institute at Fort Detrick near Washington. Fort
Detrick is the site at the centre of a web of
military centres spread across the US and
twilight private companies which work with
these military sites hand-in-hand as
contractors...
Colonel David Franz was in charge at Fort
Detrick for eleven years - he's had hands-on
experience with biological agents and has his
own ideas about the kind of person the FBI
should be looking for.
COLONEL DAVID FRANZ:
FORMER DETRICK MEDICAL RESEARCH PROG,
1987-98:
It's not someone who just got on the Internet
or went to the library and got a book and held
the book in one hand and a big wooden spoon
in the other and stirred up batches. It's
someone who has spent a significant amount
of time I believe working with a spore former of
some kind and knew how to grow ...and how
to purify and how to dry
WATTS:
Inside accounts by former staff at Fort Detrick
during the nineties reveal a research site in
disarray with questionable security measures.
We spoke to one former lab technician now
working in Belize about unexplained night-time
activities in the lab.
DR MARY BETH DOWNS:
ST MATTHEW'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
MEDICINE:
FORMER FORT DETRICK EMPLOYEE:
I came in developed my negatives and here
they said anthrax and I looked at this little
counter that would have been putting the
sequential numbers on the film and there
weren't any films missing and yet I knew that
Friday I had used it and it hadn't said anthrax.
WATTS:
What did that suggest to you had been
happening over the weekend?
DOWNS:
That someone had been in there working on
anthrax....Anyone who did have access to the
labs was not monitored in what they did, either
in what they did in the lab that is the amount
of agent they were growing, or in what they
did with that agent, that is if they put it in
their pocket and took it home ...
WATTS:
Such is the FBI's determination to establish if
Fort Detrick is at the heart of this that it has
turned to genomic analysis of the powder
itself...The Inst for Genomic Research was
founded by Craig Venter - the man who sped
up the decoding of the Human Genome... their
anthrax team has created a DNA "fingerprint"
of anthrax taken from the body of the first
person to be killed - a Florida-based
newspaper man. They're looking for differences
between this so-called Florida "strain" and
stored samples from a number of US military
sites
This is the first time genomic analysis has been
used for microbial forensics...Tim Read is one
of the world's leading authorities on the
genetic make-up of anthrax . He compared the
fingerprint of the Florida strain with that of
samples originating at Fort Detrick. The results
are not yet published - so he's being careful
what he says:
DR TIMOTHY READ:
THE INSTITUTE OF GENOMIC RESEARCH:
They're definitely related to each other
...closely related to each other
WATTS:
Could they be so closely related that one could
consider them to be one and the same thing?
READ:
I'm not commenting on that...
WATTS:
But the real answer may lie not just in where
the anthrax came from, but who had access to
it. Veterans of the 1960s US germ warfare
programme were the obvious first thought.
Early on in the investigation, there was one
name that immediately came to many people,
but few dared whisper it aloud. William Capers
Patrick the third was part of the original US
programme, which officially drew to a close in
the 1960s...The New York Times claimed last
December he was the author in 1998 of a
secret paper study on the possible effects of
anthrax sent through the mail, although he
now denies that. ...
We went to see Bill Patrick to ask him if he
might know the culprit...
Hello Susan Watts BBC
Patrick is an acknowledged showman...known
for his startling demonstrations ...some in less
than classified company. During the course of
our interview he told us several pieces of
technical information which one expert said
could help anyone intending to create an
anthrax weapon.
WILLIAM CAPERS PATRICK III:
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE CONSULTANT:
I've prepared two harmless simulant powders...
beautiful flow properties...
WATTS:
It's clear from what Bill Patrick told us that
he's been a central figure in the bio-defence
community for many years and that he may
well have met or come across the person
behind the attacks...
PATRICK:
Most of my discussions about the biological
problem has been in secure conferences and
meetings, and involve people with need to
know, with security clearance and what have
you. I don't talk about 'how to', I don't get
into 'how to' with many people, no people
other than the fact that those who really have
a need to know.
WATTS:
Does it nag at you in the back of your mind
that possibly you do know him?
PATRICK:
Possibly, possibly, I could have talked to these
people. But it would have been within the
context of their having a need to know.
WATTS:
He told me two FBI agents and an official from
the attorney general's office interviewed him
for 3 and a half hours two weeks ago. He says
they told him he had been a suspect, but left
him believing he was in the clear.
And just to put on record can I ask you did
you perpetrate these attacks..
PATRICK:
my goodness I did not ....I did not...I'm an
American patriot.
WATTS:
Patrick was on the UN team that inspected
Iraqi weapons facilities in the mid 1990s, and
he WAS surprised the FBI didn't come to him
straight after the attacks, simply because of
his expertise. He acknowledges it was only
logical to consider him a suspect, but for
Patrick, the most likely explanation, or perhaps
the most comfortable, is that the powder and
the motive originated overseas - in some rogue
state...
PATRICK:
I would hate to think that anyone in our
country.. that would do this to our own
people, if we ever find whoever does this I
hope it comes from overseas, because that
way I would.. well I don't want.. I want
someone to be caught, I want the perpetrator
to be caught, but I would rather think that it
came from our enemies outside of our own
country as opposed to our own people
perpetrating this crime against our own
WATTS:
Bill Patrick is no longer seen as a suspect, but
the net IS closing around someone at the
heart of the US germ warfare programme.
We now know by piecing together information
from well-placed sources that there's another
individual. He's been interviewed by FBI
agents, and remains under widespread
suspicion...
But he's no loner. He's likely to have worked on
a key government project in the past and to
have a network of friends and colleagues he
can rely on. The possibility that more than one
person is involved may answer some of the
perplexing geographical questions about where
the attacks originated.
DR RONALD ATLAS:
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MICROBIOLOGISTS:
I think that the significance of focussing on a
group is that you can have one person with
the expertise to produce this weaponised
anthrax and someone else to actually deliver it
to Trenton. I think that a large part of the
investigation early on focused on AN individual.
As such we would ask the question, could that
individual have gotten to New Jersey. If you
begin to think that it could have involved two
or more, then the alibi of an individual that I
was not near New Jersey may in fact fall apart
and you could look at someone else delivering
it...
WATTS:
The private contractor companies linked to the
military and jokingly referred to as "beltway
bandits" because they're sprinkled around the
Washington beltway ring-road, is where
individuals with the right mix of skills might be
working. Some of these contractors are now
known to have been involved in classified
bio-defence projects. One of these secret
projects, carried out in the Nevada desert,
was part of a series of three In the first few
days of September last year - immediately
prior to the attacks of the 11th, the New York
Times carried a major investigation which at
any other time would have been a story of
huge significance...It revealed three secret
bio-defence projects at a time when the
American people believed none was taking
place. One - run by a contractor - Battelle -
was to create genetically altered anthrax. The
question now is - are there more such
projects?
MILTON LEITENBERG:
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND:
now we've discovered that the CIA is in this
business too, though presumably only through
contractors. But we don't know how many
contractors. One contractor is now publicly
disclosed, Battelle, that did one of those
projects. There may be other contractors, so
there was this whole story has not been
clarified publicly, so that's the rest of your
iceberg, in other words we don't know how
many contractors, we don't know how many
projects.
WATTS:
The 1998 paper study on anthrax in the mail
was one secret project. Dr Rosenberg is
making the astonishing suggestion that there
may have been a deadly follow-up by
somebody else. Last time she questioned the
investigation, she was attacked by the FBI and
the White House. But she says she's prepared
to speak out again because she's so afraid of
what might happen next.
DR BARBARA ROSENBERG:
FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS:
This person is.. knows a lot about forensic
matters, knows exactly what he can be
prosecuted for and what he can get away with
and I think he had some personal matters that
he might have wanted to settle but I think in
addition that he felt that biodefence was being
under-emphasised for some time in the past
WATTS:
Rosenberg's claims are astonishing but she's an
insider with good contacts. She thinks the FBI
must act soon.
ROSENBERG:
I think the time is rapidly coming when it will
be very important to bring him to trial, even if
they don't think they have sufficient evidence.
This might at least, if not result in a criminal
conviction, make it possible to bring civil
charges somewhat like what happened to OJ
Simpson in the past. So I think it's time to
start moving because it's very important from
the point of view of deterrence of any possible
future terrorist.
WATTS:
America's desire to protect its biodefense
programme from scrutiny at all costs was part
of why it walked away from an international
agreement to control biological weapons last
summer. Could its near obsessive secrecy have
come home to roost? breeding a climate that
allowed one of its experts to take a step too
far and turn bio-terrorist against his own?
THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS READ OUT
AFTER THE BROADCAST : The CIA have told
Newsnight they totally reject Dr Rosenberg's
theory and say they were unaware of ANY
project to assess the impact of anthrax sent
through the mail.
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