June 13, 2002|By Dave Altimari and Jack Dolan | Dave Altimari and Jack Dolan,SPECIAL TO THE SUN
The FBI is investigating whether the anthrax used in last fall's attacks could have been grown secretly inside an Army lab and taken elsewhere to be converted into a weapon, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.
A former government microbiologist, who was interviewed in recent days by the FBI, said agents focused their questioning on the logistics of how someone with access to the U.S. Army's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, in Frederick County, might carry out the scheme. The microbiologist, who once worked at Fort Detrick, said the agents did not indicate whether they had evidence that such an incident had occurred.
"They asked me, if I wanted to grow something I wasn't supposed to, would there be somebody asking me about it and could I have taken it out of the lab," said the scientist, who did not want to be identified. "I told them no one checked, and it was far easier to get something out of Fort Detrick than into it."
A second bioterrorism scientist who also has been questioned by the FBI said the agents' "operating theory" appeared to be that the Fort Detrick labs were the source of the anthrax and that spores were somehow removed covertly. This scientist also did not want to be identified.
The scientists' accounts are among several developments that suggest the FBI is seriously exploring the possibility that a Fort Detrick insider could have clandestinely produced and removed anthrax spores to a private location, where they could be refined into the lethal powder sent through the mail last fall.
That premise also is at the center of a new assessment of the investigation by a prominent bioweapons expert, who says five biodefense experts have given the FBI the name of a former Fort Detrick scientist who had access to "a remote location" that could have been used to refine anthrax spores into a weapons form.
In her assessment - scheduled to be posted today on the Federation of American Scientists' Web site - Barbara Hatch Rosenberg all but names the scientist and provides details about his background. The Hartford, Conn., Courant obtained an advance copy of the six-page paper written by Rosenberg, who is chairwoman of the federation's working group on biological weapons.
She says, in her assessment, that the unidentified scientist suffered a career setback last summer that "left him angry and depressed" and that the FBI, with his consent, searched his home and computer.
The unidentified scientist has declined interview requests, but in a voice-mail message left for a Courant reporter last month he denied that he was a suspect.
Dave Altimari and Jack Dolan are reporters with The Courant, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
