"Robin"

PROF. BRENNER: We'll now hear from Dr.
Steven J. Hatfill. He's been connected with the National
Institutes for Health for some time, working on child
health development and the laboratory for cellular and
molecular biophysics. He's a medical doctor with
certification in hematology and pathology. He has a
Ph.D. degree in molecular cell biology [Lie #1]. He has a
diploma in aviation medicine [Lie #2]. He has a diploma in
diving and submarine medicine [Lie #3] . He has served with the
U.S. Army Special Forces [Lie #4] . He was on a 14-month [Lie #5] duty
as medical officer and science team leader [Lie #6] at the
Antarctic research station. He also conducted research
while there for the NASA Johnson Space Center Solar
System Exploration Division [Lie #7]. He's been involved in
research involving serious problems such as Lyme
disease, Ebola and the Marburg virus. Dr. Hatfill.
DR. HATFILL: We've heard the threat today
from Dr. Alibek, Dr. Patrick, and Dr. Huggins for
biological threats of biological terrorism. We've heard
conventional countermeasures. We've heard of a number
of programs of advanced countermeasures. It now
becomes necessary to discuss worst-case scenarios and
that concerns ways of management, or possible ways of
management, of large areas covered by biological agent.
I've been working with Brigadier General Third
Army Medical Command in the United States Army
Reserve to try to develop a system for flexible and rapid
transportation of mass casualties from a contaminated
area to a rear area while maintaining life support and
critical care functions for the casualties.
When we're dealing with a large area of
coverage event, this can be exceedingly complex. A
single area of a city may be affected or multiple areas of
the city at the same time or closely thereafter, and
terrorists may be involved with both chemical weapon
release as well as with the biological agent.
One of the most dramatic open source
experiments that have been described for a large area of
coverage occurred on September 21, 1950, where a naval
vessel did an open air simulation test releasing spores of
the same size and weight as anthrax, but nonpathogenic
to humans, over the city of San Francisco. This was
conducted off a naval vessel two miles offshore and the
results are illustrated in this diagram. Had this occurred
with actual anthrax, there's a possibility that several
hundred thousand people could have contracted a fatal
pulmonary infection.
These types of dispersal scenarios in the most
part are covert. There's no indication that a biological
agent release has occurred until the incubation period for
the particular disease has expired. This is a typical case
history. An emergency department, normal operations
and patients begin to appear. The terrorist event has
occurred the week before. The incubation period for the
agent is now open and these previously healthy
individuals start coming in requiring rapid intensive care
including mechanical life support, mechanical
ventilation.
The situation of a large area of release in many
ways would resemble a modern battlefield, disrupted
lines of communication, poor coordination. Any changes
that were apparent in peacetime would tend to be
amplified during their affect during the natural biological
agent pattern.
Consequently it is illustrative to look at how
massive casualties have been handled on the battlefield
before. In the 1850s, we saw the first large-scale
systematic development of ways of transporting casualties
from a high concentration on the battlefield to a low
concentration in rural areas. This was during the
Crimean War. The British Army instituted an eight-mile
railway line during this conflict. This was also the time
when the Florence Nightingale nurses came into effect in
the first early field ambulances.
This concept became so effective that by the
early 1900s during the Boer War in South Africa, the
British army had prepositioned a number of specialized
hospital trains all along the areas of fighting. Each of
these passenger cars has been converted to handle up to
25 stretcher cases, and these were prepositioned along
39
different areas of the conflict. Patients were brought to
these trains and taken to various treatment centers.
The concept was further developed and by the
onset of World War I, was in a highly effective manner.
Patients could be taken directly from the trenches in the
battlefields moved by an organized ambulance system,
and deposited in what had now become hospital trains.
Some of these cars contain surgery units or
supporting care to stop bleeding, regain respiration, and
resuscitate the patient. There were also provisions for
walking cases and for other casualties. The system was
so effective that during the four days of the battle of the
Somme, there were 13,392 cases that were transported
from the front-line battlefields to rural hospital areas in
France.
Special frames were developed to cushion the
patients as they rode on the trains. This is one of the first
hospital trains in operation.
By World War II, a number of trains were in
operation both on the battlefront and for cities, because of
advances in air power, cities now became a target,
specifically London. Hospital trains were used to
evacuate thousands of casualties from London hospitals
to outlying areas, in addition to receiving casualties from
across the channel and redistributing it within the
country.
This is an interior of one of these trains. It's a
three-tiered system to provide adequate access to the
patients for their transportation.
This was even continued up until the 1950s with
the British Army of the Rhine. This was the advent of
federal medical transportation medication; the hospital
trains went into disuse. At this time there's only one in
use in England which is used by a reserve army medical
unit.
With a biological attack, these patients are going
to require even more intensive care than trauma
management. This is a slide of inhalational anthrax. We
only have a few hours once predominantly respiratory
symptoms develop. The patient needs to be intubated;
they need to be mechanically ventilated. Their blood
pressure needs to be supported with medications.
Some cutaneous cases may appear. This is
cutaneous anthrax, the vegetative bacteria multiplying in
the blood stream and the tissues release a number of
toxins, with a massive edema, malignant edema.
Over 50 percent of those exposed to the agent
plume end up with inhalation anthrax. Over 50 percent
of the inhalation anthrax develop cases associated with
hemorrhagic meningitis. This is the membrane covering
the brain. A great deal of these patients will be brought
in as casualties probably all having epileptic fits.
Surrounding area and surface contamination is possible
as well as intestinal cases may appear. This is
hemorrhagic infection of the lymph nodes and intestines
and a small destruction section of the bowel through
disruption of his blood supply.
Until recently, the medical trains would not
have been sufficient for the mass evacuation of casualties
from a high concentration attack area to rear definitive
area treatments. Recently, Northrop Grumman has come
out with a specialized stretcher. This is called LSTT
stretcher. It stands for Life Support and Trauma
Transport. Essentially, this is a self-contained unit with
a giant ventilator I.V. fluid infusion pump and with full
monitoring capability. Patients put on the stretcher can
be intubated, stabilized, and transferred.
The second concept that's become important is
that of intermodal transportation. This is the use of
containers of goods or contents by a variety of different
methods.
This can be by land, air, and sea in standardized
containers. There's a whole subsection of the container
transport industry, and they will make containers how
you want. If you want a bathroom in it, they'll put a
bathroom in it. If you want it a certain size, they'll
construct it a certain size, economically and
standardized. There are some methods for
unaccompanied freight, and at the bottom slide you can
actually have these on lorries, semi-trailer trucks, that are
driven on and then off again.
By combining the systems, it becomes possible
to design a disaster car, a disaster evacuation train. The
train would look something like this. Head cars are the
ones that stay with the containers. They transport the
rest of the train. This is a locomotive, a container for
medical personnel. Bulk stores, which could feature
antibiotic stores or injectors with deployable vaccination
stations. And a staff and manned control
communications and intelligence sections.
The staff car could act as the nucleus of a
command center to coordinate effectively with first
responders.
For a proper coordinated response, it's
envisioned that the first responders, the fire, police, and
ambulances need to be connected with military resources,
with government and state resources, and with satellite.
Currently, a piece of technology called the alert
system has been developed by the Texas Department of
Transportation. Essentially, this is a laptop computer
built into the trunk of a patrol car. It's digital and
operating on the mobile system. Already digital images
have been transmitted from a patrol car in Florida to a
patrol car in Alexandria. This allows some
interoperatability between all first response vehicles.
By linking into the Internet, a commonality can
be provided. A previous mass casualty or possible mass
casualty incident such as the World Trade Center or
Oklahoma City bombing shows that the cellular system
tends to go down right after an accident. Everybody's
trying to log on and use it, and the system collapses. The
40
train would carry a useful piece of technology with it.
Manufactured by Celltel, this is a mobile system. Unless
you have a chip for your cell phone, you cannot talk.
This entire system provides a satellite link to
other federal responders in transit to the site as well as
coordinating local first responders. This will cover about
a 60-mile radius.
Maps of each area can be used so all response
forces are clearly in contact with each other. You can
play road status, you can put meteorological and weather
information on these maps and GPS coordinates are part
of the alert system.
Defense Special Weapons Agency have an
enormous amount of experience modeling downwind
areas. They have computer programs that can model
fairly quickly possible downwind affected areas.
The second section of the train would be the
intensive care patient cars. The intensive care ward
coaches would be specially built containers with a shock
absorbing system able to handle the LSTT stretchers. It
can be mounted on lorries or it can be driven on and off
with a semiattached tractor-trailer. Patients would be
brought from out of the WMD site on the LSTT
stretchers. They would then be loaded into these special
containers. A center monitoring station, this has already
been designed, and one doctor and five or six orderlies
could effectively monitor 40 or 50 patients. These things
can be driven off or taken straight to the facility.
The last portion of the disaster train would
consist of cutout cars. These would be left on-site. It
features a security element, another command control,
communications information element, ambulance trucks
with the LSTT stretchers already loaded that can drive
into the site and bring the patients back to the side of the
train and a deployable field hospital.
The inside of these hospital cars can be made to
different sizes. Along with this comes a mortuary
embalming station. This was originally developed by
Arms Corps in South Africa with the concept that
patients are embalmed onsite. This negates mass burials
or graves. The remains are preserved. It can handle 800
bodies an hour. The bodies are embalmed, put into body
bags, and stored at room temperature for later burial
when the incident is over.
The system would work like this: If these trains
are placed -- and we'll estimate you'll need somewhere
around 27 trains to cover the United States -- but if all
other traffic is cleared off of the rails, you'll be no more
than four to six hours rail travel to a major metropolitan
area.
Notification. We are estimating this will be the
Reserves or the National Guard handling these trains.
The train would travel to the disaster site to a
predetermined spot. It will be loaded. Ambulances and a
helipad will be set up back on the train, and an on-site
army field site hospital would be deployed. The patients
would be brought out on the LSTT stretchers and then
loaded onto the train. From there, the train would leave
full.
This is an artist's conception of such an incident.
This deploying field hospital is covered with a charcoal
and peroxide blanket. Patients are brought out of the
area by air or by ambulances on the train on the LSTT
stretchers. These can be at a positive pressure or
negative pressure. We show the assistants here in Level
A gear because a chemical attack could have occurred at
the same time, and the patient is loaded onto the
containers and we distribute it out of the incident site.
The disaster train concept could provide a
number of things. The ability to rapidly transport large
quantities of antibiotics, vaccines, personnel and
protective equipment to a WMD site within a matter of
hours, the ability to rapidly transform sitting stretcher
and critical care patients on life support from congested
nonfunctional hospital areas to health care facilities
outside of the target area.
And this response capability would be
independent of normal road transportation. Some
scenarios suggest that with a large area of coverage, one
third of the population may attempt to flee the city. This
could mean both sides of the beltway congested.
Bringing these medical facilities in by train, that avoids
this traffic jam. The country could be at war at the same
time. There could be limited air assets. It provides,
above all, a starting point to coordinate other federal
response forces. Thank you very much.
Questions and Answers
PROF. BRENNER: We now commence the
discussion period.
Q. My question is to the last gentleman. I'm
Dave Ruppe with Defense Week. How much would this
concept that you just described cost for the U.S. to place,
and also a more general question for the three of you:
Who exactly, what agency is in charge of developing or
is currently advocating organizing civilian research and
development and equipment purchasing efforts, all of
that? I see the military has several agencies doing it for
that side, but who's actually responsible on the civilian
side?
DR. HATFILL: Answer to the first part of your
question, we've had some talks with Northrop Grumman,
and we estimate that each train would cost approximately
half that of an F-14 jet fighter. For two squadrons of
fighters, it would cover 27 cities. We'll have 27 trains
which would cover a number of cities. It would be statebased.
Each train would be responsible for four or five
metropolitan areas.
PROF. BRENNER: Would any panelist care to
comment on the question?
COL PARKER: As far as who has the overall
responsibility for the programs for everything that might
41
be directed towards bioterrorism, I think that's difficult to
say. I don't know that answer. There are several
agencies. The DOD, of course, has had an RD effort in
biowarfare defense for a number of years. And now there
are other agencies that have been doing good work, The
NIH, for example, has a very robust infectious disease
R&D program.
So certainly, all of what goes on and a lot of
things that go on in an RD program for infectious disease
are, of course, some of the technologies that are
applicable to bio defense. And some of the basic
knowledge that comes out of that is going to be
something that should be tapped and is very useful.
There are other agencies, the Department of Energy has
some efforts, so there's just a number of agencies. We
may not be the perfect ones to ask that question to.
Q. Who would be a good person to ask that
question?
DR. WINEGAR: Are you primarily focusing
on R&D efforts? It's a very distinct difference.
Q. I guess both.
DR. WINEGAR: Now, I think there is no one
person on R&D efforts. As Gerry indicated, certainly the
Department of Energy, Health Services, DOD, a number
of agencies each have their own R&D budgets. The
procurement side is a whole different issue, and I know
that's come to the forefront lately in the aftermath of
some of the training and the awareness that's been
provided to some of the target cities. People are left with
the information, but none of the supplies.
And that's a real deficiency right now, because
none of the cities has budgeted for this type of equipment
or medical antidotes or anything. Certainly, the DOD
has some stockpiles of some particular vaccines and that
type of thing but not enough for everybody, and that's
clearly, partly, I would think, the responsibility for Public
Health Service or Office of Emergency Preparedness,
FEMA, a number of different agencies. And I guess the
bottom line is we're all sort of working together to
identify what the highest priorities are, both in R&D and
in procurement.
COL PARKER: I think it's important although
the answer to the R&D didn't sound very good. On the
other hand, there is a lot of interagency communication,
collaboration, so that there's not unnecessary duplication.
Part of the scientific process is there is going to be some
parallel efforts and complementarity. That's just part of
the scientific process. There is a lot of communication
and collaboration on some of these efforts that at least
have some cross areas.
Q. Kyle Olson, Research Planning,
Incorporated. First of all, my compliments to George
Washington University and the Potomac Institute for
Policy Studies for sponsoring this session today. There's
been a lot of interesting points made and offered. In a
sense, it's a shame that we had to wait till now to discuss
them because some of the earlier presenters already had
to leave. In fact, most of the points I wanted to make are
addressed to issues made this morning.
Let me just toss them out in a hurry. First of all,
I think I'd like to challenge the assessment made by Dr.
Oehler regarding the likelihood that large groups pose
the greatest threat. I think that, in fact, small groups are
not likely to have the wherewithal or the technical skill to
execute an effective attack. I think we get clouded or
confused and to some extent we can, I think, even lead
ourselves astray, if we focus on our own example and fail
to take the right lessons out of that.
Aum Shinrikyo was a large-scale endeavor, and
certainly they had a lot of research to put into a biological
terrorism effort. On the other hand, you can argue
equally well it was a large relatively well-funded
misguided effort which lacked the technical background.
Bottom line, Aum Shinrikyo were not strong in life
science. They were very good at electronic engineering
and other things, but biological science was not an area
where they were tremendously successful in their efforts.
I think that another point that was made was
that the technology has not suddenly transformed the
threat, and I think in a sense that's true. Certainly,
nothing that presented itself as a biological threat 20
years ago has been radically changed by some new
breakthrough technology, at least not in terms of looking
at the anthrax danger or smallpox or any of the others.
What has happened, though, is technology has not
transformed the problem, but has empowered people that
were not potentially a threat before.
As we move into this new century, we have to
recognize that technologies that were formerly the
province of only the very sophisticated, these
technologies are increasingly found in the general
environment. And as was presented earlier today, these
technologies are available at universities and other
centers around the country.
I think that Brad Roberts did a very nice job of
citing a number of very useful quotations this morning.
Let me cite a noted philosopher, Mel Brooks, in his
definitive piece, Young Frankenstein, when he said that a
riot is an ugly thing, and I think it's time we had one. I
think that some of the hue and cry over the bio-chemical
threat may be at some times overdrawn, and at the same
time, given the total absence of any conversation or
discussion or serious evaluation of that threat for the
better part of the last two or three decades, I think it's
been a very transforming experience in that respect.
Let me point out that one of the inevitable
problems that we also have in a setting like this, and
there's no way around it, is the collision of military
doctrine-based concerns and domestic terrorism-based
concerns. What is applicable in one situation does not
necessarily have a direct application in another.
42
Concerns about the ability of terrorists to build weapons
capable of delivering a strategic blow do not necessarily
correspond to concerns that first responders in the cities
have regarding the likelihood that a terrorist could come
up with something, even if it's just a pump spray, that
could take out a conference room or a symposium or an
arena of people.
Going one step beyond that, we also have to
recognize that the biological terrorist threat, as we
continue to talk about it, I think it serves us well because
it alerts us to the danger. There's a potential boomerang
there. That is as we raise the flag of terrorism to new
heights, we create a situation in which our inability to
differentiate between the naturally occurring and the
man-made can potentially create a false trigger in
people's minds. Case in point, the naturally occurring
outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in a major Indian city
today would probably raise levels of concern regarding
deliberate biological attacks the factor in South Asia to
relatively unprecedented levels. Again, thank you for the
conference. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss
these things.
PROF. BRENNER: Any panelist like to
respond?
MR. SIEGRIST: Kyle, I'm glad you spoke up.
Who did you direct that first one to about the size of the
group?
DR. OEHLER: I obviously didn't make my
point clearly. What I was trying to say is we need to look
for vulnerabilities. Large groups have different
vulnerabilities. I wasn't trying to say that large groups
are more dangerous. I'm saying that if a group is large
enough that it has all these technologies in it more
vulnerable to counter traditional terrorist efforts, such as
the counter terrorist center and the FBI and others are
specialists at. They're more vulnerable to being
penetrated. Small groups, which are harder to penetrate,
don't have all the technologies. My point is that we need
to look at where the vulnerabilities are, and try to put in
place programs to exploit those vulnerabilities.
PROF. BRENNER: Other questions. I'll ask
one of Dr. Hatfill. Can you give us an explanation of
what kind of chain of command we're looking at for these
27 trains? Who do the people report to and who controls
them and what's the organization structure? Is it civilian,
military or hybrid?
DR. HATFILL: It would be hybrid with some
qualifications on that. The DOD seems intent in
involving the National Guard in that with respect to the
rapid assessment teams. A pre-placed train on a siding
would be an ideal place for these RAID teams to operate
from. You can move three people very rapidly anywhere
and in the midst of a WMD crisis in one of our
metropolitan areas, it would be useful if the top three
people of the RAID team could advise, see what the first
responders are doing, is there a need for follow-on forces,
is there a need for greater federal intervention and this --
you're not going to do too much with 22 men in a WMD
incident. If it's a small-scale event, local authorities
should be able to handle it. If it's a large-area coverage,
these RAID teams would be trained in NBC
reconnaissance detection and could very rapidly call the
disaster train in as a follow-on force.
PROF. BRENNER: Do we have additional
questions or comments?
Q. Yes, David Mahoney with Defense News. I
have a question. At certain levels it seems with different
asymmetric threats, bioterrorism, obviously, being one of
them, at what level is there a breakdown between sort of
the traditional way the military has looked at threats as
over there somewhere before it’s projected to start being
threats where we really have to start worrying about a
mix between civil defense as an aspect of military defense
against outside aggression? I'd like to open this up to any
of the panelists who spoke today.
COL PARKER: It's a good question, and I think
a good topic to bring out and talk about and discuss. I
guess in my own mind and my own thinking, in fact, I've
begun from just the military perspective, we've always
thought in our BW defense program about the battlefield
scenario, but certainly over the last few years that has
also gone into force protection scenarios. You know, we
have to provide protection for our troops in their
barracks, as an example, and WMD and a bioterrorism
event may be something we need to not only think about
for the battlefield, but also force protection and that same
concept then, also that can be extended in our thinking
and planning for protection against a place where
civilians live, as opposed to where soldiers are. So where
that line is, I think, is going to get fuzzier. The
battlefield versus civilian protection and force protection.
I think we need to broaden our way that we think about it
and not stay in these boxes of battlefield versus civilian
protection because there's a lot of overlap. And a lot of
that intellectual thinking can be brought to bear for both
of those scenarios.
DR. HATFILL: We are living as a species at
this time in population densities that have never ever
been seen before. This brings in the concept of emerging
diseases. We're seeing on the average every two to three
years one new pathogen we never really recognized
before or a variant strain of a known pathogen. And as
we live in these terribly increased densities, which are
projected to increase even further in the next century, the
whole concept of the emerging infectious disease
becomes a major public health problem. Anything that
we spend on biological weapons defense can have direct
transference to the concept of public health and infectious
disease management.
PROF. BRENNER: Additional comments.
Q. Yes. Captain Lisa Forsythe, U.S. Army.
My question is for any of the panelists. Have you
43
analyzed our existing plan such as the Federal Response
Plan and how the Emergency Support Functions and
those Lead Federal Agencies such as the Department of
Transportation has an ESF leadership role and how DOD
fits into our current plans and how we support those
plans, not necessarily DOD taking a lead such as the
railroad system but actually supporting Department of
Transportation in those leadership roles that have already
been established?
DR. HATFILL: The National Security Council
has formulated an interagency working group to address
these problems. When is the handoff from FBI to
FEMA? How will federal assets coordinate with state
and local -- there is a working group at present working
on this.
DR. ROBERTS: There's the broader question
of the role of the Department of Defense in supporting a
national response to the bioterrorism problem as opposed
to the narrow question of the role that it plays in the
emergency response plan. I think while it's appropriate
to flag the concrete and specific issues in the emergency
response plan, we should also be sure to provide the
context here. And that is, as you know, the department
originally responded to the first PDD, the Presidential
Decision Directive in this area, four or so years ago
began to focus more seriously on its role and support of
domestic responses to terrorism, and there has been a
biocomponent of that I think this was given a big impetus
by the Defense Science Board Summer Study a year ago
which talked about the transnational threat and spelled
out potential new roles for the Department in supporting
the larger mission of the nation combating terrorism.
There have been various follow-on endeavors to that and
most recently re-collected and reorganized in the latest
PDDs, which carry forward this process. So I just
wanted to make sure that we didn't set aside this question
of the larger context within which the Department
supports the larger governmental strategy.
PROF. BRENNER: I'm going to call on
Professor Yonah Alexander to close the proceedings and
I’ll express my appreciation for you all being a very
conscientious and attentive audience.

"Who killed Cock Robin?" "I," said the Sparrow,

"With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin."

"Who saw him die?" "I," said the Fly,

"With my little eye, I saw him die."

"Who caught his blood?" "I," said the Fish,

"With my little dish, I caught his blood."

"Who'll make the shroud?" "I," said the Beetle,

"With my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud."

"Who'll dig his grave?" "I," said the Owl,

"With my pick and shovel, I'll dig his grave."

"Who'll be the parson?" "I," said the Rook,

"With my little book, I'll be the parson."

"Who'll be the clerk?" "I," said the Lark,

"If it's not in the dark, I'll be the clerk."

"Who'll carry the link?" "I," said the Linnet,

"I'll fetch it in a minute, I'll carry the link."

"Who'll be chief mourner?" "I," said the Dove,

"I mourn for my love, I'll be chief mourner."

"Who'll carry the coffin?" "I," said the Kite,

"If it's not through the night, I'll carry the coffin."

"Who'll bear the pall? "We," said the Wren,

"Both the cock and the hen, we'll bear the pall."

"Who'll sing a psalm?" "I," said the Thrush,

"As she sat on a bush, I'll sing a psalm."

"Who'll toll the bell?" "I," said the bull,

"Because I can pull, I'll toll the bell."

All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,

When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.

"Batman"

PROF. BRENNER: The first panelist is
William C. Patrick, III. From 1965 to '72 he was Chief
of the Product Development Division, in the Engineering
Directorate at Fort Detrick, Maryland. From 1972 to '86
he was involved in program analysis at high levels at the
Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Patrick has 47 years experience in the field of
biological warfare, devoted both to its offensive and
defensive aspects. Since his retirement, he has served as
a consultant to the U.S. Government and private parties.
He was involved in inspecting, after the Gulf War, Iraqi
plants capable of making biological warfare agents. Dr.
Patrick.
DR. PATRICK: Thank you very much for those
kind words. Ladies and gentlemen, I feel very strongly
that the major threat that we have today for biological
warfare is going to come from a terrorist that's state
supported, and he comes into the country with 100 grams
of dry anthrax powder, and he places it on the railroad
tracks or the metro system.
And based on the old vulnerability studies that
we had in the 1960s, you will generate large numbers of
infections. As far as I know, all of the home-grown
terrorists that have used BW have tried it through the
aerosol route, and Raymond Zacharis has done a
remarkably good job at summarizing a report -- I think
he has it published now -- in which that's the way that
the terrorist has tried to use BW effectively thus far.
Now, why hasn't the terrorist used biological
aerosols successfully in the route in which you get so
many more casualties? Well, I hope by the end of my
short presentation that you'll have a better appreciation as
to why the BW terrorist, particularly the home-grown
BW terrorist, has not been successful.
I want to remind you that BW has been around
for a long time. This is the siege of Kaffa in 1346, and
some medical experts believe this siege in which the
attackers catapulted bodies of plague victims over the city
walls, led to the pandemic outbreak of the plague back in
the 1300s that killed a thread of Europe.
Now, since I've retired, I've been going through
the country delivering lectures on what I believe to be the
principles which make for a successful BW attack or an
unsuccessful BW attack. There are four components to
this situation. The agent, most people have focused on
the agent and its properties, but equally important is the
munition system, how you deliver that munition and
agent. That is a classified lecture, and I'm not going to
get into that today. It takes about four hours to give that
lecture.
But I want to make the point as I've gone
through the countryside, I carry with me my visual aids
to aid me in this lecture. My green bag has been through
airports all over the country. I first started doing this a
few years ago, and I carry a sample of Bacillus with freeflowing
properties that looks exactly like anthrax. This
is what I prepared for the aerosol that I deposited on the
tracks of the New York subway system. It has very good
secondary aerosol properties, and that's the type of
materials that you want for the dispersion. The energy of
the train is going over it and the power creates the
secondary aerosol.
Anyway, going through these airports, I don't
know what heroin looks like, but nobody's ever stopped
me and I have all sorts of goodies. Here's a nice little
powder, very small particle size. But even though you
dry something, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going
to be effective in disseminating it.
Having said that, more recently, I've been
carrying around another little device, a two-foot nozzle
that I got from the local store, and this is a very
important point. Although a liquid is easy to make, is
very difficult to disseminate and get into that right
particle size. So a terrorist can make a product, but he's
going to have one hell of a time disseminating it into that
small particle size. Again, nobody has stopped me at the
airports and asked me what the devil I'm doing carrying
around something like this.
And most recently I decided, well, I'll push my
luck, and I'll use this device that my wife uses to take
care of her roses. And the point is this: I don't know how
well you can see that, but isn't that a beautiful aerosol?
Again, nobody is stopping me at the airport.
We've learned to look for things that go bang in the
night: pistols, explosives, and what have you, but people
at the airport security points don't have a clue as to what
to look for in terms of the BW agent.

When we talk about dissemination, we've got to
look at either a liquid or a dry powder and also what are
the characteristics that we look forward to in a munition?
And if we're talking about a liquid, some of the things
that we want to look at is viscosity, and we have a great
deal of range there. If you're considering a dry powder,
one things we look for in building a product would be
particle size, bulk density, and agent stability.
And then the munition side of the house, which
I think we've overlooked until recently, is a type of
energy that we use. The easiest way of disseminating a
BW agent is to put it into an explosive munition. And
ladies and gentlemen, that does one hell of a good job of
tearing up the organism.
Not only do we think in terms of the type of
energy used but the amount of energy being used. In
those spray devices they were using to spray the liquid, in
order for that truly to be effective, you have to get up to
high pressure. That gives the terrorist another problem.
We've got to consider when we are building an agent and
a means of distributing it.
Particle size, very important. And I think that
some of our would-be terrorists do not have the
technology to get us down to that particle size.
We have in our audience today two highly
intelligent and very effective investigative reporters from
the New York Times. We have Miller and Broad here in
our audience, and just last week or the week before, May
26, they did a beautiful job of outlining the failures of the
Aum Shinrikyo cult. Here's a cult that has a large
amount of money and fully staffed and they failed
miserably to infect a single person after nine episodes.
We know they sprayed anthrax from the rooftop
of an eight-story building in downtown Tokyo. We know
that according to Miller and Broad they sprayed germs
from trucks around the imperial palace. They attacked
the American base in Yokosuka headquarters of the
Navy's Seventh Fleet. In all, nine attacks were made, but
none were successful. At the same time, the Japanese
and U.S. authorities had no idea that the attacks had
been made. Not a clue.
Liquid cultures--I think I have demonstrated
that point -- are very easily made but are very different
because of the type of requirements to get them into a
small particle size. And the agent concentration, poor
agent concentration combined with a low disseminating
efficiency of the device, I think is a true recipe for failure.
And of course they overlooked the meteorological
conditions of the target.
How, as a nation, can we protect ourselves in
addition to gas masks? In the early 1900s, Frank Lloyd
Wright designed a hotel in downtown Tokyo that had
positive pressure. Now, we who work in the hot
laboratories use negative air pressure to keep the
organism within the building, within the confines of the
hot lab. For example, the hot lab is negative to the
hallways. The hallways are negative to the
administrative areas. The administrative areas are
negative to the outside.
Why don't we reverse that? Why don't we use
our technology today and filters in our air conditioning
systems so when you open a door or window, there's a
little puff of air going out and that keeps the organism
from coming in. I would like to see our government
seriously consider spending some money on developing
the transition technology necessary to put HEPA filters
onto our air conditioning systems so we have positive
pressure on our critical buildings. Thank you.

http://www.clickitnews.com/emergingdiseases/index.shtml

Rense.com

On The Trail Of The Anthrax Attack Conspirators

By Patricia Doyle, PhD dr_p_doyle@hotmail.com

I have been "hot on the trail" of the Anthrax Attackers. I am sure that the anthrax attackers of 2001 used the highly classified 1999 risk assessment of sending anthrax via mail authored by William Patrick III as a guide to the 2001 attacks.

The time line of the 2001 attacks goes back to 1997. Yes, that is correct 1997. The media and government and FBI etal would have us believe that 9/11 happened, and then the "lone nutty Professor" with a grudge went to his basement and "voila," 2 weeks later, anthrax in the mail. One of the big reasons why law enforcement cannot identify the conspirators is because they have the theory of a lone perpertrator and won't admit that the biological attackS were carried out by more then one individual. Law enforcement needs to widen the investigation and they need to supoena all phone records, computer drives etc of various individuals who were close to Dr. Steven Hatfill. Cars, storage rooms, even hotels in the area of Trenton need to be looked at. Who was where when the letters were mailed etc.

Well, it doesn't take a Harvard scientist to know that highly and finely weaponized anthrax cannot be milled in some basement and disbursed via mail within two weeks. Equipment and other preparations took time and well coordinated planning.

So, let us do some sleuthing.

OK, first of all we know that in 1999 there was a very highly classified and not widely distributed risk assessment that assessed the risk of sending anthrax through the mail. The assessment used b. globigii filling the envelopes with 2.5 grams of the anthrax simulant. Of course, the letters were not really sent through the postal service but handled in secure lab.

According to William Patrick III, the risk of the b. globigii escaping the envelopes was no risk.

So, being a good detective, we look at the real letters. They, as in the assessment, were all business size envelopes, taped closed. They also contained THE SAME AMOUNT 2.5 grams. The only difference was that in place of b. globigii, weaponized anthrax was used.

The anthrax in the attack letters of 2001 was milled by at least two different people. Anthrax as a weapon has its own signature. One of the letters, I believe the Daschle letter contained a more lumpy but more potent anthrax. All of the letters did have betonite and silica in the anthrax (telling us that the conspirators had their "schooling" in our own US bioweapons program, and they were all minutely milled i.e. smallest micron size.

One of the attendees to the April 1998 Clinton White House Bioterrorism meetings had alerted me to the 1999 risk assessment. This scientist thought that the assessment was pertinent in the case of the anthrax attacker and wanted me to go public with this info. I did so about 6 months ago and have been discussing it constantly on every radio show interview and in all my writings on the subjec.

One ultimate question on my mind was, "WHO ORDERED THE ASSESSMENT IN 1999." I learned that Dr. Steven Hatfill had comissioned friend, confident and colleague, William Patrick III to do a risk assessment for sending anthrax via the mail. Next question in my mind was, WHO IS STEVEN HATFILL? Why did he order the assessment? One would think that a real bioterrorist would use weaponized anthrax where it could kill the largest amount of people at one time.

I had heard of Dr. Hatfill, as did others in the Bioterrorism Preparedness community. Dr. Hatfill had much medai attention in 1997 after the manila envelope filled with b. cereus was sent to the Washington offices of the B'nai B'rith. He had also recently been hired by USAMRIID in 97 after he left the NIH. He had been at the NIH since 1995 but was seeking USAMRIID position. He had long desired to become involved in bioterrorism and his 1997 arrival at USAMRIID was his "dream job." It was quite strange, however, to hear that in 1999 he left USAMRIID quickly.

In 1999, he went to SAIC (Scientific Applications International Corp) while still maintaining lab privileges at USAMRIID, Dugway and the Chem. Weapons lab at Edgewood. He remained at SAIC until March 2002 when, for some strange reason not yet comprehended, his security clearances were revoked. In Feb. 2002, the Baltimore Sun did run an article on Dr. Steven Hatfill pointing out that in August 2000, Dr. Hatfill was seen leaving USAMRIID with 2 biosafety cabinents. His excuse was that he removed the cabinets to use as part of his lecture during a Special Forces bioterrorism course. He claimed that after 2 uses he destroyed the cabinets. I wonder if anyone has seen any receipts proving the cabinets were distroyed?

Dr. Hatfill had been very vocal and since 1997, tried to convince the media and Congress about the US being woefully unprepared to handle a bioterrorist attack.

There is much information on his speech to the bioterrorism conference at the Potomac Institute available on the Potomacinstitute.com website.

Dr. Hatfill, after leaving SAIC was recommended for a position at LSU and indirectly worked for the FBI and the DOJ in the capacity of training law enforcement about bioterrorism. (small conflict of interest and possibly why the FBI waited so long to search his home.) Dr. David Huxsoll of Plum Island and Dr. Dave Franz formerly of USAMRIID were the scientists who recommended him for LSU. As you may remember, I always believed that Plum Island was responsible for the WNV outbreak in New York in 1999. I felt that WNV was released as part of a 5 year epidemiological bioterrorism study of vectored virus spread.

I have been discussing the Patrick risk assessment for 6 months and wonder why the FBI/DOJ etal did not look into it sooner and investigate those who were responsible for it.

Some of the most intriguing part of Dr. Hatfill's bio was his African years. Dr. Hatfill went to medical school in Rhodesia. He was concurrently working for the US Army Institute for Military Assistance at Ft. Bragg and at the same time, for the Rhodesian Special Air Squadron After 1984 he went to work for the S. African Govt. and did a year tour of duty for S. Africa in Antartica. He was in Africa at the same time that So. Africa was at the height of its biowar program. Did he work with Wouter Bassoon? He was in Rhodesia during the time that there was a major anthrax outbreak. There is very little known about his years working for the white S. African govt. We do not hear about him again until 1995 when he went to the NIH. (National Institute of Health)

I believe that the actual time line for the anthrax attack was in 1997. I think that Dr. Hatfill had secretly considered releasing or causing a bioevent in the US in order to scare the Congress and public into accepting major public health changes as well as major funding. I do not think that he considered using an actual weapon until 1999. I think that he took one or more friends into his confidence and they originated the attack. I know that William Patrick and Steven Hatfill and Ken Alibek did pass polygraph tests. I have consulted a polygraph expert and asked if a well disciplined, highly motivated person,who believed he was acting in the best interest of the country were to take a polygraph test, could he pass even if lying. The experts said yes, this is why a polygraph is not admissible in a court of law.

I think that the anthax plot was a last resort. I think that after taking the 99 risk assessment into consideration, and after the June 2001 Dark Winter Smallpox Simulation exercise which gave us poor results as far as preparedness, the plotters decided to go ahead with the anthrax attack. I think that they decided to go ahead in July 2001. Preparations underway, 9/11 happened which definitely told our conspiratiors that they were doing the right thing. Thus, after 9/11, anthrax milled and ready, the attacks occurred.

I believe, although theory, that Dr. Steven Hatfill, and William Patrick III and perhaps one or more persons did send anthrax letters via US mail. They never intended to kill or contaminate facilities. Unfortunately, they never sent the b. globigii letters via mail. They should have used some high speed sorting machines in the lab when they did the risk assessment. They did not, so, they did not know that the machines would puncture the envelopes. Thus the attack resulted with people killed, sickened and facilities contaminated. The conspirators were successful in as much as the media, public and Congress were sufficiently scared and massive changes in Public health laws were implemented as well as massive funding for bioterrorism and vaccine makers.

I think that the FBI knows who was responsible, and have been dragging their heels on making an arrest. I do concur and admit that the anthrax was probably not milled at any of the homes, businesses or labs of the conspirators. Possibly, they even rented a hotel room paying cash and under an assumed name, thus making it hard to check.

I think, if we are going to solve this, we must go back to 1997 and reinvestigate the B'nai B'rith envelope case as well as the hoax letters of 1998 which I believe are part of the conspiracy. I think that this time the cospirators decided to use weaponized anthrax because the b. globigii and the b. cereus would not sufficiently scare congress or the public. Just sending a hoax letter would not create the response they wanted. After Dark Winter, when in the exercise we lost all of the first responders, it was obvious to Hatfill, Patrick, Alibek and CIA, FBI etc. that we are drastically unprepared for a bioevent.

I understand why they did it, but also think that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I ask people to keep the pressure on Sens.Daschle and Leahy to keep investigating and demand an arrest from the FBI. It was only because Sen Daschle heard about the risk assesment (finally after my 6 months of talking about it) that Dr. Hatfill was finally being investigated.

If you want more information on the cabal, please let me know. Also if you can distribute the data, please do so.

I think that releasing weaponized anthrax via the US mail was dispicable and punishment should be forthcoming. It is time that elite scientists as well as politicans learn that they are NOT above the law. Because they are in the highest level of bioterrorism science, they feel that they can use a bioweapon on the US population, get funding and have public health laws enacted that subvert our constitution and take away individual rights and do so without penalty.

We must keep the investigation going. I am afraid that as the public simply accepted West Nile Virus and has moved on forgetting how it arrived in the US, so too, the public will simply forget about the Anthrax letters. We must not let that happen.

Please keep the name of Dr. Steven Hatfill in the public media. Write to your local media and send them this information. I can provide more if they wish.

Thank you,

Patricia Doyle

references: http://www.potomacinstitute.com/pubs/pubs.htm

Patricia A. Doyle, PhD

Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/emergingdiseases/index.shtml

Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask.

Anthrax investigation still yielding findings
Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask.
Roberta Kwok

[Published online 25 February 2009 Nature doi:10.1038/news.2009.120]

The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called RMR-1029, which Ivins could access in his laboratory at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

At a biodefence meeting on 24 February, Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of three letters sent to the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin, says Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements.
Two cultures of the same anthrax strain grown using similar processes — one from Ivins' lab, the other from a US Army facility in Utah — showed the silicon-oxygen signature but did not contain tin or iron. Michael presented the analyses at the American Society for Microbiology's Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
The chemical mismatch doesn't necessarily mean that deadly spores used in the attacks did not originate from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask, says Jason Bannan, a microbiologist and forensic examiner at the FBI's Chemical Biological Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia. The RMR-1029 culture was created in 1997, and the mailed spores could have been taken out of that flask and grown under different conditions, resulting in varying chemical contents. "It doesn't surprise me that it would be different," he says.
The data suggest that spores for the three letters were grown using the same process, says Michael. It is not clear how tin and iron made their way into the culture, he says. Bannan suggests that the growth medium may have contained iron and tin may have come from a water source.
Hard to tell apart
The meeting offered scientists who collaborated with the FBI during the investigation an opportunity to share detailed data. The analyses will eventually be published in peer-reviewed journals, the FBI has said.
Jacques Ravel, a genomics scientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, described his team's efforts to find genetic differences between various cultures of the Ames strain, the B. anthracis strain identified in the anthrax letters. At first, the team was surprised to find that the DNA sequences of a reference Ames strain and Ames samples from the investigation, such as bacteria isolated from the spinal fluid of the first victim, were exactly the same. "It was kind of a shock," says Ravel.
For help, the researchers turned to variants found by a team at USAMRIID. Patricia Worsham and her colleagues had noticed differences in shape, colour and rate of spore formation even within a single anthrax culture. Ravel's team identified the genetic mutations associated with four variants and developed an assay for one of them, called Morph E. Researchers at Commonwealth Biotechnologies in Richmond, Virginia, and the Midwest Research Institute's Florida Division in Palm Bay created assays for three other variants.
The FBI then used that arsenal of tests to pin down the origins of the anthrax letters, matching the mix of genetic variants in the mailed spores to Ivins' RMR-1029 flask. "It has the genetic signatures that identify it as the most likely source of the growth," says Bannan.
Ravel also sequenced the genome of a Bacillus subtilis strain that was found in one of the letters. That sample did not match a B. subtilis strain found in Ivins' lab, says Bannan, but the bacterial contamination still could have come from somewhere else in Ivins' institution.

The FBI has asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to convene an independent panel of experts to review the anthrax investigation data. The academy is still in the process of drawing up a contract with the FBI that lays out an agreement to perform the study, says NAS spokeswoman Christine Stencel.
Thomas DeGonia, Ivins' lawyer at Venable LLP in Rockville, Maryland, maintains Ivins' innocence.
Comments
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"Although the tin and iron may have come from the water used for cultivation, their amount, in my opinion, far exceeds the levels commonly present in the water used in a laboratory. Another possibility to consider is that the suspect used a primitive but a sturdy and a widely-available container to dry the spores, namely a tin can. It would explain a simultaneous presence of both elements. This suggestion is easy to test in experiments."
25 Feb, 2009
Posted by: Serguei

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Anthrax attack on US Congress made by scientists and covered up by FBI, expert says

Sherwood Ross

Middle East Times

December 11, 2006

WASHINGTON --

The terrorists who perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely were US government scientists at the army's Ft. Detrick, MD., bioterrorism lab having access to "moonsuits" that enabled them to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, an eminent authority on the subject says.

....Boyle, who drafted the US Biological Weapons Convention of 1989 enacted by Congress, said destruction of the Ames anthrax "appears to be a cover-up orchestrated by the FBI."

.....Boyle, a leading American authority on international law, said after the attacks he contacted senior FBI official Marion "Spike" Bowman, who handles counter-terrorism issues, and provided him with the names of the scientists working with anthrax. Boyle told Bowman the Ft. Detrick scientists were not to be trusted. In addition to then destroying the anthrax, the FBI "retained every independent life-scientist it could locate as part of its fictitious investigation, and then swore them all to secrecy so that they cannot publicly comment on the investigation or give their expert opinion," Boyle said. Boyle pointed out that Bowman is the same FBI agent "who played a pivotal role in suppressing evidence which in turn prevented the issuance of a search warrant for the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th Al Qaeda hijacker on 11 September 2001, which might otherwise have led to foreknowledge and therefore prevention of those terrorist attacks in the first place."

.....Because of its "bogus investigation," Boyle said, "the greatest political crime in the history of the United States of America since its founding on 4 July, 1776 - the anthrax attacks on Congress, which served not only to deliver a terrorist threat on its members, but actually to close it down for a period - may remain officially unresolved forever." "Could it truly be coincidental," he continued, "that two of the primary intended victims of the terrorist anthrax attacks - Senators Daschle and Leahy - were holding up the speedy passage of the pre-planned USA Patriot Act ... an act which provided the federal government with unprecedented powers in relation to US citizens and institutions?" Leahy is incoming Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and may have a personal interest in holding hearings to learn who tried to kill him. He recently said President George W. Bush should be "terrified" that he will be the new Chair. http://www.law.uiuc.edu/faculty/DirectoryResult.asp?Nam...

Francis A. Boyle Professor

A scholar in the areas of international law and human rights, Professor Boyle (fboyle@law.uiuc.edu ) received a J.D. degree magna cum laude and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at the College of Law, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard and an associate at its Center for International Affairs. He also practiced tax and international tax with Bingham, Dana & Gould in Boston. He has written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on the relationship between international law and politics. His eighth book, Destroying World Order, was recently published by Clarity Press. An earlier book, Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, has been used successfully in numerous foreign policy protest trials. In the September 2000 issue of the prestigious The International History Review, Professor Boyle’s Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations (1898-1922) was proclaimed as “a major contribution to this reinterrogation of the past” and “required reading for historians, political scientists, international relations specialists, and policy-makers.” That book was translated into Korean and published in Korea in 2003 by Pakyoungsa Press. As an internationally recognized expert, Professor Boyle serves as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) currently pending before the International Court of Justice. He also represents two associations of citizens within the country and has been instrumental in developing the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic for committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Professor Boyle is Attorney of Record for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, conducting its legal affairs on a worldwide basis. Over his career, he has represented national and international bodies including the Blackfoot Nation (Canada) and the Lakota Nation, as well as numerous individual death penalty and human rights cases. He has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare. From 1991-92, Professor Boyle served as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations. He also has served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, as a consultant to the American Friends Services Committee, and on the Advisory Board for the Council for Responsible Genetics. He drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. Professor Boyle was selected for inclusion in the 2005 Edition of Marquis' Who's Who in America.

http://grassley.senate.gov/releases/2003/p03r01-09a.htm

For Immediate Release Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003

Grassley Questions Rationale Behind FBI Award

WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Grassley today wrote to FBI Director Mueller to question why he gave an award to Marion "Spike" Bowman in light of the FBI's problems with FISA warrants, especially in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. The Judiciary Committee has been investigating the FISA problems at the FBI, including holding closed hearings where Mr. Bowman and other officials were questioned about the Moussaoui case. During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and in a letter to Director Mueller, Agent Coleen Rowley highlighted the resistance at headquarters, that agents in Minnesota faced in their investigation of Moussaoui.

Here is Grassley's letter to Director Mueller.

January 9, 2002

The Honorable Robert Mueller

DirectorFederal Bureau of Investigation

935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20535

Dear Director Mueller:

I am writing to express my concern and inquire about an award you recently gave to Marion "Spike" Bowman for "meritorious service." Mr. Bowman, as deputy general counsel who is in charge of the FBI's National Security Law Unit, has a great deal of authority at the FBI over the use and processing of warrants sought under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), one of the FBI's most important tools against terrorists.

As you know, the FBI has experienced serious problems with the FISA process over the last several years. These problems are well documented by the May 2000 Bellows report, a July 2001 GAO report, the May 2002 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's ruling and the Joint inquiry of the Intelligence Committees.

The case of Zaracarias Moussaoui, who has been charged in connection with the terrorist attacks of Sepetmber 11, 2001, is a prime example of the FBI's problems with FISA warrants. The 26-page Electronic Communication from the Minneapolis Division contained information that a reasonable person would have concluded is sufficient to obtain a FISA warrant. The application should have gone forward to the Justice Department and the FISA court. Instead, Supervisory Special Agent Michael Maltbie concluded there was not enough information to go forward with the application. Incredibly, SSA Maltbie removed certain information before making a presentation of questionable accuracy and length to the National Security Law Unit. Mr. Bowman has said he concurred with SSA Maltbie that there was insufficient evidence to move forward with the FISA warrant application. Even after Mr. Bowman was made aware of the information that had been removed from the application, he maintained that even with that information the application still should not have gone forward.

If the application for the FISA warrant had gone forward as it should have, and had a warrant been granted as I believe it would have, agents would have found information in Moussaoui's belongings that linked him both to a major financier of the hijacking plot working out of Germany, and to a Malaysian Al Qaeda boss who had met with at least two other hijackers while under surveillance by intelligence officials.In light of the consequences of the decision not to even attempt to seek the FISA warrant, and Mr. Bowman's concurrence with that, it is shocking then that you gave Mr. Bowman the award known as the "Presidential Rank of Meritorious Service." By granting this award and a monetary bonus, you are sending the wrong signal to those agents who fought – sometimes against senior FBI bureaucrats at headquarters – to prevent the attacks. This also fits with a disturbing pattern of rewarding wrongdoing or mistakes by top officials at the FBI that I hoped would end during your tenure. Also, you have said that the FBI must admit its mistakes, but it seems that is not happening in this case. To my knowledge, agents who were investigating leads on the hijacking plot prior to September 11, 2001, have neither been thanked nor awarded by you or other headquarters officials in any official way. Agents in Minnesota who investigated Moussaoui and the agent in New York who tried to investigate Khalid Al-Mihdhar should be held up as models of FBI agents seeking to prevent terrorism. Instead, you have given an award and extra money to a bureaucrat at headquarters who is seen by many as having stymied the work of field agents.

I ask that you personally review the Judiciary Committee transcript of the closed hearing held on July 9, 2002 about the FBI's FISA problems. This transcript contains troubling comments and answers from Mr. Bowman and others in the National Security Law Unit. Any reasonable person who reads the transcript will seriously question the competence of the National Security Law Unit.To better understand why you gave the award to Mr. Bowman, please answer the following questions.

1) How and why was Mr. Bowman selected for this award? – Was this award given by your sole discretion as director, or were others involved in nominating or selecting Mr. Bowman? If others were involved, please identify them and include their reasons for thinking Mr. Bowman should be rewarded in the response. – Please provide any and all documents relating to the decision to grant Mr. Bowman this award. – My staff has been informed by an FBI official in the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs that the award is for work performed over the last three years. If this is so, please include documentation of achievements in this period for which Mr. Bowman was given the award and extra money.

2) I ask that you provide the full internal announcement, or the citation, for the award to Mr. Bowman and other recipients.

3) Please state how much money accompanies Mr. Bowman's award.

I would appreciate a full response in writing by Monday, January 27.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Grassley

Ranking Member

Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs

Legal Reporting Professor to Give Speech at Journalism Ethics Institute

Toni Locy, Reynolds Professor of Legal Reporting at Washington and Lee University, will deliver the keynote address at Washington and Lee University’s 47th Institute on Journalism Ethics on Friday, March 6, at 5:30 p.m. in the Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons.The title of Locy’s speech is “Committing Journalism: Contempt for Reporters in Post-9/11 America.” The event is free and open to the public.

Last year Locy received three awards including the John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award from the National Press Club and the First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for defying a federal district judge’s order to reveal the names of confidential sources for stories when she was covering the Justice Department for USA Today in 2001 and 2002. The stories in question were about the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people. Unidentified sources had told several reporters, including Locy, that former Army scientist Steven Hatfill was a possible suspect. A federal appeals court has vacated the contempt order against Locy.

In addition to her five years at USA Today, Locy has covered the Supreme Court and legal affairs for the Associated Press, federal courts for The Washington Post, criminal justice for The Philadelphia Daily and federal courts for The Pittsburgh Press. She has also worked for The Boston Globe and U.S. News & World Report. She received a master’s degree in the studies of law from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Locy joined W&L’s faculty in the journalism and mass communications department in 2008 as its first Donald W. Reynolds Professor of Legal Reporting.

The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation is a national philanthropic organization founded in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nev., it is one of the largest private foundations in the United States.

Microbial Forensics

Microbial Forensics

Stephen A Morse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA
Bruce Budowle, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Quantico, VA, USA

Microbial forensics is a newly developed discipline with an epidemiological foundation dedicated to the characterization, analysis and interpretation of evidence from the scene of an act of bioterrorism or a biocrime. It is an evolving subdiscipline of forensic sciences, which combines several disciplines including microbiology, molecular biology, genomics, bioinformatics and biochemistry. Microbial forensic investigations are carried out to obtain information regarding the identification or source of the material used in an act of bioterrorism, biocrime, hoax or unintentional release of a microorganism or toxin, with the ultimate goal of identifying those responsible for the crime (i.e. attribution). Attribution could be key to criminal prosecution of the individual or individuals, or for supporting actions that may be taken as a result of national policy
decisions.

Introduction
In mid-to-late September 2001, a 63-year-old male photo editor working for American Media in Boca Raton, Florida was exposed to a powder from an unusual letter while sitting at his desk. He became ill on September 27 while on a trip to North Carolina. After returning home, he was taken to the emergency room of his local hospital on October 2 complaining of fever, nausea, vomiting and confusion,
symptoms suggestive of bacterial meningitis. An examination of a Gram-stained smear of the patient’s cerebrospinal fluid obtained by lumbar puncture revealed the presence of numerous inflammatory white blood cells and chains of large Gram-positive rod-shaped bacteria. Based on the microscopic appearance of the stained smear, a diagnosis of anthrax was considered; the diagnosis was confirmed when Bacillus anthracis was identified in cultures of the patient’s cerebrospinal fluid and blood. The subsequent discovery of spores of B. anthracis on the index case’s (i.e. the initial patient in an epidemiologic investigation) computer keyboard and in the mail room of the America Media building as well as the recovery of spores from both asymptomatic coworkers and a hospitalized coworker suggested that the American Media building was the site where the infection had been acquired. This together with the finding of B. anthracis spores in regional and local postal centres that processed mail destined for the American
Media building implicated one or more mailed letters or packages as the probable source of exposure. When letters containing spores of B. anthracis were discovered in the offices of NBC, CBS, ABC and the New York Post and in the offices of Senator Tom Daschle, a bioterrorist act was realized in the United States. The use of the United States postal system as a method for disseminating spores of B. anthracis set off national panic, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began an investigation to identify the perpetrator of this heinous act. The need to exploit forensic evidence that could assist in identifying the perpetrator( s) thrust the nascent field of microbial forensics into the spotlight. The occurrence of this event created an urgent need for enhanced capabilities that make possible the full and robust forensic scientific exploitation and interpretation of microbial evidence from acts of bioterrorism or biocrimes.

Read the full article HERE

Judge delays ruling on Free Press reporter who refused to name sources

FREE PRESS STAFF • February 11, 2009

A federal judge just announced that he would not rule today on whether to hold Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter in contempt of court for refusing to identify confidential sources in a 2004 article.

U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland said he would take the contempt issue “under advisement,” which leaves the fate of possible sanctions against Ashenfelter for another day.


Ashenfelter contends, among other things, that being forced to identify who in the U.S. Justice Department told him that a federal prosecutor was under internal investigation would violate Ashenfelter’s rights under the 5th Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Justice officials who appeared at today’s hearing appeared to bolster Ashenfelter’s argument when they told the judge they could not say, one way or another, if Ashenfelter would face possible criminal charges if he testified.


Today’s hearing is a collision between a journalist’s interest in protecting confidential sources and an individual’s interest in gathering evidence to pursue a lawsuit.


Former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino brought a 2004 whistleblower suit against the Justice Department, claiming his supervisors illegally leaked word to Ashenfelter that Convertino was the subject of an internal probe in retaliation for Convertino’s public criticism of the department.


Ashenfelter, citing sources, wrote in a January 2004 Free Press article that Convertino was being investigated for his conduct as lead prosecutor in a now-discredited trial of North African men living in Detroit accused of being a terrorist sleeper cell. Convertino filed his suit the following month and later resigned.


There is no dispute over the accuracy of the article and Ashenfelter, a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter, is not named as a defendant in Convertino’s suit against the government.


Convertino argues, however, that Ashenfelter’s refusal to identify his sources in pre-trial witness testimony makes it impossible for him to learn which of his former bosses improperly leaked word that he was being investigated, information he says is crucial to his efforts to prove retaliation in his suit.


Cleland, the judge hearing Convertino’s suit, earlier rejected arguments by Free Press lawyers that the First Amendment protected Ashenfelter from revealing his sources. In ordering Ashenfelter to name names, the judge noted that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Michigan, is one of the few circuits that don’t recognize a so-called reporter’s privilege.


But when Ashenfelter appeared for deposition in December, he took a new tact, asserting his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. In later court pleadings, Free Press lawyers representing Ashenfelter argued that he has a legitimate fear of prosecution if he reveals his sources, noting that the Justice Department has previously pursued criminal probes against people who leaked what the government contends are confidential records on terrorism. The lawyers also noted Convertino has accused Ashenfelter of conspiring with the officials he accuses of criminal conduct.


After Ashenfelter took the Fifth, Convertino’s lawyer asked Cleland to impose escalating personal fines – up to $5,000 a day – to force Ashenfelter’s hand. The attorney also asked that Ashenfelter be barred from being reimbursed by the Free Press or anyone else for any fines.


Convertino’s request is similar to a strategy employed against a USA Today reporter for her reporting on a government scientist in connection with the 2001 anthrax mailings.


USA Today reporter Toni Locy was held in contempt of court and personally fined thousands of dollars a day for refusing to name her sources on a federal probe that focused on Steven Hatfill – wrongly, as it turned out – as a “person of interest” in the anthrax mailings. Lawyers for Hatfill, who was never charged, sought information from Locy as part of a civil suit against the government. The matter was eventually resolved without Locy being forced to pay the fines.


Her case and others have prompted media and First Amendment groups to push for a federal “shield law” that would protect journalists from having to reveal sources in a wide range of circumstances.


“Using reporters to obtain large monetary judgments in civil matters strikes me as unseemly,” Locy, now a journalism professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, said Tuesday. “We’re not their private investigators.”


Both the Free Press and USA Today are owned by Gannett Co. Inc.


Mark Grannis, a Hatfill attorney, has countered that reporters should have no greater rights than other witnesses when called to testify.


Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based, international media organization that supports jail journalists and opposes censorship, issued a statement Tuesday supporting Ashenfelter and his Convertino coverage as having “offered insight into important and legitimate news” on the workings of government.

Anthrax Case Takes a Final Twist?

The Anthrax Suicide, Washington Espionage and More

WASHINGTON One recent morning, shortly after this city had come down from the high of a historic inauguration, Joseph Persichini Jr., head of the FBI’s Washington field office, sat down with ticklethewire.com editor Allan Lengel. Persichini, a 33-year veteran of the FBI, took charge of the Washington office in 2006. In crisp white shirt and yellow tie, and his blackberry and navy blue FBI coffee mug close at hand, he talked about Chinese espionage in the Washington area, how his office sorted through intelligence tips leading up to the inauguration and the perplexing anthrax investigation and how he felt when anthrax suspect Dr. Bruce Ivins committed suicide: “It wasn’t the ending we wanted.” The following answers were condensed and the questions were edited for clarity.
Q. In the anthrax case, obviously it took a long time to solve. How frustrating was that for the first few years?.
A. Any case of that magnitude that you can’t solve immediately is frustrating to any investigator. We all wanted to bring the case to a logical conclusion and work it as fast as we could. This case brought us challenges that were never faced by law enforcement ever in the history of the world. Nobody had ever used bacillus anthracis as a weapon to murder people. There was no scientific analysis based on anthrax, no DNA about anthrax. The potential subjects were the world. How do you start from there and whittle all that down?
Q. There was a lot of talk that the scientists were never going to narrow it down to a person. Were you always confident the science would catch up?
A. Well, we were optimistic. We knew it was a piece of the puzzle we needed. But it didn’t stop us from pursuing it as a normal homicide investigation. We didn’t know if the science would come through. It was explained during the press conference about anthrax how eventually the DNA for bacillus anthracis was developed. That was a major factor in coming up with our conclusion
Q. I don’t know how much you can say about scientist Steven Hatfill. Obviously he was considered a ‘person of interest’– as the attorney general had said before. Was there any lesson learned from looking at him?
A. I’m not going to talk about Steven Hatfill. Nobody would condone any type of leak. As I said in the very beginning, the world was our suspect and you begin to eliminate the potential subjects. We had many potential subjects.
Q. The Ft. Detrick lab was always tops on the list.
A. I’m not going to get into the internal side of it. Our first impression, I’m sure all of the world thought…this is terrorism. Any time you have a case of that magnitude there are lessons learned and it’s an experience you hope as we mature, all of us learn how to approach a case of that magnitude again. It was uncharted waters.
Q. Some politicians on the Hill were criticizing the FBI. Was it hard not to step up and say ‘We’ve really got something cooking, we just can’t talk about it? Essentially you took the criticism.
A. I’m not going to talk about politics. It’s no different than Ted Kaczynski and the decision to print the manifesto . You’ve got to keep focusing on your job and you have to understand, everybody was frustrated. If you’re a victim’s family member you want to see progress, you want to bring closure to this. So did we. People that were criticizing, you have to understand, they didn’t have the facts. There is no investigation that we’re going to lay out our investigative plan, it’s just counterproductive to what we do. Everybody looks at the prism with a different perspective.
Q. Were family members of the vicitms understanding about the pace of the investigation or were they critical?
A. We established relationships with them at the outset and we tried to keep them abreast as much as possible without revealing our investigation to them. I think for the most part they understood that. They knew we couldn’t lay out our whole case, our whole strategy. I’m sure everybody goes through a sea of emotions in a case like this. I used to say to them: “I’m not walking in your shoes, I can try to be compassionate, I can try to understand and we’ll do the best we can.” I think the moment of truth was obviously on the day we revealed the conclusion of the case, with the director spending over an hour or so with them, sitting down, and the prosecutors and investigators going through the case in its entirety.
Q. Are you convinced Bruce Ivins was the guy and Hatfill was not the guy?
A. Without a question. Dr. Bruce Ivins used anthrax to murder those individuals.
Q. When he committed suicide, was that a frustration? Was it shocking?
A. It wasn’t the ending that we wanted. This team was prepared to take its case in chief and present it to a jury of his peers. That’s our job and that’s what we wanted to do. We would have presented that to the grand jury and taken the case to trial.
Q. Your reaction when you first heard he committed suicide?
A. Frustrating. Again concerned about the team , the families. Where’s closure? We knew he was the subject. He obviously knew that. How would we have closure to this case.? How can we notifiy the public? There’s a sense of , you know, they need to know what happened here.
Q. When he committed suicide, it didn’t get out right away. Was there some talk of “how do we break the news?”
A. I think that conversation began immediately with all parties, the investigative team, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Department of Justice, headquarters , FBI , Postal Service, determining what we can and cannot say. And how is it that you close an investigation of this magnitude that had global implications?
Q. Did you personally call some of the family members of the victims about this?A. The team did.
Q. Their reaction?
A. I’m not going to speak for them. Again, I’m not walking in their shoes. It’s been a long road for them. And that grieving process is different for everybody. We wanted to inform them as soon as possible. But I know there was a gap between the suicide and when we could physically get everybody here to Washington to brief them. And that really was why it took so long to go public because we wanted to brief them first.
Q. Were you in on the briefing.
A. Yes.
Q. And their reaction at that time?.
A. Again, different reactions. Some were relieved to to hear the progress that had been made that we couldn’t tell them about. So they heard exactly what we were doing, how we were approaching it, how we would have brought it to trial and how we would have presented the case. Everybody grieved different.
Q. Was it an emotional meeting?
A. Yes.
Q. People crying?
A. Yes. Emotional for everybody. It’s not over. That grieving process continues. There’s an important lesson learned reaching out to the victims. We did a pretty good job. We wanted them to be informed. We wanted them to understand what we were trying to do.
Q. Do you look back at some things that you guys did and say, “Oh boy, we could have saved a lot of time.”
A. That’s very difficult. Things were developing, the science was developing. The science again being a pivotal point; it took us a long time. How long did it take us to develop DNA in the world, and now all of a sudden, we, within a couple years, developed a DNA profile of anthrax. It was never ever done before in history. Even though it took a long time, that’s a phenomenal development by the scientists who were working with us, our FBI laboratory. You had agents that were working on the case as investigators who were scientists, who then went to the FBI lab in a promotional aspect and continued to work on the development of the DNA. That’s good work.
Q. Bruce Ivins’ name came up early on in the investigation because nearly everbody at Ft. Detrick was polygraphed and his polygraph came up a little irregular at that time. Was there any indication that you should have gotten back to him sooner?
A. I won’t talk about that.
Q. About the inauguration. How do you think things went?
A. I think it was just a very successful day. We concentrated on inauguration day, but you know we actually had 4 days with the concert on Sunday . I think the nation’s capital rose to the occasion, and I mean that by all aspects of the nation’s capital, the law enforcement community, the business community.
Q. During that time obviously there were little scares that came up. For one, the Somalia terrorist rumors. Were you getting a lot of intelligence coming from overseas in relation to the inauguration?
A. This was a global event, so this wasn’t just an event in Washington D.C. The eyes of the world were upon us. The first African-American president of the United States was being sworn in. So I think the law enforcement community, not just here in the region, but nationally and internationally, they all were very cognizant of the heightened awareness present. It’s evident that as we became closer and visitors began to arrive here, tips came in, information came in, intelligence came in, information from our partners nationally, police departments, fusion centers across the country and of course the intelligence community. Bulletins had gone out on awareness and yes, intelligence did increase as we got closer and closer to Jan 20.
Q. It must have been massive, the amount of intelligence. How do you sort through all that in an orderly fashion?
A. Again, I go back to the progress of the FBI since 9/11 and our ability to gather intelligence, analyze that intelligence and then disseminate that intelligence. The stream of intelligence is very robust. Information coming in either from the fusion centers or the intelligence community is coordinated either at the headquarters level or here at the field office level. We had the capability of gathering it and then disseminating, which is important. You may get a lead that comes in and says well, we need to check out an individual in Detroit. Well that’s not a lead that we would do. Here we would automatically send leads to our Detroit division. We had a conference call with all the field office leadership across the country and advised them what the latest threat matrix was, and that each field office was to have staff available and ready if leads or investigative assignments were delegated to each one of those divisions. Everybody understood what we were facing across the FBI, not just nationally but internationally.
Q. There were reports of a lot of chatter in some of the white Supremacist chat rooms.
A. I think again, looking across the nation, that becomes a national domestic terrorism issue. All of the fusion centers , all the law enforcement community in the nation were briefed on what we call the vulnerabilities. What is the threat? We use the term “know your domain”. If you think there’s a threat, we’re asking people to go out and re-contact sources, maybe review cases and determine whether or not people had seen an increase of activity. As I sit here today, we had some increase of information, whether it’s an Internet threat or just basic conversation between groups, which is not illegal. Just remember, there’s a First Amendment here, freedom of speech. Anybody can have a conversation, that’s not illegal. So obviously we’re looking for information that if somebody believes somebody has the ability or has expressed an interest to take some sort of action , which would be illegal or to harm someone.
Q. In the past, there’s been some criticism of the FBI not sharing information. Were there any issues that came up during inauguration?
A. I think that’s probably one of the highlights. Our relationship with the leadership with the law enforcement here in this community is absolutely fantastic. Again, we’ve been planning for this for six months. There were 23 different sub-committees, there was an executive steering committee. The Secret Service , because it was a national special security event, was responsible for the planning of the entire event. I can tell you up to the days, starting Friday with the train ride, the leadership talked every day. I started the morning talking to (D.C. police) Chief Lanier and usually our last call at 10 o clock at night was with Chief Lanier or (U.S. Park Police chief) Sal Lauro or (U.S. Capitol police chief) Phil Morse. Intelligence, I can tell you, was flowing by the minute, by the day, between all of our agencies.
Q. Beyond the inauguration, in terms of Afghanistan and Iraq, you have agents in those countries. Are you getting helpful intelligence from there either through sources or raids or gathering of documents?
A. There’s a lot going on in that arena, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our bomb technicians from FBI are there. They’re responding to all the bombings that are going off, that evidence is all coming into the FBI and the FBI lab so that a data base is being formed with just all evidence as it relates to bombings. Any time there’s any kind of activity across the world and they recover evidence , it can now be inputted into the data base. Intelligence both from the intelligence community and the activity both in Iraq and Afghanistan is being filtered through agencies. Our legal attaches in Baghdad and Kabul are working closely with the partners. That’s very very important on the war on terror as you would say. Significant advancements have been made.
Q. Do you feel any of the intelligence that’s been gathered there has helped prevent terrorist acts here in the states.
A. I won’t say whether there’s been something specific. As you always say, one small piece of intelligence may help put the whole puzzle together. That constant robust feeding of intelligence and analyzing that intelligence, there’s no finite end to that. That’s constant. That helps all of us, not just the FBI, it helps all of us across the world assess what the capabilities are, whether it’s al Qaeda or al-Shabab, or whoever other terrorist groups are out there.
Q. What about in terms of getting wiretaps in Afghanistan or Pakistan?
A. That I couldn’t give you.
Q. In terms of the FBI’s role in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, do you see it expanding?
A. Again, our presence there is greater than just our legal attache so we have training aspects, we have investigations. Here in the Washington field office we’re responsible for some of the fraud investigations as it relates to rebuilding funds in Iraq, so I think anywhere across the globe, especially in nations that are developing now, our presence is important.
Q. In the last three or four years this office and headquarters has had a lot of public corruption cases. Do you attribute that to a shifting of resources or is some of it just luck that certain things unraveled like the Jack Abramoff case?
A. Public corruption is one of the our number one criminal priorities in this division and will continue to be. We burn more public corruption resources than anywhere in the nation. We have about 55 agents working public corruption here in the nation’s capital. You mentioned we have the Abramoff case, we’re doing a lot of work in the foreign corrupt practices act and anti-trust cases.
Q. Can we expect some indictments this year in public corruption?
A. I can say we have resources committed to it and obviously an indictment is up to the grand jury, but as we move forward on cases I expect some statistical accomplishments and some judicial action to take place.
Q. In terms of espionage here in Washington, we traditionally think of Russians and Chinese. Are they still the key groups?
A. Espionage is here. It’s present. I think what’s important also is economic espionage. We continue to be a government that invests in more R and D (research and development) than anywhere else in the world. There are countries, there are companies, there are entities, that are always looking at stealing the R and D that we are investing in this country. We are in the nation’s capital. We have the largest military contractors in the nation here doing a lot of sensitive work. We have a very robust espionage group here in WFO (Washington Field Office). They’re doing great work.
Q. Have you made some espionage cases?
A. We made some case against some individuals from China who were paying for classified material. L.A. just made another case. It’s out there and we’re making cases and developing intelligence about the methods of technological transfers and R and D theft.
Q. The cases that have come up so far, have they involved China and…?
A. Primarily China; still a country that is very interested in our technology and our military development.Q. And the Russians. Are they players anymore?
A. We have a host of target countries that continue to be interested in classified material of the United States government.
Q. When you talk about a host, are we talking about three or six?
A. I’m not going to get into who. It’s a limited group.
Q. Do you feel sometimes the bad guys have access to some technology, and law enforcement hasn’t quite caught up?
A. I think it’s a challenge.
Q. How has the FBI acclimated to such venues as Facebook and Twitter?
A. You’ve got Voice Over Internet, you have so many different mediums out there whether it’s Facebook…. Ten years ago if you went out and did a search warrant of a residence — and maybe it was a drug case — odds are you went in, you did a search you walked out with possibly physical evidence , whether it would be drugs or preparation equipment or scales or whatever; never thought about a computer or a PDA or a Blackberry or a fax . Today when we do a search, that search now includes so many different modes of communications, and that’s a challenge. So you’re the agent looking at that case and now you have maybe eight different methods of communication to analyze to make your case. All the new modes of communication are obviously a challenge for us.
Q. When you think in the past year or so when you think about communication among bad guys, has anything surprised you?
A. We were having a discussion about this. People are talking about gaming on the Internet. I’m talking about, you can go online and you and another friend and another friend can go on line and you can be at your house and your friend can be at their house and you’re doing a battle game, whatever kind of battle game it is. You can use Voice Over Internet while you’re playing this game, you can be communicating with each other, and you ‘re thinking to yourself, that’s a mode I can communicate with. To me that’s a challenge, that’s phenomenal to think, here we have people sitting in their own residence playing a video game with somebody in China or maybe down the street. As progress of technology grows, the challenge of us capturing that grows.
Q. As for mortgage fraud, are you seeing it peak, or is it still growing?
A. I think we haven’t even reached the peak of where we’re going with mortgage fraud. Right now, we’re analyzing as you know. Northern Virginia communities were hit the hardest.
Q. Do you hope to get more resources to deal with this?
A. Yes, I think that’s important. I know at the headquarters level, if you’re looking at the magnitude of the problems. .. it’s going to be important to get some commitments and additional resources to take a look at this.
Q. What’s your future at the FBI?A. I’ve been here 33 years. I love coming to work everyday.. As long as the director allows me to stay in this position, I’d like to stay. Obviously we have mandatory retirement at 57, I’m not that old yet. It is an honor and privilege to work with the men and women of this division who just knock it out of the box everyday and the inauguration is probably a good example of that.

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Posted: 2/1/09 at 11:45 PM under Special Report.

Tags: anthrax, China, espionage, FBI, inauguration, Joseph Persichini Jr., Russia
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Documents raise questions about some of Hatfill's statements to authorities.

Documents released in Hatfill anthrax case

LARA JAKES JORDAN November 25, 2008 07:32 PM EST Compare other versions »

WASHINGTON — Pharmacy records and writings initially _ but wrongly _ helped lead the FBI to Army scientist Steven Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax attacks, Justice Department documents released Tuesday show.
Responding to a judge's order, the government released 78 pages of affidavits and search warrants in the now-closed case of Hatfill, who was cleared of the attacks earlier this year. The documents raise questions about Hatfill but provide no evidence that he masterminded the biological attacks that killed five people, sickened 17 and frightened a nation still shaken by the deaths of 9/11 only a few weeks earlier.
Ultimately, the government focused on another Army scientist: Bruce Ivins, who killed himself in July as prosecutors prepared to charge him in the case. Both Ivins and Hatfill worked at the Army's infectious diseases laboratory in Frederick, Md.
Hatfill was never charged, and the Justice Department in June agreed to pay him $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the government for wrongly implicating him.
The documents released Tuesday build a case against Hatfill on largely circumstantial evidence.

An FBI affidavit cites interviews and a never-published book by Hatfill to show he knew how to treat anthrax infections and how easy it would be for terrorists to acquire, produce and use the toxin with "deadly consequences."
Still, the documents raise questions about some of Hatfill's statements to authorities.

In a March 2002 interview with the FBI, Hatfill denied taking the antibiotic Cipro in the weeks before and after the attacks.
But an affidavit released in the documents cites pharmacy records showing Hatfill filling Cipro prescriptions twice during that time period _ two days each before the letters were postmarked on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 of 2001.
At the time, Cipro was the only antibiotic recommended by the Food and Drug Administration to treat anthrax infection.
Hatfill also had Cipro prescriptions filled in January, July and November of 2001, according to the affidavit.
After the anthrax attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill "a person of interest" in the investigation and stories by various news organizations followed. The Army scientist maintained his innocence in the case from the start.
Hatfill attorney Tom Connolly said there is nothing in the documents showing Hatfill had anything to do with the attacks.
"Search warrant affidavits are designed to raise suspicion _ that is their express purpose," Connolly said in a statement. "Our repeated experience has been that people make wild accusations in secret, only to retract them under public questioning. Whether or not it was right for the government to rely on this kind of information to obtain a search warrant in 2002, we know in 2008 that Steven Hatfill had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks."
He added: "It will be unfortunate for all involved if the release of these documents misleads anyone into thinking otherwise."
The documents show the FBI seized clothing, financial records, VHS tapes, books and other papers from Hatfill's home in Frederick, Md., his car, and a locker he rented in Ocala, Fla.
One search warrant describes the apartment and a 1994 Toyota belonging to Hatfill's girlfriend, which also were searched. Investigators made clear they had been tailing Hatfill, noting that he sometimes spent the night at her apartment and was seen sometimes driving her car.
The FBI seized notebooks, files, envelopes, hair brushes and bobby pins from her apartment, the records show, where it found a container of Cipro in her apartment, apparently labeled "Peck Chegne."
The government asked a judge to seal the court records over the Hatfill searches, saying public disclosure would "jeopardize the ability of federal authorities to proceed with this investigation." It also warned about the potential damage to Hatfill's reputation, saying the adverse consequences to the scientist were obvious.
Hatfill worked at the Army lab from 1997 to 1999. Technically, the government's investigation in the anthrax attacks remains open, although the Justice Department has said it is only tying up loose ends and does not expect future charges.
The documents were released following last week's order by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times had filed a lawsuit demanding that the FBI materials on Hatfill be released. The newspapers contended that the public has a right to know why investigators wanted to search Hatfill's home and on what basis the courts agreed to allow those searches.
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