| Gita Hashemi on Wed, 6 Mar 2002 17:37:02 +0100 (CET) |
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| [Nettime-bold] An article from globeandmail.com |
An article from www.globeandmail.com. To read it, please open the attachment. This article from http://www.globeandmail.com was sent to you by (). Get today's news delivered to your in-box. Sign up for our daily News Update! http://www.globeandmail.com/newsletter/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BREAKING NEWS from globeandmail.com, Wednesday, March 6, 2002 On the trail of the anthrax killer By PAUL KORING >From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Washington Somebody hated Ayaad Assaad, hated the Egyptian-born scientist enough to try to finger him as a biowarfare terrorist. "Dr. Assaad is a potential bioterrorist," warned an anonymous letter sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation last fall. "I have worked with Dr. Assaad, and I heard him say that he has a vendetta against the U.S. government and that if anything happens to him, he told his sons to carry on." Until 1997, the scientist, a U.S. citizen with top-security clearance, had worked at Fort Detrick, Md. There, the U.S. Army conducted top-secret biological warfare research, including "weaponizing" anthrax of exactly the sort that killed five Americans and terrified the country after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Please see key dates in crisis. The FBI received thousands of tips after anthrax-laced letters were sent to two prominent senators and several media outlets. What makes the letter about Dr. Assaad unusual is that it was sent on or about Sept. 25 null before the first anthrax case was even diagnosed. On Oct. 3, Dr. Assaad, now a senior scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, sat in a windowless cell in downtown Washington being interrogated by FBI officials. Dr. Assaad, who says he and other Arab scientists were subjected to racial slurs and harassment while working at Fort Detrick, says he broke into tears when confronted with the letter. A day earlier, Robert Stevens, a 63-year-old photo editor with the tabloid Sun was admitted to a hospital in Boca Raton, Fla., with an unidentified illness that included chills, fever and nausea. He would die two days later, the first victim of inhalation anthrax. As the FBI closes in on the anthrax terrorist, now believed to be a scientist at Fort Detrick or one of a handful of civilian contractors who participated in the secret weaponized-anthrax efforts, the circle of suspects numbers only a handful. And the emerging scenario is not that of a botched biological-terrorist attack by al-Qaeda or other terrorists but rather a disgruntled scientist seeking to send a wake-up call to a government that had cut back sharply on biological-warfare research. Dr. Assaad, 53, believes the person who wrote the anonymous letter to the FBI and the person who sent the anthrax-laced envelopes, with messages praising Allah and denouncing Americans, are one and the same. "My theory is, whoever this person is knew in advance what was going to happen [and named me as a] scapegoat for this action," he said. "You do not need to be a Nobel laureate to put two and two together." The FBI has cleared Dr. Assaad of any involvement in the anthrax attacks. But it has refused to comment on whether it is investigating a link between the letter fingering him and the anthrax mailer. There were people at Fort Detrick who harboured an "intense dislike" of Dr. Assaad, the scientist's lawyer, Rosemary McDermott, said in an interview. After her client was dismissed in 1997, when cutbacks during the previous administration slashed funding, Dr. Assaad sued the government, alleging age discrimination. His suit, which is still pending, details a bizarre and vicious atmosphere in which he and other Arab scientists null all U.S. citizens with top-security clearances null were denigrated and ridiculed at Fort Detrick. Dr. Assaad believes the letter to the FBI "was a deliberate attempt to frame him," Ms. McDermott said. She said the letter was clearly written by a former colleague, who knew the details of Dr. Assaad's work and family and even the commuter train he took. What has emerged from the investigation so far is that the anthrax originated not in some Afghanistan cave or Iraqi laboratory, as first feared, but at Fort Detrick or one of a handful of other labs involved in U.S. biological warfare research. (Despite signing a treaty outlawing biological weapons, the Pentagon says its secret program was legal because the weapons-grade anthrax was made to test vaccines and countermeasures.) But FBI director Robert Mueller said last week that despite months of efforts, investigators have not pinpointed which of the labs may have been the source of the anthrax. "All indications are that the source of the anthrax is domestic," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said recently. However, he denied that a single suspect had emerged. "I wish it was that easy and that simple . . . but unfortunately, there still are several suspects," he said. "The FBI has not narrowed it down to just one." Yet a leading U.S. expert on biological warfare believes the FBI has identified a prime suspect, and is concerned that no arrest has been made. "I think I know who it is," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist at the State University of New York who also heads the Federation of American Scientists working group on bioweapons. In an interview, Dr. Rosenberg said she believes the FBI identified a prime suspect before she did. Dr. Rosenberg and dozens of other scientists were asked by the FBI to assist in narrowing the search by helping identify those who had the expertise, access and possible motive to mail anthrax to the two senators and several media outlets. In an interview, Dr. Rosenberg suggested the government might be dragging its feet because of fears that the perpetrator might reveal dark secrets about the extent of U.S. biological-warfare programs. Certainly, whoever mailed the anthrax knew enough about its enormous deadly potential to not deliver it in a way to maximize casualties. Even the small amounts contained in the letters could null if dumped in Washington's subway system, for example null have infected thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people. "All the indications are that the perpetrator was not trying to kill [large numbers]," Dr. Rosenberg said, adding that she believes "there was a personal element in this." Which leaves the question of motive. Washington is swirling with theories, all of them trying to make sense of the horrifying possibility that someone with access to U.S. weapons-grade anthrax played a high-stakes game that could have gone even more horribly wrong than it did. One theory is that the anthrax mailer was trying to force the government to vastly increase spending on bioweapons, and chose his targets deliberately to gain maximum publicity. Another theory is that the anthrax mailing, occurring in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, would force Washington to attack Iraq, which is known to have an anthrax bioweapons program. This could explain the clumsy efforts to suggest Arabic or Muslim authorship of the anthrax-laden letters. The FBI's profile of the anthrax mailer, issued last fall, suggests the suspect was likely an insecure, non-confrontational, male who chose his victims carefully and knew well the area around Trenton, N.J., from where the tainted letters were mailed. "He may hold grudges for a long time, vowing that he will get even with 'them' one day," the FBI said, adding that there was likely similar previous behaviour, albeit not using anthrax. "He may have chosen to anonymously harass other individuals or entities that he perceived as having wronged him." *ADVERTISEMENT* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two new iUnits bond funds, IG5 and IG10 began trading recently on the TSE. The way you invest now, only better. http://www.iunits.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit globeandmail.com for more breaking news and powerful financial tools. 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