Anthrax mystery continues

An LSU researcher has co-authored an article in a scientific journal asserting that the FBI did not, despite its official position, solve the mystery of who launched a second domestic terror attack in 2001.

In the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks, someone mailed letters containing deadly anthrax spores to several media outlets in New York and Florida and to a pair of U.S. senators.

Many of the recipients opened their innocuous-looking letters. As a result, 22 people unknowingly inhaled the odorless powders and soon developed cold-like symptoms: a runny nose, sore throat, mild fever, muscle aches. Five of them began having difficulty breathing and eventually died.

The mystery dominated the news in a nation still in shock from 9/11.

The following summer, Baton Rouge suddenly found itself part of the story when a physician LSU had just hired, Dr. Steven Hatfill, became the FBI’s prime suspect. A bioweapons expert, Hatfill was to become associate director of LSU’s National Center for Biomedical Research and Training. LSU fired him as he was being vilified in the national media.

Hatfill was ultimately completely cleared and went on to win and settle several lawsuits for millions of dollars against the government and the media.

The FBI’s next key suspect came to light three years later: a researcher named Bruce Ivins, who worked at the U.S. Army’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md.

The FBI scrutinized him, and the media hounded him, for three years—until, under immense emotional pressure, Ivins committed suicide by taking an overdose of acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol.

Nine days later, the FBI announced Ivins was the sole culprit behind the anthrax attacks and declared the case solved.

Unanswered questions

LSU professor emeritus Martin Hugh-Jones, a leading expert globally in the study of anthrax, thinks otherwise. He’s spent decades studying the science of anthrax, and he’s routinely called to far-flung spots around the world to investigate outbreaks, which usually strike cattle. The forthcoming article about the 2001 anthrax mystery—which Hugh-Jones wrote with Barbara Rosenberg, a retired researcher from the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York, and a Dallas-based analytical chemist named Stuart Jacobson—is scheduled to appear this month in the Journal of Bioterrorism and Biodefense.

“Unsolved scientific questions, remaining 10 years after the anthrax attacks, three years after the FBI accused a dead man of perpetrating the 2001 anthrax attacks singlehandedly, and more than a year since they closed the case without further investigation, indictment or trail, are perpetuating serious concerns that the FBI may have accused the wrong person of carrying out the anthrax attacks,” they wrote.

A National Academy of Sciences panel report on the science the FBI relied on already raised doubts earlier this year. “It is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the B. anthracis in the mailings based on the available [to them] scientific evidence alone,” the panel concluded. The FBI never actually got to the bottom of how the spores were prepared, why and how they were combined with silicon and tin, and where the spores become contaminated with an unusual strain of bacteria.

Natural vs altered anthrax

Anthrax spores have a protective coat that enables them to survive for long periods in soil, from where they are ingested by grazing livestock. They are then absorbed into the body, germinate and multiply, generate toxins and frequently kill their hosts. Humans are also at risk, especially if the spores are inhaled.

Years ago, researchers figured out how to “weaponize” anthrax by adding tiny particles of silica to the spores’ coating, aiding their ability to fly in an aerosol.

The anthrax powders found in the various letters had been treated in an unusual way such that the spore coats were covered by a polymerized glass.

Their coats had even more robust protection thanks to the combination of silicon and tin that was the result of “fairly sophisticated processes known to few microbiologists and involving quality control procedures,” Hugh-Jones and his colleagues wrote. The facility where Ivins worked was not known to have worked with anthrax in such form, whereas others, such as Batelle Memorial Institute of Ohio—which the FBI concluded was not the source of the material—may actually have been.

Hugh-Jones and his colleagues conclude there’s “no material evidence that the attack spores were made [at USAMRIID, the facility where Ivins worked], and no direct evidence that an individual at USAMRIID made the anthrax, or mailed it.”

The anthrax powder in the first set of letters was so different from the second set, the study’s authors conclude, they must have been made in separate “production runs.”

In defending its findings after the NAS report in February, the FBI pointed out that their conclusions were based not only on science, but also on other evidence, some of which is classified and was not available to the NAS panel.

More study

After the NAS issued its report in February, the FBI again asserted its position that Ivins did it alone. “Although there have been great strides in forensic science over the years, rarely does science alone solve an investigation,” the FBI said in a statement.

Hugh-Jones and his colleagues contend that further analysis is warranted that considers the science and the other known facts and evidence about the case.

For the past few years, a New Jersey Congressman whose district is believed to be where the anthrax letters were mailed, has repeatedly tried to introduce a bill to establish a Congressional commission to delve more deeply into the case. The commission would also review the classified information not supplied to the NAS. The bill has yet to find broad support in Congress.

The bottom line, Hugh-Jones says, is there are too many unanswered questions to declare the case solved. “Critical scientific questions, some of which have already been indicated in this paper, must be answered before the anthrax case can be laid to rest,” he wrote. “That will require scientific expertise, political neutrality, ideally with full access to all that the FBI knows, and with the resources to commission additional work at other laboratories …”