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AMERITHRAX

The federal investigation into the anthrax attacks began with an implicit promise that the Feds would leave no stone unturned, no mailbox unswabbed in their effort to find a perpetrator. In early November 2001, about a week after Ottilie Lundgren died in Connecticut, the newly appointed Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, held a news conference at which he alluded to an expansive plan to incorporate expertise and tips from all sectors. There was a $250 million bounty on the head of the anthrax killer to encourage just such help.

“You’d be amazed at the number of, they’re not solicitations, but inquiries . . . about the potential application of this or that technology,” he said. “Clearly, not only will we look to the private sector to help us identify some of the problems, but also to come up with some solutions . . . We want to explore all potential ideas and suggestions, particularly when they seem to be further along in terms of research and development.” As if to emphasize the inclusiveness of the effort to safeguard America, Ridge also noted that the Office of Homeland Security had just welcomed a contingent from the National Organization on Disability to a talk about homeland security—the same talk he gave to the good folks at NASCAR.

But later in the briefing, Ridge told reporters that he was unable, as of yet, to project a hypothesis on whether the anthrax letters were the act of an individual or a group, domestic or foreign. What he could tell reporters was that the spores found in the letters had been identified as the “Ames strain” of anthrax—the “gold standard” for weaponized anthrax because of its virulence. The strain, which was originally from a dead Texan cow, had passed through the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa where it got its moniker, and then on to the Unites States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in 1980. But from there, it is anyone’s guess where the Ames strain wandered. Fort Detrick specialists had classified it as one of the most toxic anthrax strains they had seen, and had given some of it to germ researchers in at least three other countries including the United Kingdom and France. And who knows where it went from there?

One of the frightening truths that the Amerithrax probe illuminated over the course of its long life was that for years deadly bacteria and toxins have been shared. Biomaterials were passed between labs and researchers with little documentation, less surveillance and no effective regulation whatsoever. This surprising lack of oversight applied to both content and recipient: in the 1980s the US Centers for Disease Control shipped deadly viruses abroad via express mail. The addressees included the country’s foremost ideological foes: Iraq, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union and China. A Senate committee chaired by John McCain and the General Accounting Office opened an investigation into the shipments in the early 1990s but failed to establish whether they represented honest scientific collaboration gone awry or something darker. Nonetheless, with its interest, Congress was signaling the scientific community that the all too routine trading of deadly pathogens was something that would not be tolerated in the new era of preoccupation with weapons of mass destruction—an era ushered in by the fall of the Soviet Union and the rising threat of Saddam Hussein. And even then, one could not really be certain what the scientific community was doing with its viruses and plagues in the name of “research.”

When Ames, Iowa was mentioned in context of the anthrax attacks, it was a jolt to the city. Concerned that it might have provided a terrorist with deadly material, on October 12, 2001, the Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Science incinerated its collection of anthrax samples under armed guard. Ironically, none of the samples in Ames were, in fact, the Ames strain (which originated in Texas but was identified by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, hence the name), but some dated back to 1928 and were rather regretfully destroyed by the dean, who had hoped to hold a centennial experiment to test their longevity. The USDA ran a laboratory not far from the university but had to retrieve its anthrax collection from a storage closet it rented in a local strip mall under less than standard biohazard safety levels. These samples—crucial baseline samples for “Amerithrax” detectives—were also destroyed (with, astonishingly enough, the approval of the FBI), making it impossible for investigators to compare them when it seemed possible later that the anthrax in the letters may indeed have been linked to Ames, Iowa as well as to the Ames strain.

As the congressional showdown in the fall of 2008 eventually evidenced, the precise nature of the Ames strain anthrax found in the attack powder used in the Daschle and Leahy letters—the most sophisticated powders used in the attacks, and perhaps ever seen—would become one of the most complicated pieces of evidence in the investigation. Years after the attacks, Coen and Nadler found that there was still no unanimity on whether the spores that caused the deaths of five people were easily acces-sible to individuals with connections to ordinary labs, or whether the anthrax mailer would have needed access to more sophisticated equipment. Though pulmonary anthrax may be a perfect killer, it is not necessarily the perfect weapon. So to find the anthrax murderer, you needed to find the weapon as well as the ammunition. And for a while, the FBI seemed bent on convincing the world that both could be found in a basement lab rigged with about $2,500 worth of equipment. That claim lost credence for many once the Army failed to reverse-engineer a replica of the Senate letters’ powder, even with the help of the most high-tech facilities in the country.

The complexities of the science were tough on the media. Reporters often confused the issue, interchanging revelations about the anthrax found in the letters to the senators with news on the samples sent to the media outlets, which were powders of the same derivation, but different grades. Then there was the debate over additives: the heart of the matter. Did almost magical ingredients transform the Senate attack-powders into super lethal anthrax?

Newsweek reported early on that sources found in the powder a “compound previously unknown to bioweapons experts.” ABC News in a much-hyped “exclusive” reported that the anthrax contained bentonite, which, it further reported, is a “trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.” It took six years for ABC to retract the scoop, which had no factual basis but was useful in the drumbeat for the coming war against Iraq.

The question of additives and silica weight created a sharp schism between the Pentagon and the FBI—one unresolved to this day. Initial analysis of the powder as undertaken by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda, Maryland suggested to Army scientists that this was a very sophisticated anthrax concoction—milled to an almost infinitesimal size with additives designed to make it float right into the deepest part of human lungs and kill the host.

“Fort Detrick sought our assistance to determine the specific components of the anthrax found in the Daschle letter,” Dr. Florabel G. Mullick, the principal deputy director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), was quoted as saying in the Institute’s October 31, 2002 newsletter. Mullick described a method using an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer to detect the presence of otherwise-unseen chemicals. The test identified the previously unknown substance as silica. “This was a key component,” Mullick said. “Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize.” The AFIP finding was considered by some to be consistent with a multi-disciplinary state program. And even if Ivins was culpable, said observers who believed the AFIP was an honest broker, he did not—indeed, could not have—acted alone.

Not long after Ivins’ death, Coen and Nadler went to see Richard Spertzel, a former deputy commander at Fort Detrick’s germ warfare research unit, who had written an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal soon after Ivins’ suicide insisting that the spores in the Daschle and Leahy letters could not have been produced at the USAMRIID by Ivins alone.

“The material that was in the Daschle/Leahy letter, according to FBI releases, was 1.5 to 3 microns in particle size,” he told the journalists. Then he characterized the refinement as “super sophisticated . . . phenomenal.”

“I’m fully convinced—as are other experts, I’m not alone by any chance—that Dr. Ivins could not have done this with the equipment that he had . . . and I contend that that kind of powder could not be made at Fort Detrick, because they don’t have the equipment necessary to get down to that particle size with that kind of refinement,” continued Spertzel. “It readily floated off the slides when they tried to examine it in the microscope.” Spertzel noted reports that said the spores were “individually coated with a substance called polyglass.”

Spertzel was one of several experts who initially credited the idea that the powder came from one of Saddam’s suspected germ labs. Even at this late date, he was sticking with that theory.

Leaving his comfortable home in suburban Maryland, Coen and Nadler thanked Spertzel for his time and in particular, for his golden quote about Ivins’ death: “He’s dead and they can close the case and he can’t defend himself. Nice and convenient, isn’t it?”

Spertzel’s words echoed an interview they had had a year earlier with Stuart Jacobsen, who saw many hands behind the manufacture of the powders. “It’s a multi-disciplinary effort,” he said during filming in his home on the outskirts of a Texas city. “First of all you need some biologists to understand what kind of strain they need to use the bacteria. In this case Bacillus anthracis bacteria. Then you need a chemical engineer to get a high yield of these spores. You then need more chemists to be able to separate these spores, process them and concentrate them.”

Coen and Nadler took careful notes, underlining what Jacobsen said about the importance of chemical engineers to the effort. Jacobsen, after all, was one himself.

Jacobsen spoke at length to Coen and Nadler about the complexities of Bacillus anthracis and about the effect of friction on electrostatic particles. He speculated about the effect of mail-sorting machines on the anthrax spores’ charge. The ghoulishness of the brave new world upon which he reflected was heightened by his matter-of-fact tone of voice, his thick Scottish brogue, even his casual khaki trousers. Outside the window, Coen could see that every house in this featureless subdivision was virtually identical to its neighbor. Like liar’s dice, he thought. You would never know from the looks of it which one is empty and which housed folks—like this guy—who claimed important knowledge about the intricacies of mass annihilation.

Jacobsen, an opinionated man waging Internet war battles with critics, explained that the scientific schism could be settled only when the FBI disclosed just how much silica was present in the powder. Some of the researchers who had actually examined the stuff claimed that the silica was naturally occurring. But if there was more than 1 percent, Jacobsen insisted, there could be no doubt that the killer powder had been processed to make it as lethal as possible. Jacobsen considered the anthrax in the letters to Daschle and Leahy to be “weapons grade.” This was in alignment with sixteen US government employed biodefense experts who wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May 2002 that the attack powders had the classic weapons signature of “high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, [and treatment] to reduce clumping.”

But the FBI saw it differently, and called in experts to support its assertion that the Senate letter powder could have been made by a single operator. The agency’s post-Ivins briefing panel of scientists reported that the anthrax was not coated with silica, and that if there was some silica in the powder, it was naturally occurring. Like FBI Director Robert Mueller a month later, they would shed no light about the percentage weight of silica in the powder.

One aggressive reporter influenced by Jacobsen and other US Army sources he trusted had a go at the FBI panel at its briefing. Gary Matsumoto, employed in 2008 by Bloomberg News, had grabbed the germ war issue by the short hairs while writing his 2004 book, Vaccine A, about the controversial vaccine against anthrax used by the military. He was also one of very few non-scientists to have work published in the prestigious Science magazine, when his article on the schism between the FBI and the Department of Defense over the anthrax refinement question was published in November 2003. Matsumoto’s intelligence and sources interested Coen and Nadler, who courted the reporter as a source for years after the article appeared. There were phone conversations and coffee meetings and one lunch date for which the journalists were kept waiting for two hours. During all of these meetings, Matsumoto dropped hints about depths of collusion, secrecy and ultimate significance of his findings. He chided Coen and Nadler for being naïve, for being in over their heads, but he kept returning their phone calls and fishing for their findings.

Matsumoto said his agent was pushing him to write a book on germ warfare and that he had key military co-authors in place. “A Russian general and a US general, you see the level I’m getting at?”

One day in the fall of 2007, Matsumoto announced that he was coming to see them “right now.” He arrived bearing a box of chocolates. “I don’t know if it’s appropriate to bring gifts on the High Holy Days,” he said guessing, correctly, his hosts’ religious heritage.

Matsumoto was momentarily silenced by the walls of the office, covered as they were with the ephemera of the anthrax trail. Coen and Nadler watched fascinated as the former ROTC cadet, now in his forties, walked over to the whiteboard where they had mocked up the web of players and sources they were cultivating, and began to talk. He recognized key names and spoke for an hour about how the anthrax affair was “very bad business” that he personally wanted out of. “Why are you guys doing this?” he asked almost plaintively. Nadler picked up the box of chocolates and told Matsumoto, “Gary, it’s holy work. We’re doing it for our kids—all the kids.” Matsumoto shook his head and told Nadler and Coen that they were at the tip of an iceberg, that his own book’s revelations would “blow them away.” Still, he said, they were foolish for thinking their work might make a difference.

“I really don’t know why you guys are doing this,” he said again, turning to the journalists, who were already regretting at that moment that they didn’t have a camera trained on Matsumoto to catch this performance. Matsumoto said he was probably done with anthrax. He spent much of his free time these days dreaming of designing a video game. After an hour or so, he wished his fellow investigative journalists the best of luck and left.

But by the time Bruce Ivins died, it became clear that Matsumoto, despite not having written about anthrax in some time, had not retired from the germ war game. At the 2008 FBI briefing, he went at the experts with detailed questions far beyond the ken of fellow journalists in the room. There were thrusts and parries about the reliability of “silica signal detection capabilities of EDX machines,” “dry weight percentages,” and the “discrepancy between your findings and those of two US Army laboratories.” Under the stern gaze of a government official who conducted the meeting but refused to give his name or position, Matsumoto finally got one FBI consulting scientist to admit that the silica weight percentage was “high”—a victory in the eyes of the cognoscenti only.

The debate over additives and silica endures. The more Coen and Nadler listened to the range of expert opinions, the more they became convinced that the anthrax found in the letters to the senators required a skill set and equipment not found even in Ivins’ high security lab within Fort Detrick. They tended to believe Jacobsen and his ilk. But they listed to others as well.

In the fall of 2007, they had gone up to Harvard to interview Matthew Meselson, a professor who had advised the CIA and the FBI for decades on germ warfare and who had supported the FBI assertion that the anthrax in question appeared to be free of special weaponized coatings. Meselson had examined micrographic photos of the Senate attack powder and saw no additive. “The spores looked very pure,” he said. The journalists pressed him on the findings of the AFIP that did find silica in the samples. Meselson said he couldn’t really comment because “they haven’t released their data for independent verification.” The release, he noted, was prevented by the ongoing Amerithrax probe. Nadler then brought up the letter of a UN representative named Kay Mereish that was published in the August 2007 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Mereish’s letter noted a recent speech in Paris by an unnamed US scientist who had examined the attack powder and concluded it contained an additive that made it a more effective weapon. At that Meselson rose and extracted a document from a folder nearby. “I can show you this,” he said, “but you can’t make a copy.” Nadler read what he took to be an internal FBI memo, which suggested that the forensic expert who had given that speech may have violated security statutes and could face investigation.

“These are very sensitive areas,” said Meselson. “One should be very careful here.”

They had been warned. Just as Dallas had its second gunman, Amerithrax had its silica—a forensic detail that implied conspiracy.

Nonetheless, the FBI publicly would contemplate only the theory of a lone mailman. And even before Bruce Ivins, they had one. His name was Steven Hatfill, and by March 2002, they put him on the hot seat.