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Anthrax: Homegrown Terrorist or a Foreign State?

Posted on: Sunday, 3 April 2005, 21:00 CDT

With the first anthrax attacks now a month old, not only do authorities not know who is behind the attacks, but criminal and bioterrorism experts are divided over who the FBI should be looking for.

Early last week, Bush administration officials said they were suspicious there might be a connection between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the attacks. But a few days later attention turned toward domestic terrorists or a lone psychopath.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the weaponized anthrax germs sent to Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's office _ which have surprised experts with their degree of sophistication _ could have been produced by "a Ph.D. microbiologist'' in a "small, well-equipped microbiology lab.''

Fleischer did not rule out a connection to a foreign biological weapons program or an international terrorist group, but added that the analysis of the bacteria sample so far "certainly expands (the possibilities) beyond state sponsorship or foreign locations.''

This week, Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged that authorities simply do not know who is behind the germ attacks.

FBI investigators have been focusing on universities and private laboratories where a domestic terrorist might have obtained anthrax samples, especially in New Jersey. Agents have interviewed dozens of people in the Princeton area, which is not far from the Trenton postal facility that processed three of the anthrax letters.

Robert Ressler, a former supervisor of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Va., which crafts psychological profiles of unidentified killers and rapists, said he believes the attacks are most likely the work of a single psychopath venting his hostility on society or a domestic extremist group with a grudge.

"I felt right from the onset that even though this person may be intelligent _ as was Kaczynski with his Ph.D. _ they are not necessarily criminally sophisticated,'' said Ressler, who coined the term "serial killer.''

Theodore Kaczynski, a Harvard-educated mathematician now serving a life sentence, was linked to 16 letter bombs that killed three people and injured 23 others over 17 years. Kaczynkski, known as the "Unabomber,'' said he was saving the world from technology's tyranny.

"It is probably a person working in some lab somewhere and the hostility, the mental dysfunction, was present, but the triggering event (on Sept. 11) is what I think caused the person to do this," Ressler said.

However, bioterrorism experts said the skills, know-how and connections needed to obtain the anthrax bacteria point to a team of experts with some connection to a state-sponsored biological weapons program, even if only one member of the team was once a government weapons scientist.

"I do not believe that a single individual _ I don't care how smart he is, Ted Kaczynski or whatever _ can make a sophisticated biological weapon,'' said Retired Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, director of the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security and an instructor at the National War College in Washington. "It takes a team of people. You need microbiologists at the Ph.D. level, you need engineers, and you need (experts in) aerosol physics.''

"There is probably state support involved in this in one way or another,'' Larsen said.

Fleischer's statement that the attacks could be the work of a lone microbiologist was misleading, said Dr. Craig Smith, a member of the bioterrorism working group for the Infectious Disease Society of America and a former instructor at the military's lead laboratory for medical aspects of biowarfare defense.

"All of us just about freaked out when he said that,'' Smith said. "It made it sound like any Ph.D. microbiologist in a university program could do this ... The average microbiologist who is trained to do simple research can do the first step, but not the second half _ that's particle physics or something else _ not unless they've been in a weapons program.''

Bioterrorism experts also said it takes weeks or months to produce weaponized anthrax spores.

"This is not some copycat thing where somebody saw an airplane fly into a building and says, 'I'm going to make some anthrax now and give them hell,' '' Larsen said. "This is something that was on the shelf before the 11th.''

On the Net:

ANSER Institute for Homeland Security _ www.homelandsecurity.org

Joan Lowy is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail LowyJ(at)shns.com

© 2004 Scripps Howard News Service.

All Rights Reserved.

Source: Scripps Howard

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