FBI stymied in efforts to solve anthrax case

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/18/news/fbi.php

By Scott Shane The New York Times
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2005

WASHINGTON Richard Lambert, the FBI inspector in charge of the investigation of the deadly anthrax letters of 2001, testified under oath for five hours last month about the case.

But Lambert was not testifying in a criminal trial - he and his team of FBI agents and postal inspectors have not found a suspected culprit. Instead, Lambert and a half-dozen other FBI and U.S. Justice Department officials have been forced to give depositions in a lawsuit filed by Steven Hatfill, the former U.S. Army biodefense expert who was under intense scrutiny for months.

Four years after an unknown bioterrorist dropped letters containing a couple of teaspoons of powder into a mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey, what began as the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history appears to be stalled, according to scientists and former law enforcement officials who have spoken with investigators.

The failure to solve the case the authorities call Amerithrax is a grave disappointment for the FBI and the Postal Inspection Service, the investigative arm of the U.S. Postal Service.

The letters, the first major bioterrorist attack in the United States, killed five people, sickened 17 others, temporarily crippled mail service and forced the temporary evacuation of U.S. federal buildings including Senate offices and the Supreme Court.

"They've done everything they can possibly think of doing, and they're just not there yet," said Randall Murch, a former FBI scientist who pioneered the use of testing to trace the origin of microbes used in crimes. "You have to understand that the pressure is enormous."

A former law enforcement official who keeps up with several investigators said, "From the people I've talked to, it's going nowhere."

The official, who asked to remain unidentified because of sensitivity over leaks in the case, said some agents still formally assigned to Amerithrax are now mostly working on other cases, because "there's nothing for them to do."

For Robert Mueller 3rd, director of the FBI, who started work in September 2001 just before the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax letters, the case is a priority. He gets a briefing on the investigation every Friday that he is in Washington, said Debra Weierman, an FBI spokeswoman.

Weierman said 21 FBI agents and nine postal inspectors were assigned to the investigation - a far cry from the hundreds involved in the early months, but still a major commitment. She said that investigators have conducted more than 8,000 interviews and served 5,000 subpoenas and that the case remains "intensely active."

The fact that Hatfill, whom the FBI has neither charged nor cleared, has been able to turn the tables on the agents he says have ruined his life can only make this fourth anniversary of the case more frustrating for the authorities.

The two sets of anthrax-laced letters, addressed to media organizations and two U.S. senators, Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, were postmarked Sept. 18 and Oct. 9, 2001.

Hatfill, 51, grew up in Illinois and trained as a physician in Zimbabwe before conducting medical research in South Africa. He worked from 1997 to 1999 at the army's biodefense research center at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

He was the focus of attention from FBI anthrax investigators in 2002 and 2003, when his apartment near Fort Detrick and places he had lived or visited were searched. For months he was under 24-hour surveillance; one FBI watcher even ran over Hatfill's foot when the scientist tried to photograph him.

Two years ago, Hatfill sued the FBI and Justice Department, saying leaks to the media about him and the public comments by John Ashcroft, then the U.S. attorney general, describing Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the case destroyed his reputation. He also has a lawsuit pending against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof, a columnist, alleging that Kristof defamed him.

"FBI and Department of Justice officials engaged in a campaign of smears against Hatfill," Thomas Connolly, Hatfill's lawyer, said. "The big question is who in the government is going to stand up and make this right, by publicly exonerating him."