FBI widens probe of 2001 anthrax attack: paper
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...domesticNews-3
(Gold9472: This took five years?!?)
Mon Sep 25, 2006 12:52am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is convinced that anthrax mailed to the U.S. Senate five years ago was not weapons-grade level and authorities have widened their investigation, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
The Post said the anthrax bacteria contained nothing linking it to a specific source.
A series of anthrax attacks in 2001, which started one week after September 11, killed five people. Mail laced with the lethal powder was sent to U.S. Senate offices, a Florida newspaper, and television networks in New York.
Law enforcement officials confirmed that the anthrax bacteria, initially described as a near-military-grade biological weapon, showed no signs of processing that would make it more deadly, the Post reported.
The officials also said scientific analysis found the strain of anthrax used in the attack to be more common than was initially believed, the newspaper reported.
"There is no significant signature in the powder that points to a domestic source," one scientist who studied the material told the Post.
The FBI was now casting a wider net for possible suspects after a focus on government scientists as the likely source of the attack, the newspaper said.
An FBI spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
"Whoever made the powder produced a deadly project of exceptional purity and quality -- up to a trillion spores per gram -- but used none of the tricks known to military bioweapons scientists to increase the lethality of the product," The Washington Post said.
However, officials stressed that the person would have had to have considerable skills in microbiology and access to equipment.
"It wasn't weaponized. It was just nicely cleaned up," said one scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Whoever did it was proud of their biology. They grew the spores, spun them down, cleaned up the debris. But there were no additives."
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Originally Posted by Gold9472
