Amerithrax (15 page)

Kreh’s finger.”

Bernard “Lefty” Kreh worked rotating nightshifts at the Institute as a plant operator. Wearing a bio-suit and sucking air from a tube on the wall, Kreh’s job was to scrape anthrax “mud” off the inside of a centrifuge with a kitchen spatula. One day his finger swelled up “like a sausage” with a skin anthrax infection. For the next month, the Institute isolated him behind a glass wall inside its hospital.

Kreh’s finger became the source of a new substrain of anthrax isolated and designated “BVK-1,” for “Bernard Vic- tor Kreh.” On log sheets the designation became “LK” for “Lefty Kreh.” “Lefty’s strain was rather easy to detect,” Walter said later. When technicians grew a colony of bac- teria on a growth medium “it came out like a little comma, perfectly spherical.” Lefty Kreh’s finger provided another step forward in the Institute’s search for the deadliest an- thrax ever.

Though considerable expertise was needed to culture, mill, and weaponize the spores, U.S. biologists eventually ceased relying on mechanical milling machines to transpose desiccated paste colonies of anthrax bacteria into refined dust. “The new U.S. process concentrated the organisms into right-sized particles, while maintaining their virulence, with- out milling them,” said Patrick of his patented processes. The optimal U.S. process instead employed a refined spray- drying technique that produced microscopic, dry particles of biowarfare agents in a single step, safeguarding them in spe- cial coatings, making them tough and durable enough for wide spreading by aerosol sprayers. The spores had become floating gossamer, deadly dancing butterflies.

During the Cold War, germ and chemical weapons in the hands of a foreign enemy were a long-standing concern of

U.S. intelligence officers. Bioweapons were as dangerous as nuclear missiles. Several nations, including the U.S. and the USSR, had formally reserved the right to use biological weapons in reprisal if first used against themselves, implic- itly maintaining the right to develop and stockpile the in- creasingly deadly pathogens.

President Richard Nixon officially put the Institute out of the offensive germ business, declaring U.S. support for an international treaty banning bioweapons.
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On November 25,

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Chemical weapons such as mustard gas had been put to devastating use. The blistering gas was lethal when inhaled. Phosgene, the most dangerous of the group called choking agents, accounted for 80 percent of all chemical deaths during World War I. The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibited wartime use of both chemical and biological weapons.

1969, he signed an executive order renouncing use of lethal biological agents and weapons and ordered the unilateral dismantling of the U.S.’s offensive bioweapons program. The President promised to confine U.S. biological research to “defensive measures,” and affirmed, “Mankind already carries in its own hands too many seeds of its own destruc- tion.” The time allotted for the destruction of global germ arsenals was three years, the time it took the U.S. to scrap its own biological weapons. The Preamble to the 1972 Bi- ological and Toxic Weapons Convention reads:

[We are] determined for the sake of all mankind, to ex- clude completely the possibility of bacteriological agents and toxins being used as weapons; [We are] convinced that such use would be repugnant to the conscience of mankind and that no effort should be spared to minimize this risk.

It prohibited development, production, stockpiling, or otherwise retaining biological agents or toxins “of types or in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, pro- tective or other peaceful purposes.” The treaty also forbade “weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed con- flict.”

By March 1975, when the BTWC came into force, the Institute had decimated its aggressive germ arsenal. How- ever, the treaty was shot through with holes, setting no limit on the quantities of germs kept on hand for research and allowing any kind of research as long as its purpose was defensive. But, as Dr. Patrick observed, defensive work could look a lot like offensive work. With an eye to the future, the CIA warehoused 100 grams of
Bacillus anthra- cis
, the same amount they had previously calculated was enough to level a small city. It defied logic that the Institute was not producing offensive biological weapons clandes- tinely. The Russians were.

The Soviet Union, first to sign and ratify the BTWC, began secretly inflating its collection of viral and bacterial warfare agents. It ordered sixty-five thousand technicians

and researchers at fifty remote labs and testing sites to cook up twenty tons of smallpox virus a year and develop two hundred strains of anthrax. Some strains would end up in the hands of terrorists. Over the next twenty years, the So- viets steathily constructed the greatest arsenal of bioweapons in the history of the world. They lived in constant fear of Western inspectors who would show them as having breached the international accord prohibiting such research. Their folly would result in the greatest anthrax calamity in history, a “biological Chernobyl.” The Soviet Union contin- ued to develop biological weapons well into the 1990s. In September 1998, Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin agreed in Moscow on a program of “accelerated negotia- tions” to strengthen the Convention. The United States has taken the lead in efforts to update the treaty.

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Friday night, October 19, 2001, two breathless FBI agents arrived at the Institute with the sealed
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anthrax sample in hand. It had been sandwiched in layers of alu- minum foil and placed inside a plastic Ziploc bag. The lethal nature of the envelopes and letters had curtailed normal USPS forensic examinations at its ultramodern National Fo- rensic Lab just outside D.C. Until the evidence underwent special processing, a search for latent or identifiable finger- prints, indented writing, or an analysis of ink, paper, and saliva DNA could not be made. In the meantime inspectors were scanning post office videotapes from the forty-six branches that feed the Trenton mail stream. Concurrently, the Justice Department was sifting through sales records from the major U.S. glove box manufacturers. Its agents had already spent two days quizzing pharmacists in the Trenton area about anyone who had bought Cipro—two to three months’ worth. No prescriptions had been issued in those quantities for either Cipro or Penicillin. The plastic bag was sealed with red tape inside a white plastic container marked with a biohazard label. The agents halted at a gate like that of any military base except that an Abrams tank was parked nearby. There was a white sign saying usamriid and other signs cautioning 10 mph and cameras are unauthorized.

They observed guards in camouflage with armbands and M16s at the entrances and walking a concrete island, a guardhouse, and around a yellow-, white-, and straw-colored building. Clusters of brick and concrete buildings, light- colored, modernistic, blocky, and forbidding, crowded a two-hundred-acre site. Some were guarded by concrete bar- riers, a defense against truck bombs. Large pipes running beside the buildings and a tower that could have been a heating station gave the facility the appearance of a phar- maceutical production plant.

The windowless headquarters building at the heart of the complex employed 450 military and civilian scientists and had its own guards on twenty-four-hour alert. Fort Detrick was an obvious terrorist target. The Institute’s deadly weap- ons and secrets in any enemy’s hands would be a disaster. When terrorists plowed a fuel-laden jetliner into the Penta- gon, the Army swiftly locked down the Institute, evacuated four thousand civilian and military personnel, and filled the skies around the Institute with military helicopters.

An animal hospital faced the complex on the other side of the road. One lab was dedicated specifically to developing vaccines against biological agents such as anthrax. The In- stitute’s modern mission was to “develop strategies, prod- ucts, information procedures and training programs for medical defense against biological warfare threats and nat- urally occurring infectious diseases that require special con- tainment.” Within the CIA’s arsenal of pathogens powerful enough to kill millions were large amounts of the anthrax bacillus. At Fort Detrick, they stored virtually their complete supply.

With so much anthrax at the top secret Institute, the agents, with their anthrax sample, felt as if they were bring- ing coals to Newcastle. The mailbox where Amerithrax had posted his poisoned letters was roughly 180 miles away from Frederick, Maryland, little more than a single eve- ning’s roundtrip. About the same number of miles separated Boca Raton from St. Petersburg where hoax letters had been mailed. Distributing anthrax had always been a difficult problem for the Institute’s scientists because it dissipates so

easily in the wind. Amerithrax had conquered that problem. He used the U.S. mails.

The Institute had numerous safety measures to counteract infections. All their biowarriors were given a series of vac- cinations before being allowed into “hot zones.” They gob- bled antibiotics and constantly washed their hands. They were covered in sweltering head-to-toe body suits with hoods, masks, two pairs of rubber gloves, and two pairs of boots. They breathed purified and overheated air as they worked at their “hot boxes” or “glove boxes” under germ- destroying ultraviolet light. Hot boxes are glass housings with fume hoods, a removable rear panel, and attached rubber gloves. Reaching inside through the clamping rings and gloves, technicians could manipulate beakers of mi- crobes, assemble fragile biological bomblets, or pack an en- velope with powdered anthrax as Amerithrax must have done.

The Army facility’s modern labs, filled with unearthly light, were equipped with electron microscopes, chromatog- raphy devices, high-grade centrifuges, and laser equipment. Anthrax experiments utilized dryers, granulators, jet mills, pulverizers, vibrating sieves, mixers, feeders, and classifiers. The
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anthrax sample the Institute’s scientists were at- tempting to analyze presented problems from the beginning. The dampness that had caused the anthrax to clump together also made analysis difficult. But it did seem to be purer than the Brokaw sample. What experts needed was a dry, un- opened envelope with enough anthrax for them to identify the exact strain it came from. Learning the strain might lead them to the source and possibly to Amerithrax. Amerithrax, whoever he was, had a motive for what he had done. It was possible he had been laid off from a facility and was striking back.

In February 2001, labs had exchanged microbe samples, including anthrax, without reporting the transfers to the CDC as required by law. No one was apparently harmed but the lapses could have placed the public at risk. The department’s activities lacked sufficient federal oversight. At one Department of Energy facility, scientists experimented

with anthrax bacteria for years without anyone being noti- fied.

The visiting FBI agents were very familiar with the In- stitute. Only twenty-four days earlier, someone had fingered one of their former researchers as a potential bioterrorist. This “person of interest” had allegedly once worked with tasteless, odorless, invisible, deadly anthrax at the Institute. The odd thing was the tip-off had come at the same time or just before someone had mailed real anthrax letters to the media.

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Wednesday, October 3, 2001 (just as Bob Stevens was beginning his second day in the hospital), FBI agents asked the subject of the anonymous tip-off letter to drop by their Washington, D.C., Field Office. Eight days earlier (as NBC security was phoning the FBI about a suspicious letter from St. Petersburg), some unknown person had mailed a letter to the military police at the Quantico Marine Base in Vir- ginia. Neatly typed and single-spaced, the letter alleged that Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a fifty-three-year-old Egyptian American senior scientist with the EPA, was a potential biological ter- rorist.

Assaad, a well-respected U.S. citizen with a top-security clearance, had worked as a researcher at Fort Detrick for almost a decade. The anonymous writer knew details of Dr. Assaad’s work at the top secret bioweapons lab. The writer displayed a detailed knowledge of Assaad’s personal life and about his family. He even knew which commuter train he took. “Dr. Assaad is a potential bioterrorist,” warned the