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<H5>December 2, 2001</H5><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
<H2>Anthrax Inquiry Looks at U.S. Labs</H2></NYT_HEADLINE><NYT_BYLINE
version="1.0" type=" ">
<H5>By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER</H5></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<P><IMG alt=T src="http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/t.gif"
align=left>he F.B.I. has expanded its investigation of the deadly anthrax
attacks to include the laboratories of the government and its contractors as a
possible source of the anthrax itself or the knowledge to make it, scientists
and law enforcement officials say.</P>
<P>While theories about the attacker have focused mainly on domestic loners and
foreign states or terrorists, law enforcement officials are now also examining
the possibility that the criminal may be a knowledgeable insider.</P>
<P>Asked if the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating American
military and nonmilitary laboratories that have had the powdery anthrax strain
used in the attacks and individuals associated with such centers, a law
enforcement official replied, "Certainly." The official said, "We are
aggressively investigating every possible lead and every possible avenue,"
adding it was logical.</P>
<P>Few details of the insider investigation are known. But federal agents are
already interrogating people in the military establishment that replaced the old
program for making biological weapons. The facilities for that effort, in
western Maryland, are major repositories of the Ames strain of anthrax, the
particularly virulent form that federal officials have identified as the type
used in the attacks that killed five people.</P>
<P>Col. Arthur M. Friedlander, the senior research scientist at the Army's
biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., said in an interview on Friday that
officials there were cooperating with federal investigators.</P>
<P>"They've asked us about personnel who had access," he said, speaking
reluctantly.</P>
<P>"They didn't talk to me about my personal experience," said Colonel
Friedlander, a physician and leading anthrax expert. "They asked me about other
personnel."</P>
<P>He went on to dismiss the insider idea as improbable. Whoever made the killer
anthrax, he said, "clearly knew what they were doing."</P>
<P>"But to make the leap that this came out of a government lab is somewhat
large," he added. </P>
<P>He emphasized that no one in his organization, the Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases, a leader in developing germ defenses, even
knew how to make dry anthrax, as was found in the letters used in the attacks.
Instead, he said, scientists there used wet anthrax, which is far easier to
make. It is used in developing vaccines and testing their effectiveness.</P>
<P>"We haven't had an offensive program for a long time," Colonel Friedlander
said. Nobody at the Army's laboratory, he added, "has that kind of
expertise."</P>
<P>A dozen or two American laboratories are said to have the Ames strain, though
no one knows for sure because researchers over the decades have informally
shared pathogens like anthrax. Military laboratories like the one at Fort
Detrick, as well as military contractors, are central to the Ames network, as
they have often pioneered the nation's research on vaccines and other defenses
against germ weapons.</P>
<P>The United States began its military program to make germ weapons during
World War II and over the decades developed many ways to spread many diseases. A
top agent was anthrax, a gallon of which was strong enough to kill eight billion
people. President Richard M. Nixon, after renouncing germ weapons in 1969,
championed a global treaty that, starting in 1975, banned such arms.</P>
<P>Since the start of the anthrax attacks, federal officials, scientists and
amateur sleuths have scrambled to identify the source. Some see the attacker as
home-grown — perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia group — while others
discern a conspiracy by a state like Iraq or a foreign terrorist group. In the
United States, there are probably scores of laboratories and contractors and
hundreds of people who have access to essential anthrax ingredients and
recipes.</P>
<P>The insider avenue of inquiry is consistent with the official profile of the
suspect, released on Nov. 9 by the F.B.I. The profile describes a man with a
strong interest in science who is comfortable working with hazardous material
and has "access to a source of anthrax and possesses knowledge and expertise to
refine it."</P>
<P>Separately, a private expert in biological weapons, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
has recently published a paper contending that a government insider, or someone
in contact with an insider, is behind the attacks. </P>
<P>Though not an expert on criminal profiling, Dr. Rosenberg, a molecular
biologist at the State University of New York, has testified on biological
weapons before Congress, advised Bill Clinton when he was president and made
addresses to international arms control meetings, including one a few days ago
in Geneva.</P>
<P>Law enforcement officials said Dr. Rosenberg's assertion might turn out to be
well founded, though they emphasized that the investigation was still broadly
based. One official close to the federal investigation called the Rosenberg
theory "the most likely hypothesis." </P>
<P>Referring to her paper, the official said, "I might not have put it so
strongly, but it's definitely reasonable." </P>
<P>Other analysts, including some scientists and experts in germ weapons,
expressed more skepticism of the theory that it had to be an insider, contending
that the skills and knowledge needed to produce the type of anthrax in this
attack were widely available.</P>
<P>The paper laying out Dr. Rosenberg's thesis was distributed on Thursday by
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an arms control group. Dr.
Rosenberg, who is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the Federation of
American Scientists, a private group in Washington, has argued repeatedly that
states, not individuals, tend to have the wherewithal to make advanced
biological weapons. International treaties that prohibit that work, she
believes, are thus critical.</P>
<P>Dr. Rosenberg contends that the Ames strain probably did not originate in
1980 or 1981, as is often asserted, but arose decades earlier and was used in
the secret American program to make biological weapons.</P>
<P>She agrees with a conclusion, reached by some experts knowledgeable about the
investigation, that the anthrax powder distributed in the attacks by letter was
treated in a sophisticated manner so it floated easily, as was done in the old
American offensive weapons program, unlike Colonel Friedlander's defensive
program, which uses the wet anthrax.</P>
<P>"All the available information," she said, "is consistent with a U.S.
government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for
the U.S. weaponization process." Dr. Rosenberg contended that the anthrax used
in the attacks either originated in the weapons program itself or was made by
someone who had learned the recipe.</P>
<P>The killer, Dr. Rosenberg concludes, is "an American microbiologist who had,
or once had, access to weaponized anthrax in a U.S. government lab, or had been
taught by a U.S. defense expert how to make it. Perhaps he had a vial or two in
his basement as a keepsake." </P>
<P>The paper, "A Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the
Mailed Anthrax," dated Nov. 29, is based on interviews with federal and private
experts, published reports and scientific articles. </P>
<P>Richard H. Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University who has followed
the anthrax case and has read the Rosenberg paper, said he found it provocative
but unconvincing.</P>
<P>"This is one extreme in the theorizing," Dr. Ebright said. "There are
elements that are reasonable, but elements that are not. I'm confident that she
started with the insider conclusion and then selected the facts." Even so, he
said, American foes seem likely to seize on the paper and amplify the
provocative thesis.</P>
<P>"Every state that's hostile to the United States is going to pick up on
this," Dr. Ebright said. "They'll say it was an orchestrated government attack,
which I don't believe for a second. But you can see people believing it."</P>
<P>Dr. Rosenberg's theory is getting attention in Europe, where the
environmental group Greenpeace Germany is citing it as credible.</P>
<P>An American official sympathetic to her thesis said the Ames strain might
have come from a place other than a military laboratory.</P>
<P>"There are other government and contractor facilities that do classified work
with access to dangerous strains," the official said. "But it's highly likely
that the material in the anthrax letters came from a person or persons who
really had great expertise. We haven't seen any other artifacts that point us
elsewhere."</P></NYT_TEXT></DIV></BODY></HTML>