'ANTHRAX' DOCTOR FAILED LIE TEST By NILES LATHEM
WASHINGTON - A month before the first anthrax-laced letters were mailed, the bio-warfare expert now at the center of the probe failed a CIA-administered polygraph test over questions surrounding his mysterious past with a secret commando force in Rhodesia, The Post has learned.
Dr. Steven Hatfill, 48, the former Army bio-weapons expert publicly named as a "person of interest" in the federal anthrax probe, told friends and colleagues that flunking the lie-detector test cost him his security clearance and his job.
FBI officials say they have no physical evidence that connects Hatfill to the letters mailed last September and October.
But Hatfill remains one of 12 bio-warfare scientists under investigation, and law-enforcement officials say the loss of his job at the giant defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. remains a focus of the investigation.
Hatfill called a press conference Sunday to deny he was responsible and to blast the government for destroying his career.
He said he lost his job at the McClean, Va.-based firm in March because journalists began calling company officials, "all but accusing me of mailing the anthrax letters."
But law-enforcement officials and Hatfill's former colleagues at the company gave a different account.
They claimed that in August 2001, Hatfill had an opportunity to work on a huge CIA-sponsored project for the company and had to "upgrade" his low-level government security clearance for the job.
But when Hatfill failed the polygraph, even his existing clearance was revoked.
Company officials say they gave him six months to get it restored, and fired him in March because he was unable to do so.
The CIA has refused comment on the polygraph.
But Hatfill told colleagues at the time that he failed questions about how he responded to the 1977 death of his father-in-law and mentor, Dr. Glen Eschtruth.
Eschtruth, a doctor connected to the Methodist Church, was executed in a village in Zaire in April 1977 when it was invaded by mercenaries participating in a conflict in neighboring Angola.
Hatfill has claimed he had combat experience with a commando unit of the Rhodesian armed forces fighting against black nationalists in the country now called Zimbabwe.
His tenure there has also drawn scrutiny because of a "Greendale School" listed as the New Jersey return address on some of the anthrax letters.
While no Greendale School exists in New Jersey, a school in the Greendale suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe, is informally known as the Greendale school.
It's actually named for a white Rhodesian fighter Courtney Selous - and the Rhodesian commando unit Hatfill joined was called the Selous Scouts.
Meanwhile, anthrax spores have been found in a Princeton mailbox tested after workers at a regional mail-sorting facility contracted the bacteria in October, Gov. James McGreevey said yesterday.
The mailbox was removed last week.
It's one of 600 mailboxes that fed the regional facility chosen to be swabbed for anthrax spores. Officials said 39 still have to be tested.