Little Progress In FBI Probe of Anthrax Attacks

The offices of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) were among recipients of letters that contained anthrax spores. Legislative office buildings were later shut down. (By Rick Bowmer -- Associated Press)

The anthrax attacks took place just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Spore-laden letters were mailed in pre-stamped envelopes in September and October of 2001 to the offices of then-Senate Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) as well as media outlets in Florida and New York.

Two District postal workers, a Florida photojournalist, a New York hospital worker and an elderly Connecticut woman died. At least 17 post offices and public office buildings were contaminated. Including cleanup costs, an FBI document put the damage in excess of $1 billion.

Over the years, officials have publicly identified only one "person of interest," and that was in August 2002: Steven J. Hatfill, a physician and bioterrorism expert who worked at Fort Detrick from 1997 to 1999. Hatfill, who has not been charged, has denied any involvement and filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department and then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

"He remains innocent today as he was four years ago," said Thomas G. Connolly, Hatfill's attorney. "They were getting enormous pressure, and a way to alleviate the pressure was to offer someone up, and that person happened to be Dr. Hatfill. That caused enormous harm to Dr. Hatfill. It didn't advance their investigation one iota."

Investigators have issued more than 5,000 subpoenas and conducted interviews and research throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Asia and Africa. Two years ago, the FBI spent about $250,000 and three weeks draining a pond in Frederick, acting on a theory that someone might have discarded materials there. The pond yielded nothing useful, authorities said.

In the past year, investigators have tried to follow up on and eliminate as many leads as possible. In case the matter ever goes to trial, they want to be able to counter any defense assertions that they failed to explore alternative scenarios or suspects, sources have said.

Authorities received information, for example, from at least one detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that there was an anthrax storage facility in the Kabul area, sources said. Because the deadly letters contained the Ames anthrax spores, manufactured in the United States, authorities entertained the possibility that they had been removed from a U.S. lab and transported overseas.

Agents checked the Kabul area in May 2004 but came up empty, sources said. In November, on additional information, agents spent weeks searching an area in the Kandahar mountains, several hundred miles outside of Kabul, but found nothing, sources said.

Meanwhile, in the United States, FBI agents and scientists have been working to match the gene sequence of the mailed anthrax spores to a specific laboratory. They remain particularly interested in such laboratories as Fort Detrick, Louisiana State University and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

An article published in May in a journal of the American Society of Microbiology and written by a number of scientists, including Bruce Budowle of the FBI laboratory in Quantico, suggested that scientists had still not pinpointed the lab of origin. "Grand leaps in sequencing technology to increase speed, to reduce costs and to maximize efficiency for forensic analysis are needed," the article said.

Clare Fraser, president of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, one of the authors of the article, said of the science: "It's breaking new ground. There's still a lot of work to be done. But I don't think it's impossible to pinpoint."

Even if the test is successful, some scientists and law enforcement authorities caution, it may be of limited benefit because the nation's labs kept poor records of anthrax stocks and of those who passed through the facilities.

In light of the obstacles facing investigators, some relatives of the victims are wondering if the anthrax case will ever be solved. "It's been out there too long. I don't think they're going to find out" who did it, said Thomas L. Morris III of Suitland, whose father, D.C. postal worker Thomas Morris Jr., died of inhalation anthrax in October 2001.

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.