FBI Official Regrets Ashcroft’s Tagging of Hatfill as “Person of Interest”

FBI Assistant Director Michael Mason said yesterday that he regretted that former U.S. Army biologist Steven Hatfill was publicly identified by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks (see GSN, Sept. 18).

Mason, who took control of the bureau’s Washington field office this month, said he was disappointed that the anthrax investigation had been “beset by leaks” about the FBI’s interest in Hatfill.  Mason also said that he objected to the person-of-interest label in any investigation and that he instead prefers to identify people only when they are formal suspects.

Hatfill’s attorney Tom Connolly yesterday praised Mason’s remarks.

“His comments are at least an acknowledgement of the obvious:  that the FBI’s torrents of leaks and the attorney general’s unprecedented use of the term ‘person of interest’ was wrong,” Connolly said (Carol Leonnig, Washington Post, Sept. 30).

Mason also said yesterday that there was a good chance the person who conducted the anthrax attacks might have desired only to raise alarms about the potential for bioterrorism, not to hurt anyone, according to Reuters.

“I suppose the leading thought might be the person didn’t intend to cause harm, and did,” he said (Reuters/New York Post, Sept. 30).

In addition, Mason said yesterday that the FBI has been unsuccessful in trying to recreate the process used to create the anthrax spores used in the attacks, according to USA Today.

The FBI’s attempts at “reverse engineering” the process, however, did help “narrow” some aspects of the investigation and has led the bureau to believe that the culprit had special knowledge, Mason said.

“We would not have that if reverse engineering had completely failed to provide us with any information or valuable leads,” Mason said (Toni Locy, USA Today, Sept. 30).

Mason also suggested yesterday that the FBI might never solve the anthrax case, according to the Washington Post.

“Whether or not we bring it to a successful resolution, it has been a remarkable investigation,” Mason said, praising investigators (Leonnig, Washington Post).

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New Botox Findings Could Lead to New Treatments

University of Washington researchers announced yesterday that they have discovered how botulinum toxin enters human cells — a finding that could help scientists develop new treatments against the biological weapons agent, according Reuters (see GSN, Sept. 9).

Botulinum toxin kills by paralyzing the victim’s diaphragm, resulting in suffocation.  The University of Wisconsin researchers said they have identified the receptors used by the toxin to enter nerve cells. 

“Our study is the first to identify a receptor for one of the botulinum neurotoxins and establish its entry route,” Min Dong, a university graduate student who worked on the study, said in a statement published in the Journal of Cell Biology (Reuters, Sept. 29).

The researchers have also developed a possible botulinum toxin treatment, which has been found to be effective in mice, according to CBC News.  Pieces of the protein containing the toxin’s binding site were able to neutralize as much as 80 percent of one type of toxin, the researchers said.  They added that work is still being conducted to identify receptors for other toxin types (CBC News, Sept. 29).

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GAO, Health Advocates Say Health Tracking Will Fight Bioterror

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — As part of the effort to prepare for a potential bioterrorist attack against the United States, health officials must take steps to better track and monitor public health trends nationwide, a General Accounting Office official said this week (see GSN, Aug. 6).

“Gaps remain in state and local disease surveillance systems, which are essential to public health efforts to respond to disease outbreaks or bioterrorist attacks,” according to Janet Heinrich, GAO director of public health issues, in prepared testimony this week to the House Select Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness.

According to Heinrich, U.S. health officials must develop an efficient system to quickly move information from local medical workers to national health officials.  Current attempts to monitor health trends, she said, suffer from “chronic underreporting and outdated laboratory facilities.”

“Whether a disease outbreak occurs naturally or due to the intentional release of a harmful biological agent by a terrorist, much of the initial response would occur at the local level, particularly at hospitals and their emergency departments … however, preparedness limitations may impact hospitals’ ability to conduct disease surveillance,” she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month awarded $4.2 million to 10 state and city governments in an effort to improve medical tracking.

Shelly Hearne, executive director of the nonpartisan group Trust for America’s Health, praised the recent grants and renewed her organization’s call for better health tracking in a statement last week.  While the CDC grant will be split among 10 health agencies — California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, New York City, Oklahoma and Wisconsin — Hearne’s organization projects that a comprehensive national health tracking network would cost $275 million annually.

“A robust integrated health tracking network will not only alert health officials to increases and patterns of diseases like asthma,” Hearne said, “it could also pinpoint a surge in illness that might indicate a biological or chemical attack had occurred.”

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FBI Creates Scientific Expert Panel to Aid in Future Bioterrorism Cases

The FBI has created a 35-member panel of scientific experts to develop new techniques for use in bioterrorism investigations, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 21).

The panel is part of an effort to advance the new scientific field of microbial forensics, according to the Times.  It consists of U.S. and academic experts in a number of fields such as biology, chemistry and forensics.

“If you want to do a good job, you go to the best,” said Bruce Budowle, a senior FBI scientist and chairman of the panel.  “They see this as an important issue and want to help,” he said (William Broad, New York Times, Sept. 26).

In addition, the United States is also working to develop a network of laboratories that could be used to determine the source of future biological attacks, according to the Baltimore Sun.  The main facility in the network will be the National Bioforesnics Analysis Center, set to be created at Fort Detrick, Md., which will maintain pathogen databases for comparison with agents used in future attacks (Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun, Sept. 26).

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South Korean Military Lacks Vaccines Against WMD Agents

The South Korean Defense Ministry has disclosed that it does not have its own vaccines to inoculate its soldiers against a North Korean chemical or biological attack, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday (see GSN, July 23).

In a report prepared for lawmaker Lee Kyeong-jae, the ministry concluded that North Korea has 13 types of biological and chemical weapons at its disposal.  The South Korean Army has contingency plans to draw on the nation’s civilian smallpox vaccine stocks.

The South Korean military is also developing chemical and biological detection systems, Yonhap reported (Yonhap, Sept. 22 in FBIS-EAS, Sept. 22).

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