In one part of the story, the author seemed to indict Hatfill based on the fact that the (made up?) return address street and town names written on the anthrax envelopes were the same as names of places where Hatfill had lived in South Africa.
I could not figure out if he were guilty or not. He did have access to US weapons labs while working in the US.
Some lab equipment was found in a lake.
The whole story is odd. I wonder if he were directed to prepare the anthrax envelopes and that he is a fall guy for higher ups.
Source: Vanity Fair, pp. 180-200, October 2003 (posted 9/15/03)
The Message in the Anthrax
After fingering Joe Klein for Primary Colors and helping snare the alleged Atlanta Olympics bomber, the author, a professor of English at Vassar, was asked to analyze the 2001 anthrax letters. Frustrated with the F.B.I."s anthrax task force, he unseals his investigation of a most intriguing -- and disturbing -- suspect.
BY DON FOSTER
In the spring of 1998, an officer at the Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah, called the veteran biowarrior William C. Patrick III to ask for his help. The army wanted to convert some of its deadly anthrax into a dry powder, but, in Patrick's words, "didn't have a freeze-dryer, didn't have a spray dryer, no drying capability at all." The Soviets hadn't let the 1972 biological-and-toxinweapons convention stop them from producing 4,500 metric tons of anthrax per year. But when the Americans signed it, they put Bill Patrick out to pasture and then seemingly forgot the art, developed by Patrick in 1959, of weaponizing Bacillus anthracis without milling. Now Patrick had to re-educate the army's top microbiologists, showing them how to freeze-dry a slurry of anthrax simulant; how to purify it to a trillion spores per gram in a centrifuge; and how to remove the electrostatic charge, to prevent clumping. On one visit to Dugway, Patrick said he had employed the less sophisticated method of acetone extraction to produce a pound of dry anthrax in a single day -- enough to kill thousands of people. (Patrick now says that he misspoke when he claimed to have produced the pound of anthrax.)
For nearly two decades -- until Richard Nixon shut down America's offensive bioweapons program in 1969 -- Bill Patrick worked in secret government laboratories, designing and testing germ agents. His skull and- crossbones calling card describes him as a "Biological Warfare Consultant." An old-school warrior, Patrick, 77, looks like a big teddy bear, but he continually slips into talk of mass destruction. When lecturing on biodefense, he speaks of "beautiful bomblets" and of how many people the U.S. could kill in good weather with a dry bioweapons agent "especially in the Middle East."
On February 19, 1999, Patrick briefed two dozen officers at Maxwell Air Force Base, in Montgomery, Alabama, on his recent visits to Dugway: "The principles of biological warfare that we discovered 35 to 40 years ago have not changed." Patrick held up a sealed vial containing eight grams of highly refined powder. "Now you're very fortunate today," he said, "that I've carried in my suitcase here a sample of anthrax. The only requirement I have is that you don't drop it." His audience tittered nervously as the bottle passed from hand to hand.
...snip...
By October 12, 2001, the press was reporting that Bob Stevens (case 5), the 63-year old tabloid photo editor at American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida, who had mysteriously succumbed to inhalational anthrax on October 5, had been infected at work.(Inhalational anthrax comes from breathing in spores, and is far deadlier than the cutaneous form of the disease, which is usually contracted through cuts and scratches in the skin.) Spores were found throughout the A.M.I. building, with hot spots in the mailroom and on the victim's keyboard.
more...
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/messageanthrax.htmledit: Hatfill won a libel lawsuit against two magazines:
Hatfill Settles $10M Libel Lawsuit
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 27, 2007
A former Army scientist named by investigators as a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax attacks, Dr. Steven Hatfill, has settled his $10 million libel suit against Vanity Fair and Reader's Digest after the two magazines agreed to retract any implication that the bioweapons specialist was behind the deadly anthrax mailings.
A statement issued today by a lawyer for Dr. Hatfill, Hassan Zavareei, said the case "has now been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of all the parties." He did not indicate whether any money changed hands.
A spokeswoman for Reader's Digest, Ellen Morgenstern, confirmed the settlement, but she would not elaborate. "All I can tell you is we're very satisfied with the results. I can't get into any detail," she said. A call seeking comment from Vanity Fair's parent company, Condé Nast Publications, was not immediately returned.
Dr. Hatfill's lawsuit claimed that he was defamed in an article written in 2003 by an English professor at Vassar College, Donald Foster. Mr. Foster's assessment, first published in Vanity Fair and later carried in abridged form in Reader's Digest, analyzed Dr. Hatfill's writings and travels and found them consistent with patterns seen in the 2001 anthrax attacks, as well as prior hoaxes and suspicious incidents.
more...
http://www.nysun.com/article/49333
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
