Last Updated

16 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, January 22, 2002.

Missing Army Microbes Called Non-Infectious

Scientist Says Samples Had No Role in Anthrax Attacks

Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer

The anthrax spores that went missing from the Army's top biological warfare laboratory in 1991had been sterilized and could not have played a role in last fall's terrorism attacks, a former senior officer at the research facility said yesterday.

But the apparent loss of more than two dozen biological specimens from the military research complex here reflected what numerous officials described as a deeply dysfunctional working environment in the early 1990s. They said these conditions contributed to multiple security lapses as well as acrimony among scientists working with some of the world's deadliest bacteria, viruses and chemicals.

"It was a very bad situation," said C. J. Peters, former deputy commander for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. "But the important question is how many of these missing samples were infectious, and the answer is none."

Internal Army documents released as part of a former scientist's discrimination lawsuit against the Army describe a hunt for 27 laboratory specimens -- including samples of the bacteria that causes anthrax and the virus that causes ebola -- that turned up missing during a 1992 inventory.

The documents also describe numerous other breaches of lab protocol, including unauthorized anthrax research in February 1992 by unknown individuals late at night and on weekends.

Sources familiar with the incidents said many of the missing items were never accounted for. Peters, who is now director of the Center for Biodefense at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston said that while the loss of control of lab stocks was serious, the threat to the public was likely minuscule.

"The bacteria in these samples had been inactivated," sterilized by chemicals to allow viewing under a microscope, Peters said. He said live bacteria cultures were kept in a separate facility where access was more tightly controlled.

Still, Peters said he could not rule out the possibility that the anthrax bacteria in letters mailed to U.S. Senate offices and media companies last fall were produced at USAMRIID. Five people died and 13 others fell ill in the anthrax attacks.

Officials have previously acknowledged that USAMRIID distributed live anthrax spores to other government facilities and contractors. FBI agents are still investigating the possibility that a bioterrorist obtained anthrax spores from one of those facilities.

Previous laboratory analyses have confirmed a genetic match between the anthrax bacteria used in the attacks and a strain possessed by USAMRIID and other military labs. A more sophisticated analysis of the anthrax spores mailed to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) is nearly complete and is expected to yield additional clues about how and where the deadly material was prepared.

"If someone wanted to steal something, could they have done it? The answer is yes," Peters said. "There's no 100 percent guarantee, short of putting the scientists under guard 24 hours a day."

Although USAMRIID controls access to the most secure labs, stealing a potentially deadly specimen could be as easy as "putting something in your pocket and walking away," Peters said.

The documents released by the Army describe one incident in which a scientist who had lost his security clearance was allowed into a locked, secure lab by a colleague. Details of that incident, including any follow-up action by Army officials, were not immediately available. Many USAMRIID administrative offices were closed yesterday because of the federal holiday.

An FBI official said yesterday that the bureau's investigators "have had the benefit" of the information revealed as a result of the lawsuit, and "it is part of the ongoing investigation."

The security lapses in the early 1990s came at a particularly chaotic time in the history of the Fort Detrick lab, which has been the center of U.S. biological weapons research since the 1940s.

Internal documents released as part of the discrimination lawsuit allege serious misconduct by senior officials at USAMRIID, ranging from security lapses to reported episodes of sexual and racial harassment that were carried to bizarre extremes.

A victim of particularly severe harassment, Army investigators concluded, was Ayaad Assaad, a physiologist and Egyptian American who began work at USAMRIID in 1988. In a mocking reference to Assaad's Arab descent, two top USAMRIID officers established a "Camel Club" and awarded a stuffed toy camel each week to a scientist who had not performed to their expectations, an investigation by the Army shows.

The elaborate weekly ceremony included the recitation of a sexually explicit poem about Assaad, according to the documents.

The senior USAMRIID officers took photographs of themselves cavorting with the stuffed camel -- photos that were developed in an Army photo lab, the investigators found. The two officers implicated in the incidents left the Army in the mid-1990s, and USAMRIID's commander issued a formal apology to Assaad.

Assaad filed suit against the Army in 1998 after losing his job in a round of staff cuts a year earlier.

Assaad was among several former USAMRIID workers who have contended in interviews that control of biological hazards was lax, at least until the mid-1990s.

In an interview yesterday, Assaad repeated his assertion that anthrax spores in dry, powdered form were produced as a byproduct of research at USAMRIID and said he strongly suspects, based on his nearly 10 years there, that the anthrax letters will eventually be connected to the lab.

Those suspicions were strengthened, he said, when he learned that someone had anonymously written the FBI in late September -- days before the first anthrax cases were reported -- warning that Assaad was a "potential bioterrorist."

Rosemary McDermott, Assaad's lawyer, said she met with FBI agents on Oct. 3. They told her the letter was a hoax, she said. McDermott and Assaad noted however, that the public was not aware of the anthrax attacks until officials disclosed in early October that a photo editor for a Florida tabloid newspaper was suffering from the disease and had been admitted to a hospital Oct. 2.

"Whoever sent the anthrax letters did this to divert attention," Assaad said. "They knew the attacks would be eventually traced back to USAMRIID, and they used me as a scapegoat. Who better than an Arab American scientist who used to work there?"

Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.