The Anthrax Letters: The Attacks That Shocked America (36 page)

The letter concluded with a reminder that the reward for information leading to the culprit’s arrest and conviction had grown to $2.5 million.

Rosenberg viewed the FBI’s mailing as a waste of time. All but a couple of hundred members of the society, she said, live in a “different world” from the perpetrator. Although she would not name the suspect, she was impatient with the FBI for not doing so. The evidence was sufficient to “single out the perpetrator from the other likely suspects,” she wrote. But the bureau’s reluctance to name him was perhaps because he knew something “sufficiently damaging to the United States to make him untouchable by the FBI.”

Rosenberg’s assessments were widely reported, often in a political cast. Liberal magazines, including the
American Prospect
and the
New Yorker
, published articles that sympathized with her position. Conservative publications, notably the
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Post,
were skeptical. No journalist was more fixed on the issue than
New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof. Between January and August 2002 he devoted six columns to the subject. Incorporating most of Rosenberg’s themes and then some, he criticized the FBI for “lackadaisical ineptitude in pursuing the anthrax killer.”

David Tell, in the
Weekly Standard
, included a point-by-point critique of the argument that the anthrax mailer was a domestic scientist. Tell was as critical of the FBI as he was of Rosenberg. The result was an ironic triangle: He and Rosenberg pointedly disagreed with each other, and both disagreed with the FBI, albeit for different reasons.

Whereas Rosenberg contended that the Ames strain in the letters likely came from an American laboratory, Tell said that the United States had shared the Ames samples with labs overseas, which could have been the source. Whereas the FBI believed that the block capitals in the anthrax letters were written by a native English-speaker, Tell asked why the writer might not have been “someone who grew up speaking a language—like Arabic—whose alphabet has no upper or lower cases.” Whereas Rosenberg thought the writer’s warning to take penicillin meant he did not intend to kill, Tell disagreed. He believed that no “benignly inspired” expert would now prescribe penicillin for an anthrax infection. (Cipro and doxycycline are considered the antibiotics of choice.) He concluded that “the possibility is far from foreclosed that the anthrax bioterrorist was just who he said he was: a Muslim, impliedly from overseas, who thought the events of 09-11-01 were something to be celebrated—and who would have been doubly pleased to see ‘you die now.’”

In 2003, Rosenberg remained as convinced of her case as she was in 2001. “To my mind, everything that subsequently became known played right into my hypothesis, which strengthened my own convictions,” she said to me. And she is equally steadfast about the unflattering criticism she has received: “It rolls right off. I mean, the people who are making these statements are right wingers who have axes to grind. They’re trying to prove that it was Iraq, or Al Qaeda, or anything but the U.S. biodefense program. So, I mean, I expect that.” When I noted that the person she described in her postings seemed to fit the profile of Steven Hatfill, she responded softly, “I have not mentioned a name and I don’t intend to.”

Pat Clawson exudes gusto and strong opinions. As he climbed out of his dented 1988 red Plymouth Reliant, he announced, “I’m just a fat, ugly Irishman who doesn’t like what’s happening to my friend.” It was the end of January 2003, a cold but clear afternoon in Washington. We found a quiet table at Kelly’s Irish Times, a downtown pub. Over a corned beef sandwich and some Ellis Island beer, for 2 hours Clawson catalogued the injustices he believes Steven Hatfill has suffered. During the 1990s he and Hatfill developed a friendship at dinner parties attended by a circle of fellow conservatives. Both men are the same age, 48, and they share a world view that they purvey with spirited confidence.

When I spoke with Clawson, Hatfill had been unemployed for 5 months. Clawson, a veteran radio and television reporter at NBC and CNN, had also recently left his job with Radio America. Unlike his friend, he anticipated finding work again quickly. Hatfill has been instructed by his lawyers not to talk to any outsiders, but he has accepted the media-savvy Clawson’s offer to act as his spokesman. With Hatfill’s blessing, Clawson has regularly appeared on the air and in print on his behalf.

Clawson first learned that Hatfill might be in trouble on June 25, 2001. He heard a radio reporter say that the FBI had searched an apartment in Frederick, Maryland. “It was connected with the anthrax investigation and he mentioned ‘Steven Hatfill,’” Clawson said. For a moment Clawson wondered if Hatfill could have been the anthrax killer. But then the broadcaster indicated that Hatfill was not a suspect, and had consented to the search. “Well, hell,” Clawson thought, “Steve’s just being a good soldier and cooperating with the FBI.”

Clawson knew that Hatfill was an expert on bioterrorism and recalled Hatfill telling him the FBI had interviewed him about the anthrax letters. No cause for concern. He was among hundreds being interviewed, including almost everyone who had recently worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). But then, according to Clawson, media stories began suggesting that Hatfill had become the center of the investigation. Clawson cited the articles by Nicholas Kristof and others. “Steve was being portrayed as a nutty, lone scientist who was pissed off at the government because he lost his security clearance, lost his job, and was a closet racist who had worked for racist regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa.” Clawson’s baritone inflections sound remarkably similar to those of talk-radio’s Rush Limbaugh. Clawson paused, rested his beer on the table, and said, “That wasn’t the Steve that I knew.”

Clawson reached Hatfill and asked him what all these stories were about. “Pat, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Hatfill answered. Clawson watched his friend break into tears. “They’re following me around the clock, everywhere I go, and I don’t have a damn thing to do with any of this.”

Hatfill’s background is certainly unusual. He had distorted items on his résumé, including a false claim that he held a Ph.D. But much about his record is not in dispute. He was born in St. Louis in 1953, grew up in Illinois, and graduated from Southwestern College in Kansas in 1975. After serving in the U.S. Army, he went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to study medicine. In 1984 he received an M.D. from the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine (now the University of Zimbabwe). He completed a hematology residency in South Africa, where he also obtained a master’s degree in medical biochemistry and another one in microbial genetics.

In 1994 he submitted a Ph.D. thesis on molecular biology at Rhodes University in South Africa but never received the degree. Hatfill left Africa in 1995 and spent a year as a research scientist at Oxford. He returned to the United States for a 2-year fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and then 2 years, from 1997 to 1999, at USAMRIID. There he conducted research on viruses, including Ebola and Marburg, which are considered possible biowarfare agents. Afterwards, in January 1999, he began to work for Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a private defense contractor in Virginia.

Hatfill was fired from SAIC in March 2002, though Clawson refused to say why. According to media reports, it was because the Department of Defense had suspended his security clearance in August 2001 and Hatfill’s efforts to regain the clearance had been unsuccessful. The suspension might have been related to his participation in the 1980s with the military in Rhodesia and South Africa. An intelligence analyst who knows Hatfill confirmed to me that Hatfill had been involved with special operations there of an unspecified nature. In any case, after leaving SAIC, Hatfill was hired to work in a biomedical training program at Louisiana State University. But amid the notoriety, he was let go in early September 2002.

Hatfill’s intense interest in biodefense is obvious from his résumé. In the late 1990s he developed a biological warfare syllabus for emergency room physicians and he was a biological weapons consultant for the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Medical Strike Force. His résumé also says: “Working knowledge of the former U.S. and foreign BW programs, wet and dry BW agents, large-scale production of bacterial, rickettsial, and viral BW pathogens, stabilizers and other additives.”

These were among the reasons Hatfill had been targeted, implicitly by Rosenberg, and explicitly by Kristof and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The search of Hatfill’s apartment in June was followed by another search on August 1, but this time the FBI brought a criminal search warrant. While still denying that Hatfill was a suspect, the FBI and the attorney general deemed him a “person of interest.” He was one of 30 persons of interest, according to the bureau, but Hatfill apparently was the only one under sustained FBI surveillance.

Clawson was convinced that Hatfill’s public silence was not helping him. “Steve, you’ve got to get your side of the story out. You need to talk to the press and let people see who you are,” he said.

“No, I don’t want to,” Hatfill replied, according to Clawson.

“Well, you’re going to have to. You’re getting eaten alive.”

“Look, you know how my lawyer feels about it,” Hatfill replied.

Soon after, Clawson spoke to Victor Glassberg, Hatfill’s lawyer. “We had a tough conversation,” Clawson said, referring to their opposing views about the need for a press conference. But on August 11, in front of his lawyer’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, Steven Hatfill proclaimed his innocence in a statement to the press. This was followed, Clawson said, by a “disinformation campaign” by the FBI, including the bureau’s denial that they had trashed his apartment. “But we had pictures,” Clawson said, “which we released to the press.” On August 25, Hatfill held another press conference.

Telecast nationwide, a resolute Steven Hatfill pointed his index finger toward the assembled cameras and said: “I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, ‘I am not the anthrax killer.’” His dark blue suit covered the stocky frame of a seemingly over-age wrestler. He inveighed against Barbara Rosenberg and Nicholas Kristof for conveying a “never-ending torrent of leaks.” He assailed Attorney General John Ashcroft for singling him out as a “person of interest.” And he accused the government of abusing him: “This assassination of my character appears to be part of a government-run effort to show the American people that it is proceeding vigorously and successfully with the anthrax investigation.”

Hatfill provided timesheets to reporters showing that he had been working overtime at the SAIC offices in McLean, Virginia, on September 17 and 18 and October 8 and 9, around the times the anthrax letters were mailed. “I know nothing about the anthrax attack,” he said. “I had absolutely nothing to do with this terrible crime.”

After the second press conference, Hatfill moved from Frederick, Maryland, to his girlfriend’s apartment in Washington, D.C. But the FBI remained interested in his former home and the surrounding area. At the time that I spoke with Clawson in January 2003, investigators were searching a wooded area near Hatfill’s former home. The search was “just a continuation of our investigation on the anthrax case,” according to FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman. In June the FBI returned to the area and drained a 1-acre pond at a cost of $250,000.

I asked Clawson how Hatfill was spending his time. “He watches CNN a lot,” Clawson replied. “He is angry that his reputation is in tatters and that he has been reduced to virtual poverty.”