The Anthrax Letters: The Attacks That Shocked America (45 page)

The NAS is comprised of 2,100 of America’s most distinguished scientists. Although chartered by Congress, it is a private, honorific organization that evaluates and reports on scientific subjects upon request by a department of the government. After receiving a solicitation, the academy’s leadership clarifies the terms and goals of the request and then establishes a committee. The committee typically numbers 15-20 individuals with expertise on the issue. By the time a committee completes its deliberations and files a report, more than a year may have elapsed.

An NAS committee’s conclusions are commonly accorded great respect. Thus, a report on the anthrax investigation could profoundly affect the most important item of evidence in the government’s case. According to the FBI, the parent spores of those used in the attacks were in a single flask known as RMR-1029, and were created and maintained solely by Bruce Ivins. A favorable committee assessment of the science connecting the attack spores and those in the flask seems indispensable to the case. If the committee were to question the FBI’s scientific techniques, the case against Ivins could collapse. Mueller, Taylor, and other involved officials appeared confident that an NAS review would back the scientific findings. Still, even before the NAS review was underway, some scientists were questioning aspects of the evidence and debating how much more information was needed from the FBI.

Barbara Rosenberg, an early critic of the bureau’s investigation, was among the first to offer views about the FBI’s forensic inquiries. Her posting on the BioWeapons Prevention Project Web site drew a spirited response from Serguei Popov, who had worked in the former Soviet biological warfare program. Now a microbiologist at George Mason University, Popov listed numerous “misconceptions” in her paper. For example, Rosenberg wrote that the “FBI needs to find out what kinds of silicon compounds can be incorporated into the spore coats [of the anthrax bacterium] . . . and what effects these compounds may have on the properties of spores that have been exposed to them.” The bureau had no such need, Popov insisted. The primary question the FBI should have been addressing is “
who
did it but not
how
.”

Of Rosenberg’s claim that the letter to Senator Leahy contained an unusually pure concentration of spores, “a concentration even the Soviets were never able to achieve,” Popov was dismissive: “Obviously, Professor Rosenberg never prepared spores with her own hands. Otherwise, she would know that the preparation of the pure spores requires
no
special effort.”

On September 15, Vajid Mahidi, an assistant director of the FBI, submitted questions on behalf of the bureau to the National Academy. They included the core matter of whether the methodology used to identify and assay the genetic mutations in the bacterial samples was valid. But Alan Pearson of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, and Gregory Koblentz, a biosecurity analyst at George Mason University, felt the FBI’s questions were too limited. They sent the NAS a list of additional queries. A sample: How did the FBI know that it had identified all laboratories that possessed RMR-1029? Precisely how does the FBI define the term “weaponize?” In addition to Dr. Ivins, how many individuals had both access to RMR-1029 and knowledge about making dry powder preparations of spores?

One large and persistent issue of contention concerns the difficulty of producing the attack material. Some analysts maintain that free-floating anthrax spores would not be technically difficult for a lone operator to develop, while others disagree. On this issue, a discrepancy may be found within the FBI’s own claims. At the August 6 press conference, Jeffrey Taylor cited the need for an unusual ability in developing the spores: “Dr. Ivins was one of a handful of scientists with the capability to create spores of the concentration and purity used in the attacks.” But in 2006, an FBI microbiologist who had worked on the anthrax investigation suggested the opposite. In an article in
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
, Douglas Beecher wrote that “a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapons production. The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may . . . detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.” In other words, according to this FBI scientist, a potent sample of dry anthrax spores, like those in the mailed attacks, would not be difficult to produce. If true, one of the purported items of evidence against Ivins would be weakened.

The discrepancy of opinion about ease of production, while absent from the list of questions submitted by the FBI to the National Academy, should nonetheless interest the academy’s committee. It seems both amenable to a committee resolution and significant to the government’s case against Ivins. Futhermore, while naming the perpetrator is important, the case also highlights a simmering controversy over the nation’s posture on biosecurity. The issue was starkly posed by Laura Kahn, a researcher at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. “The sad tale of Bruce Ivins,” she wrote in the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, “illustrates that the most dangerous bioterrorism threat we face is from ourselves.” Is she correct?

A few blocks from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in Newark, a long, two-story brick building was completed in 2008. Affiliated with the university, it is one of thirteen Regional Biocontainment Laboratories in the United States that have been established to enhance the nation’s biosecurity. Like the other twelve, this facility was generated by a federal initiative after the 2001 anthrax attacks. Research at the regional laboratories includes the investigation of organisms that cause anthrax, plague, tularemia, and other pathogens deemed to be likely bioterrorism agents.

After final testing of temperature and humidity controls, alarms, and surveillance cameras, the New Jersey facility will become operational in 2009. Its airtight rooms are maintained at different levels of pressure. Like a deep-sea diver rising to the surface, an investigator experiences diminishing pressure while passing through four rooms, each with lower pressure than the one before. Preventing air from flowing outward is one of many safeguards in this biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) containment laboratory. Only in the innermost room is work conducted on highly infections organisms. (Work on more innocuous agents may be conducted in less restrictive BSL-1 or BSL-2 laboratories.)

The $39 million structure was funded largely by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but the cost is just a fraction of the $50 billion spent by government agencies on civilian biodefense since 2001. Projects range from the development of medical countermeasures and deployment of pathogen detectors to the stockpiling of drugs and vaccines and training of responders. In recent years, however, questions have been raised about some of these programs. In 2005, more than 750 microbiologists signed a letter to Elias Zerhouni, the director of the NIH, objecting to the diversion of funds from public health research to biodefense projects. Zerhouni, joined by Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, rejected the premise of the letter. They disputed its contention that biodefense concerns were of low public-health significance, and maintained that spending on non-biodefense NIH research had increased since 2001.

Some of the letter’s signers also expressed discomfort over the growing number of laboratories dealing with select agents. One of the most outspoken, Richard Ebright, a biochemist at Rutgers University, contended that the chances were now greater that a pathogen might accidentally escape or deliberately be released by an unsavory scientist. Nevertheless, the expansion of biodefense projects continued apace. Funding for biodefense research by Fauci’s institute, about $200 million in 2001, had mushroomed to $1.6 billion in 2003, and has been maintained at that annual level into 2009.

During this period the number of institutions containing BSL-3 laboratories multiplied 20-fold to 400. Similarly, the number of people working with select agents has grown from about 700 in 2001 to 15,000 in 2009. The FBI’s designation of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax killer only underscored concerns about the possibility of illicit activity by a scientist in a high security laboratory. This prompted critics, like science writer Wendy Orent, to urge an end to massive funding for research on select agents. Rather, the government should “put most of the thousands of microbiologists to work on the germs we really need to worry about.”

To David Perlin, such proposals are irksome. In 2008, Perlin became director of the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory in New Jersey while retaining his position as head of UMDNJ’s Public Health Research Institute. “To us at PHRI,” he told me, “there is no difference from a mechanical standpoint in working with plague and anthrax than working with avian flu or drug resistant tuberculosis.” They all require the precautions that are part of the work protocol in a BSL-3 laboratory. Perlin sees funding for biodefense research not only as helping to strengthen national security, but also as investment dollars in the broader research infrastructure. “It’s not just about anthrax,” he says, “ it’s about investing in infectious diseases.”

Perlin amplifies that research on select agents provides information that may be applied to infectious diseases in general. For example, at PHRI, investigators have tested several approaches to the development and application of plague vaccine. This work has provided insights into how the immune system responds to viral vectors and other vehicles that are used to target cells. He also notes that biodefense dollars helped fund reconstruction of the Spanish flu virus that killed as many as 100 million people in 1918-1919. This modeling exercise can lead to the development of better countermeasures—antiviral drugs and diagnostics—in advance of a future virulent flu outbreak. Thus, because of biosecurity concerns, more money has become available for research that can broaden understanding of infectious diseases.

I asked Perlin what he thought of Richard Ebright’s concerns about the increased number of people with access to select agents. His response was measured. While acknowledging that Ebright and others raised legitimate concerns, he believes that the answer is not to shrink the research, but to insist on solid safety procedures. Nancy Connell, who helped develop the regional laboratory, agrees. She will be moving her research on select agents from the BSL-3 laboratory at the university medical school to the new regional facility. The move suits her view that biosecurity research should be compacted into fewer institutions with well-developed oversight.

In any case, doing science sometimes entails risk. PHRI and other laboratories have long been engaged in non-biodefense research on drug resistant tuberculosis bacteria and other dangerous organisms. But properly controlled investigation of pathogens, whether terrorism agents or not, is necessary and manageable.

When I asked Perlin how an individual doing illicit work could be identified, he referred to reports that Bruce Ivins had worked alone at night. “Ivins’s operating practices would never have been allowed here,” he said, noting that protocols for work in his institute’s BSL-3 laboratories require that two people be present.

How about the issue of mental stability? I asked. He wrestled with the thought: “Ok, mental stability is a difficult issue.” He posed a rhetorical question: “Do we submit every person in the laboratory to some type of psychological evaluation?” He seemed to develop his position as he answered: “Maybe we should. We don’t now, I think, because our laws may not permit it. But I’d actually favor that, wanting to know if somebody is imbalanced.” Given the havoc that a single nefarious or maladjusted character could cause, mandatory psychological evaluation of individuals with access to select agents seems sensible.

Such screening is among several steps needed to strengthen safety and security in the nation’s biodefense efforts. Gaps in oversight in the past permitted someone like Bruce Ivins to conduct illicit work without being noticed. But those lapses do not negate the reality of external biothreats. Soon after the Ivins story appeared, the British newspaper
Guardian
reported that during the previous year security services had thwarted 100 terrorist suspects from infiltrating British laboratories. Posing as post-graduate students, mainly from Pakistan and Iran, they had sought “materials and expertise needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.”

Thus, securing our laboratories is a necessary step to protection against threats both domestic and foreign. Doubtless, safety conditions have improved in many U.S. laboratories and other biodefense programs since 2001. However, unless controls are applied convincingly throughout the system, support for biodefense at current levels will justifiably be challenged.