NP anthrax investigation?

[Doug Millison]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/anthrax/story/0,1520,719367,00.html

[...] But while we should be asking what George Bush and his cabinet knew
and failed to respond to before September 11, we should also be exploring
another, related, question: what do they know now and yet still refuse to
act upon? Another way of asking the question is this: whatever happened to
the anthrax investigation? [...]  In December, the Washington Post reported
that genetic tests showed that the variety used by the terrorist was a
sub-strain cultivated by scientists at the US army's medical research
institute for infectious diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
That finding was publicly confirmed two weeks ago, when the test results
were published in the journal Science. New Scientist magazine notes that
the anthrax the terrorist used appears to have emerged from Fort Detrick
only recently, as the researchers found that samples which have been
separated from each other for three years acquire "substantial genetic
differences".

The Ames strain was distributed by USAMRIID to around 20 other laboratories
in the US. Of these, according to research conducted by Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg, who runs the Federation of American Scientists' biological
weapons monitoring program, only four possess the equipment and expertise
required for the weaponization of the anthrax sent to Senator Daschle.
Three of them are US military laboratories, the fourth is a government
contractor. While security in all these places has been lax, the terrorist
could not have stolen all the anthrax (around 10 grams) which found its way
into the postal system. He must have used the equipment to manufacture it.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg has produced a profile of the likely perpetrator.
He is an American working within the US biodefense industry, with a
doctoral degree in the relevant branch of microbiology. He is skilled and
experienced at handling the weapon without contaminating his surroundings.
He has full security clearance and access to classified information. He is
among the tiny number of Americans who had received anthrax vaccinations
before September 2001. Only a handful of people fit this description.
Rosenberg has told the internet magazine Salon.com that three senior
scientists have identified the same man--a former USAMRIID scientist--as
the likely suspect. She, and they, have told the FBI, but it seems that all
the bureau has done in response is to denounce her.

Instead, it has launched the kind of "investigation" which might have been
appropriate for the unwitnessed hit and run killing of a person with no
known enemies. Rather than homing in on the likely suspects, in other
words, it appears to have cast a net full of holes over the entire
population. [...]  The army's development of weaponized anthrax, for
example, directly contravenes both the biological weapons convention and
domestic law. So does its plan to test live microbes in "aerosol chambers"
at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, also in Maryland. So does its
development of a genetically modified fungus for attacking coca crops in
Colombia, and GM bacteria for destroying materials belonging to enemy
forces. These, as the research group Project Sunshine has discovered,
appear to be just a tiny sample of the illegal offensive biological
research programs which the US government has secretly funded. Several
prominent scientists have suggested that the FBI's investigation is being
pursued with less than the rigor we might have expected because the federal
authorities have something to hide. [...]