Rosenberg-CIA

Deseret News, Apr 2002:  (L)eading scientists — many fearful that an unsolved case will encourage other bioterrorists — are applying their deductive reasoning to the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and spread a new level of fear about biological warfare.

Their theories are full of intrigue: A disgruntled scientist. A covert government project gone awry. An accomplice to the Sept. 11 hijackers who stayed behind to mail the letters after their planes hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.  Right-wing extremists stockpiling the deadly material in anticipation of a visit from the Internal Revenue Service.

BBC/Susan Watts, March 2002:  A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control.

The shocking assertion is that a key member of the covert operation may have removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax which killed five people. .. But has the FBI found the whole case too hot to handle?

Prof Barbara Hatch Rosenberg:  Some very expert field person would have been given this job and it would have been left to him to decide exactly how to carry it out. The result might have been a project gone badly awry if he decided to use it for his own purposes and target the media and the senate for his own motives as not intended by the govt project...but this is a possibility that I think needs to be considered.

BBC's Tim Franks, 19 Dec 2001: I'm told the FBI is now centring its investigations on just four or five laboratories that received anthrax from the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

The first person to push the theory that the terrorist is a government-related insider is the biological weapons expert, Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg. 

Atlantic:  Rosenberg .. (who) once served as a low-level bioweapons adviser to President Clinton .. (was) a passionate crusader against the use of bioweapons.  (S)he was .. convinced that an American scientist was to blame for the anthrax attacks. 

Rosenberg's investigations led her to Hatfill. (Hatfill says he believes Rosenberg was made aware of him by a former acquaintance, a defense contractor with whom Hatfill had clashed over a proposed counter-anthrax training program intended for the U.S. Marshals Service.)  She wrote a paper she called “Possible Portrait of the Anthrax Perpetrator,” which was disseminated on the Internet.

Deseret News, Apr 22, 2002:  (A) molecular biologist, (she) began the scientific sleuthing in Feburary (sic) when she posted an article on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, www.fas.org/bwc, (dead-link, unfortunately)

Rosenberg estimates that perhaps fewer than 40 people could be suspects.

She believes that the perpetrator is one of her own: a disgruntled American scientist.

Prof Rosenberg: He must be angry at some biodefense agency.  He is driven to demonstrate, in a spectacular way, his capabilities and the government's inability to respond.

He is cocksure that he can get away with it.  Does he know something that he believes to be sufficiently damaging to the United States to make him untouchable by the FBI?

BBC/Franks:  The weaponised anthrax is made by a highly secret process belonging to the United States, and the material seems to fit that recipe. Their best lead at present is the contractor that worked for the CIA.