Rosenberg-CIA
NYT, Sep 4, 2001: In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market.
At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials .. (that) demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs.
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?
The New York Times carried a major investigation which at any other time would have been a story of huge significance. .. It revealed (private) contractors have been involved in classified bio-defence projects. One of these secret projects, carried out in the Nevada desert, was part of a series of three in the first few days of September last year - immediately prior to the attacks of the 11th.
NYT, Sep 4, 2001: Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.
The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.
BBC/Susan Watts, March 2002: One - run by a contractor - Battelle - was to create genetically altered anthrax.
NYT, Sep 4, 2001: (A)dministration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.
The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug, which was first created by Russian scientists. A Bush administration official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final go-ahead later this month.
Prof 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.