Ohio Connection: FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists

[Matthew Gaylor]

[Note from Matthew Gaylor: I hope this doesn't turn out like the 
FBI's botched accusations that Richard Jewel was the Atlanta Olympics 
bomber, a charge that was completely false. With the absence of other 
suspects I suppose it's natural for the Feds to trot out the usual 
suspects.  Pravda had on October 18th all ready pointed out that the 
Center for Disease Control re-released a 1999 report authored by 
Jessica Stern of the Council of Foreign Relations, stating that most 
anthrax threats in the United States are linked to "far-right 
militia" organizations... But no US militia group is known to posses 
the refined, military form of anthrax being used against the US media 
and government, and most US militia groups are more concerned with 
defending themselves against anthrax than spreading it in such a way 
that their families and communities might be affected 
<http://english.pravda.ru/usa/2001/10/18/18529.html>. Of special 
interest in this article is the mentioning of Larry Wayne Harris, an 
Ohio microbiologist and former member of the Aryan Nations.  For a 
photo of Harris go to 
<http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/crime/bio/harris.html>.  Being 
from central Ohio just like Harris I've seen him on a few occasions 
at local events.  I did make it a point not to engage him in 
conversation as I considered him a racist nut.  On one particular 
occasion at a gun and preparedness show in Columbus, Ohio sponsored 
by the Peoples Rights Organization, an Ohio gun and civil rights 
group,<http://www.peoplesrights.org/> just before Y2K, Harris had a 
table and display selling his tapes and books on biological warfare. 
On his table he had a device for the spraying of biological agents 
such as Anthrax.  I examined the machine which looked like a 
stainless steel tube, like a coffee dispenser with a nozzle and 
valves.  The show had a prohibition in their rules about "weapons of 
mass destruction" and Harris was asked to leave.  As I remember a 
Franklin County Sheriff escorted Harris off the premises.  I don't 
think he was arrested.]



<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59509-2001Oct26.html>

FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists

Officials Doubt Any Links to Bin Laden

By Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 27, 2001; Page A01

Top FBI and CIA officials believe that the anthrax attacks on
Washington, New York and Florida are likely the work of one or more
extremists in the United States who are probably not connected to Osama
bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization, government officials said
yesterday.

Senior officials also are increasingly concerned that the bioterrorism
is diverting public attention from the larger threat posed by bin Laden
and his network, who are believed to be planning a second wave of
attacks against U.S. interests here or abroad that could come at any
time, officials said.

None of the 60 to 80 threat reports gathered daily by U.S. intelligence
agencies has connected the envelopes containing anthrax spores to al
Qaeda or other known organized terrorist groups, and the evidence
gleaned from the spore samples so far provides no solid link to a
foreign government or laboratory, several officials said.

"Everything seems to lean toward a domestic source," one senior official
said. "Nothing seems to fit with an overseas terrorist type operation."

The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are considering a wide range
of domestic possibilities, including associates of right-wing hate
groups and U.S. residents sympathetic to the causes of Islamic
extremists. But investigators have no clear suspects, and are not even
certain whether there are other undetected letters that contained the
deadly microbe.

But federal health officials said yesterday that a new case of pulmonary
anthrax in a man who worked at a State Department mail facility in
Northern Virginia has persuaded them that more than one contaminated
letter may have been sent to the Washington area. Health experts
previously believed that a single letter, sent to the office of Senate
Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), likely caused all the
anthrax reports in the Washington area as it came in contact with other
pieces of mail in the system.

Now the "working hypothesis would be that this is not
cross-contamination," said Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. "There is not enough infectious material
from cross-contamination to do that."

However, ongoing searches of truckloads of undelivered mail to the U.S.
Capitol and other government buildings has turned up no other letters
laced with anthrax bacteria, leading FBI officials to assume that the
Daschle letter may still be the only local source. Two employees at the
U.S. Postal Service's Brentwood facility in Washington have died from
inhaling the lethal bacteria, and three other local postal workers have
contracted inhalational anthrax.

"This envelope, Daschle's envelope, is not watertight or airtight or
anything like that," one law enforcement official said. "It's porous. At
one or two microns, there's plenty of room for the spores to escape."

Although there is consensus at the FBI and CIA that al Qaeda associates
are planning more serious attacks, "nobody believes the anthrax scare we
are going through is" the next wave of terrorism, one senior official
said. "There is no intelligence on it and it does not fit any [al Qaeda]
pattern."

No links between known foreign terrorist groups and the anthrax letters
have shown up on the daily Top Secret Threat Matrix, which includes the
latest raw intelligence on potential bombings, hijackings or other
terrorist attacks, one official said. Though "lots of things are
alarming" on the list, there is little agreement on how, when or where
an attack might be launched, officials said.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III warned earlier this week that
additional terror attacks are a "distinct possibility."

President Bush and other top U.S. officials have publicly voiced their
suspicion that bin Laden and al Qaeda -- accused of carrying out the
Sept. 11 suicide assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- may
be responsible for the anthrax mailings.

But Mueller, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other law enforcement
officials have said they have discovered no links between the mailings
and bin Laden. Authorities, speaking on condition of anonymity
yesterday, said they are increasingly doubtful that any connections will
be found.

One official said the only significant clue raising the possibility of
foreign terrorist involvement is the conclusion of FBI behavioral
scientists, who believe that whoever wrote the three letters delivered
to Daschle, NBC News and the New York Post did not learn English as a
first language.

But the writer could have lived in this country for some time, and the
other evidence gathered so far points away from a foreign source,
several officials said.

The anti-Israel message in the anthrax letters and bin Laden's
statements are echoed by U.S. extremist groups, said Rabbi Abraham
Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los
Angeles.

One group, Aryan Action, praises the Sept. 11 attacks on its Web site
and declares: "Either you're fighting with the jews against al Qaeda, or
you support al Qaeda fighting against the jews."

Cooper said a meeting this year in Beirut was attended by neo-Nazis and
Islamic extremists united in their hatred of Jews. "Some extremists are
now globalized," he said.

White supremacists have been linked with anthrax in the past, but not in
relation to an attack.

Larry Wayne Harris, an Ohio microbiologist and former member of the
Aryan Nations, was convicted of wire fraud in 1997 after he obtained
three vials of bubonic plague germs through the mail. He was arrested
the next year near Las Vegas when the FBI acted on a tip that he was
carrying anthrax. But agents found harmless anthrax vaccine in the trunk
of his car.

Cooper and officials at the Southern Poverty Law Project, which monitors
U.S. hate groups, said they have seen no evidence of a domestic group
capable of launching a sophisticated anthrax attack.

One of the challenges that a would-be terrorist faces is learning how to
alter the anthrax so that it will float in the air and disperse widely.
The Washington Post reported this week that the spores in the Daschle
letter had been treated with a chemical additive using technology so
sophisticated that it almost certainly came from the United States, Iraq
or the former Soviet Union.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday, however, that
investigators believe a broad range of people are capable of the crime.
"The qualityanthrax sent to Senator Daschle's office could be produced
by a Ph.D. microbiologist and a sophisticated laboratory," he told
reporters.

U.S. officials said the evidence so far does not point to either Russia
or Iraq. However, FBI checks of private and government laboratories in
the United States have not yet revealed any missing anthrax stockpiles,
disgruntled scientists or other suspicious circumstances, one top
official said.

Koplan, the CDC director, said he suspects more than one letter was
involved based on his understanding of how difficult it is to contract
inhalational anthrax. To cause the disease, 8,000 to 10,000 anthrax
spores must enter a person's lungs.

Although some officials said it is possible for that many spores to have
sloughed off the letter sent to Daschle onto another piece of mail,
Koplan said that is hard to imagine. "We all think that would be highly
unlikely to virtually impossible," he said.

Koplan speculated that there may have been multiple mailings and that
"there may be several places within the federal government that have
been deemed targets."

By contrast, the minuscule amounts of anthrax bacteria discovered at
Walter Reed Hospital and the CIA "may well represent
cross-contamination," Koplan said.

William C. Patrick, who is retired from the U.S. Army installation at
Fort Detrick, Md., said extensive studies show that once anthrax spores
hit the ground or other surfaces they stick, and are very hard to
"re-aerosolize.

There's a theoretical possibility that a few spores picked up by an
envelope might cause a skin anthrax infection, but a case of
inhalational anthrax "is highly unlikely," Patrick said.

Staff writers David Brown, Ceci Connolly, Ellen Nakashima and Peter
Slevin and researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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