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Anthrax Missing
From Army Lab
January 20,
2002
By JACK DOLAN And DAVE
ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writers
Lab specimens of
anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared
from the Army's biological warfare research facility in the
early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and
recriminations among rival scientists there, documents from an
internal Army inquiry show.
The 1992 inquiry also found
evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab late at
night to conduct unauthorized research, apparently involving
anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had
been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher,
who left the misspelled label "antrax" in the machine's
electronic memory, according to the documents obtained by The
Courant.
Experts disagree on whether the lost specimens
pose a danger. An Army spokesperson said they do not because
they would have been effectively killed by chemicals in
preparation for microscopic study. A prominent molecular
biologist said, however, that resilient anthrax spores could
possibly be retrieved from a treated specimen.
In
addition, a scientist who once worked at the Army facility
said that because of poor inventory controls, it is possible
some of the specimens disappeared while still viable, before
being treated.
Not in dispute is what the incidents say
about disorganization and lack of security in some quarters of
the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases - known as USAMRIID - at Fort Detrick, Md., in the
1990s. Fort Detrick is believed to be the original source of
the Ames strain of anthrax used in the mail attacks last fall,
and investigators have questioned people there and at a
handful of other government labs and contractors.
It is
unclear whether Ames was among the strains of anthrax in the
27 sets of specimens reported missing at Fort Detrick after an
inventory in 1992. The Army spokesperson, Caree Vander-Linden,
said that at least some of the lost anthrax was not Ames. But
a former lab technician who worked with some of the anthrax
that was later reported missing said all he ever handled was
the Ames strain.
Meanwhile, one of the 27 sets of
specimens has been found and is still in the lab; an Army
spokesperson said it may have been in use when the inventory
was taken. The fate of the rest, some containing samples no
larger than a pencil point, remains unclear. In addition to
anthrax and Ebola, the specimens included hanta virus, simian
AIDS virus and two that were labeled "unknown" - an Army
euphemism for classified research whose subject was
secret.
A former commander of the lab said in an
interview he did not believe any of the missing specimens were
ever found. Vander-Linden said last week that in addition to
the one complete specimen set, some samples from several
others were later located, but she could not provide a fuller
accounting because of incomplete records regarding the
disposal of specimens.
"In January of 2002, it's hard
to say how many of those were missing in February of 1991,"
said Vander-Linden, adding that it's likely some were simply
thrown out with the trash.
Discoveries of lost
specimens and unauthorized research coincided with an Army
inquiry into allegations of "improper conduct" at Fort
Detrick's experimental pathology branch in 1992. The inquiry
did not substantiate the specific charges of mismanagement by
a handful of officers.
But a review of hundreds of
pages of interview transcripts, signed statements and internal
memos related to the inquiry portrays a climate charged with
bitter personal rivalries over credit for research, as well as
allegations of sexual and ethnic harassment. The
recriminations and unhappiness ultimately became a factor in
the departures of at least five frustrated Fort Detrick
scientists.
In interviews with The Courant last month,
two of the former scientists said that as recently as 1997,
when they left, controls at Fort Detrick were so lax it
wouldn't have been hard for someone with security clearance
for its handful of labs to smuggle out biological
specimens.
Lost Samples
The 27 specimens
were reported missing in February 1992, after a new officer,
Lt. Col. Michael Langford, took command of what was viewed by
Fort Detrick brass as a dysfunctional pathology lab. Langford,
who no longer works at Fort Detrick, said he ordered an
inventory after he recognized there was "little or no
organization" and "little or no accountability" in the
lab.
"I knew we had to basically tighten up what I
thought was a very lax and unorganized system," he said in an
interview last week.
A factor in Langford's decision to
order an inventory was his suspicion - never proven - that
someone in the lab had been tampering with records of
specimens to conceal unauthorized research. As he explained
later to Army investigators, he asked a lab technician,
Charles Brown, to "make a list of everything that was
missing."
"It turned out that there was quite a bit of
stuff that was unaccounted for, which only verifies that there
needs to be some kind of accountability down there," Langford
told investigators, according to a transcript of his April
1992 interview.
Brown - whose inventory was limited to
specimens logged into the lab during the 1991 calendar year -
detailed his findings in a two-page memo to Langford, in which
he lamented the loss of the items "due to their immediate and
future value to the pathology division and
USAMRIID."
Many of the specimens were tiny samples of
tissue taken from the dead bodies of lab animals infected with
deadly diseases during vaccine research. Standard procedure
for the pathology lab would be to soak the samples in a
formaldehyde-like fixative and embed them in a hard resin or
paraffin, in preparation for study under an electron
microscope.
Some samples, particularly viruses, are
also irradiated with gamma rays before they are handled by the
pathology lab.
Whether all of the lost samples went
through this treatment process is unclear. Vander-Linden said
the samples had to have been rendered inert if they were being
worked on in the pathology lab.
But Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a
former Fort Detrick scientist who had extensive dealings with
the lab, said that because some samples were received at the
lab while still alive - with the expectation they would be
treated before being worked on - it is possible some became
missing before treatment. A phony "log slip" could then have
been entered into the lab computer, making it appear they had
been processed and logged.
In fact, Army investigators
appear to have wondered if some of the anthrax specimens
reported missing had ever really been logged in. When an
investigator produced a log slip and asked Langford if "these
exist or [are they] just made up on a data entry form,"
Langford replied that he didn't know.
Assuming a
specimen was chemically treated and embedded for microscopic
study, Vander-Linden and several scientists interviewed said
it would be impossible to recover a viable pathogen from them.
Brown, who did the inventory for Langford and has since left
Fort Detrick, said in an interview that the specimens he
worked on in the lab "were completely inert."
"You
could spread them on a sandwich," he said.
But Dr.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State
University of New York who is investigating the recent anthrax
attacks for the Federation of American Scientists, said she
would not rule out the possibility that anthrax in spore form
could survive the chemical-fixative process.
"You'd
have to grind it up and hope that some of the spores
survived," Rosenberg said. "It would be a mess.
"It
seems to me that it would be an unnecessarily difficult task.
Anybody who had access to those labs could probably get
something more useful."
Rosenberg's analysis of the
anthrax attacks, which has been widely reported, concludes
that the culprit is probably a government insider, possibly
someone from Fort Detrick. The Army facility manufactured
anthrax before biological weapons were banned in 1969, and it
has experimented with the Ames strain for defensive research
since the early 1980s.
Vander-Linden said that one of
the two sets of anthrax specimens listed as missing at Fort
Detrick was the Vollum strain, which was used in the early
days of the U.S. biological weapons program. It was not clear
what the type of anthrax in the other missing specimen
was.
Eric Oldenberg, a soldier and pathology lab
technician who left Fort Detrick and is now a police detective
in Phoenix, said in an interview that Ames was the only
anthrax strain he worked with in the lab.
Late-Night
Research
More troubling to Langford than the
missing specimens was what investigators called
"surreptitious" work being done in the pathology lab late at
night and on weekends.
Dr. Mary Beth Downs told
investigators that she had come to work several times in
January and February of 1992 to find that someone had been in
the lab at odd hours, clumsily using the sophisticated
electron microscope to conduct some kind of off-the-books
research.
After one weekend in February, Downs
discovered that someone had been in the lab using the
microscope to take photos of slides, and apparently had
forgotten to reset a feature on the microscope that imprints
each photo with a label. After taking a few pictures of her
own slides that morning, Downs was surprised to see "Antrax
005" emblazoned on her negatives.
Downs also noted that
an automatic counter on the camera, like an odometer on a car,
had been rolled back to hide the fact that pictures had been
taken over the weekend. She wrote of her findings in a memo to
Langford, noting that whoever was using the microscope was
"either in a big hurry or didn't know what they were
doing."
It is unclear if the Army ever got to the
bottom of the incident, and some lab insiders believed
concerns about it were overblown. Brown said many Army
officers did not understand the scientific process, which he
said doesn't always follow a 9-to-5 schedule.
"People
all over the base knew that they could come in at anytime and
get on the microscope," Brown said. "If you had security
clearance, the guard isn't going to ask you if you are
qualified to use the equipment. I'm sure people used it often
without our knowledge."
Documents from the inquiry show
that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab
building at night was Langford's predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip
Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A
surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on
Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab
pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report
filed by a security guard.
Zack could not be reached
for comment. In an interview this week, Rippy said that she
doesn't remember letting Zack in, but that he occasionally
stopped by after he was transferred off the
base.
"After he left, he had no [authorized] access to
the building. Other people let him in," she said. "He knew a
lot of people there and he was still part of the military. I
can tell you, there was no suspicious stuff going on there
with specimens."
Zack left Fort Detrick in December
1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional
behavior by Zack, Rippy, Brown and others who worked in the
pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused
of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the
Army, claiming discrimination.
Assaad said he had
believed the harassment was behind him until last October,
until after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
He said
that is when the FBI contacted him, saying someone had mailed
an anonymous letter - a few days before the existence of
anthrax-laced mail became known - naming Assaad as a potential
bioterrorist. FBI agents decided the note was a hoax after
interviewing Assaad.
But Assaad said he believes the
note's timing makes the author a suspect in the anthrax
attacks, and he is convinced that details of his work
contained in the letter mean the author must be a former Fort
Detrick colleague.
Brown said that he doesn't know who
sent the letter, but that Assaad's nationality and expertise
in biological agents made him an obvious subject of concern
after Sept. 11.
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AN ANTHRAX
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