Seven Years Later: Electrons Unlocked Post-9:11 Anthrax Mail Mystery - Scientific American PDF

Seven Years Later: Electrons Unlocked Post-9/11 Anthrax Mail Mystery - Scientific American 6/5/20, 5(49 PM
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Seven Years Later:

Electrons Unlocked Post-
9/11 Anthrax Mail
Mystery
A key part of the FBI's early investigation was finding whether the
germ that killed five people in late 2001 was weaponized. Although
they found the answer, scientists had to keep mum until the agency
completed its inquiry
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sandia-anthrax-mailing-investigation/ Page 1 of 17
By Larry Greenemeier on September 19, 2008
When materials scientist Joseph Michael and his team at Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque, N.M., trained their high-powered electron microscope on anthrax spore samples the
FBI had sent them in February 2002, they made two crucial discoveries: The first confirmed previous
findings that the Bacillus anthracis spores mailed to U.S. Senate offices and various media outlets
(shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks) contained silicon, a substance used to turn anthrax-
causing spores into a biological weapon.
But it was Sandia's next discovery that marked a critical turning point in the feds's probe of the
mysterious mailings, which killed five people, injured 17 and prompted thousands more who were
potentially exposed to the deadly spores to take potent antibiotics—in particular, Ciprofloxacin
(known to irritate the gastrointestinal tract and cause joint swelling). Using highly sensitive
transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), the
researchers came to a startling realization: The silicon had grown organically inside the Bacillus
anthracis samples, nothing had been added to weaponize the spores. "The silicon was not on the
outside of the spore," says Michael, who headed up Sandia's investigation, "but rather incorporated
on the inside."
It was this key information that helped the FBI to rule out the likelihood that a terrorist organization
was behind the anthrax mailings and prompted the agency to turn its attention to U.S. government
labs as the possible source of the anthrax. This move eventually led the agency to conclude that Bruce
Ivins, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a
federal biodefense research laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., who initially assisted with the
investigation, was the culprit. Ivins, 62, two months ago committed suicide as prosecutors prepared to
charge him in connection with the mailings.
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Post-9/11 Scare
FBI Director Robert Mueller, III, this week told a House panel that he plans to commission the
National Academy of Sciences to review evidence compiled by the agency's Amerithrax Task Force to
erase any remaining doubts that the mailed anthrax came from Ivins's lab—and close a case that
began seven years ago when a batch of letters containing Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that
causes the disease anthrax, were sent to several news outlets, including the New York Post and NBC
News. Although only the letters to the Post and NBC were discovered, the FBI concluded that
contaminated letters were also responsible for anthrax infections at ABC News, CBS News and for the
October 5, 2001, death of Robert Stevens, a photo editor for the National Enquirer publisher
American Media, Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla.
Read more from this special report:
The 10 Biggest Science Stories of 2008
Anthrax infection begins within a week of exposure with a few days of fever, chills, chest heaviness,
malaise and cough as the spores are absorbed by the lungs. Ultimately the bacteria produce toxins
that damage the lungs and poison the blood, potentially sending the victim into septic shock that
leads to organ failure and, in many cases, death.
By mid-October, spore-filled envelopes had also been discovered in the offices of former Sens. Tom
Daschle (D–S.D.) and Patrick Leahy (D–Vt.), along with ominous messages, including: "You can not
[sic] stop us. We have this anthrax" and "Are you afraid?" Buildings throughout Washington, D.C.,
including the Hart Senate Office Building, the main postal distribution facility and several offices of
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were shut down out of fear they had been contaminated. The
feds tested 36 postal facilities in the D.C. area (including one where two postal workers died), finding
spores at 15 of them. The Hart Building did not reopen until January 2002.
Investigating the Investigators

Congress has called for an investigation of the FBI's work on the anthrax case. One major misstep was
revealed Tuesday, when the Los Angeles Times reported that Peter Jahrling, a former senior civilian
scientist at the Fort Detrick facility, admitted that he had made an "honest mistake" seven years ago
when he told top FBI brass that he believed anthrax spores he examined had been altered to make
them more deadly.
Worried that a terrorist organization or a country sympathetic to al Qaeda might be involved, the U.S.
Department of Justice in late 2001 commissioned a series of tests to determine whether the spores
had been coated with a substance that would prevent them from clumping together, enabling them to
hang in the air longer than they would normally, thereby increasing the chance of inhalation.
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Early in the investigation, the FBI appeared to endorse the view that only a sophisticated lab could
have produced the material used in the Senate attack, investigative journalist Gary Matsumoto wrote
in the November 2003 issue of Science. In fact, in May 2002 16 scientists and physicians working for
the government published a paper in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association,
describing the Senate anthrax powder as "weapons-grade" and exceptional: "high spore
concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping."
In addition, the August/October 2002 newsletter from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
(AFIP), a research organization that the government often turns to for help analyzing potentially
pathological substances, reported that a mass spectrometry analysis found silica—a staple in
professionally engineered germ warfare powders for decades—in the powder sent to Sen. Daschle. The
silica was believed to be there to prevent the anthrax spores from aggregating and make it easier for
them to disperse into the air, according to Matsumoto, who added that any such weaponized form of
anthrax is "more than 500 times more lethal than untreated spores."
Finding the Right Technology

By the time the Sandia researchers began their work in February 2002, "we had heard just like
everyone else that the spores had been weaponized," says Michael, who had proposed a study of the
elemental composition of any materials found growing outside the spores.
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The first step was to find the silicon. Michael was aware that FBI researchers had analyzed the
samples with both scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which scans surfaces with a high-energy
beam of electrons, and with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), which analyzes x-rays
emitted by a substance after it is hit with charged electrons. But at that point, no one had studied
them with a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), which transmits a focused beam of
electrons through a small part of a specimen to form an image and could provide compositional
information by examining the spores a few nanometers (one nanometer is 40 millionths of an inch) at
a time, a higher resolution than SEM could provide, Michael says.
This enabled Sandia researchers to not only detect the presence of a foreign substance such as silica,
but also to determine its location on or inside the spore. "In the FBI's mind, it was important not only
that trace amount of elements were present, but also…[to determine]…where those elements were
located in the sample through microanalysis," says Paul Kotula, a Sandia material scientist who
studied the samples with Michael.
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The researchers could find no way that the silica could be placed inside the spore without leaving a
residue on the spore's outermost layer. (They found none.) Instead, the researchers determined that
the silica formed inside the spore naturally. After only a month examining the anthrax samples in
March 2002, Michael and his team were convinced, contrary to other reports, that the anthrax used in
the attacks had not been weaponized.
Some of the samples they worked with came from the USAMRIID, which employed both Ivins and
Steve Hatfill, another government scientist the FBI pursued but who ultimately turned out to be a
dead end. (He was vindicated in June when he won a $5.8 million settlement in June against the
Justice Department.) According to Michael, neither he nor other Sandia researchers ever worked
directly with any of the USAMRIID researchers, instead obtaining all of the samples they tested
through the FBI. Nor did Sandia work with live anthrax; all of the samples they received were first
inactivated or irradiated by the FBI.
Michael says he was surprised to hear that the feds were closing in on a scientist at USAMRIID (Ivins,
who died of a prescription-drug overdose), but that he was "not surprised the person who did this had
knowledge of microbiology."
In the end, it was at Sandia where scientists cracked the mystery behind the mailings. The problem
was, says Michael, that he had to keep mum on his findings—which might have calmed a jittery nation
still reeling from the 9/11 terror attack—until the FBI wrapped up its investigation. "That's been one
of the really frustrating things for Paul and me," Michael says. "We knew the answers but couldn't tell
anyone"
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Larry Greenemeier
Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related
topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots.
Credit: Nick Higgins
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Seven Years Later: Electrons Unlocked Post-9/11 Anthrax Mail Mystery - Scientific American 6/5/20, 5(49 PM

Subscribe Cart 0 Sign In

Free Digital Access to Our June Issue Read Now

Seven Years Later:

By Larry Greenemeier on September 19, 2008

Read more from this special report:

The 10 Biggest Science Stories of 2008

Investigating the Investigators

Finding the Right Technology

Free Digital Access to Our June Issue Read Now

Rights & Permissions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Credit: Nick Higgins

IKEA-Building Robot Conquers Touchy-Feely Challenge

How Cryptojacking Can Corrupt the Internet of Things

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