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CNN Saturday Morning News

New Development Narrows Focus of Anthrax Investigation

Aired February 16, 2002 - 07:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: There's a possible break that could help the FBI learn who sent anthrax-laced letters through the mail last year. "The New York Times" reports a researcher studying the case for the FBI has distinguished between stocks of anthrax strains kept at various laboratories.

Joining me from Washington to talk about this is Javed Ali, a bioterrorism expert.

Just how significant is this development?

JAVED ALI, BIOTERRORISM EXPERT: It is a significant development, Jeanne. Hopefully it will -- it's another sort of marker that will help narrow the universe of clues that the investigators have been sifting through over the past five months now.

Is it the most telling development in the case? Probably not, but it's something else again that will help narrow the focus and hopefully lead to the ultimate identity of the perpetrators.

MESERVE: Well, this will lead to the labs, perhaps, but it's a big leap between going from the laboratory involved and the person involved, isn't it?

ALI: Correct, correct. One of the problems with trying to figure out exactly where the -- this -- the Ames strain came from is trying to figure out which lab had the strain at what point, what was the chain of custody over the organism at that point, what was the state of the organism, what was the type of material it was prepared in, who had access to it.

So that's -- those are some of the types of clues and information investigators are have -- are trying to work through right now.

MESERVE: You said just a minute ago this might not be the most telling development. In your view, what is?

ALI: Well, I don't think that one, you know, single piece of evidence has emerged yet, so there -- like I said, there's an entire universe of clues and evidence that have been assimilated up until this point, and now they're trying to work through all that and narrow the focus as much as possible.

I think at this point there's three strong possibilities, or at least two strong possibilities. One is that the strain and the organism came from a lab, one of the dozen or so research labs that we know that the strain was shipped to since the early 1980s, and then it was maybe prepared in the form that was sent in the letters, the material that was the high quality, the lack of electrostatic charge, small particle size, the material added to enhance it as an aerosol. And maybe someone had access to that material in one of those research facilities, then used it.

Or the other, more scary, I think, possibility is that because the Ames strain is actually endemic in the soil in parts of Texas, that someone isolated it from a natural source or from an animal that had the disease, and then manipulated it to this very sophisticated level.

MESERVE: It would be quite difficult to do that, wouldn't it, to take it from the soil...

ALI: Yes, I think...

MESERVE: ... and get it to this weapons grade?

ALI: Right. I think that is a more technically challenging sort of act for an individual, certainly for an individual or even a group of individuals. So that's why I think the investigation is leaning more towards the material coming from one of these research facilities.

MESERVE: The FBI sent out a request to microbiologists saying, Help us if you can, tell us who you think could be suspect here. As far as you know, has that led them anywhere? Has it given them any leads?

ALI: I don't think it's led them anywhere, although if it has, they certainly haven't released that information to the public. So at this point, it doesn't appear to have generated anything, but we just don't know looking from the outside in.

MESERVE: And the military labs still appear to be the focus of the FBI's investigation right now?

ALI: The military labs or the civilian laboratories that had access to the Ames strain. The Ames strain has been used since the 1980s to test the efficacy of the anthrax vaccine, so this -- the organism was used to make sure that -- and tested against animals to make sure that those animals that received multiple lethal doses of the organism, those that were injected with the vaccine could survive that massive exposure.

So there has been some serious testing going on with this strain since the 1980s.

MESERVE: Javed Ali, thanks so much for joining us today from Washington.

ALI: Thank you.

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