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More on the developing anthrax investigation. Today the FBI searched homes belonging to MD and bioterror expert Dr. Kenneth Berry in upstate New York and New Jersey. I've written about it below.
What strikes me is, nothing in his biography suggests Berry had the skills, expertise or experience to make or process the anthrax in the letters.
A couple interesting points from his biography however.
In 1997, Berry drew up this scenario of an anthrax attack on San Francisco for use at a bioterror preparedness conference his organization, Preempt, held. It's interesting, involving as it does anthrax threats called into news organizations. But it's worth remembering, this is the type of exercise national security types use all the time to plan response.
At 07:30AM this date, a group known as "The Friends of Yousef" (a group supported by the HAMAS Terrorist Organization) called in a threat to CNN's San Francisco Bureau. The group informed the network that they are prepared to make multiple airborne releases of a large quantity of an "allegedly" new strain of anthrax. The medical community believes that the new strain is resistant to many antibiotics. The terrorist group stated that the anthrax release is set to occur over many areas of San Francisco if their demands are not met. The faction's demands are $500 million in U.S. gold bullion and the release of Ramzi Yousef and his two co-conspirators from prison within 48 hours or the anthrax releases will occur immediately following that deadline.
The initial call was taken at the news station and transferred immediately to the CNN Bureau Chief, who taped the call and informed the authorities.
Reliable sources indicate that a small group of scientists from Eastern Europe and Central Asia have formed liasons with the HAMAS, a radical Islamic extremist organization that calls for the eradication of Israel. It is reported that this group of scientists has developed this bio-agent for the terrorist market . . .
Here's the whole scenario.
A second interesting thing: On September 25 and September 28, 2001, Berry applied for two patents for bioterror detection and defense systems. That was a few days after the first batch of anthrax letters were sent to news organizations.
Key Point: Here's an educated guess. The person who made the anthrax is not the same person who mailed the anthrax letters. It was carried out as some sort of pact between two or more "bioevangelists" who believed the US needed to be woken up to the bioterror threat.
UPDATE: This from the New Jersey Star Ledger today has more interesting:
Neighbors said Berry took his family to breakfast at the nearby Sand Dollar Pancake House as the [FBI] search proceeded.
Later in the afternoon, Berry was arrested at a motel in Point Pleasant Beach following a domestic dispute in which the doctor allegedly assaulted four family members, police said. He was released on $10,000 bail last night from the Ocean County jail, a jail spokesman told the Associated Press.
In Chadwick, agents removed garbage bags filled with bulky contents from the bungalow, according to a neighbor. Authorities also removed boxes with clear plastic bags in them . . .
Berry's father, in an interview late last night at his home in Newtown, Conn., said the FBI was making his son a scapegoat for a botched investigation.
"Hey, here's a guy being shafted by the FBI," said William C. Berry, a retired financial director who now serves as president of PREEMPT. "It's just buying time because they have nothing on anthrax. You are looking at a setup."
Point Pleasant Beach police said last night that officers responding to a 911 call at the White Sands Motel discovered Berry being detained by an off-duty police officer and a motel employee.
Berry allegedly assaulted four family members, police said. His relationship to the four was not immediately known.
Five persons died and at least 17 were sickened after anthrax- laced letters, postmarked Sept. 18 and Oct. 9, 2001, were sent to two Democratic senators and media organizations. The letters were processed at a postal center in Hamilton Township -- finally reopened this year after a costly decontamination -- and may have been sent from a mailbox in Princeton. The attacks prompted the closure of many government buildings and rocked a nation still reeling from the 9/11 terror strikes.
Over recent weeks, authorities have appeared to ramp up their efforts to crack what ranks among the most frustrating cases in FBI history.
For several days last month, they shut down labs at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. They have reinterviewed former researchers from the Frederick, Md., base and even drained a nearby pond looking for discarded lab equipment.
Federal agents have logged more than 270,000 hours on the case, conducting more than 5,279 interviews, according to Weierman. Thirty FBI agents and 13 postal inspectors continue to hunt for clues.
Most attention so far has focused on another medical doctor, Steven J. Hatfill, described as "a person of interest" by Attorney General John Ashcroft but never charged.
From 1997 to 1999, Hatfill worked at Fort Detrick, the Army center that originally housed the anthrax strain sent in 2001. He has proclaimed his innocence and is suing the government and the New York Times.
Neither Hatfill nor Berry could be reached for comment yesterday. Berry's Web site says he presented a bioterrorism paper at Fort Detrick in January 1997, and, according to Berry's father, the two men know each other.
The father described Berry as exhausted and upset. He said his son has been interviewed before by the FBI because of his counterterror expertise.
"They have been on him for three years. They have no leads," William Berry said from his farmhouse, near Danbury.
Kenneth Berry, a father of seven who has been married twice, now teaches emergency room skills at a hospital affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, his father said. Born in Teaneck, Kenneth Berry moved with his family to Switzerland at age 5. They returned to New Jersey, living in Wayne, and then moved to Connecticut.
The attention of the FBI is not all that Berry shares in common with Hatfill. They have foreign medical degrees, an evangelism for bioterror preparedness, and a flair for self-promotion and even hyperbole in their quests to become bio- defenders for the country.
Years before 2001, each man gave extensive interviews warning how bioterror attacks might be attempted, and how to thwart them . . .
Berry's Web site also cites forensics experience that included the crash investigation of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. That was questioned yesterday by a spokeswoman for James Kallstrom, the former FBI official who headed the crash probe.
"He had nothing to do with it," Vicky Loughman, Kallstrom's spokeswoman, said of Berry.
Licensed as a physician in New York state, Berry lists a 1983 medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine. Three years ago he quit as director of emergency medicine at the Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville after a scandal.
Berry and two others were charged in 1999 with forging the will of a fellow doctor who had died of a heart attack the year before. The common-law wife of the deceased doctor eventually was sentenced to five years in prison on forgery charges. Berry pleaded guilty in May 2000 to a disorderly conduct charge and paid $300 in fines and court fees . . .
The forgery episode did not derail Berry's counterterrorism efforts. According to his Web site, he spoke at a June conference in Sweden, advocating a network of air sensors to alert the population to bioterrorism agents and filtration systems in federal buildings such as the White House and CIA headquarters.