I'm not behind anthrax attacks, scientist
A bioweapons expert under scrutiny for the anthrax attacks today denied he was behind the tainted letters and said “the heinous acts of biological terrorism” appalled him.
“I am a loyal American and I love my country,” Dr Steven Hatfill said in a statement.
“I had nothing to do with the anthrax letters and it is terribly wrong for anyone to contend or think otherwise.”
Law enforcement officials have said Hatfill, 48, is one of about 30 scientists being looked at in the anthrax investigation.
The investigation remains unsolved 10 months after tainted letters killed five and made more than a dozen people ill.
After “one of the most intensive public and private investigations in American history, no one has come up with a shred of evidence that I had anything to do with the anthrax letters,” Hatfill said in a statement he read outside his lawyer’s office in Alexandria, Virginia.
Law enforcement officials have said that Hatfill is not a suspect and that no evidence links him to the anthrax letters last autumn. They have described him as a “person of interest” in their investigation.
“I am appalled at the heinous acts of biological terrorism that caused death, disease and havoc in America starting last fall, but I am just as appalled that my experience, knowledge and service relative to defending Americans against biological warfare has been turned against me in connection with the search for the anthrax killer,” Hatfill said.
Many current and former scientists, who may have had access to and knowledge about anthrax, have submitted to lie detector tests. Hatfill’s is the only name to have emerged publicly.
Hatfill said two FBI investigators asked him for a “cordial and short” interview at his office and if he would take a polygraph being given to others.
He said an examiner told him that he had passed the test, and that later the FBI confirmed that to him and his former lawyer.
FBI agents have conducted two highly visible searches of his apartment in Fredrick, Maryland, including one August 1 executed with a search warrant.
Until this weekend, Hatfill had said virtually nothing in his own defence.
Hatfill worked from 1997 to 1999 at the US Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick, Maryland. It once was headquarters to the US biological warfare program and repository for the Ames strain of anthrax that was used in the attacks.
In February 1999, while working for the defence and CIA contractor Science Applications International Corp., he commissioned a study of how an anthrax attack might play itself out.
Hatfill later was fired from that job. He has blamed calls from a reporter about the anthrax attacks to his supervisors; others have said it was because he had lost a high-level security clearance.
After his apartment was searched, Hatfill was suspended with pay from Louisiana State University’s National Centre for Biomedical Research and Training, where he had just begun a job as an associate director.
