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as CREDIT: JIM WATKINS/LUBBOCK A VALANCHEJOURNAUAP “Smoking gun of Pence’s retaliation,” _Butler alleges that Pence had “ma- Institutional harassment By the time Butler returned from USAMRIID last fall, however, the IRB and auditors inves- tigating his contracts were beginning to bear down. But the researcher wasn’t returning phone and e-mail messages—it was “‘institu- tional harassment,” Butler testified. And when two university auditors showed up at his laboratory on 10 October, Butler literally shut the door in their faces, one of them tes- tified. Butler said he didn’t know the duo and had never heard of their office. “They could have walked in from the-street,” he said. Butler’s boss, meanwhile, was pressur- ing him to cooperate. “It is crystal clear to me that you will have to submit,” internal medicine dean Donald Wesson wrote Butler on 9 October. Again, Butler was upset at Pence, blam- ing her for the investigations and the IRB’s letter. Pence, meanwhile, had fallen seriously ill in August 2002 and wouldn’t return to campus until mid-2003. Still, on 15 October 2002, Butler vented his frustration in a blis- tering draft letter to a senior adminis- trator that he penned in his journal, which was entered into evidence. He later sent a revised version.) Titled nipulated” the IRB by asking a friend of his to recuse himself from the pan- el. And he complains that the IRB’s membership had created a situation in which “nonphysicians” were “ren- dering judgment on me.” On 6 November, the IRB deliv- ered its heaviest blow. It told Butler that he could no longer work with human subjects. For the prolific re- searcher, the suspension was a disas- ter. It not only imperiled a follow-up to his Tanzanian study, but it also could cut off the bulk of his income and torpedo his chances of winning an FDA grant. On 9 January the IRB, still dissatisfied with Butler’s lack of cooperation, sent him another e-mail confirming his suspension. The mystery of set 5 : Two days later, on a crisp Saturday morning, Butler went to his narrow, cluttered lab to perform some routine chores. That’s when, Butler testified, he noticed something odd: A bright blue rack was missing its 30 tubes of ¥ pestis cultures. “Set 5 missing!” Butler scrawled in his journal. Puzzled, he returned home for some family obligations, but he re- turned on Sunday to conduct a thorough search. “Can’t explain other than intentional removal, suspect theft,’ he wrote. On Monday morning, Butler reported the wwwsciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 302 missing vials to chemist Michael Jones, the health center’s biosafety officer at the time. After touring Butler’s lab together, the two men decided that they would contact their superiors. But there was no “sense of ur- gency,” Jones testified. That would change the next day, after Butler broke the news to Donald Wesson, his department chair. “I was flabbergasted,” Wesson testified about his 1 p.m. meeting with Butler. By 4 p.m., Wesson and Butler were huddled with senior health center offi- cials. Butler opposed plans to inform the po- lice and health authorities about the missing samples, several participants testified. But the group overruled him; this was a serious matter that the university could not handle on its own, the others decided. They asked Butler to call the local health department, Center stage. Butler has worked at Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center since 1987. while Wesson called the police. As darkness fell that Tuesday, 14 Jamu" ary, the investigation moved into high gear. . Lubbock police called in.the FBI, which pulled out all the stops, including informing - the White House of a possible bioterror... threat. The press got wind of the story, and it became a leading item on CNN. * Through it all, Butler remained remark ably calm. The researcher, who once gave a. talk titled “Pneumonic Plague: Delight of Terrorists,” explained to agents how a skilled microbiologist could convert his cultures 19 DECEMBER 2003 into a bioweapon in just 4 days. His descrip- tion was “like he was reading ingredients off of a cereal box,” one FBI agent testified. FBI's smooth operator Among the investigators hurrying to Lub- bock that night was Dale Green, an agent . in the FBI’s Dallas office. An interrogator with training in psychology and a law degree—he is licensed to practice in three states—prosecutors described Green as an “expert questioner” able to draw out key information from witnesses and suspects. As Butler put it, “he had a very smooth manner to him.” At the trial, Green described himself as “trained to listen to what [people are] saying and how they are saying it. I’m looking for what I call red flags.” His skill, he said, is to tell “when the truth is the truth is the tru Green, however, couldn’t tell jurors one truth: He is, in fact, a polygraph examiner— and the judge had excluded all mention of the machine from the trial. When Green arrived at the police depart- ment just after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, investi- gators had already spent several hours ques- tioning Butler. Initially, he was considered a victim and-awitness, one FBI agent testi- fied; the agents.theorized that the missing vials might be the work ofa disgruntled em- ployee. But as information about Butler’s - IRB suspension and the financial investiga- tions streamed in, they began to suspect that - “the disgruntled employee might indeed be Butler,” said FBI agent Miles Burden. Around midnight, Green asked Butler to take a polygraph test. The researcher agreed, _ waiving his right to an attorney in the process. By the end of the exam, Green was convinced that Butler was lying. But he didn’t confront the researcher with his doubts; instead, he sent him home around 2:15 a.m. “Neither of us were spring chick- ens, ... [and] I felt that the threat of the plague was very remote,’ Green testified. © Not that Butler got much sleep: Eleven agents accompanied him and then searched his modest, suburban ranch-style home for " several hours. They also questioned his wife. ” When FBI agents returned to the house the next morning around 10 a.m., they were surprised to find Butler heading for work. Instead, he agreed to accompany them to the Lubbock police station. There, in a small ‘room, Butler again waived his right to a. lawyer. Then, Green confronted Butler with the polygraph results. “I used an empathetic approach,” Green testified, telling Butler that ‘we all make mistakes.’ ” Maybe Butler . had accidentally destroyed the samples, Green suggested. “I’m trying to give him a way to save face. ... Do I think he acciden- tally destroyed [the samples}? No. I’m giv- 2059