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+ stinspot.net - war on terror Page 20: Ad ® Van Harp, assistant FBI director in charge of the Washington Field the one- Office, who oversees the anthrax investigation, declined to Sept. 11 comment on what he called "uninformed speculation" about the anthrax research. But Harp said 50 investigators are still working on what the bureau calls the Amerithrax case, backed by "a huge scientific effort." "We're making progress," he said. The anthrax-laced letters were mailed on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9, 2001, Nett from a Princeton, N.J., mailbox and addressed to media the peor organizations and two U.S. senators. The attack killed five people * Tovie and sickened at least 17 others, and hundreds of millions of dollars Youne® have been spent to clean up government offices and postal facilities. FBI and Postal Inspection Service agents initially considered alink fight to the Sept. 11 hijackers or Iraq. But after genetic analysis showed — foryo the anthrax was derived from the Ames strain used in the U.S. (Sun pl military biodefense program, investigators concentrated their effort on a domestic source. Agents interviewed and conducted polygraph tests on scores of | . ~ employees at the U.S. military biodefense research centers at Fort Detrick in Frederick and at Dugway Proving Ground. Since last summer, they have focused much of their effort on Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Fort Detrick-bioweapons expert, repeatedly searching his Frederick apartment. In December and January, the FBI launched an extensive search in woods and ponds tes outside Frederick, an effort sources said was aimed at finding tal discarded biological equipment or other evidence. Meanwhile, the FBI's Amerithrax task force ordered an exhaustive battery of scientific tests on the anthrax. Outside scientists say researchers probably have used chemical analysis to trace the water tntera: and nutrients used to grow the anthrax to a particular geographic +The" . ‘bomb area. * Inside As part of the scientific sleuthing, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller fosces III announced in November that investigators were trying to Afghani "reverse engineer" the mailed anthrax. Several sources discussed the work with The Sun on condition of * Thera anonymity. One investigator said that with about a dozen samples + Apacl completed, scientists have matched the mailed powder closely + More. enough to conclude it was made with "a pretty small operation" that staphic cost "no more than a few thousand dollars." http://www. baltimoresun.com/news/custom/attack/bal-te anthrax] lapr] 1,0,1475421.story?... 4/11/2003