The scale of the investigation and the lack of progress in finding a suspect have prompted a number of people to criticize the FBI's approach to the case. These people, many of them science experts, have prodded the bureau to move more aggressively, unsuccessfully pushing it to narrow its focus.

Nothing has produced results. In one case, the Bureau sent word an arrest was pending up the chain of command to President Bush, but their hopes proved false when their suspect proved innocent. "We just can't seem to catch a break," one government official told a reporter.

Concentrating on a 'Lone Wolf'

One reason could be the Bureau’s insistence on heading down a blind alley by concentrating their investigation on the assumption that the perpetrator is that elusive "lone wolf" their profilers have created seemingly out of thin air and the politically inspired rantings of a certain members of the leftist branch of the scientific community.

On Jan. 29, 2002 Van Harp, Assistant Director, Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent the following letter to Members of the American Society for Microbiology. That letter revealed the Bureau’s obsession with the Lone Wolf theory:

"On September 18, 2001, two copies of an identical letter were mailed in separate envelopes from Trenton, NJ, one to 'Editor, New York Post' and the other to 'Tom Brokaw, NBC TV.' Each letter contained a significant quantity of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis.

"On October 9, 2001, two additional copies of a slightly different letter were mailed from Trenton, NJ, the first to 'Senator (Tom) Daschle' and the second to 'Senator (Patrick) Leahy.' Each of these letters again contained Bacillus anthracis but of a better quality than the letters mailed to New York.

"As a result of these mailings and the resulting bacterial infections, there are five innocent persons who are dead, including a ninety-four year old Connecticut Woman. Additional cases of cutaneous anthrax have infected numerous individuals including a seven month old baby in New York City.

"I would like to appeal to the talented men and women of the American Society for Microbiology to assist the FBI in identifying the person who mailed these letters. It is very likely that one or more of you know this individual.

"A review of the information-to-date in this matter leads investigators to believe that a single person is most likely responsible for these mailings. This person is experienced working in a laboratory. Based on his or her selection of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis one would expect that this individual has or had legitimate access to select biological agents at some time.

"This person has the technical knowledge and/or expertise to produce a highly refined and deadly product. This person has exhibited a clear, rational thought process and appears to be very organized in the production and mailing of these letters.

"The perpetrator might be described as 'stand-offish' and likely prefers to work in isolation as opposed to a group/team setting. It is possible this person used off-hours in a laboratory or may have even established an improvised or concealed facility comprised of sufficient equipment to produce the anthrax.

"It is important to ensure that all relevant information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, is brought to the attention of the investigators in this case. If you believe that you have information that might assist in the identification of this individual, please contact the FBI via telephone at 1-800-CRIME TV (1-800-274-6388) or via email at the following website: Amerithrax@FBI.gov.

"There is also a $2.5 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible in this case."

Waffling on the Profile

The FBI has waffled on its famed "profile" of the anthrax mailer.

"The profile that we came out with then was based on certain information that we had at that time," said FBI director Robert Mueller. "The results of additional interviews, the results of the tests that we have done to date — many of them are preliminary — has not warranted at this time a revision of that profile."

Investigators are said to believe they are dealing with a single suspect who fits a profile similar to serial bombers, like "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski. They also believe this person is not connected to those behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, according to FBI profiler James Fitzgerald.

The comparison of their profile on the anthrax mailer and the one they did on Kaczynski is interesting. The Bureau prides itself on catching the Unabomber, but their profile had nothing to do with Kaczynski’s apprehension. Their investigative efforts in the case led nowhere. Kaczynski was caught only because his brother turned him in. If he hadn’t, the Unabomber would probably still be at large and mailing his lethal packages.

Committment to Lone Perp Theory 'Troubling'

There’s more. As the Washington Post observed: "… while any real assessment of the case is impossible without access to the bureau's evidence, the apparent commitment to the lone-domestic-perpetrator theory is a bit troubling.

"Back in 1993, the FBI developed a profile of the Unabomber, then still at large. The bureau got some key facts right. But it also determined, as the New York Times paraphrased it, that the man who turned out to be Ted Kaczynski was a 'neat dresser who leads a meticulously organized life,' would be 'an almost ideal neighbor' and ‘probably has had menial jobs.’"

To put it bluntly, Kaczynski's dressed and looked like a skid-row bum. His menial jobs, the Post noted, "included a faculty position at one of the world's great math departments. If the science of profiling is inexact enough to confuse a Berkeley math professor living in a shack in Montana with a well-dressed menial laborer, it is probably capable of confusing an American biological weapons scientist with, say, an al Qaeda operative. Until more evidence is in hand, both the bureau and the public should refrain from drawing firm conclusions about Mr. Hatfill and should not rule out other suspects, foreign or domestic."

Which of course they have.

Enter Dr. Rosenberg

The FBI’s letter to the Members of the American Society for Microbiology, and the theory behind it bears the phantom handprint of Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, originally one of the FBI’s principal sources in the search for the lone wolf perp. Rosenberg has been a thorn in the side of the Bureau from the very beginning. She has publicly chided the FBI for failing to follow up on her belief that a very specific individual – a man she refused to publicly identify, but whose identity could easily be surmised by anybody familiar with the biowarfare community.

Dr. Rosenberg compiled a lengthy analysis of the anthrax attacks. It zeroed in on the lone wolf theory, blithely dismissing any other possibility. Her analysis began with what she described as a "Possible Portrait of the Anthrax Perpetrator:

Anyone in the biowarfare community reading that profile would quickly surmise she was referring to Dr. Hatfill.

Elsewhere she adds, "All the available information is consistent with a US government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for the US weaponization process."

Sound familiar?

Rosenberg speculated that:

Possible Motive To Attract Attention

She goes on to conclude: "The motive of the perpetrator may have been to attract attention to biological weapons as a threat, either to push the US government toward retaliatory action against some enemy or to attract funding and recognition to some agency/company/program/etc. with which he has a connection. The choice of media and the Senate leader as targets fits these motives.

"The perpetrator may not even have intended to kill anyone. The postmark on the Daschle letter is difficult to read. It has been reported as Oct. 8 in one NY Times article and Oct 9 in another. On the FBI website it looks more like 3 or 5 Oct to some observers. It is possible that the perpetrator did not know of the first anthrax case [in Florida], which was first reported at about 4 PM on Oct. 4, when he mailed the last letter [to Daschle].

"If the US government suspects or knows that the anthrax was an 'inside' job, it would probably want to cover it up that politically embarrassing information for the time being and gradually suggest the truth, as seems to be happening.

"Conclusions: A recent report by the Congressional GAO, as well as many recent statements by military and non-governmental experts in the BW field, holds that terrorists are unlikely to be able to mount a major biological attack without substantial assistance from a government sponsor. The recent anthrax attack was a minor one but nonetheless we now see that it was perpetrated with the unwitting assistance of a sophisticated government program. It is reassuring to know that it was not perpetrated by a lone terrorist without state support.

"It is not reassuring, however, to discover that a secret US program may have been the source of that support, and that security is so dangerously lax in military or defense contractor laboratories. US government insistence on pursuing and maintaining the secrecy of elaborate biological threat assessment activities is undermining the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention and encouraging biological weapons proliferation in other countries, which in turn may support bioterrorist attacks on the American public."

No Public Naming of Lone Wolf

In her public statements and writings Rosenberg has refused to identify the Lone Wolf by name. But in a meeting with Senators Daschle and Leahy and others, she reportedly named him as being one Dr. Steven Hatfill, a distinguished scientist and expert on bioterrorism.

In a statement read to the media during a press conference on Sunday, August 11, Dr. Hatfill had this to say about Rosenberg:

"According to The Frederick [Md.] News-Post of June 27, 2002, in June 2002 a woman named Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who affiliates herself with the Federation of American Scientists, saw fit to discuss me as a suspect in the anthrax case in a meeting with FBI agents and Senate staffers. I don't know Dr. Rosenberg. I have never met her, I have never spoken or corresponded with this woman. And to my knowledge, she is ignorant of my work and background except in the very broadest of terms.

"The only thing I know about her views is that she and I apparently differ on whether the United States should sign onto a proposed modification of the international biological weapons convention. This was something I opposed to safeguard American industry, and I believe she favored. I am at a complete loss to explain her reported hostility and accusations. I don't know this woman at all."

He added that just a couple of days after Rosenberg discussed him on Capitol Hill the FBI asked if they could search his apartment. Up until that time, Hatfill had been given to understand that his involvement in the investigation was over. Clearly, Dr. Rosenberg’s accusations had something to do with the FBI’s renewed interest in Dr. Hatfill.

Just who is Dr. Rosenberg? The Weekly Standard’s David Tell had this to say about her:

"The FBI has declined to explain its profiling rationale in any detail, and Tom Ridge's references to "follow-up leads" and other "things they've been able to detect" remain ambiguous. But a woman named Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, whom the Bureau has consulted, and whose analysis of the case mirrors its own in certain key respects, has tirelessly publicized the results of some ambitious amateur detective work.

"Rosenberg is a research professor of environmental science at the State University of New York in Purchase. She also directs a working group on biological weapons verification for the Federation of American Scientists. And in a running "commentary" she has maintained on the federation's Internet site (www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm), Rosenberg argues that 'multiple, blatant clues' left ‘seemingly on purpose’ all make clear that ‘the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks is American....

"‘The anthrax in the letters,’ Rosenberg flatly asserts, ‘was either made and weaponized in recent years in a U.S. government or contractor lab for biodefense purposes, or by the perpetrator on his own.’ Either way, last fall's bacteriological terrorism against the United States was undoubtedly ‘an inside job.’

"Given the understandably intense jealousy with which federal investigators have guarded whatever hard evidence they themselves have accumulated in the case, media attempts to substantiate the FBI's conviction that a deranged current or former government scientist is behind the anthrax attacks have necessarily been based almost exclusively on the speculation of outside ‘experts.’

"And no such expert has been more widely or respectfully cited, at the highest reaches of American journalism, than Barbara Hatch Rosenberg. After all, notes the New Yorker, Rosenberg is 'not chopped liver.' She is a 'veteran molecular biologist' with a long-term professional interest in biological weapons - and 'deeply concerned hazel eyes.'

"Which may be true. But it is also true that this veteran molecular biologist's sensational pronouncements betray a surprisingly uncertain grasp of contemporary genetic research and clinical protocols concerning Bacillus anthracis. And a surprisingly limited familiarity with anthrax-related military and civil-defense projects around the world. And a surprisingly unscientific, even Oliver Stone-scale, incaution about the 'facts' at her disposal."

The Man Who Knew Too Much

"Rosenberg claims the FBI has known the anthrax mailer's precise identity for months already, but has deliberately avoided arresting him - indeed, may never arrest him - because he 'knows too much' that the United States 'isn't very anxious to publicize.' Specifically, according to an account the hazel-eyed professor offered on BBC Two's flagship 'Newsnight' telecast March 14, the suspect is a former federal bioweapons scientist now doing contract work for the CIA.

"Last fall, you see, the man's Langley masters supposedly decided they'd like to field-test what would happen if billions of lethal anthrax spores were sent through the regular mail, and 'it was left to him to decide exactly how to carry it out.' The loosely supervised madman then used his assignment to launch an attack on the media and Senate 'for his own motives.' And, this truth being obviously too hot to handle, the FBI is now trying very hard not to discover it.

"What if 'some kind of deal is made that the perpetrator just disappears from view,' Rosenberg worries aloud? She appears already to have taken proactive steps to thwart such a conspiracy. Over the past several months, using language lifted almost verbatim from Rosenberg's website, ABC News and the Washington Times have both fingered the same unnamed 'top scientist' as the FBI's only [never-to-be-revealed] anthrax suspect. Except that the poor man turns out to be a former Ohio laboratory technician who has never done bacteriological research of any kind - and whose unfortunate history of alcoholism has lately reduced him to working in a Milwaukee-area bowling alley. Which bowling alley has no known ties to the CIA's Directorate of Operations."

In her report, Rosenberg makes clear where her sympathies lie: "The recent anthrax attack was a minor one but nonetheless we now see that it was made possible by a sophisticated government program…secret US programs may have been the source of that support…US government insistence on pursuing and maintaining the secrecy of elaborate biological threat assessment activities is undermining the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention and encouraging biological weapons proliferation in other countries…"

The Federation of American Scientists , Rosenberg’s group, is a liberal internationalist organization dedicated to promoting international arms control under the U.N.

"Since its inception many years ago FAS has been a predominantly left-wing critic of nearly every U.S. defense-related initiative. Its efforts included active support for the 'nuclear freeze' programs of the 1980s," wrote reporter Bill Harrison in the American Prowler. "Since the February FAS posting other left-wing critics of the FBI and U.S. national security policies have joined in the search for an American perpetrator."

'Little Bio-warfare Expertise'

"Journalists usually refer to Rosenberg as a 'microbiologist' and 'State University of New York professor.' Officially, she is a professor of environmental science at a performing-arts college, but she neither has conducted scientific research nor taught in years," says investigative journalist Nicholas Stix. "And she has little biowarfare expertise. Working with the far-left Federation of American Scientists, Rosenberg is a taxpayer-supported, full-time activist."

Rosenberg’s reliability as an accurate reporter of events can be seen from her disclosure that "on approximately 4 Sept. AMI [American Media Inc.] received a fan letter containing powder and a star of David, [that was]addressed to actress Jennifer Lopez c/o The Sun (one of the AMI tabloids). Because the anthrax letter was evidently addressed to the National Enquirer, not The Sun, the Sun letter is probably irrelevant.

Excuse us, Dr. Rosenberg, but according to sources at AMI, the letter was addressed to: "Jennifer Lopez c/o The Sun."

Haunted by its botched investigation of Richard Jewell, the falsely suspected Olympic bomber who was all but convicted in the press by anonymous leaks from government agents, who were sure he was guilty, up until now the Bureau had failed to speed up its probe of Dr. Hatfill. Jewell, of course, was eventually cleared of all suspicion and successfully sued for damages. The deeply embarrassing episode left a permanent chill on the bureau. "Richard Jewell looms large around here," says an FBI official. "We’ve got to be very careful."

In recent weeks they’ve thrown caution to the wind, doing the same kind of leaking reputation-destroying material to the media about Dr. Hatfill which they did in the infamous Richard Jewell case.

In a recent interview, Rosenberg herself brought up the intriguing idea that Dr. Hatfill, her target, is being framed by fellow scientists.

Writing in the Washington Times, Guy Taylor reported that Rosenberg said that FBI agents interviewing her … asked whether a team of government scientists could be trying to frame Hatfill, whose apartment in Frederick, Md., was searched for a second time by FBI agents on the same day.

"They kept asking me did I think there might be a group in the biodefense community that was trying to land the blame on Hatfill," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist at State University of New York.

"Mrs. Rosenberg said agents visited her hours before she learned Dr. Hatfill's apartment was being searched. The FBI would neither confirm or deny her account in which she told the Times that she had been expecting a visit from the FBI since June, when she briefed staffers with the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees when she named Hatfill as the perp.

"A day after the briefings, Van A. Harp, assistant director for the FBI's Washington Field Office, told her that agents wanted to meet with her, said Mrs. Rosenberg. ‘Maybe [Dr. Hatfill] was being set up. That's my speculation of what [the agents] thought,’ she said."

The Keystone Kops scenario has gotten more absurd as each day goes by.

A top bioterrorism expert told Fox News that the FBI’s actions in the Hatfill matter have been totally incompetent.

And the special agent in charge of the investigation is just plain incompetent, the expert charged.

'Media Lynching'

"There was a guy in Oklahoma City whose nickname was ‘deaf and dumb’ for example during the Oklahoma city bombing. What you have here pure incompetence and I’ve talked to several FBI friends who retired, and they’ve indicated that there’s been an evaporation of talent. You don’t have experienced people in leadership positions – you have folks who are enthusiastic but not exercising good judgment. In this case what they’ve done is a media lynching.

"Once you’ve put the word out there in caps that build suspicion without having evidence, as this man has said, they’ve destroyed his life. There is a way that if you’ve got the evidence pursue it. But unfortunately, it’s not just this case. We’ve seen it with Wen Ho Lee, We’ve seen it in the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta with Jewell. And we’ve seen it in the al-Qaeda investigation. The FBI has had informers on the inside that they’ve mishandled … The FBI has been mishandling this case … this is a level of incompetence that cannot be tolerated."

One group that the FBI has ignored, for example are the retired scientists who worked in the offensive biological weapons program, which was shut down by President Richard M. Nixon in 1973.

"I still read the journals," retired microbiologist Bill Walter, 76, of Lake Placid, Fla., told the Washington Post. Walter, who stays in touch with friends in the Frederick area said he would like to help the FBI with the investigation.

"I read where they haven't left a stone unturned," said Walter, who has had no contact with the FBI. "There's about eight of us stones that are still unturned. It's a joke."

[Part Six – The Crucifixion of Dr. Steven Hatfill]