- Porton Down, Britain's bio-defence centre, has become
the focus of a $4 million FBI hunt for the terrorist who has terrified
the United States with an unprecedented wave of anthrax attacks.
-
- The FBI are today urgently examining if the milled
weapons-refined
anthrax the terrorists used in the United States is a strain of anthrax
from Porton Down code-named "Ames."
-
- Scientists working with the FBI say "Ames"
was sent from Porton Down in 1997 to America's most secret germ
manufacturing
plant.
-
- The decision to send "Ames" to the plant was
part of the still ongoing bio-defence exchanges between the U.S. and
Britain.
-
- The U.S. plant is known as Camp 12. It is sited in the
depths of the high-security Nellis military range in Nevada.
-
- The area is guarded by armed troops and state-of-the-art
detection equipment. Until now the plant has been a closely-guarded secret
- its existence repeatedly denied.
-
- But now the FBI has focused on the plant's contact with
Porton Down, President Bush spokesman, Ari Fleischer, has confirmed:
-
- "Camp 12 is created to mimic steps a rogue state
like Iraq would take to create a bio-arsenal.It is designed to protect
our servicemen and women from such weapons."
-
- The FBI have not ruled out a scientist with a grudge
may have worked at Camp 12 - and obtained quantity of the milled Ames
strain
from Porton Down to create the fear and panic still ongoing in
America.
-
- Professor Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State
University,
a world-ranking authority on anthrax, said: "The attacks have all
the signs of being done by an expert microbiologist working in the
bio-defence
industry. Ames would be virtually impossible to be used by
terrorists."
-
- Yesterday another expert in bio-defence research, Dr.
Barbara Sternberger, who in Washington, D.C. monitors work going on at
Fort Detrick, America's other bio-chemical research complex, claimed:
"The
FBI have a short list of people. They have all been interviewed. But
suspicion
and proof are two different things."
-
- This coming week those suspicions may harden as MI5
report
to the FBI on its investigation into the trail that sent the deadly anthrax
spores flying out in lead containers from Porton Down some 5,000 miles
to Camp 12 in Nevada.
-
- The FBI believe this evidence will enable them to
establish
if their chief suspect learned some of his expertise in Porton Down.
-
- There are regular exchange visits between the
establishment
and scientists from Fort Detrick and Camp 12.
-
- FBI psycho-profilers - the real life version of Clair
Stirling who tracked down Hannibal Lecter in the movie - have
concluded:
-
- "Our prime suspect is a loner. His lab equipment
probably costs no more than £2,000. But he is not the traditional
'mad scientist' with long hair and a crazed laugh. He's going to turn out
to be the classic member of his community. But he's unlikely to be married.
If he was, his wife or kids would have turned him in by now," a
profiler
at Quantico said this week.
-
- ___
-
- Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence for a number
of leading European newspapers (the Sunday Express, UK; El Mundo, Spain;
Welt am Sonntag, Germany). His work is also syndicated internationally
by World Wide Syndication. Any use of the above must carry a clear
attribution
to both Gordon Thomas and Globe-Intel. He is a Contributing Editor to
Globe-Intel,
an international newsletter devoted to intelligence matters.
-
- Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack
on America, published by Dandelion Books, is available in all bookstores,
at www.dandelion-books.com, www.dandelionbooks.net, www.gordonthomas.ie,
www.newsmax.com, and for the trade through Biblio Distribution, Ingram,
Baker & Taylor and other major wholesalers ($25.95).
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