Tracking the Anthrax Attacks

By Viveca Novak and Mark Thompson

At one point last week, it began to look as if the anthrax mailings might have an al-Qaeda connection after all. For one thing, military sources confirmed that anthrax traces had been found in several al-Qaeda training facilities. Around the same time, word leaked that Christos Tsonas, a Florida doctor who had treated Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, for a skin lesion, had changed his diagnosis to anthrax after the attacks.

But authorities continue to believe the anthrax killer is a domestic terrorist who operated under cover of the Sept. 11 hysteria. The anthrax traces in Afghanistan could be environmental, according to the military. Troops have found 50 to 60 sites in the country where it seemed al-Qaeda was studying or trying to make and weaponize anthrax; the most advanced was near Kandahar. But they found no evidence of the bioterrorism agent itself. "It was more like a science-fair project than a weapons lab," a Pentagon official says.

As for the Florida physician, the FBI simply doesn't trust his after-the-fact diagnosis, even though a team of experts from Johns Hopkins who recently reviewed the case agreed that anthrax probably caused the lesion. An FBI source says the doctor "had no cultures, no blood tests. His analysis was made from his handwritten notes and memory." More important, the source notes, authorities have combed cars, houses and anywhere else the hijackers were known to have lived or spent time and found no traces of anthrax. "We vacuumed everywhere they had been for residue." FBI officials remain convinced the anthrax came from a U.S. lab.

--By Viveca Novak and Mark Thompson