FBI to search again for anthrax at tabloid's building

WASHINGTON -- FBI officials said Monday that they will go back into the anthrax-contaminated American Media Inc. headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla., this week to collect evidence they hope will aid in the stalled criminal investigation into who sent the deadly bacteria.

The latest search of the quarantined building comes nearly 11 months after 63-year-old Robert Stevens, a popular photo editor at the tabloid publisher, was killed by an anthrax infection -- the first such death in the United States since 1976. Although top health officials initially believed Stevens, an avid outdoorsmen, had contracted the infection through natural sources, it soon became clear that a bioterrorist attack had been launched.

By late last year, four more people had been killed by anthrax and at least 13 others were sickened.

At a news conference Monday in Florida, FBI officials said they plan to re-enter the three-story complex where Stevens worked as soon as Wednesday to begin a two-week "comprehensive search."

"We hope this investigation will bring to justice the person or persons responsible for this horrific act," said FBI special agent Hector Pesquera, head of the Miami field office.

Earlier searches, FBI officials said, focused primarily on the work space of Stevens and the mail room where two other employees became ill. Both later recovered.

Hope to find pattern

Using detection techniques that have been updated since the attacks began, FBI officials said they hope to find a pattern in the distribution of anthrax spores throughout the building that leads them to an explanation for how the anthrax got there.

A letter similar to those mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., and to media outlets in New York was not found in previous searches of the building. Absent such evidence, investigators have been unable to say for certain that anthrax entered the AMI building through the mail as it did at other locations where people were killed or sickened.

Pesquera said Monday he believed the new techniques would allow scientists to track down the source for anthrax spores that spread throughout the building. They also hope to discover a large enough quantity of spores to do a comparison with bacteria recovered from the anthrax-laden letters, something they have not yet been able to do.

FBI officials, however, declined to specify what techniques will be used in the latest search.

The 67,000-square-foot offices in Boca Raton have been frozen in time since employees who put out the National Enquirer, Star, Globe, Weekly World News, Sun and National Examiner dropped everything to evacuate last fall once the extent of the danger became clear.

Since the attack was launched, criminal investigators have been frustrated in the search for the anthrax killer. Few solid leads or physical evidence have come to light since the first anthrax-tainted envelopes addressed with block letters and postmarked Trenton, N.J., were uncovered.

Investigating 20 people

In recent weeks, media attention has focused on a former Army researcher named Steven J. Hatfill, 48, whom Attorney General John Ashcroft has characterized as a "person of interest" in the government investigation. Although FBI sources have said they are looking at about 20 people whose background and experience may have made it possible for them to carry out the attacks, so far Hatfill's name is the only one that has been widely reported.

Hatfill, who earlier in the investigation voluntarily submitted to a lie-detector test and searches of his residence, has responded by twice defending himself publicly in the last month.

Outside his lawyer's office in Alexandria, Va., on Sunday, Hatfill, an expert on hemorrhagic blood diseases such as the Ebola virus, said emphatically: "I am not the anthrax killer." He also said he has filed a series of complaints against the government alleging that federal agents have violated his privacy, harassed him and are "ruining" his life.

Asked Monday at the news conference about the timing and intent of this week's search, Pesquera said the operation "has nothing to do" with Hatfill.