DISAPPEARING ANTHRAX

Though it has been only seven months since the FBI and postal service redoubled their efforts and doubled the reward to $2.5 million in the search for information leading to the person who sent letters containing anthrax, it seems like a different time, or at least a different state of alert. And while only a few months before that nervous citizens were mistaking the residue of Sheetrock and old tartar sauce as possible anthrax deposits, the thought of such panic now seems remote. In fact, the entire anthrax scare seems like something Washington investigators have or would like to put behind them. Congress should find out why.

Specifically, a congressional investigatory committee – the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is a fine choice – should ask why the regular updates and press conferences about the investigation into the anthrax letters that panicked the Capitol last winter suddenly ended just as the evidence began to point not overseas but to U.S. military research labs. The evidence was far from definitive but certainly was substantial enough to pursue.

For instance, the anthrax used in the letters was likely from the so-called Ames strain, a type used at the labs. The quality of the anthrax suggests it was produced by someone expert in the field and with the top-level equipment, and such a place has been investigated, – the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. The facility was in the news not long ago when journalists obtained hundreds of pages of documents from the early 1990s detailing a “cowboy culture” there, in which “shenanigans have been going on,” according to one of the reports, which also said investigators found “little or no organization” and “little or no accountability.” The reports added that it found someone had been doing work in the labs at night and on weekends and then tried to cover it up.

All of this was widely announced in early spring. With evidence pointing to only a few places from which the anthrax could come and even fewer people who could have done the work, either an arrest or an announcement declaring the trail in error seemed imminent. Instead, months have passed with virtually no word. Without jeopardizing the search, it is fair of Congress to ask what happened. A committee should be equally concerned about the reports from the early 1990s and want to know what steps have been taken to better protect and oversee these labs.