US anthrax suspect had links with AWB

By TONY WEAVER Johannesburg

AN American scientist being questioned by the FBI in connection with a spate of anthrax attacks that killed five people after September 11 has close ties to imprisoned AWB leader Eugene Terre’blanche – and his CV says he served in the former SA Defence Force.

Steven Hatfill, 48, graduated as a medical doctor at the University of Zimbabwe in 1983 and gained a master of science degree at Stellenbosch’s medical school in 1990.

Sources say that, around 1987 or early 1988, Dr Hatfill used the Milnerton shooting association’s shooting range in Table View for training the AWB’s elite Aquila Brigade, Terre’blanche’s bodyguards and shock troops.

Dr Hatfill worked in the university’s radiobiology laboratory in the department of radiation oncology in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

A former colleague of his, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said “he alienated a lot of the staff at the radiobiology laboratory because he always carried a 9mm pistol and because he used to boast about his military past”.

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The source said Dr Hatfill was employed as a medical doctor in the department of haematology, where he completed his MSc in 1990.

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According to US media reports, although Dr Hatfill is not necessarily regarded as a suspect, FBI agents searched his Maryland house last week.

FBI agents searched a Florida storage facility owned by Dr Hatfill and he is “being investigated by authorities searching for the source of the anthrax attacks that killed five people”, a report said.

Dr Hatfill once worked in the virology division of the US Army medical institute of infectious disease at Fort Detrick, the report said, and recently for a defence contractor.

His former colleague added: “I remember we were discussing the film Top Gun one day and he told us that he had trained as a ‘top gun’ in America but qualified too late to see action in Vietnam, so he went to Rhodesia to fight for the Selous Scouts.”

According to the Baltimore Sun, Dr Hatfill worked at the US Army medical research institute of infectious diseases, the top military bio-terrorism research facility, for about two years in the late 1990s.

“Like other researchers in the field, he has been vaccinated against anthrax, has had access to labs where it is stored and has some knowledge of its use as a weapon. Those factors brought his name to the attention of the FBI several months ago,” the Sun said.

The Sun reported that “in 1997, Dr Hatfill told a Washington Times columnist it would not be hard to mount a biological attack”.

“Dr Hatfill, who is familiar with such things, showed me how to culture bacteria with supplies that can be bought at Safeway (supermarket),” wrote columnist Fred Reed.

“The next year Hatfill, then at the national institute of health, was photographed for Insight magazine demonstrating ‘how a determined terrorist could cook up a batch of plague in his or her own kitchen, using common household ingredients and protective equipment from the supermarket’.”

The magazine Prospect said Dr Hatfill had access to the infectious diseases base up till early March and that the letter anthrax was indistinguishable from a strain developed at the base.

Dr Hatfill has denied any involvement in the anthrax letter campaign.