FBI Turns Anthrax Probe Towards Fort Detrick Maryland

Polygraphs for Fort Detrick Workers Investigators
Searching for Culprit in Anthrax Mailings

By Pierre Thomas - ABCNEWS.com

May 20, 2002

The government will launch a wide-ranging program of polygraph testing to determine if one of its own employees is responsible for last year's anthrax attacks, ABCNEWS has learned.

As many as 200 current and former employees at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and a number of other labs across the nation will face questioning and voluntary polygraph tests in the hope that one of them might produce a lead.

Sources told ABCNEWS those targeted include people who have expertise in the production of anthrax or have had access to it.

"In the absence of a prime suspect, the FBI has to build its case through subtraction, taking away the elements that don't fit, trying to make their theory work," said Kyle Olson, an analyst in the field of weapons of mass destruction.

Law enforcement officials say the scientific analysis of the anthrax sent in letters that killed five people is consistent with the Ames anthrax strain housed by the U.S. military at Fort Detrick and distributed to a number of labs for research.

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