Anthrax Terrorist May Have Been Indentified

The anthrax attacks in the United States were probably the work of a member of a U.S. biological warfare program, according to the magazine of Greenpeace in Germany. It says its information comes from a member of a U.S. delegation who is attending the UN biological weapons conference in Geneva.

?The U.S. delegation believe it is an inside job. … Their members also have more information than has been made public,? says Kirsten Brodde, a reporter for the magazine. ?It seems the attacker … wanted to force through an increase in the budget for U.S. research on biological weapons.? The article speculates that perhaps the terrorist wanted to cause panic rather than actually kill anyone.

When asked about the magazine article, an FBI spokesman said that investigators were pursuing a number of leads but no arrests appeared imminent.

There is suspicion concerning the disappearance of Harvard molecular biologist Don Wiley, who was last seen leaving a banquet in Memphis just before midnight on Nov. 15. His rental car was found a few hours later, abandoned on a Mississippi River bridge with the keys in the ignition and the tank full of gas. He is a 57-year-old married father of four with no known financial or domestic problems.

Wiley is an expert on how the human immune system fights off infections and had recently investigated such dangerous viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza. His disappearance at this time has attracted the attention of the FBI. ?Right now nothing is pointing at anything, except he is missing,? says local police Lt. Walter Norris.

Wiley?s wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir, says, ?There is no connection to terrorist activity. None. We don?t know what happened. We can speculate until the cows come home but we don’t know.?

Wiley is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics in Harvard University?s molecular and cellular biology department. He was in Memphis to attend an annual meeting of the scientific advisory board of St. Jude Children?s Research Hospital. Dr. William Evans, the hospital?s deputy director, says Wiley was ?in a great frame of mind? and was looking forward to time with his family when he left a Nov. 15 dinner at the Peabody Hotel about midnight. Four hours later, police found his car a few miles from the hotel, on the bridge that spans the Mississippi River, connecting Memphis and Arkansas. Wiley?s wife says she can think of no reason he would have driven toward Arkansas after the hotel dinner.

Police have no clues about what has happened to Wiley. Patrol boats and helicopters have been checking the river, but divers cannot search because the current is too swift. Police have found no evidence of a crime and investigators have dusted the rental car for fingerprints but nothing has turned up so far.

Dr. Wiley’s disappearance could be related to the anthrax situation, as is suggested in the Greenpeace Magazine article, or it could be entirely unrelated.

To read more about Dr. Wiley’s disappearance,1597,319313-412,00.shtml,click here.

To read an English translation of the German Greenpeace article, click here.

To read the German original, click here.

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