William C. Patrick III (July 24, 1926 – October 1, 2010) was an influential microbiologist and bioweaponeer for the U.S. Army during the Cold War.

Patrick headed the American offensive biological warfare (BW) program at Fort Detrick, MD beginning in 1951. After biological weapons development was discontinued by President Richard Nixon in 1969, and the bioweapons were decommissioned in 1971-72, he continued to work at Fort Detrick on biowarfare defense projects until 1986.

Biography

Youth and education

Patrick was born in Ridgeland, South Carolina in 1926. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and then attended and graduated (1948) from the University of South Carolina. In 1949 he received a master's degree (microbiology and biochemistry) from the University of Tennessee.

Career

Patrick began his professional career at the research division of Commercial Solvents in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The U.S. offensive BW program

• From 1951 to 1966, Patrick was employed in a variety of offensive programs which included 1) Project engineer in the design and start-up operations in the virus production facility as well as the freeze drying plant at Pine Bluff Arsenal (PBA), Arkansas; 2) Plant manager of the virus pilot plant at Fort Detrick, Maryland; 3) Special envoy to Dugway Proving Ground (DPG), Utah, during the field testing of several munitions systems; and 4) Chief of Agent Processing Branch, Pilot Plant Division, Biological Warfare Laboratories (BWL) for several years.

Role of the Product Development Division

• Patrick became Chief of Product Development Division (PDD) of the former BWL in 1965. This division was responsible for the first steps in the weaponization of an agent. He held this position until 1972 when the offensive program was disestablished. Products were developed with those desired or required biological, physical, aerobiological, and storage characteristics for employment in specific prototype munitions. Patrick worked closely with the basic research scientists, the bio-investigators and engineers in the pilot plant (see Building 470) and in the production plant at PBA, as well as with munitions development engineers. Frequently, the unique products of the Division were the first to be tested in field tests at DPG, and at other field sites. Product development covered all agents and included bacteria, viruses, fungi, rickettsiae and toxins. Mathematical modeling was performed in relation to target analysis and target requirements constituted a fundamental objective in the product development cycle.

The U.S. defensive BW program

• Patrick joined the new U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in 1972 and served as its Plans and Programs Officer until 1984, reporting directly to the commander. He participated in the planning, directing, coordinating, evaluating and reporting on a broad, complex program of medical defense against bio-agents. In 1984, he was promoted to one of the most senior civilian positions at USAMRIID as Program Analysis Officer, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.

In retirement

• After leaving his government job, Patrick was a consultant to the U. S. Government and private organizations. He performed services on a contractual basis to Defense Intelligence Agency, Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center, Central Intelligence Agency, USAMRIID, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Secret Service, and many other institutions through his own firm, Biothreats Assessment. These services include 1) lectures on agent-munitions weaponization, agent characteristics, aerosol technologies, etc.; 2) mathematical modeling of agents to illustrate target coverage; 3) biodefensive and biosafety lectures; 4) analytical studies of agents and their potential; and 5) lectures on bioterrorism.

• Patrick's BW experience provided significant insights into Iraq's BW program. On the UNSCOM 78 trip to Iraq (1994), his observations on how process equipment was being used at the Al Hakum facility provided the nearest thing to a "smoking gun" for Iraqi intent until they themselves declared an extensive BW program in 1995. He then continued to present lectures on the History of Biological Warfare; Bio-Agents; Munition Weaponization; Aerosol Technology; Agent Modeling; Biosafety; Biodefense; and BW Terrorism. He appeared on all of the major U.S. television networks as well as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, PBS, the History Channel, The Learning Channel, and the Discovery Channel. In his last years, Patrick gave numerous guest lectures at venues such as the National War College, Army War College, Air War College, MIT, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Academy of Sciences.

• Patrick married his second wife, Virginia, in July 1972. He had two sons from his first marriage and two stepchildren. He died from bladder cancer^[1] on 1 October 2010.^[2]

Works

Patrick held five U.S. patents pertaining to biological processes and equipment, and authored 16 articles in scientific journals, as well as 98 in-house Department of the Army publications.

• Patrick, William C. (1994), "Biological Warfare: An Overview" In: Director's Series on Proliferation, Livermore, California: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

• Patrick, William C. (2001), The Threat of Biological Warfare, for the Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, Washington DC,.^[3]

• Sidell, Frederick and William Patrick, Thomas Dashiell, Ken Alibek, Scott Layne, Jane's Chem-Bio Handbook (2005), Second Edition, Jane's Information Group.

Awards

• Six U.S. Army Sustained Superior Performance awards (1954, 1958, 1962, 1968, 1977 and 1980).

• Special Service Award, 1982

• Order of Military Medical Merit, 1986

References

• ^ Shapiro, T. Rees (2010-10-04). "William C. Patrick III, 84, dies". The Washington Post.

William C. Patrick III made enough germs to kill everyone on earth many times over. Then, after putting aside those living weapons, he worked for nearly four decades to build defenses against them, to better protect the United States from biological attack.

A scientist, Mr. Patrick made germ weapons for the American military from 1951 to 1969. He produced tons of deadly agents, like the microbe anthrax, which, when inhaled, causes fever, cough, vomiting, chills, shock and coma, usually ending in death. He received five patents, all of them granted secretly.

His production of these microscopic killers ended in 1969 when the Nixon administration decided that the nation could survive the cold war without the benefit of Mr. Patrick’s black art. He then devoted himself to germ defenses, working for the government and as a private consultant.

Mr. Patrick, 84, died of bladder cancer on Oct. 1 at a nursing home in Frederick, Md., said his wife, Virginia.

He had become one of the government’s most trusted advisers. He consulted for the Secret Service, testified before Congress and helped analyze cases of germ terrorism for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also helped the Central Intelligence Agency assess the threat of germ attacks.

Mr. Patrick made lots of friends in the federal government and the corporate world, thanks in no small part to an outgoing manner and a dark sense of humor. His business card bore a skull and crossbones, and atop his stationery was a drawing of the Grim Reaper, the scythe labeled “Biological Warfare” and the figure’s outstretched arm sowing germs.

William Capers Patrick III was born on July 24, 1926, in Ridgeland, S.C., the only child of a produce broker. He served in the Army in World War II and afterward went to the University of South Carolina and then the University of Tennessee, from which he received a master’s degree in microbiology in 1949.

After working briefly in the antibiotics industry, he moved to Frederick for a job at an Army base surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. “Cameras Are Unauthorized,” a sign warned.

Mr. Patrick helped turn germs found in nature into dangerous weapons, like Q fever, which was meant to cripple foes with chills, coughing, headaches, hallucinations and fevers up to 104 degrees. He himself came down with a case — one of the job’s hazards.

By 1965 he was leading about 80 scientists, engineers and technicians in efforts to turn bacteria, fungi, viruses and microbial toxins into “products” intended to kill and incapacitate people in gruesome ways.

Mr. Patrick left government service in 1986 to begin his consulting work. Sure that the threat of biological attacks was rising, he judged that much of the civilized world had no idea of the danger and threw himself into sounding alarms.

Exploring Iraq in 1994 as an inspector for the United Nations, he helped shatter the wall of deception around Saddam Hussein’s effort to construct a germ arsenal.

Mr. Patrick lectured at the National War College, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Academy of Sciences, among other places. He appeared on the major television networks as well as the History and Discovery Channels.

Besides his wife, Mr. Patrick is survived by two sons by a previous marriage and two stepchildren.

He lived in Frederick for decades, his home atop a wooded hill, not far from where he once made anthrax. A single gallon of the concentrated agent contained enough spores to kill every person on the planet.

Mr. Patrick expressed no regrets about his arms work, saying he was comfortable with memories of killing animals and finding new ways to produce death. He said it was all part of doing his duty for his country in perilous times.

Mr. William C. Patrick III, 84, of Etzler Road, Frederick, died Friday, Oct. 1, 2010.

Born July 24, 1926, in Ridgeland, S.C., he was the only child of the late William C. Patrick Jr. and Florine Fripp Patrick of Hampton County, S.C.

He was the husband of Virginia H. Patrick, whom he married in July 1972. He is survived by his wife; two sons by a previous marriage, William T. Patrick and Mark E. Patrick of Rockville; and two stepchildren, Theresa Bedoya App and husband, Timothy, of Baltimore, and Martin R. Lynch and wife, Tamara, of Nashville, Tenn.

Mr. Patrick served in the Army during World War II. He was a graduate of the University of South Carolina (1948) and the University of Tennessee (1949) with a master's degree in microbiology and biochemistry.

Mr. Patrick started his professional career at the research division of Commercial Solvents, Terre Haute, Ind. He joined the Biological Warfare Laboratories, Fort Detrick, in 1951. He became chief of the Product Development Division and held this position until the biological laboratories were disestablished in 1972. At that time, he joined the management staff as plans and program officer of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick. He retired from this federal service position in 1986.

During his 35 years at Fort Detrick, Patrick received many awards and honors. He received sustained superior performance awards in 1954, 1958, 1962, 1968, 1977 and 1980. He received a special service award in 1982, the Order of the Military Medical Merit in 1986 and the Barnett L. Cohen Award.

On his retirement from federal service, he formed his own consulting service, Biothreats Assessment. He performed contractual services for the Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, FBI, U.S. Secret Service and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, among others. He was a team leader of a United Nations UNSCOM inspection visit to Iraq. He has appeared on all of the major television networks, as well as the Canadian Broadcasting Network, the BBC, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. Because of his stellar contributions to our country's security, Mr. Patrick was awarded a CIA Meritorious Citation and the Order of Military Medical Merit.

In addition to the numerous guest-lecturing appearances at the National War College, Army War College, Air War College, MIT, CDC and the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Patrick held five U.S. patents pertaining to biological processes and equipment, and has authored 16 articles in scientific literature, as well as 98 major, in-house Department of the Army publications.

The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 4, at Keeney and Basford, P.A., Funeral Home, 106 E. Church St., Frederick. Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5, in the Etchison Memorial Chapel of the funeral Home. Mrs. Curtis Baughman will officiate. Interment will be in Resthaven Memorial Gardens, Frederick.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Kline Hospice House, 7000 Kimmel Road, Mount Airy, MD 21771-8601.

Online condolences may be shared at Keeney Basford.com.

Standing in his study, a waltz playing in the background, Bill Patrick reached into an old green duffel bag, pulled out a garden sprayer and pointed out an inconspicuous detail at its tip.

''That gives it a lot more zip,'' he said.

Pumping the sprayer vigorously four or five times, he produced a large cloud of fine particles that hung in the air like fog. He smiled approvingly. His mock attack with deadly germs had gone perfectly.

''So if I were a terrorist and had a liquid product, I'd choose this sprayer,'' he said.

How serious is the threat?

''It scares the hell out of me,'' replied Mr. Patrick, 72, a cheerful man who seems haunted by dark visions. ''It's just a matter of time. It's not if. It's when.''

In ways obvious and otherwise, the United States is fast becoming better prepared to defend itself against the menace of biological terrorism.

And the thanks, in part, go to Mr. Patrick.

For two decades, he worked for the Federal Government in secret laboratories behind barbed wire, helping to harness germs for war, overseeing ranks of scientists and engineers. He himself holds three secret patents and shares two others.

After President Richard M. Nixon ended the offensive program, Mr. Patrick turned his efforts to finding ways to ward off biological attacks from armies and terrorists, foreign or domestic.

In the deserts of Iraq, working as an inspector for the United Nations, he helped shatter the wall of deception around Saddam Hussein's germ warfare program, which had secretly grown enough pestilential microbes to kill everyone on earth several times over.

Now Mr. Patrick has gone public. Quietly, he has mounted a personal campaign to educate senior Government officials, policy experts and ordinary citizens about the risks of germ terrorism and how to combat it. To do so, he gives talks, writes books and grants interviews, opening a window on the once-secret world of germ warfare

This man of dark expertise, a father of two, lives in a comfortable home atop a wooded hill here, surrounded by classical music, his wife, Virginia, and a small dog named Billy the Kid.

Mr. Patrick loves black humor, and his business card proudly bears a skull and crossbones while his consulting firm's stationery is topped with an image of the grim reaper.

He also likes to shock guests with displays of simulated biological warfare.

''It's interesting to get people's reaction,'' he said with a mischievous look as he pushed forward a handful of glass vials.

Just two pounds of such germs, he said, ''can go a long, long way in terms of hell and havoc.''

William Capers Patrick 3d was born July 24, 1926. The only child of a produce broker, he grew up in Furman, S.C., a town of 150 people. He wanted to be an astronomer. But Army service in the World War II showed him the near miracle of penicillin, just coming into wide use

After the war, he went to college eager to cure diseases and aid the new field of antibiotic medicine. He received a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of South Carolina in 1948 and, a year later, a master's degree in microbiology from the University of Tennessee.

While working for a company in Indiana that made the new wonder drugs, he got a call from an old teacher who had gone to work on secret Federal projects. The mentor encouraged Mr. Patrick to sign up.

''He said, 'You'll find this the most interesting work in the world,' '' Mr. Patrick recalled, adding that it was ''hard to turn down your professor.''

In 1951, after getting a top-secret clearance, Mr. Patrick began working for the Army at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. The base was the heart of the Government's secret mission to prepare for biological combat, and work was expanding as the Korean War escalated.

Wary of growing Communist power, Mr. Patrick excelled and quickly became a team leader, dazzling supervisors with an array of achievements, including methods he developed to grow lethal germs and freeze-dry them for dispersal.

By 1965, he was head of ''product development,'' leading about 80 scientists, engineers and technicians who worked to turn bacteria, fungi, viruses and microbial toxins into ''products'' meant to kill and incapacitate people in gruesome ways.

When the military secretly tested the deadly germs in remote locales, Mr. Patrick was often the senior Fort Detrick official present. For example, in 1968, he was among those watching as jets spread germs over barges, anchored at sea a thousand miles southwest of Hawaii. The barges were packed with hundreds of rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs, half of which died.

The American public knew nothing of such tests. But people did know that Fort Detrick was the military's germ central, so antiwar protesters often marched outside its gates.

''They'd turn their back on you,'' Mr. Patrick recalled. ''But we thought we were doing the patriotic thing because we were risking life and limb.''

Indeed, three of his colleagues were accidentally exposed to germ agents and later died. Mr. Patrick himself came down with Q fever, a disease meant to immobilize enemy troops with fevers, headaches, chills and coughing.

In November 1969, President Nixon abruptly ended the program.

Skeptics said he did so to foster an image as a peacemaker. Federal experts later attributed the act to pragmatism. Germ weapons, they said, were judged superfluous for a state already heavily armed with conventional, chemical and nuclear arms.

Mr. Patrick spent the next few years dismissing people and dismantling the laboratories and plants he had helped build. ''We flooded the market with all these microbiologists, chemists, physicists,'' he recalled. ''It was a real bad time.''

In 1972, at Washington's urging, most nations renounced germ warfare as immoral and repugnant.

Fort Detrick went from ''black to white,'' Mr. Patrick said. Switching hats himself, he went to work there developing germ defenses at the newly established United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

But the switch was difficult. He retired from the agency in 1986, at 59.

''It's a different world,'' Mr. Patrick said. ''Defense studies are so much more complicated. It takes 18 months to develop a weapons-grade agent and 10 more years to develop a good vaccine against it.''

''I was offensively oriented,'' he conceded. ''And that's my expertise today.''

As history would have it, his dark knowledge became increasingly valuable to the Federal authorities in the 1980's and 1990's as germ threats and attacks grew in number.

In 1985, Mr. Patrick helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation prove that followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Oregon had poisoned salad bars with salmonella in an effort to keep voters away in a local election. More than 750 people fell ill.

In 1990, as the United States and its allies prepared to force Iraqi invaders from Kuwait, he helped evaluate the risk of a germ attack. Responding to such advice, the American military began a crash program to vaccinate troops against anthrax.

In 1992, at a secluded spot around Washington, Mr. Patrick debriefed the Russian defector known as Ken Alibek, who said Moscow had secretly produced hundreds of tons of anthrax, smallpox and plague germs, ready to spur Armageddon despite having signed a treaty banning such arms.

Mr. Patrick interrogated him for the Central Intelligence Agency, testing his credibility. ''We got right down to it,'' he recalled. ''I won't say we fell in love, but we gained an immediate respect for one another.''

In 1994, Mr. Patrick joined a United Nations team to investigate a factory complex in Iraq spread across seven miles of desert. His observations there helped show that microbe driers ostensibly for making herbicides were actually meant to produce deadly germs in large quantities.

The next year was a turning point. The Iraqis admitted, finally, to having undertaken a vast effort to prepare for biological war. The same year, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo released nerve gas in Tokyo subways, killing a dozen people and injuring thousands.

Mr. Patrick aided the American authorities in tracking the cult, helping to discover a series of failed germ attacks and learning that the biological assaults were meant to kill millions. A cultist later testified that the sect had even attacked two American naval bases near Tokyo.

In his efforts to raise public awareness about biological terrorism, Mr. Patrick has taken many routes, some more visible than others.

He quietly advised [Richard McCann Preston (born 1954)], author of ''The Cobra Event'' (Random House, 1997), a novel about a germ terrorist's attack on New York City. The book so alarmed President Clinton that he had his intelligence experts assess its credibility.

Mr. Patrick himself is a co-author of ''Jane's Chem-Bio Handbook'' (Jane's Information Group, 1998), an antiterrorism guide for health professionals. It discusses germ agents, how terrorists might spread them and how to avoid, diagnose and treat illnesses.

''Contrary to reports in the lay press, municipal water supplies are very difficult to contaminate,'' he wrote, explaining that ''dilution and diffusion factors as well as chlorination'' weaken such assaults.

Mr. Patrick's voice is authoritative and at times contentious on different kinds of germ defenses.

He is critical of vaccines, despite a Clinton Administration push to stockpile them for crises. A smart adversary, he holds, will usually be able to find a way around immunizations, most readily by choosing a different germ or by modifying an old one.

As a first line of defense, Mr. Patrick urges tightening controls on legitimate germ commerce -- an inconspicuous trade that has helped scientists study and crush diseases around the globe. But American germ banks have also inadvertently delivered noxious microbes to hostile armies and domestic terrorists.

''We've got to have better controls,'' Mr. Patrick said. ''We've got to make it a penalty for these cultures to get out.'' Washington is starting to limit germ sales in the United States, but no parallel effort yet exists among the world's 1,000 or so other microbe banks

Mr. Patrick also criticizes lax security at airports and major Government buildings.

He loves to perform his own impromptu tests by dragging bags filled with germ paraphernalia through checkpoints at places like the Pentagon, the State Department and Washington Dulles International Airport.

Grabbing his old green duffel bag, he displayed its jumble of sprayers, glass vials, plastic bags and simulated agents -- a witch's brew of biological malice.

''Nobody's ever stopped me,'' he said, shaking his head. ''Nobody's ever stopped and asked, 'What's all this stuff?' ''

Perhaps Mr. Patrick's most novel enthusiasm centers on strengthening major Government buildings and even individual homes against germ attack by adjusting their air flow. He has strongly urged private and Federal officials to adopt such measures, which are said to be planned for New York City's $15 million crisis control center.

His idea, which he calls positive pressure, is to bolster ventilation systems so a gentle breeze blows outward through a building whenever a door or window is opened. In theory, this wind would keep the structure safe from dangerous germs by automatically sweeping them away.

''It's so simple,'' Mr. Patrick said. ''As bad as biological warfare is, this is an effective way of keeping things under control.''

Mr. Patrick said he had no guilt about his long labors to develop germ weapons, only a sense of foreboding. Terrorist attacks with germs are inevitable, he said. The Government is taking a number of prudent safeguards and in no way is exaggerating the threat, so far as he can tell.

The big uncertainty, Mr. Patrick added, is how severe the attacks will be and whether the United States has the wherewithal to protect itself adequately and defuse the potential harm and mayhem.

It must try to do so.

''We don't have any other option,'' he said.

[Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)], the former Fort Detrick biodefense researcher whose Frederick apartment was searched Tuesday by the FBI, commissioned a 1999 study that described a fictional terrorist attack in which an envelope containing weapons-grade anthrax is opened in an office.

The study, written by a veteran of the old U.S. bioweapons program, was submitted to Hatfill and a colleague at Science Applications International Corp., the McLean, Va., defense contractor where he then worked.

It discusses the danger of anthrax spores spreading through the air and the requirements for decontamination after various kinds of attacks. The author, [Dr. William Capers Patrick III (born 1926)], describes placing 2.5 grams of Bacillus globigii, an anthrax simulant, in a standard business envelope - slightly more than the estimated amount of anthrax in each of the letters that killed five people last fall.

The study, portions of which were read to The Sun by a person who has a copy, illustrates the central paradox of the FBI's nine-month quest for the anthrax mailer: The perpetrator could be a respected American scientist in the biodefense field, where he acquired the skills he then used to kill.

The study discussing the mail attack, for instance, was written as a scientific exercise to draw on Patrick's expertise and help improve defenses against bioterrorism. But the FBI must consider the possibility that such a document could have planted the seed for a terrorist plot

The traits of a top-notch specialist in biodefense are the same as those of the likely perpetrator of the mail attacks: knowledge of anthrax and how it can be turned into a potent weapon; access to a lab where anthrax is stored; vaccination against anthrax; even very strong views about the threat of bioterrorism.

[Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)], 48, is a colorful character with all those traits and more. He has said in interviews that his background naturally drew the FBI's attention. Attempts to reach him yesterday were unsuccessful, and the manager of his apartment complex told reporters he was traveling overseas. Hatfill has adamantly denied having anything to do with the anthrax mailings.

A physician and Ph.D. who completed Army Special Forces training, Hatfill is a pilot and has special training in aviation and submarine medicine. He spent 14 months as a doctor and researcher in Antarctica. More recently, he told his college alumni magazine that he has trained with the United Nations to become a bioweapons inspector in Iraq if the regime agrees.

[Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)], raised in Mattoon, Ill., attended medical school in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia, and has described witnessing in 1979-1980 the largest outbreak of human anthrax - an estimated 10,000 cases, most of them cutaneous. Experts still debate whether the Zimbabwe outbreak occurred naturally or was a tactic in the civil war then raging between the white government and black guerrillas.

In recent years, while working at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick as well as at the National Institutes of Health, Hatfill has spoken frequently on the bioterrorist threat, stressing how easy it would be for a terrorist to brew a deadly bioagent in his kitchen. While at SAIC, where he worked from 1999 until March, he helped create a mock bioterror laboratory for use in a training exercise in Guam for soldiers of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

[Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)] is a friend and protege of [Dr. William Capers Patrick III (born 1926)], 75, a bioweapons legend who has himself experienced the dual status of expert and possible suspect.Recently, Patrick underwent a three-hour FBI polygraph examination. When he passed, the FBI invited him to join the inner circle of technical advisers to the investigation, Patrick said.

Another anthrax expert, Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University, said he, too, has been questioned repeatedly by the FBI, both as a scientist and as a possible perpetrator.

"Sometimes it's one and sometimes it's the other," he said. He doesn't like being grilled, but he accepts it. "I think they would have been derelict if they hadn't questioned me."

In the case of Hatfill, it is unclear why FBI agents waited at least six months after they first questioned him to conduct a thorough search of his home. One possibility: a briefing last week for Senate staffers by biologist [Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (born 1930)].

Rosenberg, who heads a biological weapons working group at the Federation of American Scientists, has repeatedly criticized the bureau for failing to aggressively pursue a "likely suspect" whom she has not named but who closely resembles [Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)]. Her Senate briefing was attended by Van Harp, who heads the anthrax investigation as assistant FBI director in charge of the Washington field office, and three other FBI agents.

FBI officials, speaking on background, say that Hatfill is only one of many scientists who have come under scrutiny, that he agreed to the search and that they found nothing incriminating, though tests for anthrax spores are not complete.

Yet neighbors and television viewers will not soon forget the daylong spectacle of FBI agents, some in protective gear, carrying equipment in and out of Hatfill's apartment just outside the gates to Fort Detrick.

In March, in a telephone message to The Sun, [Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)] complained that his very dedication to the cause of biological defense had brought him under suspicion. He said he had just been fired from his job at SAIC, the defense contractor, and blamed news media inquiries.

"I've been in this field for a number of years, working until 3 o'clock in the morning, trying to counter this type of weapon of mass destruction, and, sir, my career is over at this time," Hatfill said. "There was a lot of hysteria. A lot of us got polygraphed over this incident as part of the screening process."

However, SAIC officials said [Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)] was dismissed because his security clearance had been suspended by the Defense Department on Aug. 23, 2001, and had not been restored more than six months later. Company officials said they were not told the reason for the suspension. Press inquiries about Hatfill had nothing do to with his firing, they said.

A few other details of the FBI's scrutiny of Hatfill emerged yesterday. Investigators have learned that while in Rhodesia, Hatfill lived a few miles from a Greendale School, according to a report on ABC News, confirmed yesterday by a Rhodesian medical school classmate. The return address on some of the anthrax letters was "Greendale School" with a fictitious address in New Jersey.

The Associated Press reported that agents have searched a public storage facility [Steven Jay Hatfill (born 1953)] rented in Ocala, Fla. Hatfill's parents, Norman and Shirley Hatfill, own a thoroughbred farm in Ocala called Mekamy Oaks that he has occasionally listed as his address.

The current FBI and media scrutiny of Hatfill is only a more intense version of the attention that has bedeviled the Army's premier biological defense centers at Fort Detrick and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Scientists who have devoted their careers to protecting the country from a bioterrorist enemy have been angered and frustrated to suddenly be seen as possible enemies themselves.

"Everybody's under suspicion," said Gigi Kwik, a fellow at the John Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies who did post-doctoral research at Fort Detrick last year and has kept in touch with colleagues there. "It's a terrible atmosphere."

Work habits that ordinarily win bosses' praise have become suspect, as FBI agents check lab access records and ask which scientists worked late at night. "I routinely was there until midnight," Kwik says. "That was expected of me as a post-doc."

David R. Franz, commander of USAMRIID at Fort Detrick from 1995 to 1998, said he fears the suspicion that has focused on the biodefense research center may do it serious harm.

He noted that USAMRIID scientists worked long hours to test suspected anthrax powder last fall and have provided extensive technical assistance to the FBI. Yet dozens of the same workers are now being given polygraph tests, and the institute is repeatedly named in the news media as a possible source of the mailed anthrax.

"To see them dragged through the mud is what hurts me," Franz said.

Nonetheless, he says, it is critical that the FBI solve the case.

"It's so important for this nation that we find this person or persons and show that you don't do this to us," he said. "If we don't catch them, we'll be inviting others to try it again."