THE LESSONS OF STEVEN HATFILL. How one man lied his way into the most dangerous lab in America.
Poepsie
COVER STORY: THE LESSONS OF STEVEN HATFILL
How one man lied his way into the most dangerous lab in America.
A Special SEED Investigation by Writer-at-Large Simon Cooper.
The most lethal forms of life on Earth are contained inside a small,
innocuous-looking suite of laboratories at the heart of The most
lethal forms of life on Earth are contained inside a small,
innocuous-looking suite of laboratories at the heart of the United
States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases complex
at Fort Detrick, Maryland. On September 18, 1997, microbiologist
Steven Jay Hatfill walked through the gates of the facility, which is
known by the acronym USAMRIID, to begin work in the Virology Division.
USAMRIID grew from the ashes of an aggressive biowarfare research
program run by the US until President Nixon shut it down in 1969.
Afterward, the base converted to defense work. USAMRIID is home to a
vast collection of nightmare pathogens and organisms—Lassa
fever, monkey pox, plague, and various strains of anthrax, including
the new AMES strain identified by the army in 1980. The facility is
also home to the Ebola and Marburg viruses, the most feared and
respected of all USAMRIID’s microscopic horrors. There are no
cures and no vaccines for these viruses, whose victims bleed to death.
In fact many microbiologists refuse to work with Ebola and Marburg
because they are simply too dangerous. At USAMRIID, Ebola and Marburg
are imprisoned in a Level Four biosafety environment, a super-secure
suite of laboratories accessed through a series of airlocks, security
doors, coded entry panels, and decontamination showers. In Level
Four—the heart of USAMRIID—scientists wear spacesuits.
Hatfill was approved to begin work at USAMRIID after a two-year
sojourn as a federally funded Fellow with the National Institutes of
Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). His job was to study
filoviruses, the family to which Ebola and Marburg belong. Within a
month, he was authorized to access the Level Four pathogens, as well
as the Level Three bugs such as anthrax and plague.
Hatfill had not been hired as an official employee of
USAMRIID—which would have required a mandatory national agency
security check—but as a Special Volunteer, effectively borrowed
from the NICHD. His evaluation consisted of an academic review of his
research, which prima facie looked both innovative and impressive. On
September 2, 1997, after his resume and credentials were reviewed by
the National Research Council, Hatfill received a letter from Arthur
S. Levine, scientific director of the NICHD, confirming his
appointment as a National Institutes of Health adjunct scientist,
sponsored and paid for by USAMRIID. Now cleared to begin work at Fort
Detrick, Hatfill’s resume went into an NICHD filing cabinet
along with the resumes of hundreds of other scientists past and
present.
It is almost certain that many of the resumes in those cabinets had
been polished to present the best possible image of their owners.
There’s nothing unusual about that. All resumes land on the
desks of personnel departments with a bit of top-spin. But
there’s a world of difference between a lick of polish and what
was lurking in Hatfill’s resume.
Between 1995 and 1999, Hatfill prepared and submitted around six
versions of his resume for various positions and research grants. Each
resume was tailored to suit the audience it was intended for, yet
together they painted a consistent portrait. Here, said the resumes,
is a successful, brave, and daring man. Here is a soldier, a
scientist, and a leader—an innovator with a hint of maverick, a
dash of the establishment, and a splash of joie de vivre.
But the resumes were not as they seemed; they were documents intended
to deceive. Though they had been constructed around a skeleton of
truth, they were clothed in a carefully woven concoction of lies,
half-truths, and exaggerations. Hatfill’s resumes, his ticket
into the NICHD and later, USAMRIID’s Level Four biocontainment
labs, were misrepresentations of the man and his achievements. And
yet, it appears these lies were not uncovered until Hatfill had
already passed through some of America’s most sensitive and
dangerous military and biological facilities.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FALL 2001
The atrocity of September 11, 2001, had barely sunk into the national
consciousness when another attack was unleashed. A week after more
than 3,000 people died in the three plane attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, three letters were deposited into a mailbox
in Trenton, New Jersey. The letters, addressed to The New York Post,
NBC, and The National Enquirer all contained powdered anthrax.
On October 2, Robert Stevens, a photo editor at the Enquirer building,
died of inhalation anthrax. His was to be the first of five anthrax
deaths all linked to a series of letters sent in the wake of 9/11. Two
more letters containing anthrax were posted on October 9, addressed to
Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
The FBI launched a massive investigation out of its Washington, DC
headquarters. One of the first tasks was to analyze the anthrax.
Genetic tests revealed that all the letters contained the same AMES
strain of anthrax and that at least one sample was weaponized,
possibly using a process similar to one developed at Fort Detrick. On
January 29, 2002, the FBI wrote to the American Society of
Microbiology asking for its membership list The FBI had concluded the
motivation for the anthrax attacks was criminal and not ideological.
Suddenly eyes turned away from Islam terrorists abroad and toward the
homefront.
According to the FBI, the perpetrator had “the technical
knowledge and/or expertise to produce a highly refined and deadly
product.” The attacker, the Bureau suggested, had worked at
USAMRIID sometime in the past, might have worked as a CIA contractor,
and could have a connection to the UN’s weapons inspectors. The
attacker was probably middle-aged and might be described as
stand-offish, likely preferring to “work in isolation as opposed
to a group/team setting.”
In February White House spokesperson Ad Fleischer revealed that the
FBI had “several suspects” before re-emphasizing:
“All indications are that the source of the anthrax is
domestic.”
Actually, there were some 30 individuals being scrutinized, but one
name was at the top of the list, thanks to a tip about a former
USAMRIID researcher. Media and Internet chatter later reported that
this researcher had been heard bragging about using anthrax in the
former Rhodesia.
There was no arrest, but by March, a name had been leaked. The name
belonged to a man who had worked for Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC), a DC-based contractor for both the
Pentagon and the CIA. Before that, he’d been a researcher at
USAMR1ID.
On June 25, Hatfill signed a consent form allowing the FBI to search
his apartment without a warrant. Minutes after he signed, television
camera crews and reporters began to swarm into the street outside his
home, which was close to the gates of Fort Detrick. Hatfill challenged
an FBI agent about the remarkably rapid appearance of the press.
“How the hell did they know to get here so fast?”
“Sorry,” the agent told him. “Orders from
above.”
On July 2, The New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof named a
“Mr. Z” as a “biodefense insider who intrigued
investigators,” and he criticized the FBI for not pursuing
“Mr. Z” more aggressively. The details of Kristof’s
Mr. Z appeared to match the FBI’s profiles, as well as what was
known of Hatfill.
Indeed, there were remarkable similarities between Hatfill and the
suspect described in FBI profiles. Hatfill had worked at USAMRIID
researching exotic pathogens; he had later worked for a company that
did CIA contract work (including a study on a hypothetical anthrax
mail attack); and he had trained as a UN weapons inspector.
In the weeks and months that followed, Hatfill’s life was torn
apart by both the FBI and the media, yet no charges were laid. Then on
August 22, live on national television, Attorney General John Ashcroft
named Hatfill as a “person of interest.” The pressure on
Hatfill became intense. Twice the scientist gave anguished news
conferences proclaiming his innocence. Near tears at times, he
addressed the television cameras stating: “I want to look my
fellow Americans in the eye and declare to them, ‘I am not the
anthrax killer.’ My life is being destroyed by arrogant
government bureaucrats who are peddling groundless innuendo and half
information.” Hatfill lashed out at Ashcroft: “In my view,
he has broken the ninth commandment: thou shalt not bear false
witness.”
Hatfill’s choice of commandment was interesting. Thou shalt not
bear false witness.
Thou shalt not lie.
FORT BRAGG, GEORGIA JUNE 1976
Hatfill had made it. He had survived being bawled at by drill
sergeants, being marched for miles and miles in full combat gear, the
endless inspections, drills, and exercises. He’d been pushed out
of planes, pulled up through and over every conceivable type of
obstacle, man-made and natural. Finally, he’d made it to Fort
Bragg, home of US Special Forces. It was the beginning of a grueling
year-long training program; those who succeeded would become members
of one of the world’s finest, toughest fighting units. As
Hatfill passed through the gates of Fort Bragg, he must have been
feeling a multitude of emotions: excitement, apprehension, pride, and
maybe, a small but healthy dash of fear. He was 22 years old.
Hatfill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 4, 1953, and
attended Mattoon Senior High School in Illinois. He showed a flair for
science, which he carried through to college, studying biology at
Southwestern University in Winfield, Kansas.
Partway through his degree, Hatfill halted his studies to work as a
‘health assistant’ with Methodist missionary Glenn
Eschtruth at a mission Eschtruth had operated in Zaire since 1960.
Through Eschtruth, Hatfill met the woman who was to become his future
wife, Eschtruth’s daughter, Caroline Ruth.
After spending eight months in Zaire, Hatfill returned to Kansas and
completed his degree. On June 20, 1975, at the age of 21, Hatfill
enlisted in the US Army with his sights set high; he wanted to join
the Special Forces. A few weeks later, Private Hatfill graduated with
his BA from Southwestern, but he was already a long way from Kansas,
on the road toward his Special Forces goal. Over the next year,
Hatfill would complete a series of training courses that took him from
Airborne school in Fort Banning, Georgia, to West Germany and back. In
the spring of 1976, Hatfill finally made it to Fort Bragg and began
the Special Forces Qualification Course, a grueling five-stage
selection process that takes at least a year to complete.
But on July 2, 1976, just a few weeks after starting at Fort Bragg,
and just over a year after enlisting in the array, Hatfill was
discharged from active duty. He spent the rest of his service period
languishing, unused by the Army National Guard.
In Hatfill’s army records there is little to see; under
“Medals and Citations” there is no Good Conduct Medal.
There are no Special Forces tabs that he would automatically have been
awarded had he completed the Special Forces course. Without completing
that course he could never have “served with the US Army Special
Forces” as he later would proudly claim on the resume he
submitted to USAMRIID in 1997, which includes the following entry:
6/75—6/77 United States Army. 7th Special Forces Group, JFK
Center for Special Warfare.
Further down the resume under the heading “Practical
Experience” is the entry:
USMC [United States Marine Corps] Officer Candidate Program... served
with US Army Special Forces after college graduation where my
commanding officer was Col. Charles Beckworth, who was later to lead
the abortive hostage rescue mission into Iraq.
Hatfill would lie about his military experience throughout, his entire
life, creating ever more elaborate accounts as time progressed. In an
interview with Richard Preston, author of the internationally
acclaimed The Hot Zone, Hatfill, sitting in his office at USAMRIID,
claimed not only an army career spanning two decades, but also to have
been a captain in the Special Forces.
Two months after his 1976 separation from Fort Bragg, Hatfill married
19-year-old Caroline Rush Eschtruth at the United Methodist Church in
Pinnebog, Michigan. It was not to be a happy or a long union. In April
1977, Caroline’s father was killed at his mission during
fighting between Zairian and Angolan troops. His death devastated
Caroline. Hatfill too was affected deeply and in later years would
often bitterly recount his father-in-law’s death.
Following his army discharge, Hatfill returned to his interest in
science and, in particular, medicine. In August 1977, Hatfill gained
qualification as a medical laboratory technician from the American
Society of Clinical Pathology but decided he wanted to be a doctor. By
this time, his marriage was under strain, and soon after, Hatfill left
the United States.
HARARE, RHODESIA EARLY MARCH 1979
The war was over—unofficially at least. After a decade and a
half of fighting and the loss of more than 40,000 lives,
Rhodesia’s civil war was winding down. A ceasefire had been
declared. Shops and restaurants began to reopen. People scattered by
the conflict picked their way home; foreigners and foreign money
returned to the country, which, within a year, would be renamed
Zimbabwe.
March is considered the best month in southern Africa. The rains abate
and the baking heat of the African summer is still only a distant
threat. Temperatures hover around a delightful 75 degrees. It is
pristine weather. Weather fit for new beginnings.
In March 1979, at the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine at the
University of Rhodesia, students were preparing to enroll for their
first year’s study. Their first true year of peace. The
university’s main hall was crowded with tables, in front of
which dozens of students queued to register. As they stood in line
chatting, a loud voice caught their ears, a voice that seemed to defy
the hubbub of the hall, cutting through the hundreds of other voices
with a forceful, unpleasant tone. Turning to see who the voice
belonged to, a student in the line for the medical school saw its
source was a short, stocky man with dark hair, a moustache, and dark,
dark eyes; the man was corralling various groups of students, telling
them where to go and what to do. His swagger and confidence struck the
student. He must be a senior professor, or at least a lecturer, he
thought.
‘Who’s that shouting the odds?” he asked the student
next to him.
“He’s an American. Don’t pay any attention to
him,” came the reply.
“Is he a professor?”
There was a snort of laughter. God no. Just some asshole who has too
much to say for himself.”
Steven Hatfill would often incite this type of reaction at Godfrey
Huggins, where he had enrolled a year earlier. Caroline, who had filed
for divorce, remained in the US. Two months into his studies, their
divorce came through, marking a year that would only get worse;
Hatfill failed the first university barrier exam and was forced to
repeat a year.
Many of Hatfill’s freshman class were conscripted war veterans,
released early from the armed forces to start their medical training
on the proviso they remained available for call-up. There were still
pockets of sporadic violence in Rhodesia and, on weekends and
vacations, some class members would rejoin their units and go on
active duty.
A few months after the start of Hatfill’s second try at
first-year medical school, a small group of undergraduates were
unwinding in a campus bar after a weekend call-up. The beer was cold
and cheap, the company good and reassuring. Many were recounting
experiences of their last missions—a kind of barroom therapy to
smooth out the jitters and fatigue of a conflict that had gone on far
too long.
As they talked, Hatfill walked into the bar. Immediately, a few in the
group grew quiet. Hatfill wandered over to the edge of the
conversation. No one acknowledged his presence. Most avoided his
gaze.
One of the students in the bar recalls what happened next. He, like
most of Hatfill’s classmates interviewed for this investigation,
has asked for his name to be withheld. (Such has been the fallout of
Hatfill’s “person of interest” status that former
classmates have been placed under suspicion by colleagues and
employers merely because they happened to go to school with him.)
“We were fairly jovial, but then Steve walked into the bar. He
butted in with a story of an experience he said he’d had as a
pilot in Vietnam. The conversation stopped dead. A few of the guys
even walked out. Everybody turned toward him. There was a real sense
of animosity— some people were bristling.”
“I did quick mathematics and said, ‘There’s no way,
Steve. The Vietnam War ended in ‘74 and the Americans pulled out
in ‘72. There’s no way you could have been there, When did
you start your training—when you were 16?’”
There were a couple of snickers from the group. Hatfill said nothing,
turned on his heel, and left.
A classmate of Hatfill’s remembers a clever, energetic man
hampered by an apparently overwhelming desire to impress at any cost.
“‘That was the thing about Steve. He was an extraordinary
guy and very, very bright. But he was also a real Walter Mitty kind of
character, and he would tell these enormous, awful lies. He once told
me his wife had died in the Congo.”
“And when he told a lie like that, you were never certain if he
was telling a lie to see what he could get out of it, or if he was
telling a lie to see how far he could go with it, to see how gullible
you were. If I ever caught him in a lie he’d just sort of wink
at me and give me a nudge, as if to say ‘you caught me on that
one.’”
Hatfill’s antics divided his class into two camps: those who
could tolerate him and those who could not. In one incident, a few
classmates were pulling late-night duty in one of Harare’s
teaching hospitals. ‘We were sitting, chatting in the lounge
when Hatfill walked in. Probably three quarters of the students got up
and walked out,” says a classmate who was there that night.
Hatfill became isolated from the rest of his year. Yet, outwardly, he
seemed unaffected by his rejection. Indeed, he would go out of his way
to engage, amuse, and entertain his fellow students. “He could
be absolutely hilarious,” says one classmate.
“I’ve seen him bring large groups of students to their
knees with his antics. His speciality was to stick a small flashlight
up his nose, turn off the lights in a ward, and then ‘fly’
around the ward turning the flashlight on and off to simulate an
aircraft’s landing lights.”
Meanwhile, outside of medical school, Hatfill was still chasing after
lost military ambitions. Sometime after arriving in Rhodesia, Hatfill
turned up at the door of the Rhodesian police’s Special
Branch— their equivalent of the FBI—and offered his
services. At the time, the Special Branch was a part of the Selous
Scouts, an elite Rhodesian Special Forces counterinsurgency unit,
which spent much of its time behind enemy lines. The Scouts were an
amalgam of Army Special Forces soldiers and Special Branch police
officers. Intelligence was vital to Scouts operations and the mainly
black officers of Special Branch undertook this function.
Hatfill was 24 at the time, still an undergraduate, and struggling at
medical school. He had little to offer Special Branch, other than a
willingness to help. He was referred on to the medics of the Scouts
and was dispatched as a volunteer junior medic to a field hospital at
a base called Fort Bindura. There, he bandaged wounded guerilla
fighters and acted as an assistant of sorts for the true Scouts
medics. By the time 1980 arrived, the war was over, the Scouts
disbanded, and Hatfill’s brief, tangential association with them
ended.
Yet, in Hatfill’s mind, his Rhodesian military
“service” was somewhat more grandiose. He claimed to have
been a “badged” member of the Scouts and to have worked
behind enemy lines. Those lies were manifested into two certificates
seized by the FBI during their anthrax investigation; one purporting
to show his graduation from a Scouts tracking course, the other a
citation for good conduct. Both bore the forged signatures of genuine
Scouts officers.
A number of Hatfill’s resumes go on to claim that while in
Rhodesia he served with the Rhodesian SAS. His 1997 resume elaborates,
claiming he had seen “active combat experience with C Squadron
Special Air Service (Rhodesia).” The regimental association of
the Rhodesian SAS is adamant Hatfill never belonged to the unit. In a
terse e-mail, their spokesman states, “Hatfill is not an
ex-member of this unit; he was never attached to the unit in any way.
If has also made claims that he was a member of an American unit
giving ‘assistance’ to C Squadron. This is also
untrue.”
Following the “person of interest” furor, Hatfill was
accused in a number of media stories of being a protégé of Robert
Symington, an anatomy professor at the University of Rhodesia’s
medical school, rumoured to have been the head of an alleged secret
Rhodesian biowarfare program.
“Prof,” as Symington was known, was a polarizing figure on
the university campus, which, despite its heritage, was solidly
liberal. Silver-haired with piercing blue eyes, Symington was an
unapologetic old-style Rhodesian. A student who considers himself a
protégé of Symington’s recalled the following incident.
“Prof had seen me talking to Steve Hatfill and invited me for a
walk,” he stated. “ told me in no uncertain terms that
Steve was a frigging idiot and it wasn’t going to do anyone any
good, particularly me, if I became a friend of his. It seems very
unlikely to me that Steve was involved with Bob Symington—unless
Bob had gone out of his way to lie to me, which wasn’t his way.
He never minced words about anything.”
Symington died in 1982 while swimming in the pool at the University of
Cape Town. To date, no concrete evidence has been produced proving his
involvement in a Rhodesian biowarfare program. Or that a biowarfare
program even existed.
UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE, HARARE 3PM, NOVEMBER 11, 1983
Hatfill’s class crowded around a locked, glass-fronted wooden
cabinet near the main campus halt to see the final exam results of
four years of hard work. After seeing their grades, they repaired to
the hall to start celebrating or commiserating.
Suddenly, amid the celebrations, the sound of violent shouting and
breaking glass could be heard from the hail, The students ran out to
find Hatfill, his face painted with rage, fuming in front of the
cabinet. Behind the shattered glass were the results indicating
Hatfill’s failure. As the students looked on, a campus security
guard arrived and tried to stop Hatfill from leaving the scene, but in
a fit of rage, Hatfill resisted, and threw the guard into a plate
glass window. The incident nearly got Hatfill arrested and thrown out
of university. but he was allowed to stay on for an extra six months
to re-sit his exams, and passed in 1984. By then Hatfill’s
classmates had already moved on to start their careers. For many, the
incident was the last they would hear of him until 2002, when, as part
of the anthrax coverage, tales of his alleged African of exploits
would be reported in newspaper of and television broadcasts worldwide.
QUEEN MAUDE ISLAND, ANTARCTICA DECEMBER, 1986
Hatfill stepped off the boat that had carried him south from Africa
onto the desolate, frozen expanse of Antarctica. The voyage was the
beginning of a phase in Hatfill’s life in which he would pursue
a dream job: a position with NASA.
In the autumn of 1986, Hatfill was chosen to participate in the South
African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE). and by December, was
destined for a 14-month tour of duty at South Africa’s isolated
base in Queen Maude Land, one of the most hostile environments on the
planet. It was a perfect starting point for a would-be space scientist
who, only a year earlier, had completed a 12-month internship at a
small rural hospital in South Africa’s North-West Province.
In 1985, he’d registered as a medical practitioner with the
South African Medical and Dental Council. His certificate to practice
cited his Bachelor of Medicine qualification as M ChB (Zimbabwe) 1984.
And in July 1986, Hatfill also successfully completed the process of
having his medical degree recognized in the US.
But mere doctoring was a million miles from Hatfill’s mind. He
was headed for the stars. When the SANAE post turned up he on his
resumes some ten years later, he variously records himself as the
expedition’s “Research Team Leader,”
“Assistant Research Team Leader,” “Science Leader
and Physician,” or simply “Team Physician.” But
Richard Skinner, a director of SANAE, stated Hatfill’s position
had been as an “expedition doctor only.” Hatfill’s
resume also claims that while at SANAE he conducted “research on
pineal hypothalamic dysfunction for NASA’s Solar System
Exploration Division. At the time, Mike Duke was the chief of the
division, headquartered at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Duke, a geologist now retired from NASA, recounts his contact with
Hatfill. “From what I remember I got a letter from him telling
me about his experiences in the Antarctic. He was interested in
applying his experiences in that environment to isolation in space. He
then sent me a paper, which as far as I could see was part of a
strategy of his for getting a job with NASA. I passed it on to the
medical section people at NASA and my recollection is they
didn’t do anything with it.” A year later Duke received
another unsolicited paper from Hatfill. Again, Duke sent the paper
along to his medical colleagues. According to Duke, “the result
was that nobody paid much attention to it.”
STELLENBOSCH. SOUTH AFRICA LATE 1988
Professor Lothar Bohm was impressed. His new student—a Dr.
Steven Jay Hatfill—was proving to be quite a catch. Hatfill had
thawed out from his Antarctic expedition and had completed a
microbiology master’s degree at the University of Cape Town.
While socializing at the UCT campus club, Hatfill met Bohm—then
director of the Stellenbosch University’s radiobiology
laboratory. The two discussed a second master’s this time under
Bohm’s tutelage. A master’s in medical biochemistry and
radiation biology would be an excellent stepping stone for
Hatfill’s journey to NASA.
Bohm would later recall Hatfill as an “intellectually
quick” researcher who had devised what Bohm describes as
“a brilliant, brilliant concept.” Hatfill proposed that by
metabolizing thalidomide with a special enzymal extract known as S-9,
the drug could be used to restore leukemic cells back to normal
function; it looked like a significant new treatment for leukemia.
Bohm was impressed with Hatfill’s theory and requisitioned the
S-9, at some expense to his laboratory.
Because of funding shortages, Hatfill’s time at Stellenbosch was
not fully covered. As a result, he took a job in the
university’s hematology laboratory as a clinical assistant, and
this position paid his way through school.
Hatfill’s research results were impressive, Bohm says.
“Because of his job, he ended up working not in my lab, but
mostly in hematology He was very mature and talked with so much
confidence. When he brought you data it looked right and you trusted
the guy. He was very convincing and he gave these superb
seminars.” Hatfill’s thesis, “Thalidomide Induction
of Differentiation and Potentiation of Radiation Induced Apoptosis in
Human K562 Cells,” won him his second master’s in December
1990. He immediately began a three-year hematological pathology
residency at Stellenbosch and in 1992 he began to work on his PhD
under the supervision of Professor Ralph Kirby at Rhodes University.
Hatfill’s resume records that in 1991, after starting his
hematology residence he “established” and then
“managed” or was “director” or
“laboratory chief” of a “Molecular Haematology
Laboratory” at the Tygerberg Hospital, which is part of the
Stellenbosch medical campus. In fact, no formal molecular hematology
lab was ever established at Tygerberg.
Erna Mansvelt, current director of hematology at Tygerberg. states,
“Dr. Hatfill was a registrar (postgraduate student) in this
department until the end of 1993. I am not aware that he had a
recognized molecular laboratory in our department at that time. He did
not have any official administrative duties in the department.”
Interviews with numerous scientists and officials familiar with
Hatfill’s work at Tygerberg confirm this statement. One such
official adds, “Molecular research was performed as and when a
particular individual displayed such an interest and ceased as soon as
Hatfill departed in 1993. He could hardly regard himself as a director
as there was nothing other than his own research project to direct.
There were certainly a number of people in the academic department at
the time who would have been more eligible than he for the status of
‘director,’ but such a designation simply did nor
exist.”
During the same period between 1990 and 1993, Hatfill also claims to
have performed “clinical rotations” at the
hematology-oncology and bone marrow transplantation unit at Groote
Schuur Hospital, which also acts as part of the Stellenbosch medical
campus. Hospital records show that after registrar posts at Groote
Schuur were advertised in October 1992, Hatfill applied for and was
awarded one of them. But in January 1993, he wrote on Stellenbosch
University letterhead to inform Groote Schuur that he would be unable
to take up the post, citing that his research was “at a critical
stage.” Subsequent checks confirm that Hatfill is not on record
as being “on the staff establishment of Groote Schuur
Hospital.”
Hatfill’s resume also has him working as an “Emergency
Medical Officer at Conradie General Hospital, RSA.” Again, there
is no record of him working there.
Interviews were conducted with staff who worked there in the early
1990s. “No one remembers Hatfill,” reports an employee.
According to his resume, 1993 was an extremely busy year. In addition
to completing his hematological pathology board certification, Hatfill
also claims to have been chairman of a South African scientific
organization, the Experimental Biology Group (EBG) and a member of the
Blood Transfusion Utilization Committee at Tygerberg. Checks with
current and former members of the ESG have failed to find any record
of Hatfill’s chairmanship. Moreover, Tygerberg’s Blood
Transfusion Committee has no records of Hatfill’s involvement.
Hatfill also claims to have been a member of an AIDS advisory panel
organized through the Council for Scientific Industrial Research
(CSIR) on AIDS in 1994. CSIR never convened an AIDS advisory panel.
Hatfill’s penchant for the military also managed to bleed its
way into the sections of his resume dealing with South Africa. Hatfill
claims to have been assigned to the “2nd Medical Battalion (TA
Reserve)” of the South African Defense Force during his time in
South Africa. But Lieutenant Colonel Louis Kirstein, spokesperson for
the South African Department for Defense states the following;
‘We have no records of a Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill on our
system.”
In most of his resumes Hatfill also describes himself as a
“consultant flight surgeon to 32 Squadron [changed in later
resumes to 30 Squadron] Air/Sea rescue unit based at Yesterplatt (sic)
Air Force Base, Cape Town.” Apart from the incorrect spelling of
Ysterplaat, the main problem with this entry is that there are no such
Squadrons. Ysterplaat is home to two air and sea rescue squadrons: 22
Squadron and 35 Squadron. Ysterplaat’s commanding officer
Lieutenant Colonel Harry Treurnich can remember “no one of that
name having served at the base.”
Hatfill attended two medical courses while in South Africa; one at the
Institute of Aviation Medicine, the other at the Institute of Maritime
Medicine. Both courses were only two-week certification courses, but
Hatfill claims they were, respectively, eight and five weeks long, and
records them under a section marked “Postgraduate
Diplomas.” Neither course is considered a postgraduate
qualification. While at the Maritime Institute, Hatfill claims to have
gained qualification in hyperbaric medicine. Hyperbaric medicine is
not part of the course he completed.
On Friday September 17, 1993, Lothar Bohm was fuming. There were major
problems with Hatfill’s master’s thesis experiments. Other
researchers could not reproduce the results. Also, other scientists at
the laboratory were finding it impossible to extract DNA markers using
a special “melting” technique Hatfill claimed to have
used.
Bohm, who had coauthored a research paper with Hatfill based on the
thesis work, sat down at his computer and hammered out the following
e-mail to Kirby, Hatfill’s PhD supervisor and coauthor of
another paper based on Hatfill’s work that had been published in
the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
Dear Ralph, 2 problems here: We are rather disappointed if not to say
PISSED OFF with so much ignorance, carelessness and indifference. 9
months of time plus 4000 odd Rand wasted. You are both DEEP in our
memory.
A Japanese worker has problems in reproducing the Thalidomide work on
K 562. After some correspondence relating to buffers and drug
metabolism using S-9 fraction he still cannot do it. When I discussed
the problem with Steven it became clear that he could not have done
the experiment as his handling of the S-9 fraction indicated total
confusion.
Taking these observations and the wonderful TGE melt mitochondrial DNA
referred to in the Lancet paper it also transpires that the experiment
could not have been done by S. because essential parts of the TGE
machine accessories were still unopened. It goes to show that S takes
great liberties with the truth.
I think you may wish to be on guard when you assess his PhD thesis not
to risk a scandal. I can only pray that the Japanese worker is not
going to blow the whistle— but with increasing interest in
Thalidomide somebody else might. I find it utterly distasteful and
unprofessional to practice science in this way and I am reassessing my
position regarding S. and asking you again for advice.
Lothar Bohm
According to Bohm, Kirby never replied to this e-mail. Nor did Kirby
reply to an e-mail from SEED about his communication from Bohm.
When a technician came to examine the TCE machine, he found the
electrodes used to facilitate the DNA extraction wired the wrong way
round. “The machine could never have worked,” stated a
source at Stellenbosch, who witnessed the technician’s
examination.
Bohm says he now regrets allowing Hatfill to do much of his research
in the hematology lab where he was earning a living as a clinical
assistant. “He had a job there and he wanted to work there and
at he time that was fine by me. But in hindsight it would have been
better to have him in [my] lab and see what he was doing. There is no
doubt about it—the guy was extremely capable. But time seems to
have a different meaning for him than to a normal person. He was
always very fast intellectually and always racing ahead. Had he worked
in my lab, the whole thing would probably have taken a different
course.”
OXFORD, ENGLAND SEPTEMBER 1994
It wasn’t quite Cape Canaveral, but Oxford in University was
still a pretty big feather to have in his cap. Hatfill had left South
Africa in to take up a new job as a clinical research scientist at the
University’s Nuffield to Department of Pathology and
Bacteriology based at the John Radcliffe Hospital. Hatfill worked in
the cancer research lab.
In a resume prepared while at Oxford, Hatfill claimed that he was a
“licentiate” of the “Royal College of Physicians and
Surgeons, Edinburgh.” Three of his later application forms for
NIH grants state Hatfill gained his MD at “Edinburgh, UK”
in 1984. There is no such thing as the Royal College of Physicians and
Surgeons, Edinburgh. And Hatfill does not have a UK medical degree.
Scotland has three distinct medical colleges: the Royal College of
Surgeons, Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and
the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In the early
80’s, medical degrees from Rhodesia, like the one Hatfill was
carrying, were not accepted in the UK. The University of Zimbabwe
therefore made an arrangement with the Scottish colleges to let its
graduates sit what was known as “The Scottish Triple,” an
exam set by all three colleges. Zimbabwean graduates who passed the
Triple were allowed to practice medicine in the UK.
Fiona Sinclair, membership administrator for the Royal College of
Surgeons, Edinburgh, states, “A full search of our records has
been conducted, both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow and there is no
record of Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill having obtained any college
qualification. We have no records of Dr. Hatfill at all.”
While at Oxford, Hatfill also claimed to have been elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Medicine. Society spokesperson Rosamund Snow says
that, “as far as we can tell, he has never had any association
whatsoever with the society.”
In January 1995, Hatfill’s PhD was submitted for examination to
Rhodes University. Bohm’s warning had, apparently gone unheard
or unnoticed.
Hatfill was already applying for other jobs by the summer of 1995. He
responded to an advertisement for a fellowship position placed by the
NICHD in the journal Science.
The NICHD personnel charged with reviewing Hatfill’s application
called Oxford University, where the NICHD say they received
confirmation that Hatfill “had experience qualifying him for the
position he was applying for.”
The resume accompanying Hatfill’s application claimed not only
the “licentiate” Edinburgh medical qualification but,
crucially, also a PhD apparently awarded by Rhodes University in 1994.
Despite the fact that back in South Africa examiners were still three
months from giving their decision on the PhD, Hatfill’s resume
was titled “Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill M.D/Ph.D.”
Also submitted was a bundle of certificates including a PhD
certificate apparently issued by Rhodes on April 16, 1994.
Hatfill’s resume details the “PhD Degree in Molecular Cell
Biology” but gives a contradictory date of August 1994. In fact,
Hatfill’s PhD thesis was failed in November 1995. One of
Hatfill’s thesis examiners—interviewed on condition of
anonymity—describes his thesis as “an embarrassment to
South African science,” adding, “more than once the
question was asked of aspects of the thesis whether Hatfill had made a
mistake, or whether he was deliberately trying to deceive?’
Hatfill also enclosed a letter of recommendation bearing the signature
of his head of department at Oxford, J O’D McGee. The letter was
fulsome in its praise for Hatfill. “Steven is a very valuable
member of the Cancer Metastasis Laboratory” the letter reads.
“He is a good molecular biologist with a good knowledge of most
of the technology in this area and even more important, he can apply
it to real problems.”
The letter stated McGee had gotten to know Hatfill “very
well” and concludes, “As a person, he is popular,
self-sufficient, and can step into any ‘crisis’ situation
and deal with it effectively without demonstrating anger or any other
emotion. He is also a man with a sense of driving the research team
forward in a united way.
I have the highest regard for Dr Hatfill and unreservedly recommend
him to you.”
When shown the letter in question, McGee stated he had no recollection
of providing the reference, adding the letter was “not in the
style” in which he would write a reference for a member of
staff. He added he never had direct contact with Hatfill, other than
one meeting where Hatfill asked him to be “a referee for him for
a NASA program.”
Hatfill also submitted a letter of reference purportedly from a
Tygerberg professor repeating the claim that Hatfill had established a
molecular hematology laboratory there. Officials at Tygerberg dispute
its authenticity.
In addition Hatfill included a certificate proving his graduation from
medical school. But the certificate Hatfill present ed was issued by
the “University of Rhodesia.” By the time Hatfill was
recorded as graduating in 1984, Rhodesia hadn’t existed for four
years. The university had changed its name to the University of
Zimbabwe, and stopped issuing University of Rhodesia certificates in
1982. Those who graduated in 1983 —Hatfill’s intended year
of graduation—received certificates issued by the University of
Zimbabwe.
Apparently, the NICHD never picked up these discrepancies. On
September 18, 1995. Hatfill was granted an Intramural Research
Training Award, a fellowship that would mark the start of a four
association with the US government.
SEPTEMBER 18, 1997 FORT DETRICK, MRRYLAND
The most lethal forms of life on earth are contained inside a small,
innocuous-looking suite of laboratories at the heart of the United
States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases complex
at Fort Detrick. Access to these Level Four labs is severely
restricted. Those who are granted entry are exposed not only to the
mast dangerous organisms on the planer, but also to classified
information. The work USAMRIID researchers undertake could conceivably
be perverted for offensive biowarfare use. The knowledge they possess
is as dangerous as the pathogens they manipulate. USAMRIID should be
one of the most secure locations on the face of the Earth.
After two years at NICHD, Hatfill applied to the NRC for a transfer to
USAMRIID’s Level Four labs to study Ebola and Marburg viruses.
His career was once again subjected to a scientific review and within
a month, Hatfill was granted Level Four clearance. He was also granted
clearance to access material classified as “secret.” He
would spend the next two years in Level Four battling microscopic
nightmares. He loved it.
In 1999, Hatfill’s research funding ended, but he traveled
onward and upward to a prestigious job as a biodefense consultant with
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a contractor
for both the Pentagon and the CIA. It was a job that gave Hatfill
access to all sorts of interesting places—the FBI, CIA, and the
Department of Defense.
In December 2000, after being accepted into the UNMOVIC weapons
inspections training program—a process that required he submit a
resume and sit for an interview—Hatfill was sent to Paris to
begin basic training. While there, he boasted of his military
experience to bemused fellow attendees and claimed he had access to
classified documents.
In late summer 2001, Hatfill applied for a CIA contract requiring a
high-level security clearance. He had to undergo a rigorous background
check. When investigators questioned him about his time in Africa, the
house of cards started to topple. On August 23, the secret clearance
he had obtained at USAMRIID was suspended and he was removed from his
full-time job at SAIC, sidelined as a “consultant.”
Still, he kept up with his UN training and in November 2001 returned
to England, this time to Porton Down, home of the UK’s former
chemical and biological warfare research program. By now, news of the
anthrax letters was gripping the biodefensc community, Hatfill was
quick to insist that Iraq was behind the attacks. What he didn’t
know was that at home, the Bureau was closing in on him as a
“person of interest.”
On March 4, 2002, Hatfill was fired by SAIC. On July 1, just a few
days after his name was first publicized in connection with the
anthrax investigation, Hatfill was hired as the associate director of
Louisiana State University’s Center for Biomedical Research and
Training. The money for the post, like the majority of the
center’s funding, came from the federal government. On August 1,
the Department of Justice sent an e-mail to the center’s
director, Stephen I Gulliot, ordering him to “cease and
desist” employing Hatfill. Hatfill was put on administrative
leave the following day and fired from the $150,000-a-year job on
September 3. Gulliot was fired a day later.
Hatfill was a month from his forty-ninth birthday when LSU fired him,
and the career he’d manufactured for himself in numerous resumes
was finally over. Maybe after so many years of misrepresentation, he
was unable to tell what was real in his past and what had been
falsified. Or maybe this was the first time his credentials were fully
scrutinized.
Here is what a complete investigation uncovers: Hatfill never served
with the US Special Forces, or the Rhodesian SAS. He was not a member
of the Selous Scouts. The South African Department of Defense has no
records of Hatfill serving in the 2nd Medical Battalion (TA Reserve)
or with the Air/Sea Rescue Squadron at Ysterplaat.
There is no record of Hatfill having been a casualty officer at
Conradie Hospital, or working clinical rotations at Groote
Schuur’s hospital. He could never have established or managed a
molecular hematology laboratory at Tygerberg because there was and is
no such laboratory.
While in Antarctica, Hatfill was not a research team leader or even
assistant research team leader. He hadn’t been commissioned to
do research for NASA; he was not chairman of the Experimental Biology
Group; nor was he a member of Tygerberg Blood Utilization Committee;
and he couldn’t have sat on the Council for Scientific
Industrial Research’s advisory panel on AIDS, because such a
panel was never convened. He wasn’t a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Medicine. His Edinburgh “licentiate” medical
degree is nonexistent. The “University of Rhodesia” degree
certificate he presented had stopped being issued two years before he
graduated. His PhD is a false and there are serious questions about
his previous master’s research at Stellenbosch.
Any or all of these lies and half truths should have been picked up
when he was first evaluated for his job at the NICHD and then again
when he applied to USAMRIID. Apparently, none of them were.
Ray Gamble is the director of the NRC awards program that vetted
Hatfill for his research position at USAMRIID. The NRC is a nonprofit
organization that sits between sponsors—usually federal
government agencies—and researchers, Gamble admits the system is
not foolproof, but says its methods are the norm in most grant review
processes. Gamble explains, “We provide advice on the best
quality of applicant for the awards. Our contribution is that quality
review, so that the sponsors know that they are going to get the best
quality people out of this process.”
But the process assumes candidates are telling the truth. “You
assume that the facts stated by the applicant are in fact correct and
without seeing things that seem to indicate otherwise that’s the
assumption that’s made,” adds Gamble,
He stresses that in addition to resumes and reviews, sealed
transcripts are required to be sent directly from the
applicant’s university. But he admits, “We do not
individually call a thousand or so universities every time we receive
an application to verify a particular document.”
It was this process that apparently failed to flag Hatfill or his
falsified resumes and forged documents during the four years he spent
inside the federal grants system, moving seamlessly from health to
defense.
At least four top officials within the federal grants system signed
their names to approve grant applications on Hatfill’s behalf
three times Over three consecutive years: Leonid Margolis, head of the
NICHD laboratory Hatfill worked at for two years; Joshua Zimmerman,
laboratory chief, NICHD; Arthur S. Levine, scientific director of the
NICHD and Ruth E Mariano, the grants bid official at the NICHD. Their
signatures released tens of thousands of dollars to Hatfill and
allowed him access to some of the best research facilities and
information in the world. Margolis and Levine also signed off on two
further years of grant applications that gave Hatfill access to the
USAMRIID facilities.
No one from the NIH or NICHD was prepared to be interviewed for this
story. An NICHD spokesman said staff had “declined to be
interviewed about Steven Hatfill’s employment at NIH.”
They were, he said, “not interested in commenting about this
matter.” Likewise, “Dr. Margolis does not want to be
interviewed regarding Steven Hatfill.”
What about the senior officers and scientists of USAMRIID? One of the
most sensitive research establishments on the planet, where Hatfill
picked up “secret” level security clearance on his way to
the Level Four biocontainment labs? As far as USAMRIID was concerned,
the NRC had screened and passed Hatfill, and NRC says security checks
are beyond their responsibility: ‘It’s a local
issue,” says Gamble. “Every federal research institute has
their own form of security clearance, and we can’t become
involved in that because it would become too complex. It’s
outside our area of responsibility.”
USAMRIID refused to respond to questions regarding Hatfill, other than
to confirm his position in the Virology Division and to stress that
“he did not work with anthrax” there. Hatfill also
refused to comment on this investigation. But his spokesman and
friend, Pat Clawson, issued a statement on his behalf:
“Dr. Steven Hatfill is not the anthrax mailer. He is a scientist
and physician who has devoted his career to preserving life, not
destroying it.”
The statement later continues; “Legal considerations prevent Dr.
Hatfill from responding to specific issues about his personal
background and professional credentials, but the real questions the
press and public should be asking are: Who perpetrated the anthrax
attacks that terrorized the nation? Why is the government’s
18-month, multimillion-dollar investigation at a dead end? Why has the
government conducted a public campaign to destroy the life of an
innocent American patriot without having any credible evidence against
him?”
In 2001, the US government spent $60 million on biodefense projects.
In 2003 that figure will grow to $2 billion. Many more labs—both
military and civilian—will be working with lethal pathogen, if
President Bush fulfills his State of the Union promise to spend an
additional $6 billion developing and stock piling biodefense vaccines.
More scientists will soon have access to anthrax, plague, monkey pox,
Ebola, Marburg, and smallpox as the government’s biodefense
offensive swings into action. Many of those researchers will be vetted
by the same government system that vetted Hatfill.
Twice in April 2002, anthrax spores escaped from the Level Three labs
of USAMRIID. USAMRIID has refused to release its report into these
incidents. On February 12 this year The Los Angeles Times published a
story examining USAMRIID’s safety record. The facility
commander, Colonel Erik Henchal, was interviewed. He said that
screening by the NRC for positions at USAMRIID was now “more
stringent.” The next sentence, however, ran as follows:
But Ray Gamble, director of the council program that sponsored
Hatfill, said there had been no substantive changes in how
applications are reviewed. “It a scientific review that
hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. It’s based on the
technical proposal, the scientific merit. There are always
opportunities for people to misrepresent themselves”
To date Steven Jay Hatfill remains unemployed. He now spends most of
his time shut inside his girlfriend’s apartment. The frenzy of
press stories about him has died. The FBI has made no public comment
on the progress of the anthrax investigation in months.
And no government department or agency involved in the anthrax
investigation has offered any evidence of Hatfill’s guilt.
indaba
> SEED MAGAZINE
>
> COVER STORY: THE LESSONS OF STEVEN HATFILL
> How one man lied his way into the most dangerous lab in America.
>
> A Special SEED Investigation by Writer-at-Large Simon Cooper.
>
> The most lethal forms of life on Earth are contained inside a small,
> innocuous-looking suite of laboratories at the heart of The most
> lethal forms of life on Earth are contained inside a small,
> innocuous-looking suite of laboratories at the heart of the United
> States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases complex
> at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Yeah, yeah, whatever...
The best way to protect yourself against biological weapons and
natural infectious diseases is:
1) Use a condom when having sex with someone you are not familiar
with,
or better yet avoid sex with prostitutes and people with no
self-respect
or desire to live a decent life.
2) Build your immune system -
2.1) Avoid meat and animal products and byproducts when you
can.
2.2) Exercise your body: run, jog, walk, etc., to a hard hot
sweat
(effects = detoxification, human growth hormone release,
etc.)
If you can't survive a hour long sweat out, you're
finished anyway.
2.3) Eat beans, leafy greens, bananas, citrus fruit,
cucumbers, and lots
of fibre, eg the less refined maize meal, etc., etc.
2.4) Ensure your digestive system does not retain solid food
for more
than 8 hours - by drinking more water than a buffalo that
got lost
in the Kalahari for a week.
2.5) Don't drink alcohol and don't smoke cigarettes and mbjane
when
you feel tired and run down.
2.6) Avoid antibiotics if you can - if your body can't fight
off that
occasional light infection - you're already gone.
3) Repeat all the above steps religiously and avoid contact with
people, who
are less disciplined than you - by that I mean direct physical
contact -
sex, touching, etc.
4) When you feel strong enough, change your life and make health
the primary
focus of your existence.
5) You are now a human fit for the challenges of the 21st century.
jack mehoff
You've ever said, "May the force be with y'all."
Your Jedi robe is camouflage.
You have ever used your light saber to open a bottle of Bud Lite.
The worst part of spending time on Dagobah is the dadgum skeeters.
You have bantha horns on the front of your landspeeder.
Wookies are offended by your B.O.
You have ever used the force to get yourself another beer so you didn't have
to wait for a commercial.
Although you had to kill him, you kinda thought that Jabba the Hutt had a
pretty good handle on how to treat his women.
You have ever referred to Darth Vader's evil empire as "them damn Yankees."
You have a cousin who bears a strong resemblance to Chewbacca.
You were the only person drinking Jack Daniels in the cantina scene.
In your opinion, that Darth Vader fellow "jest ain't right."
That "Disturbance in the Force" was just last night's baked beans and spare
ribs.
There's more oil in your hair than in your astromech droid.
You use your light saber to light the barbecue grill.
Your Rebel Base was manufactured by Trasco Mobile Homes.
Your father has ever said to you, "Shoot, son, come on over t' the dark
side...it'll be a hoot."
jack mehoff
Here are some signs that you, yourself, may be a redneck Pagan...
If your ceremonial garb consists of cut-offs and a tube top.....
If you think a "family tradition" is a dating club.....
If you've reached the 3rd degree but not the 3rd grade....
If your coven's secret names for the God and Goddess are "Cooter" and "Sweet
Cheeks".....
....you may be a redneck Pagan.
If your ceremonial chalice says "Budweiser" on it...
If chewing tobacco is considered a sacred herb...
If your circle dance includes the words "dosey-do"....
If your altar pentacle is a photo of John Wayne's star on the Hollywood
"Walk Of Fame".....
....you may be a redneck Pagan.
Now if your coven chose it's High Priest at a belching contest..
If they chose their High Priestess at a wet t-shirt night...
If your annointing oil smells like "Old Spice"...
If you have ever refilled your chalice from a keg.....
....you might just be a redneck Pagan.
If your outdoor circle has defunct washing machines for quarter altars,
If the cakes and wine are done with a bowie-knife, a can of Foster's and
Little Debbie's,
If your pantheon includes Yukon Jack, Jim Beam, and the St. Pauli Girl,
....you just might be a redneck pagan.
If your ritual music has ever included Johnny Cash singing "Ring of Fire"...
If you think the Wiccan Rede is good for making twig furniture...
If you believe a pentagram is a Western Union message to 5 people...
If your altar cloth says "Holiday Inn" or Howard Johnson's"...
....you just might be a redneck pagan.
If your Goddess picture says "Miss September" at the bottom..
Or your God statue looks a little too much like Elvis Presley...
If you have ever written a spell on the back of a Denny's menu...
If you have ever cancelled a coven meeting to watch Pay-Per-View wrestling
on TV.....
....you may be a redneck Pagan.
And finally, if you have ever called the National Enquirer because you
raised a potato that resembled the Willendorf Goddess.....
Or if you have cast a love spell on livestock......
.....you are definitely a Redneck Pagan.