Agent Scott Decker
Appearances
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
He invented a scientist who went to a prairie dog colony and actually got Yersinia pestis from the fleas in the prairie dog burrows and then had planned to disseminate it. That was the storyline.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
The search of his apartment didn't get much, if anything.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
All of a sudden, there was a great deal of excitement in the squad room because we were going to use three bloodhounds to track the envelopes and see if it led to Hadfield.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It is kind of a foolish term. I mean, it's used everywhere now. And nobody knows what it means.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
We go to the mailbox. We look for traffic parking tickets that may have been issued. We look for surveillance cameras on the stores around the mailbox.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
All that traditional detective work looked good, but ended up not giving us anything, unfortunately.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
Each time we turned around and did a little more homework and investigation on this guy, it looked less and less likely that he was responsible.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
You know, this investigation was trying everything under the sun.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
So she wasn't happy. I was traveling a lot with the hazmat unit. We were probably 50% travel on the road at that time, and we just drifted apart.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
That's the way this investigation went. No stone left unturned.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
When we searched Hatfield's Camaro, the task force found maps of the Catoctin Mountain area, north of Frederick, Maryland. So the task force got together and felt, well, maybe...
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
Hatfield had made these letters, maybe he made the powders in his apartment, and then took the powder up to the Katonkton Mountains, camped up there, filled the envelopes up in a semi-wilderness, and drove to Princeton and mailed them. Not a likely scenario, but a possible scenario.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
I found that I had prostate cancer.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It's pretty brutal. And I was on sick leave for six weeks at home recuperating, but I had had enough.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
He said, we'll put you on security duty because we're getting ready to dive in at the ponds right now. And we need people on security at each road going into the pond area in the mountains. So I sat in the car for two weeks and peed in my pants in December. But at least I was back working. And I slowly recuperated.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It was a large plastic box made by the Sterilite Company. And this one was maybe two feet by two feet by two and a half foot, something like that. But the cover had two holes punched in it. And it looks suspiciously like a homemade glove box.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
Somebody could have used it to assemble the anthrax letters in it and then tossed it into the ponds.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It would require too much engineering and duct tape and stuff to make that thing into a glove box, to make it airtight. I mean, it just, it would have been easier to buy one over the internet. But, you know, it was that type of investigation where we were grasping at whatever lead we could find, really.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
They hadn't really worked these dogs out and validated what they were doing. Most of us became disillusioned little by little. Our faith in the bloodhounds began to disintegrate. So now if we can't believe the bloodhounds, what can we believe as far as Hatfield's concerned?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
The danger is that the investigation will be misled. You could work and work to investigate the person who was really innocent at the expense of ignoring the person that really is guilty. Because we haven't, as detectives, kept an open mind. You know, we've convinced ourselves we know who it is and we try to find evidence to prove that. I knew we were just going to have to dig deeper.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
And we were in for the long haul. It wasn't going to be an easy solution. We were going to have to solve this case. We were going to have to do something as quick as we can so it didn't happen again.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It was really frustrating. We needed a good, solid lead to break the investigation open because it just wasn't going anywhere at that time.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
A report came from an agent that they had an anthrax expert helping out in the Red Cross tent. He's handing out food and coffee in the tents.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
The command coast answered, do you have a name for this individual? The radio came back. They said it's Bruce Ivins. He's an expert on anthrax. And the agent also said, I think he's on the person of interest list back at the office.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
We felt that there was somebody else out there who had done it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
The FBI made the profile of the mailer public.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It was done with the hope that somebody would call and tell us who had done this.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
We sent it to the American Society of Microbiology.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It was really the first place to go looking for somebody. You wouldn't go to a physics lab, you know, or a nuclear station. You'd go to a microbiology lab where they did this for a living.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
Just hoping that it would trigger somebody to pick up the phone and call with information that may have not seemed important at the time, but maybe it was important.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
He tells them about a scientist at USAMRID. He was an expert in anthrax. He knows how to make anthrax spores. And by the way, he now works at a company in central New Jersey near Princeton.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
The biggest risk is getting a tip about somebody, and it's... It has no credibility. I mean, you always get the poison pen phone calls. You know, the guy across the street barks, his dog barks too much, and I'm going to get him in trouble.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
He made her feel a little bit uncomfortable. He was just trying to be too close, too friendly, without a real good reason, really.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
That means he can't work on the contract. That means he's unemployable as far as the CIA is concerned. So it devastated him career-wise. So we're looking for a motive. That was a pretty good motive. He's just plain pissed off.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
He was domestic. He was born in the U.S. and he wasn't foreign. And the profile said it would be a domestic scientist. And he wasn't part of any right-wing, left-wing group that we knew of. So he fit the lone wolf profile also.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
It had been believed that that was an intentional biological attack by the Selva Scouts. Long story short, Hatfield claimed to be part of that group.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
Hatfield was not nervous, calm. He denied doing it. He said to do whatever he could to help with the investigation.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
If he was guilty, he was not going to break. He stuck to his story.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
All those things came together as a perfect picture of who we were looking for.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
So when agents show up... There were helicopters hovering over news helicopters, and news trucks showed up.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
You know, what is everybody? A dead man walking? You know, it was a human experiment in progress. Nobody knew how it would come out.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Our national capital region was just chaotic. It was a buzz. There was people everywhere. There was absolute fear, hysteria.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
There was just a tremendous surge capacity that came into the Capitol from the military, from the Coast Guard. We had strike teams. We had decon teams. We had people going in, nasally swabbing thousands of patients. And this was all at the Capitol at the United States. Everybody who was responding at the time had been dealing with for 20 plus hours a day. Nobody was getting any sleep.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Everybody was working themselves to the bone. This is the worst biological attack in this country's history.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
This is an unbelievably complicated threat. How do we respond to this? And it can kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. So at that point in time, you are on an absolute war footing. You are trying to do everything within your power to stop, that next incident and to mitigate and respond to the crisis that you have in your own backyard.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
We have a white powder letter. We have somebody who's been exposed. And everybody in that suite has been exposed.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The individual who opened that letter was still sitting in a chair. We did not enter the suite. She was still sitting in a chair holding the envelope with the powder on her lap. I think fortuitously, this individual had just been trained on what to do if you open up a white powder letter. And she remained very calm, held it upright so nothing else spilled out of it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
How do you protect them? You know, what do you do? What do you tell them? And the fact of the matter is that if you ultimately want to protect them, you got to go do your job, right?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Anthrax particles will act as a gaseous material. They will just circulate through the air and move as a gas, right? If you have heating, ventilation, and air conditioning on, you can move that through the whole building very quickly.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
There's a lot of national business that needs to take place. And if you shut down the nation at that point in time, does that business proceed or not?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Anthrax, the disease, is caused by the bacteria Bacillus anthracis. Anthracis is a Greek word for black or coal, because if you get cutaneous anthrax, your skin in that area turns black. And I guess the doctor looked at some pictures of cutaneous anthrax and said, boy, that sure looks the same to me.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The doctor who had looked at him went back to his notes and said, I think I just looked at one of the hijackers of 9-11.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It started off an investigation unto itself to determine whether this hijacker had an anthrax sore on his leg.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
We didn't know who it was, and we certainly hadn't neutralized them in any way.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
You know, I had the manifest of passengers on the airline, and just doing basic investigation, it was quickly determined where each of those hijackers lived before they got on the plane.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And when they looked at the residences where these guys had lived, they found that two of them were living in an apartment that had been rented to them by Gloria Irish.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Mike Irish was an editor at the AMI, and I guess a boss of Robert Stevens. He was married to Gloria Irish, who was a real estate agent in Boca Raton.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
These hijackers, operatives, whatever you want to call them, they weren't stupid. And we could see that they were very good at planning long term.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
We sampled their apartments and their cars, what we call environmental sampling, taking samples with a damp little piece of swab of gauze. And then you run a DNA analysis on that and look for anthrax DNA. So that was done in all the hijackers' cars, their apartments down in Boca.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
He's the guy that took the mail and walked around the building and gave you your mail.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
American media evidently destroyed their mail every night or every week. I mean, they got a lot of mail, and there's no reason for them to save it. They just destroyed most of it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The FBI and others thought that Al Qaeda was behind this. And it turned out not to be true. When I grew up, I was taught to take the easy shot first. Al Qaeda was the easy shot. It would have been nice to just say it was them and to be able to prove it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Trust me, we beat that dog to death, trust me. It's all classified. It caused a lot of heart pain and resources.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
My theory is that when Mueller and Ashkoff made public the fact that the hijackers lived in South Florida around Boca Raton, that our mailer, anthrax mailer, purposely sent letters to Boca Raton to make us think it was al-Qaeda.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It was a coincidence. A very strange coincidence, but a coincidence. And that's kind of a trick. When you do these investigations, you've got to quickly recognize it's a coincidence and not chase it down. Because a real lead could be going unaddressed. I guess that's what makes a good investigator versus a not-so-good investigator.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The worst thing that can happen to an FBI agent working a criminal investigation is to solve it in your mind before you really have the evidence.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The FBI and others thought that al-Qaeda was behind this. We had no proof. We had a high suspicion, but no proof that it was an intentional act, i.e. terrorism.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The worst case scenario would be somebody had produced a pound of dried anthrax powder very fine that could take out hundreds and thousands of people if done properly.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
We didn't know why he was targeted. I mean, he could have pissed somebody off. We didn't know. We have to keep an open mind.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The doctor in South Florida recalled that he treated this guy for an ulcer on his leg. an open sore.