FBI Agent
Appearances
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
So that started the suspicion that this was a person who might have a motive.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 6: Adult Male Loner
Mr. Hatfill is a person of interest to the Department of Justice, and we continue the investigation. And for me to comment further would be inappropriate.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
They walked in the security office and there was a security guard with his feet up on a desk and he's eating a sandwich. And his boss, the director, said something to him. Do you have any letters to Brokaw? Something to that effect. And he reached into the drawer of the desk and he pulled out a plastic bag. And there was an envelope in there and it was addressed to Tom Brokaw.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
It starts out 09-11-01, 9-11-01. This is next. Take penicillin now. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great. And penicillin is misspelled. So we don't like America. We don't like Israel. And we sure do like Allah. So it must be Islamic. Whoever did this was an Islamic fundamentalist fanatic, I would call it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
They blew what we say blue light. They got a police car and a blue bubble and a siren, and they took it to the Manhattan Laboratory of Public Health. And they said, could you analyze this for anthrax? I think this powder may be anthrax powder. And then they wait. And about midnight, he gets a call. This letter is zillions of spores. There's zillions of spores in here.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
Those are his exact words, zillions. It was a very big deal investigating for us.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
It was the first letter tied to the anthrax mailing. Finding it proved that it was an act of terrorism.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
We had handwriting, ink analysis, possibly hairs and fibers inside the envelope. Maybe a particular type of ink would have been used that wasn't so common. Maybe the guy licked a stamp. Maybe human DNA.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
Now we had an actual letter filled with anthrax. And something about the powder itself catches his eye. It was crude stuff, crude powder. It wasn't really a powder. It was more like sand, I guess. It didn't aerosolize very well, if at all. But it could grind into your skin pretty easily.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
So if I open a letter, it falls on my desk, and then I lean on my desk to use the computer, I'll probably pick up cutaneous anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
I tell people, think about when you pour oatmeal into a bowl, you get a puff of little smoke. Some of the oatmeal is so fine, it goes up into the air in your kitchen. That's what these spores do.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
When we did the strain typing, it was the AIM strain.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
We all agreed on genetics. We said, yeah, tracking the DNA, that just might do it for us. We knew that if we're going to solve this thing, that was our best shot at it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
It contaminated the lab in Manhattan with the Brokaw letter, with the powder. It got out of the safety cabinet and spread around the lab. I don't know where, but floors, desks, somewhere. They contaminated the laboratory, and they had to shut the laboratory down. We had hardly any of the powder left, and I think somebody lost their job over that.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
I remember sitting down with one of the FBI laboratory bosses, and we said, well, we have this letter now, and we'd sure like to look for fingerprints. How are we going to do that? This is pretty dangerous stuff. I said, you know, we're going to have to neutralize the little bit of anthrax that's left there. We're going to have to kill it before we can analyze anything in this letter.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
We said, well, we got to do it because we got to look for fingerprints.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
One fingerprint found in the database of the FBI and the case would have been solved probably.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
Once we found out it was Ames, we did not know how widely that existed in laboratories. We didn't know how far it had spread in other research laboratories in this country and the world. And that was a big, big question for us in October of 2001.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
The U.S. House of Representatives is closing offices today. Our national capital region was just chaotic. It was really a reactive investigation. There was no proactive. There wasn't time.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
Some people will say, well, then it could have been. It could have been a lot of things, but we don't have any proof that it was.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
The new director, Mueller, was in a little room off to the side. You could see him in there. I don't think he ever went home. I think he just lived there. But he was bound that no stone would go unturned.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 3: Anthrax This!
The areas that were highly contaminated were the mail folders. where they would sort the mail. And those were very, very hot.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer
The White House really thought Iraq was behind the anthrax letters.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer
I believe there are others who could be charged with murder.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer
I mean, a thousand people were at risk of dying. We were stretched too thin. There's very few things in my life I won't share with my wife, but this was one of them.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer — Trailer
We had to get divers to go under the ice who were trained in ice diving.
Darknet Diaries
146: ANOM
Well, I'm wondering, is this something you can replicate and do again? So who knows, right? This will lead all of our criminals guessing of what company out there is actually a true secure company and which is run by potentially the government. So we obviously have the technical capability and obviously the international partners to work these types of cases in the future.
The Dan Bongino Show
The Bongino Brief: What The F*** Is Going On In New Jersey?!
FBI and our Newark field office, along with the state and local partners there, the Bureau is actively investigating the situation you mentioned, just the unexplained sighting of drone activity over that part of New Jersey, including proximity to sensitive sites and areas of concern. So the... We do not attribute that to an individual or a group yet.
The Dan Bongino Show
The Bongino Brief: What The F*** Is Going On In New Jersey?!
We're investigating, but I don't have an answer of who's responsible for that, of one or more people that are responsible for those drone flights. but we're actively investigating. What the Bureau has done to aid our state and local partners is what we generally do, enlist the help of the interagency, enlist the help of the public.
The Dan Bongino Show
The Bongino Brief: What The F*** Is Going On In New Jersey?!
There's a tip line there that 1-800-CALL-FBI, tips.fbi, for information from the public that could help us resolve this. It is concerning.
The Dan Bongino Show
The Bongino Brief: What The F*** Is Going On In New Jersey?!
There's nothing that is known that would lead me to say that. But we just don't know. And that's the concerning part.