Scott Decker
Appearances
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
It was the public. They would call these things in because an olive-complected guy was supposedly surveilling a store with the intent to do harm. Well, he wasn't. He was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Well, we've got, I don't know, how many hundreds of bags quarantined over on Capitol Hill that contain mail from that weekend. I'll bet there's another letter in those bags. Now, how are we going to find it?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
They put plexiglass windows in it and seal it real tight. And actually, they have an airflow handling system they put in it, so it has negative pressure, which means when you open the door to this makeshift laboratory, air flows in, not out. So if spores get loose in there, they'll stay in there. They won't come out.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
And that was, at the time, not public. That was close-hold information. This program was working on a biosensor, air sniffer.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
The EPA had trained agents, and they donated those agents to help search for the envelope. And even the elite hostage rescue team at Quantico, they volunteered to come up and do the decontamination.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
We had hardly any of the powder left. It had been spilled whenever it was opened, so we didn't have too much of that.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
You had probably the best law enforcement tactical team in the country doing this very mundane part of a hazmat operation.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
We had almost a full gram of highly purified powder. So that was a big moment for us.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
People used to say, well, they can do it in their garage. It's not that easy.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
It told us that whoever had done this had really refined their technique between mailings. They really figured out what they had done wrong in the first mailing and they got it right on the second one. So they're obviously technically very astute in the laboratory.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
He really didn't have the expertise in bacteriology and especially anthrax to be able to do this.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
I only knew it was being done in D.C. because I had a TS clearance and I was part of the program. TS meaning top secret. I had a need to know. They were being set up on so-called, quote, executive sites in Washington, D.C. You can read into that what you want. Mayor Giuliani asked that they also be brought into his city specifically for the World Series. which they deemed a terrorist target.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
We get that a lot in the FBI. It's called a poison pen. You know, I don't like this person, but I bet I can get them to go interview him and get the FBI to give this guy a hard time. And you go and interview the guy... His wife and kids see the FBI talking to their dad. And, you know, people will see that. The neighbors will talk. It can cause harm where there shouldn't really be any harm caused.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
The White House really thought Iraq was behind the anthrax letters.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
We were continually being asked by the higher-ups and by the administration, why couldn't Iraq have done this? Why didn't they do this? And we kept saying, because there's no indication that Ames exists in any laboratory in any place in the country of Iraq.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Once we looked at the spores harder, we could find no additives, no chemical additives, clay, silicon, nothing like that.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
But those rumors certainly were spreading. Now, how it got into the press, I don't know. But there was no basis in fact for it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
We repeatedly told the boss, the director, there is absolutely no connection that we can see to Iraq. We have no evidence at all to point in that direction.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
They were at the cutting edge of DNA sequencing at the time in the country. They were the best. They were probably the only place that was trying to do whole genome sequencing.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
They thought they found 17 mutations between Stevens' isolate and the strain they had sequenced. And they were fairly excited about that.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
It was run by a scientist named Claire Frazier, who was accomplished in the DNA. And she started her company. to develop whole genome sequencing with the thought of using it for evolution studies. It's called TIGER.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
There was absolutely no guarantee that was going to work out at all. So all this is going on with no guarantee of success. But Decker knows if they can crack that code, they could find the killer. So we knew we were going to have to do something novel and unique and develop a better technology than we had that day.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
All those things came together as a perfect picture of who we were looking for.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
It was the same strain of anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Under an electron microscope, the morphology of the spores was very, very similar. Crude, clumpy. So it appeared that the same person or persons had mailed both envelopes, New York Post and Brokaw.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
I.e., they were mailed at the same time. Definitely picked up by the letter carrier at the same time.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
You have a weekend to do it. You know, you have to do it and get back to work the next morning before somebody notices you're missing. So it's based on drive time, what would be considered a reasonable drive time.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Some of the words in the note were misspelled. Penicillin was misspelled. They felt that the misspelling was on purpose to mislead us, make us think somebody who wasn't a native English speaker wrote it. So they said that was probably a red herring done on purpose. Allah is great, death to Israel, that kind of thing.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
It was not Al-Qaeda, but it was what they call a lone wolf. An individual, domestic, here in the U.S., working by himself with no other people, a lone wolf.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Obviously somebody with a science background, a fairly good science background in order to make the weapon itself.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Somebody non-confrontational that was not necessarily violent, that was a bad person but not a confrontational person.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
We've got to search among our ranks and find out a quiet person who's pretty clever and knows about anthrax and microbiology. And it very likely could be somebody we know.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
It's not far from where the letter was mailed. You know, he was in that 100-mile radius. What's a reasonable driving time to leave Chester, drop a letter, and get back to Chester?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It was the same style of handwriting, very, very similar, if not identical. To my view, it looked the same person had written it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
There's a series of invisible dots, squares and lines and circles, and those are visible under blacklight. And the Postal Service puts them there, and that's the way they track mail.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The machines actually squeeze the envelopes as they're pushing them down the line, reading the addresses, the zip codes. So they build up a lot of paper dust, and periodically they'll clean the machines with air hose.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It was really a reactive investigation. There was no proactive. There wasn't time. I mean, if this person was going to infect more people with anthrax, it could happen anywhere. There was no real way to plan for it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It wasn't just simply, gee, let's sit down calmly and plan how to use this tiny bit of evidence. It was, shit, look what's going on in Capitol Hill. What the heck's coming up next?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
He had a tiger by the tail, and he was brand new at the job. I mean, he looked frazzled and tired, but I don't think he went home to sleep. If he did, I never saw him leave.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
To not show progress was very unnerving, embarrassing. And Bob Mueller is not a jokey person. He wants the answers and he wants them quick. He wants you to immediately say what you know and say it with confidence. And if we didn't have results to show in those meetings, it was uncomfortable. I mean, he didn't have to say anything.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It affected me. I got in a fair amount of trouble during that time. I just lost my temper a couple times, which you're not supposed to do in the FBI. You've got to keep cool.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
If a janitor spilled Tide powder in the hallway and didn't clean it up before he went home, that would get a phone call. Whereas two or three years before this, they just would have wiped it up and went about their business.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Whenever something like this gets in the news, there's always a spurt of copycats. It's just the way people are, unfortunately.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
We had three groups, three different groups, analyzing each and every threat. And that was the edict from the director's office. So an anonymous tick could be called in with zero credibility from our standpoint, but it had to be run down. And that's a huge use of resources.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Director Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft gave press conferences announcing the names of all 19 hijackers.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
As we went through Maryland, we went through Delaware on Route 95, the main corridor. We got to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and the big alert sign above the traffic. And usually the letters are in yellow, but in my memory it was orange. I don't know why, but I remember orange. And it just said in bold letters, New York City closed.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
We didn't know if it was an act of terrorism, so that was the first thing we had to do is prove one way or t'other.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
He had been up in North Carolina when he got sick, visiting his daughter, and they had gone to a state park. There was a thought that he had got infected up there, one of the plants or the bad water or something.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
We agreed to call up Dr. Paul Keim in Arizona, Northern Arizona University. He was the unquestioned expert in the country.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
I saw a Black Hawk helicopter sitting on the grass between the office and the Passaic River. And I said, yeah, I need a lift over to New York. So he said, jump in. And we flew over Manhattan and we flew over Ground Zero. Doors opened on the Black Hawk. And as we flew over through the smoke, we just looked down and it was just ashes. Buildings were in ashes. They were just big piles on the ground.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The morning of the 12th of September, things were a little up in the air. I don't think any of us knew what to really expect.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The worst case is if somebody had succeeded in making a pound of powder that would float into the air and drift over a population. Hundreds, thousands of people would breathe this in and probably die.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
We expected a secondary attack. There was rumors of a biological attack. The country took steps to get ready for it, unbeknownst to the public.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
I mean, this was a huge crime scene. Most people don't think of that as a crime scene, but it was a crime scene of seven blocks.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
I believe there are others who can be charged with murder.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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 1: Isolated Incident
I was told to grab four of the guys, load up our Suburbans with evidence collection equipment, hazmat gear, Tyvek suits, masks, gloves. We loaded up the trucks that evening. Oh, dark 30. September 12, we started heading up to New York.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The underlying current among government and scientists was a second wave of attack is coming, and it very well likely be a biological or chemical bomb. Anthrax at the top of the list is a biological threat agent, number one.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
We would be there ready to help in case there was a biological attack, a chemical attack, or even a radiological release.