The anthrax attacks in the United States were probably the
work of a member of a U.S. biological warfare program,
according to the magazine of Greenpeace in Germany.
It says its information comes from a member of a U.S.
delegation who is attending the UN biological weapons
conference in Geneva.
?The U.S. delegation believe it is an inside job. ... Their
members also have more information than has been made
public,? says Kirsten Brodde, a reporter for the magazine. ?It
seems the attacker ... wanted to force through an increase
in the budget for U.S. research on biological weapons.? The
article speculates that perhaps the terrorist wanted to cause
panic rather than actually kill anyone.
When asked about the magazine article, an FBI spokesman
said that investigators were pursuing a number of leads but
no arrests appeared imminent.
There is suspicion concerning the disappearance of Harvard
molecular biologist Don Wiley, who was last seen leaving a
banquet in Memphis just before midnight on Nov. 15. His
rental car was found a few hours later, abandoned on a
Mississippi River bridge with the keys in the ignition and the
tank full of gas. He is a 57-year-old married father of four
with no known financial or domestic problems.
Wiley is an expert on how the human immune system fights
off infections and had recently investigated such dangerous
viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza. His
disappearance at this time has attracted the attention of the
FBI. ?Right now nothing is pointing at anything, except he is
missing,? says local police Lt. Walter Norris.
Wiley?s wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir, says, ?There is no
connection to terrorist activity. None. We don?t know what
happened. We can speculate until the cows come home but
we don't know.?
Wiley is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics in Harvard
University?s molecular and cellular biology department. He was
in Memphis to attend an annual meeting of the scientific
advisory board of St. Jude Children?s Research Hospital. Dr.
William Evans, the hospital?s deputy director, says Wiley
was ?in a great frame of mind? and was looking forward to
time with his family when he left a Nov. 15 dinner at the
Peabody Hotel about midnight. Four hours later, police found
his car a few miles from the hotel, on the bridge that spans
the Mississippi River, connecting Memphis and Arkansas.
Wiley?s wife says she can think of no reason he would have
driven toward Arkansas after the hotel dinner.
Police have no clues about what has happened to Wiley.
Patrol boats and helicopters have been checking the river,
but divers cannot search because the current is too swift.
Police have found no evidence of a crime and investigators
have dusted the rental car for fingerprints but nothing has
turned up so far.
Dr. Wiley's disappearance could be related to the anthrax
situation, as is suggested in the Greenpeace Magazine article,
or it could be entirely unrelated.
To read more about Dr. Wiley's disappearance,
click here.
To read an English translation of the German Greenpeace
article,
click here.
To read the German original,
click
here.
