By Laura Meckler, Associated Press, 12/19/01

WASHINGTON -- The anthrax investigation is focused on fewer than a dozen laboratories that have worked with the deadly bacteria, federal officials say, and investigators are working to identify the genetic fingerprints of the anthrax held at each of them.

The goal is to match the anthrax used in the attacks with the anthrax on hand at each lab in hopes of finding the lab that produced it. But scientists say they don't yet know enough about the genetic makeup of anthrax to distinguish one sample from the next.

"It's a race against time to get enough genetic information to make these matches precisely," said Jill Trewhella, bioscience division leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is assisting in the genetic fingerprinting. Why the race? "We want to catch the person," she said.

Investigators are interviewing lab workers and scientists at government labs and contractors. That includes Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute, a CIA and Defense Department contractor that conducts biological warfare research, including work with anthrax.

About 800 Battelle scientists and technicians are involved in military-sponsored chemical and biological warfare research at the institute's laboratories. A spokeswoman, Katy Delaney, wouldn't say whether an audit of Battelle stores of anthrax had been completed or what it found.

The company is "cooperating fully with authorities on the investigation," said another spokesman, Tom McClain.

At least one leading expert is urging the FBI to focus on government laboratories and contractors. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York at Purchase, has told the FBI the perpetrator probably has connections with the government.

"Many contractors work in government labs and would have access to material," said Rosenberg, who chairs a biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists.

The key to the investigation, Rosenberg said, will probably involve finding someone with a motive, rather than further scientific analysis of the anthrax.

FBI investigators are considering political and ideological motivations as well as the potential for financial gain, such as someone with an environmental cleanup company, a law enforcement official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On the scientific front, investigators know that the anthrax used in the poisoned letters came from the Ames strain, a naturally occurring form of anthrax that has been used by researchers for decades and is present in at least a dozen labs.

But the bacteria changes slightly each time it grows, meaning different generations of Ames anthrax contain small genetic differences. Someday, scientists may know enough about the genetic makeup of anthrax to allow genetic fingerprinting to narrow the field.

"In theory there is information in the genome that can tell you this, but right now we're still trying to figure out how to use it," Trewhella said Wednesday. "Right now, discrimination within the Ames strain and pinning it down to a lab would be real breakthrough, a real scientific breakthrough."

Anthrax is relatively "genetically stable," experts explained, with few differences emerging over the years, meaning the anthrax at various labs is virtually identical.

Even if the genetics were matched to various anthrax repositories, "that's still not a smoking gun," said David R. Franz, an expert in biological defense at Southern Research Institute in Frederick, Md. "It's just a piece of the puzzle."

Their comments were echoed by several other experts in genetics and bioterrorism who have been advising the FBI in its investigation. More promising, they say, may be chemical characteristics of the anthrax spores, which could indicate how they were produced.

So far, the anthrax at each tested lab has appeared to be a perfect genetic match to the anthrax found in the letters, said a federal official, speaking on condition of anonymity. But anthrax has not yet been tested from every lab, he said. And it may be that investigators have simply not been able to identify the genetic differences.

The FBI believes there are at least five and as many as a dozen labs that have worked with anthrax from the Ames strain found in letters sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, said the law enforcement official. Specifically, they've focused on labs that received samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick, Md.

And in recent days, attention has focused on the possibility that a U.S. military installation was involved.

That's partly because many of the labs that received anthrax of the Ames strain in recent years got it from Fort Detrick. Also, military officials said last week that Dugway Proving Ground, an Army installation in the Utah desert, has been working with a powdered form of anthrax since 1992 in its biowarfare research program.

Associated Press writers Paul Recer, Lauran Neergaard and Karen Gullo contributed to this report.