_
Previously on The Hot Zone: Anthrax...
Bruce,
where did you just go?
The USA is in an understandable state of anxiety.
This could be related to terrorism.
Who knows where those bastards are hiding out.
Just find them.
Didn't you say Iraq doesn't have the Ames strain?
Here's a copy of what I faxed to your office.
Happy to help.
We found that something have been added to the spores.
How certain are you about what that substance is?
Bentonite? 100%.
There's only one county we know of that's added Bentonite to anthrax.
If we go for Saddam, will we even get Al-Qaeda?
All the terrorists who did all this?
So tell me more about your lone wolf theory.
All signs point to our perp
being a highly educated American citizen
with scientific expertise,
most likely works in isolation, suffers from mental illness.
I drew up this profile to send
to the American Society of Microbiology.
What if the anthrax killer is one of us?
You did a real service for your country, Dr. Ivins.
It's an honor, sir.
Things are good.
Boss, hey.
Jesus.
Are you already out running?
It's not even 6:00. I was gonna leave a message.
Yeah, well I haven't been getting much sleep lately.
Actually, none of my team has.
I got them out swabbing mailboxes all around the clock in Jersey.
I was calling to commend you on this Bentonite thing.
Bentonite, what?
From what I understand, Iraq is the only country
that's used it in producing anthrax.
Yeah. Well, that's what the inspection team found after the war but...
Yeah, right well... Your USAMRIID team
just found Bentonite in the attack spores,
which gives us a direct link between the letters and Iraq.
Made some people on the Hill very happy
to be finally getting some traction on this case.
Did they send over their results?
No, that's your department.
All I know is Director Mueller
just assigned us a major case number.
More teams coming on.
Investigation's officially been dubbed Amerithrax.
Hey, Ryker...
This is a big win for us. You've done the Bureau proud.
We're one step closer to getting weapons of mass of destruction out
of the hands of terrorists.
_
- Agent Ryker. - Excuse me, Colonel,
but your end run on the Hill just sent us
further down a path to war with Iraq.
I wanna see this Bentonite you say you found.
It wasn't me.
Bruce Ivins is our top anthrax man.
You should've been dealing with him from the start.
Then I wanna talk to him.
Where is he?
Bruce is never late. Something must've come up,
but here's his findings.
You sent info to the Hill based on one image?
Are you kidding!
It wasn't just one scientist. It was vetted.
It wasn't vetted by me.
This is the US Army, we don't report to the FBI.
And none of us appreciate you circulating a suspect profile.
Asking our microbiologists to turn on each other.
Is that the Bureau's idea of teamwork?
I see what could be the presence of Bentonite.
But this photo isn't detailed enough to show whether the substance
is covering the spores or embedded in them.
Embedded means someone took an existing sample out of a lab.
And coated means it was intentionally manufactured
to be more airborne, to be a weapon of mass destruction.
That's what the inspectors found in Iraq in '92.
But this photo,
it's not conclusive enough in either direction.
It's the best picture we can take with the equipment with have.
Well, before our soldiers go on a wild goose chase,
looking for biological weapons,
I would like to know for sure.
When the President says go, look out,
it's hammer time.
We are gonna make the world safer.
American and coalition forces
are in the early stages of military operations
to disarm Iraq,
to free its people,
and to defend the world from grave danger.
www.subtitulamos.tv
This is not about a single person.
The President has declared war on international terrorism
If we stick to the President's course,
we're against terrorists everywhere,
we're against any country that supports them.
To go in to Iraq and the suspicion about anthrax in Iraq,
and that this administration doesn't wanna say the word Iraq
for fear of having to go in...
This administration is not afraid of saying the word Iraq.
Iraq's been on the terrorist list for, for years.
We've got to move on to phase two and, in my opinion,
that's Saddam Hussein. He, he hates us.
I have a feeling inside myself that he may have had some connection to,
September 11th and perhaps this anthrax scare.
The reports that the anthrax could have been,
tampered with by this Bentonite that is Iraqi based.
I know that serious people are looking
at both of those matters seriously.
Ryker.
You've got a lot of contacts with counterterrorism.
Good morning. Nice to see you.
I need to find someone on the ground in Iraq
- in the last five years. - Iraq?
That is a 180. You're gonna bench my lone wolf angle?
- No, that's not what I'm doing. - I'm not pulling my profile.
- I'm not asking you to. - Good, because we've already got two hits,
one in Texas, one in Seattle.
I've got field agents interviewing.
Can you just, just have a seat or go get me a cup of coffee or something?
Look, there's a chance that the spores
have been weaponized with Bentonite,
and if that's true, we're gonna have to admit to the powers that be
that they know something more than we do,
which is that Iraq is harboring biological weapons.
And Al-Qaeda.
Okay, look let's just say that, that it's true.
You told me that the Ames strain came from the US.
It did, but it has been shipped to labs around the world for research.
- How many? - We're still trying to figure that out exactly,
but who knows how lax the security is at any of them?
Some scientists could've been recruited
or even blackmailed by Al-Qaeda.
Who smuggled it into the Iraq, weaponized it,
brought it into the US, dropped it in the mail in New Jersey.
I mean, that sounds, it sounds a little messy.
I have no agenda.
It's my job just to follow the science,
which I admit right now is less than solid.
Okay.
All right. What kind of "intellectual asset" are we looking for exactly?
Anyone who was part of the UN inspection team after Desert Storm.
- Hi. - You've seen it, right?
- Seen what? - The FBI profile,
the "Anthrax Killer?"
Apparently, they sent it to everybody in the microbiology community.
_
Like we're crazy enough to work with dry anthrax,
they think we have a death wish or something.
This is poppycock.
They're treating us like we're the enemy.
They shouldn't do that.
We're the heroes.
They even said that.
It's gonna make us all suspicious of each other,
as if this place isn't tense enough.
You know, Jody,
if anyone tries to tap our phones or computers,
turn this into some witch-hunt,
there are ways to protect ourselves.
_
Yeah, that is a good point, but if you think about it...
Excuse me. Dr. Ruiz?
Gabriel. Please.
Dani spoke highly of you.
Thank you for taking the time.
She tells me that you were part of an inspection team
looking for a bio and chem weapons in Iraq.
I've been off the inspection circuit for a few years,
- but I'll give you whatever help I can. - I appreciate that.
I've got USAMRIID rattling cages in high places.
Careful now, I did train under some of their guys.
Well, there are just a few quick triggers out there
linking the anthrax attack spores to Iraq
using a shaky Bentonite connection.
We did find spores in the soil less than an hour's drive from Baghdad.
And you can confirm that they used Bentonite
to aerosolize the powder?
Bacillus thuringiensis.
Claimed they coated the anthrax with it
to make it easily dispersible "Insecticide,"
but we all know that just made it highly airborne,
deadly as hell.
But Iraq never had the Ames strain, right?
- Never. - Okay.
So, then, what are the chances that the Iraqis
somehow got their hands on Ames and then,
used their aerosolizing process to weaponize it?
I guess possible in theory,
but the obvious question is why would they jump through all those hoops
when they already have their own strain?
The Vollum strain.
That's what I was thinking.
The problem is none of that seems to hold water with the suits on the Hill.
Any other details you can remember about the spores you found over there?
I can do better than that.
I brought back a little souvenir from Iraq.
It's in the fridge.
All right.
Show time.
Spores from the Leahy letter on the left,
Iraqi spores on the right.
The powders are nothing alike.
Sir, the reports USAMRIID were premature.
The anthrax in the attack letters did not come from Iraq.
We need to get this to the West Wing.
Let's touch base tomorrow.
Mat, you can't be serious.
It's blasted all over the media.
An independent lab confirmed it and I saw it with my own eyes.
This anthrax strain
is nothing like the one we saw in Iraq after the war.
Well, if not Iraq, then who?
I'm hearing a lot about who didn't give anthrax to Al-Qaeda.
- How about one lead on who did? - Look,
there are probably reasons above my pay grade to target Iraq.
Yeah, well... One being that Hussein is a...
- inhumane dictator. - Absolutely.
But if our troops are gonna get shipped off to war...
Thin ice, Ryker.
It's not your neck they'll be coming for
if you turn out to be wrong.
30 years of crossing every T, dotting every I...
Then let the science speak for itself.
Send this up the chain.
_
I first met Bruce Ivins at Chapel Hill 25 years ago.
We were doctoral students.
It didn't take me very long
to realize that there was something different
- about him. - Hold.
Hey, I'm Bruce.
Bruce Ivins.
What's your name?
And from that moment on,
Bruce was there to greet me,
every day.
So, he was an odd duck who came on too strong.
That about right?
I got to say,
none of these points to Mr. Ivins being our anthrax killer.
It's just, I...
I don't know.
You called us, remember?
There's a side to Bruce.
It's... it's not easy for me to explain.
But it's an unsettling side
that only a few women have seen.
But I learned to keep my distance.
I started sneaking into the lab through the basement to avoid him.
It didn't work.
Even after I was married and moved away,
he would drive by my house at night,
and then one day,
on my way to work in the morning,
he left me a little surprise.
You don't know what Bruce is capable of.
Bruce?
Andrew, come on.
Okay.
Amanda, breakfast.
Come on.
- Morning mom. - Good morning.
Morning.
Hi.
Good morning.
How do you know when you're in the bathroom in France?
Euro-pean.
Come on.
Did you hear about the new book on anti-gravity?
Please dad.
- It's impossible... - Impossible to put down.
Yeah, I heard that.
Okay, nothing yet?
Why don't cannibals eat clowns?
- Because they taste funny! - Taste funny!
- Come on! - Bruce broke the eggs.
Sorry, honey.
Another late-night drive?
Who's hungry?
Do you think I'm capable of hurting anyone?
Well, that is an interesting question, Bruce.
Have you been experiencing any aggressive urges?
- Any violent thoughts? - What?
No, no. Gosh.
After the events of 9/11,
you could, "Barely contain your anger."
You told me that your job gave you access
to deadly materials such as,
"Cyanide, to poison the neighbor's dog,"
and "Ammonium nitrate to make a bomb."
You wrote that down?
Okay.
I wanted you to know how much trust they put in me.
I wasn't saying I'd do anything.
I mean...
Has this been triggered by your suspicions
- regarding the fellow scientist that you saw? - No, no, no, no.
Forget what I said. It wasn't Simon Kurz.
He's just not the guy. I was mistaken.
I think I was confused, and I... I might have,
I had another one of those out-of-body experiences.
Describe it for me.
Well, it was the same as last time.
I get this tingling down both of my arms, and I'm...
And I get a little dizzy, and I have this funny taste in my mouth.
Was it metallic, the taste?
I found a poem...
that I sent to a friend, but I don't remember writing it.
And...
the other day, I was sitting at my desk,
but at the same time, I was standing
a few feet away, watching myself work.
It's like I'm a passenger on the ride of my own life, you know?
Nothing like living in the first-person singular
and the third-person singular, am I right?
Dissociative experiences are not unusual,
given your aggressive regimen of medication.
I'm gonna recommend that we adjust your dosage.
Okay?
Okay. Yeah.
Bruce,
are you able to confide these experiences to anyone?
Well, Jody and Mara.
Okay, Jody is your co-worker?
We share a lab.
Mara was our third amigo.
Till she hot-footed it off to medical school
and abandoned us.
I tell them things I'd never tell anyone.
I'm blessed that way.
_
So, Ivins had a thing for sorority girls?
He had a "thing" for the women of Kappa Kappa Gamma.
Bruce had been rejected by one of my sorority sisters.
I don't know who.
Maybe she laughed at him or...
maybe she was as nice as can be,
and simply not interested.
Bruce harbored a great deal of anger toward Kappas.
Wouldn't be the first college boy
to have crushes on a house full of young women.
He was a grown man,
a doctoral student,
and he never grew out of his obsession.
This wasn't an innocent infatuation.
It was invasive.
Bruce was always pestering me with questions about
KKG initiation rituals.
- He wanted to get a cypher, he... - A what?
It's a secret book
with a decoding key for all the KKG rituals.
That's a real thing?
I take it you never joined a sorority, Agent?
Look, it was as if Bruce
wanted to be one of us.
I was always shocked by how much he knew about our secret rituals,
and I never could figure out where he got his information.
For someone who claims not to have been close friends with him,
you sure know a lot about Mr. Ivins.
He didn't give me much of a choice.
Bruce can snap
just like that, into a...
darker version of himself.
A Bruce that's prone to secret acts of vengeance
with the most obscure reasons.
One day, my dissertation notebook went missing.
All of my experiments,
my data for years,
all the work I desperately needed to complete my doctorate.
It felt as if my life had been stolen.
I ran from lab to lab like a crazy person.
No one had seen my notebook.
And then suddenly, I knew who had it.
Hi.
Hello.
My notebook is, is, missing...
- Are you asking if I took it? - No.
No. Have you seen it?
I would never betray a KKG sister.
Of course.
Thanks.
Soon the clues started to come.
One was an acrostic.
A poem in which the first letter of every line spelled out a new message.
T, T, E, R.
I was right.
In this case, there was a second acrostic
hidden within the first.
Writing down the opening letters of each line and and then reading them backward
revealed the "secret location" of my missing notebook.
Ah, here's something.
Well, is this your notebook?
An anthrax expert,
secret codes,
a man who plays twisted games with people
using the US mail system?
Does that not sound familiar to you?
_
It's positive.
Positive.
Agent Moore! It's positive!
Hey, excuse me, please, stop. We need to clear the area.
Just move across the street here, people.
Just cross the street, please.
Thank you very much.
I don't have knowledge of a direct link
of the anthrax incidents
to... to the enemy.
But I wouldn't put it past them.
"I wouldn't put it past them."
He's talking about the Bentonite in Iraq?
Who knows.
What about the research you did with Ruiz?
Didn't you push that up the ladder?
Copak passed it on, but clearly, it didn't get enough traction.
We can just put Ruiz in front of the press here and prove them wrong.
No. See, the thing is, all the scientists had to sign
a non-disclosure agreement.
Ryker.
We found the mailbox.
How sure are you it's the one our killer used?
It's the only one that tested positive.
Where is it?
10 Nassau Street. It's about a block from the entrance to Princeton.
Any security cameras on that street?
There's a bunch all over the campus, but not here.
The letters, they have microscopic scratch marks
from the glass of the photocopier that the sender used.
I know this is daunting, but we need to find
every photocopier in the area. The libraries, Kinko's.
We can match the scratches on the glass.
Start canvassing.
Look for any professor with an axe to grind
who could have given the spores to Al-Qaeda.
Got it.
Chris, I gotta call you back.
The envelopes that were used,
they were a pre-stamped version that were only sold in post offices.
Correct.
I'm sorry, I'm not following your logic right now.
What if there were microscopic printing irregularities
on the envelopes?
And what if we could match them to the machines that made them,
and then track the shipment logs
to follow where the batches of envelopes
with those specific printing imperfections, and where they were sent?
Okay. We could pinpoint the place of sale.
We could look through all the security footage.
And then track credit card purchases.
Leading us to the terrorist operative who bought them.
Or the highly-educated straight white Christian male
over 30 acting alone.
Okay, I'll load these up on the truck.
And then we'll go ahead and start decon.
The problem is, she doesn't have any proof.
We just got her word that Ivins defaced her property
or took the notebook.
It could have been anybody.
She seemed pretty credible to me.
Well, maybe he stuck on her.
Maybe she led him on. Maybe he was slow in getting the message.
Doesn't make him a killer.
What should I do with the report?
It really seems like there's something there.
Mark the lead as covered. Just file it.
Dearest Mara,
I hope you enjoyed my poem about the two Bruces.
I have spoken to my therapist,
who posits my current sensitivities
may be related to my medications.
I have never been able to really confide in other people.
That's why you and Jody mean so much to me.
Congratulations on your soccer game.
Come to USAMRIID for a visit and bring your anthrax strains with you.
Your devoted friend...
Saddam.
_
It's come to my attention that you and Mara have been emailing each other
about me behind my back.
And I think it's just plain mean.
- Bruce. - It's hard to understand, because...
I've never spoken about her
or you
other than in glowing terms.
Thanks for meeting us, Inspector.
Dust and debris collects on the printing plates,
ink grows ever so slightly fainter
toward the end of a print run.
Is it possible to use any microscopic flaws in the envelopes
to track them back to the place of purchase?
I suppose.
Blue Eagle envelopes are sold in packs of 500.
You can eliminate any envelopes printed before March 1st, 2001.
- Why is that? - Postage?
Price jumped by one cent.
Okay.
Any other way to narrow it down?
The attack envelopes used our new ink,
it's a brighter blue in the eagle wing,
a more vibrant gray in the denomination number.
That reduces the number of envelopes in the runnings
to roughly, I'd say...
31 million?
To the naked eye, all pre-stamped envelopes look the same.
But... if you look at the printing imperfections here,
and here,
and... here,
these ink discrepancies,
they're all from an actual envelope we have in evidence.
We recalled the envelopes from the post offices that sold them,
but we ran into a roadblock. Several had already sold out.
Then what good does that do us?
If we replicate the missing print runs,
the printer still has the same plate, stock, even ink.
The same irregularity should appear in a pattern,
and we can narrow down which envelopes we're looking for,
which post offices they were shipped to.
Basically, bring us right to where the killer bought them.
I got approval for more Amerithrax teams to come onboard
and you're honestly asking for a quarter-million
to print some damn envelopes?
The White House did say whatever we need to catch this guy.
"Guy?"
Toretti got her claws in you now?
Sir, we just learned earlier today that the only labs
outside the US with Ames
are in the UK and Canada.
Now, we vetted every single person in those labs,
whoever sent these letters got their anthrax
from an American lab.
_
What's it called in football when the quarterback
throws a long forward pass in desperation?
That's not what this is.
If this isn't a Hail Mary, what would you call it?
- It's a controlled experiment. - Okay.
You thought I was crazy for seeing a code in the attack letters?
Just admit it.
You're out on a limb.
I'm impressed.
You don't give up, do you?
There is no place for you in the Bureau if you do.
I would wager every last penny I have
based on those very tense jaw muscles,
this is a first for you, summa cum laude.
I bet your credit score is way over 800.
Okay, fine.
It shouldn't be any secret that
when you're the only kid in school who doesn't fit the pattern,
especially back in the 70s,
and now, you're the only guy in your department who breaks the mold, yeah,
you spend a lot of useless energy being the poster child for...
following the rules.
But I'm guessing you're familiar with that.
Working on holidays, turning in every report early
while the title-jumper at the next desk
golfs with the boss on Fridays? Yeah, maybe I do.
This is the first time I've actually put my job on the line,
and I've never wanted anything more than to catch these guys.
They said it's gonna take all night, so.
I'm gonna hang here for a while.
Yeah, suit yourself.
For what it's worth,
you are doing the right thing here.
That only matters if we find something.
_
Corner, corner.
Pass it to me, let's go.
Pass it, pass it.
Get them, Mara!
Go, Mara, get them!
Get them, Mara!
Get in there, Mara.
You got it.
Get the ball, go, Mara!
Yeah, you got it.
That's you, Mara!
Hey, it's me.
She's wide open!
Sorry. You okay?
Back it up, give her room.
Back it up, guys. Give her space.
They found an exact match with the printing.
This is the post office that sold the envelope?
Yeah.
You did it.
So, Jersey is 200 miles away,
that's seven hours by car round trip.
Okay.
It's far enough to avoid immediate suspicion,
but it's an easy drive.
We'll check the toll booths for any cameras,
but our guy is pretty smart.
Avoiding the tollways would add about an hour to his trip.
If he leaves before midnight, he's back home by morning.
Boy, it's just middle of nowhere Maryland.
This is an entirely new area to canvass.
Maybe not.
I got something to show you.
Take a look at that building.
- What is that? - That's USAMRIID.
One of the 16 labs in the US that has the Ames strain.
So, if our guy bought the envelopes here, that means...
That the anthrax came from the most respected
Biodefense lab in the country.
Someone in that building is our killer.
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