Hi all: There was something about the brother's comments in the interview, as well as the fact that he's in Ohio, that made a couple of my puny little synapses fire. I remembered a story about a guy close to Columbus... well...
Here's the story:
http://www.adl.org/learn/Anthrax/Harris ... d=3&item=5
The Harris Hoax
The Tokyo gas attack and the Oklahoma City bombing were not enough by themselves to increase American anxiety over anthrax to its highest level. That would be accomplished in large part by one man, Larry Wayne Harris.
Harris, who lived in Lancaster, Ohio (a distant suburb of Columbus) (FLS note: Lancaster is about a half-hour away and is known as a "bedroom community"--many people living there work here in Columbus, so "distant suburb" is perhaps a bit misleading, not that it's relevant), was an unambiguous extremist with an unhealthy fixation on biological weapons. An adherent of the racist and anti-Semitic religious sect Christian Identity, which teaches that white people are descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel and that Jews are descended from Satan, Harris was also a member of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations. Harris was not simply ideologically extreme; he also had concocted a fantasy world for himself in which he was a former CIA operative who had scientifically proven the existence of God and who had learned from an Iraqi college student of secret Iraqi government plans to devastate the U.S. with anthrax and bubonic plague.
Harris became fixated on this purported biological attack from Iraq; he decided to write a book teaching people how to protect themselves against threats such as anthrax. He also decided to begin conducting experiments on bubonic plague and to this end in May 1995 obtained some samples of (inert) bubonic plague from a Maryland company, which he put in the glove compartment of his car. Suspicious health officials notified federal authorities, however, who rushed to arrest him—only to discover that it was not illegal to possess bubonic plague. Harris was able to plead to a single count of wire fraud (for falsifying information on his original request) and received only probation.
Coming on the heels of the Tokyo gas attack and the Oklahoma City bombing, this rather minor event received disproportionate attention by the media and by the government, too, which could now point to Larry Wayne Harris as an example of the dangers that Americans faced from biological warfare. In 1998, FBI director Louis Freeh told a Senate subcommittee that Harris had been convicted, "interestingly enough," on a fraud charge rather than possession of a weapon of mass destruction, but asserted in the same testimony that "he was going to use that against somebody."
But if the FBI could profit from Harris's newfound notoriety, Harris himself was not particularly unhappy with the results himself. Harris self-published his book on defense against biological warfare, Biological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America, and began promoting it on extremist shortwave radio programs and in extremist publications. He was now regularly billed as a "biological warfare expert," and appeared at right-wing gatherings and survivalist expositions. Harris's suggestions for defending oneself against anthrax consisted of urging that people dose themselves with quantities of antibiotics such as tetracycline in order to build up resistance; a theory that was unorthodox at best and caused various militia and "patriot" figures to speak out against him. Bad publicity, whether in the mainstream press or the "patriot" press, did little to deter Harris from pursuing his interests in biological agents.
These interests led Harris eventually to his second arrest and the media circus that followed it. Harris developed an association with William Job, Leavitt, Jr., a Nevada fire extinguisher manufacturer who had an interest in pseudoscience. They met at an alternative science conference, following which Leavitt hired Harris to help him test a device offered to him by pseudoscience researcher named Ronald Rockwell. This device, the "AZ58 ray tube," allegedly could kill bacteria through frequency vibrations; Leavitt had visions of manufacturing and selling the invention. Harris told Leavitt that he could test the device on anthrax; he even boasted of having "military grade" anthrax that could, he alleged, wipe out a city. Harris did not, however, have any such substance at all—he simply had some anthrax vaccine, which is harmless. (FLS Note: some of the missing anthrax was a vaccine, no? Also, the misspelling of "antrax" is intriguing...)
Rockwell, however, contacted the FBI on February 18, 1998, and informed them that Harris supposedly had anthrax. Rockwell, an ex-con, may have been genuinely concerned, or he may have been trying to retaliate against Harris, thinking that his deal was not likely to be accepted. In any case, by that evening, the FBI had initiated close surveillance of Leavitt and Harris, tracking them by helicopters and closing in with a SWAT team. They soon arrested the pair, charging them with conspiracy to possess and possession of a biological agent.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Bobby Siller told a news conference that there was no indication that the men had any target and that no one in the Las Vegas area was in any danger ("In the few days it took to test the substance…the media entered the throes of sensational ecstasy," one Las Vegas newspaper reporter remembered several years later). However, despite Siller's efforts, the arrest nevertheless turned into a media spectacle. A comment in an FBI affidavit which described Harris talking at an event the previous year about a biological attack on New York City and the consequences it would have became construed somehow as evidence of an actual and credible plot by Harris to attack New York. Tabloids carried headlines such as "SUBWAY PLAGUE TERROR" and "FEDS NAB 2 IN TOXIC TERROR."
While scientists at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, tested the samples seized from Harris, the FBI raided his home, leaving no stone unturned in a search for anthrax. It did not find any; moreover, the Army eventually revealed that the alleged anthrax was in fact harmless vaccine. Because there was no agent and no plot or intention to use an agent, the case fell apart. Leavitt was released, while Harris was extradited to Ohio, where prosecutors were prepared to argue that he had violated the terms of his probation. In the end, all charges were dropped and Harris returned to his Lancaster home.
The intense publicity surrounding Larry Wayne Harris's second arrest moved anthrax anxiety from the halls of Congress and the cubicles of bioterrorism experts to the living rooms and kitchens of all Americans. The discovery that Harris had no actual anthrax did nothing to stem the tide of media and government publicity given to anthrax during the spring and summer of 1998.
Both the specter of Harris as a potential bioterrorist and the immediacy and severity of the federal government's response telegraphed to all Americans the deadliness and seriousness of anthrax.
The Harris spectacle sent another message, too, one that was received only by certain individuals and groups with malicious tendencies. This message was: If you want to cause a panic, do it with anthrax. The main consequence of the second Harris arrest was a wave of malicious anthrax hoaxes that began in 1998.
There was something about what Tom Ivins said in the interview... the paratrooper thing, and if you listen he emphasizes the "him" in "they were investigating him" ... he talks about the FBI asking about his childhood... interesting
I've connected some dots here that I don't really want to spell out, because these folks are, you know, actual people, not fictional characters, but maybe y'all see where I'm going with this.
Note that Ohio is rather a hotbed of various racist/ Christian extremist activity; I find it interesting that the brother draws a HUGE line between himself and his two brothers (from his brother's Letters to the Editor, he is very clearly on the liberal side of "conservative Christianity" -- showing his disgust at racism, for instance).
I hate to be so vague about what I'm thinking, but I know I'm just an armchair detective.
