Workers face lie detector tests over anthrax attacks

The US Justice Department is preparing to give lie detector tests to hundreds of government workers at two centres where anthrax is stored, hoping to identify suspects in the letter attacks.

From next month the government will administer the tests to workers at Fort Detrick, Maryland, about 40 miles north west of Washington, and Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, about 85 miles south west of Salt Lake City.

The government will focus on workers who had expertise in preparing anthrax for use as a weapon and those who may have had access to it, an official says.

ABC News, which first reported the plans for testing, said some former employees of both facilities might be given polygraph tests as well.

The law enforcement official said the plan to test employees did not mean the government already had a suspect.

The investigation into who sent several anthrax-laced letters last year has produced few leads and investigators acknowledge the trail is growing cold.

The government has begun a strategy of focusing on possible sources of anthrax rather than identifying suspects from the few clues gained from the letters.

Army scientists in Utah have been developing a powdered form of anthrax for use in testing biological defence systems, military officials have said.

The army said in a recent statement that small quantities of anthrax have routinely been produced at Dugway, and then shipped to the army’s biodefence centre at Fort Detrick.

Fort Detrick, which also is home to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, has anthrax samples from other sources as well.

Investigators began interviewing employees at Fort Detrick after anthrax-laced letters were sent to politicians in Washington and to television network offices in New York last year.

Along the way, anthrax spores leaking from the letters contaminated post office buildings in Washington and New Jersey.

Two Washington postal workers died of inhaled anthrax, as did two women thought to have been infected from the mail.

At least 13 people developed either skin or respiratory anthrax, but recovered.

Since the attacks, security at Fort Detrick has come under fire.

One former researcher at the infectious disease centre there said recently that nothing would have

prevented workers from removing deadly germs from the labs.

Another scientist, Richard Crosland, said supervisors did not often check whether researchers were keeping track of lab materials as required. When they did, some researchers just submitted photocopies of old reports, said Crosland, who was laid off in 1997.

Fort Detrick spokesman Charles Dasey declined to comment on the allegations of lax security.