A Plague of Bioweapons

In Iraq, a vial of harmless botulinium found in a scientist's refrigerator is cited by the United States' leaders as proof of the righteousness of the occupation of a foreign country, while in Los Angeles women throw Botox parties where participants receive injections of a related toxin to smooth wrinkles.

In Texas, a scientist respected for his decades of work studying and treating infectious diseases in some of the world's more squalid quarters is hauled in front of a court in chains on bio-terrorism-related charges because he didn't follow government regulations with his samples -- while his own university uses military funding to genetically engineer plants to produce even more deadly poisons.

Meanwhile, two American health workers are killed by a vaccine against a disease which should no longer exist; domestically produced anthrax spores terrorize the nation in one of history's great unsolved crimes; and the writings of respected advisors to our president tout the benefits of developing synthetic viruses that would target specific ethnic groups.

Welcome to the confounding, illogical and sometimes deadly space where public health and raw science meet national security and military secrecy.

This shadowy world, which stretches from a college campus near you to the terror training camps of Afghanistan, from the plague towns of Tanzania to the spotless labs of Ft. Detrick, is haunted by terrors real and imagined, bogeymen employed when convenient to drum up funds, intimidate critics or squelch scandals. In short, it is a conspiracy theorist's dream.

When it comes to talking about biological weapons, first employed three centuries ago when the British gave smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans, almost nothing is ever black and white.

Just ask Dr. Thomas Butler, who faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in jail after being convicted Monday on 47 out of 69 federal charges filed after the FBI said he lied to them about missing plague samples and launched an investigation into his research and financial practices. Yet only months ago, according to his peers, this Navy vet and Texas Tech researcher was considered not only a leading medical scientist but something of a hero for his years of work treating epidemics in rough-and-tumble places like Calcutta and wartime Vietnam.

"Butler is probably the nation's most eminent expert on the plague," he added. "Are students going to want to work on tropical medicine if there's a chance they might lose some samples, then be hauled off in the middle of the night?" Peter Agre, a former student of Butler's who won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, told the Los Angeles Times. But where Agre and the leaders of the National Academies believe this is an attack on scientific initiative, the FBI has a decidedly different take. "An incident that could have sparked widespread panic of a bio-terrorism threat in west Texas was stopped clean in its tracks," said U.S. Attorney Jane J. Boyle.

Butler, however, testified that the FBI forced him to lie in a statement and that he is innocent of all charges.

Lost in Lubbock

The story began in January of this year, when Butler reported 30 vials of plague bacterium missing and all hell broke loose. The FBI and local police sent in 60 investigators and soon Texas was abuzz with fears of a plague-wielding terrorist. After being interrogated and allegedly failing a lie dictator test, Butler signed a confession saying he had, in fact, destroyed the vials and lied to cover up his mistake.

After being arrested, however, Butler recanted his confession, saying he had been pressured to lie in order to calm public fears. He said FBI agent Dale Green told him "the FBI investigation pointed toward accidental destruction as the explanation for the missing vials. . . . Because they were destroyed, there was no danger to the public. [Green] wanted a written statement that would help them conclude the case."