2000-2002: Anthrax Attacks Suspect Hatfill Builds Mobile Biological Weapons Factory for US Military

SAIC logo. [Source: SAIC]In 2000, the US begins a secret project to train its special forces how to detect and disarm mobile biological weapons factories. One real mobile biological weapons factory is built, but not actually used to make weapons. US Delta Force units will use this factory in their training in the months before the 2003 Iraq war. The designer of the factory is Steven Hatfill, who will later be named as a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks (see October 5-November 21, 2001) before being exonerated in 2008. Hatfill’s role in making the factory is one reason why he is later suspected in the anthrax attacks, even though there is no evidence the factory makes anthrax or any other kind of biological weapon, as the different components in it are never connected. Hatfill helps build the factory while working for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a contractor for the US military and the CIA. He begins gathering parts to build it in 2000, and construction begins in September 2001, at a metalworking plant near Fort Detrick, Maryland. SAIC fires him in March 2002, after he fails to get a high-level security clearance and he comes under suspicion for the anthrax attacks. But Hatfill continues to work on the half-built factory on his own, for no pay, until it is finished later that year (see Autumn 2002). The factory is commissioned in 2000 apparently because US intelligence chooses to believe the claims of an Iraqi defector named Curveball, who falsely claims that Iraq has such mobile weapons factories (see January 2000-September 2001). [New York Times, 7/2/2003]