Salon | Newsreal: The terror at home

T A B L E+T A L K
Are the Olympics too commercial? Debate the games' merits and faults in Table Talk's Olympic Village

D A I L Y+Q U O T E
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R E C E N T L Y
Bigger than the pope
By Andrew Jennings
When the Olympics president says, "Come unto me," the local Catholic priests say, "How fast?"
(02/19/98)
Not over the hill
By Eve Pell
While the TV cameras at Nagano focus on the young, athletes 40 and over -- including some in their 90s -- are a growing presence on tracks and fields everywhere
(02/18/98)
New York Times: All the facts that are fit to omit
By Gene Lyons
On the Clinton scandals, the newspaper of record is the newspaper of insinuations, half-truths, omissions and flat-out inaccuracies
(02/14/98)
Gays and dogs
By Daniel Reitz
If Maine voters think gays shouldn't have any more rights than dogs, then maybe gays shouldn't be paying taxes
(02/13/98)
The heart of the matter
By Geoff Shandler
What love has joined, no man, not even a scientist, can rend asunder
(02/13/98)
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The terror at home
The arrest of two men in Las Vegas on charges of carrying stocks of the anthrax virus highlights how easy it is to make weapons of mass destruction. And to some terrorism experts, that's a lot scarier than Saddam Hussein.
BY JEFF STEIN | Call him Dr. Death.
Larry Wayne Harris, arrested Wednesday in Las Vegas with a car full of suspected biological weapons, told an interviewer recently he'd been experimenting with a half dozen other toxins, including bubonic plague, and had made anthrax from a pit in the woods near Cleveland where previously infected cows had been buried 40 years ago.
"You know how long it took me to isolate anthrax from the earth?" Harris said, according to a transcript given to Salon by a U.S. government intelligence agency. "Ten days. It took me 14 days to recover bubonic plague."
Asked what else he'd been experimenting with, Harris said, "Brucellosis. Tularemia. Cholera. I mostly work with yersinia (bubonic plague virus). It's easy to isolate from cow droppings."
Harris, 45, of Lancaster, Ohio, and Wiliam Job Leavitt Jr., 47, a Nevada businessman, have been charged with illegal possession of the toxin, and are scheduled to face preliminary hearings on Monday. Harris' attorney, federal public defender Michael Kennedy, said his client is innocent. Leavitt's attorney, Lemond Mills, said Leavitt was working on a vaccine to combat anthrax. Military and FBI officials are testing the suspected toxin at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Harris is associated with the extremist Aryan Nation as well as the Christian Identity movement, which refers to non-whites as "mud people" and advocates a homeland for whites in the Northwest United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups around the nation, says that certain militia and white supremacist organizations are becoming more interested in the use of biological weapons.
In an Ohio trial last year, Harris claimed he had worked for the CIA and several U.S. Army germ warfare laboratories. The CIA and Army both denied it.
"My specialty was studying biological warfare, and the biological warfare defense," Harris said under cross-examination in the trial of Steven M. Wharf, convicted last August of shooting an Ohio policeman who stopped him after a 17-mile chase through suburban Cincinnati. Harris was a character witness for Wharf, whom he had given literature from the Aryan Nation, a white supremacist group.
"I have worked for many small laboratories down through the years," Harris testified. "Many of these small laboratories were owned by -- should we say -- government facilities. They were owned by other major corporations, but primarily they were owned by organizations I am not permitted to divulge."
He added later: "I have had a long involvement with -- personal involvement with -- the agents of the Central Intelligence Agency."
A CIA spokeswoman said Friday, "As you know it is not our normal policy to comment on employment. However, in this case, our statement is that Mr. Harris was never employed by CIA." Asked whether Harris had any other association with the agency, such as through a contractor or as an informant, the spokeswoman said, "I am leaving it at that."
"I have taught many, many times with the officials at Dugway Proving Grounds" (in Utah), Harris also testified, "many times at the Pentagon, especially with the casualty and management team in the biological warfare area."
An Army spokesman said he had been searching the records since last night and found nothing. But a former senior Army official told Salon: "The casualty and management team matches nothing I know of and sounds like a fabrication -- there is no such thing."
Harris was on parole after a 1995 conviction for fraudulently trying to obtain botulism samples from a biotechnology firm in suburban Washington, D.C. He claimed that his actions were designed to warn Americans about the perils of biological warfare materials and how easy it is to obtain them.
In the Jan. 23, 1998, interview, obtained by Salon, that he gave to a weapons expert who had left the U.S. government to write a book, Harris called his earlier conviction "just an irritant" and explained how easy it was to manufacture the anthrax from the ground where the cows had been buried. The government conducted secret studies years ago and came to the same conclusion, sources say.
"I went to the library and did a search on when we had the last outbreak of anthrax around here," Harris said. "It happened in the 1950s. I tried to find someone still alive, some scientist, who had been involved in containing the outbreak.
"And I found someone. The guy explained to me that some cattle had been brought into Cleveland by boat -- they were infected. I asked him, 'Did you incinerate them? Did you bury the cattle in lime pits?' And he told me all they did was bury the cows. So I asked him, 'Where did you bury them?' He told me he would show me."
Harris and his guide found the place, dug up the earth, put samples in a jar with alcohol, mixed it with water and then filtered out the anthrax.
"I hooked it up to a vacuum pump. I incubated it at 35 degrees overnight," he said, adding that, "you can spread this stuff with a commercial paint sprayer (and) use ... mounts outside older aircraft" to spray it over a city.
"Within 48 hours, over 100,000 would be dead. If you have one-tenth of a millionth of a gram, that's enough to kill a person."
Harris said experimenting with biological viruses was "like working with Dobermans. They're not dangerous if you know what they are and how to deal with them. This stuff isn't dangerous if you take appropriate measures." He said he'd been inoculating himself against anthrax with a homemade remedy, "but since April, I haven't worked on any pathogenic organisms in my own house."
In the interview with the former weapons expert, who wishes to remain anonymous, Harris claimed he was merely working on a book.
"My book is strictly about civil defense," he said. "I've talked with the casualty management team at the Pentagon. They tell me that it would take one year to recover from the loss of a million people."
N E X T+P A G E+| A government set-up?

T A B L E+T A L K Are the Olympics too commercial? Debate the games' merits and faults in Table Talk's Olympic Village D A I L Y+Q U O T E Slate? Insecure? Nah! R E C E N T L Y Bigger than the pope By Andrew Jennings When the Olympics president says, "Come unto me," the local Catholic priests say, "How fast?" (02/19/98) Not over the hill By Eve Pell While the TV cameras at Nagano focus on the young, athletes 40 and over -- including some in their 90s -- are a growing presence on tracks and fields everywhere (02/18/98) New York Times: All the facts that are fit to omit By Gene Lyons On the Clinton scandals, the newspaper of record is the newspaper of insinuations, half-truths, omissions and flat-out inaccuracies (02/14/98) Gays and dogs By Daniel Reitz If Maine voters think gays shouldn't have any more rights than dogs, then maybe gays shouldn't be paying taxes (02/13/98) The heart of the matter By Geoff Shandler What love has joined, no man, not even a scientist, can rend asunder (02/13/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		The terror at home The arrest of two men in Las Vegas on charges of carrying stocks of the anthrax virus highlights how easy it is to make weapons of mass destruction. And to some terrorism experts, that's a lot scarier than Saddam Hussein. BY JEFF STEIN \| Call him Dr. Death. Larry Wayne Harris, arrested Wednesday in Las Vegas with a car full of suspected biological weapons, told an interviewer recently he'd been experimenting with a half dozen other toxins, including bubonic plague, and had made anthrax from a pit in the woods near Cleveland where previously infected cows had been buried 40 years ago. "You know how long it took me to isolate anthrax from the earth?" Harris said, according to a transcript given to Salon by a U.S. government intelligence agency. "Ten days. It took me 14 days to recover bubonic plague." Asked what else he'd been experimenting with, Harris said, "Brucellosis. Tularemia. Cholera. I mostly work with yersinia (bubonic plague virus). It's easy to isolate from cow droppings." Harris, 45, of Lancaster, Ohio, and Wiliam Job Leavitt Jr., 47, a Nevada businessman, have been charged with illegal possession of the toxin, and are scheduled to face preliminary hearings on Monday. Harris' attorney, federal public defender Michael Kennedy, said his client is innocent. Leavitt's attorney, Lemond Mills, said Leavitt was working on a vaccine to combat anthrax. Military and FBI officials are testing the suspected toxin at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Harris is associated with the extremist Aryan Nation as well as the Christian Identity movement, which refers to non-whites as "mud people" and advocates a homeland for whites in the Northwest United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups around the nation, says that certain militia and white supremacist organizations are becoming more interested in the use of biological weapons. In an Ohio trial last year, Harris claimed he had worked for the CIA and several U.S. Army germ warfare laboratories. The CIA and Army both denied it. "My specialty was studying biological warfare, and the biological warfare defense," Harris said under cross-examination in the trial of Steven M. Wharf, convicted last August of shooting an Ohio policeman who stopped him after a 17-mile chase through suburban Cincinnati. Harris was a character witness for Wharf, whom he had given literature from the Aryan Nation, a white supremacist group. "I have worked for many small laboratories down through the years," Harris testified. "Many of these small laboratories were owned by -- should we say -- government facilities. They were owned by other major corporations, but primarily they were owned by organizations I am not permitted to divulge." He added later: "I have had a long involvement with -- personal involvement with -- the agents of the Central Intelligence Agency." A CIA spokeswoman said Friday, "As you know it is not our normal policy to comment on employment. However, in this case, our statement is that Mr. Harris was never employed by CIA." Asked whether Harris had any other association with the agency, such as through a contractor or as an informant, the spokeswoman said, "I am leaving it at that." "I have taught many, many times with the officials at Dugway Proving Grounds" (in Utah), Harris also testified, "many times at the Pentagon, especially with the casualty and management team in the biological warfare area." An Army spokesman said he had been searching the records since last night and found nothing. But a former senior Army official told Salon: "The casualty and management team matches nothing I know of and sounds like a fabrication -- there is no such thing." Harris was on parole after a 1995 conviction for fraudulently trying to obtain botulism samples from a biotechnology firm in suburban Washington, D.C. He claimed that his actions were designed to warn Americans about the perils of biological warfare materials and how easy it is to obtain them. In the Jan. 23, 1998, interview, obtained by Salon, that he gave to a weapons expert who had left the U.S. government to write a book, Harris called his earlier conviction "just an irritant" and explained how easy it was to manufacture the anthrax from the ground where the cows had been buried. The government conducted secret studies years ago and came to the same conclusion, sources say. "I went to the library and did a search on when we had the last outbreak of anthrax around here," Harris said. "It happened in the 1950s. I tried to find someone still alive, some scientist, who had been involved in containing the outbreak. "And I found someone. The guy explained to me that some cattle had been brought into Cleveland by boat -- they were infected. I asked him, 'Did you incinerate them? Did you bury the cattle in lime pits?' And he told me all they did was bury the cows. So I asked him, 'Where did you bury them?' He told me he would show me." Harris and his guide found the place, dug up the earth, put samples in a jar with alcohol, mixed it with water and then filtered out the anthrax. "I hooked it up to a vacuum pump. I incubated it at 35 degrees overnight," he said, adding that, "you can spread this stuff with a commercial paint sprayer (and) use ... mounts outside older aircraft" to spray it over a city. "Within 48 hours, over 100,000 would be dead. If you have one-tenth of a millionth of a gram, that's enough to kill a person." Harris said experimenting with biological viruses was "like working with Dobermans. They're not dangerous if you know what they are and how to deal with them. This stuff isn't dangerous if you take appropriate measures." He said he'd been inoculating himself against anthrax with a homemade remedy, "but since April, I haven't worked on any pathogenic organisms in my own house." In the interview with the former weapons expert, who wishes to remain anonymous, Harris claimed he was merely working on a book. "My book is strictly about civil defense," he said. "I've talked with the casualty management team at the Pentagon. They tell me that it would take one year to recover from the loss of a million people." N E X T+P A G E+\| A government set-up?