With little information to go on, the FBI is portraying the person who mailed three anthrax-filled letters as a US-based loner with a scientific background, more akin to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski than alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believe the attacks are unrelated to the September 11 terror assaults -- but nevertheless refuse to discount followers of bin Laden as the culprits.
With no solid leads in the case, and mounting public pressure to solve the case, the FBI on Friday released a vague, three-page profile of the suspect, drawing conclusions largely from the content and handwriting of letters as well as and past case studies.
The letters -- mailed to Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, NBC television news anchor Tom Brokaw, and the New York Post newspaper -- contained brief letters that were likely written by the same person, the FBI said.
The FBI said in a statement that the anthrax mailer is likely to be an adult male who is a loner, who may work at a laboratory and is "apparently comfortable working with an extremely hazardous material."
The mailer probably owns or has access to laboratory equipment, and "did not select victims randomly," but instead "made an effort to identify the correct address, including zip code, of each victim and used sufficient postage to ensure proper delivery of the letters."
The suspect is also "a non-confrontational person, at least in his public life," who "lacks the personal skills necessary to confront others." This person "may hold grudges for a long time," and "may have chosen to anonymously harass other individuals or entities that he perceived as having wronged him" in the past.
"We don't have any evidence at this point linking this to any more than one person," said James Fitzgerald, head of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Could the mailer be linked to bin Laden's al-Qaeda network?
"We're not ruling anything out," Fitzgerald said. "But we're looking in the direction of that being domestic."
The mailer probably had anthrax stockpiled ahead of the September 11 terror attacks, Fitzgerald said. "He is an opportunist and took advantage of this as a veil of secrecy," Fitzgerald added.
In the end, the FBI is hoping that -- as in the case of Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber who sent letter bombs and eluded agents for years -- someone who knows the culprit will come forward with information leading to his arrest.
Speaking on CNN late Friday, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a plea for help. "We need the help of Americans to help us find the individual who's involved here," he said.
Ashcroft said that investigators were uncertain of the origin of the deadly bacteria, and did not yet know if the letters originated from a domestic or foreign source.
The FBI statement said the letters sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and to the New York Post were "identical copies."
The third letter, to Daschle, contained a slightly different message and anthrax that was "much more refined, more potent" and more easily dispersed than that in the other letters, Ashcroft said -- AFP
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