Thursday, Feb. 19, 1998 | 12:05 p.m.
Two men, including a former white supremacist once charged with illegally receiving bubonic-plague germs in the mail, were arrested late Wednesday on federal charges of possessing deadly bacteria used to make chemical weapons.
Bobby Siller, special agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI office, at a press conference today rebutted rumors that the germs were intended for release either in New York City subways or in Cincinnati.
"I have no information on what they intended to do," Siller said.
He said there doesn't appear to be any contamination from the reported bacteria in the community.
"Our primary concern in this was the safety of the community," Siller said.
He said within 12 hours after being tipped off the FBI had resolved the safety concerns.
Larry Wayne Harris, a 45-year-old microbiologist from Lancaster, Ohio, and William Leavitt, Jr., 47, of Logandale, Nevada, were taken into custody at 7:40 p.m. Wednesday outside the Royal Center of Advanced Medicine at 2501 N. Green Valley Pkwy.
Harris, a former member of the Aryan Nations, and Leavitt were to appear before a U.S. magistrate here at 3 p.m.
Siller said agents today believe the duo's white Mercedes parked outside the clinic contained anthrax.
A special FBI hazardous waste team from Washington, D.C., and a group of U.S. Army hazardous waste specialists from Utah and an Air Force explosives unit were brought in to seal off the Mercedes and transport it to Nellis Air Force base for examination.
"There was potential for real danger," Siller said.
Siller said the suspects, both detained at the Clark County Detention Center, may have been trying to test the bacteria at the clinic. He did not indicate whether the owners of the clinic were involved.
Siller said agents received word ahead of time Wednesday that Harris and Leavitt were going to the clinic, and they were able to call in their hazardous materials experts to help handle the bacteria as the arrests were made.
Dr. Daniel Royal, a homeopath at the clinic, said the FBI called him Wednesday at 7 p.m. and asked for permission to search the clinic.
He said FBI agents told him they were looking for a cooler.
In May 1995, Harris was picked up with four vials of freeze-dried bubonic plague in Ohio. He obtained it from a food-testing laboratory, Superior Labs, in Lancaster, Ohio, where he was employed as a lab worker.
When the police searched his house on May 12, they not only found the vials, but also hand-grenade triggers, home-made explosive devices and fuse, according to Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montogmery, Ala.
He was charged with three counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud because he used his Ohio employer's state laboratory permit to get delivery to his house.
Harris plea bargained in December 1995 to one count of wire fraud. He said that he was using the plague for testing to come up with an antidote because he feared Iraq would use germ-carrying rats on the United States.
On April, 23, 1997, he was placed on 18 months of probation and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. The other three charges were dismissed.
Harris wrote a book titled, "Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America." The 131-page book sold for $28.50.
Harris was a lieutenant in Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, Idaho, a leading neo-Nazi compound, Potok said. He was a former member of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group that may have influenced convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
The National Alliance is headed by William Pierce, who authored the "Turner Dairies."
Neither Henderson's Emergency Management Planning Division nor the Clark County Health District was included in the operation, Chief Health Officer Otto Ravenholt said.
"The FBI did not ask for the local HazMat (hazardous materials) or the Health District's help," Ravenholt, who is also the county's emergency medical chief, said.
Ravenholt said anthrax spores are a threat if inhaled. Anthrax comes from infected animals and the hides of animals, particularly cattle.
American troops in the 1991 Persian Gulf War were concerned that Saddam Hussein would use anthrax against them.
"Common antibiotics such as penicillin combat it," Ravenholt said.
He said a vaccine is available against if for those working with wild animals.
But Russian researchers announced in the British scientific journal "Vaccine" in December that they had developed a new altered form of anthrax at the State Research Centre for Applied Microbiology in Obolensk, Russian.
The new strain was made possible by genetic engineering, something that biological warfare experts have feared since such technology was developed in the 1970s.
In Clark County the emergency services plan does include releases of hazardous materials, Emergency Service Director Bob Andrews said. However, no local official could say how dangerous airborne biological or chemical releases would be contained or handled.
SUN REPORTERS Ed Koch, Denise Cardinal, Art Nadler, Jerry Fink, and Valerie Miller contributed to this story.
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