FBI arrests two men for possible possession of deadly anthrax

Robert Macy

Thursday, Feb. 19, 1998 | 11:03 a.m.

LAS VEGAS - Two men were charged Thursday with possessing the deadly germ anthrax for use as a weapon. The FBI said one bragged he had enough to "wipe out the city" and last year laid out a plan to attack New York City subways.

The men were arrested in suburban Henderson late Wednesday as they were allegedly trying to arrange a lab test of the substance. A beige Mercedes, sealed in plastic, was hauled off to Nellis Air Force Base for tests to confirm the material carried inside was the germ warfare agent.

An informant said one of the men told him he had "military grade anthrax" in flight bags in the trunk of the Mercedes, according to an FBI affidavit. The source said he saw eight to 10 bags marked "biological" in the trunk.

Larry Wayne Harris, 46, of Lancaster, Ohio, and William Leavitt, 47, of Las Vegas and Logandale, Nev., appeared before a federal magistrate Thursday afternoon, handcuffed and shackled at the ankles. The two-count complaint alleges conspiracy to possess and possession of the biological agent.

Harris, sporting a heavy beard, told the magistrate he could not afford an attorney. Leavitt told the court he did not understand the charges against him.

Leavitt's attorney, Lamond Mills, told reporters his client "is absolutely not guilty." He said he believed the FBI would find that the material in the car was merely anthrax vaccine, which is used to inoculate cattle and is legal to possess.

Attorneys for both men asked that a detention hearing be continued until Monday, while the government ran tests to determine whether the anthrax was military grade or simply an anthrax livestock vaccine. The proceedings were continued to next week.

Earlier, Bobby Siller, special agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI office, told a news conference that there was no indication the men had any target.

The FBI said the pair were trying to arrange to buy the informant's testing equipment for $2 million up front and another $18 million later.

Siller repeatedly reassured residents of the Las Vegas area that there was no contamination and no danger.

Gov. Bob Miller received a briefing from Siller Thursday afternoon, and said he had been assured there was no further threat to the Las Vegas area. He said the Mercedes had been released from Nellis to the FBI.

Yet people flooded the lines of Las Vegas radio talk shows with concerns about their safety and questions about what the men were intending to do.

Some callers asked about evacuation plans and others wondered what the symptoms of anthrax were. Talk show hosts played both newscaster and counselor, passing along sketchy reports while urging listeners to remain calm.

The Las Vegas arrests came as the country prepares for possible military action against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who is suspected of manufacturing biological weapons such as anthrax.

Harris, identified by the FBI as a member of the Aryan Nations, was previously given probation after pleading guilty to illegally obtaining bubonic plague bacteria through the mail in 1995. He is also author of a self-published book called "Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America."

Leavitt, who has no criminal record, owns a microbiology lab in rural Logandale, about 60 miles north of Las Vegas, and another in Frankfurt, Germany, according to the affidavit prepared by FBI Special Agent John H. Hawken.

It said a confidential informant called the FBI Wednesday to say he was a research scientist and had been contacted by Harris and Leavitt, who asked him to use some of his equipment to test vials of bacillus anthracis.

Over the next 12 hours, the informant kept in touch with the FBI and at least one phone call was tapped. The document outlined a meeting of Harris and Leavitt with another man at the Gold Coast Hotel.

That man, who was neither identified nor charged, was later tracked down by the FBI and related their conversation.

"Harris had shown him what appeared to be a vial, which was wrapped in cardboard and stated that it contained anthrax," the affidavit said. "Harris held the vial in his hand and further stated that there was enough there to 'wipe out the city."'

Harris and Leavitt were observed leaving the hotel at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, with Leavitt carrying a white foam cooler which he placed in the Mercedes. They then met with the informant at a restaurant, the affidavit said.

The informant was identified by Leavitt's attorney, Mills, as a Ronald G. Rockwell. Mills said he did not know where Rockwell lived. There was no such listing in Las Vegas. Calls to the FBI for confirmation were not immediately returned.

In background information in the affidavit, the FBI said that last summer Harris described plans for the New York attack.

"Harris told a group of plans to place a 'globe' of bubonic plague toxins in a New York subway station, where it would be broken by a passing subway train, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. Harris stated that the Iraqis would be blamed for that event."

The affidavit added: "Harris had stated that the New York subway attack would ruin the economy and take the military by surprise."

The Mercedes is registered to Gary Gerwin of Palm Springs, the FBI said.

A Palm Springs-area man, Clark McCartney, told The Desert Sun newspaper he rented a home in nearby Cathedral City to a Gary Gerwin, but that Gerwin died in February 1996. Gerwin willed the car to Leavitt, who helped treat him for a blood disorder, said McCartney, who is regional director of the state Democratic Party.

FBI agents who interviewed the home's current residents refused to comment

Separately, in an interview with the AP, Daniel Burns, managing editor of KVBC-TV said chief photographer Mark Renfro ran into Leavitt and Harris at a Radio Shack in Las Vegas Monday night. The men were shopping for a police scanner and were looking for radar detectors and globe-shaped static electricity toy.

They conversed and the men tried to get the station to interview them about Iraq.

"They started to explain that they were conducting research and had done a lot of research on chemical warfare and were familiar with what was going on in Iraq, and if we wanted to do a story on them we should contact them," Burns said.

The FBI informant was identified as a scientist specializing in cancer research who has two felony convictions for conspiracy to commit extortion. The affidavit said however that he had no deal with authorities to provide information.

"It appears that his providing information to the FBI was done simply as a citizen performing his civic duty," it said.

Mills, a former U.S. attorney for Nevada, said the source approached Leavitt saying he had equipment he wanted to sell that could destroy anthrax.

Mills said Harris agreed to provide some vaccine grade anthrax to test the source's equipment.

Mills said he had known Leavitt for 20 years and they were once neighbors in the tiny town of Logandale. He said his client has a wife and three grown children.

The source told the FBI he met Harris at a science convention in Denver in August 1997.

FBI agents spent three hours searching Harris' home and back yard in Lancaster, Ohio, on Thursday. Agents also examined six bags of garbage at the curb. In rural Logandale, Nev., newspapers lay in the driveway of Leavitt's one-story brick ranch house. Lawn chairs and a well-used baby playpen stood in front of the door.

In a 1997 interview for a documentary, Harris claimed he got anthrax spores by sinking a probe into a 20-year-old burial site for cows infected with the disease. Harris claimed he cultured the spores in his lab, but refused to say if he possessed anthrax, said interviewer James Neff, Kiplinger Professor of Journalism at Ohio State University who collaborated on the never-aired program with Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Anthrax is an infectious disease that usually afflicts only animals, especially cattle and sheep. But anthrax spores can be produced in a dry form suitable for weapons and can be fatal to humans even in microscopic amounts.

Anthrax can also be used in germ warfare; many of the troops who fought in the Persian Gulf war were inoculated for the bacteria.

In Washington, D.C., Attorney General Janet Reno briefed President Clinton by telephone on what the government knows about the case and what was being done.

The men were arrested at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday outside medical offices in suburban Henderson, Nev.

The FBI called in a special team from Nellis Air Force Base which sealed the Mercedes in plastic and hauled it off.

"These individuals were involved in the construction of a weapon," FBI spokesman Aurelio Flores said. "We have no idea where they were going to use it."

"There is no indication what the target might have been or even if there was a target," Siller said.

No one at the Henderson office building was connected to the men, Siller said.

At the Green Valley Professional Center, a guard ordered reporters off the property, which has doctors' offices and other businesses. Some physicians were seeing patients. At least one was closed.

A hand-lettered sign on the door of Dr. Nancy L. Long's office said: "Due to the obvious we are not sure what we should be doing. As a result Dr. Long feels it is best to close the office for the day."

Flores said earlier that some subway system might have been a target.

"These individuals were trying to be maybe copycats of what happened in Japan," Flores said, referring to a 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people. "They might have talked about different cities. We have no conclusive evidence to indicate that they were talking about a specific city. It was loose talk."

After first denying that Harris had been a member, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler said Thursday that Harris joined the group in the early 1990s and left in 1995.

Butler, speaking at the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, did not say why Harris quit.

"He's not a member now," Butler told KHQ-TV of Spokane, Wash. "All I know is he said he was a microbiologist."

Last year, Harris pleaded guilty to a count of fraud after he was accused of illegally obtaining bubonic plague bacteria through the mail from a laboratory. He said he never intended to hurt anyone and was sentenced to 18 months' probation.

Harris was arrested in May 1995 after a Rockville, Md., laboratory sent three vials of the freeze-dried, inactive bacteria to his home in Lancaster, Ohio.

Even after pleading guilty to the charge, Harris maintained he did nothing wrong. He said he wanted the bacteria for research for his book.

"I am a scientist. I am absolutely of no harm to anyone. I never, never intended to hurt anyone," he said then.

Maurice Eisenstein, a consultant on security and weapons of mass destruction for the Rand think-tank in Santa Monica, Calif., said it is relatively easy to obtain a sample of a deadly bacteria and grow it in a private lab.

"Extreme right wings groups who have inordinate passion, hate for the nature of this country and the government are prime candidates for using this stuff," he said. "If they had vial of this stuff and knew how to use it you could easily do what they did in Oklahoma City, without explosives."

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