Suspects in anthrax case appear before federal magistrate

Bill Gang

Thursday, Feb. 19, 1998 | 4:58 a.m.

Was it a sinister plot to breed the deadly anthrax bacteria and contaminate perhaps hundreds of thousands of people or the first steps in an altruistic experiment that could save humanity from such an attack by others?

It's too early to tell, but posturing on both sides of the issue dominated Thursday's court appearance of two men charged in a Green Valley anthrax scare.

Television crews showed a Wednesday night event involving machine-gun armed federal agents guarding a Henderson medical lab and bio-suited investigators gingerly securing a Mercedes Benz believed to be holding the purported deadly germs.

The two men charged by federal prosecutors -- an admitted white supremacist with a history of biological experimentation and a Southern Nevada businessman -- will be held in federal custody through the weekend.

Federal Magistrate Roger Hunt will determine Monday whether bail should be set for Larry Wayne Harris and William Job Leavitt Jr. on the felony charges in the Henderson incident that had drawn national attention and lured a media circus to the federal courthouse.

But Leavitt's attorneys predicted the camera crews and national media reporters, clogging the streets and sidewalks and elbowing past each other for advantageous position, could be gone in a couple of days if tests don't show the seized anthrax to be "military grade" as an informant professed.

Attorney Lamond Mills, who said he has been Leavitt's friend for years in addition to his lawyer, said tests under federal supervision in the next 24 hours will show whether the anthrax is deadly.

Mills said he believes the germs Harris was using in his experiments were "harmless animal anthrax vaccine ... that you give to animals."

"If the cure works on vaccine grade anthrax, it would work on the real stuff," the attorney said. "They were going to see if their (experimental antidote) kills it."

Leavitt's other attorney, Kirby Wells, said he had been involved on behalf of Leavitt in brokering a multi-million deal for Harris to buy laboratory equipment from the Green Valley lab to test what he touted as a miracle cure for anthrax.

Mills said Leavitt, who has no criminal record, the antidote and the need to verify its effectiveness was "legitimate and vital ... and that he could make some money from it."

"It's a total misunderstand," Mills said. "He is not some wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, hide-in-a-cabin radical."

But an affidavit supporting the federal charges states "there are no valid commercial or industrial uses for anthrax bacteria and its most common use is as a bacteriological warfare agent."

The affidavit, prepared by FBI Special Agent John Hawken, said federal officials were notified of the impending sale of the research lab by an unnamed research scientist involved in the deal.

That informant, according to the documents, conceded that there was to be an experiment "which was supposed to electronically deactivate viruses and bacteria."

But the informant indicated he was told by Leavitt that he had "military grade" anthrax in the trunk of the Mercedes Benz for the experiment.

In support of the criminal charges, Hawken noted that Harris, an Ohio resident, currently is on probation after a 1995 felony conviction for wire fraud in obtaining bubonic plague toxins.

The agent added that in the summer of 1997, 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," Hawken said, noting that Harris is a licensed clinical and public health microbiologist operating his own company in Lancaster, Ohio.

The FBI affidavit quotes the informant as saying that Leavitt and Harris showed him a vial during a meeting at the Gold Coast hotel-casino and told him there was enough anthrax in it "to wipe out the city."

Harris's attorney, Federal Assistant Public Defender Michael Kennedy, said that before Monday's hearing he wants to look at the credibility of the informant, who has 1981 and 1982 felony convictions for extortion.

"We know there is a joker in the deck, but we don't know who it is," Wells said.

The FBI affidavit tells how agents swooped down on the lab at 2501 Green Valley Parkway and arrested Leavitt and Harris on charges of conspiracy to possess biological agent to be used as a weapon and possession of an illegal biological toxin.

At the initial court appearance Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale asked that the pair be held 10 days without bail before arraignment, but Hunt said the pair would only be held until Monday.