Confiscated anthrax reported to be non-lethal

Saturday, Feb. 21, 1998 | 11:31 a.m.

and SUN WIRE REPORTS

U.S. Army tests have concluded that a substance seized by FBI agents from two men in Henderson was a nonlethal form of anthrax used in vaccines, a federal official said today.

The materials that FBI agents discovered Wednesday night when they descended on a Mercedes and its two occupants outside of a doctor's office in Green Valley, a suburb of Henderson, were taken to an Army laboratory at Fort Dietrick, Md., for testing.

The Army found that the material "is not capable of producing the toxins that normal anthrax would produce," said the official, who requested anonymity.

However, the FBI seized additional material in Ohio from houses owned by Larry Wayne Harris, a former Aryan Nation member and one of the two men arrested in Henderson. That material was still being tested at Fort Dietrick, and those tests will not be completed before Monday.

The two men -- Harris, 46, of Lancaster, Ohio, and William Job Leavitt Jr., 47, of Logandale -- were charged with conspiracy to possess and possession of a biological agent for use as a weapon.

Lamond Mills, defense attorney for Leavitt, said he had not been informed by the FBI or the U.S. attorney's office about the test results. He called the news reports "really good news."

"Legally, this means their case goes down the toilet," said Mills. "I would expect the U.S. attorney to drop the charges."

Mills said he would try to get his client out of the Clark County jail as early as Saturday. An attorney for Harris and the U.S. attorney's office weren't immediately available for comment.

The men were arrested after the FBI received a tip from an informant, Ronald Rockwell, portrayed by the FBI as a "citizen performing his civic duty."

A defense lawyer, however, said Friday that Rockwell, a convicted extortionist, is just a scam artist who sought revenge because his scheme to make money off the men failed.

For his part, Rockwell said he was just plain scared when Leavitt and Harris, who were interested in what he called a "germ-killing" machine, said they had the deadly bacteria.

"They just said they had military-grade anthrax," Rockwell told the Las Vegas SUN on Friday afternoon.

Rockwell said Leavitt approached him a few months ago, asking about a device that Rockwell invented called the AZ58 ray tube. According to Rockwell, the tube kills all bacteria through frequency vibrations.

"We (Leavitt and Rockwell) talked a lot about my work," he said. "I was going to turn the AZ58 over to him once I showed him how it works. Then he was going to have all the heavy testing (done) over in Frankfurt, Germany."

Rockwell said that Leavitt planned on producing more AZ58 ray tubes in Frankfurt, and the two were working on a contract where Rockwell would get 10 percent of the profits. He was asking for $20 million without the contract.

Harris came into the picture, Rockwell said, as someone that Leavitt hired as a microbiologist to test the tubes.

But Rockwell said he became suspicious after he noticed the two changing their stories, he said.

"There were inconsistencies," he said. "Leavitt was inconsistent in referring to where the two were and when."

Rockwell decided to contact authorities after he discovered that the two had anthrax, he said. He thought that if they wanted to test the ray tube, they would use a more common bacteria and became nervous when they told him they had the deadly bacteria, he said.

"I was looking for someone to take this technology forth to mankind because it is so powerful," he said. "They didn't tell the truth on what they were going to really use on this test."

Mills - a former U.S. attorney - said Leavitt didn't think the material was military-grade anthrax but rather anthrax vaccine, which is legal to possess. Leavitt was initially shocked that he was caught up in the investigation, Mills said.

Leavitt was only interested in Rockwell's machine, which Rockwell tried to sell to the men for $2 million, Mills said.

"When he couldn't scam them, he went the other way," Mills said of Rockwell. "He became a good guy for the FBI."

Harris' attorney, Michael Kennedy, said Rockwell's credibility "is something we're going to look into."