Contract shows soured deal between Leavitt, Rockwell

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998 | 11:32 a.m.

Details of the soured business relationship between anthrax scare suspect William Job Leavitt Jr. and the man who turned him in to the FBI are bared in a draft of a four-page contract obtained by the SUN.

The proposed contract, drafted by Ernest Roark, the lawyer of FBI source Ronald G. Rockwell, is at the center of last week's scare that has attracted worldwide headlines.

In the contract, Rockwell describes how he wanted to sell Leavitt an invention he called the AZ-58 Ray Tube Frequency Instrument that supposedly kills bacteria.

Leavitt, of Overton, and another medical researcher, Larry Wayne Harris of Ohio, were arrested last Wednesday by FBI agents as they attempted to test Rockwell's equipment with what turned out to be a harmless anthrax vaccine.

Rockwell, as the deal collapsed, told the FBI that Leavitt had indicated the substance was military-grade anthrax. But lab tests later conducted by the government revealed it was nonlethal.

In the draft, faxed Feb. 11 to Leavitt's lawyer Kirby Wells, Rockwell indicates he also wanted Leavitt to pay him to do research on time travel and high-level nuclear waste neutralization.

The government's top scientists have been unable to perfect any form of nuclear waste neutralization, which attempts to render the waste harmless by subjecting it to electrical waves and beams.

Wells told the SUN Monday that Rockwell also was interested in UFO research.

Wells said he began considering Rockwell a "crackpot" after seeing his other projects.

Rockwell, through a spokes-woman, has denied trying to involve Leavitt in time travel and UFO research.

But the draft of the never-signed contract says Leavitt has assured Rockwell "that related work on the projects will be carried forward indefinitely even if the direct involvement" of both men is terminated.

The draft implies that Rockwell has been working with Al Bielik, who's said to have discovered how to alter the flow of time.

Rockwell wanted Leavitt to give him a $100,000 nonrefundable deposit on the AZ-58 Ray Tube and another $1.9 million to close the sale, the contract says.

Rockwell also was asking for 10 percent of the proceeds of the future sale of the technology he had invested, the draft says. Those proceeds were estimated to be as high as $18 million.

The agreement between the two men was never signed when Leavitt balked at paying the $100,0000 up front.