Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2001 | 9:38 a.m.
The author of a book containing a recipe for the deadly anthrax bacteria has been barred from a gun collector's show at Cashman Center this weekend.
Agricultural-chemicals entrepreneur Timothy Tobiason, 45, of Silver Creek, Neb., has sold self-help and military history books at gun shows throughout the country. But he has raised the ire of at least two gun show operators this month for selling his book, "Scientific Principles of Improvised Warfare and Home Defense Volume 6-1: Advanced Biological Weapons Design and Manufacture."
The volume, described as a germ warfare cookbook, includes ways to make anthrax so that it can be delivered by mail. Five Americans have died from inhalation anthrax since last month, including two postal workers. Tobiason has not been charged with any crimes related to the book, but he has been monitored by the FBI.
When Claude Hall caught wind of Tobiason's book, he kicked him out of his Oklahoma City gun show on Nov. 10. Hall, who operates five shows in Las Vegas annually, said he told Tobiason by telephone Monday that he was not welcome at the Cashman Field shows Saturday and Sunday.
"I'm not going to have that kind of stuff at my show," Hall said. "I had sent him a letter saying he was not welcome at my shows. He called me and was trying to beg his way back into the shows. But I told him he had raised too much of a stink."
Tobiason could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But he told New York Times reporters at a Salt Lake City gun show earlier this month that he was angry at the federal government because he claimed its patent laws cheated him out of money. He said he wrote his germ warfare book "to fight against dishonest government" and that he could launch a biological attack more deadly than the recent incidents.
"It would be a hard thing to do, but I'm prepared to do it," Tobiason told the Times.
Hall, an Oklahoma City resident, participated in the rescue effort when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in that city was bombed by right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh in 1995. The explosion from the homemade ammonium nitrate bomb killed 168 people.
After that incident, Hall said he expelled from his shows people who were selling books on how to make pipe bombs. The gun show rules he has posted on his Internet website prohibit "anarchist" books and Nazi material that glorifies that era. Also banned are any other items that will give the general public "a negative perspective of these shows."
"To have a book on how to make anthrax and kill people, I don't agree with that," Hall said. "To sell that type of thing after what happened at the World Trade Center, that's B.S. He might try to walk into our show, but if we catch him, we'll throw ... (him) out of there."
Fellow gun show operator Bob Templeton of the Crossroads of the West Gun Shows based in Kaysville, Utah, said he had no idea Tobiason was selling the germ warfare book at his Salt Lake City show Nov. 17-18.
"He represented to us that he was selling military history books," Templeton said.
After the Times published its story after the Salt Lake City show, Templeton barred Tobiason from another show last weekend at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, Calif. Like Hall, Templeton said he has booted vendors in the past who sold controversial material.
"We notified him of our decision, and he was somewhat surprised," Templeton said of Tobiason. "He talked about his First Amendment rights, but we said there's no place at a gun show for that type of material."
