2001 Anthrax Attacks Timeline: Steven Hatfill
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=anthraxattacks&anthraxattacks_suspects=anthraxattacks_steven_hatfill

Search warrants show FBI suspicion in anthrax case
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4AP7CN20081126

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army scientist who was wrongly targeted in the FBI's anthrax investigation attracted suspicion because of his knowledge of the deadly toxin, according to recently released court records.

FBI agents focused on Steven Hatfill after the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks because he had access to the building where anthrax was stored and described in an unpublished novel how an attack could take place, according to search warrants released on Tuesday by the U.S. District Court in Washington.

The FBI investigated Hatfill for years, but he was never charged. The Justice Department agreed in June to pay him $5.85 million to settle his lawsuit claiming government officials had violated his privacy rights.

Most of the new entries published by the 9/11 Timeline this week deal with the anthrax scare. The main drug used to combat anthrax was Cipro, which a high government official advised some reporters to take shortly after 9/11. Although an inquiry was launched into a coverup of problems with it in May 2000, the FDA endorsed the drug two months later. Hoax letters similar to the later anthrax mailings were sent to Fox News from 2000, and one may have been received by a Florida tabloid in mid-September 2001.

The main focus in the 9/11 Timeline this last week has been the anthrax attacks. There was some material about them in the Timeline at one point, but it got lost somehow. It has now been revived and new material has been added. The first anthrax mailing was in 1997, when the target was the Jewish service organization B'nai B'rith, and the CIA investigated the possibility of anthrax attacks using letters in 1999. Wrongly accused scientist Steven Hatfill's contract with USAMRID ended in the same year, and he then started helping the US military build a mock biological weapons factory. White House staff started taking anti-anthrax drugs on 9/11.