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FBI found no traces of anthrax in Maryland pond

Emergency Management Alert, August 6, 2003

Law enforcement officials said August 1 that no traces of anthrax were found in tests of soil samples taken from a Maryland pond the FBI drained in June, the Associated Press reports.

Authorities found various items including a gun and a bicycle in the 1.45 million-gal pond in a Frederick, MD, forest, but nothing connected to the anthrax case. FBI divers last winter found a plastic box with two holes cut into it that some investigators believed could have been used to fill envelopes with anthrax spores while reducing the chance of exposure. The FBI hoped to find a connection to the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 that killed five people and sickened 17 others.

The FBI focused on the Frederick area because it is the site of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, one of the country's main anthrax research centers. The town also was home to Steven Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert who once worked at the institute and who Attorney General John Ashcroft named a "person of interest" in the case. However, no charges have been filed against Hatfill and he denies any involvement to the attacks.

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