'Fallen Angel' has left few tracks in ricin case

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Three months later, she wants to know why the government can't catch the person who is calling himself "Fallen Angel" and threatened to use more ricin if new trucking rules were not repealed.

"I guess my question would have to be are they trying to catch them?" she said.

FBI officials said they are working hard, but their lack of success does not surprise national terrorism experts.

A lack of forensic evidence, the easy access to ricin, a nation full of people who have axes to grind and no apparent eyewitnesses add up to making the case hard to solve, experts told The Greenville News.

"It's an immensely hard problem," said Jay Davis, a former federal defense official who now works as a private national security consultant. "It's not that the FBI is failing. It's just a different kind of crime."

Randy Murch, who spent 23 years as an FBI agent specializing in forensic evidence before going to work for the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Va., said the ricin and anthrax cases are much like homicide cases that go cold after leads dry up and the evidence offers little help.

"Oftentimes you can only do so much," he said. "They've got their work cut out for them, and it might take awhile."

FBI officials say they are actively pursuing those responsible for sending letters containing ricin to the Greenville mail center and the White House last year. No such letter has been found in connection with the ricin found last week on a mail-opening machine of U.S. Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, which prompted the closing of three Senate buildings, a postal facility and the decontamination of 16 people.

The White House letter was postmarked Chattanooga, but the Greenville letter bore no postmark. FBI officials think the suspect knows Greenville well and may have personally delivered the letter to the Greenville mail center because the facility is not open to the public.

No one has become ill from any of the incidents, officials say.

Authorities have been criticized for the way the Greenville and White House cases were handled. In Greenville, postal workers did not call law enforcement for several hours, and the substance was not tested for almost a week. The postal center, which handles as many as 20,000 pieces of mail a day for nationwide distribution, remained open during that week in October.

A few weeks later when the substance was found in a mail center serving the White House, officials did not tell the public of the incident. It also took the Secret Service several days to inform the FBI.

The FBI also has made no arrests in a three-year-old case in which someone sent anthrax in the mail, killing five, sickening 17 and terrorizing the Capitol.

Tom O'Neill, a spokesman for the South Carolina FBI office, said the way the ricin was sent makes it vexing for investigators.

"You're looking at an anonymous letter that's deposited into a postal facility," he said. "It's difficult to track down who could be responsible for it or where it may have originated from. It makes it extremely difficult when you think of the amount of people who could have come in contact with it or could have deposited it."

In recent weeks the FBI has offered a $100,000 reward and distributed fliers to generate leads from the public. It's been aided by the American Trucking Association, which has asked its members to be alert for clues.

Experts said the ricin and anthrax cases are similar to the cases of the Unabomber and the Washington snipers, in that the physical evidence at the crime scene wasn't what ultimately snared the suspects. The Unabomber case involved 16 attacks over 17 years.

"What caught the snipers was not looking at the bullets but somebody who finally saw them," said Davis, a nuclear physicist who worries about the anonymous nature of some terrorism. "What got Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was not that we got and studied a dozen of his bombs, which by the way were unique and didn't look like any bomb anybody ever made. What got him was that his brother recognized his writing style when he sent that manifesto to the press."

David Siegrist, director of studies in biological terrorism for the Potomac Institute in Arlington, Va., said finding those responsible for the ricin is immensely more difficult because the plants from which it is made are grown worldwide and are common throughout the South.

By contrast, he said, the anthrax used in the attacks had been processed in some way and could be subject to genetic analysis, which told investigators its strain had originated in a research setting, though even that clue did not lead to an arrest.

"Bioterrorism is very difficult to track down," he said. "It's a very challenging problem, and I think we're realizing we don't have the tools to do it as effectively as we should."

Murch, the former FBI agent, said what is needed in the ricin and anthrax cases is what he calls the human link, a tie between the physical evidence and a human.

"I have no doubt that the forensic evidence available is being worked as hard as possible," he said. "But either there is nothing available in the evidence or the individual or individuals who are committing these crimes have not exposed themselves to other people or eyewitnesses. It seems to me the individuals probably have the capability to produce the material, and they know enough about forensic science to avoid providing law enforcement with the key clues."

Murch said investigators would try and get as much direction as they can from the available physical evidence, including the letters, the envelope and the ricin. But even if they find some evidence, such as fingerprints, it doesn't mean investigators will know who may be connected. He said unless a fingerprint found on a letter can be matched to one already on file in some database, it doesn't give investigators any link.

"Until they can develop the human link, it might run cold for a while," he said.

Jay Hetherington, who teaches terrorism topics at Clemson University and worked for the CIA for 33 years, said the use of mail makes it difficult to identify suspects.

"One of the problems is that there are 280 million people in the United States," he said. "You really have to have something that keys you in."

Even with a focus on truckers, he said, the nature of their job makes it hard to find the person responsible. And there is no shortage of truckers who dislike the new federal rule requiring more rest.

Dr. Alvin Fox, a bacteriologist who teaches at the University of South Carolina and is nationally recognized for his work in biodetection and anthrax, said the problem facing law enforcement is not an easy one. He said the government probably spent $1 million just trying to identify the strain of anthrax in those attacks, information that ultimately did not lead to any one individual because it was a common strain.

"I think we're all frustrated," he said. "But the government is taking this very seriously."

John Parachini, who studies terrorism and weapons proliferation issues for the Rand Corp., said one of the government's challenges is updating its technology.

"In part, we are faced with a 21st century problem, and our law enforcement people have 20th century capabilities and mindsets," he said. "The gumshoe approach in law enforcement will get you part of the way there, but the forensic challenge is fundamentally different."

Parachini praised the FBI for its formation of a scientific advisory panel to help solve problems related to biological weapons. And he said people should keep the ricin mailings in perspective, becase no one has become ill.

"We have to be careful about focusing too much on the means that we fear and keep in perspective the outcomes," he said. "If you have to send it in an envelope or somebody has to go in and try and smear it around so people will get exposed, while that's dangerous and disconcerting, it's not like somebody blasting a shotgun through your window."