31 August 2004
It was a January weekend in 2003. Dr Thomas Butler, a world-renowned expert on bubonic plague, had called in at his laboratory at Texas Tech University. The 62-year-old microbiologist had worked with the disease for decades and always kept a meticulous record of what was in his lab and where. That day, he noticed that 30 vials of plague were missing. It was the beginning of a nightmare.
<snip>
After Butler had spent the weekend looking for the vials, he did what he was supposed to do and called the university security officer. Together they searched again. Maybe the containers had been misplaced or accidentally sterilised. It happens in labs: vials go through the autoclave at the end of a busy day by mistake. It's no big deal. But Butler didn't find them, and the FBI was called in.
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Dr Plague cooperated fully with the investigation. He even waived his right to an attorney. He had worked for the government all his life, since his days as a navy doctor in Vietnam, and he trusted them. "I was tricked and deceived," said Butler in an interview with the CBS television show 60 Minutes last year. "I was naïve to have trusted them and the assurances they gave me."
The assurances were simple. To avert public panic, the FBI told Butler, he should sign a document stating that he had accidentally destroyed the vials. He would then be able to get back to work. He did so, and was promptly arrested. "Not for anything to do with the vials," says Turley. "But for lying to the FBI. It made no sense. He would never have created such controversy to conceal the accidental destruction of vials. Vials are accidentally destroyed in labs every day. All he would have had to do is get more plague."
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=556734
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