WASHINGTON — Five years after a series of deadly anthrax-laced letters rattled the nation, the FBI has offered no indication that it is any closer to solving the first major act of bioterrorism on U.S. soil, leading critics to speculate the probe has stalled and to question how well federal officials would handle future attacks.
Members of Congress and targets of the attacks -- which killed five people between Oct. 5 and Nov. 21, 2001, sickened 17 and exposed thousands of others -- increasingly are expressing concern that the FBI-led federal investigation, code-named Amerithrax, has been mismanaged.
FBI officials have stopped providing regular briefings to victims and lawmakers about the investigation. The federal task force leading the investigation has shrunk in half. And it is now on its third leader.
The credentials of the latest chief may be telling: He has worked on complex international criminal cases that have run cold.
The reticence of the FBI is in sharp contrast to bold predictions the agency made about the investigation in its early days.
"Their public pronouncements about their confidence levels were obviously way off the mark all the way along," said Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota whose Capitol Hill office was one of the targets of the attacks. "It has sort of been the domestic version of Iraq. They made a lot of assumptions that turned out not to be accurate."
Daschle, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said he asked the FBI about a month ago for an update but was rebuffed.
"Clearly, this whole investigation has gone very cold," he said. "Because it has become so cold, they are all the more apprehensive about acknowledging that they do not have any real good evidence or leads."
A leading Republican, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, also complained about the lack of new information on the investigation in a letter last month to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Grassley is threatening to subpoena FBI officials to testify before Congress or to hold up Justice Department nominations if the agency does not divulge more information soon.
The FBI says its investigation remains highly active. It has told lawmakers that it would not provide any more briefings on the case in part out of fear that sensitive information would be leaked to the media.
