The Sunshine Project
News Release
28 October 2003
The Thomas Butler Case: Some Unreported Information
And Reasons for the Department of Justice's Prosecution
(Austin and Hamburg) - Thomas Butler, the scientist who lost plague samples and prompted a national bioterrorism scare, goes to trial on November 3rd. Butler faces 69 federal counts and a possible penalty totaling $17 million in fines and more than 200 years in prison.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) doesn’t publicly comment on the case; but news reports say that it is using Butler as an object lesson for scientists working with bioweapons agents. Purportedly, that lesson is "don’t play loose with disease samples". Some scientists and scientific organizations are rallying to Butler's cause. They say that the charges are grossly disproportionate to mistakes committed. Some allege that the Butler prosecution will make the US vulnerable by scaring scientists away from biodefense research. The case has been characterized as one pitting scientific freedom and treatments for disease against an overzealous DOJ that simply does not understand the culture of life scientists.
But if life scientists are looking for a cause to symbolize their resentment of new oversight laws, the Butler case may not be one that wins them public sympathy. There is a 'crime' far more heinous than Butler’s bumbling that underlies the prosecution: the gutting of openness in academic institutions by secretive biodefense research. A major reason behind DOJ’s aggressive posture seems to have less to do with Dr. Butler personally than it does with the biodefense research program of his institution, Texas Tech University (TTU).
What has gone unreported in the Butler case is that Texas Tech's work with bioweapons is far from a little program at an ordinary state school in a flat and dusty corner of middle America. In fact, Butler worked in the midst of a large and secretive biodefense program supported by the US Army, a program that even many life scientists may not be aware of.
The TTU - US Army program is one that is not primarily oriented toward treating disease, rather, it engages in other kinds of research on bioweapons agents and toxins. This includes types of work that have drawn international criticism of the US because they push the envelope of acceptability under the Biological Weapons Convention.
TTU’s biodefense patron is the US Army Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM). The conduit for this money into TTU is its Institute for Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH), which is located off-campus at the former Reese Air Force Base. While TIEHH’s website emphasizes its research on environmental contaminants and studies to save reptiles; pollution and wildlife aren't the main course on TIEHH’s dinner table.
Behind its somewhat misleading public image, TIEHH is an Army biodefense research center. And its faculty and funding are intricately tied up with infectious disease research at Butler's direct employer - the TTU Health Sciences Center. How much of TIEHH's work is Army biodefense? SBCCOM provides a whopping 75% of TIEHH's research contracts. With additional money from the Air Force, four out of five external research dollars coming into the inappropriately-named Institute for Environmental and Human Health are for Pentagon biodefense studies. Some of the SBCCOM grants are passed through TIEHH to the TTU Health Sciences Center, including Army-funded research on Dr. Butler's specialty - plague.
As of August 31st, 2003, TTU financial documents list 22 active biodefense contracts between TIEHH and the Department of Defense, totaling more than $7.5 million in cash in TTU accounts. Twenty one of these contracts are with SBCCOM. Apart from some projects on protective clothing whose purpose is relatively clear, what exactly TTU is doing for the Pentagon is poorly publicly documented.
Some research, however, appears to be of the type that is earning the US biodefense program international mistrust. SBCCOM-funded projects at TIEHH include threat assessment programs to make toxin concoctions by mixing different bioweapons agents together, a program that does not appear to respond to any documented threat. Another project is on chem/bio decontamination of large objects, such as military equipment. The latter projects can be accomplished using simulants – not live agents - but it is unclear which approach TTU is using. It could involve large scale weaponization of disease agents and toxins. TIEHH has also been extensively remodeling its Reese Air Force Base site to create "state of the art" facilities for its research. A complete description of these facilities are has not been made available to the public.
The Butler case has never been simply about an absent-minded professor at an average state university. The story broke as the FBI increasingly focused on the US biodefense program in its investigation of the anthrax letters of 2001. For the government, the lost plague raised more embarrassing questions about the security of Pentagon biodefense research. The case is also about the government enforcing the quid pro quo that it and life sciences institutions have developed: various federal agencies provide enormous money for a tightly-proscribed research agenda on bioweapons. Research institutions get this support if they kowtow to the government's priorities, including secrecy, and if they don't have embarrassing screw ups.
Up against DOJ and his employer, Butler will need all the help he can get – not because his plague error caused any demonstrated harm; but because the reasons for his prosecution include the government's need to protect sensitive research from the public eye. The case is not simply about reassurances that sloppy handling of disease will not be tolerated – the publicity surrounding the lost vials highlights the vulnerability of sensitive research to accidents. A leak at a sensitive biodefense project isn't just a potential health or terrorism threat. An accident could be an international political liability if it reveals the "wrong" research, and Butler was certainly close to projects that appear to fit that description. It is thus not surprising that Justice wants him in jail and TTU wants him fired. In this sense, the prosecution of Butler serves to make clear the restrictive terms of the government’s biodefense largesse.
Supporters of intellectual and scientific freedom who are aligning themselves to Butler's cause would be more likely to earn admiration by challenging the biodefense agenda that is compromising institutions like Texas Tech and that has led to Butler's aggressive indictment. But the defendant's defenders haven't done this. So far, their arguments relate more to the narrower interests of protecting their own.
There's no question that the Department of Justice is making an example of Thomas Butler, and probably unfairly so. But standing up for Dr. Butler isn't a very noble cause if it is done for the self-interested purpose of absolving biodefense scientists from serious prosecution, rather than protecting public science from the Pentagon's biodefense invasion.
If there can be a positive outcome of Butler's trial, it will be a thorough public exploration of TTU's research and of how biodefense is compromising the integrity of institutions like Texas Tech.