Community Infected by Germ-Warfare Fears

Ever since three vials of freeze-dried bubonic plague organisms showed up in the glove compartment of Larry Wayne Harris’ old white Subaru back in 1995, this city of 36,000 has been grappling with a dilemma.

How does a community deal with someone in its midst whose actions seem suspicious--but are not necessarily illegal and perhaps are misconstrued? Was Harris seeking to prevent germ warfare, as he has claimed, or was he trying to unleash it?

It is a question that Lancaster, or some other town, may have to face again after Harris’ arrest in Las Vegas last week for carrying what the FBI thought was deadly anthrax--but in fact turned out to be nonlethal anthrax vaccine. Probation-violation charges (Harris was convicted of mail fraud in obtaining the plague samples) may send him to jail for up to five years. But even if he is convicted and serves his full sentence, he would eventually be free from formal supervision.

Meanwhile, neighborhoods in other parts of America must handle their own Larry Harrises as militias, white separatists and tax protesters mingle in overlapping, but certainly not congruent, circles. Does espousing anti-government politics mean participating in outright revolution? Does talk necessarily mean that action will follow? Can true motives always be unearthed?

“It’s one of the difficulties about having a free society,” Lancaster police Lt. David W. Bailey said of Harris. “If he is in fact conducting legitimate research, he has rights. But there is the public health to worry about. It is very thorny.”

The search warrant executed in 1995 on Harris’ white-frame bungalow turned up some intriguing tidbits. Hanging in one bedroom, for example, was a framed commission for Harris as a second lieutenant in the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Aryan Nations--an Idaho-based white-supremacist group whose members have been linked to robbery and murder in their quest to form their own country in the Pacific Northwest.

Police also found an ammunition box filled with blasting caps, four hand-grenade trigger mechanisms, five detonating fuses, “one yellow box of home-made explosives,” two bags of blasting agent and a sawed-off .30-caliber rifle, according to the warrant report.

City Health Commissioner Bruce Carpenter said Harris’ home laboratory included an incubator, petri dishes and other equipment that would have allowed him to reconstitute the plague germs. None of it was needed to test wells or septic systems, the job he performed for a lab until being fired a few months before.

Harris made up a nonexistent lab to obtain the plague culture. Still, the glove compartment’s contents were not harmful in their freeze-dried form. And Harris maintained that he was merely trying to develop an antidote for use in case the Iraqis unleashed germ warfare on the United States.

“Had he not told such really, really crazy stories and . . . obtained [the plague] through forged means, people would have been a lot more lenient,” Carpenter said.

Instead, Harris was convicted of mail fraud and placed on 18 months’ probation. His probation officer gave him permission to travel to speak about his fears.

From then on, eyes watched. Ears listened.

The probation officer agreed to pass on to Carpenter any signs of a lab setup glimpsed during spot checks of Harris’ home.

Lancaster’s 100-officer police force has no formal surveillance unit. But intelligence reports filtered in from other agencies, detailing the audiences before whom he spoke as his reputation in the “patriot movement” grew.

Detectives noticed that Harris was a regular at Trader’s Cafe, where a dozen or so people gather each Thursday night to complain about what they see as government injustice and cover-ups.

They noticed when Stephen Wharf, a 23-year-old charged with aiming a loaded rifle at a state trooper, claimed in his defense that he had been influenced by Harris’ theories. The two men met when both performed in a church Easter pageant, Wharf’s attorney said.

Harris testified at Wharf’s trial about his germ-warfare fears and claimed on the stand that he himself had trained Iraqis in the art of the microbe as a private consultant to the CIA and the Defense Department.

His neighbors noticed when Harris applied, while awaiting trial in the plague case, for a zoning variance for a home lab. They gathered 143 signatures urging its rejection. He told the Lancaster Planning Commission he wanted to test water and was employed by Independent Health Services of Columbus. Carpenter informed commissioners Harris was lying and he knew it for a fact: Carpenter, it turned out, owned that company. Harris’ application was rejected.

With last week’s arrest, fears and tempers flared. But with the discovery that the anthrax was vaccine and the prospect that Harris could be jailed, another consequence could be a sympathetic backlash. A neighbor who has argued with Harris in the past over his barking Dobermans fired her harsh words last week at law enforcement and the press. “It’s all hype,” she snarled. “You may think he’s crazy, but a lot of people think the way he does.”