Artist faces bioterror charges

A Federal grand jury in Buffalo will consider possible bioterrorism charges today (June 15) against an art professor who uses biotechnology to make performance art displays criticizing capitalism. Steven Kurtz is an associate professor at the Buffalo campus of the State University of New York. He came under suspicion on May 11 after he called 911 early in the morning to report that his wife had died in her sleep, from what authorities later said was heart failure. While in his home, police and paramedics spotted items including Petri dishes and scientific equipment, according to his attorney, that caused them to call the FBI. After the FBI obtained a criminal search warrant, agents of the 30-agency Joint Bioterrorism Task Force then spent parts of 2 days in hazmat suits searching his home and removing several items. The search team found no dangerous agents, according to Buffalo FBI spokesperson Paul Moskal. Kurtz's lawyer, Paul Cambria, said they found samples of three different kinds of bacteria, one of which was an "innocuous" genetically modified strain of Escherichia coli Kurtz used in his displays. Kurtz is controversial because of his membership in the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a tiny group of artists nationwide who build biotechnology arts projects with a political message. Neither for nor against biotechnology in general, according to its web site, the group advocates "contestational biology" – opposition to the belief that "the 'free' market always works in the public interest by saving us from environmental, health, and population problems." The Department of Justice has subpoenaed several of Kurtz's present and former CAE colleagues from around the country to testify today. The subpoena for one of them, Beatriz da Costa, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, says that the investigation involves possible crimes of possessing biological agents defined in Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act of 1989, according to her attorney, Dan Henry. The Buffalo federal district attorney's office refuses to say what the government took from Kurtz or even to verify that they are investigating him. "We don't say there is or isn't an investigation," William Hochul, Jr., chief of the office's Terrorism Division, told The Scientist. "We don't say who is or isn't subpoenaed. We just kind of proceed until such time as things happen in open court." Kurtz wrote The Scientist in an E-mail that on advice of counsel, he could not speak to the press. But in an E-mail from him to a correspondent who posted it on the Internet June 2, Kurtz wrote, "I was detained for 22 hours by the FBI. They seized my wife's body, house, cat, and car. These items were released a week later." Kurtz wrote, "They seized computers, science equipment, chunks of my library, teaching files, ID, and all my research for a new book." Referring to today's grand jury hearing, he concluded, "In all probability, I will be arrested shortly thereafter." Because of the Justice Department's secrecy, some of the lawyers representing people who will testify say they have no idea what the government will allege. Henry said that the prosecutors are "just throwing their net out very broadly to conduct their investigation and see what it turns up." "They are zeroing in on his message," Kurtz's lawyer Cambria told The Scientist. "I know that because they're looking at past things that he's written and so on, and they're trying to use that to circumstantially show that he's some kind of terrorist, which is kind of ridiculous." Cambria said Kurtz objects to spending money on bioterrorism defense at the expense of the public health agenda of conquering natural killer diseases, and he opposes genetically modified crops that give the companies who create them a monopoly on selling them. Previously, Cambria successfully defended Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt in the Supreme Court, and he won suits against municipalities that tried to block the performances of rock star Marilyn Manson. Nonviolent protests opposing the grand jury hearing are scheduled to take place today in Buffalo, San Francisco, Vienna, and Amsterdam. Cambria said he sees no parallels between Kurtz's case and those of convicted plague researcher Thomas Butler and bioterrorism researcher Steven Jay Hatfill, who has never been charged with a crime but remains a "person of interest" in the FBI's ongoing investigation of who sent anthrax to several people in the wake of September 11. But Jonathan Turley, the lawyer handling Butler's appeal of his 2-year conviction for fraud and for improperly shipping plague samples to Tanzania, disagreed. "All of these cases showed a distinct lack of judgment and adult supervision at the Justice Department. There's a new culture of body counts at Justice. There's very little attention to who is being prosecuted or the means of prosecution. Prosecutors seem to be trying to prosecute anyone of anything to get the numbers up in the war on terror." Correction (posted June 16): When originally posted, this storyincorrectly stated that Professor Kurtz would appear before the Federal grand jury proceeding June 15. As is customary in such actions, he was not subpoenaed and did not appear. The Scientist regrets the error.

Artist faces bioterror charges

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