Scientist in '03 plague scare sets off airport shutdown

MIAMI — The suspicions airport-security officials had when they saw the metal canister grew when they learned about the man who brought it in from the Middle East: a scientist who sparked a bioterrorism scare after he reported missing vials of plague samples seven years ago.

Officials closed most of Miami International Airport late Thursday and early Friday, roused nearby hotel guests from their beds and detained Dr. Thomas Butler until Friday morning, when he was released without charges, a senior law-enforcement official said.

Tests on the canister found nothing dangerous, said the senior law-enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Homeland Security spokesman Nicholas Kimball said the item resembled a pipe bomb.

Butler's former lawyer said the incident appeared to be a "fantastic overreaction."

Butler, 70, is a renowned plague researcher who became the focus of a federal investigation in 2003, when he reported that 30 vials of plague samples possibly had been stolen from his Texas Tech University lab.

He later was acquitted of smuggling and illegally transporting the potentially deadly germ, and of lying to federal agents about the missing vials. Jurors found Butler guilty of the mislabeling and unauthorized export of a FedEx package that contained plague samples he sent to Tanzania.

He also was convicted of fraud and theft and sentenced to two years in prison for defrauding Texas Tech about illegally negotiated contracts he had with pharmaceutical companies with which he also had clinical-studies contracts.

The senior law-enforcement official said a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inspector noticed an odd container about 9 p.m. Thursday as Butler was going through customs. He had arrived on a flight from the Middle East, where he had been teaching at a Saudi Arabian university.

The inspector ran Butler's name through a database and discovered he had been tried on the plague-related charges. Officials evacuated the airport and detained Butler, who cooperated fully, the law-enforcement official said.

A Miami-Dade police bomb squad spent hours scouring the airport. Between 100 and 200 passengers were evacuated from four of the airport's six concourses. Airport roadways and a hotel near the airport's international terminal were closed.

Butler was released after tests showed that he, the container and his other belongings did not contain any hazardous biological material or explosives, the official said.

The canister was used to transport dead bacteria samples and was a legitimate experiment, said another government official who also requested anonymity. Without naming Butler, the official said the scientist who was detained is a professor at Ross University, a medical school in the Caribbean island of Dominica, and on a teaching assignment in Saudi Arabia.