FBI to test files for chemicals

POCATELLO, Idaho – A federal judge has ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Pocatello office to further test files that a former office employee says contained chemicals that made her sick.

Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ordered the testing Friday but stopped short of ruling in favor of Rose Wellard, who had asked for the immediate release of the file.

“I feel like we are at least taking a step in the right direction,” Wellard told the Idaho State Journal in Pocatello. “It’s nice to feel you are getting some help.”

Wellard said she developed a cough in July 2004, two days after opening a file about a string of bank robberies in the 1940s. She argued in court that when she opened a sealed container holding the file, a noxious gas was released.

Since then, Wellard says she has suffered from several respiratory and neurological problems.

In 2005, the FBI tested the file for fungus and bacteria. But, Wellard said in the lawsuit that the FBI’s initial testing did not go far enough.

Wellard’s doctor and two toxicology experts recommended testing for five chemicals that could cause illness: selenium, methyl bromide, phosgene gas, sulfuryl fluoride and hydroquinone – byproducts of the antiquated photographic development techniques used in the 1940s.

The chemicals also could be released during fumigation. The FBI has said fumigation was performed in the Virginia office where the file was kept two weeks before it was shipped to Pocatello.

The judge declined to hand the files over to Wellard, but in his 11-page ruling Winmill ordered the FBI to begin chemical testing within 20 days.

Winmill wrote that under the Code of Federal Regulations, the FBI had specific deadlines to respond to Wellard’s initial health concerns in 2004.

“The record does not show that any inspection was carried out within those time limits,” Winmill wrote.

John Wellard, Rose’s husband, said the decision was a victory and Judge Winmill will keep his eyes on the FBI.

“Now they have to answer to him if they don’t get it done in 20 days,” he said.