ASSOCIATED PRESS Dr. Steven J. Hatfill addresses the press outside his lawyer's office yesterday in Alexandria, Va. to declare, "I am not the anthrax killer." This is the second time in two weeks Hatfill has professed his innocence and decried the attention from law enforcers.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. ÷ The biowarfare expert under scrutiny in the anthrax attacks said the FBI has accepted his offer to undergo a blood test that he says will prove his innocence.

"I am not the anthrax killer," Dr. Steven J. Hatfill said yesterday and lashed out against Attorney General John Ashcroft for calling him a "person of interest" in the investigation.

Hatfill said he has waived privacy rules to allow the release of the results of the blood test.

He said he has also offered to compare his handwriting to that appearing on the anthrax letters, but the FBI has yet to accept that offer.

Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department would confirm Hatfill's offers or whether they would regard the tests as reliable. Evidence of anthrax-fighting antibodies in the bloodstream diminishes naturally over time. The anthrax letters were mailed last fall.

Federal officials have said the FBI is not ready to clear Hatfill in the attacks that killed five people and sickened 13 others even though investigators have no physical evidence linking him to a crime.

The scientist went before a throng of reporters outside his lawyer's office for the second time in two weeks to profess his innocence.

"This assassination of my character appears to be part of a government-run effort to show the American people that it is proceeding vigorously and successfully with the anthrax investigation," Hatfill said.

"I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, ÎI am not the anthrax killer. I know nothing about the anthrax attacks. I had absolutely nothing to do with this terrible crime."'

Ashcroft last week would not say whether authorities have identified a suspect in last fall's anthrax mailings but said Hatfill remained "a person of interest to the Department of Justice."

Although authorities say Hatfill is one of 30 such people, his was the only photo shown to residents of the Princeton, N.J., neighborhood where a mailbox tested positive for anthrax this month.

FBI agents were trying to determine whether anyone saw Hatfill last September or October near a mailbox where authorities believe the anthrax letters were mailed.

Hatfill provided reporters with copies of what he said were timesheets for CIA contractor Science Applications International Corp., where he was working last year, that he said proved he could not have mailed the letters.