Scientist Was Lone Anthrax Mailer, Justice Dept. Says

The U.S. Justice Department yesterday pinned responsibility for the 2001 anthrax mailings entirely on U.S. Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins, an apparently mentally unstable researcher who allegedly wanted human test subjects for a next-generation anthrax vaccine pulled from production, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Aug. 6).

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor named Ivins "the sole suspect" in the attacks that killed five people and sickened 17:  “We are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks.” 

Ivins committed suicide last week as investigators were reportedly preparing to file charges against him.

His lawyers and other critics of the anthrax investigation have argued that the case against the scientist was based on circumstantial evidence that could not definitively single him out as the perpetrator of the mailings.  Authorities conducted “an orchestrated dance of carefully worded statements, heaps of innuendo and a staggering lack of real evidence — all contorted to create the illusion of guilt,” said defense attorney Paul Kemp.

Ivins wrote repeated e-mails in summer 2000 complaining of his difficulties with developing a new anthrax vaccine, according to investigation records released yesterday.  The treatment, produced by Michigan firm BioPort, had been used on U.S. military and laboratory personnel until a federal injunction halted its manufacture.

If the vaccine could not pass efficacy tests, Ivins wrote in June 2000, “the program will come to a halt.  That's bad for everyone concerned, including us."

Ivins maintained an after-hours schedule at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in September and October 2001 that he was later unable to justify, according a sworn statement by postal inspector Thomas Dellafera.  His e-mails to a friend leading up to that time expressed growing feelings of “isolation — and desolation.”

“I just heard tonight that Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas,” Ivins wrote in one post-Sept. 11 e-mail.  "Osama Bin Laden has just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans."

Dellafera called the e-mail’s phrasing "similar to the text of the anthrax letters postmarked two weeks later warning 'Death to America,' 'Death to Israel’" (Washington Post I, Aug. 7).

In the wake of the anthrax mailings, FBI investigators collected more than 1,000 anthrax samples from sites around the world for analysis.  The effort led them to identify the material used in the attacks as a variety of the strain RMR-1029 that Ivins had first developed in 1997.  There was limited access to the container, the Post reported.

"The spores used in the attacks were taken from that specific flask, regrown, purified, dried and loaded into the letters," Taylor said.  "No one received material from that flask without going through Dr. Ivins.”

While Ivins had distributed samples of RMR-1029 to roughly 15 other researchers around the country, each of the prestamped envelopes used in the mailings had a small printing imperfection found only on envelopes sold in Maryland and Virginia, including a Frederick, Md., post office where Ivins rented a mailbox (Joby Warrick, Washington Post II, Aug. 7).

Ivins gave the FBI “questionable” anthrax samples in 2003 to mislead investigators, and he gave inconsistent accounts of how he learned that anthrax spores in the mailings were genetically identical to a supply of the agent to which he had regular access, investigators said.

Investigators hypothesized in court documents that Ivins targeted U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) because they held abortion rights stances.  Ivins’s wife was involved in antiabortion efforts, the Post reported (Post I).

While the investigation has convinced some U.S. lawmakers and survivors of the attacks that Ivins was the mailer, the researcher’s friends and professional peers remained doubtful, the New York Times reported.

Evidence presented by the government yesterday “was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect,” Kemp said.  “But there’s a total absence of proof that he committed this crime.”

Kemp noted the investigation was unable to recover a single anthrax spore from Ivins’s car or residence, and that the scientist did not indicate in thousands of e-mail messages that he was planning the mailings or had carried them out.  The FBI has also not proven that the scientist traveled to Princeton, N.J., where the letters were mailed, Kemp said.

Ivins was not in constant control of the flask of anthrax, Kemp said.  “Other scientists helped him create that anthrax and worked with it constantly,” he said.  “They kept no records of who took a sample.”

More scientific evidence is needed to prove the case, bioterrorism experts told the Times (Shane/Lichtblau, New York Times, Aug. 7).

Former federal prosecutor Lawrence Barcella said the likelihood that the evidence would have won a conviction in court “depends on how well the elimination went and how narrow the funnel ends up at the end,” the Associated Press reported.

U.S. Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said, “It is a very compelling case," while Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J) said the FBI might have made errors similar to those from an investigation of an earlier suspect in the attacks, Steven Hatfill (see GSN, June 30).

"In both cases, they were looking back in the history of a quirky personality to suggest because of the quirky personality maybe the person would be malicious," he said.  "That's a leap that you don't usually make in court" (Mark Sherman, Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Aug. 6).

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