Global Security Newswire

A U.S. lawmaker has called on an independent group to search for possible scientific contradictions to the FBI’s case that a lone U.S. Army scientist carried out the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Oct. 1).

Federal prosecutors were preparing to charge Bruce Ivins, a former microbiologist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., when the scientist killed himself last July.

Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.) earlier this month asked a National Academy of Sciences panel reviewing the case to consider whether the investigation’s microbial forensic evidence is “inconsistent with the FBI’s conclusions.”

A variety of new techniques were invented to advance the scientific investigation, which eventually traced mutant anthrax strains in the mailings to a supply of the agent developed and controlled by Ivins. Federal investigators determined that Ivins was the only researcher with access to the anthrax mixture as well as the expertise and equipment needed to culture and dry the spores to be mailed.

“He wasn't an expert. He was the expert," a high-level FBI official said.

The FBI conducted reviews of 100 people who theoretically might have had access to the laboratory where Ivins kept the material. Investigators found that Ivins appeared to be the only person with knowledge of the specific location of the flask that contained the mutant anthrax.

The largely improvised forensic techniques did not promise any conclusive information, and FBI experts were skeptical at the outset that the project could succeed.

“We were looking for a needle in a haystack … and no one knew if there was even a needle there,” said geneticist Scott Decker, who led the FBI’s science team.

FBI investigators expressed deep frustration after Ivins committed suicide that they would not have the chance to prove their case in court, the Post reported.

Independent analysts and a handful of legislators continue to dispute the FBI’s case against Ivins, and many people close to the scientist have suggested he was not capable of killing.

“Bruce Ivins was a victim of a vicious plot,” said Ayaad Assaad, a toxicologist and former colleague of Ivins at the Fort Detrick facility (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Oct. 27).