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Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask. The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called...

A federal judge today ordered the Justice Department to release documents that explain why investigators suspected Steven J. Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill has since been exonerated.

Scientific impossibility: Did FBI get their man in Bruce Ivins? By Deborah Rudacille Examiner Correspondent 11/16/08 Bruce Ivins was a cold-blooded murderer, a deranged psycho-killer, who in the fall of 2001, cooked up a virulent batch of powdered anthrax, drove to Princeton, N.J., and mailed letters loaded with the lethal mix to five news organizations and two U.S. senators. At least, that’s what the FBI says. The letters infected 22 people, killing five, including two Maryland postal workers. The sixth victim of the madness was Ivins himself, a 62-year-old biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious...

On Friday, the government filed this statement of the facts in its memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment in a civil rights and Privacy Act lawsuit brought by Dr. Steve Hatfill. “The anthrax attacks occurred in October 2001. Public officials, prominent members of the media, and ordinary citizens were targeted by this first bio-terrorist attack on American soil. Twenty-two persons were infected with anthrax; five died. At least 17 public buildings were contaminated. The attacks wreaked havoc on the U.S. postal system and disrupted government and commerce, resulting in economic losses estimated to exceed one billion dollars....

WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

FBI Focusing on 'About Four' Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks Friday , March 28, 2008 By Catherine Herridge and Ian McCaleb WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned. Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID. The FBI...

New light is being shed on the 2001 anthrax attacks in a fascinating open letter to Ayman al Zawahiri of al Qaeda, written by a jihadi living in London. Numan Bin Uthman, a former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, provides yet more evidence that the global Islamic jihad movement is losing its resolve.  But the letter contains a startling admission. Uthman tells us of a conversation he had with al Qaeda leaders before the 9/11 attacks in which he urged them not to use WMD. From AKI News: Uthman also said that he had taken part in...

Agency says it remains committed to solving the 5-year-old mystery WASHINGTON - The top FBI official in charge of the investigation into the deadly anthrax attacks has left the case, NBC News has learned. Richard "Rick" Lambert had been the inspector of the so-called AMERITHRAX case since September 2002, and had run every aspect of the five-year-old investigation. Just last month, he was transferred to the Knoxville, Tenn., field office of the FBI as its special agent in charge, according to the FBI. Lambert was the public face of the case, and his transfer is sure to fuel speculation that...

TRENTON, N.J. -- Officials have found two missing vials of anthrax mislabeled at a state lab among the samples taken from the postal facility that processed tainted letters in 2001. The vials were among thousands of negative samples. There was a transcription error in the numbers when they were labeled, state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz said. Officials disclosed they had lost track of the vials nearly two weeks ago. Officials said they thought it was a clerical error and that no anthrax was actually lost. The FBI was investigating how the vials were misplaced. The anthrax vials were among 19,000 samples...

July 20, 2004 — FBI agents returned to search the U.S. Army's biological weapons labs at Fort Detrick, Md., as part of a last-ditch effort by the bureau to make a case in the 2001 anthrax attacks, federal officials tell ABC News. The FBI has set a self-imposed Oct. 1 deadline for its agents to build a case that will stand up in court, officials said. After matching the anthrax used in the deadly attacks with anthrax at the Army facility, investigators now hope to further narrow the hunt among the hundreds of researchers who have worked at the Fort...

/table> Some Fort Detrick Labs Closed 10:25 AM Jul 20, 2004 10:25 am US/Eastern Frederick, MD (WJZ)Federal agents are combing a number of laboratory suites at Fort Detrick in Frederick for evidence of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Fort Detrick spokesman Charles Dasey says the labs have been closed since Friday at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, home to the Army's biological warfare defense program. A law enforcement source tells The Associated Press that the activity is related to the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 in October of 2001. FBI agents have frequently...

<p>HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — The FBI, revisiting an old lead in the anthrax investigation, recently interviewed a former Fort Detrick researcher and his co-workers about his whereabouts when the letters were mailed, he and his lawyer said Sunday.</p> <p>Ayaad Assaad, who now works for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said the agents also quizzed him Tuesday about his knowledge of producing finely powdered anthrax like that used in the letters.</p>

(NOTE: SALIM MUWAKKIL is a senior editor at In These Times, a contributing columnist to the Chicago Tribune and a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute. This article is due to be published on 3/15). WHEN THE DEADLY TOXIN RICIN WAS FOUND February 3 in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), there was no change in Homeland Security colors. Although biological attacks on the apparatus of government are a veritable shortcut to domestic insecurity, they don't register on the chromatic terrorism scale. Americans have been trained to disassociate such attacks from the war...

<p>Bush was asked during a recent White House meeting whether American credibility was on the line in the search for illicit weapons.</p> <p>CNN's David Ensor examines claims that the Bush administration overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (part 1).</p>

<p>The CIA has been quietly building a case that the anthrax attacks of 2001 were in fact the result of an international terrorist plot.</p> <p>U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports tell us the information showing a terrorist link to the anthrax-filled letters sent by mail in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks is not conclusive. But it is persuasive.</p>

HEADLINE: Anthrax Fallout Hits Postal Service; Anxious about costs if cavalier about people, managers at the Brentwood Road postal center sent 'volunteers' back into the formally closed facility to retrieve mail. BYLINE: By Timothy W. Maier, INSIGHT BODY: Management of the U.S. Postal Service processing and distribution center on Brentwood Road in Northeast Washington, which serves the nation's capital, not only ignored its own policies by failing to shut down operations immediately upon learning that the building tested positive for anthrax, but Insight has learned that managers also secretly sent postal volunteers into the facility on Oct. 22, 2001, to...

Accumulated evidence, albeit mostly circumstantial, is nonethless sufficient to implicate Iraq in the wave of Anthrax incidents in America in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, according to former IDF intelligence officer Dr. Danny Shoham. Mystery still surrounds the affair of letters containing the deadly biological warfare agent that were sent to various addresses in the US over a more than two-month period shortly after the suicide attacks on New York and Washington. Shoham, a senior researcher at Bar Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, believes that the proximity of the two events is no coincidence and...

Toogood Reports [Weekender, June 9, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Psst! The anthrax-laced letters that killed five people last fall, were sent by a home-grown, American terrorist. In fact, the killer — a heterosexual, Christian, white male wacko, if you'll excuse the redundancy — is a scientist who was doing contract work for the CIA, and who murdered five innocents on orders from the CIA. The feds have covered it all up. Pass it on. I know who did it, because Barbara Hatch Rosenberg told me. Rosenberg is not only a tenured professor of microbiology at the New York State...

SALT LAKE CITY -- As always, the American Society for Microbiology's annual meeting here this week was part science, part fellowship. But this year, the meeting of 10,000 members of the group was something else: part Agatha Christie. • Today in the Sky: Real-time airport weather, delays, and travel news • Trim your overworked day • Tips for getting better returns on your investments • 10 great places to get high atop a mountain Like a scene from a mystery novel in which the key suspects in a crime are gathered in one place, the scientists' meeting was shadowed by...