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The FBI's Investigation of Bruce Ivins and Its Conclusions Marilyn W. Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning Investigative Reporter and Editor for The Washington Post She talks of the "big remaining holes" in the case against Ivins. The scientific analysis led to a flask which was the parent of isolates accessible to a 100 plus known people. The press has filed a motion seeking to unseal the evidence filed in the case from the start. The first caller perhaps is Professor Frances Boyle (perhaps not but I strongly suspect it is), a local law professor there with definite political views and his own...

On Wednesday, August 8, 2008, the Department of Justice held a news conference announcing that Bruce E. Ivins, a former anthrax researcher for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), was the sole person responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks. Headed by U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor and FBI Assistant Director Joseph Persichini, the presentation was noteworthy for often not answering relevant questions, but instead referring reporters to several dozen court documents they had just been provided. After hurriedly reading one of these documents I decided to hedge my strong conclusion in an essay that the FBI had...

Islamic leaders tied by federal investigators to the radical Muslim Brotherhood in America – including one under active investigation for alleged terror-financing – have recently donated to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign for president, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by WND. Jamal M. Barzinji earlier this year gave Obama $1,000, a gift that records show has not been returned. Other Democratic candidates, including Rep. Jim Moran, have refunded donations from Barzinji since federal agents raided his Virginia home and offices in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Obama's top Muslim adviser resigned earlier this month over controversy surrounding his...

Police in the US say there is "insufficient evidence" to charge three men who were allegedly planning to assassinate Barack Obama.

Three men arrested in Aurora, Colo., on methamphetamine and firearms charges may have been plotting to assassinate Barack Obama, FBI authorities told FOX News late Monday, although local officials are still pondering the intent of the suspects. Aurora Police Detective Marcus Dudley identified Tharin Gartrell, 28, as one suspect pulled over for a routine traffic stop Sunday and found to be wanted on numerous warrants. Two rifles, including a sniper rifle, and methamphetamines were found in the car. [snip] Federal sources said this incident may have had more to do with methamphetamine than with any plot to assassinate Obama, but...

DENVER (AP) - Authorities are investigating whether a man arrested with rifles, ammunition and drugs in his truck made statements threatening Barack Obama, but emphasize he never posed a "credible threat" to the candidate or the Democratic National Convention. Federal and local authorities had scheduled a news conference for Tuesday afternoon, but U.S. Attorney Troy Eid downplayed the case. "We're absolutely confident there is no credible threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention, or the people of Colorado," Eid said in a statement.

Video of Bill Ayers and the FBI discussing Ayers book Fugitive Days http://fora.tv/2006/01/26/Weather_Underground

Denver's U.S. attorney is expected to speak on Tuesday afternoon about the arrests of four people suspected in a possible plot to shoot Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges. One of those suspects spoke exclusively to CBS4 investigative reporter Brian Maass from inside the Denver City Jail late Monday night and said his friends had discussed killing Obama. "So your friends were saying threatening things about Obama?" Maass asked. "Yeah," Nathan Johnson replied. "It sounded like they didn't want him to be president?" "Well, no," Johnson...

DENVER (CBS4) ― CBS4 has now learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges. CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass reported one of the suspects told authorities they were "going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle … sighted at 750 yards." Law enforcement sources tell Maass that one of the suspects "was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative."...

(English-language translation) In addition to allegedly approving legislative bills and cabinet appointments in exchange for money, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are investigating alleged acts of money laundering and bank fraud by New Progressive Party Senator Jorge de Castro Font, sources to EL VOCERO reported. According to the sources, this is why the IRS joined the investigation which began in March. EL VOCERO anticipated on July 8 that federal authorities were investigating the alleged approval of bills in exchange for money coming from "large interests", as well as the confirmation of cabinet members....

San Francisco FBI agents have begun a criminal investigation of Los Angeles City Attorney Rockard "Rocky" Delgadillo, a one-time rising star of California politics whose career stalled after a series of admitted ethical lapses. Sources familiar with the FBI investigation said agents recently went to Los Angeles to conduct interviews in what appears to be a wide-ranging probe of Delgadillo, 48, a moderate Democrat now in his second four-year term. The probe began after Delgadillo was criticized for allegedly using city resources for personal benefit. Delgadillo admitted last year that he had his city-owned SUV repaired at taxpayers' expense after...

FBI Assistant Director Vahid Majidi said Monday the initial anthrax sample that Ivins took from his Army lab in February 2002 and gave investigators did not meet court-ordered conditions for its preparation and collection. In a briefing for reporters, Majidi said the sample kept at the FBI lab was destroyed because the bureau believed it might not have been allowed as evidence at trial. "Looking at hindsight, obviously we would do things differently today," Majidi said. He gave investigators a second sample of anthrax from his lab in April 2002 to comply with standards in a subpoena issued in the...

More Federal Intelligence Changes Planned The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of...

WASHINGTON — ...F.B.I officials say they are confident that their scientific evidence against Dr. Ivins, who killed himself last month as the Justice Department was preparing an indictment against him, will withstand scrutiny, and they plan to present their findings for review by leading scientists. But the scrutiny may only raise fresh questions. The bureau presented forensics information to Congressional and government officials this week in a closed-door briefing, but a number of listeners said the briefing left them less convinced that the F.B.I. had the right man, and they said some of the government’s public statements appeared incomplete or...

FBI terrorism experts are investigating whether the death of a Somali-born Canadian citizen — whose body was found Monday in a Denver hotel room with about a pound of extremely toxic sodium cyanide — is connected to the upcoming Democratic National Convention. The Denver coroner said the man died of cyanide poisoning. The cause of death was announced Thursday, but authorities haven't determined whether 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie committed suicide. An FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has been sent to Denver, although Special Agent Kathy Wright said there's no information to conclude that Dirie had terrorist ties, the Rocky Mountain...

WASHINGTON -- As federal authorities pursued the wrong suspect in the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, they ignored or overlooked a series of early clues that pointed to Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins, a review of investigative records by the Los Angeles Times shows. ...* Genetic analysis by outside scientists published in May 2002 reported that anthrax powder recovered from the mailings most likely came from Ft. Detrick, or it was grown from a sample that originated there. "I would have felt very confident at the time that the top place to look was at Ft. Detrick," said Jonathan A....

Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it would call FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to appear at an oversight hearing Sept. 17, when he is likely to be asked about the strength of the government's case against Ivins. A spokeswoman for Sen. Charles Grassley, R- Iowa, a vocal FBI critic, said he would demand more information about how authorities narrowed their search. The House Judiciary panel, meanwhile, is negotiating to host a separate oversight hearing in September with bureau officials, in a session that could mark the first public occasion where Mueller faces questions about the FBI's handling of...

Authorities are testing a pound of a granular substance found inside an upscale Denver hotel room to determine if it is cyanide. A Canadian national was found dead on Monday inside room 408 of the Burnsley Hotel. The Denver Coroner's Office has not completed the autopsy of 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is assisting Denver police with the investigation. "You have a suspicious substance that was found in a hotel room in conjunction with person being a foreign national and we have a lot of questions and that is why we are assisting," said Denver...

It has the makings of international intrigue. Less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention a man has been found dead in a Denver hotel room with a container of what authorities initially suspect to be the deadly poison cyanide. Adding to the intrigue is that the dead man, Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, 29, appears to be from outside the U.S. No passport was found on Dirie, who is believed to have entered the country from Canada. A large container of a white powdery substance was found in the man's room on the fourth floor of the Burnsley Hotel at...

WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today began asking tough questions of the Department of Justice and the FBI following the release of documents implicating Dr. Bruce Ivins as the only suspect in the Amerithrax investigation. “This has been a long investigation full of missteps and mistakes. There’s been too much secrecy up to this point and it deserves a full and thorough vetting,” Grassley said. “There are clearly a lot of unanswered questions and it’s time to start a dialogue so we can get answers.” Here is a copy of the text of Grassley’s letter. The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey...

4 gunmen bust doors, yell ‘FBI,’ loot home BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE Two men kicked in the front door, splintering it near the bolt-lock. Two more kicked in a side door. All four had guns. It was 3 a.m. “FBI! FBI!” the men shouted, one pulling what looked like a badge out of his shirt before stuffing it back in. “Where’s your money?” Lloyd McCuien lay facedown on the living-room floor of his Pulaski County house — off Arkansas 365 outside Maumelle and within sight of Interstate 40 — surrounded by seven family members. “It took me about...

Technical Intelligence in Retrospect: The 2001 Anthrax Letters Powder ------------------------------------------------- Authors: Dany Shoham; Stuart M. Jacobsen --------------------------------------------------- Published in: International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Volume 20, Issue 1 March 2007 , pages 79 - 105 -------------------------------------------- (Weblink : http://newsdetails.blogspot.com/2007/05/technical-intelligence-in-retrospect.html ) -------------------------------------------- EXCERPTS (...) Naturally, the U.S. Intelligence Community first tried to profile the SSP by technically comparing it with past weaponized anthrax powders made by the U.S. Army. But, while the dehydration-based forming of dry powder, weapon-grade, biological material conducted by William Patrick in the U.S. Army during the 1950s relied on freeze drying, and then grinding down the...

The FBI has launched a review of the violent law enforcement raid of the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo in Prince George's County last week that resulted in the deaths of the family's two dogs. The agency has begun "reviewing the events that occurred at Mr. Calvo's residence," said Richard J. Wolf, spokesman for the FBI in Baltimore, which has jurisdiction over federal civil rights investigations in Maryland. (snip) Courts across the country in recent years have ruled that it is almost always unacceptable for police to kill pets in the course of searching a home. Cases in...

August 7, 2008 · The FBI says that, with scientist Bruce Ivins' suicide, the case against him is effectively closed. Doubts are emerging, however, as to whether he really was the 2001 anthrax killer. His handwriting does not match up and he could not have possibly done it all alone, fellow scientists say. FBI Details Case Against Anthrax SuspectThe Justice Department on Wednesday said Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins was "the only person responsible" for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks. Justice officials unsealed 14 search warrants and affidavits, outlining a damning but still largely circumstantial case against Ivins, who committed suicide...

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001. After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we...

A man arrested in a Tri-Cities traffic stop is on the F.B.I’s terror watch list, according to court documents filed by the Tennessee Highway Patrol. 27 year old Abdul H. Khan of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was pulled over on Highway 19E north of Elizabethton by Tennessee Highway Patrolman M.D. Musick. According to a court affidavit filed by Musick, Khan was going 77 m.p.h in a 55 m.p.h. zone, was driving on a revoked license, and was in possession of a stolen credit card. “I checked Mr. Khan’s driver’s license status through the NCIC computer and his privilege to drive was...

Police found a map of Camp David marked with a presidential motorcade route inside the Bethesda home of the teenager at the center of a bombmaking probe, along with a document that appears to describe how to kill someone at a distance of 200 meters, a Montgomery County prosecutor said yesterday at a court hearing. Collin McKenzie-Gude, 18, also had two forms of fake identification: one portraying him as a Central Intelligence Agency employee, and the other in the name of a federal contractor purportedly protected by the Geneva Conventions, authorities said. The investigation has expanded to include officials from...

Army scientist Bruce Ivins had custody of highly purified anthrax spores with "certain genetic mutations identical" to the poison that killed five and rattled the nation in 2001, according to documents unsealed Wednesday in the government's investigation. Also, Ivins was unable to give investigators "an adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours around the time of" the attacks, and he apparently sought to mislead investigators on the case, according to an affidavit filed by one government investigator.

<p>WASHINGTON - Army scientist Bruce Ivins had custody of highly purified anthrax spores with "certain genetic mutations identical" to the poison that killed five and rattled the nation in 2001, according to documents unsealed Wednesday in the government's investigation.</p> <p>Also, Ivins was unable to give investigators "an adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours around the time of" the attacks, and he apparently sought to mislead investigators on the case, according to an affidavit filed by one government investigator.</p>

LOS ANGELES, (AP) -- Authorities say FBI agents have served search warrants at three hospitals and arrested two men in a scheme to recruit homeless people to fraudulently bill government health care programs for millions of dollars in unnecessary health services. Federal authorities say the searches Wednesday were conducted at City of Angels, Tustin Hospital and Medical Center and Metropolitan Hospital.

WASHINGTON - Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims. The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation. The last thing the FBI needed...

WASHINGTON -- Authorities investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks will begin meeting with victims' families Wednesday to discuss the case, family members said, an indication that some lingering questions in the investigation may soon be answered. The government is expected to declare the case solved but will keep it open for now, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. Several legal and investigatory matters need to be wrapped up before the case can officially be closed, they said. Army scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide last week as prosecutors prepared to charge him...

We have forgotten so much about the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that many people may not remember the deadly anthrax spores that were mailed to various prominent people in politics and in the media during that time. None of the intended victims was killed by the anthrax but five other people were, including two postal workers, who apparently became victims because they handled the mail containing anthrax spores. In the instant search for someone to blame, biologist Steven J. Hatfill was publicly named as "a person of interest" in the case by government officials. He...

<p>"WASHINGTON (AP) -- His decades-long obsession with a college sorority may link a former Army biowarfare scientist to four anthrax-laced letters dropped off at a New Jersey mailbox in 2001, authorities said Monday in the latest twist of one of the most bizarre unsolved crimes in FBI history.</p>

Its origins pointed to one conclusion: that only the government scientist could be behind the 2001 attacks. Federal investigators cinched their case against alleged anthrax mailer Bruce E. Ivins after sophisticated genetic tests by a California firm helped them trace a signature mixture of anthrax spores, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Well before the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings, Ivins, through his work as a government scientist, had combined anthrax spores obtained from at least one outside laboratory, people familiar with the evidence said. With the help of leading outside geneticists and a fresh look at the evidence by a...

WASHINGTON — After four years of painstaking scientific research, the F.B.I. by 2005 had traced the anthrax in the poisoned letters of 2001 to a single flask of the bacteria at the Army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., according to government scientists and bureau officials. But at least 10 scientists had regular access to the laboratory and its anthrax stock — and possibly quite a few more, counting visitors from other institutions, and workers at laboratories in Ohio and New Mexico that had received anthrax samples from the flask at the Army laboratory. To get that far, the Federal...

Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in September/October 2001. But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone. I believe this...

A new program by the U.S. Department of Justice targeting Muslim men of Arab descent for surveillance is unconstitutional, civil rights groups say. The new terrorist profile, set to be unveiled as early as this week, is meant to keep tabs on such men who frequently travel abroad and maintain extensive international contacts, the Detroit News reported Monday. Under the measure, the men may be subject not only to stops at the U.S.-Canadian border, but also to wider investigations that could include electronic surveillance and detentions, whether or not they are suspected of wrongdoing, the newspaper said. What is dangerous...

The FBI removed computer records from the C. Burr Artz Library this week, a library official confirmed Saturday. Darrell Batson, director of Frederick County Public Libraries, said two FBI employees came to the downtown Frederick library either Wednesday or Thursday. The agents removed two public computers from the library's second floor. They told him they were taking the units back to their office in Washington, D.C., Batson said. Batson expected the computers would be returned early this week, he said. Debbie Weierman, spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, would not comment Saturday on whether the agency had removed records...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

We often disagree with Tom Daschle, but the former Senate Majority Leader had it right yesterday when he said that last week's suicide of a U.S. microbiologist shouldn't end the probe into the 2001 anthrax attacks. Given how the FBI has mishandled this case, the Bush Administration has an obligation to make its evidence and the history of its investigation public. Americans will be relieved if the attacker was Bruce Ivins, who killed himself with an overdose of pills as prosecutors reportedly planned to charge him with killing five people by sending finely milled anthrax spores through the mail. The...

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick's Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects. Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers, according to one of Ivins's former supervisors. In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were interviewed and polygraphed...

<p>WASHINGTON - Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whose office was a target of the anthrax attacks in 2001, said Sunday the suicide of the government's main suspect does not mean the case is over.</p> <p>Daschle said the FBI has not given him any new updates. He also raised questions about the quality of the investigation, noting that the government recently paid out almost $6 million to a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who accused authorities of unfairly targeting him in the anthrax case.</p>

This is not an excerpt but a synopsis. The Feds are considering closing down the investigation of the Oct. 2001 Anthrax attacks due to Dr.Ivins suicide.

(From newspaper local to Fort Detrick) In 2003, the Defense Department gave Bruce Ivins its highest civilian honor for his work on an anthrax vaccine. Friday, the government had little to say about him, following his apparent suicide and media reports that the FBI was preparing to charge him with the 2001 anthrax mailings. Ivins was a Frederick resident who worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, was a member of St. John Evangelical Catholic Church and a volunteer with the American Red Cross. He once said he taught himself to juggle to correct his nature...

One of the nation’s top biodefense researchers has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailing assaults of 2001 that killed five, the Los Angeles Times has learned.Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and with the FBI investigation said.Ivins’ name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case that disrupted mail service...

(English-language translation) Regional Director of the Office of Improvements to Public Schools and Popular Democratic Party candidate for House of Representatives District 20 Elvin Camacho Vélez was indicted on charges of theft to federal programs and extortion after allegedly soliciting and accepting $12,000 to cover expenses for his political campaign during transactions that were recorded. "Basically, we caught him red-handed....the evidence is solid," said Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Luis Fraticelli during a press conference along with U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez and other officials from that agency. Rodríguez indicated that, between June 18 and 30 of this year,...

The FBI Story by: Daniel Smith, July 31, 2008 …Waco…Ruby Ridge…Elian Gonzalez…Yearning For Zion Ranch…These words do not just compose a list of proper nouns. They are recent typifications of a problem as old as the United States, and, perhaps, as old as humanity itself. After all, our Founding Fathers’ chief concern was the limitation of governmental powers; the story of Eden pictures creatures refusing the mandate of their Creator. In both cases, personal liberty waged a war against law, and vice versa. Reconciliation between liberty and law is not yet realized—a point the Cato Institute brought to the forefront...

Cleveland) - Multiple search warrants are being executed across Cuyahoga County today by the FBI and the IRS. Cleveland Special Agent In Charge Frank Figliuzzi tells Newsradio WTAM 1100 it's part of a long-running public corruption investigation. Figliuzzi says the affidavit supporting the search warrant are sealed, so he cannot go into further details. Figliuzzi did say that it is a broad-ranging investigation looking at the highest levels of Cuyahoga County government. County Administrator Jim McCafferty confirms that the office of County Commissioner Jimmy DiMora was among those searched. DiMora's home was also searched, as was the home of Auditor...