Free Republic

Authorities probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks fixed on now-cleared scientist Steven J. Hatfill primarily because confidential informants said they had talked with him about his purported involvement in Rhodesian bioweapons initiatives, according to court documents released yesterday. The documents cover searches of Hatfill's residence, his car, a rental storage facility in Florida and property owned by his then-girlfriend. But they are perhaps most notable for the sparseness of their details and for the lack of a direct connection between the scientist and the notorious crime.

The Justice Department released nearly 100 documents Tuesday that it used to falsely link scientist Steven J. Hatfill to the 2001 anthrax attacks. Search warrants and documents detailing what was recovered show the FBI seized clothing, financial records, VHS tapes, books and other papers from Hatfill's home in Frederick, Md., his car, and a locker he rented in Ocala, Fla.The court documents also show the FBI searched the car and Washington apartment of an unnamed person, seizing notebooks, files, envelopes, hair brushes and bobby pins. The evidence presumably belongs to Hatfill's then-girlfriend Peck Chegne. Hatfill originally was named a person...

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Washington, D.C., office was shuttered in 2001 after anthrax spores were found, so he’s “very sensitive” to the investigation into the crime, he said. Now, Cummings said he supports a review of the investigation. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., proposed legislation in September to create a congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response. “Whatever we have to do to get to the bottom of this anthrax issue, we need to do it,” Cummings said. Holt’s bipartisan commission would mirror the 9/11 commission and make recommendations on how to prevent such attacks and...

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Washington, D.C., office was shuttered in 2001 after anthrax spores were found, so he’s “very sensitive” to the investigation into the crime, he said. Now, Cummings said he supports a review of the investigation. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., proposed legislation in September to create a congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response. “Whatever we have to do to get to the bottom of this anthrax issue, we need to do it,” Cummings said. Holt’s bipartisan commission would mirror the 9/11 commission and make recommendations on how to prevent such attacks and...

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...

It was an open-and-shut case, the FBI said. But three months after agents pinned the post-9/11 anthrax mailings on Army scientist Bruce Ivins - who committed suicide as the FBI closed in on him - his former colleagues have approached a lawyer to sue the feds for fingering the wrong man...

The FBI has posted a $100,000 reward for help in finding who sent identical letters containing what turned out to be a harmless white powder to banking offices across the country. All 50 letters, which were sent between Oct. 17 and 18, were postmarked Amarillo, Texas. FBI today released the text of the letters on its Web site: "STEAL TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE'S MONEY AND NOT EXPECT REPERCUSSIONS. IT'S PAYBACK TIME. WHAT YOU JUST BREATHED IN WILL KILL YOU WITHIN 10 DAYS. THANK (Redacted) AND THE FDIC FOR YOUR DEMISE."

Panic swept America. By including a deadly bioagent in something we welcome into our homes and workplaces every day — the mundane U.S. mail — someone (or several someones) evoked the same sorts of fears provoked two decades earlier by the Tylenol poisonings in Chicago. Anthrax mailings eventually killed five people and sickened 17 others..So: Was Bruce Ivins the one and only anthrax killer? Or is he a convenient scapegoat for embarrassed investigators who, having wrongly suspected Hatfill, don't deserve the public's confidence that they got this right?

The FBI is declining to release at least 15,000 pages of documents related to the now deceased prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks despite lingering suspicions that the bureau has accused the wrong man. In August, the FBI and Justice Department identified Bruce Ivins, a former microbiologist at the U.S. Army's biological weapons research center at Fort Detrick, Md., as the "only person involved" in the attacks that killed five people and terrorized the nation. But David M. Hardy, the section chief of the FBI's records management division, notified McClatchy that his office could not immediately release the records...

Nearly two months after the suicide of scientist Bruce Ivins — whom the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claims was solely responsible for mailing a series of letters laced with anthrax in 2001 — questions still remain over whether he was actually able to produce those anthrax spores.....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of carrying out the 2001 anthrax attacks, e-mailed himself last year saying he knew who the killer was, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. "Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!! I finally know who mailed the anthrax letters in the fall of 2001. I've pieced it together!" Ivins wrote in the e-mail dated Sept. 7, 2007, according to an FBI affidavit. "I'm not looking forward to everybody getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will all be over," Ivins allegedly wrote. "Finally! I should have it TOTALLY nailed down within the month....

Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist the FBI says is the sole culprit behind the 2001 anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five people, apparently was barred from all government labs in March after spilling anthrax on himself and going home to wash his clothes before telling his bosses....

A recent New York Times editorial criticizing the Federal Bureau of Investigation about its seven-year probe into the mailing of anthrax-laden letters to members of Congress, prominent media figures and others is a direct attempt to plant doubt in the minds of its diminishing readership. The editorial read, “None of the investigators’ major assertions, however, have been tested in cross-examination . . .” Sorry, that test is moot when the suspect kills himself. Dr. Bruce Ivins, a mentally unbalanced scientist at the U.S. Army’s laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland, killed himself once he was informed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office...

Former USA Today reporter Toni Locy urged the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington on Thursday not to throw out her case seeking a reporter’s privilege to keep her sources confidential. Locy became embroiled in the legal battle after reporting about Steven Hatfill, the former Army scientist who was investigated in the 2001 anthrax attacks but whose name has since been cleared. When Locy refused to give up her confidential sources in Hatfill's ensuing Privacy Act suit against the government, the U.S. District Court in D.C. held her in contempt. She appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals.

"I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact," Mr. Leahy said. "I believe there are others who can be charged with murder." Mr. Leahy's skepticism was echoed by GOP Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa)...

"... the two ranking members of the Committee have both told Mueller that, in essence, they do not accept or believe the FBI's accusations against Bruce Ivins. The Democratic Chairman of the Committee, Pat Leahy (who was a target of the anthrax attacks) told Mueller categorically that he simply does not believe that Ivins was the prime culprit if he was a participant at all, and said he is absolutely convinced that there were others involved in the preparation and mailing of the anthrax. Leahy began the hearing by identifying the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground and the private CIA...

WASHINGTON - The FBI is asking the National Academy of Sciences to review its investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Director Robert S. Mueller III told lawmakers this morning. The review is intended to address doubts about the guilt of Bruce E. Ivins, the Fort Detrick scientist who killed himself in July. The FBI says Ivins, who worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, was the sole suspect in the attacks

FBI Director Robert Mueller is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today, currently live-streamed on C-SPAN. An article this morning in The Washington Post dramatically touted the hearing as one in which, as the headline put it, "Lawmakers Are Seeking Answers in Anthrax Case -- FBI's Mueller to Be Queried by House Panel About Evidence Against Researcher." The article itself claimed that "the strength of the government's evidence against Bruce E. Ivins . . . will be tested anew today when FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III appears before the House Judiciary Committee" .....Mueller won't provide the Committee with even...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.......

In a will he wrote last year......

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is ridiculing part of the FBI's explanation for the 2001 anthrax attacks. And the Maryland Republican says he's skeptical about the agency's conclusion that biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins grew the anthrax in his laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick and then mailed it to unsuspecting victims, five of whom died......

In a letter to Mueller sent ahead of a Sept. 16 hearing on "troubling issues" about the FBI, panel chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asked Mueller to answer several questions about the bureau's anthrax investigation. Conyers asked for the identities of White House officials who wanted the agency to link the anthrax attacks to al Qaeda or Iraq, why army scientist Bruce Ivins retained his security clearance at Fort Detrick despite being a suspect in the probe, and why another Fort Detrick scientist, Steven Hatfill, was the focus of the investigation despite evidence pointing elsewhere...

Federal and local law enforcement agencies today issued a $20,000 reward for information about a 2005 anthrax hoax at Savannah River Site. The Atlanta Field Office of the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office jointly issued the reward to aid their investigation into discovering the identity and location of the person initiating the hoax against officials at SRS and the federal Department of Energy, according to an FBI press release.

Investigators were at an impasse when a lucky discovery narrowed the hunt for the culprit who mailed the deadly spores.

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...

When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it. Covert's piece this week in thetentacle.com establishes what many in our community, including scientists and support staff at USAMRIID, past and present, know: Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters. --

They have worked for almost seven years in secret. Most people did not know that the work in Ray Goehner’s materials characterization department at Sandia National Laboratories was contributing important information to the FBI’s investigation of letters containing bacillus anthracis, the spores that cause the disease anthrax. The spores were mailed in the fall of 2001 to several news media offices and to two U.S. senators. Five people were killed. in those letters was not a weaponized form, a form of the bacteria prepared to disperse more readily.

HOW QUICKLY we forget. In the aftermath of 9/11, after the memorials, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and the transit bombings in London and Madrid, the anthrax scare slipped from public consciousness. Now, long articles detail the results of a troubled investigation into the anonymous anthrax-tainted letters of the fall of 2001. With the cruel elegance of a Greek tragedy, Bruce Ivins, the scientific adviser on the matter, became the prime suspect in the case, and its final victim as well, when he killed himself on July 29. Suddenly anthrax is back in the news, and we remember those...

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it had cracked the long-unsolved anthrax case, the turning point cited by the bureau was its identification of a laboratory flask as the source of the anthrax. The dots, or in this case more than a thousand separate anthrax samples, were connected with the help of a group of scientists working secretly for some seven years. They succeeded by using a combination of new techniques not even invented in late 2001 when the anthrax-laced letters were sent, and that most old-fashioned attribute of expert scientists and detectives: a trained eye. Now, in their...

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...

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...

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...

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — The Army scientist suspected in the anthrax attacks was remembered for his humor, intelligence and compassion at a memorial service Saturday.

Report finds lax Fort Detrick procedures Just seven months after the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, the U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland where the accused killer, microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins, worked was described in a government report as a "rat's nest" that was contaminated with anthrax bacteria. The highly redacted report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, said Suite B-3 in Building 1425 at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick not only was contaminated with anthrax in three locations but the bacteria had escaped from secure areas in...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department said Friday that Steven Hatfill was not involved in anthrax mailings for which he was listed six years ago as a person of interest. The Justice Department agreed in June to pay $4.6 million to settle Hatfill's lawsuit against the government, but until Friday the government had not exonerated him, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported. "We have concluded, based on laboratory access records, witness accounts and other information, that Dr. Hatfill did not have access to the particular anthrax used in the attacks, and that he was not involved in...

Actions to Aid Probe Appear Now As Cover-UpWASHINGTON -- One night in autumn 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the worst act of bioterrorism in its history, Bruce Ivins was alone in his cluttered Fort Detrick, Md., office, scrubbing phones, walls and furniture. ...... Dr. Ivins, his colleagues said, argued that al Qaeda was responsible. "He was very passionate about this," former boss Jeffrey Adamovicz said. "He was very agitated." In these conversations, Dr. Ivins dwelled at one point on a purported link between Florida victim Robert Stevens, a photographer for American Media, and an apartment rented to 9/11 ringleader...

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...

1. FBI says they connected the anthrax mailings with Fort Detrick. But it didn't say such things earlier : “The Federal Bureau of Investigation, suspecting that components from the Delta trainer might have been used to make the anthrax mailed in late 2001, examined the unit, officials and experts said. But investigators found no spores or other evidence linking it to the crime, they said.” http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE6DB133AF931A35754C0A9659C8B63 2. Dr Stephen Hatfill, wrongly suspected for years by FBI, met an ABC News reporter on October 2001 and told him that FBI was losing its time to suspect American scientists. Iraq was behind...

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...

<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>

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...

Jean Duley testified that she was "scared to death" of Bruce Ivins after he left her a string of harassing phone messages, according to an audio recording taken during a July 24 peace order hearing. Duley, 45, told Judge Milnor Roberts that Ivins planned to "go out in a blaze of glory," had bought a bulletproof vest and a gun and planned to kill his co-workers. The audio recording was obtained by The Frederick News-Post on Monday. Duley told the court she got to know Ivins while running group and individual counseling sessions at the Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick...

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...

While counselor Jean Duley said the late Bruce E. Ivins expressed homicidal intentions, threatened her and said he "would go out in a blaze of glory" in the face of a pending FBI indictment, as least one former colleague believes the Fort Detrick scientist is being used as a scapegoat in the high profile anthrax poisoning case that paralyzed the nation -- again -- shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Arthur O. Anderson, a medical doctor and scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick, said Duley's description of Ivins doesn't...

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...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from the huge federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins is also listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines. Ivins, 62, died Tuesday, apparently in a suicide. Federal authorities had informed his lawyer that criminal charges related to the mailings would be filed. As a...