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An inventory of deadly germs and toxins at an Army biodefense lab in Frederick found more than 9,200 vials of material that was unaccounted for in laboratory records, Fort Detrick officials said Wednesday. The 13 percent overage mainly reflects stocks left behind in freezers by researchers who retired or left Fort Detrick since the biological warfare defense program was established there in 1943, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He said the found material included Korean War-era serum samples from patients with Korean hemorrhagic fever, a disease still of interest...

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....

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

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. --

(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...

FREDERICK — During a two-week period in April four years ago, officials at the Army’s lead biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick discovered anthrax spores had escaped carefully guarded suites into the building’s unprotected areas. The breach called into question the ability of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases to keep its deadly agents within laboratory walls seven months after the terrorism attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax mailings that autumn. The 2002 incident was considered a containment breach because anthrax was found outside a containment suite, which is a group of laboratories and administrative rooms....

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...

The “Teflon Terrorist” And Risk Of Infiltration Ron Kessler in his new book The Terrorist Watch quotes FBI Director Robert Mueller on the subject of WMD and the risk of infiltration: “Al Qaeda is tremendously patient and thinks nothing about taking years to infiltrate persons in and finding the right personnel and opportunity to undertake an attack. And we cannot become complacent, because you look around the world, and whether it’s London or Madrid or Bali or recently Casablanca or Algiers, attacks are taking place.” In November 2007, FBI Director Mueller gave a speech in which he warned against the...

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.

WASHINGTON -- Anthrax has been confirmed in samples collected from the two Pentagon mail facilities that were at first closed last week and then declared free of the pathogen, United Press International has learned. The head of the company that was accused of contaminating the samples sent from those facilities -- a detached building on the Pentagon grounds in Arlington, Va., and the other in Falls Church, Va. -- said the presence of anthrax was detected independently by two government laboratories. Robert B. Harris, president and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. in Richmond, Va., also said the anthrax...

Thomas Butler was a sought-after plague expert, with a clinical trial in Tanzania that promised important results for biodefense. Then he was charged with mishandling plague samples and lying to the FBI. This month, a jury convicted him of financial wrongdoing. Who is Thomas Butler, and what lessons do his trials hold? Sitting on an airplane preparing to take off from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, American microbiologist Thomas Butler had some time to reflect on his rising fortunes. Stowed in the plane's belly was a footlocker containing carefully packed specimens from more than 60 Tanzanian bubonic plague victims. His journal...

Scientists have successfully immunised mice against the deadly ebola virus which has killed thousands in Africa. They used virus-like particles (VLPs) which are non-infectious but are capable of triggering a strong response by the immune system. Usually lethal doses of ebola had no impact on the vaccinated mice. The study, by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It looks like a virus, so you have the protective immune response, but it's basically an empty shell. The scientists hope their work will lead to a vaccine which will...

Evidence of new virus found in stool samples, journal report says Scientists working to identify the cause of a mysterious respiratory illness that has killed 111 people worldwide are now almost certain that it is associated with a new kind of coronavirus, a family of viruses also responsible for the common cold. One of two groups of scientists whose findings were published online yesterday in separate New England Journal of Medicine articles also said they had found genetic evidence of the virus in some victims' stool samples. The finding lends support to a previously advanced theory that the virus might...

This isn't going to be a cute column. It may be a bit long. Some things need saying, so I'm going to say them. Recently stories have appeared in the press implying that Steve Hatfill, among other things a former ebola researcher at the Army's biological-warfare research center at Fort Detrick, Md, sent the notorious anthrax-bearing letters to people around the country. The implication is that he is a murderer. I know Hatfill socially, though we are not intimate. We met years back in Washington at a party held by a common friend. We have the occasional beer, bump into...