F.B.I. Presents Anthrax Case, Saying Scientist Acted Alone

New York Times ^ | August 6, 2008 | Scott Shane

[Shermy]

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 could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Lawyers for Dr. Ivins reasserted their late client’s innocence and criticized the government for presenting what they called “heaps of innuendo” that failed to link him directly to the crime and would never have to be tested in court. “It was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect,” said Paul F. Kemp, who represented the scientist for more than a year before his death on July 29 at age 62. “But there’s a total absence of proof that he committed this crime.”

The conflicting views of Dr. Ivins emerged in a day of emotional crosscurrents. At a morning memorial service at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., weeping Army scientists praised Dr. Ivins as a beloved colleague “known for his patience and enthusiasm for science,” as a written program put it. At the same time, at F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and bureau officials were explaining to survivors of the anthrax attacks and relatives of the five people who died why they believe Dr. Ivins was a mass murderer.

[Grut]

So what was the ‘until very recently’ heavy promotion of the angle that Hatfill was the one behind it?

Oh, he acted alone too. ;^)

[bmwcyle]

AMEN

[Technogeeb]

Of course, the whole conclusion turns on the validity of the new techniques.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there, since such a determination seems reasonable as an extrapolation of known science (I haven't read the technique they used, but I could see it being just an issue of comparing some minor mutation from a coding error showing up in both samples and nowhere else).

So let's assume that it did come from that lab. Now the question becomes, who in that lab who had access to anthrax would be the most likely suspect? Your choices include:

1. The alpha-male larger-than-life white guy (Hatfill).
2. The 62 year old Catholic pro-life democrat (Ivins).
3. The son of an Iraqi diplomat who happens to also be a convicted agent of al Qaeda (al Timimi).

Just to make it a bit more interesting, lets add in the fact that the FBI has distorted some evidence and made a number of false statements about two of these suspects, while completely ignoring the third (since he has foreign ties to Iraq, he must be innocent, because we know this was domestic terrorism because we profiled it that way).

[ZACKandPOOK]

“The outrageous thing is the U S Attorney and FBI coming out and trashing a dead guy who cannot defend himself. “

Oh, get over it. He used fake screen names on the internet! He engaged in battles over wikipedia entries! To top it all off, sometimes the diabolical fiend would ask them to email him before they changed his edit back — all part of a sinister plot to distract them from correcting the entry. He read Camus! He worked late after 9/11 even though he was just in military biodefense. The only reason they didn’t suspect Ed is he never works past 5 p.m. and he doesn’t read literature. The evidence, crediting the sampling, points to a match at one of the eight labs downstream from him. Oh, and let’s not forget their Greendale speculation. Treble Rebel, assuming it was silicon (and not silica) — just for the sake of discussion — what was the source of silicon? Assuming there was subtilus contamination, what was the source given that they genetically typed it? Is Venable going to come out with a rebuttal on the merits? It was inappropriate for the newspapers to be editorializing without hearing from the other side on the merits. I’m on vacation but I hope someone compiles his wikipedia entries chronologically. And get the Greendale specialist from the Washington periodical on their incredibly stupid Greendale speculation. Venable needs to bring suit under the civil rights statute and take civil discovery of all the evidence to include all emails he wrote, including from September 2001.

[trumandogz]

There you have it. A homegrown American Terrorist takes the easy way out.

[Shermy]

/sarc

I don’t get the Matsumoto/NBC angle, I mean, why release it? It only raises questions why the Feds don’t have similar explanations for ABC, CBS, New York Post, and AMI.

[shalom aleichem]

I AM over it. But thanks for the laughs. I think you are Thomas Pynchon “faking” a screen name. You write as well if not better. Keep up the good work.

[jpl]

Ivins wrote and typed hundreds of letters to Congress and the media, sometimes under assumed names, and kept copies of them in his house as "keepsakes"?

OK, if this is true then the guy really was stone cold nuts, but it's another claim in the ever-growing list of things that I'm skeptical about. I wonder if anyone besides the feds has had access to all these "letters" yet.

Each drip of information that we're getting sounds harder to believe than the last.

[Nick Danger]

Here's my theory:

[ZACKandPOOK]

The girls of Kappa join in the cover-up!

http://gawker.com/5034402/anthrax-babes-lament-were-boring

” Hey girls–

I just wanted to let everyone know that the group has been made secret for at least the next week in order to protect members’ privacy. If you are the admin for a pledge class group, I would recommend that you make that group secret as well, and to all members, I would strongly encourage you to either up your privacy settings or weed out your facebook profile so that nothing is on there that you wouldn’t want the world to see. Finally, if a reporter contacts you, through facebook or any other means, do not speak with them. It is Kappa National Policy that actives not speak with the press. If you have any questions, you can call or email me.

L,

Diana

Update -
BREAKING NEWS: FBI Director Robert Mueller dated a Kappa.
ENQUIRER HEADLINE: DIRECTOR DOESN’T KISS AND TELL

[piasa]

Even assuming that Ivins was the lone perp-

When’s the FBI going to get around to explaining how the head of an active terrorist cell, Ali A Timimi, could get past the background check?

And what is their explanation for all the circumstantial evidence that contradicts the lone perp theory?

[swarthyguy]

So the FBI drove a man they knew was “unstable” to suicide by harassing his kids and his wife.

Of course they knew of his “instability” from his shrink, but they still pushed his buttons.

SOP for the FBI, but I hope the agents are proud they pushed this man to kill himself, besmirching his name in the process, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to defend himself or prove his innocence.

Case closed.

[Shermy]

The letters are to and FROM “society” figures.

There is not one bit of evidence the fake name letter/s were other than to his local paper, which is curious, but

why would using a fake name for a letter to the editor have anything to do with a propensity to write a fake name on an anthrax letter? What else would a criminal do?

Also, the first letters had no fake name and address.

[swarthyguy]

>>their explanation

Conspiracy Nut, you!

[TrebleRebel]

I don’t get the Matsumoto/NBC angle, I mean, why release it? It only raises questions why the Feds don’t have similar explanations for ABC, CBS, New York Post, and AMI.

I have a theory on that one. To make a case they wanted to try to connect as many dots as possible between Ivins and the details they knew. The more this piles up, beyond, say, 5 or 6 "connections" the more damning the whole things sounds to the public.

So, they connected Daschle and Leahy via some Catholic pro-life issue (thinking about this you could probably connect any person to Daschle and Leahy somehow, however obscure).

They connected Ivins to Princeton through the Kappa Kappa Gamma (hey, it was only a warehouse, but who cares). That was a nice move - that gave the chance to introduce his sorority obsessions as well.

They connected the pre-stamped envleopes to Ivins through a dubious printing error.

They found an email sent after 9/11 where he mentioned America and Israel and Al Qaeda - gee what a coincidence.

They found some obscure Greendale church or something he visited years ago - yup, that'll do.

Then, they thought - how can we connect Ivins to NBC? It didn't matter that Matsumoto hadn't worked there since 1999 - let's use him anyway since we've got an email with some colorful language.

[jpl]

The conflicting views of Dr. Ivins emerged in a day of emotional crosscurrents. At a morning memorial service at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., weeping Army scientists praised Dr. Ivins as a beloved colleague “known for his patience and enthusiasm for science,” as a written program put it.

It sure sounds like I'm not the only one who isn't buying what they're selling out of the Hoover building!

[Shermy]

They should explain and release a photo of the envelope error.

And get the input of stamp collectors.

[weegee]

So the FBI drove a man they knew was “unstable” to suicide by harassing his kids and his wife. Of course they knew of his “instability” from his shrink, but they still pushed his buttons.

Standard operating procedure.

[weegee]

What is his link to Florida where the 9-11 hijackers lived and partied? The dead tabloid editor was in Florida.

[VOA]

I wonder if the FBI can show how Ivins suppossedly produced such a
high-quality, non-milled, weakly-charged, polyglass-coated spores.
A former colleague of Ivins wrote a good article that appeared
in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 5 detailing FBI descriptions of
the anthrax spores that were used in the attacks...and multiple qualities
that Ivins almost certainly couldn’t have built into those spores.

As I don’t have on-line access to WSJ, I’ll post a little bit of
the controversy as mentioned on CNN:

FBI accused of hardball tactics in anthrax case
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/06/fbi.tactics/?iref=mpstoryview

(excerpt from end of article)
Peter Hotez, chairman of microbiology at George Washington University,
rejected the government’s contention that Ivins’ access to a sophisticated
lab device called a lyophilizer — used to dry anthrax — was in
any way damning.

And Richard Spertzel, a former colleague of Ivins at Fort Detrick,
said there was “no way” a lyophilizer could have created the fine
anthrax spores used in the 2001 letters.

In addition, Spertzel said, no one working at a U.S. government
lab could have produced such high quality anthrax in secret.