Posted on 08/07/2008 11:30:43 PM PDT by CutePuppy
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 Suspect
The 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 late last month.
When asked about the strength of the case and their seeming certainty of Ivins' guilt, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey Taylor replied, "Circumstantial evidence? Sure, some of it is. But it is compelling evidence."
Ivins' attorney, Paul Kemp, said the evidence is anything but compelling and attacked not only the accuracy of the government's findings, but its very focus on Ivins, a suspect whose death now prevents either side from proving its case once and for all.
Ivins' Lawyer: 'He Didn't Do It'
"The idea that anyone could say they could convict someone with what they have is stunning," Kemp said. "They have nothing. There was not a single piece of evidence produced from all those search warrants and all those affidavits. He was a weird, bookish, nerdy kind of man. But he didn't do it. He was an open, caring, honest man with a great sense of humor who was beloved by his friends and family."
The case against Ivins largely rests on new scientific techniques that investigators believe directly link the anthrax used in the attacks to Ivins. According to the documents, genetic analysis of the spores show they match a batch of spores from the Army's lab at Fort Detrick, Md., and that Ivins was the "custodian" of them.
Taylor said Ivins was one of fewer than a dozen people in the country with the knowledge, capability and equipment necessary to pull off the attack. He said the flask investigators recovered from the lab was the "parent flask" of the anthrax that was sent through the mail, and he said that flask belonged to Ivins. Taylor called the flask "the murder weapon."
But on Wednesday, Kemp countered that hundreds of people had access to the flask and that the science behind the investigation is not as solid as it is being made out to be. He also added that Ivins cooperated with the investigation every step of the way.
False Samples Cited
That is a far cry from the picture Justice Department officials painted Wednesday. They say Ivins not only dodged their inquiries, but also tried to outright "mislead" investigators. They say Ivins submitted false anthrax samples from his lab to throw off investigators.
In one instance, the documents say, investigators asked Ivins for a specific sample of anthrax they needed. Ivins gave a sample, but when they went to the lab themselves and took the sample, it did not match what Ivins had given them. When they confronted Ivins, the documents say, he denied it was true.
Kemp says when investigators asked Ivins for an anthrax sample, he thought they were asking for a pure culture sample. It wasn't until six weeks later that they called and said they had wanted something else.
Kemp says Ivins never denied to the FBI that the anthrax could have come from his batch.
Ivins was restricted from the lab on Nov. 1, 2007, some six years after the attacks, according to an Army spokesperson.
A Deeply Troubled Man
What both Kemp and Justice officials agree on was that Ivins was struggling with his mental health. But they disagree as to the extent and relevance of his mental state.
The documents reveal a man deeply troubled for many years. The records show he sent an e-mail to someone he knew a few days before the attacks warning that "bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas" and have "just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans." The language is strikingly similar to the warning scratched across the anthrax letters, which said, "We have this anthrax ... Death to America ... Death to Israel."
Ivins told a co-worker he was suffering from serious mental health troubles, saying he feared he might not be able to control his behavior. A couple of months after the attacks, Ivins sent an e-mail to someone he knew, which included several poems he wrote about himself.
One said: "I'm a little dream-self, short and stout. I'm the other half of Bruce — when he lets me out. When I get all steamed up, I don't pout. I push Bruce aside, then I'm free to run about."
In an earlier e-mail, Ivins talked openly about his depression and paranoia and seeking help.
In 2000, he wrote: "The thinking now by the psychiatrist and counselor is that my symptoms may not be those of a depression or bipolar disorder, they may be that of a 'Paranoid Personality Disorder.' "
Kemp says Ivins "had mental troubles. But he always sought treatment for them. He was aware of his mental state, and he sought to correct it and took medication for it. He never denied it."
Taylor described Ivins as "a prolific letter-writer," who often sent mail under assumed names and from post office boxes. Taylor said Ivins mailed more than 68 letters to Congress and media organizations alone, the two targets of the deadly letters sent through the mail.
After-Hours At The Lab
The documents also reveal a sudden "spike" in Ivins' after-hours activity at the lab where the bacteria were stored in the weeks leading up to the attacks. Officials say when they asked Ivins why, he said only, "Home is not good."
Kemp says the government is mischaracterizing the "spike" and that over the course of his years working at the lab there were numerous instances when Ivins worked late. Kemp says Ivins also gave investigators information about the work he was doing that kept him there.
The documents do not fully explain why a man so beloved by his friends and co-workers would want to kill people with lethal bacteria. But the FBI asserts in the documents that Ivins was under pressure to help a private company produce an anthrax vaccine and that the company had just lost its Food and Drug Administration approval, suggesting he might have been trying to make the anthrax threat more pressing and real.
The Sorority Obsession
There were parts of Ivins' life that were unusual, including his apparent fascination with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. The government described this interest darkly, as an obsession that dated back 30 years.
Officials offered a message he posted online under a different name:
"I like individual Kappas enormously, and love being around them. I never choose an enemy, but they've been after me since the 1960s, and REALLY after me since the late 1970s. At one time in my life, I knew more about KKG than any non-Kappa that had ever lived."
But Kemp says Ivins was merely interested in the idea of secret societies in the past, never had any obsession with any of the women and told investigators about the old interest freely.
Taylor said investigators had called Kemp recently to set up a meeting to outline their case against Ivins. But before the meeting could take place, Ivins committed suicide.
At Ivins' memorial service Wednesday, an Army official said a couple hundred people showed up at the Fort Detrick chapel for an hourlong service. Many were crying, and four colleagues spoke about him being a brilliant scientist, a mentor with a quirky sense of humor. They also talked of his scientific accomplishments and sang "Amazing Grace" at the end.
Taylor said Ivins' statements were inconsistent over time and failed to explain the evidence against him. He said, "We are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks."
Now that Ivins is dead and the evidence will never be evaluated in court, there will always be some doubt as to whether that is in fact the case.
- This story was reported by NPR staffers Dina Temple-Raston, Ari Shapiro, Laura Sullivan, David Kestenbaum, Nell Greenfieldboyce, Allison Keyes, Tom Bowman and Katia Dunn. It was written by Laura Sullivan.
Interestingly, NPR seems to have extensive coverage of Ivins case, there are a lot of sidebars and links on the site. Other links, which have decent summations of events and [some ridiculous] accusations serving as FBI's claims of "motives" or "proof" so far:
U.S. Judge Unseals Documents In Anthrax Case - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93305949
Anthrax Suspect's Abortion Stance Eyed As Motive - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93385756
why was a seriously troubled man allowed a security clearance?
Previously...
He wasn't "seriously troubled" until after they gave it to him.
nice work.
Thanks the invisible hand.
It’s good to know that anyone can open the links and read the documents if they so desire to.
Especially this one, where there is such barrage of innuendoe being unleashed.
Evidently that was a lot of anthrax in the letters....How did Ivins weaponize it (dry it)? Ive been told its not an easy thing to do
I agree.
It would be interesting to pull up all the innuendo and statements by the FBI during the Hatfill did it part of the investigation that eventually cost the taxpayers more than $4.5 million dollars not including the cost of draining ponds all over the place. How much leaking to the media did the FBI do in those days when they were trying to convince us that they had the right guy?
b) He and NPR may be on the same "side" in this case, but I doubt that it's for the same reasons. After all, this is "Bush administration's" FBI and DoJ. NPR does have the capability of creating good investigative reports, like some "Frontline" episodes which underwent prior bias-ectomy.
Nice blog... I'd call it a Death by Harassment and Innuendo. Wonder if anyone (or a number of people) in FBI or DOJ is or will be claiming a "credit" for cracking the case and catching the "mass murderer". It's a sure resume enhancement, isn't it, at least in terms of "creativity"?
Anthrax Linked To Lab
According to one source who has been briefed on the investigation, Ivins was one of fewer than a dozen people with access to the particular supply of anthrax they now believe was used in the 2001 attacks. In the seven years since the attacks, technology has improved and, sources say, investigators are now able to tie the anthrax bacteria to the Department of Defense lab in Maryland where the scientist worked.
Investigators now believe the anthrax used in the attacks was actually a mixture of spores with slight genetic variations, which gives it a specific signature and, more important, links it almost exclusively to the lab where Ivins worked.
One source familiar with the case against Ivins says the FBI has amassed an exhaustive report of times Ivins entered and left the lab in the days and weeks before the deadly letters were sent. The source says the logs show Ivins using the lab where the anthrax was present at times that could be viewed as suspicious, including late at night when he was there alone.
Ivins also had access to a sophisticated freeze-dryer, which could have been used to turn the wet bacteria into a dry form. Ivins' co-worker Jeff Adamovicz says he remembers the unit, called a lyopholizer, in the hallway and says it was used to dry protein samples for vaccine work. Adamovicz said the dryer was signed out to Ivins. Adamovicz remembers FBI agents testing the dryer, but they never hauled it away, a sign that it most likely came up clean. An additional piece of equipment would also have been required to mill the dried spores into a powdered form.
You’d have to ask the FBI that question petitfour.
Here is their website if you want to contact them:
Thanks
Well, it ain’t like the FBI has screwed up an investigation before...
So beloved his brother hadn't spoken to him in over 20 years.
Bear in mind that some of the same folks that were behind the attack on Hatfill are the ones covering for Ivins now.
We can choose or lose our friends and associates, we can't choose our relatives.
We don't know his brother, but if they were estranged from each other for so long, neither did he know Bruce Ivins that his colleagues knew.
Ivin’s lawyer is also the lawyer for the Thomas Tamm, the suspected leaker of the NSA ‘eavesdropping’ program ; that leak has done a lot of damage to our ability to gain time-critical information from terrorist communications abroad and as it happens, has crippled us in acquiring the hard evidence that enables us to get convictions without relying on purely circumstantial evidence.
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