The GAO will be reviewing the case, too. They have been working on it for some time. They were just waiting for the NAS to finish before they began working on their conclusions.
CIDRAP news has an article titled "Anthrax expert says NRC report supports FBI" which contains these tidbits of information:
The National Research Council's (NRC's) report on the FBI's anthrax investigation amounts to a general endorsement of the agency's scientific approach, even though the NRC found that the purely scientific evidence on the source of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was not conclusive, a leading anthrax expert said today.
"I actually have been telling people this is a qualified endorsement of the science in the [FBI] investigation," Paul S. Keim, PhD, a Northern Arizona University microbiologist who helped the FBI investigate the anthrax attacks, told CIDRAP News. ......
Keim said the NRC panel is not saying the FBI was wrong, only that the scientific evidence wasn't as strong as the agency suggested. ....
Keim—who described himself as a friend of Ivins' who was surprised when the probe led to him—noted that some media headlines have said the NRC committee doubts the link to Ivins. "The committee isn't saying that. . . . All the major conclusions that the FBI came to, the committee said, 'Yeah, the evidence is consistent with that.'"
Sen. Leahy says 2001 anthrax case shouldn’t be closed
by Paul Tinder on February 17, 2011
In a reflection last month on his own experience as a would-be target of an assassin, Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said that he has never accepted the FBI’s decision to close the anthrax-laced letter case from 2001.
Leahy was one of the targets of the anthrax letters sent to him and then-Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) which caused the deaths of five people and caused 17 others to fall ill. Leahy’s comments come in light of the recent National Research Council’s report questioning the FBI’s allegation that Fort Detrick scientist Bruce E. Ivins was the culprit, the Washington Post reports.
Ivins committed suicide in July 2008 as he was about to be indicted, but his lawyer has continued to maintain his innocence.
“I still wonder who sent it and why they sent it,” Leahy said, according to the Washington Post. “I’ve expressed those concerns to the FBI and this report adds to those concerns.”
There have been several calls to form an independent commission to continue the investigation.
“Were there people who at the very least were accessories after the fact?” Leahy said, according to the Washington Post. “I think there were. Why would he send one to Tom Brokaw, to Tom Daschle, to me, to the man at the National Enquirer in Florida?
“They have to make their decisions; I have to make mine. In my mind, it’s not closed. Call it an old prosecutor’s instinct.”
http://www.bioprepwatch.com/news/233446-sen-leahy-says-2001-anthrax-case-shouldnt-be-closed
-Thoughts and Comments
by Ed Lake
Figures.
Ed wrote:
“According to The Washington Post, it was in June of 2000 that Ivins became a client of Comprehensive Counseling Associates, about 1-1/2 miles from where Ivins lived. The Post says:
He began weekly individual sessions with a licensed clinical professional counselor there. The counselor said she remembers him as precise and unfailingly polite, yet sometimes “very cold, without emotion.”
On his second or third visit, the counselor said, “he got bizarre.” Ivins talked of a young woman living somewhere in the Northeast and said he planned to drive to watch her play in a soccer game. “I think he was infatuated or thinking about getting involved,” recalled the counselor,”
___________________________________________________________
Tales of Addiction, Anxiety, Ranting
Scientist, Counselor Recount Recent Turmoil in Anthrax Suspect’s Life
“Before he died July 29 of a Tylenol overdose, Ivins, 62, had two inpatient stays at Maryland hospitals for detoxification and rehabilitation and attended two sets of therapy sessions with a counselor who eventually sought court protection from him.
Ivins had just returned from a four-week stay at a psychiatric hospital in Western Maryland in late May when he wrote the fellow scientist in recovery a calm, six-sentence e-mail. “I hope,” it said, “that both of us avoid relapsing into our previous substance abuse.” Since his death, Ivins’s long-term mental health and the psychological effects of the investigation have become increasingly prominent questions.
The counselor he saw for group therapy and biweekly individual sessions, who would eventually tell a judge that he was a “sociopathic, homicidal killer,” had a troubled past. Jean C. Duley, who worked until recent days for Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick, is licensed as an entry-level drug counselor and was, according to one of her mentors, allowed to work with clients only under supervision of a more-seasoned professional.
Shortly before she sought a “peace order” against Ivins, Duley had completed 90 days of home detention after a drunken-driving arrest in December, and she has acknowledged drug use in her past.
In a 1999 interview with The Washington Post, Duley described her background as a motorcycle gang member and a drug user. “Heroin. Cocaine. PCP,” said Duley, who then used the name Jean Wittman. “You name it, I did it.”