[AP] Anthrax scientist commits suicide as FBI closes in

Here is another interesting, long-ish read ...

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

 

Officials: Anthrax suspect obsessed with sorority
Aug 4, 5:22 PM (ET)
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) - The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday.

Multiple U.S. officials told The Associated Press that former Army scientist Bruce Ivins was long obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, going back as far as his own college days at the University of Cincinnati.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The bizarre link to the sorority may indirectly explain one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why the anthrax was mailed from Princeton, N.J., 195 miles from the Army biological weapons lab the anthrax is believed to have been smuggled out of.

An adviser to the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at Princeton University confirmed she was interviewed by the FBI in connection with the case.

U.S. officials said e-mails or other documents detail Ivins' long-standing fixation on the sorority. His former therapist has said Ivins plotted revenge against those who have slighted him, particularly women. There is nothing to indicate, however, he was focused on any one sorority member or other Princeton student, the officials said.

Despite the connection between Ivins and the sorority, authorities acknowledge they cannot place the scientist in Princeton the day the anthrax was mailed. That remains a hole in the government's case. Had Ivins not killed himself last week, authorities would have argued he could have made the seven-hour round trip to Princeton after work.

Ivins' attorney, Paul F. Kemp, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday but has asserted his client's innocence and said he would have been vindicated in court.

Katherine Breckinridge Graham, a Kappa alumna who serves as an adviser to the sorority's Princeton chapter, said Monday she was interviewed by FBI agents "over the last couple of years" about the case. She said she could not provide any details about the interview because she signed an FBI nondisclosure form.

However, Graham said there was nothing to indicate that any of the sorority members had anything to do with Ivins.

"Nothing odd went on," said Graham, an attorney.

Kappa Kappa Gamma executive director Lauren Paitson, reached at the sorority's headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, initially told an AP reporter Monday afternoon she would provide a comment shortly. She did not answer subsequent phone messages or e-mails seeking a response.

Some of the scientist's friends and former co-workers have reacted with skepticism as details about the investigation surfaced. They questioned whether Ivins had the motive to unleash such an attack and whether he could have secretly created the powder form of the deadly toxin without co-workers noticing.

Princeton University referred questions about Ivins to the FBI. The university does not formally recognize sororities and fraternities but chapters operate off campus.

Local police in both Princeton Borough and Princeton Township said Ivins' name did not turn up on any incident reports or restraining orders.

Kappa Kappa Gamma also has chapters at nearby colleges in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington. One official said investigators were working off the theory that Ivins chose to mail the letters from the Princeton chapter to confuse investigators if he ever were to emerge as a suspect in the case.

Five people died and 17 others sickened by the anthrax plot, which was launched on the heels of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The following August, investigators announced they'd found anthrax spores inside the mailbox on Nassau Street, the town's main thoroughfare. FBI agents immediately began canvassing the town, showing residents a photograph of Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill, who at the time was a key "person of interest" in the case.

That theory fell flat and this June, the Justice Department exonerated Hatfill and agreed to a $5.8 million settlement with him.

In the past year, the FBI has turned a close eye on Ivins, whom a therapist said had a history of homicidal and sociopathic behavior. Prosecutors had planned to indict Ivins and seek the death penalty but, knowing investigators were closing in, he killed himself with an overdose of acetaminophen, the key ingredient in Tylenol.

With its top suspect now dead, the Justice Department is considering closing the "Amerithrax" investigations. It has been among the FBI's most publicized unsolved cases and, if it is closed, authorities are expected to unseal court documents that outline much of their case against Ivins.

---

Associated Press Writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report from Mount Laurel, N.J.

 

FBI says evidence points uniquely to Bruce Ivins in anthrax case

The deceased government researcher was the only scientist who had regular access to the unique anthrax spores linked to deadly mailings in 2001, according to FBI documents released today.

By David Willman and David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 7, 2008

WASHINGTON -- In an extraordinary attempt to prove the guilt of a suspect now beyond their reach, government officials Wednesday released a wealth of new details about the troubled life of Bruce E. Ivins, and said they had evidence that would have convicted him in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people.

Hundreds of pages of previously secret documents show how the FBI, using new scientific tools, began to establish the guilt of one of the very scientists it had been relying on to crack the case. Ivins, 62, died of an apparent suicide July 29.

"We stand here today, firmly convinced that we have the person who committed those attacks," said Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, whose office would have prosecuted Ivins. "And we are confident that, had this gone to trial, we would have proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." He said Ivins had acted alone.

Ivins was the "sole custodian" of the unique strain of anthrax that caused the deaths of five Americans, and had started working late in his laboratory the nights before the letters were mailed, according to a federal affidavit from Thomas F. Dellafera, a postal inspector who was part of the investigation team.

When asked for samples of the anthrax he was working with, the affidavit said, Ivins purposely provided the wrong or unusable material until an FBI agent marched into his secure lab and seized a flask of the lethal bacterium.

The government used Ivins' own desperate words, found in e-mails sent in the months and days before the attacks, to show a man racked by paranoia who described himself as "scary." At the same time, he was increasingly upset by the trouble besetting an anthrax vaccine he was trying to return to production.

As described by authorities Wednesday, Ivins may have perpetrated the attacks in an effort to create fear that would, in turn, spur greater federal spending and overall support for biodefense.

The unveiling of the evidence implicating a man who last week apparently killed himself was met with relief from many relatives of the anthrax victims -- and with derision from Ivins' lawyers.

"The government's press conference was an orchestrated dance of carefully worded statements, heaps of innuendo and a staggering lack of real evidence, all contorted to create the illusion of guilt," said attorneys Paul F. Kemp and Thomas M. DeGonia.

But Maureen Stevens, widow of the first victim, Robert Stevens, said she felt relieved after flying from Florida to Washington to attend a special FBI briefing.

"They've put it all together. . . . There is so much that they have gathered, and they worked so hard. I feel I can rest now," she said.

Taylor, joined by officials from the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service, referred to genetic testing of material retrieved from the tainted letters and the victims and detailed other evidence that he said proved Ivins' guilt. Yet the presentation fell well short of providing specifics that many experts say would be needed to rigorously analyze the government's conclusion that the anthrax powder could only have originated from a flask in Ivins' laboratory.

"I assume they can prove it," said Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist and retired Army major general who formerly oversaw research conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked. "But the question is, does that 'genetic match' match anything else in the world? Show us the data -- and let's see it published."

Asked at the news conference when the genetic-testing data would be made public, Joseph Persichini, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said: "I'm not going to comment on when the publications and the process will come out, but the FBI lab will do that accordingly."

The government's presentation also raised questions about why the FBI for years exhaustively targeted Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former researcher at Ft. Detrick, while agents did not seek to search Ivins' home or vehicles for traces of anthrax until last fall.

This June, the government agreed to pay Hatfill $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit in which he asserted that the FBI and Justice Department had improperly leaked information about him -- some of it misleading or inaccurate -- to news organizations.

Wednesday's news conference was not attended by senior Bush administration officials, such as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who has presided over the investigation since soon after the mailings occurred in the fall of 2001. Earlier in the day, Mueller met with families of some of the anthrax victims. The director also briefed current and former congressional officials who were affected by the mailings that killed five people, injured 17 others and unleashed new fear after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Taylor, who has been the local U.S. attorney since late September 2006, presided at the news conference, although he is a relative newcomer to the anthrax investigation. He pointed to investigative documents, newly unsealed by a federal judge, along with other evidence that he said proved Ivins had perpetrated the anthrax mailings:

* Genetic testing and follow-up investigation of Ivins and others at Ft. Detrick

"We were able to identify in early 2005 the genetically unique parent material of the anthrax spores used in the mailings," Taylor said, adding that the anthrax had come from "a single flask of spores . . . that was created and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins at USAMRIID."
"This means that the spores used in the attacks were taken from that specific flask, regrown, purified, dried and loaded into the letters. No one received material from that flask without going through Dr. Ivins."

Taylor also said, "We thoroughly investigated every other person who could have had access to the flask, and we were able to rule out all but Dr. Ivins."

nvestigators also traced the limited-circulation, pre-stamped envelopes in which the tainted letters were sent to mid-Atlantic postal facilities, including one in Frederick, Md., where Ivins lived.

* Records and interviews showing that Ivins used a specially equipped lab at USAMRIID several times before and soon after the anthrax mailings

"In the days leading up to each of the mailings, the documents make clear that Dr. Ivins was working inordinate hours alone at night and on the weekend in the lab where the flask of spores and production equipment were stored," Taylor said, adding that records established that Ivins had not spent so many late-night hours in the lab "at any time before or after this period."

"When questioned about why he was in the lab during those off-hours prior to each of the mailings, Dr. Ivins was unable to offer any satisfactory explanation."

Ivins was routinely vaccinated against anthrax as a required part of his work as a staff microbiologist at USAMRIID.

* Ivins' statements and other actions suggesting that he was trying to cover up his crimes

Taylor pointed to the many investigative documents unsealed earlier in the day, including postal inspectors' sworn statements in support of various search warrants.

In one of the most recent affidavits, dated July 11, Inspector Charles B. Wickersham said, "Ivins is believed to have submitted false samples of anthrax from his lab to the FBI for forensic analysis in order to mislead investigators."

One night within the last several months -- after his house in Frederick had been searched by investigators -- Ivins "took highly unusual steps to discard a book and article on DNA coding while under 24/7 surveillance," Taylor said.

Those and other steps taken by Ivins, including "far-reaching efforts to blame others and divert attention away from himself," Taylor said, "suggest consciousness of guilt."

One of the search warrant documents unsealed Wednesday provided elaboration.

"Dr. Ivins repeatedly claimed that the anthrax used in the attacks resembled that of another researcher at USAMRIID and was dissimilar" from the strain used in Ivins' laboratory, Dellafera wrote.

Three colleagues of Ivins' at USAMRIID told investigators that they did not have access to the signature "parent" strain of anthrax as Ivins had claimed, the investigative documents show.

Documents also suggest that Ivins had a decades-long obsession with a sorority whose chapter at Princeton University is located 60 feet from the only U.S. mailbox where spores from the letters were found.

* Ivins was motivated both by his commitment to overcome a regulatory obstacle to the anthrax vaccine and by his social conservatism

As of summer 2001, the FDA was blocking resumed production of the only U.S. government-licensed anthrax vaccine, made by a private company that Ivins -- in his government role -- was assisting. Soon after the anthrax mailings, the FDA green-lighted resumed production of the vaccine by the company, then called BioPort.

As of mid- to late 2001, Taylor said, Ivins was "a troubled individual. . . . He's very concerned, according to the evidence, that this vaccination program he's been working on may come to an end. . . . And a possible motive is [that], by launching these attacks, he creates a situation, a scenario where people all of a sudden realize the need to have this vaccine."

Ivins, a Catholic whose two children attended a parochial school in Frederick, described himself in a 2002 e-mail to a colleague as "pro-life . . . consistent with a Christian."

Two of the intended recipients of anthrax-tainted letters -- then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) -- are Catholics who favor abortion rights.

Moreover, the newly unsealed documents also quote from an e-mail that Ivins sent on Sept. 26, 2001 -- nine days before the death in Palm Beach County, Fla., of Stevens, the first anthrax-related fatality in the case.

"It's interesting that we may now be living in a time when our biggest threat to civil liberties and freedom doesn't come from the government but from enemies of the government," Ivins wrote. "Osama Bin Laden has just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans, but I guess that doesn't mean a lot to the [American Civil Liberties Union]."

In the anthrax letters that he is alleged to have mailed to Leahy, Daschle and news media figures, this language was included in a photocopied, handwritten note:

"DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT."

david.willman@latimes.com
david.savage@latimes.com

Times staff writer Josh Meyer in Washington and researcher Janet Lundblad in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

 

Oh the irony ...

The LA Times:

At a Pentagon ceremony on March 14, 2003, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID were bestowed the Decoration of Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to nonmilitary employees of the Defense Department. “Awards are nice,” Ivins said in accepting the honor. “But the real satisfaction is knowing the vaccine is back on line.