2001 Anthrax Mailing Case Closed by FBI

Cited: Associated Press/Reuters

The FBI has declared 2001 anthrax mailings case closed as it has decided that the government researcher acted alone. The long-running investigation has been closed according to a person familiar with the case on February 19. The person informed of the decision to close the case was not authorized to speak about it before an official announcement expected later on February 19 and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity.

The anthrax letters were sent to lawmakers and news organizations as the nation reeled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The anthrax case was one of the most vexing and costly investigations in U.S. history until officials announced in 2008 that the lone suspect was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who killed himself as authorities prepared to indict him. The move February 19 seals that preliminary investigative conclusion.

Investigators had been on the verge of closing the case last year but government lawyers decided to conduct a further review of what evidence could be shared with the public, according to several people familiar with the case.

Officials were hesitant about releasing some information because of concerns about violating privacy rights and grand jury secrecy, said those familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Laced with anthrax, the letters were sent with childish, blocky handwriting and chilling scientific expertise. The spores killed five people: Two postal workers in Washington, D.C., a New York City hospital worker, a Florida photo editor and a 94-year-old Connecticut woman who had no known contact with any of the poisoned letters. Seventeen other people were sickened.

For years, the FBI chased leads.

Authorities tried to build a case against bio-warfare expert Steven Hatfill, but ultimately had to pay him a multimillion-dollar settlement. In 2008, they announced that the mystery had been solved, but the suspect was dead.

Authorities said that in the days before the mailings, Ivins had logged unusual hours alone in his lab at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. They also say he threw investigators off his trail by supplying false leads as he ostensibly tried to help them find the killer.

However, according to Justice Department documents that were released February 19, over 1,000 possible suspects were investigated by the FBI until they concluded that the U.S. Army scientist alone committed the crime.

Doctors everywhere need the ability to test for anthrax if needed . . . They need to have in their lab a hematology analyzer that can check for certain antibodies. It is also recommended that they have a hematology analyzer that has rapid testing capabilities as well as a gastric occult blood test system for diagnostic purposes. For whatever situation or health crisis, doctors need physician diagnostics equipment to do their job properly.

Officially closing its investigation, the department said various steps taken in the past year only confirmed its earlier conclusion that the scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, had mailed the anthrax-laced letters. Ivins, the 62-year-old microbiologist took a fatal overdose of Tylenol, dying on July 29, 2008. After Ivins’ suicide, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the investigation found Ivins was the culprit, and prosecutors said they were confident he acted alone.

In seven years after the attack, an “Amerithrax task force” of investigators spent more than 600,000 work hours, conducted some 10,000 witness interviews on six continents, and recovered about 6,000 items of potential evidence.

The documents for the first time detailed the scope of the work by the FBI and other investigators in scrutinizing more than 1,000 individuals, located both in the United States and overseas, as possible suspects. They included physicians, scientists, researchers, a disgruntled foreign scientist, a microbiologist who committed suicide after the attacks and a microbiology student with alleged ties to al Qaeda’s anthrax program.

But all of those suspects, as well as another U.S. Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who had been an early focus of the investigation, were eventually ruled out and the attention shifted to Ivins.

SEVEN-YEAR INVESTIGATION

By 2007, investigators conclusively determined that a single-spore batch of anthrax created and maintained by Ivins at his laboratory in Maryland was the parent material for the spores in the letters.

“The evidence gathered in this seven-year investigation establishes that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer,” according to the documents, citing direct evidence about the anthrax spores and what it called “compelling circumstantial evidence.”

Ivins committed suicide on July 29, 2008, just as prosecutors prepared to charge him with murder for committing the attacks. His attorney has maintained he was innocent. Some of the evidence involved his suspicious behavior.

“Dr. Ivins was alone in his lab for long stretches of time in the evenings and on the weekends leading up to the anthrax mailing events. This picture is in stark contrast to his behavior before and after the mailings,” the department said.

It said the suicide “was the result of his final downward slide” into depression and other mental health problems.

“Dr. Ivins profound mental health struggles provide both a context for his motives to commit the crime and an explanation for how he could commit such a horrific and tragic offense,” the department said in a 92-page summary.

In the months after his suicide, investigators continued to review thousands of e-mails going back 10 years and examined additional evidence. Investigators also obtained court orders allowing access to his mental health records and interviewed mental health providers who had treated Ivins.

Skeptics — including prominent lawmakers — pointed to the bureau’s long, misguided pursuit of Hatfill, and noted there was no evidence suggesting Ivins was ever in New Jersey when the letters were mailed there.

At the urging of lawmakers, the National Academy of Sciences has launched a formal review of the FBI’s scientific methods in tracing the particular strain of anthrax used in the mailings to samples Ivins had at his Fort Detrick lab.

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My Take: After reading the article, I think I am one of the skeptics. If all reports indicate that this particular doctor was not even in the cities of the envelopes were mailed from, who mailed them? That seems to be good evidence that there was someone else involved. That is like saying the undying needs hair restoration when he has a full head of hair. I can just see the hair transplant going in the room to perform the restoration and finding a guy with a full head of hair instead.

It just seems a little stupid to me. Now you might see a Dothan Alabama face lift done when it really doesn’t need to be done, but that is the person wanting it. Even a Tallahassee FL plastic surgeon will not argue with an insistent patient as is evident with many Hollywood stars. This makes me wondering why the FBI would not pay attention to the fact that the letters were mailed from one city and their main suspect was in another.

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