Evidence against Ivins released
Proves link to anthrax attacks, FBI says
WASHINGTON — Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins had in his lab highly purified anthrax spores that were linked to the 2001 attacks that killed five and access to the distinctive envelopes used to mail them, the government declared Wednesday, releasing a stack of documents to support a damning though circumstantial case.
Ivins, a brilliant but deeply troubled man who committed suicide last week, was the anthrax killer whose mailings rattled the nation in the worst bioterror case in U. S. history, just a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, federal prosecutors asserted. They were backed by documents that were a combination of hard DNA evidence, suspicious behavior and, sometimes, outright speculation.
Ivins’ attorney said the government was “taking a weird guy and convicting him of mass murder” without real evidence.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called for a congressional investigation. “This has been one of the largest domestic terrorism investigations in the FBI’s 100-year history, and the investigative team made mistakes, missteps and false accusations,” he said.
Ivins had submitted false anthrax samples to the FBI to throw investigators off his trail and was unable to provide “an adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours” around the time of the attacks, according to the documents.
Investigators also said he sought to frame unnamed coworkers and had immunized himself against anthrax and yellow fever in early September 2001, several weeks before the first anthrax-laced envelope was received in the mail.
Ivins, 62, killed himself last week as investigators closed in. “We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury,” U. S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said at a Justice Department news conference.
The scientist’s attorney, Paul F. Kemp, dismissed that comment. “They didn’t talk about one thing that they got as result of all those searches,” he said. “I just don’t think he did it, and I don’t think the evidence exists.”
Taylor conceded the evidence was largely circumstantial but insisted it would have been enough to convict.
The newly released records depict Ivins as deeply troubled, increasingly so as he confronted the possibility of being charged.
“He said he was not going to face the death penalty, but instead had a plan to kill co-workers and other individuals who had wronged him,” according to one affidavit. In e-mails to colleagues, Ivins described a feeling of dual personalities, the material said.
Officials disclosed Wednesday they had restricted his access to the biological agents last September.
Ivins was described in the documents as the sole custodian of highly purified anthrax spores with “certain genetic mutations identical” to the poison used in the attacks. Taylor acknowledged “a large number of individuals, over 100,” had access to the substance.
Investigators said they had traced back to his lab the type of envelopes used to send the powder through the mail.
The FBI’s investigation had dragged on for years, tarnishing the reputation of the agency in the process. Investigators had long focused on Steven J. Hatfill, whose career as a bioscientist was ruined after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft named him a “person of interest” in 2002. The government recently paid $6 million to settle a lawsuit by Hatfill, who worked in the same lab as Ivins.
Authorities said language that Ivins used in an e-mail days before a second round of anthrax attacks was similar to the messages in anthrax-laced letters received soon after by Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
In the e-mail, Ivins wrote that “Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas” and have “just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans.” The letters said: “WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX . . . DEATH TO AMERICA . . . DEATH TO ISRAEL.”
As for motive, investigators seemed to offer two possible reasons for the attacks: that the brilliant scientist wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that the antiabortion Catholic targeted two pro-choice Catholic lawmakers.
“We are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks,” Taylor said.
