FBI refuses to release data on prime suspect in ’01 anthrax attacks
WASHINGTON — The FBI is declining to release at least 15,000 pages of documents related to the now-deceased prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks despite lingering suspicions that the bureau has accused the wrong man.
In August, the FBI and the Justice Department identified Bruce E. Ivins, a former microbiologist at the Army’s biological weapons research center at Fort Detrick, Md., as the “only person involved” in the attacks that killed five people and terrorized the nation.
But David M. Hardy, the section chief of the FBI’s records management division, notified McClatchy Newspapers that his office could not immediately release the records because there were “investigative leads still open” and the FBI needed to withhold the documents in order to protect confidential sources, privacy, law enforcement techniques and a suspect’s right to a fair trial.
McClatchy had filed a request for the documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which generally permits the release of records of a dead person.
Ivins committed suicide in July.
In a letter received by McClatchy on Tuesday, Hardy said the FBI has identified a “significant number” of documents related to Ivins that have not yet been released and is still searching for other relevant records.
The investigation, known as Amerithrax, is not officially closed. But when it is, Hardy said, the FBI will release documents on a “rolling basis as soon as practicable.” So far, the FBI has received eight requests for records related to Ivins.
“Although the FBI cannot predict with absolute certainty when the Amerithrax investigation will be formally closed, we can assure you that the FBI has already begun to make initial preparations,” he said.
The Justice Department has released hundreds of pages of court records and detailed a trail of circumstantial evidence against Ivins, including his access to anthrax with genetic mutations that matched the DNA of the spores that were mailed in the weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The government identified Ivins as the sole culprit a week after his suicide and a month after the government paid another former Fort Detrick scientist almost $6 million for wrongly implicating him for years.
However, some experts continue to question the FBI’s evidence, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., whose office received some of the anthrax-laced letters, has said he did not believe Ivins acted alone.
In an attempt to bolster confidence in the bureau’s handling of the case, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III announced recently that a panel of independent scientists would review the FBI’s DNA analysis of the anthrax spores.
