U.S. says Ivins was anthrax killer

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 7, 2008 | by Lara Jakes Jordan

WASHINGTON -- The murder weapon was a flask.

Army scientist Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer whose mailings took five lives and rattled the nation in 2001, prosecutors asserted Wednesday, alleging he had in his lab a container of the lethal, highly purified spores involved and access to the distinctive envelopes used to mail them.

Making its points against Ivins, a brilliant yet deeply troubled man who committed suicide last week, the government released a stack of documents to support a damning though circumstantial case in the worst bioterror episode in U.S. history. The court documents 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. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa called for a congressional investigation.

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 government documents.

Investigators also said he sought to frame unnamed co-workers 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 killed himself last week as investigators closed in, and U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said at a Justice Department news conference, "We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury."

The scientist's attorney, Paul F. Kemp, heatedly 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 if not wholly circumstantial but insisted it would have been enough to convict.

The prosecutor's news conference capped a fast-paced series of events in which the government partially lifted its veil of secrecy in the investigation of the poisonings that followed closely after the airliner terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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 he 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 had sole custody of highly purified anthrax spores with "certain genetic mutations identical" to the poison used in the attacks, according to an affidavit among a stack of documents the government released, all seemingly pointing to his guilt. Investigators also said they had traced back to his lab the type of envelopes used to send the deadly powder through the mails.

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.

Taylor said Wednesday that investigators concluded in 2005 that Hatfill couldn't have had access to a crucial flask of anthrax spores.

Authorities say that language 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 to Daschle and Leahy said: "WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX ... DEATH TO AMERICA ... DEATH TO ISRAEL."

Wednesday's documents were released as FBI Director Robert Mueller met privately with families of the victims of the attacks to lay out the evidence officials said the agency was preparing to close the case.

Patrick O'Donnell, a postal sorter who was sickened after handling one of the contaminated letters, said after attending Tuesday's briefing that he believes Ivins is the man who poisoned him. At the same time, the government didn't provide all the answers.

"I don't know what to think, man," O'Donnell said. "It's closing a lot of things, but it's also opening up a lot of doors."

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 anti-abortion Catholic targeted two Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights.

"We are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks," Taylor told a news conference at the Justice Department.