I wonder if this suicide is anything like The "suicide" of David kelly in Britain. If so, we now know who attempted an assassination of the leadership of the Congress.
Bruce E. Ivins, a scientist who helped the FBI investigate the 2001 mail attacks, was about to face charges.
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 1, 2008
A top government scientist who helped the
FBI analyze samples from the 2001
anthrax attacks has died in
Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the
Los Angeles Times has learned.
Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft.
Detrick,
Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with
Ivins, his suspicious death and the
FBI investigation.
Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve
anthrax vaccines by preparing
anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.
Regarded as a skilled microbiologist,
Ivins also helped the
FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the
anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a
U.S. senator's office in
Washington.
Ivins died Tuesday at
Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the
FBI.
The death -- without any mention of suicide -- was announced to
Ivins' colleagues at the
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or
USAMRIID, through a staffwide e-mail.
"People here are pretty shook up about it," said
Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for
USAMRIID, who said she was not at liberty to discuss details surrounding the death.
The
anthrax mailings killed five people, crippled national mail service, shut down a
Senate office building and spread fear of further terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The extraordinary turn of events followed the government's payment in June of
a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the
FBI's chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed
anthrax.
The payout to
Hatfill, a highly unusual development that all but exonerated him in the mailings, was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting
Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.
Federal investigators moved away from
Hatfill -- for years the only publicly identified "person of interest" -- and ultimately concluded that
Ivins was the culprit after
FBI Director
Robert S. Mueller III changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006.
The
FBI's new top investigators --
Vincent B. Lisi and
Edward W. Montooth -- instructed agents to reexamine leads or potential suspects that may have received insufficient attention. Moreover, significant progress was made in analyzing genetic properties of the
anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two senators.
The renewed efforts led the
FBI back to
USAMRIID, where agents first questioned scientists in December 2001, a few weeks after the fatal mailings.
By spring of this year,
FBI agents were still contacting
Ivins' present and former colleagues. At
USAMRIID and elsewhere, scientists acquainted with
Ivins were asked to sign confidentiality agreements in order to prevent leaks of new investigative details.
Ivins, employed as a civilian at Ft.
Detrick, earlier had attracted the attention of
Army officials because of
anthrax contaminations that
Ivins failed to report for five months. In sworn oral and written statements to an
Army investigator,
Ivins said that he had erred by keeping the episodes secret -- from December 2001 to late April 2002. He said he had swabbed and bleached more than 20 areas that he suspected were contaminated by a sloppy lab technician.
"In retrospect, although my concern for biosafety was honest and my desire to refrain from crying 'Wolf!' . . . was sincere, I should have notified my supervisor ahead of time of my worries about a possible breach in biocontainment,"
Ivins told the
Army. "I thought that quietly and diligently cleaning the dirty desk area would both eliminate any possible [
anthrax] contamination as well as prevent unintended anxiety at the
institute."
The
Army chose not to discipline
Ivins regarding his failure to report the contamination. Officials said that penalizing
Ivins might discourage other employees from voluntarily reporting accidental spills of "hot" agents.
But
Ivins' recollections should have raised serious questions about his veracity and his intentions, according to some of those familiar with the investigation. For instance, although
Ivins said that he swabbed areas near and within his personal office, and bleached surfaces to kill any spores, and that some of the swabs tested positive, he was vague about what should have been an essential next step:
Reswabbing to check whether any spores remained.
"I honestly do not recall if follow-up swabs were taken of the area,"
Ivins said. "I may have done so, but I do not now remember reswabbing."
(In accordance with Title U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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