Anthrax suspect dies in apparent suicide [Archive]

View Full Version : Anthrax suspect dies in apparent suicide

Nbadan

08-01-2008, 04:49 AM

Looks like suspicious suicides come in 3 now too...

By David Willman
Los Angeles Times
Article Launched: 08/01/2008 01:31:11 AM PDT

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 Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his death and with the FBI investigation.

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, had 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 had 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, D.C.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after having ingested a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague who declined to be identified out of concern, he said, 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 (USAMRIID) in an e-mail.

"People here are pretty shook up about it," said Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman

Mercury News (http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_10065164?nclick_check=1)

Air Force brigadier general dies of gunshot wound 28 Jul 2008 An Air Force brigadier general died of a gunshot wound that likely was self-inflicted...

Aide to U.S. Senator Jim Webb found dead from apparent gunshot wound 29 Jul 2008 Authorities in Botetourt County this morning discovered the body of a well-known Democratic operative and U.S. Senate aide along U.S. 220, dead from an apparent gunshot wound.....

.....looks like someone is cleaning house...

ChumpDumper

08-01-2008, 07:32 AM

Tell us all about it.

In detail.

PixelPusher

08-01-2008, 10:23 AM

I saw the "Anthrax" and "suicide" in the thread title and had an 80s flashback.

"Anthrax is the Devil's music!"

xrayzebra

08-01-2008, 10:30 AM

Oh boy! dan has a new conspiracy theory. Tell us about it dan, complete with utube.

E20

08-01-2008, 05:19 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080801/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/anthrax_scientist

Suspect in anthrax-letter deaths kills himself By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers
4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and severely rattled the post-9/11 nation may have been part of an Army scientist's warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin, officials said Friday. The brilliant but troubled scientist committed suicide this week, knowing prosecutors were closing in.

The sudden naming of scientist Bruce E. Ivins as the top — and perhaps only — suspect in the anthrax attacks marks the latest bizarre twist in a case that has confounded the FBI for nearly seven years. Last month, the Justice Department cleared Ivins' colleague, Steven Hatfill, who had been wrongly suspected in the case, and paid him $5.8 million.

Ivins worked at the Army's biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., for 18 years until his death on Tuesday. He was one of the government's leading scientists researching vaccines and cures for anthrax exposure. But he also had a long history of homicidal threats, according to papers filed last week in local court by a social worker.

The letters contained anthrax powder were sent on the heels of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and turned up at congressional offices, newsrooms and elsewhere, leaving a deadly trail through post offices on the way. The powder killed five and sent numerous victims to hospitals and caused near panic in many locations.

Workers in protective garb that made them look like space men decontaminated U.S. Capitol buildings after anthrax letters were discovered there. Major postal substations were closed for years. Newsrooms were checked all over after anthrax letters were mailed to offices in Florida and New York.

The Justice Department said Friday only that "substantial progress has been made in the investigation." The statement did not identify Ivins.

However, several U.S. officials said prosecutors were focusing on the 62-year-old Ivins and planned to seek a murder indictment and the death penalty. Authorities were investigating whether Ivins, who had complained about the limits of testing anthrax drugs on animals, had released the toxin to test the treatment on humans.

The officials all discussed the continuing investigation on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The Justice Department is expected to decide within days whether to close the "Amerithrax" investigation now that its main target is dead. If the case remains open, that could indicate there still are other suspects.

Ivins' attorney asserted the scientist's innocence and said he had cooperated with investigators for more than a year.

"We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law," said Paul F. Kemp.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. Relatives told The Associated Press that he killed himself. Kemp said his client's death was the result of the government's "relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."

For more than a decade, Ivins had worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed — a situation that made vaccines ineffective — according to federal documents reviewed by the AP. In 2003, he shared the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service for his work on the anthrax vaccine. The award is the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees.

Ivins conducted numerous anthrax studies, including one that complained about the limited supply of monkeys available for testing. The study also said animal testing couldn't accurately show how humans would respond to anthrax treatment.

The Fort Detrick laboratory and its specialized scientists for years have been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings. In late June, the government exonerated Hatfill, whose name has for years had been associated with the attacks. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called him a "person of interest" in 2002.

Investigators also had noticed Ivins' unusual behavior at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings. He conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus stayed on Hatfill.

Ivins' friends, colleagues and court documents paint a picture of a flourishing scientist with an emotionally unstable side. Maryland court documents show he recently received psychiatric treatment and was ordered to stay away from a woman he was accused of stalking and threatening to kill.

Social worker Jean C. Duley filed handwritten court documents last week saying she was preparing to testify before a grand jury. She said Ivins would be charged with five capital murders.

"Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapist," Duley said, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic.

Authorities have been watching Ivins for some time. His brother, Tom Ivins, said federal agents questioned the scientist about a year and a half ago. Neighbors said FBI agents in cars with tinted windows conducted surveillance on his home. A colleague, Henry S. Heine, said that over the past year, he and others on their team had testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings.

On July 10, police responded to Fort Detrick to speak with Ivins. He was ultimately removed from his job and taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation because of concern he had become a danger to himself or others.

The victims of the attacks had little in common.

Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid published in Boca Raton, Fla., was the first to die.

Thomas Morris Jr. 55, and Joseph Curseen, 47, worked at a Washington-area postal facility that was a hub for sorting the capital's mail.

Kathy Nguyen, 61, who had emigrated from Vietnam and lived in the Bronx, worked in a stock room at Manhattan Eye Ear & Throat Hospital, a Children's Hearing Institute. Ottilie Lundgren, 94, who lived in Oxford, Conn.

Aggie Hoopsfan

08-01-2008, 09:23 PM

It was probably all ordered by the same cigarette smoking man that laid out the plan for 9/11.

Nbadan

08-05-2008, 12:11 AM

The way it's looking right now...I wouldn't be surprised to see this blow up on the FEDS face just like the FDSL fiasco blew up in the Texas CPS face...

After four years of painstaking scientific research, the F.B.I. by 2005 had traced the anthrax in the poisoned letters of 2001 to a single flask of the bacteria at the Army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., according to government scientists and bureau officials.

But at least 10 scientists had regular access to the laboratory and its anthrax stock — and possibly quite a few more, counting visitors from other institutions, and workers at laboratories in Ohio and New Mexico that had received anthrax samples from the flask at the Army laboratory.

(snip)
As the investigation wore on, some colleagues thought the F.B.I.’s methods were increasingly coercive, as the agency tried to turn Army scientists against one another and reinterviewed family members.

One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Dr. Ivins’s daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks.

(snip)
Dr. Byrne said he believed Dr. Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. “They figured he was the weakest link,” Dr. Byrne said. “If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?”

NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/washington/05anthrax.html?hp)

Nbadan

08-05-2008, 12:19 AM

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick's Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects.

Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers, according to one of Ivins's former supervisors. In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were searched, and their computers and equipment carted away.

The FBI eventually focused on Ivins, whom federal prosecutors were planning to indict when he committed suicide last week. In interviews yesterday, knowledgeable officials asserted that Ivins had the skills and access to equipment needed to turn anthrax bacteria into an ultra-fine powder that could be used as a lethal weapon. Court documents and tapes also reveal a therapist's deep concern that Ivins, 62, was homicidal and obsessed with the notion of revenge.

(snip)
"I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, 'Show me your evidence,' " said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. "A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons."

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201632.html?hpid=topnews)

If Bruce Ivins was the main suspect, why hadn’t we heard anything about the Anthrax case in nearly seven years?
Why was Steven Hatfield able to successfully sue the US Government for harassment and violation of his civil liberties just a couple of months ago? Did the government lean on Ivins just as they leaned on Hatfield, but Hatfield was able to get out from under the pressure by putting the pressure back on the government?

Nbadan

08-05-2008, 12:24 AM

If we had a real investigative M$M they would be researching this angle instead of publishing govt. propaganda...

Giuliani Co. Cleaning Up Anthrax
Decontaminating Former Headquarters Of National Enquirer

(AP) Workers began pumping a potent chemical into the former headquarters of a supermarket tabloid Sunday to clean up the first target in a series of deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

The cleanup is being led by BioONE, a company established by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sabre Technical Services, which decontaminated other buildings hit by anthrax attacks.

"It will be a symbol that we can deal with these new risks that we live with in our new world," Giuliani said.

After a call of "Let's go" from Giuliani, workers started the flow of chlorine dioxide, a chemical used to disinfect drinking water, into the American Media Inc. building to kill the spores. A high concentration of the chemical is kept in the sealed building for 12 hours to be effective.

The cleanup is set to last 24 to 36 hours, to be followed by repeated tests to determine the safety of the building before a quarantine is lifted.

BioONE then plans to occupy the space as the headquarters for its new crisis management venture. The company hopes to move in by the end of the year.

The arrival of anthrax in the mail at the building was the first in a series of still-unsolved attacks that killed five people, among them photo editor Bob Stevens of AMI's tabloid the Sun. The attacks emptied Senate offices and a major mail processing center in the Washington area, rattling a nation shaken by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks a month earlier.

AMI, which also publishes The National Enquirer, hurriedly abandoned the three-story office after the anthrax was found.

A real estate investor bought the building for a paltry $40,000 and then made plans to lease it to BioONE. The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, though the decontamination at the larger Brentwood Post Office in Washington cost $130 million.

CBS (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/10/national/main628671.shtml)

No coincidence there!

:rolleyes

Nbadan

08-05-2008, 12:46 AM

Would evidence the FEDS say they had against Ivins have held up in court?

"But at least 10 scientists had regular access to the laboratory and its anthrax stock — and possibly quite a few more, counting visitors from other institutions, and workers at laboratories in Ohio and New Mexico that had received anthrax samples from the flask at the Army laboratory."

Ny Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/washington/05anthrax.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)

Nbadan

08-05-2008, 01:00 AM

Even the Rupert Murdoch WSJ has a clue....

Bruce Ivins Wasn't the Anthrax Culprit
By RICHARD SPERTZEL
August 5, 2008; Page A17

Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in September/October 2001.

But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone.

I believe this is another mistake in the investigation.

Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.

Information released by the FBI over the past seven years indicates a product of exceptional quality. The product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter. There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled.

What's more, they were also tailored to make them potentially more dangerous. According to a FBI news release from November 2001, the particles were coated by a "product not seen previously to be used in this fashion before." Apparently, the spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. That's what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time.

Another FBI leak indicated that each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs.

In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.

The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.

Furthermore, the anthrax in this case, the "Ames strain," is one of the most common strains in the world. Early in the investigations, the FBI said it was similar to strains found in Haiti and Sri Lanka. The strain at the institute was isolated originally from an animal in west Texas and can be found from Texas to Montana following the old cattle trails. Samples of the strain were also supplied to at least eight laboratories including three foreign laboratories. Four French government laboratories reported on studies with the Ames strain, citing the Pasteur Institute in Paris as the source of the strain they used. Organism DNA is not a very reliable way to make a case against a scientist.

The FBI has not officially released information on why it focused on Ivins, and whether he was about to be charged or arrested. And when the FBI does release this information, we should all remember that the case needs to be firmly based on solid information that would conclusively prove that a lone scientist could make such a sophisticated product.

From what we know so far, Bruce Ivins, although potentially a brilliant scientist, was not that man. The multiple disciplines and technologies required to make the anthrax in this case do not exist at Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Inhalation studies are conducted at the institute, but they are done using liquid preparations, not powdered products.

The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying "to reverse engineer" (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases. So why should federal investigators or the news media or the American public believe that a lone scientist would be able to do so?

Mr. Spertzel, head of the biological-weapons section of Unscom from 1994-99, was a member of the Iraq Survey Group.

Get a Clue! (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121789293570011775.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

........the rats are jumping ship...

ChumpDumper

08-05-2008, 04:39 AM

So Dan went from saying he was assassinated to just being the wrong guy?

Or both?

What purpose does any of this serve?

Are you calling Spertzel a rat?

MannyIsGod

08-05-2008, 06:27 AM

The one thing I really don't get is if they have such damning evidence why was this guy free? That just doesn't make sense. Even if you're gun shy because of your stupid false allegations before, you don't fuck around and let a man you think is guilty wander free.

I don't know, but shit doesn't completely add up at all.

Nbadan

08-06-2008, 12:46 AM

I don't know, but shit doesn't completely add up at all.

An (likely) innocent man is dead....that adds up in conservative world....just ask 1 million Iraqis..

Nbadan

08-06-2008, 02:12 AM

The foreign media is calling out ABC News....where is the American corporate media?

Was the US public misled about the anthrax attacks?

Was the US public misled about the anthrax attacks? ABC News should reveal the sources of its false report that the anthrax attacks after 9/11 were tied to Saddam Hussein
Dan Gillmor

...

The network's hyperventilating broadcasts of leaked, false allegations purportedly tying the anthrax to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime (see Glenn Greenwald's meticulous examination of the coverage) was bad enough. What the organisation is doing now is journalistically unforgivable.

Pressthink's Jay Rosen and I, among many others who care about the journalism craft, believe ABC has some big, vital questions to answer. Here are three:

1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?

2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within US government facilities. This leads us to ask you: Who were the "four well-placed and separate sources" who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick had found the presence of bentonite in the anthrax sent to senator Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five-day period in October, 2001?

3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the US is released into public debate because of faulty reporting done by ABC News. How that happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled?

Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/terrorism.usa)

Not that I am going to hold my breath for anything substantial out of ABC on how they either willingly and despicably lied, shilled and propagandized for the Neocon's favorite war du jour or, at best, were duped into broadcasting patently false information, with the the intention of their unreliable sources being that it would stir up war fever in the mass population.

ChumpDumper

08-06-2008, 04:27 AM

So are you saying that Ivins was innocent and the anthrax was of domestic origin?

Aggie Hoopsfan

08-06-2008, 12:33 PM