By Allan Lengel
For AOL News
WASHINGTON — Steven J. Hatfill, the scientist wrongfully accused of being the anthrax killer, has broken his silence in interviews with NBC’s “Today” show and The Atlantic magazine.

“I learned a couple things,” Hatfill told “Today” host Matt Lauer this morning. “The government can do to you whatever they want. They can break the laws, federal laws, as they see fit. … You can’t turn laws on and off as you deem fit.

“I used to be somebody that trusted the government. Now I really don’t trust anything,” said Hatfill, who had worked at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md.
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Bruce Ivins

Not everyone is buying into the FBI’s findings that scientist Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer — including his supervisor.

The Frederick News Post  in Frederick, Md., where Ivins worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, reports that Ivins’ supervisor Jeffrey Adamovicz wasn’t impressed with the FBI findings released last week which pointed the finger at Ivins, who committed suicide before authorities could charge him. The FBI also announced the official closing of the case.

“The evidence is still very circumstantial and unconvincing as a whole,” Adamovicz, the former chief of bacteriology, wrote in an e-mail to the paper. “I’m curious as to why they closed the case while the (National Academy of Science) review is still ongoing. Is it because the review is going unfavorable for the FBI?”

“There is an assumption by the FBI that the spores could have only been prepared in the week before each mailing. This is a fatal error in logic,” Adamovicz wrote, according to the paper. “The only reason that I can derive why the FBI has proposed this is that it is the only period that helps provide circumstantial evidence against Bruce.”

To read more click here

Suspect Bruce Ivins

WASHINGTON – The FBI has fired off a letter to the Wall Street Journal disputing a guest column which questioned the FBI’s conclusion that scientist Bruce Ivins was responsible for the deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

The column concluded that  Ivins was in all likelihood not the real culprit.

“Monday’s opinion piece, “The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved,” was filled with inaccuracies and omitted several relevant facts that are necessary for a balanced discussion of the science applied in the anthrax investigation,” said the FBI letter signed by D. Christian Hassell, Ph.D, Director of the FBI Laboratory.

It went on to say the FBI was confident with its findings.

Author of the controversial column, Edward Jay Epstein, who is working on a book on the 9/11 Commission, wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal that “silicon”, an element in the deadly anthrax, which is used to weaponize the material,  was not available to Ivins, a scientist at the the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md.

Therefore, it wasn’t likely that he was the guy.

Ivins killed himself in the summer of 2008  shortly before the FBI said it was about to be charge him in the case.  The FBI concluded that Ivins was the guy and case essentially closed.

“If Ivins had neither the equipment or skills to weaponize anthrax with silicon, then some other party with access to the anthrax must have done it. Even before these startling results, Sen. Leahy had told Director Mueller, ‘I do not believe in any way, shape, or manner that [Ivins] is the only person involved in this attack on Congress,’” Epstein wrote in his column.

The FBI letter,  which was  circulated by the agency on Wednesday, stated:

“From the outset, the FBI’s scientific work in the anthrax case has had a foundation in validation and verification of its approach and conclusions. This process began within weeks of the initial events of 2001 and has included:

Read more »

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
You can accuse John Philip Barker of a crime, but don’t ever accuse him of being overly smart.

Barker, 47, has been charged with mailing a white powder letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney David Smith of Kansas City, Ks., who had just prosecuted him for mailing an anthrax threat to the IRS, authorities said.

Interestingly, a criminal complaint says that Barker spelled anthrax wrong — he spelled it “antrax” — in the first letter to the IRS and the second one to the prosecutor.

The letter to the prosecutor read:

An FBI affidavit said the letter Barker sent to the prosecutor also contained his name and address of his prison on the return address. The powder was harmless.

Barker was sentenced on Aug. 10 in the IRS mailing to one year and a day in federal prison.

Read Criminal Complaint and FBI Affidavit

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Suspect Bruce Ivins

Bruce Ivins was named the sole suspect, but not everyone is convinced of that. The question is will the review of the science in the case shed some light on Ivins? It would be nice if it did.

By Dan Vergano
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – A year and a day after the death of anthrax mailing suspect Bruce Ivins, a panel met here at the National Academy of Sciences to dissect the investigative science behind the FBI case against him.

“The committee will only review and assess the scientific information,” said Alice Gast of Lehigh University, head of the review panel. “We will offer no view on the guilt or innocence of any person or persons.”

Just such questions, however, surround the still-open case, said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who spoke before the panel, which met Thursday and Friday.

“This was the only documented bioterror attack on the U.S.,” Holt said. “Simply stated, the government suffers from a credibility gap that raises questions about the guilt of Dr. Ivins.”

An anthrax vaccine researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., Ivins died of a drug overdose July 29, 2008.

For Full Story

One year after scientist Bruce Ivins killed himself, the department is trying to close up the case. But there are still some folks who believe that Ivins was not the culprit. Is this one of those cases that will continue to produce conspiracy theories that go far beyond this one scientist?

Suspect Bruce Ivins

By Devlin Barrett
The ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON – A year after government scientist Bruce Ivins killed himself while under investigation for the lethal anthrax letters of 2001, the Justice Department is on the verge of closing the long, costly and vexing case.

Several law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that the department tentatively planned last week to close the case but backed away from that decision after government attorneys said they needed more time to review the evidence and determine what further information can be made public without compromising grand jury secrecy or privacy laws.

For Full Story

Suspect Bruce Ivins

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
WASHINGTON — Nine months after the real suspect in the anthrax killings committed suicide, there are still plenty unanswered questions as to why the FBI let its top investigator on the case focus for so long on the wrong guy, Steven Hatfill, even after some investigators and prosecutors expressed serious skepticism internally.

Now the FBI has agreed to pay the National Academy of Sciences $879,550 to review the case. Unfortunately,  some of the perplexing questions  about the investigation won’t be answered in this 15-month review, according to the New York Time’s Scott Shane.

The review, Shane writes “won’t assess the bureau’s detective work or its conclusion that an Army microbiologist, Bruce E. Ivins, sent the deadly letters in 2001.” Ivins committed suicide last summer before authorities could file charges in the case.

Instead, Shane writes: “The academy panel will review genetic fingerprinting that led agents to Dr. Ivins’s Maryland laboratory, as well as clues to how and where the anthrax was grown and dried.”

The money for the research on the case is far short of the $5.82 million the government agreed to pay scientist Steven Hatfill last June to settle his lawsuit, which alleged that the FBI and Justice Department ruined his reputation and career after publicly naming him a “person of interest”.

Some remain skeptical that Ivins sent the letters.

Rep. Rush Holt

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
WASHINGTON – The anthrax caper just won’t go away.
Rep Rush Holt (D-N.J.) on Tuesday introduced legislation to create a Congressional commission to investigate the government’s response to the 2001 anthrax attacks that left five dead and sickened 17.

The legislation, the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act of 2009, would set up a bipartisan commission that would make recommendations to the President and Congress on “how the country can best prevent and respond to any future bio-terrorism attacks”, according to Holt’s office.

“All of us – but especially the families of the victims of the anthrax attacks – deserve credible answers about how the attacks happened and whether the case really is closed,” Holt said in a prepared statement.

“The Commission, like the 9/11 Commission, would do that, and it would help American families know that the government is better prepared to protect them and their children from future bio-terrorism attacks.”

“Myriad questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government’s bungled response to the attacks,” Holt said.

Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office, declined to comment on Wednesday on the bill.

The FBI spent years and millions of dollars following countless leads around the world centering on what turned out to be the wrong suspect- scientist Steven Hatfill. Internally, many in law enforcement circles privately blamed the lead FBI investigator for fixating on Hatfill and not looking beyond him.

That FBI investigator was eventually replaced and last summer FBI and Postal Inspectors began closing in on someone they believed was the real culprit — scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins. Ivins committed suicide before any charges were filed.

The deadly laced anthrax letters were apparently sent from a postal box in Rep. Holt’s district in Central New Jersey.