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FBI: Suicide May Close Anthrax Case

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The Associated Press

Published: August 3, 2008

WASHINGTON - Answers to one of the nation's highest profile unsolved crimes are in documents that could be released as early as this week - and help explain how the government chased the wrong suspect for years, officials said.

Prosecutors mulled this weekend whether to close the anthrax poisoning investigation, possibly as early as Monday. If so, court documents detailing new evidence that led the government to Bruce E. Ivins may be unsealed.

Five people died - including one in south Florida - and 17 others were sickened when anthrax-laced letters began showing up at congressional offices, newsrooms and post offices soon after Sept. 11, 2001.

After wrongly investigating Army scientist Steven Hatfill, the FBI more than a year ago turned to Ivins, who worked at the same military lab. Ivins, a decorated scientist who was working on an anthrax cure, killed himself Tuesday.

Two U.S. officials said victims and their survivors could be briefed as early as Tuesday on the final piece of the bioterrorism attacks that confounded the government.

The Justice Department attributed the break in the case to new scientific tools that cost the FBI about $10 million. Investigators said the science focused on how the anthrax strains were handled and who had access to it at the time of the mailings.
Ivins was removed from his lab in Maryland by police on July 10 and temporarily hospitalized, according to court records, because it was feared that he was a danger to himself and others. It was unclear whether he was still employed by the lab when he died.

That raises the question of whether Ivins still had his security clearance and, if so, how he kept it, given that his social worker said Ivins had been viewed as homicidal and sociopathic by his psychiatrist.

David R. Franz, a former commander of the Army's lab biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked, said Saturday he thought it was "very important that the FBI present their case against Bruce and not just state that the investigation was over because it was him and he's gone."

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