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Anthrax Security Concerns Raised

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By NELSON HERNANDEZ and PHILIP RUCKER

The Washington Post

Published: August 8, 2008

WASHINGTON - Revelations about anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins' mental instability have exposed what congressional leaders and security experts call startling gaps in how the federal government safeguards its most dangerous biological materials, even as the number of bioscience laboratories has grown rapidly since the 2001 terror attacks.

An estimated 14,000 scientists and technicians at about 400 institutions have clearances to access viruses and bacteria such as the Bacillus anthracis used in the anthrax attacks, but security procedures vary by facility, and oversight of the labs is spread across multiple government agencies.

And screening for the researchers handling some of the world's most deadly germs is not as strict as that for national security jobs in the FBI and CIA, federal officials said.

In Ivins' case, the microbiologist expressed homicidal thoughts to a therapist eight years ago and grappled with mental health problems long before he emerged as the FBI's lead suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

More than a year before the attacks, the scientist admitted to himself that he was losing his grasp on reality.

"Paranoid man works with deadly anthrax!!!" he wrote in one e-mail in July 2000, predicting what a National Enquirer headline might read if he agreed to participate in a study on his work.

"I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind," he added a month later in another message to a colleague.

"It's hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I am being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don't spread the pestilence."

He continued, "I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away."

These e-mail messages and dozens of others are part of the FBI case laid out Wednesday against the man they say is responsible for the anthrax attacks that killed five people and panicked the country.

They provide glimpses into the personality of a man obsessed with a sorority that he first encountered while an undergraduate, asserting in an e-mail that the women's group was waging a "fatwa" against him.

But his comments never came up in security and medical screenings at the Army lab where he worked.

"The system is supposed to catch and report that sort of information," said Jeffrey Adamovicz, who supervised Ivins at the Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md.

"I had never heard of any of this before. His previous supervisor had never heard of any of this before. His current supervisor had never heard of any of this before."

Security Procedures Questioned

The case sparked calls in Congress for investigations into whether the labs are physically secure and whether too many scientists have been granted clearances to handle deadly biological agents.

"I think we need to tighten up the procedures," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., chairman of a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

"It surely seems as though Ivins was a troubled man and something should have picked this up earlier. He should have been rescreened and re-evaluated in terms of his ability to have the access that he had."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the ranking Republican on the Senate's Homeland Security committee, said the case "raises serious questions about the effectiveness" of lab security.

More than a year before the anthrax attacks, Ivins told a counselor that he was interested in a young woman who lived out of town and that he had "mixed poison" that he took with him when he went to watch her play in a soccer match, the counselor said.

Even though the therapist told police and Ivins' one-time psychiatrist, Ivins continued to have unfettered lab access at Fort Detrick, where he worked for more than 28 years before committing suicide last week.

His bosses were apparently unaware of his e-mail and online postings fixating on the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, complaints of mental disturbances, unusual poems hinting at a double life, and suggestions of substance abuse.

Lab Access Revoked In November

Before the attacks, Ivins and his colleagues at the Army lab received regular background and medical checks, said Caree Vander Linden, the institute's spokeswoman.

She did not know how often these checks occurred, though security risk assessments are now valid for five years.

Medical screenings were done every year by base doctors, she said, but she did not know whether they included psychological evaluations or drug tests, both of which have been added after the attacks.

After 2001, labs at Fort Detrick were subject to random inspections by an "elite roving observer force," then constant video surveillance.
Ivins and others were required to enroll in a "personnel reliability program," which relies on scientists and technicians to self-report anything unusual, even something as minor as taking cold medicine. Co-workers are required to report abnormal behavior or risk losing security clearances.

None of these measures stopped Ivins from working in his lab until November, when his access was revoked, Vander Linden said.

Medical privacy laws forbade her from discussing what ended his access, she said, though former colleagues have said they believe he was banned from the lab in connection with the FBI investigation.

Neither Vander Linden nor Ivins' colleagues could explain how the mental troubles outlined in FBI documents went unnoticed for so long.

"It's just incongruous with the individual that I knew," said Kathleen Carr, a former Army lab scientist who worked with Ivins and helped develop the institute's new security measures.

Information from The New York Times was used in this report.

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