Rocking The Boat

Almost a decade after Bruce Ivins supposedly sent deadly anthrax spores through the mail and killed five, the Justice Department is now openly questioning the FBI's conclusions in the case that drove Ivins to commit suicide.

Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they'd identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the news media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.

Now, however, Justice Department lawyers have acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab — the so-called hot suite — didn't contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

The government said it continued to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court didn't explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that his secure lab "did not have the specialized equipment . . . that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters."

The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never provided direct evidence that he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder.

A number of disturbing questions remain in the Bruce Ivins case. Only circumstatial evidence was ever brought against him, and now, finally, the DoJ is looking into the issue.  If Ivins wasn't the real culprit, then who was?  The FBI is satisfied that Ivins was the mastermind, but the Justice Department now isn't sure.

We'll see where this goes.