Anthrax Researcher Had History of Crazy

[Kanastrous]

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide this week as prosecutors prepared to seek indictment and the death penalty against him for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, U.S. officials said Friday.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, was a leading military anthrax researcher who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md.

Friends, colleagues and court documents paint a picture of a brilliant scientist with a troubled 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 Duley filed handwritten court documents last week saying she was preparing to testify before a grand jury. She said the FBI was involved and that Ivins would be charged with five capital murders.

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

The government laboratory where Ivins worked has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings.

For more than a decade, Ivins worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed, which made vaccines ineffective, according to federal documents reviewed by the AP.

In his research, he complained of the limited supply of monkeys available for testing and said testing on animals is insufficient to demonstrate how humans would respond to treatment.

Federal officials told NBC News that Ivins was asked to help analyze some of the anthrax material recovered from mailings that killed five people in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He also helped develop the anthrax vaccine widely given to U.S. troops.

A painstaking scientific examination of the anthrax used in the mailings — an analysis that took years — showed that it came from anthrax strains held at Ivins' lab, U.S. officials told NBC News on condition of anonymity.

Other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing grand jury investigation, said prosecutors were closing in on Ivins, who was 62. They were planning an indictment that would have sought the death penalty for the attacks, which killed five people, crippled the postal system and traumatized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Authorities were investigating whether Ivins released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine, officials said. The Justice Department has not yet decided whether to close the investigation, officials said, meaning it's still not certain whether Ivins acted alone or had help. One official close to the case said that decision was expected within days.

If the case is closed soon, one official said, that will indicate that Ivins was the lone suspect.

White House press secretary Dana Perino declined to comment on the case, except to say that President Bush has maintained an interest in it over the years and was aware there were "about to be developments." She would not say how much he knew about the Ivins case.

Ivins' attorney said the scientist 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," attorney Paul F. Kemp said. "We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial."

Kemp said that Ivins' death was the result of the government's "relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."

The biodefense institute issued a statement saying its " family mourns the loss of Dr. Bruce Ivins, who served the institute for more than 35 years as a civilian microbiologist. In addition to his long and faithful government service, Bruce contributed to our community as a Red Cross volunteer with the Frederick County chapter. We will miss him very much."

Ivins was "hounded" by aggressive FBI agents who raided his home twice, said Dr. W. Russell Byrne, a colleague who worked in the bacteriology division of the Fort Detrick research facility for 15 years. Byrne said Ivins was forcefully removed from his job by local police recently because of fears that he had become a danger to himself or others. The investigation led to Ivins being hospitalized for depression earlier this month, Byrne said.

He said he does not believe Ivins was behind the anthrax attacks.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the investigation, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine. A woman who answered the phone at Bruce Ivins' home in Frederick declined to comment.

Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that his other brother, Charles, had told him that Bruce committed suicide and Tylenol might have been involved.

Tom Ivins said Friday that federal officials working on the anthrax case questioned him about his brother a year and a half ago. "They said they were investigating him," he said from Ohio, where he lives, in a CNN interview.

FBI vehicles with tinted windows had watched Ivins' home for a year, neighbor Natalie Duggan, 16, said.

"They said, 'We're on official business,' " she said.

Five people died and 17 were sickened by anthrax powder in letters that were mailed to lawmakers' Capitol Hill offices, TV networks in New York, and tabloid newspaper offices in Florida. Two postal workers in a Washington mail facility, a New York hospital worker, a Florida photo editor and an elderly Connecticut woman were killed.

In late June, the government exonerated a colleague of Ivins, Steven Hatfill. Hatfill's name has for years had been associated with the attacks after investigators named him a "person of interest" in 2002.

The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit contending he was falsely accused and had been made a scapegoat for the crimes.

Due to the privacy lawsuit with Hatfill, the Justice Department and the FBI are being cautious about how much information they reveal about the investigation into Ivins, federal lawyers told NBC News' Pete Williams.

The Justice Department released a brief statement Friday afternoon saying, “substantial progress has been made in the investigation by bringing to bear new and sophisticated scientific tools.” The statement did not identify Ivins. It said investigative documents remain sealed but the department expects to release more information soon.

Despite his death, Ivins and his estate, which is now controlled by his family, still retain privacy rights, the lawyers said. However, the officials said they are well aware that at some point they will need to make a full accounting.

Unusual behavior by Ivins was noted at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings, when 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 long stayed on Hatfill.

After the government's settlement with Hatfill was announced in late June, Ivins started showing signs of strain, the Times said. It quoted a longtime colleague as saying Ivins was being treated for depression and indicated to a therapist that he was considering suicide.

Family members and local police escorted Ivins away from the Army lab, and his access to sensitive areas was curtailed, the colleague told the newspaper. He said Ivins was facing a forced retirement in September.

Ivins played keyboard and helped clean up after masses at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick, where a dozen parishioners gathered after morning Mass to pray for him Friday.

The Rev. Richard Murphy called Ivins “a quiet man. He was always very helpful and pleasant.”

Henry S. Heine, a scientist who had worked with Ivins on inhalation anthrax research at Fort Detrick, said he and others on their team have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings for more than a year.

Heine declined to comment on Ivins' death.

Norman Covert, a retired Fort Detrick spokesman who served with Ivins on an animal-care and protocol committee, said Ivins was "a very intent guy" at their meetings.

Ivins was the co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

The Los Angeles Times said federal investigators moved away from Hatfill and concluded Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the investigation in 2006. The new investigators instructed agents to re-examine leads and reconsider potential suspects. In the meantime, investigators made progress in analyzing anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two U.S. senators, according to the report.

In January 2002, the FBI doubled the reward for helping solve the case to $2.5 million, and by June officials said the agency was scrutinizing 20 to 30 scientists who might have had the knowledge and opportunity to send the anthrax letters.

In 2003, Ivins and two of his colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.

In 1997, U.S. military personnel began receiving the vaccine to protect against a possible biological attack. Within months, a number of vaccine lots failed a potency test required by federal regulators, causing a shortage of vaccine and eventually halting the immunization program. The USAMRIID team's work led to the reapproval of the vaccine for human use.

The Times said Ivins was the son of a Princeton-educated pharmacist who was born and raised in Lebanon, Ohio. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in microbiology, from the University of Cincinnati.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25961053/

***

To me, the real question is, why would someone with a known history of mental and emotional problems, be put in a position to handle lethal biowarfare materials?

[Sea Skimmer]

I’ve been reading up what’s on the web about this guy, and apparently not long after the anthrax attacks he discovered flaws in the containment systems at Fort Detrick on his own initiative, which had allowed a fair portion of one building to be contaminated with anthrax leaked out of its own supposedly germ proof labs! He also repeatedly questioned the safety of the facility on other matters. It doesn’t really mean anything one way or another on if he was guilty, but clearly he was a valuable asset. Making that anthrax vaccine was none too easy either, we’d been trying to make one since the 1960s at least.

To me, the real question is, why would someone with a known history of mental and emotional problems, be put in a position to handle lethal biowarfare materials?

We brought the whole sadistic mass murdering staff of Unit 731 over to start up our original offensive biowarfare program, so hiring this guy is an improvement! A lot of brilliant people are a bit crazy, sometimes it manifests itself as just being eccentric, other times its more demented. Also I dare say, better he works for us then gets a nice contract to go work for say Sudan in a cave.

Also keep in mind having some germs in a petri dish is not the same as having a weaponized biological warfare agent. Anyone who can convert the former into the latter could also just isolate anthrax from a shovel full of soil (literally all soil has anthrax in it, livestock is routinely infected by it) and proceeded as planned. Now the anthrax in these attacs did come from a government lab, but none the less that was not a requirement for a suitably educated person to make a bioweapon. That’s what makes bioweapons downright scary.

[Sidewinder]

In late June, the government exonerated a colleague of Ivins, Steven Hatfill. Hatfill's name has for years had been associated with the attacks after investigators named him a "person of interest" in 2002.

The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit contending he was falsely accused and had been made a scapegoat for the crimes.

Due to the privacy lawsuit with Hatfill, the Justice Department and the FBI are being cautious about how much information they reveal about the investigation into Ivins, federal lawyers told NBC News' Pete Williams.

Shouldn't the Jackass Department have learned to be more cautious after the mess with Richard Jewell? If government agents continue doing Police Chief Wiggums impressions, the producers of 'The Simpsons' should sue for plagiarism.