ANTHRAX SCIENTIST a SUICIDE! FBI Was Moving On Fort Detrick, Md., Researcher ...
MRbluster
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and DAVID DISHNEAU
The Associated Press
Friday, August 1, 2008; 3:57 AM
WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed
suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal
charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the
nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
according to a published report.
The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at
the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told
about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for
Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's
investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The
Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken
a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.
Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that
another of his brothers, Charles, told him Bruce had committed
suicide.
A woman who answered the phone at Charles Ivins' home in Etowah, N.C.,
refused to wake him and declined to comment on his death. "This is a
grieving time," she said.
A woman who answered the phone at Bruce Ivins' home in Frederick
declined to comment.
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr and FBI Assistant Director
John Miller declined to comment on the report.
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.
Just last month, the government exonerated another scientist at the
Fort Detrick lab, Steven Hatfill, who had been identified by the FBI
as a "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks. The government paid
Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit he filed against the Justice
Department in which he claimed the department violated his privacy
rights by speaking with reporters about the case.
The 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.
Besides the five deaths, 17 people were sickened by anthrax that was
mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in
New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The victims included postal workers and others who came into contact
with the anthrax.
In the six months following the anthrax mailings, Ivins conducted
unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at
USAMRIID _ the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases at Fort Detrick _ and found some, according to an internal
report by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, which
oversees the lab.
In December 2001, after conducting tests triggered by a technician's
fears that she had been exposed, Ivins found evidence of anthrax and
decontaminated the woman's desk, computer, keypad and monitor, but
didn't notify his superiors, according to the report.
The report says Ivins performed more unauthorized sampling on April
15, 2002, and found anthrax spores in his office, in a passbox used
for moving materials in and out of labs, and in a room where male
workers changed from civilian clothing into laboratory garb.
Ivins told Army investigators he conducted unauthorized tests because
he was worried that the powdered anthrax in letters that had been sent
to USAMRIID for analysis might not have been adequately contained.
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.
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.
The colleague declined to be identified out of concern that he would
be harassed by the FBI, the report said.
Ivins was one of the nation's leading biodefense researchers.
In 2003, Ivins and two of his colleagues at the USAMRIID 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.
He and his wife, Diane, owned a home just outside the main gate to
Fort Detrick.
___
[Dishneau reported from Hagerstown, Md.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080100404.html?hpid=topnews
Dr. Cavortian
killed Ivins!
kiloVolts
>
> By LARA JAKES JORDAN and DAVID DISHNEAU
> The Associated Press
> Friday, August 1, 2008; 3:57 AM
>
>
>
> WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed
> suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal
> charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the
> nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
> according to a published report.
>
> The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at
> the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told
> about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for
> Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's
> investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.
[snip]
How convenient. Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald and closed the door
on the JFK assassination. How convenient. Trust your government - NOT.
"An Inconvenient Truth" - how convenient. Trust Al Gore, former VP, former
president elect and former Peace Prize winner - NOT.
snakehawk
> > "Anthrax scientist commits suicide as FBI closes in"
>
> > By LARA JAKES JORDAN and DAVID DISHNEAU
> > The Associated Press
> > Friday, August 1, 2008; 3:57 AM
>
> > WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed
> > suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal
> > charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the
> > nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
> > according to a published report.
>
> > the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told
> > about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for
> > Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's
> > investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.
>
> [snip]
>
> How convenient. Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald and closed the door
> on the JFK assassination. How convenient. Trust your government - NOT.
>
> "An Inconvenient Truth" - how convenient. Trust Al Gore, former VP, former
>
> - Show quoted text -
It seems odd that Ivins would go through the trouble of scribbling on
the envelopes in such a way as to blame Arabs went he allegedly sent
those letters to well known people. No report has come out yet
indicating that Ivins held any special animosity toward Arabs. The
reports suggest that Ivins was an oddball, but nothing to indicate why
he would attempt to implicate Arabs.
But if the FBI was planning to indict Ivins they must have evidence
connecting him to the letters. That he was connected with anthrax is
a given. But what connected Ivins to the letters? And were the
mailings during the 9-11 panic just a coincidence?
The FBI was spectacularly wrong about Hatfill. What did they have on
Ivins that made them so sure he was guilty? And did they have that
information on Ivins while they were hounding Hatfill? Let's hope
it's not all classified like so much of the information surrounding
9-11.