The FBI botched an analysis of anthrax evidence that linked an Army researcher to the deadly letters that killed five people in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a panel of scientists.
The 190-page report, released Tuesday by the National Research Council, says the anthrax in the mailings can’t be definitively linked to anthrax found in the lab of Bruce Ivins, a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick County. Ivins committed suicide in 2008 as prosecutors were preparing to indict him.
| Timeline |
| Sept. 18, 2001: The first letters are mailed. October and November 2001: Five people die and 17 are sickened from the mailings. |
| Summer 2002: Law enforcement officials call scientist Steven Hatfill a “person of interest.” |
| July 29, 2008: Bruce Ivins commits suicide as prosecutors prepare to indict him. |
| February 2010: The Justice Department concludes its investigation, naming Ivins as the culprit. |
The Justice Department faced skepticism after it closed its investigation last February, concluding that Ivins had mailed the letters. The FBI said the anthrax in the letters was linked to spores in a flask in Ivins’ lab, labeled RMR-1029.
“The scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR-1029 is not as conclusive as stated” by the department, said the report by the NRC, a division of the National Academy of Sciences.
It is “not possible to reach a definitive conclusion” about the origin of the anthrax in the letters “on the basis of the scientific evidence alone,” said Alice Gast, president of Lehigh University and chairwoman of the panel that conducted the review.
Authorities first named another Fort Detrick scientist, Steven Hatfill, a “person of interest” in the case, but he was cleared of wrongdoing and won a defamation suit against the government.
Henry Heine, a former Fort Detrick microbiologist who testified for the panel, said the report “somewhat vindicated” Ivins.
“The science shows that there were certain questions that were not answered,” he said.
The lack of closure bothers Patrick O’Donnell, who contracted anthrax working as a mail sorter in New Jersey.
“They just left it in limbo,” O’Donnell, 45, told The Washington Examiner. “It’s driving me crazy.”
The anthrax attacks killed five people and sickened 17 over a period of weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a statement Tuesday, the FBI and Justice Department did not dispute the report’s findings, but said the forensic analysis wasn’t the only evidence that pointed to Ivins.
“The FBI has long maintained that while science played a significant role, it was the totality of the investigative process that determined the outcome of the anthrax case,” the statement said.
The panel said it made no determination on Ivins’ guilt or innocence. The study said the letter spores were “consistent” with having been derived from Ivins’ flask.
But it noted that RMR-1029 could not have been the immediate source of the anthrax in the letters. The report said “one or more separate growth steps” would have been necessary for the letter spores to have come from that flask.
Erica Redmond contributed to this report.
