The investigation into the anthrax attacks that started in 2001 and mystified the nation ended in June for the FBI, when its prime suspect committed suicide. For others, the case leaves many questions unanswered.
“I tend to be very skeptical about it,” Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland School of Law, said of the FBI’s case against the late Bruce Ivins.
The university held a forum Wednesday in Baltimore scrutinize the FBI’s case, with Claire Fraser-Liggett, a DNA researcher who led efforts to trace the origin of the anthrax used in the mailings, and Scott Shane, a New York Times reporter who has extensively followed the story.
“There’s many different examples of the FBI barking down the wrong tree,” Greenberger said.
In the anthrax case, federal investigators had pinned the mailings of deadly anthrax powder to several members of U.S. Congress and New York media on Ivins, a scientist at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick.
Ivins was mentally ill, had access to the strain of anthrax used in the attacks and could not provide a legitimate excuse for working late on nights at the time attacks took place, the FBI said.
But as investigators prepared to charge Ivins, he committed suicide.
The FBI said he was the only person responsible for the attacks, but doubts have persisted with experts such as Greenberger saying the evidence is circumstantial and would not hold up in court.
Fraser-Liggett did not divulge her opinions on the case because, she said, “the investigation is by no means closed.”
Meanwhile, Shane said some media helped fuel the early focus on Steven Hatfill, a Fort Detrick researcher whom the FBI wrongly considered its top suspect before shifting to Ivins.
“I do think that in some cases, the media went overboard,” said Shane, who worked at the Baltimore Sun before joining the Times.
“We went for some of the stuff that we shouldn’t have gone for, but it was under pressure.”
He pointed to one case in which other media reported on an FBI leak that said investigators linked the anthrax attacks to Hatfill by using bloodhounds that recognized his scent from the mailings.
Shane reported soon after that the FBI agent who selected the dogs and their handlers was an explosives expert who had no experience with bloodhounds.
The U.S. Department of Justice settled a lawsuit with Hatfill in June for nearly $6 million.
“After the Hatfill case,” Shane said, “I think it behooves everybody, especially now that Ivins is dead, to be skeptical.”
