A scientist the FBI says was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks believed he was “being eaten alive inside” by a second personality, court documents unsealed Wednesday show.
Bruce Ivins, who spent much of his adult life working in a top-secret military laboratory, told friends in the months before the attacks that he couldn’t “control the thoughts in his mind,” which he described as a “pestilence” — “incredible, paranoid, delusional thoughts.”
“The woman I saw before I went into group [therapy] wanted to get me put in jail,” Ivins wrote in a March 4, 2001, e-mail. “I’m down to a point where there are some things that are eating away that I feel I can’t tell ANYONE…”
Ivins’ e-mails and private messages were among hundreds of pages released to the public by a federal judge Wednesday, nearly a week after the 62-year-old, facing indictment in the attacks, swallowed handfuls of pills and ended his life.
Justice Department officials said in a news briefing Wednesday that a “possible motive” for the deadly anthrax attacks was Ivins’ outrage that the federal government had cut his anthrax vaccine program.
Whatever Ivins’ motivation, Wednesday’s documents portrayed a deeply troubled man consumed by perverse grudges and obsessions.
Officials said Wednesday that they did not have the science to prove their case until at least 2005, when a new genetic test helped officials identify a military flask in which the deadly spores were bred.
“We had the murder weapon, essentially,” U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said. “We stand here today, firmly convinced that we have the person responsible for those attacks.”
From there, it took investigators months to determine the “universe” around the flask, which eventually led them to Ivins’ door.
In the days before the papers were released Wednesday, the public learned more about the reclusive scientist, including his private obsessions, such as a one-man war on a college sorority. Wednesday’s documents shed more light on the workings of Ivins’ mind.
According to Wednesday’s documents, Ivins mailed envelopes containing the deadly bacteria to NBC because he was outraged that a network reporter had made an open-records request for his laboratory notes.
Investigators believe that Ivins sent a poison letter to then-Sen. Tom Daschle because the South Dakota lawmaker was a Catholic who supported abortion rights.
Ivins showed borderline personality for years before the deadly mailings. But the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks apparently gave him the boost he needed, and the menacing shapes of his fever became precise and alive.
A few weeks after the terrorist attacks, Ivins reported on feelings in his group therapy sessions.
“Everyone but me is in the depression/sadness/flight mode for stress,” he wrote. “I’m really the only scary one in the group.”
Authorities allege that Ivins borrowed Osama bin Laden’s motto — “death to all Jews and all Americans” in his anthrax letters. The letters containing the deadly spores would kill five people and sicken 17 others — most of them postal workers or mail room employees, collateral damage in Ivins’ war with his own demons.
But Ivins didn’t suffer in silence. On Oct. 16, 2001, around the time of the attacks, a co-worker of Ivins’ wrote to a former colleague. “Bruce has been an absolute manic basket case the last few days,” the co-worker wrote.
David R. Hose Sr., a State Department mail room employee who nearly died from exposure to anthrax, told the New York Times that the FBI was using Ivins as a scapegoat.
“I don’t believe a thing they are giving out,” Hose said.
– Scott McCabe contributed to this report.
