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2008-08-01 07:23:29
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press Writers1 hour, 47
minutes ago
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.