One of the targets of the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 still doubts the FBI’s conclusion that Bruce E. Ivins, who worked at a Maryland Army laboratory and committed suicide in 2008 as he was about to be indicted, was the sole culprit.
“I still wonder who sent it and why they sent it,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, remarked last month at the Newseum Washington, D.C., according to an account in the Washington Post.
Leahy’s skepticism may have been reinforced last week, when a panel of scientists questioned the efficacy of the genetic testing used by the FBI to allege that a Ivins acted alone in mailing the deadly letters to Capitol Hill and media outlets. Despite the scientists’ findings, the FBI said it had no reason, given all the evidence, to alter its conclusion that Ivins was guilty in the crime that killed five people and sickened 17 others.
But in an interview with the Post last week, Leahy said he still has “extreme doubts” about the case. “I’ve expressed those concerns to the FBI, and this report adds to those concerns,” Leahy said. Other Capitol Hill critics of the anthrax investigation include Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the judiciary panel, and Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), from whose district the letters were sent.
Those who doubt the FBI’s investigation can point out that the government had to pay several million dollars to settle a suit brought by Steven J. Hatfill, another scientist who was long a focus of the investigation but was ultimately cleared.
Then, too, some things about the mailings have never been explained, among them why Leahy and Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, then the Democratic majority leader, were targets of anthrax-contaminated letters. It is doubtful that, outside of political Washington, either senator’s name was instantly recognizable.
Leahy’s doubts about the anthrax investigation may carry extra weight, given that he was a prosecutor in Vermont and he is hardly a flamboyant publicity-seeker. “Were there people who at the very least were accessories after the fact?” Leahy asked. “I think there were.”
“Call it an old prosecutor’s instinct,” he added.
