The deadly anthrax attacks of the autumn of 2001, which have officially be labeled as “solved” but continue to trouble some people a decade later, are under scrutiny again.
The attacks, which killed five people and caused at least 17 others to become ill from anthrax sent through the mail, frightened a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks. After a long investigation that was marked by serious lapses, the FBI concluded that Bruce E. Ivins, an Army biodefense expert who worked at Fort Detrick, Md., was the culprit.
Ivins was never found guilty in court because he committed suicide in 2008 as investigators were closing in on him. Nevertheless, the authorities laid out what they said was a convincing mass of circumstantial evidence for his guilt.
But now, as The New York Times reports, three scientists are raising questions about the FBI’s conclusions. The scientists’ findings raise the possibility that Ivins did not act alone — and that he might even have been innocent. “The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense,” The Times reports.
The scientists argue that “distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated,” William J. Broad and Scott Shane of The Times report. The newspaper said it had reviewed FBI documents related to the investigation and had interviewed the authors of the forthcoming scientific paper.
Other scientists said the tin could have been a random contaminant, rather than a clue to how the spores were processed, The Times notes. And the newspaper quotes Dean Boyd, a Department of Justice spokesman, as saying: “Speculation regarding certain characteristics of the spores is just that — speculation. We stand by our conclusion.”
Yet some aspects of the anthrax mailings remain baffling a decade later. Why, for instance, were contaminated letters sent to the offices of Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.)? They were familiar figures inside Washington, Daschle as Senate majority leader and Leahy as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but hardly household names. And the five people who died were virtual unknowns, with seemingly nothing in common.
Moreover, the FBI pursued several other suspects, most embarrassingly another former Army scientist, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who was eventually exonerated and received a $4.6 million legal settlement.
The anthrax attacks, as Main Justice has noted in numerous reports, seemed likely to spawn more questions and suspicions, and not just from crackpots and conspiracy buffs. Leahy, a former district attorney, has said he doubts that the full truth has emerged. “Call it an old prosecutor’s instinct,” he said earlier this year.
