Who planned and carried out the anthrax attacks? In struggling with this question we should not rush too quickly to the discussion of individuals — Hatfill, Ivins, and the like — persons proposed by the FBI as lone-wolf perpetrators. A more useful approach is to sketch the possibilities in general terms and try to establish the actual historical movement of the investigation among them. Which possibilities were popular at particular moments? What arguments and evidence were offered in favor of them? By what path did the FBI arrive at its current preferred solution? Only when this overview is complete will we be ready to examine the FBI’s ultimate choice of Dr. Bruce Ivins as “the anthrax killer.”
The main perpetrator hypotheses can be arranged in four quadrants.
These four quadrants do not exhaust the possibilities, of course, because it is possible to imagine perpetrators from one quadrant working in association with perpetrators from another. We will return to this possibility at the end of this book.
The foreign individual hypothesis held little interest for anyone and, indeed, cannot explain basic facts about the attacks. There was never a serious attempt to promote it.
The domestic individual perpetrator was recognized as a possibility in the fall of 2001 (mention was made of a possible “domestic madman” along the lines of Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber[1]), but it had few supporters during the most intense phases of the attacks in October of 2001. It came to prominence only at the end of that month.
The main energy of the investigators and commentators was expended on promoting the foreign group hypothesis. Much evidence suggests that this option was meant to carry the day and was central to the original plan. An attack on the U.S. by groups of foreign Muslims using weapons of mass destruction could clearly serve to legitimize internal repression, external aggression, and a host of ancillary transformations. This scenario was established in advance of the anthrax attacks and pushed hard in October of 2001 as citizens got sick and died of anthrax, as the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress and the large scale NSA domestic spying was launched, as the invasion of Afghanistan began, and as preparations were made to invade Iraq.
Only when the sustainability of this preferred option was threatened was there a rapid shift to the domestic individual. This option was, the evidence suggests, chosen as the fallback position when exposure of the perpetrators and their accomplices became a danger. The FBI led the way to the domestic individual hypothesis, persisted with it, and remains committed to it to this day, despite its incompatibility with the evidence.
The hypothesis of the domestic group received minor attention as the attacks began (we can find, for example, occasional references to the possibility that a neo-Nazi group was the perpetrator[2]) but after the FBI made its choice of the lone wolf, the domestic group became the suppressed possibility. Formally, the FBI kept this possibility alive,[3] but the Bureau worked hard to emphasize the search for an individual. One of the aims of the present book is to revitalize this suppressed hypothesis.
Let us now follow the movement between hypotheses in more detail.
Foreign Group
The narrative began in confusion but with two suspected foreign groups dominating media discourse: al- Qaeda and Iraq. As October progressed these two possibilities were increasingly seen as connected. The Double Perpetrator, involving both al-Qaeda and Iraq, although present in subtle form from the outset, entered the scene definitively in the middle of October and soon went from strength to strength.
The al-Qaeda Hypothesis
There were four main reasons the al-Qaeda hypothesis was attractive to many people.
(i) Al-Qaeda had been accused publicly by the President of the United States, and convicted in the media, of having carried out the 9/11 attacks. It seemed natural to many people that the same perpetrator would follow up with a second round of terrorist attacks.
Senator Tom Daschle says in his memoirs: “For weeks following September 11, there was a somewhat fatalistic expectation in the minds of many that we would be attacked again. The only question was where and how.”[4] When he heard of Robert Stevens’ death he thought this might be “round two.”[5] He says that “the first thought most people had was that the letters were somehow connected to the September 11 attacks, that they were the work of a terrorist group such as al-Qaeda.”[6]
As a matter of fact, already by mid-September the fear had been publicly expressed that biological attacks by al-Qaeda were in progress. On September 22 the Washington Post noted:[7]
Soon after last week’s terrorist attacks, federal health authorities told public health agencies to be on the alert for ‘unusual disease patterns associated with today’s events,’ a bureaucratically phrased but nonetheless chilling hint of fear that the nation might be under biological attack.
The author of the article explicitly mentioned anthrax as a disease that could be unleashed on the population and expressed concern that the disease might not be diagnosed since it could “at first be mistaken as an ordinary cold or a flu.” How odd that the anthrax attacks were, indeed, already in progress at this time. People started showing symptoms virtually on the day the article came out—symptoms that were, as the writer of the article had worried, not initially recognized as associated with anthrax.[8] As September wore on, the “anthrax scare” reached impressive proportions— Chapter 6 takes up the topic. All of this prescient commentary on anthrax assumed that the party that had carried out the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden’s group, would be the leading actor in any attack using anthrax.
(ii) United States forces began bombing Afghanistan on October 7. The Bush-Cheney administration claimed that, according to the best intelligence it was receiving, the U.S. population and the legislative branch should expect retaliation by al-Qaeda in a second serious round of terrorist attacks.
On October 5, two days before the bombing of Afghanistan began, “U.S. intelligence officials…told members of Congress there is a high probability that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden will try to launch another major attack on American targets.” An intelligence official claimed “there is a ‘100 percent’ chance of an attack should the United States strike Afghanistan.”[9]
(iii) Osama bin Laden and his group were said to be on record as expressing interest in acquiring biological weapons: these allegations were held to establish intent. Various spokespersons and authorities also said that al-Qaeda would have been able to develop at least a crude form of anthrax to use in an attack, and may have already developed it: these allegations were held to establish capacity. (See, for example, the September 27 Washington Post article, “Al Qaeda May Have Crude Chemical, Germ Capabilities.”[10])
(iv) Circumstantial evidence, ranging from general to specific, strongly suggested a connection between the al-Qaeda operatives who were alleged to have carried out the 9/11 attacks (the Hijackers) and the anthrax attacks. The main types of evidence fall into four categories:
- Locations
The Hijackers had been active both in locations from which anthrax letters were sent and in places where people were exposed to the bacterium (especially in Florida). This was repeatedly noted by the FBI and the media.[11] - Crop-duster planes
The Hijackers and other Middle Eastern men presumed to be associated with al-Qaeda had a close connection to crop-duster planes, which had been feared prior to 9/11 for their ability to disperse large quantities of biological and chemical weapons. These connections in 2000-2001 seemed firm and well established.[12] - Links
There were curious apparent connections—some quite direct—between anthrax and the Hijackers. Among these links was one of special importance that appeared to connect Robert Stevens, the first anthrax fatality, closely to several Hijackers, who were also in Florida. - The letters
The text of the letters that accompanied several mailings of deadly spores had obviously been constructed to establish the perpetrators as extremist Muslims connected to the crimes of 9/11.
The first of these texts obtained by the FBI appears to have been that in the letter to journalist Tom Brokaw:[13]
The second distinct anthrax letter was that sent to Senator Tom Daschle:[14]
The FBI obtained the Daschle letter on October 15, while it appears to have first read the Brokaw letter on October 12. Photographs of the above two letters, as well as of a letter to The New York Post, were first released to the public on October 23.[15]
The discovery of these letters, with their language of Muslim extremism and with the date “09-11-01” prominently displayed, helped create momentum toward the foreign group hypothesis and, specifically, toward al-Qaeda. On October 12 the FBI had been said by The New York Times to be “extremely doubtful” that the anthrax attacks were linked to the attacks of 9/11,[16] but on October 16 the same newspaper reported that investigators “abruptly acknowledged that such a link is now at the center of their investigation.”[17] The al-Qaeda hypothesis now began to come into its own. Although the FBI never came out definitively in favor of this hypothesis, it could not ignore the text of these letters and the possible implications.
The cumulative effect of these arguments and suspicions was that by mid-to-late October, Tom Ridge, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, as well as the White House and many in Congress, stated that the al- Qaeda hypothesis was the strongest.[18]
The general public, by October 21, also appears to have accepted the al-Qaeda hypothesis as its top choice: “In a Newsweek poll out yesterday [Oct. 21], 63 percent of those surveyed attributed the anthrax attacks at least in part to bin Laden’s organization.”[19]
The Double Perpetrator Hypothesis
What I call the “Double Perpetrator hypothesis” held that Bin Laden’s group sent the anthrax spores through the mail but that the group had a state sponsor that had supplied the spores, namely Iraq.
The Double Perpetrator hypothesis had advantages over the simple al-Qaeda hypothesis. Spreading anthrax through mailed letters was a primitive and ineffective means of dispersing anthrax if the goal was multiple casualties. This crudity was reinforced by the text of the letters, with their misspellings and unidiomatic English. In the Double Perpetrator hypothesis these primitive elements could be laid at the feet of al-Qaeda, while the source of the sophisticated B. anthracis spores in the envelopes to the senators had to be a state, Iraq, which was known to have once possessed a stockpile of anthrax. A peculiar paradox was thus resolved.
The Double Perpetrator hypothesis, in its broad sense, was certainly not new. States can, and often do, support terrorist groups. For example, the United States sponsored terrorists in Nicaragua (the so-called “Contras”) beginning in the late 1970s. In fact, in 1948 the CIA was explicitly given a mandate to support armed organizations subverting or attacking enemy states while ensuring that such support could be plausibly disclaimed by the U.S. government.[20] This relationship of sponsor-proxy is to be expected in the case of weapons of mass destruction, which are a scientific and financial challenge for non-state groups. In the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996 the U.S. Congress recognized the danger of “extremist and terrorist movements, acting independently or as proxies for foreign states” (my emphasis). Through the sponsor-proxy relationship, the Act says, a foreign state is able to achieve “plausible deniability.”[21]
Before the Double Perpetrator idea was promoted for the anthrax attacks it was applied to 9/11. Already on the day of 9/11 there were plenty of allusions to the possibility of a state sponsor of the attacks. The formal warning to state sponsors occurred at 8:30 p.m. on September 11 with Mr. Bush’s words: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”[22]
A further expression of this idea was given in Bush’s address to the Joint Session of the 107th Congress on September 20, 2001: “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”[23]
What Bush said formally, many others said crudely. Neoconservative Charles Krauthammer explained on September 28 that the war against terrorism was not about chasing Osama bin Laden or other terrorists. The war was about getting rid of regimes. The message to be given to state sponsors of terrorism was: “Harbor terrorists—and your regime dies.”[24] George Will said, some time later, that the choice to be given to state sponsors of terrorism was “reform or extinction.”[25] Both spoke openly about Iraq as a target.
What had occurred in relation to 9/11 soon occurred for the anthrax attacks. Already in their surprisingly timely book, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, published in early October of 2001, Judith Miller and co-authors William Broad and Stephen Engelberg explained that Iraq might use a “surrogate, a terrorist group” to deliver a bioweapon to its target.[26] This scenario had also been incorporated into the June, 2001 bioterrorism exercise called Dark Winter, carried out at Andrews Air Force Base, about which more will be said in Chapter 6. Likewise, Iraq’s role as a potential supplier of anthrax spores was discussed in the press while the attacks were actually occurring but before they were publicly known. For example, on September 27, a microbiologist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies said, in the course of an interview about the dangers of bioweapons, that al-Qaeda “could also conceivably obtain a virulent strain of anthrax from Iraq.”[27]
James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence under Clinton, had begun associating Iraq with the 9/11 attacks on September 11 itself (shortly after 7 p.m., ET),[28] and as the anthrax attacks unfolded he added these to Iraq’s sins.[29]
The story of Mohamed Atta, alleged ringleader of the Hijackers, meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April of 2001 (discussed later in this chapter), was of great assistance in establishing the crucial links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, promoting the Double Perpetrator idea for both sets of fall attacks.
Citing credible and substantive evidence of Iraqi links to the anthrax attacks was generally not thought to be necessary by those making these accusations, but insinuation was common. On October 18, for example, journalist Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post that, “Saddam and his bloody bugs have to go.” Cohen admitted that Iraq might not have had anything to do with the anthrax attacks, but since “America is now getting a taste of the havoc biological weapons can wreak,” and since “Iraq has such a capacity,”
Iraq must be placed in the crosshairs.[30] Robert Kagan, leading neo-conservative and one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, wrote on October 17 that if George H. W. Bush had toppled Saddam’s government in 1991, “today we wouldn’t all be wondering whether anthrax spores spreading around the country were developed in one of Saddam’s laboratories.”[31]
Through October of 2001, accusations against Iraq grew and became more specific. On October 14 The Observer in the U.K. reported:[32]
American investigators probing anthrax outbreaks in Florida and New York believe they have all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack—and have named Iraq as prime suspect as the source of the deadly spores. Their inquiries are adding to what US hawks say is a growing mass of evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, possibly indirectly, with the September 11 hijackers.
The article continued:
Leading US intelligence sources, involved with both the CIA and the Defence Department, told The Observer that the ‘giveaway’ which suggests a state sponsor for the anthrax cases is that the victims in Florida were afflicted with the airborne form of the disease.
The Observer also quoted an anonymous CIA source as saying, “they aren’t making this stuff in caves in Afghanistan.” The source continued: “This is prima facie evidence of the involvement of a state intelligence agency. Maybe Iran has the capability. But it doesn’t look likely politically. That leaves Iraq.”
On October 15 the Wall Street Journal spoke approvingly of The Observer’s report, noting, “Bin Laden couldn’t be doing all this in Afghan caves. The leading supplier suspect has to be Iraq.” The Wall Street Journal also had a course of action to recommend: “The best defense against anthrax attacks…is to go on relentless offence.”[33] The alleged Prague meeting between an Iraqi diplomat and Mohamed Atta was mentioned in the same piece, with the result that Iraq was now a definite target.
The reporters for The Observer noted that preparations for bombing Iraq were already underway and they named the individuals at the center of this effort: “The hawks winning the ear of President Bush is [sic] assembled around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and a think tank, the Defense Policy Advisory Board, dubbed the ‘Wolfowitz cabal.’”
The Observer’s story seems a bit premature: it would have been better founded a few days later when the sophisticated, aerosolized Daschle anthrax had been studied. (The FBI did not receive the highly sophisticated spores in the Daschle letter until October 15.) In any case, the motif “they aren’t making this stuff in caves” definitely preceded evidence justifying it. The motif seems to have made its first appearance in the Washington Post on October 5 in an article by Charles Krauthammer. When Krauthammer wrote the article—assuming he wrote it on October 4—Robert Stevens had been diagnosed with anthrax (this was announced in a press conference on October 4) but was still alive. Although he was known to have the inhalation form of the disease, little of significance was known about the spores, where he had contracted the disease, and whether his disease was the result of an attack or was simply acquired from the environment. What is more, Krauthammer did not even mention Stevens or his disease in the article. Nonetheless, after ranting about biological attacks and the importance of going after enemy states with weapons of mass destruction, he observed: “You do not make weaponized anthrax in caves. For that you need serious scientists and serious laboratories, like the ones in Baghdad.”[34] The comment was bizarre. There was no credible evidence of “weaponized” anthrax anywhere on the scene when he wrote the article.
After October 15, discussions of “weaponized anthrax,” grounded in study of the attack spores, became increasingly common. An attempt was made to use the physical characteristics of the anthrax spores to establish Iraq as the source of the spores. But it was a risky move and it ultimately backfired, discrediting both foreign group hypotheses and almost exposing the perpetrators.
The Fall of the Double Perpetrator Hypothesis
The perpetrators of the anthrax attacks, in attempting to set up al-Qaeda and Iraq as the Double Perpetrator, made several mistakes.
The first mistake had to do with the type of anthrax used in all of the letters, the Ames strain. (A “strain” is a genetic subtype of a bacterium.) Originally isolated from a cow in Texas—called the Ames strain because it was mistakenly thought to have originated in Ames, Iowa— this type of anthrax was more common in U.S. labs than elsewhere. It was central to U.S. military work on anthrax and it certainly did not point in the direction of al-Qaeda or Iraq. But how could the perpetrators have been so ill-advised as to use this strain when they could, presumably, have used others more likely to implicate Iraq?
It was widely believed, even by microbiologists well acquainted with anthrax, that the Ames strain had become so broadly dispersed throughout laboratories across the world that this identification would not say much about the origin of the samples in the letters—or otherwise put, could easily be used to implicate Iraq. The perpetrators may have shared this misconception.[35]
Eventually, the FBI drew up a detailed list of laboratories around the world that were known to have the Ames strain: neither Iraq nor al-Qaeda was on that list. According to the Bureau, only 15 U.S. laboratories and three foreign labs possessed the Ames strain.[36]
Another possible reason for use of the Ames strain by the perpetrators was that they intended from the outset to frame one or more persons within the U.S. microbiology community. If such parties could have been credibly connected to the Ames strain and portrayed as acting on behalf of Iraq, they would have been good candidates for framing. Ayaad Assaad, a scientist who apparently had been subjected to racial harassment while working for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), could have been that candidate.[37] He had worked for USAMRIID until 1997. On October 2, 2001 the FBI received a letter (postmarked on September 26) calling Assaad “a potential biological terrorist.” It is difficult to believe that this was a coincidence given that the attacks were underway but not yet made public.
The FBI interviewed Assaad on October 3 but decided for reasons unknown to us not to follow this lead.
Another mistake made by the perpetrators had to do with the weaponization of the attack spores. By the time the perpetrators targeted the two U.S. senators they were employing extremely sophisticated anthrax spores. It was clear that this was exceptionally lethal material that had undergone considerable modification from its natural state. The spores dispersed quickly and widely, threatening far more lives than would anthrax spores in their natural state. Tom Daschle has remarked on this feature of the spores in his memoirs:[38] “The researchers were stunned to confirm not only the high aerosolizability of this anthrax, but its ability to reaerosolize so readily a month after the original spill.” He has also confirmed that scientists at USAMRIID who studied the elusive, aerosolized material “had trouble keeping it under the microscope long enough to examine it.”
Over the course of October, 2001 the media reported that the anthrax spores were small and quite uniform in size, and this range (1.5-3 microns) was ideal if the spores were to enter the lungs and lodge there. Moreover, the spores appeared to have been treated with an additive that neutralized the electrostatic charge that, in nature, makes anthrax spores cling to each other and form clumps. Preventing the formation of clumps is essential to the process of aerosolization.[39]
As October, 2001 neared its end a struggle appeared to be taking place among members of the executive branch. It is possible this was staged, but evidence suggests this was a genuine conflict, with one party determined to keep following the original plan of framing the Double Perpetrator while the other party was equally determined to beat a strategic retreat into the haunts of the domestic lone wolf.
The claims and counterclaims in the Washington Post tell the story. On October 24 and 25 the tension was building. The FBI was now reported as saying privately that it suspected the source of the spores was domestic.[40] The White House, as well as many in Congress, was said to still lean toward al-Qaeda,[41] but it was obvious the proponents of the domestic perpetrator hypothesis were growing more outspoken. Meanwhile, the White House was said to be backing off its accusations against Iraq.[42] But this retreat from Iraqi provenance caused its own difficulties because the anthrax, being sophisticated, could not have been produced by al-Qaeda.
The discovery that there was an aerosolizing additive in the spores, announced on October 25, brought matters to a head.[43] Only three countries in the world were now said to have the capability of producing this anthrax: the former Soviet Union, the United States, and Iraq. While this opened up an opportunity for the get-Iraq group, it also had grave risks. Some experts were already saying that the U.S. was the leading contender as producer of these spore preparations.[44]
Suddenly, the White House began retreating not only from the Iraq hypothesis but also from the al-Qaeda hypothesis. Ari Fleischer, making an about-face, said on October 26 that, in the words of the Washington Post, “a skilled microbiologist and a small sophisticated lab would be capable of producing” the Daschle anthrax.[45]
Readers of the Washington Post were now told a disagreement had developed between the Bush administra-tion and a separate party, of which James Woolsey was a representative, that wanted Iraq to remain the chief suspect as source of the spores.
Those favoring the domestic option, although they were said to be speaking “on condition of anonymity,” were at least speaking, and the strength of their voices grew daily.[46] But the party promoting Iraq’s involvement did not give up easily. Anthrax expert Richard Spertzel had explained on October 25 that Iraq used “aluminum-based clays or silica powders” as additives to its anthrax spores[47] and the very next day ABC News entered the fray with the claim that the spores showed evidence of precisely these clays.
Brian Ross was the lead journalist. He reported that “sources tell ABCNEWS the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite. The potent additive is known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons—Iraq.” This shocking information had been relayed to ABC, supposedly, by “three well-placed and separate sources.”[48] ABC continued to repeat this claim and by October 29 its “well-placed and separate sources” had grown to four.[49] In addition, ABC added to this article a detailed version of the tale of Atta in Prague. The bentonite story and the Prague story were obviously meant to reinforce each other, and Iraq was the target.
But the bentonite did not exist. On November 1, Ross was forced to inform his audience that further tests had ruled out bentonite.[50] Significantly, it was the White House that contradicted Ross’s bentonite claim and that appears to have made him back down.[51] The takeaway is that Ross’s sources— and this applies as well to one of his 2002 tales discussed in the next chapter—remained determined to frame Iraq even after the White House had been persuaded to give it up and was moving on to the lone wolf theory.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has castigated ABC for its false claims, saying in 2008 that “the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade.”[52]He has also said it was likely that “the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them.”
But ABC News had actually brought into further disrepute the framing of Iraq, and by this time it had become clear that in using such a sophisticated and lethal preparation of spores the perpetrators had crawled out on a limb. They had, in effect, ruled out the hypothesis that al-Qaeda, acting alone, had carried out the attacks. Al-Qaeda, in its famed caves, could not possibly have created this product, and now the Iraqi provenance was cashiered as well.
Ultimately, the failure to successfully frame Iraq as source of the spores not only ruined the hypothesis of al- Qaeda acting alone but also ruined what might otherwise have been credible domestic hypotheses: the right-wing hate group and the eccentric loner. Neither could have created this product.
A final major mistake the perpetrators made was the crude forging of letters from Muslim extremists. Although the FBI initially seemed to be moving, after reading the Daschle letter, in the direction of al-Qaeda, the Bureau soon turned in the opposite direction. The letters were an embarrassment. It was as if someone had tried to frame Native Americans for the crime by inserting a note in the letters announcing, “White man in heap big trouble.”
On October 24 members of the FBI were saying privately to the media that they doubted the links to al-Qaeda were real and believed there was a U.S. source of the spores. While the White House was still supporting the al-Qaeda hypothesis, the Washington Post reported that “many experts believe the phrases [in the letters] are intended to wrongly cast suspicion on foreign terrorists.”[53] The Washington Post also reported that “Retired Air Force anti-terrorism specialist Gerald ‘Gary’ Brown said he doubts the anthrax attacks are the work of Muslims.” “We believe this is home grown,” said Brown.[54] Other experts added, “It’s what every American thinks a Muslim fanatic would write.”
In short, the anthrax letters, taken as a combined production of text and spores, failed to support either the al-Qaeda or the Double Perpetrator hypotheses. The text was not believably al-Qaeda and the spores were not believably Iraqi.
From about the end of October, 2001, although the get-Iraq group fought a rear-guard action, the anthrax attacks were increasingly accepted as a domestic operation. The foreign group hypothesis was on the ropes.
The perpetrators of the anthrax attacks, in attempting to set up al-Qaeda and Iraq as the Double Perpetrator, made several mistakes.
The first mistake had to do with the type of anthrax used in all of the letters, the Ames strain. (A “strain” is a genetic subtype of a bacterium.) Originally isolated from a cow in Texas—called the Ames strain because it was mistakenly thought to have originated in Ames, Iowa— this type of anthrax was more common in U.S. labs than elsewhere. It was central to U.S. military work on anthrax and it certainly did not point in the direction of al-Qaeda or Iraq. But how could the perpetrators have been so ill-advised as to use this strain when they could, presumably, have used others more likely to implicate Iraq?
It was widely believed, even by microbiologists well acquainted with anthrax, that the Ames strain had become so broadly dispersed throughout laboratories across the world that this identification would not say much about the origin of the samples in the letters—or otherwise put, could easily be used to implicate Iraq. The perpetrators may have shared this misconception.[35]
Eventually, the FBI drew up a detailed list of laboratories around the world that were known to have the Ames strain: neither Iraq nor al-Qaeda was on that list. According to the Bureau, only 15 U.S. laboratories and three foreign labs possessed the Ames strain.[36]
Another possible reason for use of the Ames strain by the perpetrators was that they intended from the outset to frame one or more persons within the U.S. microbiology community. If such parties could have been credibly connected to the Ames strain and portrayed as acting on behalf of Iraq, they would have been good candidates for framing. Ayaad Assaad, a scientist who apparently had been subjected to racial harassment while working for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), could have been that candidate.[37] He had worked for USAMRIID until 1997. On October 2, 2001 the FBI received a letter (postmarked on September 26) calling Assaad “a potential biological terrorist.” It is difficult to believe that this was a coincidence given that the attacks were underway but not yet made public.
The FBI interviewed Assaad on October 3 but decided for reasons unknown to us not to follow this lead.
Another mistake made by the perpetrators had to do with the weaponization of the attack spores. By the time the perpetrators targeted the two U.S. senators they were employing extremely sophisticated anthrax spores. It was clear that this was exceptionally lethal material that had undergone considerable modification from its natural state. The spores dispersed quickly and widely, threatening far more lives than would anthrax spores in their natural state. Tom Daschle has remarked on this feature of the spores in his memoirs:[38] “The researchers were stunned to confirm not only the high aerosolizability of this anthrax, but its ability to reaerosolize so readily a month after the original spill.” He has also confirmed that scientists at USAMRIID who studied the elusive, aerosolized material “had trouble keeping it under the microscope long enough to examine it.”
Over the course of October, 2001 the media reported that the anthrax spores were small and quite uniform in size, and this range (1.5-3 microns) was ideal if the spores were to enter the lungs and lodge there. Moreover, the spores appeared to have been treated with an additive that neutralized the electrostatic charge that, in nature, makes anthrax spores cling to each other and form clumps. Preventing the formation of clumps is essential to the process of aerosolization.[39]
As October, 2001 neared its end a struggle appeared to be taking place among members of the executive branch. It is possible this was staged, but evidence suggests this was a genuine conflict, with one party determined to keep following the original plan of framing the Double Perpetrator while the other party was equally determined to beat a strategic retreat into the haunts of the domestic lone wolf.
The claims and counterclaims in the Washington Post tell the story. On October 24 and 25 the tension was building. The FBI was now reported as saying privately that it suspected the source of the spores was domestic.[40] The White House, as well as many in Congress, was said to still lean toward al-Qaeda,[41] but it was obvious the proponents of the domestic perpetrator hypothesis were growing more outspoken. Meanwhile, the White House was said to be backing off its accusations against Iraq.[42] But this retreat from Iraqi provenance caused its own difficulties because the anthrax, being sophisticated, could not have been produced by al-Qaeda.
The discovery that there was an aerosolizing additive in the spores, announced on October 25, brought matters to a head.[43] Only three countries in the world were now said to have the capability of producing this anthrax: the former Soviet Union, the United States, and Iraq. While this opened up an opportunity for the get-Iraq group, it also had grave risks. Some experts were already saying that the U.S. was the leading contender as producer of these spore preparations.[44]
Suddenly, the White House began retreating not only from the Iraq hypothesis but also from the al-Qaeda hypothesis. Ari Fleischer, making an about-face, said on October 26 that, in the words of the Washington Post, “a skilled microbiologist and a small sophisticated lab would be capable of producing” the Daschle anthrax.[45]
Readers of the Washington Post were now told a disagreement had developed between the Bush administra-tion and a separate party, of which James Woolsey was a representative, that wanted Iraq to remain the chief suspect as source of the spores.
Those favoring the domestic option, although they were said to be speaking “on condition of anonymity,” were at least speaking, and the strength of their voices grew daily.[46] But the party promoting Iraq’s involvement did not give up easily. Anthrax expert Richard Spertzel had explained on October 25 that Iraq used “aluminum-based clays or silica powders” as additives to its anthrax spores[47] and the very next day ABC News entered the fray with the claim that the spores showed evidence of precisely these clays.
Brian Ross was the lead journalist. He reported that “sources tell ABCNEWS the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite. The potent additive is known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons—Iraq.” This shocking information had been relayed to ABC, supposedly, by “three well-placed and separate sources.”[48] ABC continued to repeat this claim and by October 29 its “well-placed and separate sources” had grown to four.[49] In addition, ABC added to this article a detailed version of the tale of Atta in Prague. The bentonite story and the Prague story were obviously meant to reinforce each other, and Iraq was the target.
But the bentonite did not exist. On November 1, Ross was forced to inform his audience that further tests had ruled out bentonite.[50] Significantly, it was the White House that contradicted Ross’s bentonite claim and that appears to have made him back down.[51] The takeaway is that Ross’s sources— and this applies as well to one of his 2002 tales discussed in the next chapter—remained determined to frame Iraq even after the White House had been persuaded to give it up and was moving on to the lone wolf theory.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has castigated ABC for its false claims, saying in 2008 that “the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade.”[52]He has also said it was likely that “the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them.”
But ABC News had actually brought into further disrepute the framing of Iraq, and by this time it had become clear that in using such a sophisticated and lethal preparation of spores the perpetrators had crawled out on a limb. They had, in effect, ruled out the hypothesis that al-Qaeda, acting alone, had carried out the attacks. Al-Qaeda, in its famed caves, could not possibly have created this product, and now the Iraqi provenance was cashiered as well.
Ultimately, the failure to successfully frame Iraq as source of the spores not only ruined the hypothesis of al- Qaeda acting alone but also ruined what might otherwise have been credible domestic hypotheses: the right-wing hate group and the eccentric loner. Neither could have created this product.
A final major mistake the perpetrators made was the crude forging of letters from Muslim extremists. Although the FBI initially seemed to be moving, after reading the Daschle letter, in the direction of al-Qaeda, the Bureau soon turned in the opposite direction. The letters were an embarrassment. It was as if someone had tried to frame Native Americans for the crime by inserting a note in the letters announcing, “White man in heap big trouble.”
On October 24 members of the FBI were saying privately to the media that they doubted the links to al-Qaeda were real and believed there was a U.S. source of the spores. While the White House was still supporting the al-Qaeda hypothesis, the Washington Post reported that “many experts believe the phrases [in the letters] are intended to wrongly cast suspicion on foreign terrorists.”[53] The Washington Post also reported that “Retired Air Force anti-terrorism specialist Gerald ‘Gary’ Brown said he doubts the anthrax attacks are the work of Muslims.” “We believe this is home grown,” said Brown.[54] Other experts added, “It’s what every American thinks a Muslim fanatic would write.”
In short, the anthrax letters, taken as a combined production of text and spores, failed to support either the al-Qaeda or the Double Perpetrator hypotheses. The text was not believably al-Qaeda and the spores were not believably Iraqi.
From about the end of October, 2001, although the get-Iraq group fought a rear-guard action, the anthrax attacks were increasingly accepted as a domestic operation. The foreign group hypothesis was on the ropes.
Journalistic Fictions Fan the Flames
Throughout September and October of 2001 those outraged by the attacks of the purported Double Perpetrator ranted against scenarios conjured up by their own imaginations.
On October 21 the Washington Post published a review by Jeff Stein of the book Germs, by Judith Miller and co-authors.[55] Stein pointed out that it is not easy to master the art of bioweapons production and commented:
That should give some comfort to Americans terrified by the prospect of an imminent biological or chemical attack by Osama Bin Laden’s operatives within our borders. But it probably won’t, especially considering that Bin Laden’s evil pal Saddam Hussein perfected the weapons—and used them—against Iranian troops and Kurdish villagers…
The warm relationship between the Islamist Bin Laden and the secular-nationalist Saddam was fantasy, of course. But Stein was not finished. He continued:
And once again, we’ve sent a stern warning to Saddam Hussein that Iraq will catch fire if weapons of mass destruction are unleashed here. He should know that few Americans, in their present angry and anxious mood, can imagine weeping much if Baghdad is nuked while millions here are dying from smallpox.
The millions of Americans dying of smallpox were a fictional projection, taken equally from the Miller book and from the Dark Winter simulation. Yet the Post gave Stein free rein to fantasize about a retaliatory nuclear strike against a city inhabited by several million human beings. We might be tempted to dismiss all this as a bad joke, but we do not have that luxury: the theme of using nuclear weapons against fantasized Muslim attackers was also taken up by others and is a sign of a dangerous orientation that remains with us to this day. (See chapter 8.)
The day after the Stein article the Washington Post published a similar article by Fred Hiatt.[56]
A hit squad from somewhere in the Middle East travels to New York City carrying a one-liter bottle filled with one of the several chemical weapons agents we have long known Saddam Hussein to be developing. Using a simple sprayer (like one that a gardener or house painter might own), they diffuse the contents into the air over Times Square… Hundreds, maybe thousands of people die agonizing deaths as a result.
And on it goes. Fiction again—in this case taken from a book by former UN weapons inspector Richard Butler. Hiatt, while admitting the scenario was fictional and that there was no actual evidence to tie Iraq to the anthrax attacks, insisted that Saddam Hussein was a “plausible suspect.” He told his readers that Saddam was “credibly alleged to have tested germ weapons on prison inmates” (there has never been any evidence to support this allegation), and ended by saying that it would be a pity if Americans, faced with the prospect of a dangerous Iraq, exhibited “faintheartedness.”
In short, once again Americans were projected as dying in large numbers from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction on the pages of the Washington Post, and once again Iraq was to be held accountable, even though those dead Americans, like Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, were products of the imagination.
But the widest circulation was achieved by the tale, Mohamed Atta Visits Prague.[57] This story was apparently first told by the Associated Press on September 18, 2001. It concerned a meeting of Mohamed Atta, alleged ringleader of the Hijackers, with an Iraqi intelligence agent. They supposedly met in Prague in April of 2001. Through the fall of 2001 the story was retold with an astonishing amount of detail as well as confirmation by Czech intelligence. It was widely circulated, and into the winter of 2001-02 was still endorsed by Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. While many people remember that the tale functioned to link Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, it should not be forgotten that the story also functioned to link Iraq to the anthrax attacks. At times the link was implied directly:
Some federal officials have wondered whether chemical or biological weapons might have been a subject of discussion when Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, met last year with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. Iraq is known to have worked on the development of such weapons.[58]
More generally, bearing in mind that in October 2001 there was a strenuous effort to associate the Hijackers with the anthrax attacks, we can understand that Mohamed Atta Visits Prague was being used to make several linkages. It linked al-Qaeda, 9/11, anthrax and Iraq.
The story was fiction.[59] Atta did not meet with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. This was confirmed progressively in the media from spring to fall, 2002.
The FBI’s Case and Its Failure
By the end of October 2001, the main lines of the subsequent FBI account were beginning to emerge. The FBI would direct the search party away from evil Muslims—both al-Qaeda and Iraq—and would quietly, over a period of years, pursue the domestic lone wolf perpetrator. Although this story would be of doubtful value to the executive’s foreign policy ambitions it would have the virtue of disguising the real purpose of the anthrax attacks and burying the issue of who was behind them.
On August 6, 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft named scientist Steven Hatfill a “person of interest” and the FBI concentrated on investigating him, publicly and aggressively. A year later Hatfill sued the Justice Department for libel, and eventually he received $5.82 million in compensation, while the FBI moved on to other possibilities.[60]
In 2008 the Bureau decided the “anthrax killer” was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who had been working on an anthrax vaccine at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in Maryland. This time the FBI faced no serious challenge from its chosen perpetrator because Ivins died shortly before he was to be charged with the crime. He was said to have committed suicide.[61] If he took his life—a likelihood given his mental instability and the extent of FBI harassment and pressure—the FBI must bear some responsibility.
In 2010 the Department of Justice (DOJ) formally closed the case, affirming Ivins’ guilt.[62]
But the case against Ivins was subjected to serious critique from the beginning. On October 2, 2009, attorney Barry Kissin, responding to an invitation by one of Congressman Rush Holt’s aides, submitted a detailed and historically important memo to Mr. Holt’s office on the anthrax attacks and the associated cover-up.[63]
In his submission Kissin showed that the anthrax spores, clearly from a domestic source, had been subjected to sophisticated processes that would have been impossible for a lone wolf perpetrator to perform. He pointed out that the domestic U.S. anthrax program had gone underground when Nixon ordered destruction of biological weapons materials in 1969 but that during the late 1990s the CIA was directly involved in the development of both weaponized anthrax and the means of delivering it as a weapon. Because of these clandestine programs, he argued, the U.S. military-industrial complex possessed, prior to the anthrax attacks, all the elements essential for the attacks. These elements included: the Ames strain of anthrax; methods of refining the spores to achieve the right size and uniformity for maximum lethality; and a method of promoting dispersibility through the addition of silicon to the spores. Kissin referred as well to domestic studies relevant to sending the attack spores through the mail:
In 1999, William Patrick, the original inventor of anthrax weaponization, was commissioned to do an analysis of a hypothetical anthrax attack through the mail for the CIA. Ultimately, this classified document was leaked to the media. In his report entitled “Risk Assessment,” Patrick explained that 2.5 grams is the amount that can be placed into a standard envelope without detection. (The anthrax letters addressed to the Senators contained about 2 grams of anthrax.) In a footnote, Patrick noted that the U.S. had refined “weaponized” anthrax powder to the unprecedented extent of a trillion spores per gram. This degree of refinement corresponds with the extraordinary purity of the anthrax in the letters addressed to the Senators.
Kissin argued that one of the chief suspects in the attacks ought to be Battelle Memorial Institute, the largest R&D company in the world, which regularly does work for the CIA and the U.S. military and was involved in anthrax weaponization projects that began in the second half of the 1990s. He noted that Battelle had the facilities for working with dry anthrax spores, while USAMRIID did not. Battelle publicizes its advanced methods of producing a variety of sophisticated aerosols. Kissin also showed how, throughout the anthrax investigation, the FBI had taken steps to keep Battelle’s name out of the discussion.
Kissin dismissed the FBI’s attempt to explain the silicon in the attack anthrax, the substantial presence of which was not in doubt, as “naturally” occurring. Experiments had demonstrated that the deliberate addition of silicon is the only way to explain the high amounts of this chemical element in the anthrax. Silicon has long been key to American methods of weaponizing anthrax.
Kissin likewise rejected the FBI’s attempt to claim that the silicon in the attack spores was innocent because it was located in the spore coat rather than in the outermost layer, the exosporium. The FBI, he argued, was concealing the fact that the original anthrax weaponization technology, which involved situating the silicon in the exosporium, had been surpassed by technology of microencapsulation that situates silicon in the underlying spore coat.
If the FBI’s case was vulnerable to this powerful critique in 2009, the trouble has only increased since then. Since 2011, a scientific report, a court case, a set of research articles, and several other sorts of evidence have further discredited FBI contentions.
By the end of October 2001, the main lines of the subsequent FBI account were beginning to emerge. The FBI would direct the search party away from evil Muslims—both al-Qaeda and Iraq—and would quietly, over a period of years, pursue the domestic lone wolf perpetrator. Although this story would be of doubtful value to the executive’s foreign policy ambitions it would have the virtue of disguising the real purpose of the anthrax attacks and burying the issue of who was behind them.
On August 6, 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft named scientist Steven Hatfill a “person of interest” and the FBI concentrated on investigating him, publicly and aggressively. A year later Hatfill sued the Justice Department for libel, and eventually he received $5.82 million in compensation, while the FBI moved on to other possibilities.[60]
In 2008 the Bureau decided the “anthrax killer” was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who had been working on an anthrax vaccine at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in Maryland. This time the FBI faced no serious challenge from its chosen perpetrator because Ivins died shortly before he was to be charged with the crime. He was said to have committed suicide.[61] If he took his life—a likelihood given his mental instability and the extent of FBI harassment and pressure—the FBI must bear some responsibility.
In 2010 the Department of Justice (DOJ) formally closed the case, affirming Ivins’ guilt.[62]
But the case against Ivins was subjected to serious critique from the beginning. On October 2, 2009, attorney Barry Kissin, responding to an invitation by one of Congressman Rush Holt’s aides, submitted a detailed and historically important memo to Mr. Holt’s office on the anthrax attacks and the associated cover-up.[63]
In his submission Kissin showed that the anthrax spores, clearly from a domestic source, had been subjected to sophisticated processes that would have been impossible for a lone wolf perpetrator to perform. He pointed out that the domestic U.S. anthrax program had gone underground when Nixon ordered destruction of biological weapons materials in 1969 but that during the late 1990s the CIA was directly involved in the development of both weaponized anthrax and the means of delivering it as a weapon. Because of these clandestine programs, he argued, the U.S. military-industrial complex possessed, prior to the anthrax attacks, all the elements essential for the attacks. These elements included: the Ames strain of anthrax; methods of refining the spores to achieve the right size and uniformity for maximum lethality; and a method of promoting dispersibility through the addition of silicon to the spores. Kissin referred as well to domestic studies relevant to sending the attack spores through the mail:
In 1999, William Patrick, the original inventor of anthrax weaponization, was commissioned to do an analysis of a hypothetical anthrax attack through the mail for the CIA. Ultimately, this classified document was leaked to the media. In his report entitled “Risk Assessment,” Patrick explained that 2.5 grams is the amount that can be placed into a standard envelope without detection. (The anthrax letters addressed to the Senators contained about 2 grams of anthrax.) In a footnote, Patrick noted that the U.S. had refined “weaponized” anthrax powder to the unprecedented extent of a trillion spores per gram. This degree of refinement corresponds with the extraordinary purity of the anthrax in the letters addressed to the Senators.
Kissin argued that one of the chief suspects in the attacks ought to be Battelle Memorial Institute, the largest R&D company in the world, which regularly does work for the CIA and the U.S. military and was involved in anthrax weaponization projects that began in the second half of the 1990s. He noted that Battelle had the facilities for working with dry anthrax spores, while USAMRIID did not. Battelle publicizes its advanced methods of producing a variety of sophisticated aerosols. Kissin also showed how, throughout the anthrax investigation, the FBI had taken steps to keep Battelle’s name out of the discussion.
Kissin dismissed the FBI’s attempt to explain the silicon in the attack anthrax, the substantial presence of which was not in doubt, as “naturally” occurring. Experiments had demonstrated that the deliberate addition of silicon is the only way to explain the high amounts of this chemical element in the anthrax. Silicon has long been key to American methods of weaponizing anthrax.
Kissin likewise rejected the FBI’s attempt to claim that the silicon in the attack spores was innocent because it was located in the spore coat rather than in the outermost layer, the exosporium. The FBI, he argued, was concealing the fact that the original anthrax weaponization technology, which involved situating the silicon in the exosporium, had been surpassed by technology of microencapsulation that situates silicon in the underlying spore coat.
If the FBI’s case was vulnerable to this powerful critique in 2009, the trouble has only increased since then. Since 2011, a scientific report, a court case, a set of research articles, and several other sorts of evidence have further discredited FBI contentions.
The National Academy of Sciences Report
In 2008 the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to carry out a review of the scientific methods used by the Bureau in the course of its anthrax investigation. There is no reason to believe the FBI was ever keen on this option. FBI Director Robert Mueller had been subjected to tough Congressional questioning after Ivins’ death in 2008 and had chosen the NAS option to avoid a more comprehensive investigation.[64]
The NAS project, carried out by a committee consisting initially of 15 scientists, started its work in 2009 and submitted its final report in 2011.[65] The committee had constraints and it also had to suffer through what appear to have been internal conflicts within the DOJ and FBI.
The committee’s job was not to examine anthrax spores, or equipment that might have been used to prepare the anthrax, or any other physical evidence. The committee was restricted to reviewing reports, studies and papers produced by others, as well as interviewing a number of witnesses. The NAS committee had no mandate to evaluate the broad forensic study that had led to the finding of Ivins as the killer, nor did it have a mandate to comment on the overall strength of the case against Ivins.
Although the committee politely expresses, in its report, appreciation of the FBI and its hard work, a careful reading reveals a more complex picture.[66] For example:
- The committee received two large boxes with approximately 9000 pages of material that it was asked to review, but the FBI did not provide a clear explanation of the material or a system of consistent coding, so a great deal of time was spent organizing the material and trying to determine its significance.
- The committee found out late in the game that there was a body of classified material bearing on the investigation to which it would not have access.
- The committee asked the FBI several times for a written statement of the conclusions the FBI drew from its scientific investigations, but no such statement was ever forthcoming.
- FBI members interviewed by the committee tried to formulate the FBI’s goals and conclusions but these were not consistent with each other or with written statements from the DOJ.
- FBI members were sometimes helpful but at other times were terse and unhelpful.
In addition, the FBI dumped a new set of documents on the NAS committee after the committee had submitted its draft report. Since there was no reason the FBI could not have given this material much earlier, the move generated much criticism. Congressman Rush Holt suggested the dumping of new documents may have been an attempt “to contest and challenge the independent NAS panel’s draft findings.”[67]
It is difficult not to conclude that while one segment of the DOJ and FBI may have been willing to see the Bureau’s anthrax work scrutinized, another segment definitely was not. This apparent conflict has surfaced from time to time in the FBI’s anthrax investigation.
The NAS committee’s final report, appearing in 2011,was entitled Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters. Well before publication it became known that the committee was finding serious flaws in the Bureau’s case against Ivins, and this appears to be why the DOJ, or elements within it, took two sets of actions to counter the report.
First, the DOJ made a pre-emptive strike on the committee by definitively pronouncing Ivins the killer and closing the case before the committee’s final report was published.[68]
Then, when the committee released its report and made its findings public, gaining considerable media attention, the FBI was quick to state that it had full confidence in its case against Ivins, and that the committee touched on only certain aspects of the physical evidence whereas the FBI’s case was complex and was built on many forms of evidence. The Bureau then, through various intermediaries, had a “panel of experts” convened to review Ivins’ psychiatric file.[69] This panel duly supported the FBI’s conclusion that he was the anthrax killer. Unfortunately for the FBI, the panel was largely bogus and its report appears to have had little influence.[70]
Two of the NAS committee’s findings severely weakened the FBI’s case against Ivins.
The FBI had claimed that Ivins, when asked to submit a sample of the anthrax in his flask (the so-called RMR-1029 anthrax) to the FBI for its anthrax repository, falsified his submission.[71] This made Ivins appear deceptive and suspect. The NAS committee, however, did not find the evidence of deception compelling.[72]
Second, and more importantly, the committee severed the physical link between Ivins and the anthrax used in the mailings. To appreciate the importance of this it is crucial to understand that the case against Ivins was never strong. The characterization of the case in The New York Times as “circumstantial” is generous.[73] The most important piece of evidence presented had to do with the spores used in the mailings. FBI scientists claimed they could trace the deadly spores to a flask of liquid anthrax preparation, called RMR- 1029, kept under Ivins’ care in his lab. The FBI did not claim that the spores in the letters had been directly taken from Ivins’ flask, rather they said that the anthrax in Ivins’ flask was the material from which the spores in the mailings had been derived. In other words, the FBI claimed someone had taken material from the flask and grown colonies of anthrax from it. Anthrax from these colonies, or from descendants of these colonies, had then been used in the deadly mailings. According to the FBI, “By 2007, investigators conclusively determined that a single spore-batch created and maintained by Dr. Bruce Ivins at USAMRIID was the parent material for the letter spores.”[74] This, said the Bureau, pointed directly to Ivins as the killer.
Actually, even if this claim about RMR-1029 had been justified, the case against Ivins would have remained weak. Many people, both at USAMRIID and elsewhere, had access to anthrax deriving from the beaker in question. As Ivins’ lawyer, Paul Kemp, pointed out in 2010, “there are dozens, if not hundreds, of scientists, contractors, students, professors, who used that same anthrax, the very anthrax that would have the same genetic components as RMR-1029.”[75] It is difficult to see how a court case based on such evidence could have been successful.
But the NAS committee’s findings dramatically weakened an already weak case. The committee found that the method used by FBI scientists was inadequate to support the conclusions drawn. The committee said the anthrax in the mailings could have derived from what was in Ivins flask, after one or more intermediate stages of culturing, but the anthrax spores in the mailings could have come from a different source altogether. The committee said the evidence was simply inconclusive.[76]
The NAS committee thus removed the main pillar in the case against Ivins.
In 2008 the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to carry out a review of the scientific methods used by the Bureau in the course of its anthrax investigation. There is no reason to believe the FBI was ever keen on this option. FBI Director Robert Mueller had been subjected to tough Congressional questioning after Ivins’ death in 2008 and had chosen the NAS option to avoid a more comprehensive investigation.[64]
The NAS project, carried out by a committee consisting initially of 15 scientists, started its work in 2009 and submitted its final report in 2011.[65] The committee had constraints and it also had to suffer through what appear to have been internal conflicts within the DOJ and FBI.
The committee’s job was not to examine anthrax spores, or equipment that might have been used to prepare the anthrax, or any other physical evidence. The committee was restricted to reviewing reports, studies and papers produced by others, as well as interviewing a number of witnesses. The NAS committee had no mandate to evaluate the broad forensic study that had led to the finding of Ivins as the killer, nor did it have a mandate to comment on the overall strength of the case against Ivins.
Although the committee politely expresses, in its report, appreciation of the FBI and its hard work, a careful reading reveals a more complex picture.[66] For example:
The committee received two large boxes with approximately 9000 pages of material that it was asked to review, but the FBI did not provide a clear explanation of the material or a system of consistent coding, so a great deal of time was spent organizing the material and trying to determine its significance.
The committee found out late in the game that there was a body of classified material bearing on the investigation to which it would not have access.
The committee asked the FBI several times for a written statement of the conclusions the FBI drew from its scientific investigations, but no such statement was ever forthcoming.
FBI members interviewed by the committee tried to formulate the FBI’s goals and conclusions but these were not consistent with each other or with written statements from the DOJ.
FBI members were sometimes helpful but at other times were terse and unhelpful.
In addition, the FBI dumped a new set of documents on the NAS committee after the committee had submitted its draft report. Since there was no reason the FBI could not have given this material much earlier, the move generated much criticism. Congressman Rush Holt suggested the dumping of new documents may have been an attempt “to contest and challenge the independent NAS panel’s draft findings.”[67]
It is difficult not to conclude that while one segment of the DOJ and FBI may have been willing to see the Bureau’s anthrax work scrutinized, another segment definitely was not. This apparent conflict has surfaced from time to time in the FBI’s anthrax investigation.
The NAS committee’s final report, appearing in 2011,was entitled Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters. Well before publication it became known that the committee was finding serious flaws in the Bureau’s case against Ivins, and this appears to be why the DOJ, or elements within it, took two sets of actions to counter the report.
First, the DOJ made a pre-emptive strike on the committee by definitively pronouncing Ivins the killer and closing the case before the committee’s final report was published.[68]
Then, when the committee released its report and made its findings public, gaining considerable media attention, the FBI was quick to state that it had full confidence in its case against Ivins, and that the committee touched on only certain aspects of the physical evidence whereas the FBI’s case was complex and was built on many forms of evidence. The Bureau then, through various intermediaries, had a “panel of experts” convened to review Ivins’ psychiatric file.[69] This panel duly supported the FBI’s conclusion that he was the anthrax killer. Unfortunately for the FBI, the panel was largely bogus and its report appears to have had little influence.[70]
Two of the NAS committee’s findings severely weakened the FBI’s case against Ivins.
The FBI had claimed that Ivins, when asked to submit a sample of the anthrax in his flask (the so-called RMR-1029 anthrax) to the FBI for its anthrax repository, falsified his submission.[71] This made Ivins appear deceptive and suspect. The NAS committee, however, did not find the evidence of deception compelling.[72]
Second, and more importantly, the committee severed the physical link between Ivins and the anthrax used in the mailings. To appreciate the importance of this it is crucial to understand that the case against Ivins was never strong. The characterization of the case in The New York Times as “circumstantial” is generous.[73] The most important piece of evidence presented had to do with the spores used in the mailings. FBI scientists claimed they could trace the deadly spores to a flask of liquid anthrax preparation, called RMR- 1029, kept under Ivins’ care in his lab. The FBI did not claim that the spores in the letters had been directly taken from Ivins’ flask, rather they said that the anthrax in Ivins’ flask was the material from which the spores in the mailings had been derived. In other words, the FBI claimed someone had taken material from the flask and grown colonies of anthrax from it. Anthrax from these colonies, or from descendants of these colonies, had then been used in the deadly mailings. According to the FBI, “By 2007, investigators conclusively determined that a single spore-batch created and maintained by Dr. Bruce Ivins at USAMRIID was the parent material for the letter spores.”[74] This, said the Bureau, pointed directly to Ivins as the killer.
Actually, even if this claim about RMR-1029 had been justified, the case against Ivins would have remained weak. Many people, both at USAMRIID and elsewhere, had access to anthrax deriving from the beaker in question. As Ivins’ lawyer, Paul Kemp, pointed out in 2010, “there are dozens, if not hundreds, of scientists, contractors, students, professors, who used that same anthrax, the very anthrax that would have the same genetic components as RMR-1029.”[75] It is difficult to see how a court case based on such evidence could have been successful.
But the NAS committee’s findings dramatically weakened an already weak case. The committee found that the method used by FBI scientists was inadequate to support the conclusions drawn. The committee said the anthrax in the mailings could have derived from what was in Ivins flask, after one or more intermediate stages of culturing, but the anthrax spores in the mailings could have come from a different source altogether. The committee said the evidence was simply inconclusive.[76]
The NAS committee thus removed the main pillar in the case against Ivins.
The Stevens Court Case
The family of the first person to die in the anthrax attacks, Robert Stevens, took the U.S. government to court in 2003.[77] By this time it was widely accepted that the foreign group hypotheses about the anthrax had failed and that the anthrax had come from a U.S. laboratory, probably at USAMRIID, or at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, or at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio. The plaintiff’s case was built on allegations of negligence by the U.S. government, which, it claimed, had created conditions that allowed for the removal of deadly anthrax from one of these institutions. The lawyers for the Stevens family claimed that the U.S. government should have been aware of how deadly the anthrax was and should have put in place proper measures to insure it would not be removed by anyone bent on committing a crime with a bioweapon. Stevens’ family sued for $50 million.
The U.S. government defense was conducted by a team of lawyers from the civil division of the Department of Justice. The February, 2010 “Amerithrax” report claiming that Ivins was the anthrax killer had been produced by the criminal division.
Since the lawyers for the civil division were defending the U.S. government against negligence, the FBI’s story about Ivins was presumably seen by them as contrary to the interests they had to defend. If Ivins did, in fact, successfully smuggle anthrax from USAMRIID after preparing it in a lab there, the Stevens family would be right in its claim—this would, indeed, indicate negligence on the part of the U.S. government. Fortunately for the legal team, there was plenty of evidence available, including that from the NAS investigation, that cast doubt on the Ivins story. The team made use of this evidence.
The key document in this connection is titled, “Defendant United States’ Motion for Summary Judgment Based on the Absence of Proximate Cause and Memorandum of Law in Support.” The text of this argument is 21 pages long and is publicly available. It was filed on July 15, 2011 in Florida Southern District.[78]
A “summary judgment” is a legal judgment made without a full trial. The DOJ legal team was asking the judge to make a judgment against the plaintiff because the plaintiff’s lawyers had failed to provide evidence of a direct cause of the injury in question. The basic argument made by the DOJ legal team was that a plaintiff cannot simply rely upon a vague or indirect causal relationship. If A (in this case the U.S. government) is to be held responsible for B’s injury (the death of Robert Stevens) B or B’s representative must show that A acted in a particular way that had a specific, direct and foreseeable effect on B’s welfare.
The DOJ civil lawyers did not say in this July submission that Ivins was not responsible for the anthrax crime but neither did they say that he was, even though the DOJ had closed the case the previous year and pronounced Ivins the anthrax killer in no uncertain terms. The civil team’s argument was based on demonstrating the absence of evident connection between Ivins’ flask and the attack anthrax.
A key point made by the civil legal team was that the anthrax in the mailings was “weaponized:” the attacks constituted a bioweapon attack on U.S. citizens. Although this may seem obvious, the FBI had strenuously denied it during most of its seven year-long investigation. Downplaying evidence of sophistication in the preparation of the anthrax was necessary for the FBI to be able, not only to keep attention away from U.S. anthrax weaponization projects, but also to claim that the job was within Ivins’ reach. But the DOJ civil division lawyers explained that the “attacker transformed liquid anthrax into an unconventional weapon.” They referred to “the deadly weapon of the anthrax attacks,” the “unconventional weapon,” the “weapon to be sent to specified targets through the mail.”
The civil division lawyers made reference to “highly specialized equipment and techniques to profoundly modify the spores in preparation for their use in the nation’s first deadly attack with a pathogen.” Someone, said the civil division lawyers, “had to take anthrax bacteria and cultivate it, concentrate it, dry it, and convert it into an extremely fine powder before mailing…Without each crucial step, the anthrax never could have been placed into letters, never could have been sent through the mail, and never could have been inhaled by an eventual victim such as Mr. Stevens.”
Modifications involving drying and preparation of an extremely fine powder are especially significant for purposes of foreseeability because USAMRIID exclusively used liquid anthrax spore preparations when working with viable anthrax…It would also take special expertise (even amongst those used to working with anthrax) and equipment to make dried material of the quality used in the attacks…Alteration of the form of the anthrax required technical equipment that was not routinely used for that purpose, and the equipment used to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters has never been identified.
Although the civil team’s arguments were not presented explicitly in favor of Ivins’ innocence, this was the direction in which they tended. It is little wonder law professor Paul Rothstein said, “I cannot think of another case in which the government has done such an egregious about-face. It destroys confidence in the criminal findings.”[79] Ivins’ former lawyer, Paul Kemp, said the civil case went beyond providing reasonable doubt of Ivins’ guilt: it provided “millions of reasonable doubts.”[80] The criticisms of the FBI’s fumbling, reported extensively in mainstream media sources, showed how profoundly the Bureau’s case against Bruce Ivins had deteriorated.
The filing of this motion for summary judgment by the DOJ civil division lawyers was apparently followed by panic and shouting matches within the Department. The upshot was that the civil division lawyers “got scolded” and were made to settle the case without a trial as quickly as possible.[81] The settlement discussions were initiated in August, 2011 and the final settlement was agreed to on November 28 of that year. The Stevens family received $2.5 million with no admission of liability by the U.S. government.
The Bioterrorism & Biodefense Articles
In 2011 and 2012 two articles co-authored by Martin Hugh-Jones, Barbara Rosenberg and Stuart Jacobsen appeared in the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.[82] The lead author, Hugh-Jones, is referred to in the FBI’s Amerithrax Investigative Summary as a “renowned anthrax expert”—the only such expert identified by name in the Summary. The three scientists brought new evidence and new hypotheses to the discussion of the preparation of the attack spores and directly challenged the FBI’s methods and conclusions.
The authors looked in their first article at the presence of tin in the attack spores. The tin had been noted before—it was part of a unique chemical signature of these spores— but the FBI had not pursued the matter and had not given an explanation of the tin’s presence. The Bioterrorism & Biodefense authors, on the other hand, offered a hypothesis. “All the available evidence,” they said, “can be explained by the hypothesis that the spore coats were silicone-coated using a tin catalyst.”[83] The conclusions they drew from the “silicon-tin signature” of the attack spores were highly relevant to the search for the perpetrators of the attacks. “Potential procedures that might be applicable for silicone coating of spores, barely touched on here, are complex, highly esoteric processes that could not possibly have been carried out by a single individual [italics added]. They would require a laboratory with specialized capabilities and expertise not found at USAMRIID.”[84] The authors clearly felt that laboratories at Battelle Memorial Institute were more likely places to look for the origin of the attack spores than was Ivins’ place of work.
The challenges these researchers offered to the FBI hypothesis were reported in the mainstream press and further eroded the credibility of the FBI’s case.[85]
In a second article (December, 2012) in the same journal these authors came out even more strongly in favor of a silicone microencapsulation hypothesis. They made a suggestion about the purpose of this process:
Microencapsulation by special polymers to produce particles in the 1-10 micron range could protect microbes from environmental damage during aerosolization and delivery [e.g. via bomblets] and also from the body’s initial defenses during the infection process.[86] [bracketed insertion in original]
They added that processes such as this would probably be unavailable to terrorists but could be used by a state laboratory “to produce highly effective weapons of mass destruction. ”[87]
The researchers had by this time come to suspect that both tin and B. subtilis, a contaminant of the attack spores, originated at Dugway Proving Ground (the U.S. army testing ground in Utah),[88] and they suggested Dugway, possibly in close collaboration with Battelle, as the source of the spores. They expressed the opinion that the microencapsulated spores may not have been prepared especially for the attack letters but may have been already present in a U.S. military program, being then removed by a person, or by persons, for the 2001 attacks.[89]
In a later summation of their research they said:
The process of spore microencapsulation requires special expertise, specific documented chemicals, and sophisticated facilities. The known clues point to Dugway or Battelle, not USAMRIID, as the site where the attack spores were prepared. Crucial evidence that would prove or disprove these points either has not been pursued or has not been released by the FBI.[90]
The cumulative effect of this research has been to further weaken the already weak case against Bruce Ivins. These weaponized spores would, presumably, have been accessible to deep insiders in U.S. intelligence and military structures, but they would certainly not have been accessible to Ivins.
Other Holes in the FBI Case
Meanwhile, other disturbing evidence continued to accumulate. For example, the FBI had claimed that Ivins could not account for extra hours in the lab in the evenings and weekends prior to the anthrax mailings. He was, they claimed, using this time to prepare the anthrax for the attacks. Such extra time in the lab at night was, they added, unprecedented in his work history.[91] But investigators for PBS Frontline, ProPublica and McClatchy Newspapers found that Ivins was doing valid and important work at the lab during the times in question. They also found that the number of night hours in the lab that had been called anomalous by the FBI were not so unusual—he had put in many extra hours in labs in the USAMRIID complex other than the lab to which the FBI had apparently, without reason, restricted its attention.[92]
The same investigators cast further doubt on the contention that Ivins had deliberately misled the FBI when making a sample submission to them. They said, basing their findings on documents made public after the NAS review, that the FBI’s claim was misleading and that, moreover, the FBI knew it was misleading.[93]
Doubts about the time required to prepare the anthrax spores were also expressed by other researchers. In an interview with ProPublica, Dr. Henry Heine, a former supervisor of Ivins at USAMRIID, said that the period in Ivins’ schedule identified by the FBI as his opportunity to prepare the spores (the “34 more hours in the B3 suite than his combined total for the previous seven months”) was completely inadequate for the task the FBI alleges he was performing. The 34 hours, Heine said, are “more than 8,000 hours (close to a year) short of what he would have needed to grow the anthrax. ”[94] Heine added that it would have been impossible for Ivins to have prepared the anthrax without his colleagues being aware of it.
What, then, is the state of the DOJ’s case against Ivins today? The official position of the Department and its investigative agency, the FBI, is that Ivins was the anthrax killer. The case is closed. But not only have many scientists expressed skepticism, so have several important elected officials.[95] The fact that these doubts are discussed openly in the mainstream media indicates that the standing of the DOJ’s case in the courts of expert and public opinion is extremely low.[96] The much discussed “600,000 investigator work hours” and “in excess of 10,000 witness interviews” that the FBI claims to have invested in this case[97] have resulted, 13 years after the attacks, in a case without credibility.[98]
Notes to Chapter 5
- Carlos Hamann, “FBI: Anthrax Mailer More ‘Unabomber’ than Bin Laden,” Agence France-Presse, November 11, 2001.
- Ed Vulliamy, “Anthrax Attacks’ ‘Work of Neo-Nazis,’” Guardian Unlimited, October 28, 2001.
- Guillemin, American Anthrax: Fear, Crime, and the Investigation of the Nation’s Deadliest Bioterror Attack, 156.
- Daschle and D’Orso, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever, 143.
- Ibid., 144.
- Ibid., 177.
- Nakashima and Weiss, “Biological Attack Concerns Spur Warnings: Restoration of Broken Public Health System Is Best Preparation, Experts Say.”
- “History Commons: 2001 Anthrax Attacks,” September 22-October 2, 2001: Some People Get Sick from Anthrax, but Are Not Properly Diagnosed.
- Schmidt and Woodward, “FBI, CIA Warn Congress of More Attacks As Blair Details Case Against Bin Laden; Retaliation Feared If U.S. Strikes Afghanistan.”
- Anderson and Loeb, “Al Qaeda May Have Crude Chemical, Germ Capabilities.”
- Rick Weiss, “Second Anthrax Case Found in Fla.; Victim’s Co-Worker Infected; FBI Launches Massive Probe as Va. Monitors a Third Man,” The Washington Post, October 9, 2001; Justin Blum and Peter Slevin, “Terrorist Ties to Anthrax Sought; No Bacteria Found in FBI Searches of Sites in Fla., Elsewhere,” The Washington Post, October 10, 2001; Justin Blum and Peter Slevin, “Anthrax Found in Third Person; Probe Centers on Fla. Tabloid Offices Where 3 Worked,” Washington Post, October 11, 2001; Howard Kurtz, “Anthrax Has Newsrooms On the Alert; Some Journalists Wonder If Media Are Now a Target,” The Washington Post, October 13, 2001; Justin Blum and Michael Powell, “Anthrax Confirmed in 3rd State; Letter From Malaysia Tests Positive in Nev.; 2nd NBC Case Possible,” The Washington Post, October 14, 2001.
- Nakashima and Weiss, “Biological Attack Concerns Spur Warnings: Restoration of Broken Public Health System Is Best Preparation, Experts Say”; Blum and Eggen, “Crop-Dusters Thought To Interest Suspects”; Justin Blum and Rick Weiss, “Suspect May Have Wanted to Buy Plane; Inquiries Reported On Crop-Duster Loan,” The Washington Post, September 25, 2001; Anderson and Loeb, “Al Qaeda May Have Crude Chemical, Germ Capabilities”; Rolf Myller, “Biological, Chemical Threat Is Termed Tricky, Complex; Smallpox Virus Is Most Feared in Array of Deadly Weapons,” The Washington Post, September 30, 2001; Weiss, “Second Anthrax Case Found in Fla.; Victim’s Co-Worker Infected; FBI Launches Massive Probe as Va. Monitors a Third Man”; Eggen and Woodward, “Terrorist Attacks Imminent, FBI Warns; Bush Declared Al Qaeda Is ‘On the Run’; Assaults on U.S. Called Possible in ‘Next Several Days.’”
- The letter can be found on the FBI website: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/anthrax-amerithrax/amerithrax-investigation
- Ibid.
- “A Nation Challenged,” The New York Times, October 24, 2001.
- “A Nation Challenged: Searching for a Killer,” The New York Times, October 12, 2001, B9.
- “Information, Please,” The New York Times, October 16, 2001. Front page.
- Blum and Slevin, “At Fla. Tabloid Company, a Search for Motive; First Anthrax Case, Which Ended in Photo Editor’s Death, Has Investigators, Employees Asking Why”; “The Spreading Anthrax Toll,” The Washington Post, October 24, 2001.
- Howard Kurtz, “Powell Urges Calm in Face of New Threats; Secretary of State Refutes Taliban Contention That U.S. Raids Had Casualties,” The Washington Post, October 22, 2001.
- “National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects: NSC 10/2,” June 18, 1948, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1945-50Intel/d292.
- Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996, 1996.
- George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks,” September 11, 2001, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057.
- George W. Bush, “Address to the Joint Session of the 107th Congress,” in Selected Speeches of President George W. Bush, 2001-2008, 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/ documents/Selected_Speeches_George_W_Bush.pdf.
- Charles Krauthammer, “The War: A Road Map,” The Washington Post, September 28, 2001.
- George F. Will, “War Without Precedent,” The Washington Post, October 10, 2001.
- Miller, Engelberg, and Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.
- Anderson and Loeb, “Al Qaeda May Have Crude Chemical, Germ Capabilities.”
- James Woolsey, “Woolsey Interview by Wolf Blitzer” (CNN, September 11, 2001), Author’s collection.
- Juliet O’Neill, “Ex-CIA Boss Call for War on Iraq: ‘Absolute Destruction’ of Saddam Hussein Is next Step in War on Terrorism: Top Adviser,” Ottawa Citizen, October 24, 2001.
- Richard Cohen, “Public Enemy No. 2: If This Is the ‘War’ President Bush Says It Is, Then We Cannot Stop with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda,” The Washington Post, October 18, 2001.
- Robert Kagan, “Coalition of the Unwilling,” The Washington Post, October 17, 2001.
- David Rose and Ed Vulliamy, “Iraq ‘Behind US Anthrax Outbreaks,’” The Observer, October 14, 2001.
- “Review and Outlook: The Anthrax Source,” Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2001.
- Charles Krauthammer, “A War on Many Fronts,” The Washington Post, October 5, 2001.
- Blum and Slevin, “Anthrax Found in Third Person; Probe Centers on Fla. Tabloid Offices Where 3 Worked”; Rick Weiss, “Ordering Germs? There Are Hurdles First; Controls Tightened After Student Fraudulently Obtained Plague Bacterium in 1995,” The Washington Post, October 12, 2001; Dan Eggen and Eric Pianin, “Anthrax Cases In Three Cities Share Strain,” The Washington Post, October 20, 2001; Dan Eggen and Rick Weiss, “U.S. Says Anthrax Germ In Mail Is ‘Ames’ Strain; Microbe Is of Type Commonly Used in Research,” The Washington Post, October 26, 2001.
- “Amerithrax Investigative Summary (Released Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act)” (United States Department of Justice, February 19, 2010).
- Assaad references are from History Commons Anthrax Timeline, Sept 26, Oct. 2, Oct. 3.
- Daschle and D’Orso, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever, 172.
- Dan Eggen and Rick Weiss, “Additive Made Spores Deadlier; 3 Nations Known to Be Able to Make Sophisticated Coating,” The Washington Post, October 25, 2001.
- Dan Eggen and Peter Slevin, “Germ-Laced Mail’s Source Still a Mystery; Investigators Find No ‘Conclusive Link’ Between Anthrax Scare, Sept. 11 Attacks,” The Washington Post, October 24, 2001.
- “The Spreading Anthrax Toll”; Eggen and Slevin, “Germ-Laced Mail’s Source Still a Mystery; Investigators Find No ‘Conclusive Link’ Between Anthrax Scare, Sept. 11 Attacks.”
- Eggen and Slevin, “Germ-Laced Mail’s Source Still a Mystery; Investigators Find No ‘Conclusive Link’ Between Anthrax Scare, Sept. 11 Attacks.”
- Eggen and Weiss, “Additive Made Spores Deadlier; 3 Nations Known to Be Able to Make Sophisticated Coating.”
- Ibid.
- “Learning on the Fly,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2001.
- Dan Eggen and Bob Woodward, “FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists; Officials Doubt Any Links to Bin Laden,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2001.
- Eggen and Weiss, “Additive Made Spores Deadlier; 3 Nations Known to Be Able to Make Sophisticated Coating.”
- Brian Ross et al., “Troubling Anthrax Additive Found,” ABCNEWS.com, October 26, 2001.
- Brian Ross et al., “Troubling Anthrax Additive Found; Atta Met Iraqi,” ABCNEWS.com, October 29, 2001.
- “Ross Responds to ‘Vital Questions’ About Anthrax Report,” TVNEWSER, August 6, 2008, http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ross-responds-to-vital-questions-about-anthrax-report_b20406.
- “History Commons: 2001 Anthrax Attacks,” October 26-November 1, 2001: ABC News Heavily Pushes False Story Attempting to Link Anthrax Attacks to Iraq.
- Glenn Greenwald, “Vital Unresolved Anthrax Questions and ABC News,” Salon, August 1, 2008.
- Eggen and Slevin, “Germ-Laced Mail’s Source Still a Mystery; Investigators Find No ‘Conclusive Link’ Between Anthrax Scare, Sept. 11 Attacks.”
- Peter Slevin, “No Consensus on Who Wrote Anthrax Letters; Experts’ Speculation Covers a Broad Range,” The Washington Post, October 25, 2001.
- Jeff Stein, “Touch of Evil,” The Washington Post, October 21, 2001.
- Fred Hiatt, “Paying the Piper for Peace,” The Washington Post, October 22, 2001.
- Vernon Geberth and Peter Slevin, “Issues of Proof Emerge as U.S. Seeks Coalition Against Terror; Evidence Difficult to Find in Identifying State Sponsors,” The Washington Post, September 20, 2001; Colum Lynch, “U.S. Holds Out Threat of Force Against Iraq,” The Washington Post, October 10, 2001; Peter Finn, “Czechs Confirm Key Hijacker’s ‘Contact’ With Iraqi Agent in Prague; Atta Communicated With Diplomat Who Was Later Expelled,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2001; Kate Taylor, “Did Mohamed Atta Meet an Iraqi Spy in Prague?,” Slate, September 3, 2002, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2002/09/did_mohamed_atta_meet_an_iraqi_spy_in_prague. html; “Mohamed Atta, the Lead 9/11 Hijacker, Did Not Meet with Iraqi Intelligence in Prague,” Leading To War, accessed June 1, 2014, http:// www.leadingtowar.com/claims_facts_atta.php.
- Weiss, “Second Anthrax Case Found in Fla.; Victim’s Co-Worker Infected; FBI Launches Massive Probe as Va. Monitors a Third Man.”
- “Mohamed Atta, the Lead 9/11 Hijacker, Did Not Meet with Iraqi Intelligence in Prague.”
- David Freed, “The Wrong Man,” The Atlantic, May 2010, http://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/the-wrong-man/308019/.
- Initially Ivins’ death was reported as a “suspicious death” and “apparent suicide.” See David Willman, “Apparent Suicide in Anthrax Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2008. No autopsy was performed. See Edward Jay Epstein, “The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved: The FBI Disproved Its Main Theory about How the Spores Were Weaponized,” Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2010. But Guillemin, American Anthrax, pp. 237 ff., has an extended presentation of the evidence supporting the suicide hypothesis.
- “Amerithrax Investigative Summary (Released Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act),” p. 92: “Based on the evidence set forth above, the investigation into the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 has been concluded.”
- Barry Kissin, “The Truth About the Anthrax Attacks,” October 2, 2009, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23969.htm.
- Glenn Greenwald, “Serious Doubt Cast on FBI’s Anthrax Case against Bruce Ivins,” Salon, February 16, 2011.
- Committee on Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis Mailings, Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2011).
- Ibid, pp. 1-10; 33 ff.
- Greg Gordon, “FBI Seeks Delay in Outside Review of Its Anthrax Probe,” McClatchy Newspapers, December 9, 2010, http://www.mcclatchydc. com/2010/12/09/105060/fbi-seeks-delay-in-outside-review.html; Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, “New FBI Material Delays Academy Report on Anthrax Attacks,” Science, December 10, 2010, http://news.sciencemag. org/2010/12/new-fbi-material-delays-academy-report-anthrax-attacks?ref=ra.
- Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Justice Department and FBI Announce Formal Conclusion of Investigation into 2001 Anthrax Attacks, Press release, (February 19, 2010), http://www.justice.gov/ opa/pr/2010/February/10-nsd-166.html.
- Greg Gordon, “Panel Supports FBI’s Findings in Anthrax Letters Case,” McClatchy Washington Bureau, March 23, 2011. A partial, redacted form of the panel’s report is available: “Report of the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel.” Research Strategies Network, 2011.
- Jeffrey Kaye, “Psychologizing Bruce Ivins: Exposing the Amerithrax Behavioral Analysis Experts,” The Public Record (TPR), March 26, 2011.
- “Amerithrax Investigative Summary (Released Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act), ” pp. 75 ff.
- Committee on Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis Mailings, Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, p. 147.
- Scott Shane, “U.S. Revises Its Response to Lawsuit on Anthrax,” The New York Times, July 19, 2011.
- “Amerithrax Investigative Summary (Released Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act),” p. 1.
- Laura Sullivan, “Ivins Lawyer Rebuts DOJ Anthrax Allegations: Full NPR Interview With Ivins’ Attorney Paul Kemp,” NPR (National Public Radio), March 30, 2010.
- “The scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR- 1029 is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary.” “The results of the genetic analyses of the repository samples were consistent with the finding that the spores in the attack letters were derived from RMR-1029, but the analyses did not definitively demonstrate such a relationship.” Committee on Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus anthracis Mailings, Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, p. 6.
- For a general overview of the controversial case, see Jerry Markon, “Justice Department Takes on Itself in Probe of 2001 Anthrax Attacks,” The Washington Post, January 27, 2012.
- DEFENDANT UNITED STATES’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT BASED ON THE ABSENCE OF PROXIMATE CAUSE AND MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT, legal document, (July 15, 2011). Quotations in this section are from this document.
- Markon, “Justice Department Takes on Itself in Probe of 2001 Anthrax Attacks.”
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Martin Hugh-Jones, Barbara Rosenberg, and Stuart Jacobsen, “The 2001 Attack Anthrax: Key Observations,” Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense, October 13, 2011, http://www.omicsonline.org/2157- 2526/2157-2526-S3-001.php?aid=2008; Martin Hugh-Jones, Barbara Rosenberg, and Stuart Jacobsen, “Evidence for the Source of the 2001 Attack Anthrax,” Bioterrorism & Biodefense, December 17, 2012.
- Hugh-Jones, Rosenberg, and Jacobsen, “The 2001 Attack Anthrax: Key Observations,” 1.
- Ibid., 9.
- William Broad and Scott Shane, “Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case,” The New York Times, October 9, 2011.
- Hugh-Jones, Rosenberg, and Jacobsen, “Evidence for the Source of the 2001 Attack Anthrax,” 5.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 1, 6.
- Ibid., 8.
- Barbara Rosenberg and Martin Hugh-Jones, “Scientific Data Points to Government-Made Anthrax,” Frederick News-Post, September 15, 2013.
- “Amerithrax Investigative Summary (Released Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act),” pp. 29 ff.
- This information can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/anthrax-files/
- bid.
- Gary Matsumoto, “Colleague Says Anthrax Numbers Add Up to Unsolved Case,” ProPublica, April 23, 2010.
- Carrie Johnson, “Anthrax Suspect Didn’t Act Alone, Leahy Posits,” Washington Post, September 18, 2008; Joby Warrick and Carrie Johnson, “Lawmaker ‘Skeptical’ Of Anthrax Results,” Washington Post, August 1, 2009.
- A few examples of articles in the media that have raised questions about the FBI’s case: Richard Spertzel, “Bruce Ivins Wasn’t the Anthrax Culprit,” The Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2008; Eric Umansky, “Questions Linger in Ivins Anthrax Investigation,” ProPublica, September 8, 2008; Epstein, “The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved: The FBI Disproved Its Main Theory about How the Spores Were Weaponized.” Matsumoto, “Colleague Says Anthrax Numbers Add Up to Unsolved Case;” Greg Gordon, “Was FBI Too Quick to Judge Anthrax Suspect the Killer?” McClatchy Washington Bureau, April 21, 2011; Greenwald, “Serious Doubt Cast on FBI’s Anthrax Case against Bruce Ivins.” Shane, “U.S. Revises Its Response to Lawsuit on Anthrax;” “Who Mailed the Anthrax Letters?” Editorial, The New York Times, October 17, 2011; Jerry Markon, “Justice Department Takes on Itself in Probe of 2001 Anthrax Attacks,” The Washington Post, January 27, 2012.
- “Amerithrax Investigative Summary (Released Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act),” p. 4.
- This is not meant to be a full account of the weaknesses in the case against Ivins. I have stressed recent evidence and have selected evidence I find very strong.
