Justice Department Unseals Evidence in Anthrax Case

WASHINGTON — An emotionally troubled Army microbiologist acted alone in mailing anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and shook the nation seven years ago, federal investigators said Wednesday.

They said they would have proven his guilt in court had the suspect, Bruce Ivins, not committed suicide last week.

"We are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks," U.S. attorney Jeffrey Taylor told reporters. "Had this gone to trial, we would have proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

Ivins, who received the Pentagon's highest civilian award five years ago for his work on developing an anthrax vaccine, died last week in a Frederick, Md., hospital of an overdose of medical drugs.

His attorney, Paul Kemp, has asserted Ivins' innocence.

In an extraordinary move, the Justice Department received a federal court order allowing sealed evidence compiled against Ivins to be released to the public on Wednesday.

In sworn affidavits and other documents, investigators laid out circumstantial evidence against Ivins, including allegations that:

_ "At the time of the attacks, he was the custodian of a large flask of highly purified anthrax spores that possess certain genetic mutations identical to the anthrax used in the attacks."

_ He gave unsatisfactory and inconsistent explanations as to why he spent more hours at work during the time of the attacks than before or since.

_ He gave FBI investigators false samples of his anthrax "in order to mislead investigators."

_ During the weeks preceding the attacks, Ivins told coworkers he had "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times" and feared that he might not be able to control his behavior.

_ Postal inspections determined that the envelopes - bought with pre-paid postage - used to mail the anthrax-laced letters were likely bought from a U.S. Post Office in Frederick, Md., near Ivins' home.

Such evidence is, by law, kept secret during an investigation and made public only during a trial, when a suspect has the opportunity to present a defense.

With no opportunity to present the evidence in court, however, the Justice Department requested, and received, court permission to make the evidence public, Taylor said, due to the widespread interest in the crime.

"We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury," he said.

Taylor even suggested a possible motive: creating a national anthrax scare to bolster government support for the work Ivins and his team were doing in developing an anthrax vaccine.

The anthrax attacks took place in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As the country reeled from those losses, news of deadly anthrax-laced letters moving through the U.S. Postal Service shook Americans' confidence in their own security and the ability of the government to safeguard the nation.

The letters were mailed from a postal box in Princeton, N.J., to newsrooms in Florida and New York, as well as the Capitol Hill offices of two U.S. senators, Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., since voted out of office, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

What followed were seven years of investigations, more than 9,100 interviews and hundreds of thousands of hours invested in determining the source of the attacks.

The breakthrough came two years ago when FBI scientists developed a way to identify the anthrax used in the attack by its genetic fingerprint.

Investigators traced its origin to a single flask of spores created and maintained by Ivins.

"No one received material from that flask without going through Dr. Ivins," said Taylor.

"It appears, based on the evidence, that he acted alone," said Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office.

Persichini joined FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday for a two-hour briefing on the investigation's findings for family members of the five people who were killed and some of the 17 survivors who were hospitalized at the time.

The first victim was Boca Raton photo editor Robert Stevens, 63, who opened a letter containing anthrax-laden powder at his office, came down with flu-like symptoms and died Oct. 5, 2001.

It was "a moving day for all of us," said Persichini, who described the briefing as a step toward closure in a painful crime that had long confounded investigators, victims and family members, all of whom avoided reporters after the briefings at FBI headquarters in downtown Washington.

In the documents released, investigators said that, as early as 2002, Ivins had suggested to investigators the names of coworkers who might have been involved in the attacks.

That summer, Steven Hatfill, who also worked for the Army's bio-defense labs, was singled out as a "person of interest." Hatfill filled a lawsuit against the Justice Department, accusing federal investigators of sullying his reputation. In June, the government awarded Hatfill $5.9 million to drop the suit.

The anthrax bacterium - bacillus anthracis - occurs naturally in spores and is lethal, killing about 90 percent of people who ingest it and go untreated.

Ivins helped to develop and improve anthrax vaccines in his career at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick, Md.

Memorial services were held there Wednesday in his honor. Reporters were barred from the event.