Officials: Ivins guilty in anthrax attacks in 2001 that killed 5 people, shook nation

The accused was born in Lebanon, Ohio, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Army scientist Bruce Ivins “was the only person responsible” for anthrax attacks in 2001 that killed five and rattled the nation, the Justice Department said Wednesday, buttressing its claim with the release of dozens of documents all pointing to his guilt.

Ivins, who committed suicide last week, had sole custody of highly purified anthrax spores with “certain genetic mutations identical” to the poison used in the attacks, according to the documents. Investigators also said they had traced back to his lab the type of envelopes used to send the deadly powder through the mails.

Ivins, who grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati, killed himself last week as investigators closed in, and U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said, “We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury.”

The prosecutor’s news conference capped a fast-paced series of events in which the government partially lifted its veil of secrecy in the investigation of the poisonings that followed closely after the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner terror attacks.

The newly released records depict the scientist as deeply troubled, increasingly so as he confronted the possibility of being charged.

“He said he was not going to face the death penalty, but instead had a plan to kill co-workers and other individuals who had wronged him,” according to one affidavit. In e-mails to colleagues, Ivins described a feeling of dual personalities, the material said.

The affidavits also said Ivins submitted false anthrax samples to the FBI, was unable to give investigators “an adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours around the time of” the attacks and sought to frame unidentified co-workers.

In addition, he was said to have received immunizations against anthrax and yellow fever in early September 2001, several weeks before the first anthrax-laced envelope was received in the mail.

Authorities say that language Ivins used in an e-mail days before the 2001 anthrax attacks was similar to the messages in anthrax-laced letters to Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

In the e-mail, Ivins wrote that “Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas” and have “just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans.” The letters to Daschle and Leahy said: “WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX . . . DEATH TO AMERICA . . . DEATH TO ISRAEL.”

Wednesday’s documents were released as the FBI held a private briefing for families of the victims of the attacks, and officials said the agency was preparing to close the case.

As for motive, investigators seemed to offer two possible reasons for the attacks: that the brilliant scientist wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that the anti-abortion Catholic targeted two pro-choice Catholic lawmakers.

“We are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks,” Taylor told a news conference at the Justice Department.

The events in Washington unfolded as a memorial service was held for Ivins at Fort Detrick, the secret government installation in Frederick, Md., where he worked. Reporters were barred.

More than 200 pages of documents were made public by the FBI, virtually all of them describing the government’s attempts to link Ivins to the crimes.

The government material describes at length painstaking scientific efforts to trace the source of the anthrax that was used in the attacks.

It says that in his lab, Ivins had custody of a flask of anthrax termed “the genetic parent” to the powder involved — a source that investigators say was used to grow spores for the attacks on “at least two separate occasions.”

Anthrax culled from the letters was quickly discovered to be the so-called Ames strain of bacteria, but with genetic mutations that made it distinct. Scientists developed more sophisticated tests for four of those mutations, and concluded that all the samples that matched came from a single batch, code-named RMR-1029, stored at Fort Detrick.

Ivins “has been the sole custodian of RMR-1029 since it was first grown in 1997,” said one affidavit.

Stephen A. Hatfill’s career as a bioscientist was ruined after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft named him a “person of interest” in the probe. The government recently paid $6 million to settle a lawsuit by Hatfill, who worked in the same lab.