Last Friday, the FBI announced that it was closing its case on the Amerithrax incident of 2001. They believe that Bruce Ivins, a government scientist at Fort Detrick, is in fact the perpetrator of the letters that were sent out of a New Jersey mailbox, causing much panic and several tens of billions of dollars of investment to develop specific countermeasures to any future incident. The FBI has a dedicated site to this issue here. From the NY Times:
The report disclosed for the first time the F.B.I.’s theory that Dr. Ivins embedded in the notes mailed with the anthrax a complex coded message, based on DNA biochemistry, alluding to two female former colleagues with whom he was obsessed.
The report described how an F.B.I. surveillance agent watched in 2007 as Dr. Ivins threw out a article and a book, Douglas Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,” that could betray his interest in codes, coming out of his house in Frederick, Md., at 1 a.m. in long underwear to make certain the garbage truck had taken his trash.
Whether the voluminous documentation will convince skeptics about Dr. Ivins’s guilt was uncertain on Friday. Representative Rush D. Holt a New Jersey Democrat and a physicist who has sharply criticized the bureau’s work, said the case should not have been closed.
“Arbitrarily closing the case on a Friday afternoon should not mean the end of this investigation,” Mr. Holt said, noting that the National Academy of Sciences was still studying the F.B.I.’s scientific work. He said the F.B.I. report laid out “barely a circumstantial case” that “would not, I think, stand up in court.”
Rep. Holt is talking out of his ass, of course, but we shouldn't hold his symptoms of being a politician against him. It's natural for Americans to distrust what the government tells us - we look for vast conspiracies against our common good, and are disappointed when it's only a "lone gunman." Others will criticize the FBI's scientific analyses of the anthrax spores, or that Ivins was a fall guy for the FBI's failure to find a perp quickly enough. But here's the thing that I think many people miss - analyzing the anthrax spores was a key step in figuring out whether this was a domestic incident or a foreign incident, and it wasn't just DOJ-connected forensic labs doing the work, it was a host of DOD and other federal agencies who were performing the analyses. Once the possibilities were narrowed down, then it was just a matter of traditional law enforcement practice to focus on on a few suspects.
Ivins had access to the biological material, he had a motive (so to speak - more on this later), and the opportunity to mail the letters. The envelopes came from the Maryland/Virginia area, the language in the letters was similar to writings of Ivins, he undertook suspicious behavior, and he had mental issues. He was not a well man, and unfortunately, it seems that we didn't have a solid screening process for researchers using BW material as we do for CW material (that's been corrected, I think).
I had to read the motives section carefully before I understood it. The FBI had reason to suspect that Ivins sent out the anthrax:
Based on his e-mails to two former colleagues (hereinafter “Former Colleague #1 and Former Colleague #2), and from his own statements to investigators, it is clear that by the summer of 2001, Dr. Ivins was under an extraordinary amount of stress in his professional life. The anthrax vaccine research program that Dr. Ivins had invested essentially his entire career of more than 20 years was in jeopardy of failure. The anthrax vaccine with which he was assisting was failing to meet potency standards and, absent some major breakthrough, may have been eliminated. Also, the military anthrax vaccine, and Dr. Ivins, in particular, were the subject of increasingly vocal criticism by those who associated the vaccine with “Gulf War Syndrome.” Finally, the rPA, or Next Generation Anthrax Vaccine, on which he was also working, had run its course at USAMRIID, leaving him potentially without anthrax research to do. According to Former Colleague #1 and others, Dr. Ivins not only took great pride in his work, but also he could not stand to be criticized. Under extreme pressure from so many different assaults on his career and life’s work, Dr. Ivins had a motive to commit the crime.
I think some of it needs to be explained better. Before 1996, the DOD's entire anthrax vaccine production came from one plant in Lansing, Michigan, owned by the Michigan Department of Public Health. Because of the severe shortfalls witnessed in the Persian Gulf War (1991), the DOD wanted to produce the vaccine in a greater amount so that the total force would be protected from the number 1 BW threat in the world prior to shipping out. A company called BioPort bought the facility, which is now "Emergent BioSolutions." The problem was that BioPort needed to upgrade the 1970s-era facility to meet the DOD requirement, and it needed FDA approval to do that. The FDA found some problems that would take years and millions of dollars to correct.
So BioPort started producing the vaccine anyway, because DOD had only one source to get any anthrax vaccine - but it was "quarantined" until the FDA approved the lots. In the meantime, the DOD was running out of the older MDPH-produced vaccine lots, and there was all this "Gulf War illness" controversy. Ivins evidently felt pressure because the public trust in "his" anthrax vaccine was evaporating, and that his current work on a next generation anthrax vaccine was in jeopardy. He didn't want to do other biological research, he viewed himself as "an anthrax researcher." So he decided to create an incident that would force people to take his work seriously.
I want to stress two things here: first of all, and fundamentally, this decision of Ivins - if it was based on his insecurity and pride over his work - was not a rational one. He had no reason to believe that his work was in jeopardy. Yes, BioPort had some initial technical issues in getting FDA approval (and for the record, it did get FDA approval for production and the quarantined lots were released for use), but there was literally no other source of vaccine available. There were significant demands by other nations and other federal agencies for BioPort's limited stocks (especially in 2002-2003), let alone the prime contract to support the DOD demand for vaccine for all of its military units and research laboratories.
There was a delay, yes, there was scrutiny (some of it unwarranted), yes, but there was no chance that BioPort was going to be shut down or that all of the agencies and nations looking for anthrax vaccine were going to accept Cipro as the answer. This was a guaranteed cash cow, which is why BioPort had lots of interested investors watching as the DOD paid higher and higher per-unit costs for anthrax as a result of these delays and modernization efforts at the plant. Ivins was in a very safe area of military medical research, very important and very necessary for combat forces to fight and survive in a CBRN threat environment.
Second, obviously Ivins is dead and isn't going to confirm what his motive was or if he had assistance or if there's a one-armed man who really did it but pinned it on Ivins. It falls to traditional law enforcement practices to put all of the pieces together.
In its early stages, despite the enormous amount of evidence gathered through traditional law enforcement techniques, limitations on scientific methods prevented law enforcement from determining who was responsible for the attacks. Eventually, traditional law enforcement techniques were combined with groundbreaking scientific analysis that was developed specifically for the case to trace the anthrax used in the attacks to a particular flask of material. By 2007, investigators conclusively determined that a single spore-batch created and maintained by Dr. Bruce E. Ivins at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (“USAMRIID”) was the parent material for the letter spores. An intensive investigation of individuals with access to that material ensued. Evidence developed from that investigation established that Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters.
Yes, the FBI could have run this investigation better, and yes, they still don't "get" CBRN terrorism, but they're getting better at understanding it. But this is why we let law enforcement run terrorism issues, because in the end, they have to resolve who did what, when and where. It's not up to the military to determine who was behind the Amerithrax incident or any future terrorism incident. It's the military's job to watch for indications of such activity, to make sure that our military service personnel can survive such attacks, and to use lethal force to take out terrorists who are attacking us when it's in a military context. It's up to the law enforcement community to prevent such incidents (ideally), to figure out how it happened, and to make the solid case that particular individuals are the ones who did it. I think the FBI got the right man.
I think the FBI's case against Dr. Ivins is bogus: no evidence, no witnesses, an impossible timeline. Your analysis above does not convince me at all.
The case made public by the FBI could never hold up in court, which is why it was so convenient to charge a dead man. If that's the best the FBI can offer after the most extensive investigation in their history, shame on them.
The real question is why the FBI persists in sticking to such a pathetic story. What are they hiding?
You can follow and participate in a discussion of the anthrax murders at www.caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com.
Your contrary comments are welcome.
Posted by: Lew Weinstein | 22 February 2010 at 12:31 PM
The FBI sticks to the story because they've exhausted all leads Lew and have been thorough in doing so. It's simple Sherlock Holmes, when you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true. That includes lack of evidence, witnesses, and shortened timelines. If a tree falls in a forest and no one sees it, does it make a sound? You're god damn right it does, so if Bruce Ivins is alone in his lab being an "anthrax researcher" does that mean he didn't cause the amerithrax incidents because no one saw him mix the flask?
Nice post J. I'm witchoo
Posted by: NVH | 22 February 2010 at 12:45 PM
Also think the case against Irvins is bogus.
Irvins was growing very small batches of wet spores using a lypholyzer (something like that) for bio research on animals. In contrast the anthrax attack used huge amounts of dry spores of uniform size, and that had been treated electro statically so they would not cling or clump and and would remain airborne. In other words this was weaponized anthrax, and I have heard no evidence suggesting that he could have made these spores. Notice the phrasing 'access to the biological material'. if US labs were using anthrax from the same source, that does not mean anything. He had genetically similar anthrax as did many other researchers, plus he committed suicide after we hounded him relentlessly? thats not a case. thats a joke.
I look forward to someone explaining what Im getting wrong here.
Posted by: aaron | 22 February 2010 at 10:04 PM
Would we be making any OTHER kind of anthrax other than weaponized to study? Do you really think we lost all our capability to research and study this stuff in the 1970s? No, we just didn't reneg like the Russians did on the agreement and didn't pursue offensive capabilities. We did keep on looking at in limited ways how to deal with weaponized agents...
Also, do you really think you're going to get Law Enforcement agents down into the weeds with all this small batch, wet spore, lypholyzer BS talk? No, you're not. You're going to get a list of dudes who can and can't make the stuff, had access, and then you look at their backgrounds and histories and careers and personalities. And no offense, even if he was innocent, and he killed himself b/c he doesn't like being talked to, I don't want him handling the countries Bio Defense capabilites whatsoever...
Posted by: NVH | 23 February 2010 at 10:00 AM
What NVH said. Not to make this (another) legal defense, the anthrax used in the Amerithrax letters was not a "huge amount," it was in single digit grams. Funny thing about bio materials, you can grow as much as you want, it's not limited like chemicals or nuclear material. The anthrax spores were not "weaponized" in as far as coatings, that was an initial view that was later debunked. The anthrax was dried and ground up to be aerosolized, but the silicon "coating" ended up being an environmental contaminant, not a deliberate engineering step. And if you compare the anthrax in the first letters to the latter ones, you see that the early stuff was crude, the latter batches were more refined (but not "weaponized"). Read the report. The investigative side pretty much proves out the case after the forensics pointed to Fort Detrick as the probable source.
Posted by: J. | 23 February 2010 at 10:38 AM
"J" writes "read the report". Yes, the report is very revealing. It shows why the alarm bells rang over the dispersibility of the Daschle powder. After Bruce Ivins showed that it dispersed into single spores upon plating (>10^12 colony forming units per gram), that was alarming enough. But then the government quickly gathered a collection of dry spore simulnats they had availiable in house. These dry spore simulants are ALWAYS weaponized with silica - that's standard procedure.
When Bruce Ivins plated these the alarm bells really went off - the Daschle powder dispersed into single spores at least 2 orders of magnitude more effectively than the weaponized simulants - in most cases much more than 2 orders of magnitude.
And we are supposed to believe he made a product orders of magnitude more effective than the simulants all on his own covertly when he had never made a weaponized dry powder preparation before in his life?
The numbers don't lie - and the science doesn't lie if you understand it.
It's all documented in page 121- 130 at http://foia.fbi.gov/amerithrax/847545.PDF
Posted by: S | 02 March 2010 at 11:38 AM