Anthrax in the News Again

Update below

"Whatever happened to the anthrax investigation?" I asked some of my co-workers recently during conversation between tutoring sessions at the community college where I now tutor part-time.

Well, that investigation is once again in the news, as the most recent suspect committed suicide this week. Considering the FBI's bumbling in the case (Steven Hatfill, the previous suspect, was exonerated and recently settled with the Dept. of Justice and the FBI for $5.2 million), I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions about this final suspect. Maybe he was pushed to the edge by the focus of the investigation. However, these details about the man are rather interesting:

• Dr. Bruce Ivins worked in the Army lab at Fort Detrick where intensive studies on live anthrax spores were performed. He even swabbed contaminated areas in the lab and in his office in 2001 and 2002, without telling anyone until questioned later in an Army investigation.
• He had been acting erratically lately, suffering from depression and making homicidal threats against his co-workers and a social worker.
• According to letters he had written to his local newspaper, as a conservative Christian, he supported the Bush administration and believed that the U. S. should be governed according to the Gospel. (I would hesitate to call him a Christian "fanatic," as one blogger has, based just on these letters, however.)
• According to the Los Angeles Times, Ivins was "a co-inventor of a new anthrax vaccine", and he stood to benefit monetarily if the product came to market.
• Ivins conducted research on squalene, a component of the anthrax vaccines given to U. S. soldiers to supposedly protect them against bio-terrorism. These vaccinations have caused a lot of controversy. Journalist Gary Matsumoto has written a book on this controversy, titled Vaccine-A: The Covert Government Experiment that's Killing Our Soldiers and Why GIs are Only the First Victims.

When the anthrax letters were mailed, the fear and terror created by the attacks on 9/11 racheted up. Hoax letters were sent, and suspicious packages were found around the country, most turning out to be non-threatening. For instance, some white powder on the floor of a woman's restroom at a university where I was teaching caused a stir; local police were called to investigate. The substance was bath powder, if I remember correctly. Although I'm not susceptible to hysteria, I remember casually looking at websites advertising bio-terrorism wear for civilians--gas masks in child sizes and such!

More seriously, however, the anthrax letters were used to gender support for war against Iraq. Glenn Greenwald has extensively documented the role of ABC News in linking anthrax with Iraq.

This whole story is begging for a Congressional investigation. Congress should look into what government sources fed information to ABC, linking the anthrax with Iraq, and into why the FBI has been so ineffective in its search for the source of the anthrax. Is there a conspiracy? (My tendency is to think not conspiracy but opportunism as being the Bush administration's MO in manipulating facts to advance its desire to begin a war with Iraq.) Has there been a cover-up? Was Dr. Ivins the anthrax terrorist or is he a fall-guy? Inquiring minds want to know.

Update. Monday, 4 August
A New York Times article paints a disturbing picture of the FBI's errors and sloppiness in investigating the origins of the anthrax-laden letters. Here is the link: "Anthrax Evidence is Said to Be Circumstantial," Scott Shane, New York Times, 4 Aug. 2008.

2nd Update
Glenn Greenwald has posted information about the credibility of the social worker upon whose public record hangs a great deal of the negative perception of Dr. Ivins' personality. Greenwald points out that while Dr. Ivins may well be the person who sent the anthrax letters, those charges have not been proven yet. And plenty of people who knew Dr. Ivins well remain skeptical of the charges. We should be cautious about jumping to conclusions in a case in which the FBI's investigation has been so poorly led.

I recall how an investigation in the 1990s, by the Dayton and Liberty County police in Texas, led to the arrest of an aunt of mine. My aunt had been robbed and raped, yet before the investigation was over, the police had taken my emotionally shaken aunt alone in a room, hooked her up to a polygraph, and interrogated her to such an extent that she ended up confessing having stolen the money and lying about the rape. Prior to this harassment, the police had lost the rape kit, and they had tried to get my aunt to finger a man who had just been released from prison. In the later interrogation, the police browbeat my aunt, telling her the polygraph indicated that she was lying, that it would be better for her and her family if she confessed to the crime. My aunt was so emotionally unstable by this time that she copped to the crime even though she didn't do it. Then she tried to commit suicide.

Circumstantial evidence can seem to be damning when it's just an unhappy example of how connecting-the-dots can result in any number of conflicting scenarios, depending upon who is holding the pen.