More Weirdness in the Anthrax Mailings

It's been a while since I've written about the issues with the FBI's investigation of the Anthrax mailings, and now it appears that the GAO report on this matter has attracted the interest of The New York Times:

A congressional inquiry into the F.B.I.’s scientific work on the anthrax mailings of 2001 has identified major gaps in genetic evidence that purportedly links the germs to Bruce E. Ivins, the Army microbiologist blamed for attacks that killed five people, sickened 17 others and shook the nation.

The Government Accountability Office study, requested in 2010 and made public on Friday, echoes earlier criticism from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2011, its expert panel found that the bureau’s analysis of the genetic evidence “did not definitively demonstrate” a firm link between the mailed anthrax spores and a sample taken from Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, and more generally was “not as conclusive” as the bureau had asserted.

The G.A.O. had better access to F.B.I. records and deepened the genetic critique, finding that the bureau’s investigation “lacked several important characteristics” that could have strengthened its case. “A key scientific gap,” the 77-page report said, was the bureau’s failure to investigate whether samples of anthrax spores could naturally mutate enough to obscure their putative links to Dr. Ivins.

I think that it is more than likely that Dr. Ivins was involved in the anthrax mailing.

I know that the FBI was flailing wildly, and was looking for anyone that they could finger as the perp, and Ivins was the 2^nd person that the FBI aggressively harassed, the first being Steven Hatfill, and it appears that in both cases, the FBI was hoping for a suicide to end their search.

Scientist Poke Holes in FBI's Anthrax Mailer ID

And they are doing this in a peer reviewed journal:

A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.

Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.

F.B.I. documents reviewed by The New York Times show that bureau scientists focused on tin early in their eight-year investigation, calling it an “element of interest” and a potentially critical clue to the criminal case. They later dropped their lengthy inquiry, never mentioned tin publicly and never offered any detailed account of how they thought the powder had been made.

The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.

Both the chairwoman of a National Academy of Science panel that spent a year and a half reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work and the director of a new review by the Government Accountability Office said the paper raised important questions that should be addressed.

…………

In its report last February, the National Academy of Sciences panel sharply criticized some of the F.B.I.’s scientific work, saying the genetic link between the attack anthrax and a supply in Dr. Ivins’s lab was “not as conclusive” as the bureau asserted.

If the authors of the new paper are correct about the silicon-tin coating, it appears likely that Dr. Ivins could not have made the anthrax powder alone with the equipment he possessed, as the F.B.I. maintains. That would mean either that he got the powder from elsewhere or that he was not the perpetrator.

The FBI hasn't covered itself in glory,

Their behavior towards their first "person of interest", Steven Hatfill, as well as their behavior toward Bruce Ivins, seemed to be geared more toward driving their subjects to self destruction than to any finding of fact. (They went after Ivins' counselor, for example).

The bottom line here is that there is a lot of highly classified information that was not subject to review for this article, and a continued insistence on the part of the DoJ merely serves to reinforce the people who believe that the FBI did not find the right guy.

I Said that the Ivins AnthraxEvidence was Tenuous………

Lawyers at the Department of Justice have concluded that, notwithstanding the FBI's claims to the contrary, there is absolutely no evidence that accused anthrax mailer Bruce Ivins had any access to equipment that would have had to be used to weapoonize the disease:

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago.

………

Now, however, Justice Department lawyers have acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab — the so-called hot suite — didn't contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

The government said it continued to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court didn't explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that his secure lab "did not have the specialized equipment . . . that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters."

The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never provided direct evidence that he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder.

Earlier this year, a report by the National Academy of Sciences questioned the genetic analysis that had linked a flask of anthrax stored in Ivins' office to the anthrax in the letters.

I've always felt that the FBI was more interested in finding some guy than they were interested in finding the guy, and from that perspective.

In fact I think that Ivins' suicide was an implicit goal of their tactics, which appears to have been a desired outcome for the FBI (they went out of their way to, for example, alienate and terrify his therapist), because dead men don't defend themselves.

It makes it easier to close the case.

Background here.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along…

The National Academy of Sciences has reviewed the FBI's forensic claims regarding Bruce Ivins and the Anthrax mailing investigation, and has politely called bullsh%$ on this:

The National Academy of Sciences is just out with a 190-page review [1] of the forensic science behind the FBI's investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. The takeaway: Some of the evidence cited to identify Army microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins as the perpetrator isn't as conclusive as the FBI has claimed.

In particular, the panel of experts said it "did not definitively demonstrate" that the source of the anthrax was spores taken from a flask controlled by Ivins, a microbiologist who did vaccine research at the U.S. Army Institute for Medical Research of Infection Diseases in Maryland. Nor did scientific data generated for the FBI "rule out other sources" for the anthrax, the panel's report says.

Considering the record on the investigation, the you can review their tactics to the prior "person of interest" in this situation (Stephen Hatfill, who was exonerated and received a cash settlement) and be rather surprised that he didn't top himself as well.

Anthrax Terrorism Case Officially Closed

So, the FBI says that it's case closed.

I've been following this for some time, and as I have noted before, I'm not certain of this.