Scientists raise queries over FBI anthrax probe

Washington Post : Colleagues and friends of Bruce E. Ivins, the vaccine specialist who committed suicide earlier this week after the FBI indicated they were going to indict him for the 2001 anthrax attacks remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.

Update: 8/4/2008. The New York Times Scott Shane writes that most of the evidence against Ivins is circumstantial, and that the FBI was several weeks away from indicting the scientist. While genetic analysis had linked the anthrax letters to a supply of the deadly bacterium in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., at least 10 people had access to the flask containing that anthrax, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

“What has bothered me is the unscientific, bumbling approach of our investigators,” said Rep Rush D. Holt (D-NJ),a physicist whose New Jersey district includes the contaminated Princeton mailbox.

Mr. Holt said in a recent interview that his first doubts came after anthrax was found in his Congressional office in October 2001 but investigators never returned to conduct systematic testing to trace the path of the anthrax spores.

After that, he said, when contamination at a New Jersey postal processing center indicated that the letters had been mailed on one of a limited number of routes, it took investigators seven months to test several hundred mailboxes and identify the source.

“Within two days they could have dispatched 50 people to wipe all those mailboxes,” Holt said. He wrote to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, on Friday to ask that he testify to Congress about the investigation as soon as it is closed.

Meryl Nass, a doctor with some background in anthrax, queries whether Ivins could have produced the dry form of anthrax used in the attacks.