DNA tests helped finger suspect anthrax scientist

ADVANCED DNA testing led federal investigators to suspect a government scientist in the 2001 anthrax killings.

The scientist’s odd behaviour, suspicious e-mails and unusual work hours convinced them they had the right man.

The government declared the 2001 attacks solved on Wednesday, pointing the blame at former army scientist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide last week as prosecutors prepared to bring charges. The Justice Department said it was confident it could have convicted the scientist, who spent his career developing anthrax vaccines and cures at the bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Authorities cited advanced DNA testing that showed Ivins, 62, had in his laboratory anthrax spores identical to those that killed five and shocked a nation still reeling from the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Prosecutors described Ivins’ unexplained late nights in the laboratory just before the attacks. They released an e-mail excerpt that used language similar to that of one of the anthrax letters. They said he was angry about criticism of his anthrax vaccine and might have released the toxin to get support for his drug.

Other e-mails revealed his troubled mind in the period leading up to the anthrax mailings.

“I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind,” he wrote in an e-mail to a friend on August 12, 2000. “I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there’s nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs.”

It was enough for the Justice Department to declare solved a case that had been one of its most puzzling.

“We regret we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury,” US attorney Jeffrey Taylor said.

One victim agreed, but said he is satisfied by the evidence.

“This is justice enough for me,” New York Post editor Mark Cunningham, one of three of the paper’s staffers who suffered anthrax skin infections, wrote in yesterday’s editions.

But it was not enough to convince Ivins’ supporters and may not be enough to quiet critics who say the FBI was looking for someone to blame after focusing on the wrong man for too long.

“I just don’t think he did it and I don’t think the evidence exists,” said Ivins’ attorney, Paul F. Kemp.

Investigators at the FBI and US Postal Service originally thought al-Qaida may have been behind the attacks. It wasn’t long, though, before the focus switched to Fort Detrick scientist Steven Hatfill. It would be years before DNA technology narrowed the field to Ivins and a handful of others who had access to a specific batch of anthrax.

Hatfill got $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit filed against the Justice Department to clear his name, and authorities kept investigating.