Tel-Chai Nation

Bruce Ivins, the scientist who mailed letters laced with anthrax some time after 9-11, has committed suicide before the feds could nab him:

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

[...]

Ivins was the co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Just last month, the government exonerated another scientist at the Fort Detrick lab, Steven Hatfill, who had been identified by the FBI as a "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks. The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit he filed against the Justice Department in which he claimed the department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case.

The Times said federal investigators moved away from Hatfill and concluded Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the investigation in 2006. The new investigators instructed agents to re-examine leads and reconsider potential suspects. In the meantime, investigators made progress in analyzing anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two U.S. senators, according to the report.

Besides the five deaths, 17 people were sickened by anthrax that was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The victims included postal workers and others who came into contact with the anthrax.

If there's anything that isn't mentioned here, it's the question of if Ivins was a Muslim. He was quite possibly an al Qaeda sympathiser though, and that's surely why he committed those nasty, hateful crimes of his.

Update: The American Thinker finds some very disturbing news that even before 9-11, Ivins may have tried to kill co-workers of his:

Social worker Jean C. Duley also said Ivins left her a telephone message in mid-July, after she had alerted police to his threats, telling her that that her actions had made it possible for the FBI "to now be able to prosecute him for the murders."

Duley testified at a Frederick County District Court hearing July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins. The New York Times obtained a recording of the hearing and posted on its Web site Saturday.

Duley testified that Ivins had tried to poison people even before the 2001 attacks.

"As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning ... He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he's been slighted or has had - especially toward women - he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings," Duley said.

She added that Ivins "has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer. I have that in evidence. And through my working with him, I also believe that to be very true."

Duley told the judge she was "scared to death" of Ivins.

While it may not prove Ivins guilty, it certainly does make a strong case that Ivins was capable of committing the horrific crimes. And it makes it all the more a mystery why a man as dangerous as that was ever allowed to work in a weapons facility.

Labels: terrorism, United States