Bruce E. Ivins did not act alone. That’s what Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy told the Federal Bureau of Investigation with regard to their sole suspect in the September 2001 Anthrax Case. During a committee hearing held Wednesday morning, Leahy informed FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that he firmly believes there are others who should be charged with murder in the aforementioned case.

Due to lawmakers’ doubts concerning the methods the feds used to determine the culprit, which had never before been used in a case of such magnitude, Mueller announced that the National Academy of Sciences would analyze the FBI’s evidence. At that time, the Bureau, via DNA evidence, linked the anthrax powder to a flask found in a United States Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, where Ivins, who committed suicide in July this year, worked for 35 years as a civilian microbiologist.

The leading military anthrax researcher, who had been working for more than ten years on developing a vaccine against the lethal substance, took his own life the same week the federal prosecutors were planning to seek the death penalty against him. On July 29, Ivins died at Frederick Memorial Hospital after taking a massive dose of Tylenol mixed with codeine. The latter is the most commonly administered opioid analgesic.

The Anthrax Case is deemed by U.S. authorities as the largest bioterrorist attack in the nation’s history, having killed five people and sickened 17 other when letters containing anthrax spores were sent to several news organizations and Capitol Hill offices.