Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), one of those targeted in the anthrax letters attack of 2001, is skeptical that FBI's suspect, who recently committed suicide, acted alone. Leahy told FBI director Robert S. Mueller III that, even if the Bureau was right about his involvement in the case, he thought that Bruce Ivins had been helped by accomplices.

Leahy used very strong words, claiming that he does not believe in "any way, shape or manner" that Ivins was the sole responsible for the anthrax attacks, also stating that he thinks others may be charged with murder. Ivins's defense lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, said that there was no evidence that his former client had acted at all in the anthrax case, alone or with anyone else.

Leahy's pressure on the FBI could help the push for an independent review of the evidence that authorities gathered against Bruce E. Ivins. Many have questioned both the Bureau's handling of the case and the apparently circumstantial evidence that they had on him. His colleagues claimed that he began acting strange only after the FBI put pressure on him during the investigation.

Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins, was a government expert who killed himself as he was about to be charged by the Justice Department with conducting the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Ivins died July 29 at Frederick Memorial Hospital after taking a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine. He helped the FBI investigate an anthrax-tainted envelope sent to a US senator’s Washington office, as a microbiologist for a government laboratory. For the past 18 years, Irvin worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md. He had played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccine by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals, and was decorated for his outstanding contribution to biodefense.