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Bruce Ivins, the main suspect in anthrax
case sent himself an e-mail saying he new the identity of the man who sent the deadly
anthrax mailings. The subject was “Finally! I know who mailed the anthrax!”
Bruce Ivins, 62, who authorities say killed
himself in July as the Justice Department prepared to charge him in the anthrax
case, is alleged to have sent the mail on Sept 7, 2007. But the e-mail message does
not identify the attacker. In the message, Ivins says he plans on turning the information over
to his lawyer who would then give it to authorities. The former biodefense
researcher says he has to check a couple of things to be sure and then he can
turn over the information and the final proof.
“I’m not looking forward to everybody
getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will be over,’ the e-mail
reads in an apparent reference to his colleagues at Ft. Detrick.
“Finally! I should have it TOTALLY nailed down within the month. I should have
been a private eye!!!!”
Officials from the FBI and the Justice
Department have said that Ivins alone was responsible for the anthrax attacks. But
the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said that the former scientist
couldn’t have worked alone in the case of the anthrax letters. He said that he
did not believe the FBI’s supposition that an Army scientist conducted the
attacks alone.
Ivins worked at Army's biodefense lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland
and committed suicide on July 29 by taking an acetaminophen overdose. Ivins had access to the anthrax strain in the letters and might have had
reasons to send them to members of Congress and several people from the media.
On the other hand, skeptics say that the government researcher
was singled out because he was the “weakest link.” Most of Ivins colleagues say
that his behavior only became abnormal after being pursued relentlessly by FBI.
FBI investigators have said they traced a
strain of anthrax from the envelopes that were sent to victims to a batch of anthrax
in Ivin’s lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
And the case was thought to be over. Bruce Ivins’s colleagues allege that,
armed with this evidence, the FBI began to pressure the people at the
laboratory and singled out Ivins because he was most susceptible to being
intimidated.
The anthrax attacks occurred less than a
month after the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks that killed thousands of
people in New York, Washington
and Pennsylvania.
The anthrax mailings that were sent to media organizations and politicians had
killed five people – one of them was a postal worker in the mailroom of the New
York Post –, shut down a Senate office building and spread fear of further terrorism.
Seventeen people become ill but they recovered after treatment.
The Justice Department decided to keep the
anthrax investigation officially open after it initially said the anthrax case had
been solved. “We are working to close the investigation soon,” Justice
Department spokesman Dean Boyd said.
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