Bruce E. Ivins, the US scientist who killed himself amid an anthrax investigation, used two computers at the C. Burr Artz Public Library on the evening of July 24. The scientist visited a Web site dedicated to the anthrax investigation, the search warrant approved by Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said. The federal judge authorized the FBI to search the computers used by Bruce Ivins, hoping the search of the computers “may reveal documentary evidence that will assist the investigation into ... threats to witnesses related to the anthrax investigation,” the affidavit said.
The Justice Department decided to keep the anthrax investigation officially open after it initially said the anthrax case had been solved.
New details about the anthrax case and the reasons behind Dr. Ivins’ decision to send the anthrax letters were revealed by the FBI. It appears that Dr. Ivins was undergoing psychiatric treatment while working at the government biodefense research laboratories. Ivins’ psychotherapist said she requested a protective order from Ivins because she was scared to death according to her testimony at a Frederick County District Court hearing. Duley said Ivins had “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.” Other top psychiatrists considered him a “sociopathic” and a “homicidal killer.”
When asked about all these details and about Ivins’ psychiatric history, Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Dr. Ivins worked, said she did not know if the Army had been aware that Dr. Ivins was undergoing psychiatric treatment as early as 2000, before the incident happened. However, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has offered no explanation for why Ivins was allowed to work at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories.
Bruce Ivins, 62, had worked for the past 18 years at the government biodefense research laboratories at Detrick, Md. Ivins had played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals. But Ivins had also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator’s Washington office.
Ivins, who is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, as federal records show, and as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines, was among those in line to collect patent royalties if the product had come to market, an executive familiar with the matter said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The case is full of contradictions. His death came as a shock for the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), as well as for his family and friends. One of his colleagues described the scientist as “a brilliant man, very intense with his work.” On the other hand, one of his colleagues said Ivins was committed to a facility in Frederick to treat his depression but on July 24, he was released from the facility.
Ivins was also scheduled to appear in court Thursday after a woman accused him of stalking her. He was under a restraining order on allegations of stalking, threatening and harassing a woman.
Last weekend, Dr. Ivins, a 62-year-old father of two, took an overdose of Tylenol with codeine just as the Justice Department was prepared to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17. The finely powdered anthrax was sent through the mail to media organizations and politicians shortly after the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda militants in 2001.
