On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit of a former Army scientist against the New York Times. The scientist, Steven Hatfill, sued the publication for libel due to their reports that he said falsely tied him to the deadly 2001 anthrax mail attacks.

The Supreme Court justices refused to intervene, offering no comment and in essence putting an end to the libel case.

The high court’s decision leaves intact an earlier unanimous ruling in July by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia. The circuit court had in turn confirmed the ruling of a federal trial judge had been correct in granting The Times’ motion to Dismiss Dr. Hatfill’s lawsuit.

A federal appeals court had concluded earlier that Steven Hatfill is a “public figure” and as such he needed to prove that the NY Times reports were done in “actual malice”, that is with express knowledge or at least suspicion on the Times’ part that he was not guilty but publishing the defamatory information anyway.

The Attorney General at the time, John Ashcroft, had named Hatfill as “person of interest” to the case of the Anthrax investigation but he was never charged. His home was searched by investigators, a fact which the media reported, as well as his background as a biodefense expert.

The U.S. Justice Department settled a separate lawsuit between Hatfill and the government in June, paying him $5.8 million in damages. The suit purported that officials had violated his privacy by leaking case and personal background details to members of the media.

The second lawsuit, rejected Monday by the high court, had been against the Times itself as well as its columnist Nicholas Kristof, who initially identified Hatfill as “Mr. Z” in a series of columns in May and June of 2002. Kristof later named Hatfill in an August column the same year.

In the lawsuit, Hatfill claimed that "Kristof wrote his columns in such a way as to impute guilt for the anthrax letters to Dr. Hatfill in the minds of reasonable readers."

Hatfill has repeatedly denied involvement in the case, including in a news conference directly after filing his suit, where he stressed: “I am not the anthrax killer.”

No person was ever charged or convicted in the deadly bacterial attacks of the fall of 2001. Spores of the deadly Bacillus Anthracis were sent by mail to several politicians and media organizations, and ended up infecting several postal employees. All-in-all five people were left dead and seventeen others were severely ill.

In August, federal authorities revealed that they had found what they called overwhelming circumstantial evidence that pointed to one Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist stationed along with Hatfill at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Ivins committed suicide as the federal investigation focused on him.