More Documents in the Case Against Bruce Ivins Released
September 25th, 2008
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In a rare occurrence, I’ve found myself actually thinking “See, this is how it’s supposed to work.”
The case against Bruce Ivins, the prime suspect in the anthrax mailings of 2001 has now been further revealed to the public. Numerous documents, including search warrants, judicial motions, affidavits and reports of evidence had been sealed during the investigation in order to assure the integrity of the investigation. At the time, revealing the contents of the warrants and other documents could have posed a direct threat to the investigation by tipping off suspects to what the FBI was looking for and what evidence they had found.
Now that Ivins has offed himself, the process to get legal clearance to unseal these documents has been underway. The US Department of Justice has just released another batch of original documents that are very telling of the investigation. These include affidavits, search reports, warrant requests and other related documents. They can be viewed directly in PDF format here.
In general, I’m not very quick to offer praise to the government, but in this case the investigation and the release of the documents appears to have been done exactly as it should have been. I’ve stated before that I personally believe that Ivins was probably guilty as the FBI alleges. Their case against him is quite compelling. Normally in the United States, suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but as Ivins is now dead, that will never happen and therefore, in some sense, this general principle does not apply. The fact that the investigation was so thorough and by the book may be partially attributed to the fact that investigators knew they were in the hot seat, given the publicity and high profile nature of the case.
Early on, the investigation focused on Dr. Steven Hatfill. That turned into a major black eye for the government when Hatfill fired back and eventually filed and won a lawsuit against the DOJ. Hatfill, as it turns out, had never even handled live anthrax of the type used in the attacks. After such a blunder, investigators could not afford to name another suspect without some very solid evidence.
I’ve had a chance to skim over some of the documents and they only reinforce the fact that Ivins has all the appearance of a certified nutball with delusions of grandeur and a vindictive, even violent streak.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that the anthrax mailings were part of a conspiracy that involved more than just Ivins or that he was not even involved at all. However, nobody has presented any compelling evidence of this and thus probability still favors the FBI’s theory as being accurate.
Ivins is a bit like Lee Harvey Oswald: He did it. Some people just won’t ever be able to accept that without a confession.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Good Science, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 25th, 2008 at 11:44 am
The man was as guilty as could be. The evidence is very compelling. Really for me though what seals it is that he killed himself. Okay, he might have been depressed and upset over the investigation but normally when someone is accused of something they did not do they want to defend themselves and proclaim their innocence. He didn’t even leave a suicide note. He didn’t leave anything saying that he was innocent but being forced to be the man who was at fault. He just gave no comment and ended it like he had nothing to say. Suicide is something that you don’t associate with false prosecution. It’s associated with someone who knows they have been caught and nothing is left to do. It’s over and they can’t defend themselves anymore. Jig is up.
That plus the evidence convinces me near 100%
There are some people who think it was a government conspiracy and he was murdered and it was made to look like a suicide to make him the fall guy. What I say to that aside from it being 100% unsupported by anything but speculation is “Why not blame it on someone more useful” They could have made Saddam Husein the fall guy. He’s also dead. It would have helped give some more argument to the war in Iraq and the WMD thing there.
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September 25th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I’m not one to believe the government without doubt. I was skeptical of the investigation and this guy being the one but I read three or four of the documents posted and it seems to me like there is a mountain of evidence that points to this guy. He had a pattern of very disturbing behavior and the way he talked about the subject came close to an admission. He was also one of the only people who could have pulled this off.
I do still think there could be possibly others involved, maybe someone else knew something or helped him, but maybe or maybe not. There’s no evidence that anyone else was involved, but I’m just not convinced we can be sure there wasn’t. I am now 100% convinced he was behind it though. He probably acted alone because he seems the type that would, but I think they should continue to follow leads and not rule out there may be others out there involved.
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September 25th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
It is compelling. There was good science done to track down the origin of the spores, but I am not about to pat the investigators on the back too much. They worked on this a long time and in thge begining they were entirely down the wrong road. HE was there and should have stuck out like a sore thumb. Co-workers even were suspicious of him but it took them years to figure out that he was the one. It was only after they had traced the stuff to his lab and then basically eliminated everyone else.
More than anything else, I’m disgusted that there would be so lax security and checks and monitoring with something like weapons grade anthrax. How did this guy get high level clearance with his history of mental issues and continued disturbances? How did he keep it? Why did they ever let one person have the ability to have custody of the spores? Why is anyone given the freedom to come and go in the lab and potentially take the stuff as they want?
It seems obvious to me that something like anthrax spores of this type should be kept under better guard and with a paper trail for anyone who needs access to them etc.
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September 26th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Interested in the Bruce Ivins/Anthrax case read this and pass it around the blogosphere ..
http://www.ersnews.com/permas_stories_updates/anthrax.htm
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September 27th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Regardless of who did it (and I do think that the evidence is compelling for it being Ivins) the state of US bioweapon labs is unacceptable if this could happen. I agree that it should be very well protected and it sounds like there are too many holes in the guarding of weaponized anthrax. I really hope that it is not the same for something like the CDC’s smallpox sample! This is scary stuff!
Too bad it’s not as easy to keep from walking out the door as something like a radioisotope. You know, that gives me an idea. Maybe all the spore stock and breeding culture should have a gamma tracer added. That would make it a lot easier to keep it from leaving if they added some very sensitive portal monitors. They could make it easily traceable to a given lab and sample too with a unique signature. What do you think?
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