WASHINGTON — After seven frustrating years probing the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings, the FBI formally closed the case today, concluding a mentally unhinged government researcher acted alone.
Many details of the case have been known, but newly released FBI documents paint a fuller portrait of Dr. Bruce Ivins as a troubled scientist whose career was teetering toward failure at the time the letters were sent. As the U.S. responded to the mailings, his work was given new importance by the government and he was even honored for his efforts on anthrax.
The documents also describe what investigators say was Ivins’ bizarre, decades-long obsession with a sorority. The letters were mailed from a mailbox near the sorority’s office in Princeton, N.J.
The anthrax letters were sent to lawmakers and news organizations as the nation reeled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The FBI and Justice Department announced the decision closing the case while disclosing reams of evidence collected in the case. Officials also released a nearly 100-page summary of their findings.
The document said Ivins made comments to a former colleague that showed “immediately prior to the anthrax letter attacks, his life’s work was in jeopardy.”
Ivins killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to indict him for the attacks.
The anthrax case was one of the most vexing and costly investigations in U.S. history. Officials announced in 2008 that the lone suspect was Ivins. The move today seals that preliminary investigative conclusion.
Authorities had been on the verge of closing the case last year, but government lawyers decided to conduct a further review of what evidence could be shared with the public, according to several people familiar with the case.
Officials were hesitant about releasing some information because of concerns about violating privacy rights and grand jury secrecy, said those familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.
Laced with anthrax, the letters were sent with childish, blocky handwriting and chilling scientific expertise.
The spores killed five people: Two postal workers in Washington, D.C., a New York City hospital worker, a Florida photo editor and a 94-year-old Connecticut woman who had no known contact with any of the poisoned letters. Seventeen other people were sickened.
For years, the FBI chased leads.
Authorities tried to build a case against biowarfare expert Steven Hatfill, but ultimately had to pay him a multimillion-dollar settlement.
In 2008, they announced that the mystery had been solved, but the suspect was dead.
Authorities said that in the days before the mailings, Ivins had logged unusual hours alone in his lab at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. They also said he threw investigators off his trail by supplying false leads as he ostensibly tried to help them find the killer.
As the FBI closed in on Ivins, the 62-year-old microbiologist took a fatal overdose of Tylenol, dying on July 29, 2008. After Ivins’ suicide, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the investigation found he was the culprit, and prosecutors said they were confident he acted alone.
Skeptics — including prominent lawmakers — pointed to the bureau’s long, misguided pursuit of Hatfill, and noted there was no evidence suggesting Ivins was ever in New Jersey when the letters were mailed there.
At the urging of lawmakers, the National Academy of Sciences has launched a formal review of the FBI’s scientific methods in tracing the particular strain of anthrax used in the mailings to samples Ivins had at his Fort Detrick lab.
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