U.S. Army Lab Freezes Research on Dangerous Pathogens

Lawyer: Evidence against Bruce Ivins 'undercut'

Army anthrax lab suspends research to inventory its germs

Anthrax investigation still yielding findings

Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask.

Roberta Kwok
Published online 25 February 2009 | Nature

The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called RMR-1029, which Ivins could access in his laboratory at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

At a biodefence meeting on 24 February, Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of three letters sent to the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin, says Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements.

Two cultures of the same anthrax strain grown using similar processes — one from Ivins' lab, the other from a US Army facility in Utah — showed the silicon-oxygen signature but did not contain tin or iron. Michael presented the analyses at the American Society for Microbiology's Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

The chemical mismatch doesn't necessarily mean that deadly spores used in the attacks did not originate from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask, says Jason Bannan, a microbiologist and forensic examiner at the FBI's Chemical Biological Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia. The RMR-1029 culture was created in 1997, and the mailed spores could have been taken out of that flask and grown under different conditions, resulting in varying chemical contents. "It doesn't surprise me that it would be different," he says.

The data suggest that spores for the three letters were grown using the same process, says Michael. It is not clear how tin and iron made their way into the culture, he says. Bannan suggests that the growth medium may have contained iron and tin may have come from a water source.

Hard to tell apart

The meeting offered scientists who collaborated with the FBI during the investigation an opportunity to share detailed data. The analyses will eventually be published in peer-reviewed journals, the FBI has said.

Jacques Ravel, a genomics scientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, described his team's efforts to find genetic differences between various cultures of the Ames strain, the B. anthracis strain identified in the anthrax letters. At first, the team was surprised to find that the DNA sequences of a reference Ames strain and Ames samples from the investigation, such as bacteria isolated from the spinal fluid of the first victim, were exactly the same. "It was kind of a shock," says Ravel.

For help, the researchers turned to variants found by a team at USAMRIID. Patricia Worsham and her colleagues had noticed differences in shape, colour and rate of spore formation even within a single anthrax culture. Ravel's team identified the genetic mutations associated with four variants and developed an assay for one of them, called Morph E. Researchers at Commonwealth Biotechnologies in Richmond, Virginia, and the Midwest Research Institute's Florida Division in Palm Bay created assays for three other variants.

The FBI then used that arsenal of tests to pin down the origins of the anthrax letters, matching the mix of genetic variants in the mailed spores to Ivins' RMR-1029 flask. "It has the genetic signatures that identify it as the most likely source of the growth," says Bannan.

Ravel also sequenced the genome of a Bacillus subtilis strain that was found in one of the letters. That sample did not match a B. subtilis strain found in Ivins' lab, says Bannan, but the bacterial contamination still could have come from somewhere else in Ivins' institution.

The FBI has asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to convene an independent panel of experts to review the anthrax investigation data. The academy is still in the process of drawing up a contract with the FBI that lays out an agreement to perform the study, says NAS spokeswoman Christine Stencel.

Thomas DeGonia, Ivins' lawyer at Venable LLP in Rockville, Maryland, maintains Ivins' innocence.

Revealed: Scientific evidence for the 2001 anthrax attacks

• 27 February 2009 by Debora MacKenzie
• New Scientist Magazine issue 2697.

KEY forensic evidence in the US anthrax attacks of 2001 has been revealed. The FBI had previously prevented the scientists involved from speaking publicly about their findings in case this interfered with court proceedings, but last August, after chief suspect Bruce Ivins committed suicide, the case collapsed and the FBI lifted many of the restrictions. This week, some of the scientists involved revealed their results at a scientific meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

These show how the FBI traced the spores used in the attacks to a single flask at a US government lab, but they don't explain why the FBI made Ivins - who worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) - the chief suspect.

In late 2001, envelopes containing dry anthrax spores were sent to a number of US media outlets and politicians, leading to five deaths. Later that year, Paul Keim at the Northern University of Arizona in Flagstaff identified the anthrax bacterium used in the attack as the US army's Ames strain. The FBI then obtained 1072 anthrax samples from the 18 labs it knew to have Ames and got several research groups, including Keim's, to compare their genomes with that of the strain used in the attacks. The hope was this would uncover mutations that would finger one lab as the source.

But Keim and his colleagues told the Baltimore meeting that initial reports that useful mutations had been found were misleading. The full genome sequences revealed "no genetic differences at all", says Keim. Instead, the researchers say, the key clues came from a lucky discovery. A technician, also at USAMRIID, had noticed patches of unusual-looking spores in cultures of the attack anthrax, and recultured just those. Keim and colleagues sequenced their genomes and found 10 mutations that differed from the common Ames sequence. Because the spores made up a fraction of the total, these "minority" mutations hadn't shown up initially.

Next the team developed highly sensitive tests to screen all 1072 samples for four of the mutations. Eight samples had all four. One came from a flask labelled RMR-1029 that Ivins was responsible for at USAMRIID. The other seven came from cultures taken from that flask, only one of which was not located at USAMRIID. So while these findings show the attack spores came from one of these cultures, the FBI has gone further in concluding the attack came directly from the RMR-1029 flask.

Another question is how the attacker turned the water-based slurry of spores in the flask to the fine, dry powder in the letters.

Joseph Michael of the Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, used specialised electron microscopy to show that 75 per cent of the attack spores had incorporated silicon into their coats while growing (see image). As spores taken directly from RMR-1029 following the attacks had no silicon in their coats, and the other seven genetic matches had either none or a lower percentage, the attack spores must have been recultured before they were posted.

During this process, they would have shed their coats, multiplied, then turned back into spores. Was Ivins's level of expertise needed to turn these recultured spores into dry powder? "What I am hearing is that the spores in the letter were not special. It would not take a lot of time or equipment to make them," says Keim. Michael's images show the attack anthrax contained spore clumps, unlike professionally produced powders.

The FBI may have evidence to show Ivins was the link between RMR-1029 and the envelopes, though with civil suits from Ivins' and the victims' families pending, the bureau won't be revealing it soon. For now, the researchers say their studies nail the spores as coming from the flask, but not the identity of the attacker.

Holt seeks congressional anthrax commission

By RAJU CHEBIUM • Gannett Washington Bureau • March 3, 2009
MyCentralJersey.com

Rep. Rush Holt, D-Hopewell Township, has introduced legislation that would also probe the federal government's reaction to and investigation of the anthrax scare.

The commission he proposes would be similar to the independent panel that probed the 9/11 attacks in New York and suburban Washington.

The FBI said last year an Army scientist, Bruce Ivins, was responsible for the nation's deadliest bio-terrorism attacks, though the Bush administration initially named one of Ivins' colleagues as a "person of interest." Ivins has since committed suicide.

Holt and Rep. Chris Smith, R-Hamilton, say there's strong circumstantial evidence linking Ivins to the anthrax mailings but they have expressed skepticism about the government's case.

Anthrax-laden letters killed five people and sickened at least 17 others as the nation was grappling with the psychological aftermath of 9/11. Some of the letters were mailed from Princeton, in Holt's district. Those letters were handled by a mail-sorting facility in Hamilton, in Smith's district, and some postal workers were affected, though no one died.

FBI's Evidence in Anthrax Attacks Case Leaves Puzzling Scientific Questions

Friday afternoon, the FBI released a detailed statement about the anthrax powder's chemical signature and other elements of the bureau's scientific work. [See below]

FBI Responds to Science Issues in Anthrax Case

FBI Laboratory Director D. Christian Hassell, PhD issued the following statement:

During a recent American Society for Microbiology Biodefense (ASMBD) meeting in Baltimore , Maryland , questions were raised regarding two scientific analyses conducted during the course of the anthrax investigation. While this information is not new, it is important for the FBI to clarify the science since these findings continue to be misinterpreted by various media outlets.

The first item involves the elemental analysis of the anthrax spores that was conducted by Dr. Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. At the conference, Dr. Michael presented analyses of three anthrax letters (Leahy, Daschle, and New York Post). He concluded that the anthrax powder in the three letters shared a chemical fingerprint but did not match the chemical fingerprint of spores in Ivins’ flask. Spores from the letters showed a distinct chemical signature that included silicon, oxygen, iron, tin, and other elements. Spores from Ivins’ RMR-1029 flask did not contain those elements in quantities that matched the letter spores. This is not unusual considering that Ivins’ RMR-1029 preparation had been submerged in water and other chemicals since 1997 and was a mixture of 34 different spore preparations. The letter spores were dried spores, produced from two separate growth preparations as indicated by differences in the New York and Washington, D.C. mailings. Although the chemical fingerprint of the spores is interesting, given the variability involved in the growth process, it was not relevant to the investigation.

It is important to note that the genetic profile of the spores from the letters and the spores from Ivins’ RMR-1029 flask was identical. Ivins’ RMR-1029 spore preparation had the same combination of anthrax mutations found in the letters. Only eight of the anthrax samples collected during the course of the investigation matched the genetic profile in the letter material and all were linked back to RMR-1029. This conclusion was the most significant and relevant scientific finding in the case.

By analogy, if one were to grow a corn stalk from a specific corn seed, the trace chemical fingerprint of the stalk might differ from that of the seed due to different compositions—for example iron—in the respective fertilizers used to grow each; however, the genetic profile of the seed and the stalk would be identical.

The second item involves isotopic analysis of the mailed anthrax. Media reports indicated that FBI scientists had concluded in 2004 that out of many domestic and foreign water samples analyzed only water from near Fort Detrick, Maryland, where Dr. Ivins worked, had the same isotopic signature as the water used to grow the mailed anthrax. This statement is incorrect. While water isotopic analysis was researched, the FBI concluded that there were too many confounding variables to precisely match bacteria that were grown using different materials and recipes. This technique was not relevant to the investigation.

While we have full confidence in our scientific approach, an additional independent review will provide further validation and thus benefit the larger scientific community. Consideration of an outside review began before any public disclosure of the scientific aspects of the investigation. This follows our approach throughout the investigation: to bring in external scientists to review and provide advise on our methodologies.

USA Today

15,300 government workers have access to agents of bioterror

"In an awkward and disturbing irony, the most significant bioterrorism incident in the U.S. to date — i.e., the 2001 anthrax attacks — apparently originated in a U.S. military laboratory that was engaged in biological defense research," writes Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News, which reported the analysis.  Despite the FBI linking the 2001 anthrax attacks to Bruce Ivins, a vaccine researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute for infectious diseases, Aftergood says, "the pursuit of such research, and perhaps the associated threat, has continued to expand."

The CRS report offers options for increased oversight of select agent labs, noting an estimated 12-fold increase in BSL-4 labs, those holding the most dangerous bugs, since 2004. Options include certifying facilities, standardizing training, expanding the select agent list, and forbidding further lab construction.

However, increased regulation may limit lab competitiveness and slow public health responses from labs, as well as add costs. "Regardless of U.S. domestic efforts, biocontainment technologies are widely dispersed around the globe and used by many scientists in many countries," concludes the report.

The Times of Trenton

Preventing bioterrorism:

Last year, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism -- itself an outgrowth of the 9/11 Commission and its recommendations -- issued its report. It used alarming language to prod our government to act. It affirmed something that was demonstrated with the deadly anthrax attacks: Terrorists will likely use WMD attacks on America that feature biological weapons. The question now is: Have we implemented "lessons learned" from these attacks that took place in the fall of 2001, which caused such havoc here in New Jersey and across the nation?

I agree with the commission's assertion that "only by elevating the priority of preventing bioterrorism will it be possible to substantially improve U.S. and global biosecurity." To that end, the commission made a number of recommendations for improving biosecurity here at home, including the more thorough and persistent monitoring of personnel working at high-containment laboratories (i.e., those who work with dangerous pathogens) and the designation of a single federal agency for tracking the number of such labs in the United States.

Last week, I reintroduced the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act, to examine and to report on how the attacks occurred and how we can best prevent similar episodes in the future.

Readers may wonder why the commission did not address the 2001 anthrax attacks in detail in its report. The answer is that examining those attacks was not an explicit mandate of the WMD Commission. This is in contrast to the 9/11 Commission, which was specifically charged with looking at how the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks happened, why the federal government failed to prevent the attacks, and what remedial measures are necessary to prevent a similar catastrophe in the future.

A thorough investigation into the federal government's response to the first modern bioterror attack on our soil is absolutely essential if we are to ensure that we have learned the right lessons from that episode to implement countermeasures and changes in policy that are directly tied to those "lessons learned" -- something that The Times of Trenton repeatedly has pointed out in its frequent coverage of this tragedy.

While many of the WMD Commission's recommendations for improving biosecurity look sound on the surface, none of their specific action proposals are based on a detailed examination of how the 2001 anthrax attacks occurred. More than seven years after the attacks, many critical questions remain unanswered. Chief among them is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) "Amerithrax" investigation focused for so long on the wrong suspect.

The FBI's performance in the wake of the attacks has left me and many other Americans wondering whether the Bureau is truly equipped to handle bioterrorism. Deterring such attacks in the future depends in part on at least the expectation of swift and certain detection and punishment.

Neither happened in the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks. We need to know why the first attack succeeded and why the perpetrator or perpetrators escaped justice.

Just as the 9/11 Commission looked not only at the attacks of that morning, but also at recommended changes in the structure of government agencies, screening methods and even congressional oversight, so should an anthrax commission look at the specific crime, but also at measures for prevention, detection and investigation of any future bioterrorism.

An anthrax attack investigation would help address these kinds of policy questions in a level of detail that the WMD Commission could not.

Columbus innocent over anthrax in the Americas

• 13:22 13 March 2009 by Debora MacKenzie

When Europeans invaded the Americas they introduced many Old World diseases that decimated Native Americans. Scientists had thought that anthrax was one of them. New research shows, however, that the deadly bacteria arrived in the Americas thousands of years earlier, when Stone Age humans crossed the Bering land bridge.

The military Ames strain behind the 2001 anthrax attacks, however, is a recent Asian immigrant.

Anthrax bacteria can live in soil for decades as tough spores, until they are inhaled by a grazing animal. Then they multiply explosively, kill the animal, and bleed into the soil to await the next victim.

The disease was a scourge of cows, cowboys and settlers in the Wild West: spores still mark the route of the Chisholm Trail and other cattle drives. It is only since the intense genetic analysis of anthrax that followed the 2001 attacks, though, that enough has been known about the bug to trace its family tree in the Americas.

Early invader

Anthrax initially evolved in southern Africa, earlier work has demonstrated. Paul Keim of the Northern Arizona University, who led the genetic investigation of the attacks, says that normally anthrax spores do not move far from their dead victims, so it was probably humans carrying scavenged, spore-infested hair and hides who moved one anthrax "family" into northern Africa, then across Eurasia.

That transfer then continued, Keim says. His new work confirms previous studies suggesting that many strains of American anthrax came on European wool and cattle in recent centuries. The Ames strain used in the anthrax attacks, for example, naturally occurs only in Texas, but differs from Eurasian anthrax by only about eight mutations, showing it is a recent immigrant.

But the analysis also shows that most of the anthrax lurking in the grasslands from northern Canada to Mexico differs by up to 106 mutations, showing it branched off from the Eurasian form long ago – roughly when humans and animals entered the Americas from Siberia then moved south as grasslands opened up in central Canada around 13,000 years ago. .

Mammal extinctions?

"The line of descent shows a clear gradient from north to south," Keim says. Moreover the family tree shows one introduced ancestor gave rise to all the more recent members of the family. The fact it moved from north to south shows it was carried by the invading humans, not animals moving back north as the glaciers retreated.

For anthrax, at least, Columbus is off the hook. But the finding may also have implications for the extinction of many American mammals shortly after humans arrived.

Best-known as the lethal bacteria mailed in the 2001 bioterror attacks that killed five people, anthrax is found naturally in the soil worldwide. Cows and goats — grazing animals — most often suffer from anthrax, with veterinary cases reported every year.

"With genomic analysis, we can really ask interesting questions about the origins of something like anthrax," says Talima Pearson of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, an author of a PloS ONE journal study that sought the hardy bug's origins. The introduction of cattle by Spaniards, and trade with Europe that started in the 1600s have often been pointed to as the start of the disease in North America, part of a wave of Old World diseases, such as the smallpox thought to have killed millions in the colonial era.

Call it a case of archaeology by biology. In the study, Pearson and colleagues looked at 285 anthrax-laced soil samples from throughout Canada and the United States. As an outgrowth of the 2001 terror attacks, the NAU lab has expanded its "molecular genotyping" capabilities for the bacteria, and looked at 2,850 gene markers common to all those samples to see how closely related each one was, and how those links changed with geography.

The researchers developed a "molecular clock" to estimate the age of the bacteria samples. Anthrax reproduces by cloning itself, so changes to its genes are relatively rare, says NAU study senior author Paul Keim, which suggested to the researchers that they should estimate its age based on the frequency of those changes.

Along the lines of the conquistador theory, the team expected to see the oldest varieties of Western North American anthrax residing in the south and diversifying as they moved northwards. Instead, says the study, the analysis found the oldest, "ancestral" bacteria populations in northern Canada, with newer ones further south."The pattern just jumped out for anthrax coinciding with the peopling of the New World," says geologist James Mead of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, a study co-author, after the molecular clock roughly traced the oldest, northernmost, samples to around 13,000 years ago.

The team speculates that anthrax arrived in North America over the now-vanished Bering Land Bridge that connected Asia and Alaska during a past Ice Age. Rather than bison slowly carrying the bacteria south in their travels, the wide dispersal of the samples points to human hunters, the earliest immigrants to the continent, as the culprits who carried tainted furs and meat with them in their travels.

"The idea is speculative at this point," Mead says.

Related work by the same group, described by Keim at a recent biodefense meeting in Baltimore, finds a more recent origin for the well-known Ames strain of anthrax, best known as the type of anthrax used in the 2001 mailings. The strain was traced to soil samples in Jim Hogg County in south Texas in a 2008 Emerging Infectious Diseases journal study. Ames hides in the dirt amid the Western North American anthrax varieties in Texas and Oklahoma but not much farther north, Keim said at the meeting.

That Ames strain most closely, although still distantly, resembles strains found today in China, he added, suggesting it travelled by trade within the last 300 years. These Chinese strains transition toward European varieties along the path of Asia's ancient Silk Road trading routes, suggesting another area for historical anthrax investigation.

"I would like to compliment Keim and collaborators for their remarkable discovery that represents a real scientific breakthrough in being able to trace back the spread of a bacterial pathogen over a period of more than 10 millennia," says anthrax researcher Joachim Frey of Switzerland's Institute of Veterinary Bacteriology in Berne, who was not part of the study.

"It has been pretty clear for some time that Ames, as we know it, had originated in China and arrived somewhere in (New England) as a result of imported contaminated hair or hides, probably hair," says Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who was also not part of the study. "From the New England mills it made its way in the washing waters into local cattle downstream, and from their carcasses, into bone meals which were fed, eventually, to cattle in western and southern Texas."

But Hugh-Jones has doubts about the Asian-origins theory when applied to the more common Western North American strain.

Anthrax is thought to have arisen in Africa, which means it would have had to travel through Asia in prehistory "at a fair clip", he says, to reach Alaska by 13,000 years ago. "A simpler hypothesis is that it did come over with the early Spanish settlers in the 16th Century," says Hugh-Jones, which would mean that the oldest bacterial populations are instead in the south.

Dorothy H Crawford: World waits for ground-breaking anthrax evidence

The Anthrax Agenda

Eight years into an investigation that has consumed millions of dollars, some scientists and legislators remain unconvinced that the FBI's case is closed.

In July 2008 anthrax vaccine researcher Bruce Ivins committed suicide, leaving behind a grieving wife, two adult children, and scores of baffled friends and colleagues. According to the FBI the 62-year-old had murdered 5 people and sickened 17 others in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001.

By late 2005 FBI investigators, using sophisticated genomic analyses, had linked the letters to a single flask of Ames strain anthrax, a particularly virulent strain of the anthrax bacterium. Ivins, a researcher at the US Army’s Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was the custodian of this particular flask, labeled RMR-1029.

Today, nine months after Ivins’ death and nearly eight years into an investigation that has consumed millions of dollars, some scientists and legislators are not convinced that the FBI’s case would have succeeded in court.

“Anything of this seriousness should be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt,” says US Representative Rush Holt, who in March renewed his call for a national commission to thoroughly investigate the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 and the government’s “bungled response” to the crime. “It raises the bar when the person [FBI investigators] have fingered isn’t alive to defend himself, requiring an even greater standard of proof. I don’t think they have met that standard.”

Holt is not the only one in Washington calling for a more thorough look at the FBI’s handiwork. Patrick Leahy, a Democractic senator from Vermont and a target of one of the anthrax letters, along with Senator Arlen Spector, a Republican from Pennsylvania, challenged the FBI’s conclusions at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in September 2008. Both said they doubt that Ivins, acting alone, could have carried out the crime.

That month the FBI formally petitioned the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to form an independent panel of scientists to review the validity of the methods used to link the distinctive strain of anthrax in the letters with RMR-1029, and to provide expert opinions on other scientific questions related to the case.

In February at an American Society of Microbiology meeting in Baltimore, FBI researchers who had previously been bound by FBI confidentiality rules gave the first detailed scientific accounts of the case. “The science leads to the flask,” says Jacques Ravel, assistant professor of microbial genomics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who spoke at the meeting. “There is no other flask that has the same signature.” Ravel sequenced the genome of the anthrax in one of the letters and helped identify four distinctive mutations that ultimately led to the flask of RMR-1029.

Identifying the unique strain of Ames anthrax in the letters was only the first step. Investigators then had to develop and validate assays capable of pinpointing the mutations and screen thousands of blinded samples from academic and government laboratories.

At the February meeting FBI scientist Jason Bannon said that though many laboratories known to work with the Ames strain voluntarily surrendered samples, the FBI also conducted search and seizure operations to retrieve others. Of 1,072 samples from 18 labs, only eight samples contained all four of the mutations in the distinctive strain of anthrax in the letters, according to Bannon. One of those samples came directly from the flask of RMR-1029 and seven others were cultured from the spores in the flask. Only one of the eight cultures was not sourced to Fort Detrick. The FBI has not disclosed the identity of the eighth lab.

Ravel vigorously defends the rigor of the procedures the FBI imposed on participating laboratories as they worked to validate the genomic “fingerprint”  that led investigators to RMR-1029. “It was almost insane, the precision of every step,” he says. “Nobody does it that way in a regular lab.”

Most critics dispute not the quality of the genomic science that led investigators to the flask of RMR-1029 but rather the conflation of Ivins with the flask. “There were other labs out there that were presumably sourced for RMR-1029,” says Gerard Andrews, Ivins’ former supervisor at USAMRIID. “What was the detective work that eliminated those labs?”

Skeptics also point to the mystery of a common bacterium called b.subtilis found in the attack spores but not in flask of RMR-1029. Anthrax-loaded letters sent to the New York Post and NBC News were heavily contaminated with subtilis, which must have been present in the media used to grow the spores, says Ravel, who sequenced the subtilis found in those letters.

Ravel’s team compared hundreds of blinded samples of subtilis provided by the FBI looking for a match for the letter subtilis. “We never found a match,” he says. “Not even close.” That fact, says Andrews, probably exonerates Ivins. “If it was a contaminant they would expect to find it all over Bruce’s lab. You should have been able to find it in the strain archives or in somebody’s freezer box at USAMRIID. It’s very significant that they didn’t find it. But that issue has been sort of pushed under the carpet because it doesn’t support their case.”

The FBI has asked the NAS to look into the subtilis contamination issue and other technical questions related to the investigation. But the FBI has not yet officially hired the NAS to appoint an investigatory panel, probably because of tight budgets, says William Kearney, deputy executive director of the office of news and public information at NAS. “We cannot appoint a committee,” he says, without a signed contract.

Meanwhile, Rep. Holt would like his proposed National Commission to look at “what happened, how and why it happened, and what we need to do to prevent any future occurrences.” His bill has some support, he says, though not enough to ensure passage. “It’s not high on the national agenda right now,” he says. “But it should be.”

— Deborah Rudacille is a freelance science writer and the author of The Riddle of Gender and The Scalpel and the Butterfly: The War Between Animal Research and Animal Protection. Roots of Steel, a history of Baltimore steelworkers, will be published in 2010.

Judge urges settlement in 'National Enquirer' anthrax case

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A News-Post story in February reported that USAMRIID was shutting down most of its bioresearch while it tried to match its inventory to its records, citing an "overage" of BSAT, biological select agents and toxins.

Meade's CID, however, isn't concerned with overstock. Instead, agents are looking for what may have gone missing between 1987 and 2008.

"It's possible there are some viral samples missing," at USAMRIID, Fort Meade public affairs officer Chad Jones confirmed in a phone interview Monday.

"I don't know anything else. The investigation is ongoing," he said.

The investigation into possible missing pathogens began about the same time Col. John P. Skvorak issued a "stand down" memo halting research operations until an updated inventory is complete. The memo made no mention of missing samples.

A retired support staff employee who worked in the BSL-4 labs received a visit from Fort Mead's CID agents in February. Agents wanted to know if he'd taken anything out of the lab between 1987 and 2008, and how easy it was for others to remove samples.

"I said it was easy enough. It was a lock and key access to the suite of freezers," the retiree said in an interview.

In that time period, thousands could've accessed the freezers of deadly and/or infectious viral samples, he told investigators. Specifically, the man reported, CID asked about samples of VEE, Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, VEE is spread to humans by mosquitoes; symptoms range from mild flu-like illness to brain inflammation, coma and death. Mortality rate is one-third, "making it one of the most deadly mosquito-borne diseases in the United States."

Another support staff member in the BSL-3 labs left the job a few years ago. In February, he received a message on his answering machine instructing him to call one of two numbers about missing VEE. The phone numbers connected him to Meade's CID.

Perhaps we could find solace in the fact that the Army is trying to impose order on the process after more than 20 years, tracking missing viruses and adding others to its database.

Aside from the obvious -- the possibility that deadly viruses may be floating around out there unsecured -- two events, however, preclude us from taking one iota of comfort in this scenario: 1) the construction of a greatly expanded biolabs, which means more germs, more people, more risk; and 2) the government's own admission that the 2001 anthrax murders were an inside job.

Asked whether he supports an expansion of biolabs at USAMRIID, the former BSL-3 worker said "No."

"Not knowing what I know now. With that many people there, things get sloppy."

A belief that inventory controls, stricter protocols and psychological screenings will protect the public from USAMRIID's dangerous pathogens is na?ve. Even Detrick scientists were reportedly upset at the new controls, according to a Feb. 10 AP story, because they don't suit USAMRIID's operations.

Why? Because germ samples can be easily multiplied in the lab and it's difficult to track them.

Now that's comforting.

kheerbrandt@yahoo.com

At a cost of nearly $880,000, it won't be cheap. But when it comes to the government spending taxpayer money, it would be difficult to find a more worthy project.

Bruce Ivins apparently committed suicide last July after discovering that he was about to be indicted in the infamous anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened many others not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

After Ivins died, the FBI publicly identified him as its sole suspect in a case that it had been feverishly working on for nearly seven years. The FBI turned to Ivins after its earlier prime suspect, "person of interest" Steven Hatfill — like Ivins, a researcher at Fort Detrick's USAMRIID — was finally ruled out. Not before, however, Hatfill's career and reputation were left in tatters by the FBI's long, public investigation of him.

Some scientists appear to believe that the science the FBI employed in coming to its conclusion that Ivins was the true culprit is suspect. The NAS appears aimed at discovering if those concerns are valid. The NAS states that its review will evaluate, "the reliability of the principles and methods used by the FBI, and whether the principles and methods were applied appropriately to the facts." In other words, was the FBI's investigation credible, and did it reach appropriate conclusions based on the scientific techniques it used? The academy will examine esoteric issues involving genetic, chemical, dating and other studies the FBI used in formulating its belief that Ivins was its man.

The academy will not issue any finding of guilt or innocence regarding Ivins or anyone else. It will not examine the persuasiveness of the scientific evidence in regard to the investigation or any prosecution or litigation. It will simply examine whether the bureau's techniques were sound and its conclusions appropriate.

If the NAS puts its stamp of approval on the FBI's investigative techniques and conclusions, that will go a long way toward closing the book on this case. However, should the NAS determine that the FBI's techniques or conclusions were flawed, skepticism will remain regarding the bureau's characterization of Ivins as its "sole suspect."

If the NAS finds fault with the FBI's handling of the investigation, the case will remain open in many people's minds, including in the scientific community. It will also mean that the truth about Ivins' guilt or innocence will remain at question — perhaps forever.

Barring a new revelation or another solid suspect surfacing, this review may provide the last, best answers the public will ever get on the anthrax mailings case. It remains to be seen whether the NAS' conclusions will ostensibly close the book on this story or result in it remaining open forever.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases searched all 335 of its refrigerators and freezers for the inventory, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute’s deputy commander. The institute’s commander ordered the inventory Feb. 4, and the process was completed May 27.

Overall, the institute holds more than 70,000 samples of so-called select agents, or diseases the government believes pose a severe threat to human health.

The inventory process uncovered samples dating back several decades, and included vials of the pathogens that cause anthrax, ebola and rift valley fever.

The vast majority of the found samples were likely working stock accumulated by researchers over several decades, Kortepeter said.

Researchers determined that about half of the 9,200 samples had no further scientific value and destroyed them.

The institute halted most of its research while it performed the inventory, but is now up and running again, Kortepeter said.

The 14 provisional members of the National Academy of Sciences study committee include medical doctors, chemists, microbiologists and a U.S. District Court judge.

The academy will consider public comments on the proposed committee membership before finalizing the roster.

The FBI requested the study last year, after critics questioned the validity of the science it used in matching the anthrax used in the 2001 mailings with that in a flask controlled by Bruce Ivins, a Fort Detrick microbiologist.

Ivins committed suicide on July 26, 2008.

According to the academy, the review will examine the techniques the FBI used for their scientific reliability and use in forensic validation.

It will also examine whether the FBI reached appropriate conclusions based on its use of those techniques.

The study will specifically not examine how persuasive the scientific evidence might be in regards to an investigation or any prosecution or litigation. It will also not make any determination about the guilt or innocence of any person in regard to the anthrax mailings.

The study will take 18 months and will cost approximately $880,000.

The academy will take comments on the web at www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/CommitteeView.aspx?key=49105.

Microbe - The journal for the American Society for Microbiology

July 2009

Questions Linger over Science behind Anthrax Letters

Not so on the Internet, where a handful of people have turned Amerithrax into an ongoing discussion. Amerithrax is the Department of Justice's name for the investigation of the anthrax attacks.

Beyond conspiracy theories and other fringe beliefs, bloggers have been filing Freedom of Information Act requests and working sources just as any experienced reporter would.

"I think it's kept it alive. Its provided a place for reporters and others to go from time to time and look for facts and opinions," said Lew Weinstein, who wrote a fictional novel based on the Amerithrax case titled "Case Closed."

He maintains a blog with the same name, trying to debunk the FBI case against Ivins.

Weinstein, who splits his time between Key West, Fla., and Collioure, France, was once a congressional candidate, has business degrees from Princeton and Harvard and retired in 2005 as the CEO of a biomedical research organization.

"I am amazed at the level of scientific discourse that's going on on my blog," said Weinstein, who called from a side trip he was taking with his wife to Lithuania.

"This is not simply a crime story. There's more to it than that," he said.

Ed Lake has been studying the case since 2001. Eight years ago he started a website to compile facts, documents and his own analysis.

He wrote a book, "Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks," which looks at the first three years of the investigation.

Unlike Weinstein, Lake has found the FBI case against Ivins solid.

"I certainly don't have any information pointing to anyone else," Lake said.

The retired computer systems analyst, who lives in Racine, Wis., has saved 40,000 e-mails relating to the investigation on an external hard drive he keeps in a safe deposit box.

But Lake said he has no particular desire to see the case go one way or another. He stresses the difference between conspiracy theorists, who are distrustful of the government, and true believers, who firmly believe in one scenario.

Lake said he doesn't align himself with either group. He's just after the facts.

"When you look at it all together, it's a really damning set of circumstantial evidence," he said.

Despite opposing viewpoints, Lake and Weinstein share an interest in the Amerithrax case that goes beyond the curiosity of most people.

Weinstein said the facts, or what he perceives as a lack thereof, infuriated him to the point of writing a book.

Lake said it started as soon as he got into his first online debates about the case.

"There was no way of stopping it, dropping it after that," he said.

Eight years ago her husband, Thomas Morris Jr., died after breathing anthrax spores from contaminated mail at the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington.

A year ago she attended a meeting at FBI headquarters, where Director Robert Mueller told Morris that her husband's killer had been identified.

"I've been thinking a lot about that word closure," she said. "I don't think that's the right definition for me."

The government's case against Bruce Ivins remains open after officials last August declared the Fort Detrick scientist and leading anthrax researcher at the post's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases the sole suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and injured 17.

Ivins, 62, died from an apparent acetaminophen overdose July 29, 2008. Shortly after his death, the FBI presented a case against Ivins based largely on circumstantial evidence.

"In my mind it's over and done with," Morris said. "I know one thing for sure: My husband is not coming back, Mr. Ivins is not coming back, and we have to settle for the outcome."

But vital questions still persist as doubters wait to learn how the FBI concluded that Ivins, who by many accounts was a hardworking researcher and an affable man who was active with his family, church and community, was responsible for the attacks that paralyzed the country shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Answers to those questions and a better view of how the FBI proceeded with its investigation could be forthcoming.

"We expect (the case) to be closed very shortly," said Dean Boyd, a Department of Justice spokesman. "I'm not prepared at this time to give you an exact date."

For Ivins' family and former colleagues who have maintained his innocence, a closed case will mean the FBI is putting faith in circumstantial evidence and a scientific fact-finding process that brought investigators to a flask of anthrax spores under Ivins' control, but accessible to more than 100 people.

"We don't convict beakers in this country," said Rockville attorney Paul Kemp, who represents the Ivins family. "We prosecute, convict or acquit human beings."

He said no lawsuits have been filed by the family, but legal action is conceivable.

"They're still angry, and they are upset, and they want to maintain their privacy," he said.

A year of questions

In the past year, the FBI has released little additional information about Ivins' alleged role in the anthrax mailings.

In early August, Department of Justice officials unveiled search warrants and other documents establishing Ivins as their primary suspect.

Ivins, who was described by one colleague as having a fragile personality, may have been extremely distressed by an FBI inquiry. He swallowed enough Tylenol to poison himself before any charges were filed.

The last year of his life had been punctuated by mental instability as reported by police and a counselor, and alienation from his workplace of 21 years.

He had lost his lab access. In November 2007, as a result of an FBI search, Ivins was denied entry to the highest-level containment labs where the most dangerous pathogens are handled. In March 2008, he lost access to all labs after not immediately reporting a spill of anthrax spores. Sixteen days before he overdosed, Ivins was escorted from Fort Detrick by Frederick police and taken to the hospital for a psychological evaluation. He was barred from the post after that.

Ivins' mental health counselor, Jean Duley, filed a peace order against the scientist. Duley said she was fearful Ivins would hurt her and others.

"I think it would change anybody's behavior if there was a federal agent car sitting outside your house 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Gerard Andrews, a former colleague of Ivins.

Also in the past year bureau scientists also in the past year had discussed the scientific process they used to genetically match the anthrax found in the letters sent to news agencies and Senate offices to the flask of RMR-1029, a batch of anthrax under Ivins' control.

The same scientific methods will become the subject of an FBI-requested study by the National Academy of Sciences set to begin later this summer.

The $880,000, 18-month review will be funded by the FBI. The project will look at genetic studies used to identify the source of the anthrax found in the letters, how and where the anthrax spores were grown, how the spores and bacterial DNA were collected and what role cross-contamination may have played.

The academy, in its own statement, said it will not consider the value of the scientific evidence as it relates to any specific component of the investigation, prosecution or litigation. The study will not be used to establish the guilt or innocence of any person, the academy said.

Former colleagues of Ivins question the purpose of the academy's study.

"It very likely came from that flask, but who cares, hundreds of people had access, if not more. Dozens of labs were sent that sample," said Andrews, former director of the bacteriology division at USAMRIID from 2000 to 2003. He supervised Ivins for about five years.

Andrews, now an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, called the academy study "essentially meaningless."

"They're basically going to say the science was robust enough," he said.

The science will not uncover physical evidence directly linking Ivins to the production of the powderized anthrax spores and won't explain how the FBI ruled out other people and labs who had access to the RMR-1029 spores, Andrews said.

The FBI built its case on 16 points, including Ivins' mental health issues and long hours he worked in the lab before the mailings.

But no direct physical evidence was recovered that would have connected Ivins to the Princeton, N.J., mailbox where the letters were dropped, no anthrax was found in his cars or home, and no eyewitnesses saw him produce, package or mail the envelopes.

The FBI leaned most heavily on a scientific method never before used in a criminal investigation. More than 1,000 samples of Ames anthrax, a strain identified in the letters, were obtained from 16 government, commercial and university labs. Eight of the samples were genetically matched to the RMR-1029 spore batch.

Jeff Adamovicz, head of the bacteriology division after Andrews left in 2004, said the fact that samples obtained by the FBI were voluntarily submitted weakens the case significantly.

He is also certain other labs possessed RMR-1029.

Dangerous pathogens, known as select agents, are regularly sent between both public and private labs that are registered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shipments from USAMRIID are recorded on an internal form and with the CDC, Adamovicz said.

"The FBI knows full well the distribution of that strain," said Adamovicz, who left USAMRIID in 2007.

He said he has no evidence to suggest any specific person or entity is responsible for the attacks, but wanted the FBI to fully explain how they ruled out two sites where RMR-1029 was likely to have been produced and shipped: U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio.

"They've been focused on USAMRIID since day one," he said.

The Army this month released a document showing Ivins' record of RMR-1029, where he kept a log of when and the amount of spores, in liquid form, he took from the flask.

The record shows the 1000 ml of spores was created in October 1997 with anthrax from Dugway Proving Ground and the USAMRIID bacteriology division. The report show Ivins accessed the strain between September 1998 and November 2003.

Large portions of the document, which include entries next to the amount used, are redacted.

Adamovicz, who is still unable to believe his friend and colleague was guilty, is continuing to study the government evidence.

He said he was bothered by the way the Department of Defense "rolled over so easily" by neglecting to defend its own facility when Ivins was identified as the FBI's sole suspect.

Current employees of USAMRIID are barred from speaking publicly about the case, a spokeswoman said.

Critics have found no shortage of ways to rebut the FBI evidence and possibility that Ivins produced the deadly, weaponized anthrax spores.

Russell Byrne, one of Ivins' former colleagues, is a former director of the bacteriology division. He likened the scenario to someone using their own gun to kill somebody and leaving it on their desk.

He said there was no genetic evidence found in any of the USAMRIID lyophilizers, a machine that would have been required to dry the spores into a powder.

The fact that three division chiefs dispute the FBI evidence should be enough to question the validity of the case, said Byrne, who left the institute in 2003.

"You guys knew a lot about Bruce," Byrne said. "But you didn't know him."

Finding answers

Victims of the attacks hope the case is settled, but some remain skeptical.

"The evidence in my own mind wasn't enough to support a conviction," said Leroy Richmond, a worker at the Brentwood postal center who was hospitalized after coming in contact with anthrax-contaminated mail.

"I really have some doubts."

Richmond said he still suffers from memory loss and fatigue as a result of the infection. He has since retired from the Postal Service.

After the 45-minute FBI presentation he and other victims and families sat for last summer, he said he was concerned at the amount of evidence that was circumstantial.

"I think it will be questionable even after they say we've done all the investigation we need," Richmond said.

Mary Morris, the wife of Richmond's former co-worker Thomas Morris Jr., said she was satisfied with the case.

She said she does not want to find herself asking questions with no answers.

"Otherwise it will drown you, it will swallow you up," she said.

But at least one congressman wants answers to questions that, at the moment, have no answers.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., submitted the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act in March. The bill aims to establish a national commission, similar to the one formed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The letters were mailed from Holt's district.

"I think the families of the victims deserve it, all of the people affected: letter carriers, the residents of central New Jersey, people in Washington deserve to have a case that is really closed," Holt said.

"Not just a lot of loose ends or some surmises or some assertions."

The bill remains stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

"I wish it were moving faster than it is legislatively," he said. "I think the public deserves answers."

The assessment, which came from a study by the military's Defense Science Board, did not target the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

But the finding indirectly supported the FBI case identifying USAMRIID researcher Bruce Ivins as the suspect in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five and injured 17.

In the year since the FBI laid out its case, the Department of Defense has completed two major reviews of government lab safety, security and operations.

In August 2008, the Secretary of the Army formed a task force on biosurety. The task force requested the study by the Defense Science Board, an advisory committee to the secretary of defense, to examine lab safety and security policies.

The Defense Health Board, another advisory board to the Pentagon, performed the other study requested by the task force. It looked at the need for biodefense labs and whether they were contributing a return on investment.

The study found military biodefense facilities such as USAMRIID were necessary, especially for response to bioterrorist events. But the report found challenges in transferring research into products people could use and no real system to measure a return on the government's investment in research programs.

Neither study focused on any one government lab. They also stayed clear of directly addressing the evidence the Department of Justice has used to establish Ivins as the sole suspect in the anthrax attacks.

Despite increased focus this past year, research at USAMRIID was suspended in February while employees recovered more than 9,200 samples of unrecorded disease samples. Inventory at the institute is now at 100 percent, but officials could not guarantee any of the samples were not improperly removed.

Caree Vander Linden, spokeswoman for USAMRIID, said the recommendations from the Defense Science Board report for biolab safety and security are being acted upon.

The top recommendation was guarding against a security breach of computers that control access to the lab's environmental systems' computers, which keep pathogens contained.

"USAMRIID's cybersecurity has been assessed and the results of that assessment are being acted on," Vander Linden said in an e-mail.

The 93-page report also recommends monitoring of personnel through video cameras and a two-person rule in the lab.

The report recommends managers review video footage of each lab worker at least once a month and keep all video footage for a year.

"USAMRIID uses an extensive video monitoring system and a two-person rule during specifically defined procedures," Vander Linden wrote. "USAMRIID, through various means, meets routinely with laboratory personnel to discuss standards and obligations."

Cameras were installed in USAMRIID laboratories between 2002 and 2008, Vander Linden said.

The report encourages the continued use of the Biological Personnel Reliability Program, which certifies people to work with dangerous diseases known as biological select agents.

The program includes background checks, drug testing and frequent interviews. Increased video monitoring and interviews were recommended to bolster the program.

Less than 0.1 percent of people screened under the program fail, according to the report.

The report acknowledges the lack of any reliable psychological tests measuring mental and emotional health.

Ivins shared through e-mails to friends that he suffered from depression. A counselor said Ivins revealed violent thoughts during a session. He also admitted to some bizarre behavior such as driving long distances to anonymously mail packages.

The defense report states that emotional monitoring increases intrusion, which could lead to the best researchers leaving the Department of Defense for jobs in the private sector.

Last December, Fort Detrick scientists who work with dangerous pathogens were given additional training on securing their labs and the samples they work with.

Vander Linden said the institute undergoes an annual security assessment.

In September 2008, the Government Accountability Office released a 10-month study on perimeter security for the nation's five biosafety level 4 labs, where the most dangerous pathogens are handled. USAMRIID contains a BSL-4 lab.

The GAO study report did not match its assessments with specific lab names.

The panel of 15 experts was convened by National Academy of Sciences and held its first meeting Thursday.

The group laid out its responsibility to study the process and procedure used by the FBI and potentially validate its findings.

"We utilized established biological and chemical analysis techniques and applied them in a novel way to a very difficult problem," said Chris Hassell, an assistant director of the FBI who oversees the laboratory division.

But the study, which will cost the FBI nearly $880,000, will not explore the investigative methods or detective work that established Ivins as the primary suspect.

Ivins died of an intentional overdose of Tylenol after learning he was to be indicted in the mailings that killed five and sickened 17.

Instead, experts will review how the FBI matched the anthrax mailed in letters to a specific strain identified from thousands of samples obtained in the early stages of the investigation.

"Our principal challenge here, in this particular project, has been the fact that this is still an open case," Hassell said.

That fact has irked critics of the FBI case against Ivins, which include many of his former colleagues and supervisors at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The study will affirm the validity of the investigative science but will stop short of explaining how the FBI sorted Ivins from the dozens of people who had access to the strain of anthrax used in the mailings.

"Good scientists are confident in their findings but are open to scrutiny," Hassell said.

Dr. David Relman, a Stanford University professor who is co-chairman of the study group, said he wants the review to provide assistance and guidance for future investigations.

"As we look forward, we want to ensure the best possible science methods and approaches be applied and deployed for future work of this sort," he said.

Today, the board will continue with another open session. On the agenda is Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who wants a formal commission to look into the eight-year FBI investigation.

The letters were mailed from a mailbox in Holt's central New Jersey district.

A group of scientists who worked with the FBI on its case will also address the board.

Local lawyer and peace activist Barry Kissin took us to task for the editorial, saying, in effect, that the NAS study would not speak to Ivins' culpability, even though, as Kissin said, the FBI "has done its best to pretend that it is the science in Amerithrax that largely establishes Ivins' guilt."

Two quotes in News-Post reporter Adam Behsudi's Sunday story on Ivins and the NAS study speak volumes on this subject. The first is from Gerard Andrews, director from 2000 to 2003 of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases -- and Ivins' supervisor for about five years.

Relating to the anthrax flask -- to which Ivins had access -- that the FBI asserts was the origin of the strain used in the fatal mailings, Andrews says: "It very likely came from that flask, but who cares, hundreds of people had access, if not more. Dozens of labs were sent that sample."

And from Jeff Adamovicz, who headed up the division after Andrews left: "The FBI knows full well the distribution of that strain. They've been focused on USAMRIID since day one."

The FBI's case against Ivins is almost wholly circumstantial. It includes his strained behavior while under suspicion and surveillance by the FBI, which he was aware of before apparently committing suicide in July 2008.

While the NAS study may well validate the scientific protocols used by the FBI in its investigation, that would not prove Ivins' guilt. That point cannot be too strongly made.

However, another avenue of discovery has been proposed. In March, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., introduced the Anthrax Investigation Act in Congress. The bill would establish a national commission akin to the one created to study the 2001 terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, this bill remains stalled in Congress.

Ivins' family and those of the victims of the anthrax mailings -- and indeed, all those who worked with Ivins at USAMRIID -- need and deserve to have this case solved.

Even if Congress does create this commission, however, Ivins' guilt or innocence may never be proved. Still, it would be only fair and fitting that the FBI's characterization of him as the only viable suspect be re-examined in earnest. If there are a number of other facilities and individuals who cannot be excluded from consideration as the source of the anthrax used in the fatal mailings, that fact should be a major part of any conclusion about this case.

We urge our congressional representatives to support this legislation. The mailings took place in Holt's district, so he has a personal reason to be involved. But the accused man and the laboratory where he worked should also make it a personal issue for Maryland's congressional delegation.

Anthrax investigation probe underway

"This type of study is unprecedented" because the agency doesn't normally divulge evidence from ongoing investigations, FBI laboratory director Chris Hassell told the committee on Thursday. But given the lingering doubts about the case, the FBI, which has already published nine peer-reviewed papers related to the investigation, according to Hassell, opted to open itself up to independent scrutiny. "This is what we did, please tell us what you think."

The committee, which is expected to meet around five times over the next 18 months, "provides a critique," said panel chair Alice Gast, president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The committee is charged with examining the FBI's genetic and chemical studies but not "any other aspects of the investigation not related to the science," she said.

On Friday, Claire Fraser-Liggett walked the committee through the genomic methods used to first genetically characterise the anthrax isolates in her former lab at The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and the subsequent assays developed to trace the strains back to Ivins' flask at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. "Ultimately, I think it was really this population genetics approach that provided the breakthrough in this case," Fraser-Liggett, who now directs the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltomore, said.

Other speakers included Bruce Budowle, executive director of the University of North Texas’ Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth and a former FBI scientist involved with the case, who described how the new field of microbial forensics emerged from the investigation, and retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Smith, who urged the panel to "continue to probe" and push the FBI to release all the relevant documentation.

In the public comments session of the meeting, Barry Skolnick, an independent technical analyst, called on the committee to review the sampling methods originally used to collect anthrax from the infected facilities. Skolnick said that the committee is devoting too much attention to the microbial forensics. "It's clear that [sampling] is not in the forefront of their minds."

The committee's next meeting is planned for late September.

The meeting featured presentations from three experts who worked on the case. Scientific methods were explained, and the 15-member panel was asked to use the study as a means to prepare for future attacks.

A lawmaker also addressed the group, criticizing the FBI's handling of the country's first widespread bioterrorism event.

"If the technical and scientific procedures are as flawed as the nontechnical procedures, they certainly deserve a look," said Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat from whose district the letters were mailed.

Holt said the study sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences would be useful for answering some key questions but was too narrow in scope.

Investigators last year determined that Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins was the primary suspect in the attacks that killed five people and sickened 17. A flask of anthrax under Ivins' control was identified as the origin of the bacteria used in the letters.

Ivins, who had a record of serious mental health issues, died July 29, 2008, of an intentional overdose of Tylenol after learning he was to be indicted in the mailings.

Holt has submitted legislation to form a special commission to examine the FBI's eight-year investigation highlighted by a multimillion-dollar settlement after investigators wrongly accused Fort Detrick scientist Steven Hatfill.

"Simply stated, the government suffers from a credibility gap on this issue," he said.

The FBI has not yet formally closed the case.

One of the experts who made a presentation at the meeting led a genetic study to sort through more than 1,000 samples of anthrax. The method found the anthrax in the letters matched eight samples that could be traced to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked.

Claire Fraser-Liggett, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, performed the analysis while director of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville.

The positive samples were isolated through the identification of four specific mutations. Those were genetically matched with anthrax gathered from the envelopes and the spinal fluid of the first victim, Robert Stevens, a photo editor at a Florida tabloid.

Fraser-Liggett said the work to find a match began in late 2001, but the successful method was not completed until 2007, when agents began to seriously investigate Ivins.

"I was hopeful that perhaps genomics would provide sufficient amount of information to be able to track the material to its source, but I then, and have always, asserted that in no way did I ever believe that this kind of genomics-based investigation was ever going to lead to the perpetrator," Fraser-Liggett said.

"That was going to require much more traditional police investigation."

The 18-month academy study will affirm the validity of the investigative science but will stop short of explaining how the FBI sorted Ivins from the dozens of people who had access to RMR-1029, the strain of anthrax used in the mailings.

Jennifer Smith is a retired FBI agent and biochemist who now leads BioForensic Consulting. Smith was involved in the agency's DNA unit when the investigation began.

"I want to say that I hope this committee is able to see information that was shared ... even if that information might currently be housed within the classified files," she said.

Bruce Budowle was a senior FBI scientist before his current post as director of the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas.

He said no new methodology was used in the case, but it significantly advanced the field of microbial forensics.

He advised the government to capitalize on relationships with the private and academic sectors to prepare a structure for examining microbial forensics.

"Get those experts ready today for the next event that occurs," Budowle said. "We would know who to go to in the process instead of having to search them out."

The committee will likely meet again next month.

Alice Gast, the committee chairwoman and president of Lehigh University, said the academy has the ability to pursue classified materials. The study will deepen as the group learns more and asks additional questions, she said.

"Really it remains to be defined -- the scope of all materials we'll receive," Gast said.

"The committee will only review and assess the scientific information," said Alice Gast of Lehigh University, head of the review panel. "We will offer no view on the guilt or innocence of any person or persons."

Just such questions, however, surround the still-open case, said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who spoke before the panel, which met Thursday and Friday. "This was the only documented bioterror attack on the U.S.," Holt said. "Simply stated, the government suffers from a credibility gap that raises questions about the guilt of Dr. Ivins."

An anthrax vaccine researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., Ivins died of a drug overdose July 29, 2008. One week later, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor formally announced Ivins was "the sole suspect" in the 2001 mailings that killed five people, shut congressional offices and paralyzed the U.S. Postal Service.

The first evidence listed against Ivins was "the genetically unique parent material of the anthrax spores used in the mailings," Taylor said, the now-famous "RMR-1029" flask of Ames strain anthrax spores, "created and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins at USAMRIID." In briefings, scientific meetings and publications over the last year, outside scientists engaged by investigators, such as Claire Fraser-Liggett of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, reported that four mutations in the genetic code of the anthrax used in the attack served as markers traceable back to the flask.

"We thoroughly investigated every other person who could have had access to the flask, and we were able to rule out all but Dr. Ivins," Taylor said, since the link between flask and scientist first became clear in 2005.

Proclaiming his innocence

One year later, "the department and the FBI continue working to conclude the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks," the Justice Department's Dean Boyd said in a statement. "We anticipate closing the case in the near future."

The case against Ivins rests largely on a traditional police investigation, revealed in search warrant affidavits. Ivins acted strangely, worked late lab hours before the attacks, had sent packages under assumed names "throughout his adult life," Taylor said, and faced job worries because of a failing anthrax vaccine program in fall 2001.

Ivins' lawyer, Paul Kemp, has maintained his late client's innocence. The FBI said it long had suspicions about Ivins based on the strain of anthrax detected. But if the RMR-1029 flask link mattered so much, why didn't the FBI arrest him in 2005? Kemp asked.

Those kinds of questions emerged about the science behind the investigation, which led the FBI last year to request the panel, which is expected to produce a final report by next summer. The National Academy of Sciences' William Kearney said the $879,000 contract for the review involved negotiation between the academy and Justice Department over its scope and access to information. The committee is charged with examining at least five scientific questions:

•The validity of the genetic studies of the attack anthrax.

•Certainty that the four mutations identified in the attack anthrax are truly unique.

•Chemistry studies dating the growth time of the attack anthrax to times Ivins was working late hours in his lab.

•The validity of anthrax-collecting techniques used by investigators.

•The risks of cross-contamination in labs where analyses were performed.

"I think this review is a really good first step," said biological policy expert Cheryl Vos of the Federation of American Scientists. "What I would really like to know is how much did the scientific conclusions drive the investigation, and vice versa. There is a clear intersection between the two."

Calls for a broader review

"We're just getting started. We have a broad scope of experts, both on the panel and who we are getting information from," said Gast, the panel chief. Gast added she was "confident" of the panel receiving investigation background information.

A tension emerged at the panel between its narrow mandate to investigate the science linking Ivins' anthrax flask to the 2001 attack anthrax and calls for wider reviews. Holt, in particular, called for a look at the entire investigation.

Former FBI scientists Bruce Budowle of the University of North Texas and Jennifer Smith of BioForensic Consulting asked the panel to assess "lessons learned" for the next bioterror attack investigation.

"There was a bit of a tug of war in the FBI. Investigators had a desire to use whatever possible" science might yield clues, Smith said. Bad science, however, would yield false leads or exclude suspects wrongly, she said. Because the investigation will serve as a model for any future bioterror investigation, Smith added, "it's critical you assess how the bureau did."

The science touted that narrowed the suspects in the 2001 Amerithrax case that killed five and sickened 17 is being debunked on a daily basis.

Still U.S. Rep. Rush Holt from New Jersey isn't getting far in asking for a panel investigation into the case, similar to the 9/11 Commission Report. Perhaps some are worried that shining the light of truth will reveal the government's role in Amerithrax. In the wake of Amerithrax, biolab funding grew from $4 million to $15 billion.

Holt should keep pushing hard. The proposed National Academy of Sciences study is a waste of time because we already know the science doesn't make a case against Ivins.

The only case to be made is that Ivins had a mental breakdown, likely caused by his own mental frailty aggravated by the FBI's harassment. Agents pounced on Ivins' deficiencies, real and contrived, and fed them to a public eager for answers.

For example, the phone messages from Ivins to therapist Jean Duley. A copy was obtained through a public information request to the Frederick Police Department, which did its own investigation into Ivins' death last fall.

The messages came from Ivins after Duley secured an emergency petition to have Ivins hospitalized. This happened less than a month before a grand jury was set to convene. Duley was signed on as a witness, despite her "confidential" relationship with Ivins.

As a result, Duley, encouraged by the FBI who recorded the voicemails, took out a peace order against Ivins, citing "threatening" messages. The July 24 order broke the Ivins' investigation to the world because the documents are open to the public. Duley made it known that Ivins was a suspect in the anthrax murders. She specifically referenced "threatening" messages. Listen for yourself, click here. No threats are made or implied in the messages. More the sad ramblings of a broken man who felt betrayed.

Was making the investigation public another FBI attempt to coerce a confession? Or was it a way to allow Duley to testify outside the confines of a client/patient relationship? Either way, it succeeded on one level. Three days after the peace order, Ivins reportedly overdosed on acetaminophen.

No grand jury hearing. No Duley testimony, which could've been extremely damaging. But, no trial meant Duley didn't have to testify that she was on house arrest during her last sessions with Ivins, according to court records. Sentenced to three months beginning in mid-April, her detention was complete a week before she filed the peace order that ultimately broke Ivins.

Surely that information, along with her lengthy list of DUI's and other troubles, would've shredded her credibility as a witness.

Trial or no, the public and the victims' families, including the Ivins, deserve the truth about Amerithrax. The evidence presented by the FBI makes a mockery of our justice system and insults not only our intelligence, but the memory of those who died.

kheerbrandt@yahoo.com

The Fort Detrick lab received accreditation from the College of American Pathologists.

USAMRIID spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden said the lab provides support for researchers in the form of immunizations and blood tests.

The lab's rating at Biosafety Level 2 is "comparable to a laboratory in a hospital," Vander Linden said.

The USAMRIID lab is one of 7,000 labs the college inspects every two years by examining staff qualifications, equipment, facilities, record keeping and other areas.

The accreditation program is recognized as equal to or more stringent than the government's own inspections, according to a statement from the organization.

The USAMRIID lab has not gone unaccredited in recent years, according to the organization.

Separate USAMRIID labs where select agents or the most dangerous of pathogens are handled have been scrutinized in recent years.

The FBI identified one lab as the origin of the strain of anthrax used to carry out the deadly mailings of 2001. Investigators pointed to deceased USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins as the suspect in the attacks that killed five and sickened 17.

Ivins died of an overdose of Tylenol last summer, prompting the FBI to lay out its case against one of the nation's foremost anthrax researchers.

The case is not yet closed.

Despite the FBI case, the Army research center was recognized as having excellent perimeter security, according to a September 2008 report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report assessed five facilities that contain Biosafety Level 4 labs where researchers study life-threatening diseases that are transmissible through the air and have no known treatment or vaccine as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Identified as Lab B in the report, government inspectors found USAMRIID complied with all 15 of the security controls, including roving armed guards, vehicle barriers and video surveillance.

However, another report released in the past year identified insider threats as the most grave concern for military biolabs.

The report by the military's Defense Science Board recommended internal reviews of employee records, drug testing and frequent interviews. Also recommended was regular reviews of internal security camera footage.

USAMRIID installed cameras in its labs between 2002 and 2008.

The presentation by Patricia Worsham came Thursday during a meeting of scientists and experts who are part of an FBI-commissioned panel tasked to study the science behind the investigation of the anthrax mailings, also known as Amerithrax.

Ivins, a leading anthrax researcher at Fort Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, died a year ago of an apparent suicide after the FBI identified him as the sole suspect in the letter attacks.

The FBI has yet to officially close the case, but the agency's forensic science methods are already being studied by a group of scientists working under the National Academy of Sciences.

The FBI is funding the 18-month, $880,000 NAS study, which will affirm the validity of the investigative science, but will stay clear of examining how the FBI connected Ivins to the crime.

On Thursday, the 15-member panel questioned the analysis and tests scientists used to isolate the RMR-1029 strain, which came from an Ames strain turned into powder form and mailed in letters that killed five people and sickened 17.

The flask of RMR-1029 anthrax under Ivins' control was identified as the origin of the bacteria used in the letters.

Worsham, who works in USAMRIID's bacteriology division, said she was prevented by a federal gag order from talking about certain aspects of the case involving Ivins. Instead, she presented how the lab identified morphological variants to identify the strain used in the attack.

During the investigation, federal agents enlisted the help of multiple agencies and organizations, including scientists at USAMRIID.

"We had to send every Ames strain we had to the repository," Worsham said.

She said the Ames strain was valuable to the work at USAMRIID because it worked well for vaccine tests. Ivins was a leading scientist in developing an anthrax vaccine.

"Ames had a good history," she said. "It had not been passed through the laboratory a great deal."

Paul Keim, a Northern Arizona University biology professor, explained to the panel how his team identified the anthrax Ames strain among nearly 2,000 strains collected.

Although researchers could only identify four or five new isolates from the Ames strain, Keim said he was positive about the match between the anthrax collected from the letters and the flask under Ivins' control.

"It would have been nice to have 100 isolates," he said.

Keim said he had criticism for the FBI, which used his lab as a repository for evidentiary samples.

"We weren't able to get money from the FBI to do these analyses until May 2002," he said. "For the next crisis it would have been nice if the federal government had a few sugar grants."

The presentation Friday to a scientific panel confirmed nothing new but provided the group, convened by the National Academy of Sciences, a glimpse into the investigative science used in the wake of the nation's first major bioterrorism event.

"I think the letter powders are not unique with respect to (silica) and (oxygen) elemental signatures," said Joseph Michael of Sandia National Laboratory.

He said previous studies have shown the same chemical make up of silica added to dried anthrax.

Investigators think the silica was introduced to the dried anthrax spores as a way to weaponize the bacteria by making it airborne longer and easier to inhale.

The FBI has yet to close its case but has accused Frederick resident Bruce Ivins, a researcher at Fort Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, of processing and mailing the anthrax.

Michael's presentation is part of an 18-month, $880,000 National Academy of Sciences study commissioned by the FBI. It was the second day this week the panel met.

The study seeks to affirm the validity of the investigative science, but will stay clear of examining how the FBI connected Ivins to the crime.

After Ivins' alleged involvement was made public, colleagues of the scientist doubted Ivins would have the capability or know how to weaponize the spores.

Ivins died from an apparent suicide last year. The 2001 attacks killed five people and sickened 17.

Michael studied the powders recovered from letters sent to the Washington offices of Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, and the New York Post.

He used Scanning Electron and Scanning Transmission Electron microscopes to study the structures of thousands of the irradiated, lifeless spores.

Michael said it was clear the silica coating had been added. The same study of the RMR-1029, a flask of liquid Ames strain anthrax investigators think Ivins drew from to create the weaponized powder anthrax, did not contain silica, Michael said.

He said the spore coatings on the Daschle, Leahy and New York Post letters were indistinguishable.