Laboratory tests have found no traces of anthrax in an apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where a man worked on unprocessed animal hides obtained from Vado Diomande, the New York City man who contracted inhalation anthrax this month.

The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which released the test results yesterday, said it had told three people who lived in the apartment, including Mr. Diomande's associate, that they could immediately discontinue the antibiotics they had been taking.

Four other people who worked with Mr. Diomande and may have had contact with animal skins continued to take antibiotics, although none have exhibited any symptoms of infection.

The negative test results and the reduction in the number of people on antibiotics were among the most promising developments in the case since Wednesday, when federal authorities confirmed that Mr. Diomande had contracted inhalation anthrax in the first naturally occurring case in the United States since 1976. A musician and a dancer, Mr. Diomande, 44, is thought to have inhaled anthrax spores while handling untreated animal skins, which he stretched and scraped to make drums.

Mr. Diomande, who collapsed on Feb. 16 after a performance in Mansfield, Pa., remained in serious condition yesterday at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa.

This week, the federal Environmental Protection Agency will begin cleaning Mr. Diomande's fifth-floor apartment at 31 Downing Street in Greenwich Village and his sixth-floor studio in a warehouse at 2 Prince Street near the Brooklyn waterfront, officials said yesterday.

On Friday, lab tests detected the presence of anthrax spores in both places, as well as in a Dodge van that Mr. Diomande is believed to have used to transport the skins.

The agency will clean the hallways and other common areas of the apartment building and will clean other residents' apartments if they ask for it. The extent of the cleanup of the Brooklyn warehouse is still being determined, officials said, as is what will be done to the van.

"Our agency has responded to anthrax incidents in the past and has a great deal of expertise in this area," said Alan J. Steinberg, a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, which handled the cleaning of several Congressional offices and a mail-distribution center in Washington after anthrax terrorism attacks in 2001.

A study published in Annals of Internal Medicine on Tuesday, the day before Mr. Diomande's case was disclosed, reviewed 82 inhalation anthrax cases worldwide, 70 of them fatal, from 1900 to 2001.

"Of the 12 patients who survived, they were much more likely to have received either multidrug antibiotic regimens or antiserum, to have had fluid drained from around their lungs, and to have received therapy in the early rather than later stages of the disease," said Dr. Jon-Erik C. Holty, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Mr. Diomande had chills, fever and fluid in his lungs when he collapsed, but after a week of hospitalization he was in stable condition. On Friday, his condition was changed to serious.

As government workers prepared to decontaminate the apartment of a man who contracted anthrax, tenants of the warehouse where he kept unprocessed animal skins complained yesterday that the closing of the building had hurt their livelihoods.

Lincoln Mayne, 34, an Australian fashion designer who pays $850 a month to rent a 500-square-foot studio in the eight-story building, at 2 Prince Street near the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, said that his five employees had not been paid in a week and that two of them were planning to quit.

"It affects the momentum of my business," said Mr. Mayne, who said he had 2,000 T-shirts in the studio, worth $2,200, that were supposed to be shipped on Friday.

The anthrax patient, Vado Diomande, 44, remained in serious condition yesterday at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa., although doctors there said that he had shown improvement. Officials believe he contracted inhalation anthrax, the first naturally occurring case of the disease in the United States since 1976, after working with unprocessed animal skins to make drums.

Last Friday, laboratory tests confirmed the presence of anthrax spores in Mr. Diomande's apartment in Greenwich Village, his work studio in the Brooklyn warehouse and in a Dodge van he is thought to have used to transport the skins. Officials have struggled with how to decontaminate the two buildings.

Mr. Diomande's fifth-floor apartment remains sealed, but other residents of the building, at 31 Downing Street, have been allowed to come and go. Starting tomorrow, workers for the federal Environmental Protection Agency will use a bleach solution and a high-efficiency particulate air-filter vacuum to clean the apartment and the building's common areas, including hallways.

Several of Mr. Diomande's possessions may have to be destroyed, but his family will be consulted before any such decision is made, said Mary Mears, a regional spokeswoman for the agency. The work is to be completed by Friday.

The fate of the warehouse is less certain. The building is mostly occupied by a self-storage company, but about 30 loft studios on the third and sixth floors have been rented, mostly to artists and musicians. (Mr. Diomande's studio is on the sixth floor.)

Mehatem Ashenaffi, 31, who runs an online bookstore with his partner out of a 1,000-square-foot studio that costs $1,400 a month in rent, said his business had been crippled. "If the doors aren't open, we can't sell," he said.

Thomas S. Beale, 27, a sculptor who pays $860 a month to rent a 600-square-foot studio, said he had asked government representatives when he could return, to no avail. "I've had one client who wanted to see my work, but he is leaving the country on Tuesday," Mr. Beale said. "I was told it would be 7 to 10 days before we could go back in. It's an incredible frustration and inconvenience."

Mr. Mayne, Mr. Ashenaffi and Mr. Beale, who work on the third floor, met last night with Mr. Ashenaffi's business partner and two other tenants.

Erik T. Ekstein, one of three owners who hold the lease on the building, said they had hired a contractor to do the cleanup and were awaiting approval by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and by the Environmental Protection Agency, which will oversee the work.

"We definitely feel for our tenants," he said in a telephone interview. "We will do everything in our power to get them back into the building as quickly as possible."

He said he hoped the plans would be approved by tomorrow. The environmental agency has scheduled a meeting with the tenants tomorrow night.

John Holl contributed reporting for this article.

Environmental cleanup workers entered two New York City buildings yesterday where anthrax spores were detected last Friday and began a painstaking decontamination process under close monitoring from federal and city officials.

At 9 a.m., workers hired by the federal Environmental Protection Agency started cleaning the hallways and the fifth-floor apartment of Vado Diomande, the musician who contracted inhalation anthrax last month. The presence of anthrax in his building, at 31 Downing Street in Greenwich Village, was confirmed last Friday, but residents have been allowed to come and go. The work was completed about 9 p.m.

More complicated is the cleanup of the Brooklyn warehouse where Mr. Diomande is believed to have inhaled anthrax spores from working with unprocessed animal hides that he used to make drums. That cleanup, which began around noon yesterday, is expected to take three to five days.

Since Feb. 22, when Mr. Diomande's diagnosis was confirmed, none of the 30 commercial tenants have been allowed to enter the eight-story building, at 2 Prince Street near the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn.

Mr. Diomande remained in serious condition yesterday at a hospital in Pennsylvania, although Dr. Melanie A. MacLennan, a physician and a friend of Mr. Diomande's, said that his wife, Lisa, had told her that his vital signs had improved.

Last night, at a 90-minute meeting at the MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, tenants of the warehouse listened to presentations from the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Department of Small Business Services, and from the E.P.A. Jessica Leighton, the city's deputy commissioner for environmental health, said the cleanup workers were being extremely cautious even though the risk of infection was "virtually nil."

The officials explained the cleanup process. Workers in hazardous-materials suits are passing high-efficiency particulate air-filter vacuum machines over floors, and soaking hard surfaces with a bleach solution and rinsing them off, usually after an hour, with soap and water. Workers are also collecting air and dust samples in petri dishes and waiting to see if spores develop after 24 to 48 hours. Some materials that cannot be cleaned, like certain carpets, will be double-wrapped in plastic, sprayed with bleach, boxed, sprayed and then incinerated.

The tenants, who had complained that their livelihoods were hurt, left the meeting with mixed reactions. "We're being told that it's safe, yet we still cannot get in for another three, five or seven days," said Peter D. Gerakaris, 25, an artist who occupies a third-floor studio.

"Three days ago, we didn't know what was going on," said Lincoln Mayne, 34, a fashion designer who rents a third-floor studio. "Now I feel there's a face to the process."

Bill Holcomb, 31, who runs a recording studio across the hall from Mr. Diomande's space on the sixth floor, said he would not be willing to return until he was assured that air vents and entryways had tested negative for anthrax. "If I can get that on paper, I can continue to conduct business with peace of mind," he said during the meeting.

Erik T. Ekstein, one of the three owners who hold the lease on the warehouse, hired Trade-Winds Environmental Restoration, which focuses on hazardous-waste removal, to do the work.

The warehouse was the site of another environmental controversy only a few years ago. In 2002, the building's owner, Marvin Rubenstein, and his son Isaac were convicted in Federal District Court in Brooklyn of violating the Clean Air Act by failing to follow work standards when they had workers remove asbestos from the building in 2000. The two men were sentenced to prison in 2003, but after an appeal, their sentences were reduced last year to time served.

A drummer from Manhattan who contracted inhalation anthrax last month after working with unprocessed animal skins suffered a "temporary setback" on Thursday evening, and was downgraded to serious condition, hospital officials said yesterday in a statement.

The drummer, Vado Diomande, 44, had been in fair condition at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa. When reached by telephone yesterday, a hospital spokeswoman declined to elaborate on Mr. Diomande's condition or what problems he was having.

In a separate statement, Mr. Diomande's brother-in-law, Alexander Harman, said: "I know he is strong and can overcome all obstacles. He will thrive with the support of all who know him, and all who have newly come to know of him."

Mr. Diomande, founder of the Kotchegna Dance Company, collapsed on Feb. 16 after a performance in Mansfield, Pa.

Meanwhile, Mary Mears, a spokeswoman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said workers had finished recleaning Mr. Diomande's apartment at 31 Downing Street in Greenwich Village and had found no further traces of anthrax.

She said that workers were continuing the cleanup of two floors at a Brooklyn warehouse where Mr. Diomande worked with the skins, and that the results of tests determining if those floors could be reopened would be available early next week.

SAYRE, Pa., March 22 — Walking slowly but sporting a wide smile, Vado Diomande, the African dancer and drummer who contracted inhalation anthrax last month, entered a hospital auditorium here yesterday and spoke publicly for the first time since he fell ill. He thanked the doctors who have been treating him, talked about his plans for life after the hospital, and even did a quick dance.

"They do very good job," he said in halting English. "Because if not them, maybe I'm not here today."

Then, saying, "Just one step," he jumped into the air and did a quick dance to the applause of his family and the hospital's staff members.

Mr. Diomande, 44, a native of Ivory Coast in West Africa who lives in Greenwich Village with his wife, contracted the first naturally occurring case of inhalation anthrax in the United States since 1976. Health officials have said he fell ill after working with unprocessed animal skins to make drums.

Mr. Diomande said on Wednesday, however, that he had been working with a cowhide he purchased in New York about a week before he fell ill. While cutting the hide to make a bass drum, Mr. Diomande said, he noticed "powder" fall from the skin to the floor. Within a few days, he said, he was having trouble breathing and felt fatigued.

Initially, he told investigators that he had been working with a goatskin. In an effort to explain the discrepancy, Mr. Diomande's wife, Lisa, said he had spoken with investigators "through a great deal of pain, lack of breathing and drugs."

Mr. Diomande has spent more than four weeks in the hospital, and though he has lost 45 pounds, his condition has steadily improved. He was released late Wednesday evening.

He collapsed on Feb. 16 after a performance in Mansfield, Pa., and was taken to Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, where he remained in intensive care.

"It was very painful," Mr. Diomande said of the night of his collapse. "After the show, to go upstairs, I could not walk. When I do, I walk five steps and have to rest. It was this sickness."

Doctors treated Mr. Diomande with antibiotics including Cipro, but said he had been placed on a ventilator for several weeks and had undergone operations to remove fluid near his lungs.

On Monday, his condition was upgraded from fair to good, and on Wednesday the chief pulmonary specialist at the hospital, Dr. James Walsh, said that Mr. Diomande still had "abnormal lung function." "I think Vado survived because he was such a fit and strong person to begin with," Dr. Walsh said.

A professional performer, Mr. Diomande even demonstrated his improved lung capacity by holding his breath for several seconds.

Dr. Walsh said that Mr. Diomande's condition was not contagious and that the public should not be fearful. "If you buy a drum from him, you are not going to get inhalation anthrax," he said. "If you shake his hand, you are not going to get inhalation anthrax."

After Mr. Diomande's doctors diagnosed anthrax, environmental cleanup crews detected anthrax spores at his Greenwich Village apartment and at the Brooklyn warehouse where he made the drums. The crews spent several weeks cleaning and decontaminating the sites, and though both locations have since been reopened, Ms. Diomande said many of the couple's possessions were destroyed during the cleaning process.

To help with Mr. Diomande's recovery, the couple are likely to delay a return to their fifth-floor walkup and stay with Ms. Diomande's brother in Jersey City, she said.

She also apologized to their neighbors and the tenants of the Brooklyn warehouse for the inconveniences during the cleanup.

"We feel for them because it's also happening to us, and we're hoping their lives will be restored as we hope with our lives," she said.

During nearly 40 minutes of questions, Mr. Diomande said that he would return to making drums but that he would take more precautions in the future, including always wearing a mask. He said he hoped to be dancing again within "maybe two weeks."

The United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from The New York Times on Monday, allowing a libel suit by a former Army bioterrorism expert to go forward.

The suit, filed in 2003 by Steven J. Hatfill, accused Nicholas D. Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist for The Times, of implicating Dr. Hatfill in the unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001.

The suit was dismissed by a federal judge in Virginia in 2004. A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., reinstated the case in July, and the full court, by a 6-to-6 vote, declined to rehear it in October.

The decisions to date have been preliminary, centering on whether Mr. Kristof's statements could be considered defamatory.

Judge Dennis W. Shedd, writing for the majority in the July decision, said "a reasonable reader of Kristof's columns likely would conclude that Hatfill was responsible for the anthrax mailings in 2001." But Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, dissenting from the October decision, said "the columns do not pin guilt on plaintiff, but instead urge the investigation of an undeniable public threat."

The trial court will now consider whether the statements were false and whether The Times was at fault for publishing them.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: September 26, 2006
The New York Times

Seeking to clear up public confusion, an F.B.I. official has reiterated the bureau’s judgment that the anthrax in the letter attacks five years ago bore no special coatings to increase its deadliness and no hallmarks of a military weapon.

In theory, that finding could widen the pool of potential suspects in the unsolved case since the perpetrator would have required less skill and could have worked with more commonplace materials. What started as the largest criminal investigation in American history now, five years later, appears to be stalled.

The statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation official contradicts an array of assessments over the years about the anthrax attacks, which in late 2001 killed 5 people and sickened 17 others. Tainted letters were dropped into a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., sending anthrax to offices of several publications and two United States senators.

Soon after, a variety of public and private experts proclaimed the deadly spores to have been specially treated to enhance their ability to float in the air and reach deep into human lungs, where they could germinate and kill their host. Some experts called the anthrax military-grade.

But the bureau official, Douglas J. Beecher, a scientist at the F.B.I. Laboratory in Quantico, Va., disputed such claims as misguided in a recent journal article.

“A widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production,” Dr. Beecher wrote in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. “The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.”

The F.B.I. declined to make available lead scientists in the inquiry.

The Hartford Courant and The Washington Post referred to the Beecher piece in recent articles.

William C. Patrick III, a scientist who once made germ weapons for the American military and is now a private consultant on biological defense, agreed with the F.B.I.’s assessment. “The material was good, but not weapons grade,” Mr. Patrick said in an interview. “You can’t make that in your basement. It requires sophisticated equipment.”

The misconceptions in the case began early, reinforced by edgy public officials and federal scientists struggling to assess an unfamiliar threat quickly. In Washington, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology studied the anthrax and found what it believed to be added silica, a signature of military anthrax.

“This was a key component,” an institute official said at the time. “Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize.”

Last year, Edward G. Lake, a retired computer systems analyst in Racine, Wis., self-published a book, “Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks,” that documented the silica misunderstanding as well as many other federal and private blunders. “There were,” Mr. Lake said in an interview, “a lot of false assumptions.”

For its part, the F.B.I. has quietly but fairly consistently argued for a humdrum explanation. In November 2001, it said the culprit was probably a domestic loner with at least limited scientific expertise who was able to use laboratory equipment obtained for as little as $2,500.

Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense expert, came under intense scrutiny in the case even as he vigorously proclaimed his innocence. His extensive ties to the American military establishment seemed like circumstantial evidence of guilt among those who saw the anthrax as highly refined and possibly of weapons-grade.

In 2003, Dr. Hatfill sued the bureau and the Justice Department, saying leaks to the news media about him and the public description of him by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the case had violated his privacy rights. He also has defamation suits pending against The New York Times, Reader’s Digest and Vanity Fair.

Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director of the Washington field office of the F.B.I., said in a recent statement that the bureau’s “commitment to solving this case is undiminished.”

“Despite the frustrations that come with any complex investigation,’’ he said, “no one in the F.B.I. has, for a moment, stopped thinking about the innocent victims of these attacks — nor has the effort to solve this case in any way been slowed.”

Nicholas Wade contributed reporting.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — A federal magistrate judge has ordered The New York Times to disclose the identities of three confidential sources used by one of its columnists, Nicholas Kristof, for columns he wrote about the investigation of the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001.

The order, issued Friday by Magistrate Judge Liam O’Grady, requires the newspaper to disclose the identities of the three sources to lawyers for Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who has brought a defamation suit against The Times. The order was disclosed Monday.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the newspaper would appeal the ruling.

Dr. Hatfill, a germ warfare specialist who formerly worked in the Army laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., has asserted that a series of columns by Mr. Kristof about the slow pace of the anthrax investigation defamed him because they suggested he was responsible for the attacks.

Five people died in the attacks. Although the federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the case, they have not charged him with any crimes.

At a deposition on July 13, Mr. Kristof declined to name five of his sources for the columns, but two have subsequently agreed to release him from his pledge of confidentiality. Judge O’Grady’s ruling identifies the remaining unnamed sources as two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and a former colleague or friend of Dr. Hatfill at Fort Detrick.

The judge ruled that the laws of Virginia applied and that under that state’s law, reporters have only a qualified privilege to decline to name their sources that may be outweighed by other factors.

He wrote that for Mr. Hatfill to have a chance of meeting his burden of demonstrating that he was defamed by the columns, he “needs an opportunity to question the confidential sources and determine if Mr. Kristof accurately reported information the sources provided.”

Mr. Kristof wrote about a government scientist he initially referred to as Mr. Z, saying he had become the overwhelming focus of the investigation. In August 2002, he wrote that Dr. Hatfill had acknowledged he was Mr. Z. at a news conference in which he said he had been mistreated by the news media.

The lawsuit was originally dismissed by a federal judge in Virginia in 2004. A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond reinstated the case and the full appeals court, by a 6-to-6 vote, declined to overturn that ruling. The Supreme Court declined to intervene last March.

Judge O’Grady wrote: “The court understands the need for a reporter to be able to credibly pledge confidentiality to his sources. Confidential sources have been an important part of journalism, which is presumably why Virginia recognizes a qualified reporter’s privilege in the first place.”

He said Virginia law required the use of a three-part balancing test as to whether there is a compelling need for the information, whether the information is relevant and whether it may not be obtained any other way.

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: November 3, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 — A federal judge in Virginia on Thursday upheld a ruling by a magistrate judge that The New York Times must disclose the identities of three sources used by Nicholas D. Kristof for columns he wrote on the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001.

The judge, Claude M. Hilton of Federal District Court, ruled that last month’s opinion was “not clearly erroneous or contrary to law.”

The order is part of a case of defamation brought against The Times by Stephen J. Hatfill, who asserts that columns by Mr. Kristof suggested he was responsible for the attacks.

The ruling is likely to make it more difficult for The Times to defend the lawsuit when the case goes to trial because a judge may instruct the jury to give less credibility to assertions that the columns had been based on legitimate and knowledgeable sources. Because it is a civil case rather than a criminal one, there is little chance of anyone from The Times facing the possibility of being jailed over contempt charges.

George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel for The Times, said Thursday’s ruling was disappointing, “given that the court recognized that confidential sources play an important role in good journalism, and that the court of appeals came very close to dismissing this case on a preliminary motion on the basis that the columns weren’t defamatory.”

“Though it may make defending the case tougher,” Mr. Freeman added, “we are confident that in the end, the columns will be vindicated.”

Five people died in the attacks. The authorities called Dr. Hatfill, who worked on germ warfare issues, a “person of interest” but have not charged him with any crimes.

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: November 18, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — A federal magistrate judge ruled on Friday that The New York Times may not rely in any way on information its columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, may have received from two Federal Bureau of Investigation officials in its defense of a defamation suit brought by a former government scientist.

The judge, Liam O’Grady, issued the ruling as a sanction against The Times for refusing to disclose or force Mr. Kristof to disclose the identities of the two confidential F.B.I. sources he used in writing a series of columns about the investigation of the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001.

Dr. Stephen J. Hatfill, a germ warfare specialist who once worked in the Army laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., has asserted in a lawsuit that the columns defamed him because they suggested he was responsible for the attacks.

In its filings, The Times has suggested that Mr. Kristof had numerous sources for the columns. Of those, Mr. Kristof initially refused to identify five, saying he had promised them confidentiality. He has since disclosed the identities of three, saying those sources recently released him from his pledge.

In issuing the ruling, Judge O’Grady rejected a series of harsher sanctions sought by Mr. Hatfill’s lawyers, including a request that the court impose a $25,000-a-day fine on The Times until it named the two F.B.I. officials.

Judge O’Grady issued his ruling from the bench in Alexandria, Va., where he sits and where the trial is scheduled to begin on Jan. 29. The ruling means that when Mr. Kristof testifies during the trial on behalf of The Times, he may not cite any information he may have received from the two confidential sources as substantiation for the columns.

How much of a setback the ruling is for The Times is unclear and probably depends on how much other substantiation Mr. Kristof and the newspaper may present to counter Dr. Hatfill’s assertions. Five people died in the anthrax attacks. Although federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as “a person of interest” in the case, they have not charged him with any crimes.

Mr. Kristof’s columns were about a government scientist he initially referred to as Mr. Z, someone he said had become the overwhelming focus of the investigation. In August 2002, he wrote that Dr. Hatfill had acknowledged he was Mr. Z at a news conference in which he said he had been mistreated by the news media.

Because the lawsuit is a civil action, not a criminal one, there was no consideration of anyone being ordered to jail as has happened in some recent criminal investigations. Instead, the judge said he fashioned the remedy to ensure that Dr. Hatfill was not disadvantaged by the use of information obtained by The Times from sources it would not identify and thus subject to examination.

Judge O’Grady had written earlier that for Dr. Hatfill to meet his burden of demonstrating he was defamed, he needed “an opportunity to question the confidential sources and determine if Mr. Kristof accurately reported information the sources provided.”

In preparation for the start of the trial, Dr. Hatfill was deposed Friday by lawyers for The Times.

The lawsuit was originally dismissed by a federal judge in Virginia in 2004, who ruled that the columns were not defamatory and only reported on the existence of an investigation. A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., reinstated the case, and the full appeals court, by a 6-to-6 vote, declined to overturn that ruling. The Supreme Court declined to intervene last March.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — The New York Times filed a motion with a federal judge on Friday asking him to dismiss a suit by a germ-warfare scientist who said a series of columns by Nicholas D. Kristof about the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001 defamed him.

The scientist, Stephen J. Hatfill, who formerly worked in the Army laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., has said Mr. Kristof’s columns about the slow pace of the anthrax investigation defamed him because they suggested that he was responsible for the attacks.

In the motion filed Friday, lawyers for The Times asked Judge Claude M. Hilton of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., to dismiss the suit. The motion said Dr. Hatfill was a public figure because of his role in administering bioterrorism programs and speaking publicly about the issue.

As a public figure, The Times’s lawyers argued, Dr. Hatfill has a high burden to establish that he was defamed, including showing that the newspaper knowingly conveyed the idea that he was responsible for the attacks.

“No evidence indicates that The Times ever intended to imply plaintiff was in fact guilty of the anthrax mailings, and overwhelming evidence exists to the contrary,” the filing said.

The pleading also said that Dr. Hatfill could not demonstrate that the columns were published with “actual malice,” a standard for defaming public figures, because Mr. Kristof did not know whether Dr. Hatfill was responsible for the attacks, only that he was worthy of investigation.

Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers are scheduled to file a response this month in which they may well argue that he is not a public figure.

The legal papers filed by The Times included dozens of exhibits that made public for the first time internal F.B.I. memorandums about the inquiry, along with e-mail messages sent to and from Mr. Kristof.

One undated memorandum, apparently prepared to answer questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, appears to have been written in the fall of 2002. It said that investigators interviewed Dr. Hatfill on four occasions in 2002 and that he consented to a polygraph examination in January 2002. Subsequently, the memorandum said, he declined additional polygraph examinations.

Another memorandum from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, dated Dec. 3, 2001, showed how the bureau investigated “persons of interest” in the case. The memorandum said the bureau had a three-tier system. Some people would “deserve the most active investigative attention” and others would be “screened out of consideration by the most reasonable and expedient manner available to include an interview.”

A brief in support of the motion to dismiss the case was also filed Friday, but its contents were not made public because it included material that parties in the case agreed to keep sealed. In addition, volumes of supplementary exhibits were filed but not released. The brief and some of the exhibits could be made public as early as Monday.

Five people died in the anthrax attacks. Although the federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the case, they have not charged him with any crimes.

Mr. Kristof wrote about a government scientist he initially referred to as Mr. Z, saying he had become the overwhelming focus of the investigation. In August 2002, Mr. Kristof wrote that Dr. Hatfill had acknowledged that he was Mr. Z at a news conference in which he said the news media had mistreated him.

The case was initially dismissed by a trial judge who said the columns did not defame Dr. Hatfill but merely reported on the investigation. An appeals court reversed that ruling, saying a jury should decide the issue of defamation.

After the case went back to the trial court, a federal magistrate judge ruled that The Times had no basis to refuse to identify all of Mr. Kristof’s confidential sources. After The Times refused to identify two F.B.I. officials who were among the many sources, Magistrate Judge Liam O’Grady, also in Alexandria, ruled last month that The Times could not rely in any way on information from those sources in defending against Dr. Hatfill’s suit.

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: January 6, 2007

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 5 — A lawyer for a former government scientist who is suing The New York Times for defamation over a series of columns about the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001 said Friday in court that he was prepared to introduce an internal e-mail message from a senior Times editor that raised questions about one of the columns. 

 The lawyer, Mark A. Grannis, said the columns written by Nicholas D. Kristof about the federal investigation of the mailings unfairly damaged the reputation of his client, Dr. Stephen A. Hatfill, a former germ warfare scientist.

Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers have said the columns wrongfully suggested that he was responsible for the attacks.

Mr. Grannis told Judge Claude M. Hilton of Federal District Court here that if the trial proceeded he would introduce evidence including a May 23, 2002, message from Philip Taubman, then deputy editor of the editorial page, raising questions about a draft of a column by Mr. Kristof.

Beginning that spring, Mr. Kristof wrote a series of columns about a government scientist whom he initially referred to as Mr. Z., saying the scientist had become the overwhelming focus of the investigation. That August, Mr. Kristof wrote that Dr. Hatfill had acknowledged that he was Mr. Z. at a news conference in which he said the news media had mistreated him.

Mr. Grannis said he would introduce evidence of questions about the column posed by Mr. Taubman and others. The evidence from Mr. Taubman, the lawyer said, was a message saying the as-yet-unpublished column “pointed pretty much at the guy” and encouraging Mr. Kristof to take out some of the material that did that.

Mr. Grannis made his disclosure of the information that he has obtained in the discovery phase of the suit in a hearing on a Times motion to seek dismissal of the complaint.

The trial is scheduled to start Jan. 29. Judge Hilton did not say when he would rule.

The Times has argued that the columns were aimed at prodding the Federal Bureau of Investigation to pursue the anthrax case more vigorously and did not accuse Dr. Hatfill of being the person responsible for the mailings.

In writing about the investigation, Mr. Kristof’s ire was directed against federal officials for not moving swiftly to decide whether the scientist was guilty or innocent, the paper’s lawyers have said.

“His intent was to focus on the F.B.I.,” a lawyer for The Times, Lee Levine, told Judge Hilton.

Mr. Levine, of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, told Judge Hilton that Mr. Hatfill was a public figure, or as someone recognized in libel and defamation law as a limited-purpose public figure, because of his involvement in the public debate about preparedness for a bioterrorist attack.

Mr. Levine said Dr. Hatfill had “voluntarily thrust himself into the vortex of that controversy” through his writings and speeches, confirmed by Dr. Hatfill’s complaints that he was easily identified as Mr. Z by many people in the field.

As a public figure Dr. Hatfill would have a far greater burden in his effort to win a defamation suit. To prevail, a public figure has to prove that the material was published with “actual malice,” that is with the knowledge that the statements were false or with reckless disregard as to whether they were false.

Lawyers for The Times also argued that neither Mr. Taubman’s message nor any other evidence put forward by Mr. Hatfill’s lawyers was proof that Mr. Kristof had acted with reckless disregard for the truth, the standard that Mr. Hatfill must meet if he is found to be a public figure.

The Times said that even if all of Mr. Hatfill’s assertions were true, he would not prevail and that therefore the judge should dismiss the case before trial. The message from Mr. Taubman, now Washington bureau chief for The Times, was released Friday afternoon by the lawyers for The Times. It read: “Nick, you’re still pointing pretty much at the guy. I think you need to lose the material I’ve marked in boldface.”

Mr. Taubman had marked two paragraphs referring to a middle-age American scientist with experience in producing bioweapons. The column, which appeared May 24, included the first of those two paragraphs but dropped the second, the messages showed. Although the essence of that message was pretty much as Mr. Grannis represented it in court, two other e-mail messages he cited were more ambiguous.

He said messages from Nicholas Wade, a former science editor at the paper and then a special projects writer, and Gail Collins, the editorial page editor, were critical of a column prepared for publication in July. Those messages, as disclosed by lawyers for The Times, raised more generalized suggestions.

Mr. Grannis said Mr. Wade’s message had said the column made it plausible to a reader that Mr. Kristof was pointing at Mr. Z as the culprit. But the message said it was plausible that Dr. Hatfill might have been involved in an earlier anthrax scare that was a hoax.

In her message, Ms. Collins said the column “looked fine to me” and asked how an anthrax mailing to The National Enquirer in Florida fit in.

Five people died in the attacks. Although federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the case, he was not charged with any crimes. No one has been charged in the attacks.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — A federal judge on Friday dismissed a suit against The New York Times by a former government scientist who said he was defamed by a series of columns about the deadly anthrax mailings in 2001.

The judge, Claude M. Hilton of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., granted a motion by The Times to dismiss the suit but did not provide an immediate explanation. He is expected to file a detailed written opinion in coming days.

It was the latest and, perhaps, final chapter in a suit that has gone to the Supreme Court.

The scientist, Dr. Stephen J. Hatfill, a specialist in biological weapons, had said in his suit that the columns by Nicholas D. Kristof about the anthrax mailings had defamed him.

Mr. Kristof wrote about a government scientist whom he initially identified as Mr. Z, saying he had become the overwhelming focus of the investigation. In August 2002, Mr. Kristof wrote that Dr. Hatfill, a former scientist at the Army bioweapons center at Fort Detrick, Md., had come forward and identified himself as Mr. Z and said the news media had treated him unfairly.

Five people died in the anthrax attacks. Although federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest,” he was never charged with any crime, and the attacks remain unsolved.

The Times argued in its dismissal motion that Dr. Hatfill was a public figure, at least for the purposes of the suit, in that he had thrust himself into the public debate about preparedness for a biological attack. That would present him with a far greater burden in showing that he was defamed and could, as the newspaper argued, prevent such a judgment.

The Times also argued that the columns did not blame Dr. Hatfill for the attacks, as he said in his suit. Instead, the paper’s lawyers said, the columns were aimed at pressing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to move more swiftly and either charge or clear Dr. Hatfill as a suspect.

Judge Hilton had dismissed the suit earlier, saying that no defamation had occurred. A three-judge appeals panel voted, 2 to 1, to reinstate the suit, saying a jury should decide whether the columns were defamatory.

The full appeals court, based in Richmond, Va., split, and the Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Judge Hilton’s latest dismissal, when his opinion is published, is expected to rest on a fuller argument than the last time and could thus be less vulnerable to being overturned. It is likely to deal with the issues raised in The Times’s dismissal motion and Dr. Hatfill’s response, including the question of whether he is a public figure for the purposes of defamation law.

Whether there is any leeway for Dr. Hatfill to mount an appeal as he did before would depend on how Judge Hilton fashions his ruling.

A lawyer for Dr. Hatfill, Mark A. Grannis, said, “Obviously we can’t make any statements as to what we’ll do until we see the ruling.”

Mr. Grannis said he did not believe that the case was over.

“It has always been our position,” he said, “that the evidence of defamation was extremely strong and Mr. Kristof fabricated parts of his column to falsely implicate Dr. Hatfill in the anthrax attacks.”

David E. McCraw, a lawyer for The Times, said in a statement: “We are gratified by the judge’s ruling today. In making our summary judgment motion, we believed that the plaintiff had failed to come up with the evidence necessary to bring this case to trial, and we are pleased that the court agreed.”

Mr. McCraw said the case had required a significant investment of time and money on the part of the newspaper, “but in the end, the law of defamation worked the way it was supposed to, by protecting aggressive, important journalism.”

By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: February 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — A federal judge who dismissed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times acted after concluding that the scientist who brought the case, a bioterrorism expert investigated over deadly anthrax mailings in 2001, was a public official and could not show that the newspaper had knowingly published false information.

In an opinion released Thursday, the judge, Claude M. Hilton of the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., laid out the reasons for his order last month dismissing a long-running case brought by Steven J. Hatfill, a specialist in biological weapons. Dr. Hatfill’s lawsuit said a series of columns by Nicholas D. Kristof about the anthrax mailings had defamed him.

Mark A. Grannis, a lawyer for Dr. Hatfill, said Judge Hilton’s opinion was unsurprising and was not the last word in the case.

“The opinion is more or less what we expected, given the judge’s earlier statements,” Mr. Grannis said. “We will appeal, and we expect to prevail.”

Mr. Kristof wrote about a government scientist whom he initially identified as Mr. Z, saying this scientist had become the overwhelming focus of the investigation into the anthrax attacks. Then, in August 2002, Mr. Kristof wrote that Dr. Hatfill, formerly with the Army bioweapons center at Fort Detrick, Md., had come forward to identify himself as Mr. Z and say the news media had treated him unfairly.

Five people died in the anthrax attacks. Federal authorities identified Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the investigation but never charged him with any crime. The attacks remain unsolved.

Judge Hilton’s opinion, which was dated Tuesday, said Dr. Hatfill could be considered both a “public official” and a “public figure” and therefore would have to meet a higher burden of proof than would a private figure in order to prevail in a defamation suit. Under that higher burden, a public figure bringing suit must demonstrate that the writer acted with “actual malice” — that is, either knew that what he was writing was false or had “a high degree of awareness” that it probably was.

The judge said Dr. Hatfill was a public official because even after he left his formal government position, he continued to perform official functions as a federal contractor. At the time Mr. Kristof wrote about the case, Dr. Hatfill was receiving federal money to work on national defense programs, the judge said.

The opinion said Dr. Hatfill was also a public figure, holding himself out as an expert on bioterrorism and granting interviews to a variety of news organizations.

Judge Hilton described at length the government’s inquiry into the case and its focus on Dr. Hatfill. He disclosed that the F.B.I. had searched Dr. Hatfill’s car and a condominium owned by his girlfriend and had seized several items, including “notes regarding the anthrax mailings, a spinner flask of anthrax stimulant and a container of Cipro.” A spinner flask could be used to study the properties of anthrax, and Cipro is an antibiotic used to treat a variety of ailments, including anthrax poisoning.

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: August 14, 2007

Five reporters must testify about their law enforcement sources in a former Army scientist’s lawsuit against the Justice Department, a federal judge in Washington ruled yesterday.

The suit, filed by Steven J. Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert, contends that the government violated the federal Privacy Act by providing journalists with information about him in the F.B.I.’s investigation of the deadly anthrax mailings in 2001.

The reporters — Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek; Allan Lengel of The Washington Post; Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today; and James Stewart, formerly of CBS News — have acknowledged receiving information from the Justice Department and the F.B.I. about Dr. Hatfill, the judge, Reggie B. Walton, wrote in his decision yesterday. But they have refused to name their sources.

Judge Walton, of the Federal District Court in Washington, said Dr. Hatfill was entitled to the sources’ names because “the information sought is clearly central to his Privacy Act claims.”

“Denying civil litigants access to the identity of government officials who have allegedly leaked information to reporters would effectively leave Privacy Act violations immune from judicial condemnation,” Judge Walton wrote, “while leaving potential leakers virtually undeterred from engaging in such misbehavior.”

The reporters are not defendants in the suit but are likely to face contempt sanctions if they fail to comply with Judge Walton’s order. Lawyers for Mr. Lengel and Ms. Locy and a spokeswoman for Mr. Isikoff and Mr. Klaidman declined to comment yesterday. A lawyer for Mr. Stewart did not respond to a request for comment.

In April, Judge Walton referred the parties to mediation in an effort to settle the case. A separate lawsuit by Dr. Hatfill against The New York Times, claiming that columns by Nicholas D. Kristof had defamed him, was dismissed by a federal judge in Virginia in January. Dr. Hatfill has appealed.

Last year, the government and five news organizations, including The Times, paid Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage, $1,645,000 to settle what Judge Walton, in his decision yesterday, called a “strikingly similar” case.

By THOMAS KAPLAN
Published: September 6, 2007

NEW HAVEN, Sept. 5 — Two people in Danbury, Conn., have contracted anthrax, probably from animal hides brought from Africa to make drums, the authorities said on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the New Haven office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the cases did not appear to be terrorism-related.

Officials would not release the names of the patients, who are in the same family, but the owner of the home where the anthrax was found, Donald Lombardo, identified the tenant as Ase-AmenRa Kariamu, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Kariamu is the director of a West African drumming program at the Danbury Music Center.

Mayor Mark D. Boughton of Danbury said the house was being used to store untanned animal hides obtained from areas of the world where anthrax is known to be common.

At least one of the patients is believed to have contracted cutaneous anthrax from working with the hides, Mayor Boughton said. Local and state officials were examining the patient’s house in an effort to pinpoint the source of the anthrax, Mayor Boughton said.

It is the second time in two years that African drummers in the metropolitan region have contracted anthrax.

In both cases, untanned hides for drums were believed to be the source.

The two Danbury patients are recovering, said William Gerrish, a spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

Officials are in the process of contacting their relatives and acquaintances to determine if anyone else was exposed, Mr. Gerrish said.

Cutaneous anthrax is rare and is not contagious.

“We certainly recognize that any time anthrax is involved, it can generate concern,” Mr. Gerrish said. “But we do not believe that there is a threat to the general public.”

Cutaneous anthrax, the most common type, is an infection of the skin and can be treated with common antibiotics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Only one or two cases occur annually in the United States, Bernadette Burden, a spokeswoman for the centers, said in a telephone interview.

The more serious form is inhalation anthrax. It was responsible for five deaths in the United States, including one in Connecticut, when anthrax spores were sent through the mail in the months after the 9/11 attacks.

Ottilie W. Lundgren, 94, who lived in Oxford, Conn., about 20 miles east of Danbury, was one of the five victims of that attack, which spread panic and crippled the postal system for several months. Seventeen others were sickened nationwide.

Mayor Boughton said one of the two infected people in Danbury went to a local hospital in mid-August for treatment and later saw a number of specialists. A test for anthrax came back positive on Tuesday morning, Mayor Boughton said.

Since the source of the infection was uncertain at that point, federal, state and local authorities became involved, the mayor said. Concern subsided when officials determined that the hides on the drums were likely to blame, he said.

“It’s what we call a naturally occurring case of anthrax,” Mayor Boughton said. “It’s not related to terrorism.”

Nor is it unique. In February 2006, a 44-year-old Greenwich Village drummer contracted the more serious inhalation anthrax while using unprocessed animal skins to make drums.

The authorities believe he inhaled anthrax spores while covering a drum with goat skin he bought in the Ivory Coast, where he was born and raised.

The drummer, Vado Diomande, spent more than a month in the hospital and lost 45 pounds as he fought the disease.

He survived and vowed to return to his dancing and drum-making.

Anthrax spores are formed by naturally occurring bacteria and can be found in soil, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Animals who ingest contaminated soil can then pass the disease to people who handle their hides or eat undercooked meat.

Naturally occurring anthrax is rare in the United States but much more prevalent in other parts of the world, including many developing countries and much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Symptoms of cutaneous anthrax, which accounts for 95 percent of all anthrax cases, include swelling of the skin and itchiness, experts said.

It is not usually fatal when treated, unlike inhalation anthrax, which is often fatal.

By THOMAS KAPLAN
Published: September 6, 2007

NEW HAVEN, Sept. 6 — A property in Danbury, Conn., where two people are believed to have contracted anthrax is contaminated with spores of the potentially fatal disease, state officials said today.

In the past 24 hours, officials conducted tests of 27 samples gathered in a three-story home on the property and in a barn in the backyard. Five samples from the barn tested positive for anthrax, as did one from the door to the house, said Rachael Sunny, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.

A resident of the property and one of his family members probably contracted anthrax after coming in contact with untreated animal hides brought from Africa to make drums, the authorities said on Wednesday. Terrorism is not suspected.

Just after noon today, a crew was preparing to enter the house and collect 12 additional samples, Ms. Sunny said from the scene in Danbury. The department expects it to take at least 24 hours to test those samples.

Meanwhile, several nearby residences have since been voluntarily evacuated, and nearly a mile of Padanaram Road, where the house is located, remains closed.

But there is no immediate health concern for neighbors, Ms. Sunny said. Some neighbors chose to evacuate merely because it was more convenient to sleep elsewhere as crews worked all night nearby, she said.

Officials would not release the names of the patients, who are in the same family, but the owner of the home where the anthrax was found, Donald Lombardo, identified the tenant as Ase-AmenRa Kariamu, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Kariamu is the director of a West African drumming program at the Danbury Music Center.

Mayor Mark D. Boughton of Danbury said the house was being used to store untanned animal hides obtained from areas of the world where anthrax is known to be common. At least one of the patients is believed to have contracted cutaneous anthrax from working with the hides, Mayor Boughton said.

It is the second time in two years that African drummers in the metropolitan region have contracted anthrax. In both cases, untanned hides for drums were believed to be the source.

The two Danbury patients are recovering, said William Gerrish, a spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

“We certainly recognize that any time anthrax is involved, it can generate concern,” Mr. Gerrish said. “But we do not believe that there is a threat to the general public.”

Cutaneous anthrax, the most common type, is a non-communicable infection of the skin and can be treated with common antibiotics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Only one or two cases occur annually in the United States, Bernadette Burden, a spokeswoman for the centers, said in a telephone interview.

The more serious form is inhalation anthrax. It was responsible for five deaths in the United States, including one in Connecticut, when anthrax spores were sent through the mail in the months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In February 2006, a 44-year-old Greenwich Village drummer contracted the more serious inhalation anthrax while using unprocessed animal skins to make drums.

The authorities believe he inhaled anthrax spores while covering a drum with goat skin he bought in the Ivory Coast, where he was born and raised.

The drummer, Vado Diomande, spent more than a month in the hospital and lost 45 pounds as he fought the disease.

He survived and vowed to return to his dancing and drum-making.

Anthrax spores are formed by naturally occurring bacteria and can be found in soil, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Animals who ingest contaminated soil can then pass the disease to people who handle their hides or eat undercooked meat.

Naturally occurring anthrax is rare in the United States but much more prevalent in other parts of the world, including many developing countries and much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Symptoms of cutaneous anthrax, which accounts for 95 percent of all anthrax cases, include swelling of the skin and itchiness, experts said.

It is not usually fatal when treated, unlike inhalation anthrax, which is often fatal.

Published: February 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — A federal judge found a former reporter for USA Today in contempt of court on Tuesday for refusing to name her confidential sources who had discussed a former Army scientist’s possible role in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The reporter, Toni Locy, now faces fines of up to $5,000 a day for refusing to comply with an earlier order issued by the judge, Reggie B. Walton. Judge Walton said he would decide in coming days whether a second former reporter, Jim Stewart, should also be held in contempt of court for refusing to reveal the sources for his accounts on the anthrax inquiry, broadcast on CBS News.

The two journalists are being pressed to reveal their sources by Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a onetime bioterrorism expert for the Army, who is suing the federal government, saying his reputation was ruined by leaks to the news media from law enforcement officials linking him to the attacks. In 2002, the F.B.I. and John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, described Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the investigation into the attacks, which killed five people and remain unsolved.

Judge Walton said Ms. Locy’s testimony was important to help Dr. Hatfill pursue his civil lawsuit against the government, but advocates for the news media said his order was the latest of recent rulings that could hamper the work of journalists.

“Of all the federal court sanctions on reporters for refusing to reveal confidential sources over the past several years, this is perhaps the most disturbing,” said Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“Toni Locy is being punished for doing what reporters are supposed to do: making sure important information gets to the public about whether the government had the investigation into a major public health threat under control,” Ms. Dalglish said.

Ms. Locy has declined to identify the sources she relied on in three articles for USA Today about the investigation. The articles discussed Dr. Hatfill’s role in the investigation and raised questions about the strength of the evidence against him.

Ms. Locy declined after the hearing to discuss any details of the case but said that the judge’s order could make it difficult for journalists to report on the status of any law enforcement investigation, even a high-profile one, “until someone is charged, tried and convicted.”

“I’m concerned about the ramifications of this order for all journalists, beyond just me,” said Ms. Locy, who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University.

In holding Ms. Locy in contempt, Judge Walton said he would impose fines beginning at $500 a day for seven days, then escalating to $1,000 a day for seven days, then $5,000 a day for seven days. He would then consider other options, which lawyers said could include jail time.

Judge Walton said he would soon rule on whether his order would be delayed pending a probable appeal by Ms. Locy.

Ms. Locy and Mr. Stewart are the only journalists still facing contempt citations in the case. Because of procedural problems and other issues, the court previously threw out subpoenas seeking testimony from a number of other journalists, including Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, who first wrote in 2002 about a mysterious Army scientist he called Mr. Z, whom he later identified as Dr. Hatfill. A defamation suit against Mr. Kristof was dismissed last year, a decision now under appeal.

Judge Walton had some cautionary words for journalists on Tuesday, but he saved his harshest judgments for the unidentified officials who linked Dr. Hatfill to the anthrax investigation in the news media.

“There’s not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with it,” the judge said, yet the public notoriety has “destroyed his life.” 

Every day, newspapers publish articles like the ones that have gotten Toni Locy in trouble: she quoted law enforcement officials, their names kept secret, about a person under investigation in an unsolved crime.

But there was nothing ordinary about the crime — the anthrax attacks in 2001 — or the fallout for Ms. Locy, a reporter who wrote about the case for USA Today. She has become one of the rare reporters who risk serious punishment for refusing to reveal confidential sources, and even in that exclusive company, her story is extraordinary.

A federal judge in Washington, Reggie B. Walton, wants her to name sources who might have had nothing to do with her articles. He has ordered her to pay fines up to $5,000 a day if she continues to withhold the names. And he has ordered that she pay the fines herself, prohibiting the newspaper from paying for her.

The actions against Ms. Locy, 48, are unlike any taken by an American court, according to First Amendment lawyers, media associations and companies that have petitioned the court on her behalf. They say that Judge Walton’s decision last month to hold her in contempt of court sets a precedent that would chill the routine workings of the press.

The contempt order has been stayed pending an appeal to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which will hear arguments on May 9.

“This is an unprecedented fishing expedition to expose people without any reason to think they have any relevant information,” said Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “Never has a court specified that the sanctioned person has to pay the fines herself, and fines of this magnitude are almost unheard of.”

Judge Walton has described the issue as straightforward. The plaintiff in a lawsuit needs the information, he has said on the bench and in court papers, and a contempt finding is meaningless without some coercive power. He set her fine to increase over time, up to $5,000 a day after the second week in contempt.

The plaintiff is Steven J. Hatfill, a scientist who was considered a suspect in the anthrax attacks, though no one has been charged. He sued the federal government, claiming that in talking about him to reporters, officials violated the federal Privacy Act.

Judge Walton ordered Ms. Locy to reveal her unnamed sources for two articles she wrote in 2003.

Ms. Locy, now an assistant professor of journalism at West Virginia University, says she cannot recall which government officials gave the information. So the judge ordered her to name all sources with whom she might have discussed the case.

She says she had 10 to 12 such sources, people with whom she also discussed subjects like the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Under Judge Walton’s order, she said, “folks who helped me on far more sensitive stories than the two at issue in this case could be exposed.”

But Judge Walton said that “the identity of those who did not provide information about Dr. Hatfill will remain confidential to all other than Dr. Hatfill and his attorneys.”

Many states have laws shielding reporters from having to divulge sources in most circumstances, but there is no similar federal law. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a shield bill, 398 to 21, but a weaker version stalled in the Senate.

Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana and the author of the House bill, lately has cited Ms. Locy’s plight as proof that a shield law is needed. Her case “is the biggest bullet in the gun,” said Matt Lloyd, a spokesman for the congressman.

Ms. Locy contends that much of the information in her articles first came to her from one of Dr. Hatfill’s own lawyers and that law enforcement figures only confirmed it.

More than many of her competitors, she wrote skeptically about the government’s focus on him. She compared the treatment of Dr. Hatfill to that of Richard Jewell, a suspect in the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta, and pointed out that “Jewell was cleared, marking one of the most humbling chapters in F.B.I. history.”

By CLARK HOYT
Published: April 20, 2008
The New York Times

THE push for a federal shield law to help journalists protect the identities of confidential sources got a big boost last week when John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, endorsed it in Washington at a convention of the nation’s newspaper editors and publishers.

The Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are also on board, and supporters of the proposal, which is strongly opposed by the Bush administration, are optimistic that success is near. The bill awaits Senate action after the House passed its version last October by a vote of 398 to 21.

Times reporters have had more than their share of recent court struggles to protect confidential sources, the latest being James Risen, who is fighting a grand jury subpoena for testimony involving a 2006 book he wrote on the C.I.A. But the journalist in the most immediate jeopardy is Toni Locy.

Locy, a former reporter for USA Today, is facing the choice of personal financial ruin or surrendering the names of as many as a dozen sources who might — or might not — have given her information about Steven J. Hatfill, a “person of interest” in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, injured 17 and terrorized the nation. It is not clear that a federal shield law can arrive in time — or in a form — to help her.

Hatfill, a former government researcher who specialized in germ warfare, is suing the Justice Department and the F.B.I. because he says leaks to the news media about the anthrax investigation violated the federal Privacy Act and destroyed his reputation. (He also filed a defamation suit against The New York Times for columns by Nicholas D. Kristof that first identified him only as “Mr. Z.” The trial judge dismissed that suit, and Hatfill is appealing the decision.)

United States District Judge Reggie B. Walton has ordered Locy to identify her sources or pay heavy fines, escalating to $5,000 a day. He has decreed that no one can help her with them — not USA Today, her family or her students at West Virginia University, who had offered to organize a bake sale. Locy teaches media law and public affairs reporting and will be moving this fall to Washington and Lee University.

“I really do love the law,” she told me, even as she faces the prospect of bankruptcy at its hands. Locy said she has little equity in the three-bedroom home she bought last year, her first, and is making car payments on a 2007 Nissan Murano. Her savings have been drained to help pay medical expenses for a niece with a serious birth defect, and all that remains is a 401 (k) retirement plan that would be wiped out in little time under Walton’s order. She said she is not sleeping well.

A federal appeals court stayed the fine and is scheduled to hear arguments on the case on May 9.

Locy covered the Justice Department for USA Today from 2000 through 2005. The newspaper’s editor, Ken Paulson, described her as “a tenacious and hard-working reporter.”

In May 2003, she was asked to write an update on the anthrax case, which was then two years old and still unsolved, as it remains today. The news media had already reported that Hatfill was a focus of the investigation, that his apartment had been searched three times and that he had failed lie detector tests. Attorney General John Ashcroft had gone on “The Early Show” on CBS the previous August and identified Hatfill as “a person of interest,” a designation that has not been removed by the Justice Department, even though no charges have been brought against Hatfill in all the years since.

Locy wrote skeptically about the investigation, comparing Hatfill to Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was wrongly implicated in the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She said that investigators — but not all of them — believed Hatfill was behind the anthrax attacks. Two unidentified sources said the evidence against him was largely circumstantial.

Locy said that she talked with one of Hatfill’s lawyers before writing the article and that he praised it afterward as fair coverage, never raising Privacy Act problems because of what the unidentified sources had told her. As her desk became cluttered, she said, she tossed away her notes. Today, she said, she cannot remember who told her what about Hatfill.

Judge Walton has criticized Locy for not keeping her notes, as though she should have anticipated a lawsuit and that she would be called to testify. At a hearing in February, he also seemed skeptical that Locy could not remember five years later what her sources had said. “I’m not suggesting that Ms. Locy would not be truthful,” he said, “but it would be very convenient for reporters in this situation to just say, ‘I don’t recall.’ ”

Locy said she had 10 to 12 sources at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. who talked with her about the anthrax investigation — and about many other stories she covered during her four years on the beat. Walton said she had to identify all of them so that Hatfill’s attorneys could question them about whether they gave her information about their client. The judge then imposed the stiff fines to coerce her. Her lawyers argue that they amount to unlawful punishment because she has not been found guilty of criminal contempt of court.

Two of Locy’s sources did agree to come forward, and they said they could not remember what they had told her.

Locy’s lawyers contend that Hatfill does not need her sources, saying his lawyers told the judge in January that they were ready to proceed to trial and believed they had a strong case. Mark Grannis, a lawyer for Hatfill, said Locy’s sources were important but that getting a trial this year, before memories fade even more, was more important than waiting out a long fight to get her to give up the names.

There are two competing interests here: the right of an individual who believes he has been wronged to sue for damages, and a reporter’s need to keep promises of confidentiality to sources who provide information for stories of vital public interest. If something close to the House version of the shield law were to become reality and be applied to this case, Locy would be off the hook, because the reporter’s privilege in most civil cases like Hatfill’s would be absolute. But the Senate might include a balancing test — to let a judge decide which interest was more compelling in each case — meaning Locy could still be in hot water. Walton said he thinks government employees should be fired for talking about a criminal investigation.

In the end, whatever damage was done to Steven Hatfill’s reputation was not done by Locy’s articles, played inside USA Today long after he was swept up in the case by intense media coverage and the attorney general’s statement. Hatfill can still have his day in court without her sources. Breaking Toni Locy to set an example for journalists and as a warning to government officials not to talk confidentially with reporters sends exactly the wrong signals in an era of increasing government secrecy. Her case is a powerful argument for a federal shield law.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Friday that it would pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense researcher intensively investigated as a “person of interest” in the deadly anthrax letters of 2001.

The settlement, consisting of $2.825 million in cash and an annuity paying Dr. Hatfill $150,000 a year for 20 years, brings to an end a five-year legal battle that had recently threatened a reporter with large fines for declining to name sources she said she did not recall.

Dr. Hatfill, who worked at the Army’s laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., in the late 1990s, was the subject of a flood of news media coverage beginning in mid-2002, after television cameras showed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in biohazard suits searching his apartment near the Army base. He was later named a “person of interest” in the case by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking on national television.

In a news conference in August 2002, Dr. Hatfill tearfully denied that he had anything to do with the anthrax letters and said irresponsible news media coverage based on government leaks had destroyed his reputation.

Dr. Hatfill’s lawsuit, filed in 2003, accused F.B.I. agents and Justice Department officials involved in the criminal investigation of the anthrax mailings of leaking information about him to the news media in violation of the Privacy Act. In order to prove their case, his lawyers took depositions from key F.B.I. investigators, senior officials and a number of reporters who had covered the investigation.

Mark Grannis, a lawyer for Dr. Hatfill, said his client was pleased with the settlement.

“The good news is that we still live in a country where a guy who’s been horribly abused can go to a judge and say ‘I need your help,’ and maybe it takes a while, but he gets justice,” Mr. Grannis said.

The settlement, Mr. Grannis said, “means that Steven Hatfill is finally an ex-person of interest.”

In a written statement, Mr. Grannis and Dr. Hatfill’s other lawyers said, “We can only hope that the individuals and institutions involved are sufficiently chastened by this episode to deter similar destruction of private citizens in the future — and that we will all read anonymously sourced news reports with a great deal more skepticism.”

The lawyers will take their fee out of the settlement, which will pay out $5.8 million over 20 years. The $4.6 million figure is the cost of the annuity to the government.

The settlement called new attention to the fact that nearly seven years after the toxic letters were mailed, killing five people and sickening at least 17 others, the case has not been solved.

A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said in a statement that the government admitted no liability but decided settlement was “in the best interest of the United States.”

“The government remains resolute in its investigation into the anthrax attacks, which killed five individuals and sickened others after lethal anthrax powder was sent through the United States mail,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.

An F.B.I. spokesman, Jason Pack, said the anthrax investigation “is one of the largest and most complex investigations ever conducted by law enforcement” and is currently being pursued by more than 20 agents of the F.B.I. and the Postal Inspection Service.

“Solving this case is a top priority for the F.B.I. and for the family members of the victims who were killed,” Mr. Pack said.

But Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat whose district was the site of a postal box believed to have been used in the attacks, said he would press Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., for more answers about the status of the case.

“As today’s settlement announcement confirms, this case was botched from the very beginning,” Mr. Holt said. “The F.B.I. did a poor job of collecting evidence, and then inappropriately focused on one individual as a suspect for too long, developing an erroneous theory of the case that has led to this very expensive dead end.”

Dr. Hatfill subpoenaed Washington journalists to try to learn which federal officials had spoken to the news media about the case against him in possible violation of federal privacy laws.

Toni Locy, a former legal affairs reporter for USA Today who wrote several articles about the case, was held in contempt of court, facing fines of up to $5,000 a day from Judge Reggie Walton over her refusal to name her sources, and her case is pending before an appeals court. Ms. Locy said Friday that she was relieved by the developments but that it was too soon to celebrate.

“I hope this means that this ordeal is over and that I can get on with my life,” said Ms. Locy, who will begin teaching legal reporting at Washington and Lee University in the fall.

She said Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers said they no longer needed her testimony, though she had not been told whether the contempt order against her had been lifted.

The outcome differed significantly from the settlement of a similar case involving Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist once suspected of espionage. In that case, five news organizations joined the government’s settlement, agreeing to pay a total of $750,000 to prevent their reporters from having to testify about their sources.

Ms. Locy said that a federal mediator had tried to get Gannett, which owns USA Today, to negotiate some type of settlement with Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers, but that it had refused

She called the result an important affirmation of journalists’ ability to use confidential sources in gathering material on important news stories. “I protected my sources, and that’s important,” she said.

Dr. Hatfill also sued The New York Times and the columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, saying that columns Mr. Kristof wrote about the case had libeled him by suggesting that he might be the anthrax mailer. That lawsuit was dismissed last year, but Dr. Hatfill has appealed the dismissal.

The former Army scientist also sued Vanity Fair and the author of an article about the case in the magazine, Donald Foster, as well as Reader’s Digest, which published a condensed version. That case was settled last year on confidential terms.

Dr. Hatfill, 54, grew up in Illinois but studied medicine in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. After returning to the United States in the early 1990s, he worked at the National Institutes of Health and the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. In applying for those jobs, he claimed to have had a Ph.D. from a South African university that his lawyers later admitted he had not earned.

He did training on bioterrorism for the F.B.I., Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency and trained to be a bioweapons inspector for the United Nations, though he never began the job.

After Dr. Hatfill came under suspicion in the anthrax case in 2002, an F.B.I. surveillance team began following him everywhere, and a small motorcade sometimes trailed his car around Washington.

In May 2003, an F.B.I. surveillance car ran over Dr. Hatfill’s foot in Georgetown as he approached the car to take the driver’s picture. He was given a ticket for “walking to create a hazard” and was fined $5.

David Stout contributed reporting from Washington.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Monday unanimously affirmed the dismissal of a suit against The New York Times by a former government scientist who had asserted that he was defamed by a series of columns about the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001.

The three-judge panel said that a federal trial court judge had correctly granted The Times’s motion to dismiss the suit brought by the scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, a specialist in biological weapons.

The author of the columns, Nicholas D. Kristof, initially wrote about a government scientist he identified as Mr. Z, saying he was the overwhelming focus of the investigation into the anthrax mailings, in which five people died. In August 2002, Mr. Kristof identified Dr. Hatfill as Mr. Z, saying he had come forward and identified himself to the news media as the person being written about.

Although the federal authorities had deemed Dr. Hatfill a “person of interest” in the investigation, he was never charged with any crime and the attacks remain unsolved.

Writing for the appeals court, based in Richmond, Va., Judge Paul V. Niemeyer said that the trial court had been correct to rule that Dr. Hatfill was a public figure and thus had to meet an especially high standard to prevail in his suit against The Times. Under a landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling, a public figure must demonstrate that a publication acted with “actual malice” to succeed in a defamation suit. That meant that Dr. Hatfill had to show that The Times knew or suspected that any suggestion he was involved in the anthrax attacks was false and published the articles anyway.

The appeals court opinion, joined by Judges M. Blane Michael and C. Arlen Beam, said that Dr. Hatfill was a public figure in the context of bioterrorism because he had through numerous news media interviews “voluntarily thrust himself into the debate” about the nation’s preparedness to deal with events like the anthrax mailings.

Last month, the Justice Department agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit in which Dr. Hatfill claimed that law enforcement officials had improperly leaked information about him to news outlets in connection with the anthrax investigation.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: August 2, 2008

WASHINGTON – For six years, Steven J. Hatfill has sought in public and in court to clear his name after being named a “person of interest” in the 2001 anthrax investigation.

On Friday, the disclosure that a former colleague of Dr. Hatfill committed suicide after investigators prepared to indict him provided the clearest indication yet that Dr. Hatfill may finally achieve his goal.

The Justice Department, which has not publicly exonerated the former Army scientist, would not comment about the case on Friday. But by all indications, investigators have lost interest in Dr. Hatfill.

A lawyer familiar with the investigation of Bruce E. Ivins, Dr. Hatfill’s former colleague at the Army’s bio-defense labs at Fort Detrick, who died earlier this week after ingesting an overdose of prescription painkillers, said that Dr. Ivins was expected to be indicted alone.

The former Army scientist spent years in the glare of official suspicion after someone sent envelopes containing anthrax powder to government officials and news media outlets in late 2001.

Those suspicions became public in mid-2002, when television crews filmed agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation wearing biohazard suits as they raided Dr. Hatfill’s apartment. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft later described Dr. Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the investigation.

Dr. Hatfill gave a tearful press conference in August 2002 denying any involvement in the attacks and contending that he had been smeared by F.B.I. leaks and irresponsible reporting.

But he would spend years under the microscope. He accused investigators of tipping off the media in advance of the search of his home, and later of conducting constant surveillance of him. His home phone was wiretapped, he said, and agents followed him wherever he went.

In a May 2003 incident in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Georgetown, Dr. Hatfill approached the car of an F.B.I. agent who had been trailing him in order to take the driver’s picture. The agent drove off and his car ran over Dr. Hatfill’s foot. Police later ticketed Dr. Hatfill for “walking to create a hazard” and he was forced to pay a fine of $5. The driver was not ticketed.

Steadfastly maintaining his innocence and declaring that his life was being destroyed by harassment, Dr. Hatfill went to court to try to clear his name.

He filed a lawsuit against the government contending that officials had leaked information about him in violation of the Privacy Act. As part of that case, the court subpoenaed reporters who had quoted anonymous law enforcement officials about his case in an attempt to force them to reveal their sources.

Earlier this year, the judge in the case, Reggie Walton, found Toni Lacy, a former reporter for USA Today, in contempt of court when she refused to reveal the sources of information in several articles about the case.

“There’s not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with it,” Judge Walton said at the time, yet the public notoriety has “destroyed his life.”

Ms. Lacy appealed the decision, but Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers dropped their demands for her testimony after the United States government agreed in June to pay the former Army scientist $2.825 million and an annual annuity of $150,000 to settle the lawsuit.

Dr. Hatfill also sought to clear his name by suing news outlets, saying that articles suggesting that he might have been behind the anthrax mailings had defamed him.

He sued The New York Times and one of its op-ed columnists, Nicholas D. Kristof. That lawsuit was dismissed, but Dr. Hatfill has appealed the dismissal.

The former Army scientist also sued Vanity Fair and the author of an article about the case in the magazine, Donald Foster, as well as Reader’s Digest, which had republished a version. The case was settled confidentially in 2007.

Thomas G. Connolly, an attorney for Dr. Hatfill, said on Friday that he had “nothing at this point” to say about the case. Mr. Connolly said that he would wait until the FBI released more information about its investigation of Dr. Ivins after first briefing the family members of the victims.

“Out of respect for the victims’ families, we’re not going to make any comments until the families are briefed,” Mr. Connolly said.

Dr. Hatfill, Mr. Connolly added, was not interested in speaking directly with the media about the case.

WASHINGTON — After four years pursuing one former Army scientist on a costly false trail, F.B.I. agents investigating the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 finally zeroed in last year on a different suspect: another Army scientist from the same biodefense research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.

 Over the last 18 months, even as the government battled a lawsuit filed by the first scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, investigators built a case against the second one, Bruce E. Ivins, a highly respected microbiologist who had worked for many years to design a better anthrax vaccine.

Last weekend, after learning that federal prosecutors were preparing to indict him on murder charges, Dr. Ivins, a 62-year-old father of two, took an overdose of Tylenol with codeine. He died in a Frederick hospital on Tuesday, leaving behind a grieving family and uncertainty about whether the anthrax mystery had finally been solved.

The apparent suicide of Dr. Ivins, a Red Cross volunteer and amateur juggler who had won the Defense Department’s highest civilian award in 2003, was a dramatic turn in one of the largest criminal investigations in the nation’s history. The attack, the only major act of bioterrorism on American soil, came in the jittery aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. It killed five people, sickened 17 others and set off a wave of panic.

In the early days after the letter attacks, in September and October 2001, Dr. Ivins joined about 90 of his colleagues at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in a round-the-clock laboratory push to test thousands of samples of suspect powder to see if they were anthrax. Later, in April 2002, he came under scrutiny in an Army investigation of a leak of potentially deadly anthrax spores outside a sealed-off lab at Fort Detrick. He later admitted he had discovered the leak but not reported it.

 Whether the focus on Dr. Ivins had resolved the case of the anthrax letters was unclear. A federal law enforcement official said that Dr. Ivins had been regarded as a strong suspect and that agents had been nearing an arrest, and a lawyer familiar with the investigation said he believed that prosecutors had planned to charge only Dr. Ivins. The link between Dr. Ivins’s suicide and the federal investigation was first reported on Friday in The Los Angeles Times.

But the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined on Friday to make public its case against Dr. Ivins, noting that evidence was under court seal as part of a grand jury investigation. Officials said they were briefing the victims of the anthrax letters — those who recovered, as well as family members of those who died — and would need to go to court to have evidence unsealed before it could even be summarized for the public.

A lawyer who had represented Dr. Ivins since May 2007, Paul F. Kemp, insisted that Dr. Ivins was innocent and had been driven to suicide by false suspicions.

“For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with that investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him,” Mr. Kemp said in a written statement, calling the microbiologist “a world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years with the Department of the Army.”

“We assert his innocence in these killings and would have established that at trial,” Mr. Kemp said. “The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation.”

Mr. Kemp was clearly referring to the case of Dr. Hatfill, who was the focus of intensive F.B.I. and news media attention in the case beginning in mid-2002 and received a $4.6 million settlement from the government in June to settle a lawsuit accusing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of destroying his career and personal life with leaks.

Whatever the cause of his suicide, Dr. Ivins had been behaving bizarrely in the weeks before his death. He was hospitalized briefly for depression and, according to a complaint filed with the police, threatened to kill a social worker who had treated him in group therapy, among others, in rants referring to his expectation that he would be charged with five counts of capital murder. 

“It’s out of character,” said Norman M. Covert, a former spokesman and historian for the Army biodefense center who served with Dr. Ivins on an animal care committee. “But if the F.B.I. was really leaning on him, what a tremendous load that was on him.”

A spokesman for the Frederick police, Lt. Clark Pennington, said he could not say whether Dr. Ivins had left a suicide note because the anthrax investigation remained open.

Investigators in the huge inquiry traveled to many countries and by late 2006 had conducted 9,100 interviews, sent out 6,000 grand jury subpoenas and conducted 67 searches, the F.B.I. said. But the prime focus steadily narrowed: first to the Army infectious diseases laboratories, apparently linked to the letters by genetic analysis, then to Dr. Hatfill, a medical doctor who had become a bioterrorism consultant, and finally to Dr. Ivins, who worked in the same building as Dr. Hatfill and lived two blocks away from him outside the gates to Fort Detrick.

Two puzzles have haunted investigators from the beginning: the motive of the perpetrator and his skills. Because the notes in some of the letters mailed to news media organizations and two senators included radical Islamist rhetoric, investigators initially believed the letters might have been sent by Al Qaeda.

But the F.B.I. quickly settled on a different profile: a disgruntled American scientist or technician, perhaps one specializing in biodefense, who wanted to raise an alarm about the bioterrorism threat. That theory accounted for the letters’ taped seams and the notes’ use of the word anthrax, a warning that allowed antibiotic treatment — not to be expected from a Qaeda attack intended mainly to kill.

That theory of a biodefense insider placed many scientists at the infectious diseases institute and other laboratories under scrutiny, even as they helped the F.B.I. analyze the anthrax powder in the letters.

“The F.B.I. would be remiss not to look at us, especially those of us who worked with anthrax,” said John W. Ezzell, an anthrax researcher who hired Dr. Ivins at the institute and knew him well. “We were all subjected to lie detector tests. We were all interviewed.”

Mr. Ezzell called Dr. Ivins “intense about his work, but a popular guy.” Asked whether he was aware that Dr. Ivins had become a more serious suspect, Mr. Ezzell declined to comment.

The other puzzle involved the skills necessary to produce the high-quality aerosol powder contained in the letters addressed to the senators, Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, and Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

Scientists familiar with germ warfare said there was no evidence that Dr. Ivins, though a vaccine expert with easy access to the most dangerous forms of anthrax, had the skills to turn the pathogen into an inhalable powder.

“I don’t think a vaccine specialist could do it,” said Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff, a physician who aided the F.B.I. investigation when he worked at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

“This is aerosol physics, not biology,” Dr. Zelicoff added. “There are very few people who have their feet in both camps.”

Mr. Ezzell said Dr. Ivins had worked on many projects involving anthrax spores and the toxin they produce, including experiments in which animals were exposed to anthrax to test vaccines. But he said the experiments, to his knowledge, involved anthrax spores in liquid and not in the dry powder form used in the letter attacks.

By their own admission, the F.B.I. and the Postal Inspection Service had little expertise in biological weapons in 2001, when they first loosed hundreds of agents on the investigation. Since then, at least 19 government and university laboratories have worked on the investigation, using clues like the genetic fingerprints of the anthrax, and radioactive isotopes in the water used to grow it, to try to trace it to a source.

The source, several officials said, was the infectious diseases institute, where the trail led to just a handful of vials in a single lab.

But the scientific evidence, some of it found using new methods, now may never be tested in a criminal trial, leaving questions about just how compelling it is.

“I would urge the bureau to publish its evidence if it declares the case solved and closed,” said Dr. Claire Fraser-Liggett, the former director of the Institute for Genomic Research, where the anthrax genome was decoded.

On Capitol Hill, where anthrax contamination in 2001 led to the evacuation of many offices, several members of Congress voiced skepticism about reports that the hunt for the anthrax killer might be over.

Representative Rush Holt, a Democrat whose district includes the Princeton, N.J., mailbox where investigators believe the letters were mailed, said the F.B.I. should provide a full briefing.

“What we learn,” Mr. Holt said, “will not change the fact that this has been a poorly handled investigation that has lasted six years and already has resulted in a trail of embarrassment and personal tragedy.”

William J. Broad and Nicholas Wade contributed reporting, and Jack Begg, Kitty Bennett and Barclay Walsh contributed research.

FREDERICK, Md. — Bruce E. Ivins arrived last month for a group counseling session at a psychiatric center here in his hometown with a startling announcement: Facing the prospect of murder charges, he had bought a bulletproof vest and a gun as he contemplated killing his co-workers at the nearby Army research laboratory.

“He was going to go out in a blaze of glory, that he was going to take everybody out with him,” said a social worker in a transcript of a hearing at which she sought a restraining order against Dr. Ivins after his threats.

The ranting represented the final stages of psychological decline by Dr. Ivins that ended when he took his life this week, as it became clear that he was a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

For more than three decades, Dr. Ivins, 62, had worked with some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens and viruses, trying to find cures in case they might be used as a weapon. Now he was a suspect in the nation’s worst biological attack.

To some of his longtime colleagues and neighbors, it was a startling and inexplicable turn of events for a churchgoing, family-oriented germ researcher known for his jolly disposition — the guy who did a juggling act at community events and composed satiric ballads he played on guitar or piano to departing co-workers.

“He did not seem to have any particular grudges or idiosyncrasies,” said Kenneth W. Hedlund, a retired physician who once worked alongside Dr. Ivins at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick. “He was the last person you would have suspected to be involved in something like this.”

But to some anthrax experts, while reserving judgment on Dr. Ivins’s case, his identification as a suspect fit a pattern they had suspected might explain the crime: an insider wanting to draw attention to biodefense.

Dr. Ivins, the son of a pharmacist from Lebanon, Ohio, who held a doctorate in microbiology from University of Cincinnati, spent his entire career at the elite, Army-run laboratory that conducted high-security experiments into lethal substances like anthrax and Ebola.

He turned his attention to anthrax — putting aside research on Legionnaire’s disease and cholera — after the 1979 anthrax outbreak in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk, which killed at least 64 after an accidental release at a military facility, said Dr. Hedlund, who worked with Dr. Ivins at the time.

The work became even more intense in the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attack, as the field grew tremendously, with billions of dollars in new federal support for research on anthrax and other potential biological weapons and to buy new drugs or vaccines to handle a possible future attack.

Dr. Ivins was among the scientists who benefited from this surge, as 14 of the 15 academic papers he published since late 2001 were focused on possible anthrax treatments or vaccines, comparing the effectiveness of different formulations. He even worked on the investigation of the anthrax attacks, although this meant that he, like other scientists at the Army’s defensive biological laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., was scrutinized as a possible suspect.

Dr. Ivins and his wife, Diane Ivins, raised two children in a modest Cape Cod home in a post-World War II neighborhood right outside Fort Detrick, and he could walk to work.

He was active in the community, volunteering with the Red Cross and serving as the musician at his Roman Catholic church. His showed off his music skills at work, too, playing songs he had written about friends who were moving to new jobs.

But as inves