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Who Is Rehashing the Shrinks-4-Hire Report on Bruce Ivins?

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Slightly over a week after McClatchy focused new attention on evidence that Bruce Ivins may not have been able to produce the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks, and just days after Jerrold Nadler called attention to the FBI’s obfuscations about the technical data McClatchy used, the LAT has decided to ignore such technical problems with the FBI’s case and return to claims that Ivins must be the killer because he was mentally unstable.

Of note, much of the LAT story fleshes out the Shrinks-4-Hire report, complete with names, a detailed description of how Bruce Ivins’ mother tried to abort Ivins by bouncing down the stairs, and descriptions from his psychiatrists.

Ivins grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, a small town 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati. His parents had planned the arrivals of their first two children, both sons, but by late 1945 the couple had no desire to add to the family. In conversations with a sister-in-law, Mary Ivins described how she tried to abort the unwanted third pregnancy:

Over and over, she descended a series of steps by bouncing with a thud on her buttocks.

Bruce Ivins, born April 22, 1946, would eventually hear the story himself.

[snip]

A psychiatrist who treated him in the late 1990s, Dr. David Irwin, confided to a therapist that Ivins was the “scariest” patient he had ever known.

It’s as if someone leaked the LAT an unredacted copy of the report in an effort to drown out increasing focus on the many problems with the case. And it’s as if the LAT simply used that as a template for their story, without consulting the information released since the Shrinks-4-Hire was completed that poses problems for it: not the National Academy of Sciences report and the McClatchy stories raising key technical questions about the case, and not Noah Shachtman’s story raising doubts about the FBI’s claim no one else could have accessed Ivins’ anthrax.

I guess some people tied to the anthrax case believe if you keep repeating the story, “Bruce Ivins stalked women, so he must have tried to kill Patrick Leahy” enough times, people will continue to believe it.

The Circumstantial Case against Bruce Ivins Gets Weaker

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It seems we’re going to be discussing anthrax in detail again. And in anticipation of those discussions, I wanted to challenge the notion that the circumstantial evidence against Ivins remains strong.

The whole case depends on the FBI’s contention that a flask Ivins had–RMR-1029–was “the murder weapon.” But in fact, the FBI only has proof that Ivins had what might be one of eight or more potential precursors to the murder weapon. Their efforts to equate the two ignore some interim steps about which they seem to have little evidence (and what they have they’re not examining very closely).

So here’s my summary of the circumstantial case against Bruce Ivins. (Jim White gave me a ton of scientific help with this, but the errors surely result from my own misunderstanding.)

When US Attorney Jeff Taylor announced FBI was closing the investigation in February 2010, he gave the following 7 pieces of evidence that Ivins was the culprit.

First, we were able to identify in early 2005 the genetically-unique parent material of the anthrax spores used in the mailings. As the court documents allege, the parent material of the anthrax spores used in the attacks was a single flask of spores, known as “RMR-1029,” that was created and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins at USAMRIID. This means that the spores used in the attacks were taken from that specific flask, regrown, purified, dried and loaded into the letters. No one received material from that flask without going through Dr. Ivins. We thoroughly investigated every other person who could have had access to the flask and we were able to rule out all but Dr. Ivins.

Second, as a renowned expert in the production and purification of anthrax spores, Dr. Ivins was one of a handful of scientists with the capability to create spores of the concentration and purity used in the attacks. The affidavits allege that, not only did Dr. Ivins create and maintain the spore batch used in the mailings, but he also had access to and experience using a lyophilizer. A lyophilizer is a sophisticated machine that is used to dry pathogens, and can be used to dry anthrax. We know others in Dr. Ivins’ lab consulted him when they needed to use this machine.

Third, in the days leading up to each of the mailings, the documents make clear that Dr. Ivins was working inordinate hours alone at night and on the weekend in the lab where the flask of spores and production equipment were stored. A review of his access records revealed that Dr. Ivins had not spent this many “off hours” in the lab at any time before or after this period. When questioned about why he was in the lab during these off hours prior to each of the mailings, Dr. Ivins was unable to offer any satisfactory explanation.

Fourth, the affidavits indicate Dr. Ivins had engaged in behavior and made a number of statements that suggest consciousness of guilt. For example, one night shortly after a search warrant was executed on his house, Dr. Ivins took highly unusual steps to discard a book and article on DNA coding while under 24/7 surveillance. In addition, he had submitted a questionable sample of anthrax from his flask of parent spores to the FBI, presumably to mislead investigators. He had also made far-reaching efforts to blame others and divert attention away from himself, and had made threatening e-mail statements to a friend regarding the case. Recently, he had detailed threats in his group therapy session to kill people who had wronged him, after learning he might be indicted.

Fifth, as reflected in the court documents, Dr. Ivins had a history of mental health problems and was facing a difficult time professionally in the summer and fall of 2001 because an anthrax vaccine he was working on was failing. The affidavits describe one e-mail to a co-worker in which Dr. Ivins stated that he had “incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times,” and feared that he might not be able to control his behavior.

Sixth, throughout his adult life Dr. Ivins had frequently driven to other locations to send packages in the mail under assumed names to disguise his identity as the sender. He had also admitted to using false names and aliases in writings. In addition, he was a prolific writer to Congress and the media, the targeted victims in the anthrax attacks. Law enforcement recovered 68 letters to such entities from his house in a Nov. 1, 2007 search.

I’ll conclude with one more point. The envelopes used in the attacks were all pre-franked envelopes, sold only at U.S. Post Offices during a nine-month window in 2001. An analysis of the envelopes revealed several print defects in the ink on the pre-printed portions of the envelopes. Based on the analysis, we were able to conclude that the envelopes used in the mailings were very likely sold at a post office in the greater Frederick Maryland, area in 2001. Dr. Ivins maintained a post office box at the Post Office in Frederick, from which these pre-franked envelopes with print defects were sold.

Here’s what remains of each of these 7 pieces of evidence:

1. The spores in the attack came from RMR-1029 and Ivins controlled access to that flask

The certainty of this claim was seriously challenged by both the National Academy of Sciences report and subsequent reporting on several grounds.

First, the NAS study concluded only that the genetic analysis was consistent with the spores being derived from RMR-1029.

The results of the genetic analyses of the repository samples were consistent with the finding that the spores in the attack letters were derived from RMR-1029, but the analyses did not definitively demonstrate such a relationship.

That only says that whoever prepared the (probable) two separate batches of anthrax may have started with anthrax obtained at some point from that flask. NAS holds out the possibility the anthrax producer may have gotten it from somewhere else, that it was possible to get similar genetic results from other means (that is, suggesting that’s not the only way to have produced the samples found in the letter).

An even bigger problem is the complete lack of attention on what happened to the anthrax after it came from Ivins’ flask, if it did. The NAS later emphasizes this interim step.

The flask designated RMR-1029 was not the immediate, most proximate source of the letter material. If the letter material did in fact derive from RMR-1029, then one or more separate growth steps, using seed material from RMR-1029 followed by purification, would have been necessary. Furthermore, the evidentiary material in the New York letters had physical properties that were distinct from those of the material in the Washington, D.C. letters.

Read more →

Why Didn’t FBI Investigate AFIP’s Role in Starting the Iraq-Anthrax Rumors?

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I’ve been reading the National Academy of Sciences Anthrax Report and noted something odd in follow-up to the McClatchy report of the other day describing unexplained tin and silicon in one of the anthrax samples. (Here’s Jim White’s post on the report.) As McClatchy reported, there’s some weird data about silicon and tin in some of the samples.

The lab data, contained in more than 9,000 pages of files that emerged a year after the Justice Department closed its inquiry and condemned the late Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator, shows unusual levels of silicon and tin in anthrax powder from two of the five letters.

[snip]

To arrive at that position, however, the FBI had to discount its own bulk testing results showing that silicon composed an extraordinary 10.8 percent of a sample from a mailing to the New York Post and as much as 1.8 percent of the anthrax from a letter sent to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, far more than the occasional trace contamination. Tin — not usually seen in anthrax powder at all — was measured at 0.65 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, in those letters.

But it turns out that the weirdest data–showing the 10.8 silicon in the NY Post sample–didn’t come from FBI. As NAS explained, that data came from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Early in the investigation, AFIP performed [scanning electron microscopy-energy-dispersive X-ray] SEM-EDX analysis of a New York Post letter sample and found regions in the sample having high silicon content but no oxygen, suggesting the presence of silicon-rich material that was not related to nanoparticulate silica. While this observation could have led to an explanation for the difference between the bulk and individual spore measurements, follow-up experiments apparently were not performed.

A release from AFIP describing their analysis of the Daschle letter (not the NY Post letter) is one of the most cited sources of the claim that the anthrax was weaponized in a uniquely Iraqi fashion.

“Ft Detrick sought our assistance to determine the specific components of the anthrax found in the Daschle letter,” said Florabel G. Mullick, MD, ScD, SES, AFIP Principal Deputy Director and department chair. AFIP experts utilized an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (an instrument used to detect the presence of otherwise-unseen chemicals through characteristic wavelengths of X-ray light) to confirm the previously unidentifiable substance as silica. “This was a key component,” Mullick said. “Silica prevents the anthrax from aggregating, making it easier to aerosolize. Significantly, we noted the absence of aluminum with the silica. This combination had previously been found in anthrax produced by Iraq.”

This was the analysis that a USAMRID scientist used to declare that the anthrax was weaponized–which said scientist retracted after later Sandia analysis was done (from the NAS report).

An initial finding by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) found, upon gross examination, that the spores exhibited a silicon signal and sometimes exhibited an oxygen signal. Subsequent studies conducted by Sandia National Laboratories (as described in Chapter 4 of this report) determined that the silicon was localized to the spore coat within the exosporium—that is, it was incorporated into the cell as a natural part of the cell formation process. The USAMRIID scientist who first reviewed the AFIP results and made statements regarding the presence of silicon and possible weaponization retracted those earlier statements.

So some of this was known before–that AFIP served a key role in early rumors that the anthrax was weaponized in a way that pointed to Iraq. But the NAS report seems to confirm that the Iraq rumors originated at least in part from AFIP.

That’s all very interesting for several reasons. First, because FBI claims to have gotten data on AFIP’s SEM-EDX tests just last year.

The committee notes that this information was not made available to it or to the FBI until spring 2010.

That would mean FBI didn’t get (or ask for?) the information until after it had closed the investigation (they closed the investigation in February 2010)!

It would also suggest–rather incredibly–that FBI didn’t hunt down this information when they were stonewalling Jerry Nadler about it (as McClatchy reminds).

New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler asked FBI Director Robert Mueller how much silicon was in the Post and Leahy letters at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in September 2008. The Justice Department responded seven months later that silicon made up 1.4 percent of the Leahy powder (without disclosing the 1.8 percent reading) and that “a reliable quantitative measurement was not possible” for the Post letter.

More interesting still, NAS can’t explain what relationship existed between FBI and AFIP.

The committee also reviewed reports of work carried out in parallel at the AFIP although it is not clear how closely AFIP and the FBI investigative and scientific teams worked together or coordinated their efforts.

I’m also confused about when AFIP did these tests. In its list of official tests, NAS describes the AFIP SEM-EDX tests as having taken place in November 2001.

But somewhere along the way, perhaps along with information about the investigation of a claimed al Qaeda anthrax site explored in 2004, NAS got additional materials from AFIP dating to October 2001.

AFIP Materials related to USAMRIID Specimens October 2001 (41 pages)

And still more interesting is the reference to documents provided to NAS in December 2010–at the time when FBI was trying to stall the release of this document–showing AFIP, along with USAMRID, purportedly conducted anthrax studies on the remains of the Flight 93 9/11 hijackers.

Finally, in the new materials provided to the committee it is noted that [polymerase chain reaction] PCR analysis was performed on human remains from United flight 93 on 9/11/2001 that were identified as those of the hijackers (B3D1). Analysis was performed at USAMRIID and at AFIP for sequences diagnostic of B. anthracis. One assay at USAMRIID gave positive results, but these results were believed by the FBI to be due to laboratory contamination. All other results were negative. As the committee learned at the January 2011 meeting, there were no tests done on remains from any of the other September 11, 2001 hijackers. [my emphasis]

So let’s see. At some point during the anthrax attacks in 2001, USAMRID and AFIP decided to do anthrax tests on material from Flight 93. They purportedly  found the hijackers tested positive for anthrax! But on second thought, FBI tells us, that positive result came from “lab contamination.” And then, presumably just after those tests, USAMRID and AFIP, perhaps working outside the chain of the official FBI investigation of anthrax, discover evidence implicating Iraq in the anthrax attacks. Results that, once again, further testing suggested was inaccurate.

Another example of lab contamination, I guess. Funny how that happens.

And the FBI wants us to believe that over the course of a 9 year investigation, they never decided to investigate the circumstances surrounding this partnership that somehow always resulted in convenient propaganda?

USAMRID Lost Vials in 2003 AND 2009

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Back in 2009, I noted that a report that USAMRID had lost track of its vials of anthrax sort of undermined the entire FBI case against Bruce Ivins.

One key to the FBI case against Ivins, after all, is that he had complete control over the sole flask that contained the strain of anthrax used in the attack. But now we come to find out that, more than six months after his death, they still don’t have a sound inventory of what they have where?

Well, as this important long Wired article on the FBI’s growing doubts about their case reveals, 2009 was not the first time USAMRID realized they didn’t have an adequate inventory of their anthrax. Discovering they had missed some samples is actually how they discovered the Ivins strain they claimed had been the source of the attack anthrax.

In December 2003, while conducting an inventory of one of USAMRIIDs biocontainment suites, investigators discovered 22 undocumented Ames anthrax samples. They began to fear that the repository they had spent nearly two years assembling might have gaping holes in it. So for the first time, the FBI decided to scour USAMRIID for any vials they had missed.

The institute staff fumed at the search—ongoing experiments would be disrupted, they shouted. Heine, Ivins’ coworker, decided to exact a bit of revenge on his FBI handler. While the agent was collecting samples in his lab—dressed in full protective gear—Heine handed her a vial and told her it was a deadly plague strain. The vial started shaking in the agent’s gloved hand. Heine cracked up. “They were entirely dependent on me to identify everything in every box,” he says. “I could’ve held up a critical piece of evidence, said it was something else, and put it aside. There’s no way they would’ve known.”

During the search, investigators took Ivins’ primary RMR-1029 store—not just a sample of the stuff, all of it. They skimmed a small amount into a vial, labeled it with an identification number, and sent it to Pat Worsham down the hall for analysis.

Now, it appears that investigators decided to focus on Ivins because 1) he had withheld the RMR-1029 in the past, and 2) he had concerning tendencies.

(And, probably, 3) their case against Hatfill was falling apart.)

But what Shachtman doesn’t explain is what happened to the other 22 vials they had missed … at USAMRID. Plus the ones (such as, at Dugway, which would be a more likely laboratory to have produced this anthrax) not declared elsewhere?

In other words, no matter how good the science was analyzing the specimens of anthrax they got, there’s abundant evidence that they didn’t do a comprehensive inventory in the early days of the investigation (at which point, legally, it was probably too late to apply this kind of analysis), and they can’t guarantee that the labs have an accurate inventory of their anthrax, much less that that anthrax all stayed in the official labs.

Read more →

FBI’s Shrinks-4-Hire: Stalkers Are Likely Bioterrorists

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The FBI has linked to a redacted executive summary of the report some shrink contractors did on Bruce Ivins. While it is just the executive summary and even that is partly redacted, the report basically paints Bruce Ivins was a stalker which therefore makes him a possible bioterrorist.

Unfortunately for the shrinks who did the report, they start by endorsing the FBI’s now questionable anthrax theory.

Dr. Ivins acknowledged that he was the sole custodian of the “RMR-1029” flask that held the anthrax used in the attacks, and had unrestricted and unobserved access to the “hot suites” where work with anthrax could be conducted anytime day or night. From his own laboratory writings we know that the quality and spore concentration of the anthrax he produced matched that contained in the letters. In addition, he had the equipment necessary to produce the non-weaponized dried spores found in the letters.

The National Academy of Science had this to say about the source of the anthrax:

The flask designated RMR-1029 was not the immediate, most proximate source of the letter material. If the letter material did in fact derive from RMR-1029, then one or more separate growth steps, using seed material from RMR-1029 followed by purification, would have been necessary. Furthermore, the evidentiary material in the New York letters had physical properties that were distinct from those of the material in the Washington, D.C. letters.

And this to say about whether or not anyone could comment on how the anthrax was prepared.

The committee finds no scientific basis on which to accurately estimate the amount of time or the specific skill set needed to prepare the spore material contained in the letters. The time might vary from as little as 2 to 3 days to as much as several months. Given uncertainty about the methods used for preparation of the spore material, the committee could reach no significant conclusions regarding the skill set of the perpetrator.

In other words, because the shrinks based their entire report on the claim that Ivins had the “means and opportunity” to commit the attack based on the scientific claims about the anthrax, they pretty much undermine their entire argument from the start (and undermine their claim that they had “no predispositions regarding Ivins’ guilt or innocence”).

But what I’m even more intrigued by is their apparently shoddy explanation for one of the FBI’s claims that has been subsequently debunked.

In its report on the investigation, the FBI claimed that Ivins targeted Senators Leahy and Daschle because they were pro-choice Catholics.

In 2001, members of the Catholic pro-life movement were known to be highly critical of Catholic Congressional members who voted pro-choice in opposition to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Two of the more prominent members of Congress who fell in this category were Senator Tom Daschle, then Senator Majority Leader; and Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both recipients of the 2001 anthrax mailings.

But the claim was primarily based on his wife’s beliefs (the wife who, we now know, Ivins was trying to cheat on at every opportunity). More importantly, Ivins figured out a way to foil his wife’s beliefs after his death by mandating that if he were not cremated, then $50,000 of his estate would be donated to Planned Parenthood. In other words, the notion that Ivins targeted the two guys standing in the way of unquestioning passage of the PATRIOT Act because they are pro choice Catholics never really added up.

The shrinks, however, boldly assert they have identified the real themes that motivated Ivins.

As the Analysis section of this report explains in greater detail, Dr. Ivins had multiple motives in launching what he later called [redacted] through the mail. The key themes were revenge, a desperate need for personal validation, career preservation and professional redemption, and loss. These themes guided him not only in making the attacks, but in choosing his targets and shaping his methods.

The attacks above all enabled Dr. Ivins to gain retribution against his various perceived enemies. Some of those enemies, like Senators Daschle and Leahy, had directly incurred his wrath; others, like the New York Post, which to him represented the media and New York City, appeared to have been symbolic stand-ins for broader targets.

They explain (sort of) why Ivins might view Daschle as an enemy.

In June 2001, Senator Daschle, the Senate majority leader, sent a letter to the Department of Defense that heightened concerns about the vaccine.

But nowhere does the report provide an explanation for why Leahy would be a target. Nor why Ivins would target the other newspapers. And as all the crappy explanations for this crime do, the report apparently ignores the question of why Judy Miller received a fake version of the anthrax; particularly for conservatives, you’d think the NYT, not the Post, would be the symbol of evil decadent New York.

Now maybe the explanation of why Pat Leahy is such an evil man that Bruce Ivins allegedly tried to kill him appears in the redacted section. But at least in this summary, it appears the shrinks’ report doesn’t answer some of the most basic questions raised about the attack.

Update: Pro choice/life error fixed thanks to WO.

New Standard for Justice: Innocent Until a Secret Shrink Study Proves You Guilty after Your Death

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Our country apparently has a new standard for justice: innocent until a secret study–headed by a guy who may have had some responsibility for screwing up an earlier investigation and conducted entirely after your death–finds you were psychologically capable of committing a crime.

The LAT reports on a just such a report conducted on Bruce Ivins. It was initiated in late 2009 (remember, Ivins died in July 2008), at the suggestion of Dr. Gregory Saathoff, a psychiatrist who consulted on the investigation itself. And it was completed on August 23, 2010. Among the details the report apparently found that should have disqualified Bruce Ivins from having the security clearance he did is the fact that he put question marks next to some questions on a form he filled out in 1987 (those question marks should have raised eyebrows, definitely, but it’s funny they’re looking at them in this context now).

Mostly, though, LAT writer David Willman seems to suggest (and I’m not sure how much of this is speculation, off the record reporting, or reading the report itself) that the redacted parts of the report show that Ivins’ obsession with the KKG sorority in the 1980s should have disqualified him from getting clearance.

Some of the “disqualifying” behaviors that the panel said should have prompted Army officials to reconsider Ivins’ fitness to work in a secure biodefense facility were redacted from the report by Justice Department lawyers because of privacy concerns. However, based on investigative documents made public more than a year ago by the FBI and on remarks by Ivins’ acquaintances, this much is known:

Ivins became obsessed with Kappa Kappa Gamma in the 1960s, when a member of the sorority turned him down for a date. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ivins twice burglarized houses affiliated with the sorority.

Over the same period, he tormented a former member of the sorority, Nancy Haigwood, by stealing her laboratory notebook, which was integral to her pursuit of a doctoral degree, and by vandalizing her residence. Ivins was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina in the 1970s when Haigwood was a graduate student there.

“Despite criminal behavior and sabotage of his colleague’s research,” the panel said, “Dr. Ivins was hired by USAMRIID and received a security clearance, allowing him to work with potential weapons of mass destruction.”

Now, I believe the report itself had as its stated goal assessing whether Ivins should have been able to retain his clearance. Still, the fact that people are still using Ivins’ KKG obsession as “proof” that he was the anthrax killer–without offering any explanation why that obsession led him to allegedly mail anthrax from outside of a KKG office 3 hours and 25 minutes from his home rather than mailing it from the actual KKG chapters closer to his home–is just blind faith.

Willman also describes the National Academy of Sciences report on the anthrax this way, to fluff up the case against Ivins.

Last month, a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences at the FBI’s request concluded that the scientific evidence implicating Ivins was not definitive but “is consistent with and supports” the bureau’s finding of a genetic match between his batch of anthrax and the material in the letters.

As Jim White has pointed out, the scientific panel was not so convinced–and provided a great deal of evidence as to why Ivins probably couldn’t have made the anthrax in his lab at Ft. Detrick.

Overall, the importance of the primary conclusion of the NAS report cannot be overstated (p. 4 of the report as marked, all references will use internal page numbers, not pdf numbers from my pre-publication copy):

It is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the B. anthracis in the mailings based on the available scientific evidence alone.

It’s bad enough that DOJ is using what was intended to be a lessons learned study (to prevent bioterrorism in the future, even though we’re not sure Ivins committed this crime; note that DOJ closed the case during the period of this study) to try to shore up their shaky case against Ivins.

But what really pisses me off is that DOJ was off contracting secret studies at the same time as it was repeatedly refusing to accept an independent review of their work on the case. Read more →

Anthrax and Blago for Breakfast

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I forgot to mention this yesterday. But I’m going fishing this weekend, and you’re going to be blessed with the fine hospitality of bmaz and the likker cabinet until sometime Monday.

But while I’m sneaking my last Toobz fix in before Mr. EW wakes up and makes me put away the computer for the weekend, I wanted to point to two things.

First, Glenn links to two articles on the testimony of Henry Heine’s testimony before the scientific review of the Amerithrax case. I’m hoping Jim White will have a post up talking about the scientific side of these articles (the short version: Heine raised the same points that Jim has been raising for some time). But I wanted to point to this, from the second article.

After the committee left, Heine expressed frustration that he had already told the FBI everything he just presented, but that no one had listened to him. FBI agents he dealt with were professional, he said, but some officials at the Department of Justice were extremely arrogant.

He said the whole investigation was filled with lies. Officials told different USAMRIID researchers their co-workers accused them of committing the attacks, just to see their reaction. They searched his vacation house and car without warrants.

They misled him about the questions they would ask him in front of a grand jury. And they tried to get him to seek a restraining order against Ivins, only days before he committed suicide, by saying Ivins had threatened to kill Heine during a group therapy session.

Heine is not the only one who does not believe Ivins was the real killer.

“At least among my closest colleagues, nobody believes Bruce did this,” he said. He thinks the FBI went after Ivins because “personality-wise, he was the weakest link.”

Remember how one piece of evidence the FBI used to argue that Bruce Ivins was a killer was the purported death threat he made? Eventually, they got his therapist to report on it. But it turns out the purported death threat was against Heine–and the Government asked him, but he refused, to get a restraining order against Ivins. That, plus Heine’s comment about the FBI believing Ivins was “the weakest link,” suggests that Heine really believes they pushed Ivins at a time when he was losing it psychologically.

In any case, the guy they wanted to use to buttress their case that Ivins was dangerous is now out there arguing that he could not be the killer.

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Would Obama Issue First Veto to Protect Anthrax Whitewash?

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Bloomberg is reporting that Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag has told the intelligence committees Obama will veto the intelligence authorization because–among other reasons–it calls for re-examining the FBI’s conspiracy theory-as-investigation summary finding that Bruce Ivins acted alone. (h/t fatster)

President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies’ inspector general “would undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Whaa???

To sustain its claim that Ivins, rather than an accomplice, mailed the anthrax from Princeton, FBI engaged in addled speculation worthy of the Kennedy assassination. And now Obama is worried about “public confidence” in those addled speculations?

And shouldn’t there be an investigation of the investigation, at the least, because of the way FBI botched the investigation and framed Steven Hatfill?

If the investigation can’t bear any scrutiny, then I’d say there’s probably a good reason, and therefore a good reason to do an Inspector General investigation.

But I guess the President who advocates transparency is against that.

RawStory has a good summary of both this issue and the other targets of Obama’s veto threat: Congressional notification and GAO oversight of intelligence.

Nadler: FBI’s Not Done on Amerithrax

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I know that Rush Holt has already called for further investigation in the anthrax case, but having a Sub-Committee Chair at HJC make the same call might carry different weight.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, reiterated his call for an independent investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks which killed five people and sickened 17.  He issued the following statement:

“Despite the FBI’s assertion that the case of the anthrax attacks is closed, there are still many troubling questions.  For example, in a 2008 Judiciary Committee hearing, I asked FBI Director Robert Mueller whether Bruce Ivins was capable of producing the weaponized anthrax that was used in the attacks.  To this day, it is still far from clear that Mr. Ivins had either the know-how or access to the equipment needed to produce the material.  Because the FBI has not sufficiently answered such questions, I join Congressman Holt in urging an independent investigation of the case.”

Rush Holt: Investigate the Anthrax Attacks

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Now here’s a investigative commission I can support (h/t Glenn):

Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today introduced the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act of 2009, legislation that would establish a Congressional commission to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks and the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks. The bipartisan commission would make recommendations to the President and Congress on how the country can best prevent and respond to any future bioterrorism attack.  The attacks evidently originated from a postal box in Holt’s Central New Jersey congressional district, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many of his constituents. Holt has consistently raised questions about the federal investigation into the attacks.

“All of us – but especially the families of the victims of the anthrax attacks – deserve credible answers about how the attacks happened and whether the case really is closed,” Holt said. “The Commission, like the 9/11 Commission, would do that, and it would help American families know that the government is better prepared to protect them and their children from future bioterrorism attacks.”

Under Holt’s legislation, the commission would be comprised of no more than six members of from the same political party. The commission would hold public hearings, except in situations where classified information would be discussed. The commission would have to consult the National Academies of Sciences for recommendations on scientific staff to serve on the Commission. The Commission’s final report would be due 18 months after the Commission begins operations.

“Myriad questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government’s bungled response to the attacks,” Holt said. “One of the most effective oversight mechanisms we can employ to get answers to those questions is a 9/11 style Commission.” [my emphasis]

The FBI’s claim to have solved the anthrax case gets increasingly discredited every week, even as FBI struggles to set up a narrowly scoped scientific review to try to bolster their argument. 

It’s high time we looked into the gaping holes in the FBI’s story and figure out whether we still have domestic bioterrorists running free amongst us.