Demands for the FBI to show what it's got on the supposed, and now deceased, anthrax suspect, are growing:
(New York Daily News) WASHINGTON - FBI officials had been ready to "completely overwhelm" anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins with the evidence against him when he killed himself, but his former boss is dubious that agents really had a case.
After years of bungled leads and investigative missteps - including the $5.8 million it cost feds to settle a lawsuit with an earlier target of suspicion, Ivins' colleague Steven Hatfill - the FBI and federal prosecutors took their time to build a damning file on the anthrax vaccine specialist.
"The agents kept this close-held," a U.S. counterterrorism official briefed on details of the Ivins probe told the Daily News on Saturday. "They took their time until they had enough evidence to completely overwhelm Ivins, and they expected him to plead guilty."
After Ivins committed suicide, the Justice Department acknowledged "developments" in the "Amerithrax" attacks that killed five people in the months after 9/11. It did not mention Ivins.
Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, whose office received a poisoned letter in 2001, said Saturday that it was time for answers.
"It's been seven years; there's a lot of unanswered questions, and I think the American people deserve to know more than they do today," he said.
The former head of the Fort Detrick lab where Ivins worked also says it's time for the FBI to lay its evidence on the table.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Adamovicz told The News that the FBI's probe into the 2001 anthrax killings had upended the work of the lab by turning scientists into suspects - and pushed his pal over the edge.
"I just cannot see that Bruce would in any way, shape or form be responsible for something like that," he said. "I'd like to see these charges substantiated, because just like [with] Dr. Hatfill, there could be nothing to these allegations."
He said the FBI has created a psychologically toxic atmosphere for scientists at Fort Detrick.
"We were there processing information for agents and then one day they turned around and treated us all like suspects," he said. The agents' criteria for additional suspicion was "who's working the most overtime," said Adamovicz, who also was questioned by the feds.
Meanwhile, the Daily News also has reports on an allegation that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was pressured by the White House to pin the anthrax attacks on al-Qaeda:
After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.
"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.
On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."
But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."
ABC News doesn't comment on that either, or on their own role in pushing the anthrax-Iraq line, but they do play up Daschle's doubts about the investigation:
Daschle said the FBI has not given him any new updates. He also raised questions about the quality of the investigation, noting that the government recently paid out almost $6 million to a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who accused authorities of unfairly targeting him in the anthrax case.
"From the very beginning I've had real concerns about the quality of the investigation," Daschle said in a broadcast interview. "Given the fact that they already paid somebody else $5 million for the mistakes they must have made gives you some indication of the overall caliber and quality of the investigation."
As for the death of Bruce Ivins, the government scientists now accused posthumously in the case:
"Unfortunately, it doesn't bring anything to closure," Daschle said. "This probably further complicates their ability to get to the facts."
He said he did not know if the investigation involving Ivins "is just another false track and a real diversion of where they need to be. We don't know and they aren't telling us."
And last but not least, Bloomberg reports that the California medical examiner did not plan to do an autopsy on Ivins' body.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
