Top US scientist commits suicide?

[John Simkin]

Story being reported by the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7536890.stm

A top US scientist suspected of anthrax attacks in 2001 has died from an apparent suicide just as he was about to be charged, a newspaper reported.

The Los Angeles Times says government scientist Bruce Ivins was found dead after an overdose of painkillers.

The paper said that he had recently been told of the impending prosecution.

Five people died when anthrax was posted to media organisations and politicians in the US shortly after the 11 September attacks in 2001.

Mr Ivins, 62, had helped the FBI investigate anthrax-tainted envelopes as a microbiologist for a government laboratory.

The newspaper said Mr Ivins had worked at the government biodefense research laboratories in Fort Detrick, Maryland, for the past 18 years.

The US justice department has not commented on the newspaper report.

Security measures in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks crippled the US mail service and temporarily closed a Senate building.

As well as the five deaths, more than 20 other people were made ill.

In June 2008, the US justice department agreed a multimillion-dollar settlement with another scientist at the Fort Detrick laboratory it had said was a "person of interest" in the anthrax attacks.

Dr Steven Hatfill sued the department saying it had violated his privacy rights by speaking to reporters about the case.

He has denied any involvement in the attacks.

[Ron Ecker]

Here's the story from the NY Times. I didn't know that Hatfill had been exonerated and received a settlement of almost 6 million dollars from the government. For me that would ease any pain and suffering endured.

August 1, 2008

Scientist Suspected of Anthrax Attacks Said to Kill Himself

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 10:19 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide this week as prosecutors prepared to seek indictment and the dealth penalty against him for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, U.S. officials said Friday.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, was a leading military anthrax researcher who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing grand jury investigation, said prosecutors were closing in on Ivins, 62. They were planning an indictment that would have sought the death penalty for the attacks, which killed five people, crippled the postal system and traumatized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Authorities were investigating whether Ivins released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine, officials said.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the investigation, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine. A woman who answered the phone at Bruce Ivins' home in Frederick declined to comment.

Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that his other brother, Charles, had told him that Bruce committed suicide and Tylenol might have been involved.

Tom Ivins said Friday that federal officials working on the anthrax case questioned him about his brother a year and a half ago. ''They said they were investigating him,'' he said from Ohio, where he lives, in a CNN interview.

The Fort Detrick laboratory and its specialized scientists for years have been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings. In late June, the government exonerated a colleague of Ivins, Steven Hatfill. Hatfill's name has for years had been associated with the attacks after investigators named him a ''person of interest'' in 2002.

The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit contending he was falsely accused and had been made a scapegoat for the crimes.

''We are not at this time making any official statements or comments regarding this situation,'' said Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, which is investigating the anthrax attacks, said Friday.

Five people died and 17 were sickened by anthrax powder in letters that were mailed to lawmakers' Capitol Hill offices, TV networks in New York, and tabloid newspaper offices in Florida. Two postal workers in a Washington mail facility, a New York hospital worker, a Florida photo editor and an elderly Connecticut woman were killed.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Anth...amp;oref=slogin

[William Kelly]

From where I'm sitting, it looks like the FBI gave the chap a chance to kill himself, the only honorable thing to do, you know. Saves a lot of trouble, cost of a trial, lawyers and all that. And the end result would have him executed anyway. Saves the taxpayer's money, and everybody a lot of embarrasment.

BK

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Great Timing: now Harry and Nancy can take a few months vacation, and prepare for elections. My guess is the Legislative Branch will be ready to awaken from its eight years of slumber around January 22nd, 2009. Just in time to save the nation from those seething Blolshevics Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer, in a Bipartisan National Salvation Front.

Some say why not health care at 20% of GNP. They say Why not 25%?

Edited August 1, 2008 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Mark Stapleton]

Authorities were investigating whether Ivins released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine, officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Anth...amp;oref=slogin

This was the guy's motive?

Seems a little threadbare to me.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Threadbare, especially when one recalls that President Bush met with Leahy and Tom Daschle, in January 2002 and asked them to not push the

Anthrax investigation because it would detract from the War on Terror. Huh? How did he not know that it would help the war on terror?

Of course these utterly responsible Democrats agreed to the President's request.

[Mark Stapleton]

Threadbare, especially when one recalls that President Bush met with Leahy and Tom Daschle, in January 2002 and asked them to not push the

Anthrax investigation because it would detract from the War on Terror. Huh? How did he not know that it would help the war on terror?

Of course these utterly responsible Democrats agreed to the President's request.

Yes, it smells very bad.

Some background from a previous thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8058

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

A friday in August...could you pick a better ashtray for a one day news event? By monday this story will already be the X-Files.

[Ron Ecker]

August 2, 2008

Anthrax Suspect’s Death Is Dark End for a Family Man

By SARAH ABRUZZESE and ERIC LIPTON

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 investigators intensified their focus on Dr. Ivins, his life began to come apart.

Local police records show unusual calls this past spring, including the report of an “unconscious male” in March. For at least six months of this year, he had attended group counseling sessions at a psychiatric center and had apparently been seeing a psychiatrist.

W. Russell Byrne, a former colleague of Dr. Ivins at the biodefense laboratory, criticized federal agents as harassing the germ scientist and his family.

“They searched his house twice and his computer once,” he said in an interview. “We all felt powerless to stop it.”

He said Dr. Ivins was recently escorted away from the laboratory by the authorities and “disgraced in a place he spent his whole career.”

“That was so humiliating,” he said. “It’s hard to believe.”

In court records, filed after Dr. Ivins discussed his plans to kill his co-workers, a social worker who led the sessions, Jean Duley, said that Dr. Ivins’s psychiatrist had “called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions.” She went on to say that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking at Dr. Ivins and that he would soon be charged with five murders — the same number of fatalities in the anthrax attacks.

“He is a revenge killer,” Ms. Duley told a Maryland District Court judge in Frederick as she sought a restraining order against Dr. Ivins. “When he feels that he has been slighted, and especially towards women, he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings.”

After Dr. Ivins made the threats on July 9 about killing his co-workers, he was detained while at work and taken to a hospital before being transferred to a nearby psychiatric hospital. He was later released, but forbidden from going to Fort Detrick.

Ms. Duley said that Dr. Ivins had a history of making homicidal threats that dated to his college days. But several of Dr. Ivins’s co-workers said that while he clearly was devastated after he was singled out for possible prosecution, that does not mean he was involved in the attack.

The police had come to Dr. Ivins’s home in response to a call early on July 27 from the fire department for assistance; they found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. He was transported to the hospital, and died two days later.

His family has made no public statement about the investigation or about Dr. Ivins’s suicide. But his children both placed messages on their Facebook pages, saying goodbye to their father, hinting at the torment he went through in his final months.

“I will miss you Dad. I love you and I can’t wait to see you in Heaven,” his son, Andy Ivins, wrote. “Rest in peace. It’s finally over.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/us/02sci...6TwZ085ts/yo74g

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

That Madsen article is necessary reading, for things that you will not be reminded of elsewhere, including the article I am about to post.

Also here is a very important Greenwald article on the Propaganda role played by ABC News in turning the weaponizing the Anthrax Letters for the

Government's Propaganda War against its former CIA ally in Iraq.

Unlike most of the other accounts it reminds us of the psychological effect of the Anthrax letters-- coming just one week after 9/11 -- in the creation of a broad and virtually homogenous fear of radical islam.-------

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

-------

aticle: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10738/

[Craig Lamson]

That Madsen article is necessary reading, for things that you will not be reminded of elsewhere, including the article I am about to post.

Also here is a very important Greenwald article on the Propaganda role played by ABC News in turning the weaponizing the Anthrax Letters for the

Government's Propaganda War against its former CIA ally in Iraq.

Unlike most of the other accounts it reminds us of the psychological effect of the Anthrax letters-- coming just one week after 9/11 -- in the creation of a broad and virtually homogenous fear of radical islam.-------

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

-------

aticle: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10738/

I guess you must live an a different USA than I live in. In my USA, 9/11 was just the final straw that broke the camels back when it came to Islamic radicalism. In my USA, we had a vivid memory of all the other attacks that came first. Anthrax was just a sideshow.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

That Madsen article is necessary reading, for things that you will not be reminded of elsewhere, including the article I am about to post.

Also here is a very important Greenwald article on the Propaganda role played by ABC News in turning the weaponizing the Anthrax Letters for the

Government's Propaganda War against its former CIA ally in Iraq.

Unlike most of the other accounts it reminds us of the psychological effect of the Anthrax letters-- coming just one week after 9/11 -- in the creation of a broad and virtually homogenous fear of radical islam.-------

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

-------

aticle: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10738/

I guess you must live an a different USA than I live in. In my USA, 9/11 was just the final straw that broke the camels back when it came to Islamic radicalism. In my USA, we had a vivid memory of all the other attacks that came first. Anthrax was just a sideshow.

had a vivid memory??? Does this imply before 9/11? Were those investigations ever followe up on or were they blocked? Was the lead story in most of the US Corporate Media Shark attacks on swimmers during your america's summer of 01? Or was your america only reading online stories that could reach 13 people at a time? If so your america was cozy, real cozy.

[Craig Lamson]

That Madsen article is necessary reading, for things that you will not be reminded of elsewhere, including the article I am about to post.

Also here is a very important Greenwald article on the Propaganda role played by ABC News in turning the weaponizing the Anthrax Letters for the

Government's Propaganda War against its former CIA ally in Iraq.

Unlike most of the other accounts it reminds us of the psychological effect of the Anthrax letters-- coming just one week after 9/11 -- in the creation of a broad and virtually homogenous fear of radical islam.-------

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

-------

aticle: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10738/

I guess you must live an a different USA than I live in. In my USA, 9/11 was just the final straw that broke the camels back when it came to Islamic radicalism. In my USA, we had a vivid memory of all the other attacks that came first. Anthrax was just a sideshow.

had a vivid memory??? Does this imply before 9/11? Were those investigations ever followe up on or were they blocked? Was the lead story in most of the US Corporate Media Shark attacks on swimmers during your america's summer of 01? Or was your america only reading online stories that could reach 13 people at a time? If so your america was cozy, real cozy.

Yep, a very vivid memory. There was no real doubt about the cause of the attacks that came before 9/11. What was to block? Why did we fail to act would be a far better question.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

That Madsen article is necessary reading, for things that you will not be reminded of elsewhere, including the article I am about to post.

Also here is a very important Greenwald article on the Propaganda role played by ABC News in turning the weaponizing the Anthrax Letters for the

Government's Propaganda War against its former CIA ally in Iraq.

Unlike most of the other accounts it reminds us of the psychological effect of the Anthrax letters-- coming just one week after 9/11 -- in the creation of a broad and virtually homogenous fear of radical islam.-------

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

-------

aticle: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10738/

I guess you must live an a different USA than I live in. In my USA, 9/11 was just the final straw that broke the camels back when it came to Islamic radicalism. In my USA, we had a vivid memory of all the other attacks that came first. Anthrax was just a sideshow.

had a vivid memory??? Does this imply before 9/11? Were those investigations ever followe up on or were they blocked? Was the lead story in most of the US Corporate Media Shark attacks on swimmers during your america's summer of 01? Or was your america only reading online stories that could reach 13 people at a time? If so your america was cozy, real cozy.

Yep, a very vivid memory. There was no real doubt about the cause of the attacks that came before 9/11. What was to block? Why did we fail to act would be a far better question.

------

9/11 being the final straw to convince the US population to go onto a war on terror. Well, no doubt there had been a lot of prep work. Did US intelliegence have a lot of warnings? Yep far more than they cared to admit. Buy you are wrong if you imply that the public in general was talking a lot about Islamic terror during the summer of 2001. They needed 9/11 and and the anthrax attacks were fit into the islamic pattern, to induce a broad surrender of liberties, and cash for a war that was aimed on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Now the extent to which the anthrax letters were part of the overall islamaphobe campaign is being minimized by the corporate war media.

[Craig Lamson]

That Madsen article is necessary reading, for things that you will not be reminded of elsewhere, including the article I am about to post.

Also here is a very important Greenwald article on the Propaganda role played by ABC News in turning the weaponizing the Anthrax Letters for the

Government's Propaganda War against its former CIA ally in Iraq.

Unlike most of the other accounts it reminds us of the psychological effect of the Anthrax letters-- coming just one week after 9/11 -- in the creation of a broad and virtually homogenous fear of radical islam.-------

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokow, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

-------

aticle: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/01/10738/

I guess you must live an a different USA than I live in. In my USA, 9/11 was just the final straw that broke the camels back when it came to Islamic radicalism. In my USA, we had a vivid memory of all the other attacks that came first. Anthrax was just a sideshow.

had a vivid memory??? Does this imply before 9/11? Were those investigations ever followe up on or were they blocked? Was the lead story in most of the US Corporate Media Shark attacks on swimmers during your america's summer of 01? Or was your america only reading online stories that could reach 13 people at a time? If so your america was cozy, real cozy.

Yep, a very vivid memory. There was no real doubt about the cause of the attacks that came before 9/11. What was to block? Why did we fail to act would be a far better question.

------

9/11 being the final straw to convince the US population to go onto a war on terror. Well, no doubt there had been a lot of prep work. Did US intelliegence have a lot of warnings? Yep far more than they cared to admit. Buy you are wrong if you imply that the public in general was talking a lot about Islamic terror during the summer of 2001. They needed 9/11 and and the anthrax attacks were fit into the islamic pattern, to induce a broad surrender of liberties, and cash for a war that was aimed on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Now the extent to which the anthrax letters were part of the overall islamaphobe campaign is being minimized by the corporate war media.

Oh please, The Cole attack was less than a year old by the time the towers fell. Anyone with half a brain had islamic terror on their minds. And I gotta love your conclusion "they" "needed" anything as if you 'know" it was all part of some grand plan by the "powers that be" How original. "They" didn't need anthrax. It could have been sold after the Cole. All that was missing then was a President willing to do the right thing. Lucky for us that President was in charge on 9/11.