Top US scientist commits suicide?

Len Colby · September 6, 2008

According to Google Maps the round trip from Military Rd. Frederick MD (Where Ivins lived) to 10 Nassau Street, Princeton NJ (where the mailbox was) is 396 miles easily in doable on a single tank of gas and would take 6 hours 45 minutes. But that time presumably is based on the assumption of a driver going speed limit.

I've done central NJ to northern VA in 3 1/2 hours. Nobody drives the speed limit on those roads.

Kevin,

I don't think the issue is how long it would take, but whether he could do it on one tank of gass, and whether or not there is any records of Ivins purchasing the amount of gas necessary to get from Md. to NJ and back.

According to the site automotive.com a 2001 Toyota Corolla gets 41 MPG highway and has a 13.2 gallon (50 liter) tank, that comes to 541. According to Google Maps the r/t from Fort Detrick to the Princeton mailbox (10 Nassau st) and back to Ivins’ street (Military Rd) is 396 miles which leaves a 36% / 145mile margin. There are several 2001 or earlier models that have similar total range

A source you cited has him filling up shortly before he returned to the base. The media accounts I saw didn’t give his complete address but according to Google maps the closest and furthest points on his street, Military rd., are only 0.2 and 0.8 miles from the base entrance. He could have gone a long time before needing to fill up again. He said in an e-mail he often went on long drives and took measures to cover them up from his wife

Corolla http://www.automotive.com/2001/12/toyota/c...ions/index.html

Drive (note this link works best with Firefox, you might need to manually enter the addresses with other browsers) http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&o...iwloc=A&f=d

AnthraxDoctor wrote:

I was a medical director at the U.S. Postal Service at the time of the anthrax attacks, and have been following this story closely.
The gaping hole is whether Mr. Ivins had co-conspirators. The smoking gun is the second batch of anthrax spores (weapons grade) that were mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.

Apparently, those spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. In addition they had been imparted with an electrostatic charge ("The Russian Recipe"). The FBI has not released evidence that Mr. Ivins had access to such equipment, nor the expertise to perform this process.

An unsourced claim from an anonymous source.

And: This was NOT the work of a single 'lone gunman'! At least one of the Anthrax letters was mailed **FROM FLORIDA**. Ivins was in the Maryland area -- he obviously didn't send the letter postmarked in Florida!
See: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...hrax/index.html

I didn't see anything there indicating any of the letters were sent from Florida all accounts have them coming from the same mailbox near the sorority Ivins was obsessed with.

William Kelly · September 6, 2008

The Court Documents released so far:

http://www.usdoj.gov/amerithrax/

Evan Burton · September 6, 2008

Bill, Len - thank you for providing a most interesting thread!

Len Colby · September 7, 2008

As for the PS Bundy, if he was responsible for the Parkway murders, it was the first time he did it, and the MO (Knife) was also used in the next to last murder of a young girl in Flordia.

It might have been his first, it might not. When Bundy was 14 a 8 year-old neighbor who he knew disappeared and some including Ann Rule suspect he killed her though he denied it.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...endid=296086385

According to Wikipedia citing a book by his lawyer, “The day before his execution, Bundy told his lawyer that he made his first attempt to kidnap a woman in 1969,[23] and implied that he committed his first actual murder sometime during the 1972-73 time frame.[24]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_bundy#cite_ref-21

I forgot that he said he slit Kimberly Leach’s, his last victim’s, throat. Her body was too badly decomposed to tell exactly how she died though the coroner said it was due to trauma to her neck.

http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/flsupct/59128/59128ini.pdf PDF pgs 95 -6

But even so throat cutting and stabbing are very different ways of killing. All his other known victims whose bodies were recovered were bludgeoned most were then strangled. All like Leach had been sexually assaulted but the Parkway girls weren’t.

Serial killers normally progress to more daring attacks as their confidence and experience builds. Bundy seems to followed such a progression he attacked his first known victims in their residences while they were sleeping, the then started luring girls to his car by pretending to injured (using crutches and casts etc as props) and in need of help, he then seems to have started posing as a cop or other authority figure. After 2 ½ years in jail he went back to attacking sleeping women in their homes for one night then lured Leech into his van apparently posing as a cop and later tried to get a Youngman in his car pretending to be a fireman. He is never known to or suspected of having attacked women in their own cars. As previously noted the only time he is known to have attacked more than one victim at a time was the women in the sorority house when they were sleeping. Knocking a single woman unconscious, especially if she is already sleeping or in your car, is a lot easier than stabbing 2 conscious girls to death. If it were Bundy why would he never again attack two women at once?

Even his supposed confession might not really have been a confession since it was given in 3rd person “OJ” style. Previously serial killer expert Dr. (then Det.) Bob Keppel enlisted Bundy’s help with the “Green River Killer” investigation and Bundy often told him (in 3rd person) what he thought the killer had done or thought. Also he said the Parkway killing was spontaneous but the use of a knife suggests premeditation.

But as I said if you are really interested in the Bundy did it theory you should contact Keppel or Ann Rule. Keppel’s rather impressive CV with contact info can be found here http://www.cjcenter.org/vitas/Keppel.pdf

William Kelly · September 7, 2008

As for the PS Bundy, if he was responsible for the Parkway murders, it was the first time he did it, and the MO (Knife) was also used in the next to last murder of a young girl in Flordia.

It might have been his first, it might not. When Bundy was 14 a 8 year-old neighbor who he knew disappeared and some including Ann Rule suspect he killed her though he denied it.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...endid=296086385

According to Wikipedia citing a book by his lawyer, "The day before his execution, Bundy told his lawyer that he made his first attempt to kidnap a woman in 1969,[23] and implied that he committed his first actual murder sometime during the 1972-73 time frame.[24]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_bundy#cite_ref-21

I forgot that he said he slit Kimberly Leach's, his last victim's, throat. Her body was too badly decomposed to tell exactly how she died though the coroner said it was due to trauma to her neck.

http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/flsupct/59128/59128ini.pdf PDF pgs 95 -6

But even so throat cutting and stabbing are very different ways of killing. All his other known victims whose bodies were recovered were bludgeoned most were then strangled. All like Leach had been sexually assaulted but the Parkway girls weren't.

Serial killers normally progress to more daring attacks as their confidence and experience builds. Bundy seems to followed such a progression he attacked his first known victims in their residences while they were sleeping, the then started luring girls to his car by pretending to injured (using crutches and casts etc as props) and in need of help, he then seems to have started posing as a cop or other authority figure. After 2 ½ years in jail he went back to attacking sleeping women in their homes for one night then lured Leech into his van apparently posing as a cop and later tried to get a Youngman in his car pretending to be a fireman. He is never known to or suspected of having attacked women in their own cars. As previously noted the only time he is known to have attacked more than one victim at a time was the women in the sorority house when they were sleeping. Knocking a single woman unconscious, especially if she is already sleeping or in your car, is a lot easier than stabbing 2 conscious girls to death. If it were Bundy why would he never again attack two women at once?

Even his supposed confession might not really have been a confession since it was given in 3rd person "OJ" style. Previously serial killer expert Dr. (then Det.) Bob Keppel enlisted Bundy's help with the "Green River Killer" investigation and Bundy often told him (in 3rd person) what he thought the killer had done or thought. Also he said the Parkway killing was spontaneous but the use of a knife suggests premeditation.

But as I said if you are really interested in the Bundy did it theory you should contact Keppel or Ann Rule. Keppel's rather impressive CV with contact info can be found here http://www.cjcenter.org/vitas/Keppel.pdf

I think you should start a new thread on Bundy and serial killers and let this one go on about the Anthrax killer(s).

BK

Len Colby · September 8, 2008

Bill you're the one who brought Bundy up. I'm done with the subject if you are.

Still waiting for any evidence it wasn't Ivins.

William Kelly · September 9, 2008

Bill you're the one who brought Bundy up. I'm done with the subject if you are.
Still waiting for any evidence it wasn't Ivins.

Len,

I started a new, dedicated Ted Bundy thread here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ic=13428&hl=

My point being that the same investigative procedures and techniques used to catch Bundy were most certainly used against targeted suspects in the Anthrax investigation.

There might also be some parrallels running between Bundy and Ivins in regards to being stiffed by sorority girls, but I don't know if anybody knowledeable has gone there.

I'm certainly not done with the subject.

I'm just getting started.

As for evidence of suspects other than Ivins, I don't know what you're waiting for.

My proposition is that our own US government WMD efforts are more of a threat to us than anything terrorists can dream up, and that if Ivins had anything to do with the Anthrax mailings, or Oswald had anything to do with the assassination of the President, then our national security is serously threatened and still at stake.

I think it is pretty terrifying that foreknowledge of Oswald's role in the assassination was expressed by a government scientist in the same, small outfit stationed at Fort Detrick, Md., where the Anthrax originated, and they were both interested in the study of Anthrax as a weapon. I think that we should find out more about what they are doing there and who's been doing it.

BK

Terry Mauro · September 9, 2008

Bill you're the one who brought Bundy up. I'm done with the subject if you are.
Still waiting for any evidence it wasn't Ivins.

Len,

I started a new, dedicated Ted Bundy thread here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ic=13428&hl=

My point being that the same investigative procedures and techniques used to catch Bundy were most certainly used against targeted suspects in the Anthrax investigation.

There might also be some parrallels running between Bundy and Ivins in regards to being stiffed by sorority girls, but I don't know if anybody knowledeable has gone there.

I'm certainly not done with the subject.

I'm just getting started.

As for evidence of suspects other than Ivins, I don't know what you're waiting for.

My proposition is that our own US government WMD efforts are more of a threat to us than anything terrorists can dream up, and that if Ivins had anything to do with the Anthrax mailings, or Oswald had anything to do with the assassination of the President, then our national security is serously threatened and still at stake.

I think it is pretty terrifying that foreknowledge of Oswald's role in the assassination was expressed by a government scientist in the same, small outfit stationed at Fort Detrick, Md., where the Anthrax originated, and they were both interested in the study of Anthrax as a weapon. I think that we should find out more about what they are doing there and who's been doing it.

BK

Here you go http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2001/2841wolfowitz.html

Colby is likely to describe this article as "rubbish". How many folks from NYC or Jersey are partial to this expression?

Edited September 9, 2008 by Terry Mauro

William Kelly · September 9, 2008

Terry,

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of Larouche vs. Neocons.

Those people come and go.

I was thinking more like:

http://www.usamriid.army.mil/aboutpage.htm

It seems that I'm not the only one who thinks there's some Shennigans going on over at the USAMRIID.

http://butnerblogspot.wordpress.com/2008/0...t-fort-detrick/

Anthrax case raises concerns about highly secure programs

Source: Greg Carlstrom - The FederalTimes.comBruce Ivins, the biologist suspected of sending anthrax-laced letters to politicians and journalists in 2001, began showing signs of mental illness as far back as 2000 — but he was allowed to access sensitive research facilities until as recently as last year.

And that has caught the attention of military officials and Congress, who are calling for a review of the personnel procedures at secure installations that conduct biological research.Army Secretary Pete Geren has convened an investigative team to look at the lab where Ivins worked — the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.. Ivins continued working there for years after the attacks, even after the FBI began investigating him.

The Army's investigation will examine Detrick's security procedures, such as background checks, medical exams and behavioral screening. Collectively, they're called the Personnel Reliability Program, an initiative started in 2003 at the behest of Congress.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said the Army has a "proven track record" of protecting its biological facilities, but the service still has offered no explanation for how Ivins' case failed to raise alarms. Ivins, who committed suicide last month, had been taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs since 2000. And the FBI has known since 2005 that the anthrax used in the attacks came from his lab. Yet he was allowed to work at the lab until November 2007.

Meanwhile, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is launching an investigation into security at Fort Detrick and other Level 3 and Level 4 biological facilities, which are those that conduct research on life-threatening biological agents that can easily be transmitted.

Read entire article

By Gregg Carlstrom Federal Times:

http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3679886

Also: http://www.espionageinfo.com/Ul-Vo/USAMRII...s-Diseases.html

http://www.detrick.army.mil/cutting_edge/chapter12.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States...ctious_Diseases

Video:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/11885-...mriid-video.htm

And here's a guy in Texas, Scott Henson, a judicial rights activisit and blogger who thinks like I do:

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008...-homegrown.html

After 9/11, much-publicized anthrax attacks on Congress and the media set off massive new spending in biodefense research. But in retrospect, that decision funneled money precisely to those most likely to infect US civilians, either intentionally or by accident.

As exhibit one in making that case, this week a top US Army bioterrorism specialist killed himself after learning he would be prosecuted over the 2001 anthrax attacks. Reports the London Daily Mail:

Biodefence researcher Bruce Ivins, 62, had been warned about the impending prosecution shortly before his death on Tuesday after swallowing a massive dose of painkillers.

He had worked for the past 18 years at the U.S. government's biodefence laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The laboratory has been at the centre of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

The anthrax was sent through the mail to media organisations and politicians in 2001 shortly after the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

The anthrax virus killed five people and sickened 17 others, crippled national postal services, shut down a Senate office building and spread fear of further terrorism.

For several years after 9/11, I served on Texas' Bioterrorism Preparedness Coordinating Committee representing ACLU of Texas. I became convinced from that experience that the greatest threat of releasing toxic biopathogens comes not from Islamic terrorists but accidents or malevolent actions by an expanding cadre of US bioterrorism researchers. Quite a few of these scientists work in Texas, particularly in Galveston and San Antonio, as well as in a number of smaller labs around the state.

The 2001 anthrax attack offers a perfect example how this home grown threat outpaces any bioterror threat from our nation's enemies. Referencing the case in a letter to a Texas Senate committee in 2004 (by which time investigators had identified Fort Detrick, MD scientists as the source of the attack), I wrote that:

According to published reports, that particular strain was first retrieved from a cow near the Texas-Mexico border in 1981, cultured at Fort Detrick, Maryland by US Army scientists, and turned into an aerosolized, or “weaponized” form at Dugway Army Base in Utah. The weaponized anthrax was then shipped back to Fort Detrick via commercial Federal Express delivery service. Investigators and independent analysts now believe a US-trained scientist at one of these facilities, probably in Maryland, may be responsible.

So, as you consider bioterrorism threats to Texas, always keep in mind that in America’s highest profile bioterrorism case in history, terrorists used America’s so-called 'defensive' research offensively against us. That’s also the most likely scenario in the future.

Though investigators originally accused the wrong person, it now it appears undeniable that one or more US scientists were the source of the 2001 attacks.

The other, perhaps more significant danger from expanded bioterror research is the threat of pure accidents, which can create just as much threat as an overt attack. Last summer an Aggie biodefense researcher was accidentally exposed in an incident that could have easily infected others. Several other cases cited in my 2004 letter reinforce the risks from expanded bioterror research and funding:

<LI id=y5ti149>A Texas Tech professor lost or destroyed 30 vials of Bubonic Plague somewhere on the Lubbock campus, then lied to federal investigators about it. The professor was convicted in federal court, in part, for carrying vials of Bubonic Plague on commercial airline flights to and from Tanzania without registering them with US Customs, and sending plague vials via Federal Express without informing the carrier they were transporting bioagents.
<LI id=y5ti152>A researcher at the UT Health Science Center in Houston was exposed to Anthrax at a BSL-3 lab, doing tests on some of the Anthrax used in the 2001 attack on Washington.
A package headed for UTMB Galveston filled with West-Nile-Virus-infected bird remains exploded in an Ohio Federal Express facility, causing its evacuation.

I've not been tracking the subject as closely in recent years but am certain by now this list could expanded. The denouement of the Fort Detrick case confirms my earlier conclusion that US biodefense policy remains misguided and based on a faulty set of assumptions. The source of the next infection from bioterror agents won't be a pathogen concocted by Al Qaeda scientists in some Pakistani mountain redoubt. As in 2001, it will almost certainly occur at the hands of American scientists, either accidentally or - as at Fort Detrick - through some perverse crime of opportunity.

Edited September 9, 2008 by William Kelly

Len Colby · September 9, 2008

Bill you're the one who brought Bundy up. I'm done with the subject if you are.
Still waiting for any evidence it wasn't Ivins.

Len,

I started a new, dedicated Ted Bundy thread here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ic=13428&hl=

My point being that the same investigative procedures and techniques used to catch Bundy were most certainly used against targeted suspects in the Anthrax investigation.

There might also be some parrallels running between Bundy and Ivins in regards to being stiffed by sorority girls, but I don't know if anybody knowledeable has gone there.

I'm certainly not done with the subject.

I'm just getting started.

As for evidence of suspects other than Ivins, I don't know what you're waiting for.

My proposition is that our own US government WMD efforts are more of a threat to us than anything terrorists can dream up, and that if Ivins had anything to do with the Anthrax mailings, or Oswald had anything to do with the assassination of the President, then our national security is serously threatened and still at stake.

Bill –

Previously your position was (or seemed to be) that the USG, not Ivins, was the culprit or they were covering up for those responsible. You seem to have dropped that. Did I misunderstand your current or earlier positions?

While its obvious security needs to be increased at bio-weapons facilities, eliminating such research entirely is probably not such a good idea. Earlier you argued that WMD research was a greater danger than foreign terrorism presumably because the potential death toll from the former was greater than the 3000 or so Americans killed by the later. By the same logic only 5 Americans are known to have died as a result of such research but the potential toll of an attack is much higher. One has to evaluate the respective dangers of another attack versus the dangers of continued research with (hopefully) vastly improved security.

Also if you eliminated such funding overnight you’d still have a large number of scientists and technicians with the knowledge of how to produce such toxins either unemployed but able to buy reasonably sophisticated equipment on the open market or employed at other types of labs with highly sophisticated but under far less scrutiny.

Accesses to such pathogens is probably impossible to completely control

Experts said the system is working well. After the Harris incident, "ATCC got religion," said Amy Smithson, director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

However, Smithson said, "there are more than 500 culture collections around the world, and the regulations on shipments of dangerous human pathogens have not been tightened everywhere. That's something that has to be dealt with right away."

The World Federation for Culture Collections has a registry of 473 collections of microbes in 62 countries. As of Thursday, 46 listed B. anthracis as being available to scientists for sale, exchange or for free.

The regulations or procedures governing who can get a dangerous microbe differ from country to country.

But culture collections are not the only way to obtain lethal microbes. B. anthracis, for example, lives in the soil and can be found in livestock.

Harris, for instance, claimed to have grown large amounts of the anthrax bacteria from a starter culture he made from soil from a site in Ohio where anthrax-infected cattle had been buried decades earlier.

However, strains found in nature vary considerably in their virulence and in their ability to persevere in the presence of antibiotics. A terrorist would almost certainly have to make many isolation efforts before finding a strain that was as potent as desired, and perhaps many more to find a drug-resistant strain.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com...amp;slug=easy14

My point being that the same investigative procedures and techniques used to catch Bundy were most certainly used against targeted suspects in the Anthrax investigation.

That seemingly is how we know that Ivins filled up his tank shortly before returning to the lab then disappearing the evening the first letters were mailed. Lack of activity doesn’t prove anything because many cars could do the drive on less than a tank of gas and he could have bought some along the way or back.

William Kelly · September 18, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1701312_pf.html

Anthrax Suspect Didn't Act Alone, Leahy Posits

By Carrie Johnson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 18, 2008; A18

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) yesterday broke a years-long public silence about the anthrax-mailing case to cast doubt on the FBI's assertion that a bioweapons researcher acted as the lone culprit in the deadly attacks.

Leahy, one of two congressional addressees of poison-laced letters in the fall of 2001, did not offer reasons for his suspicions, which could heighten calls for an independent review of the evidence that authorities gathered against Bruce E. Ivins.

FBI officials and federal prosecutors last month named Ivins as the sole perpetrator of the mailings, which killed five people and sickened 17. Ivins, a researcher at an Army lab at Fort Detrick, Md., died July 29; he committed suicide before he could be publicly charged with a crime.

"If he is the one who sent the letter, I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people," Leahy told FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III at a hearing yesterday. "I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact. I believe that there are others who can be charged with murder."

Mueller replied that agents "had followed every lead to determine whether anybody else was involved, and we will continue to do so." He told lawmakers that "even if" authorities closed the seven-year "Amerithrax" investigation, they would vet any fresh leads that pointed to other suspects.

The unusual exchange enlivened a hearing about a grab bag of issues related to the FBI's performance. The most heated questions focused on the anthrax case.

Leahy did not comment further about the case. According to congressional sources, he was not raising questions based on new evidence that would shift suspicion away from Ivins. Rather, Leahy's doubts stem from the complexity of the crime and the scientific properties of the anthrax spores used in the letters, they said.

Ivins's defense lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, said in an e-mail yesterday, "There is no evidence he acted at all in this case, let alone with anyone else."

At the hearing, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said there are "just so many questions unanswered," such as why the investigation continues a month after the death of the man prosecutors called the only suspect. "Did you personally review the evidence and come to a conclusion there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt?" Specter asked Mueller.

"Yes," Mueller responded.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Mueller to support an independent review of the "detective work" in the case, including witness interviews, grand jury transcripts and other information in the probe. Other lawmakers sought classified information about labs in the United States and overseas, including CIA contract facilities, that could have produced the spores used in the attacks.

Former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who received one of the letters in 2001, yesterday said that "an independent review would be useful, given the high level of skepticism involving this matter and the lack of a conclusive ending."

The congressional session is expected to end late next week, making further hearings unlikely at least until after the elections, Senate aides said.

William Kelly · September 18, 2008