9. Inability to explain his own behavior. Whenever Dr. Ivins was confronted with the evidence against him, he was unable to provide reasonable or consistent explanations for his behavior. Two important examples were his inability to provide any reasonable explanation for his increased after-hours time in the lab in the days preceding both anthrax mailings and his inability to explain how and why he ended up submitting questionable samples of RMR-1029 to the FBI Repository.
III. THE AMERITHRAX INVESTIGATION
- A. Introduction
The spore powder, letters, and envelopes recovered during the investigation were exhaustively examined using traditional forensic methods, including hair, fiber, fingerprint, DNA, and handwriting analysis. In addition, Task Force agents interviewed witnesses, and later obtained pen-registers, executed search warrants, and engaged confidential sources. Using these tools, Task Force agents conducted preliminary investigations of 1,040 individuals and in-depth investigations of over 400 of them. In 2007, all of this evidence was supplemented with the groundbreaking scientific genetic analyses that conclusively identified the murder weapon. This revelation, and the investigation that followed, led to the conclusion that Dr. Ivins mailed the anthrax letters.
A bio-terrorism attack presents inherent challenges for criminal investigators. Before any crime is identified, the situation is treated as a public health crisis. In the initial aftermath of the letter attacks, law enforcement authorities were not sure that a crime had even been committed until the first victims of the attack became symptomatic, which occurred weeks after the letters were mailed. The first victims who sought medical care for cutaneous anthrax were mis-diagnosed as having contracted common infections from spider bites or other benign causes. It was only when victims Robert Stevens and Ernesto Blanco, both employed by AMI in Boca Raton, Florida, happened to be admitted to the same Florida hospital for pneumonia-like symptoms and were diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, that investigators had reason to suspect that an act of terrorism had occurred. Following Mr. Stevens’s death on October 5, 2001, the first two anthrax-laden envelopes were discovered at the offices of the NBC studios in New York City (on Friday, October 12th) and the Capitol Hill office of Senator Thomas Daschle in Washington, D.C. (on Monday, October 15th).
The FBI and USPIS then officially opened their joint investigation. Within 24 hours, scientists assisting the Task Force confirmed that the anthrax powder in the letters to Senator Daschle and the New York Post matched the same strain of anthrax found in the clinical isolates of bacteria removed from Mr. Stevens’s blood, thereby linking the three events in Florida, New York, and Washington, D.C. However, many questions remained unanswered. Investigators did not know whether an anthrax letter had passed through AMI in Florida or how many other letters might have been sent. They did not know the location from which the letters had been mailed. Nor did investigators at the time have any idea whether the letters were part of a state-sponsored
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