Aside from Dr. Ivins, determining who else had access to RMR-1029 was complicated by the fact that there were a handful of times that small portions of RMR-1029 (aliquots) were sent over to Building 1412 the night prior to a scheduled aerosol challenge, leaving open the possibility, however remote, that some researcher in 1412 skimmed a small sample. The same argument could be made regarding two other institutions where other samples of RMR-1029 were stored prior to the mailings. However, the investigation and analysis undertaken by the Task Force, as discussed below, ruled out these other individuals.
- Building 1425: There were 14 people who had access to the hot suites where RMR-1029 was created and stored in September and October 2001 – the relevant time period leading up to the mailings. Except for Dr. Ivins, all of these individuals visited the lab only during standard works hours, with a few limited exceptions. Each person who went into the lab at off-hours had legitimate and demonstrable reasons to be in the hot suites at the times they were there. None of these people was alone in the lab for the lengthy period of time required to grow, harvest, purify, and dry the spores and to load the letters under a protective hood. A comparison of the off-hours of Dr. Ivins to those of these other researchers reinforces the conclusion that Dr. Ivins’s hours were suspicious.[1]
- Aerosol challenges in Building 1412: Dr. Ivins kept a record of the times that he sent RMR-1029 over to Building 1412 for aerosol challenges. Agents thoroughly investigated each of these transfers via interviews with the recipients and a review of their laboratory notebooks and confirmed that all of the material was used in experiments, with any residual material autoclaved. Dr. Ivins’s Reference Material Receipt record supported the investigators’ findings. There were times, however, that Dr. Ivins sent the tubes of RMR-1029 over to Building 1412 the night before the experiment, so there were a handful of occasions when an isolate of RMR-1029 was left in the hot suites of Building 1412
- ↑ Given the reference in the attack letters to 9-11-01 and the fact that there was an appreciable increase in the quality of the spores from the first mailings to the second, the likely pool of potential mailers would be those who had real-time access to RMR-1029 in September and October 2001. Nonetheless, the investigation did not ignore anyone with potential access to RMR-1029 since its creation on October 22, 1997. This pool included 131 individuals with hot suite access in Building 1425, and another 246 individuals with hot suite access in Building 1412, though these numbers may include some duplication, as some individuals had access to both hot suites. Investigators included Building 1412 in this analysis out of an abundance of caution because there was one notation on an early version of Dr. Ivins’s Reference Material Receipt record indicating that RMR-1029 was initially stored in Building 1412, though Dr. Ivins later denied this, and his laboratory notebooks supported him. An investigation was conducted on each of these people as well, with unremarkable results.
the laboratory. Finally, they cross-referenced this list against a list of researchers with up-to-date vaccinations, which are required before lab access will be authorized, in order to produce a complete list of all individuals with theoretical access to RMR-1029 prior to the mailings.
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