Posted on 08/04/2008 11:35:24 AM PDT by Shermy
While counselor Jean Duley said the late Bruce E. Ivins expressed homicidal intentions, threatened her and said he "would go out in a blaze of glory" in the face of a pending FBI indictment, as least one former colleague believes the Fort Detrick scientist is being used as a scapegoat in the high profile anthrax poisoning case that paralyzed the nation -- again -- shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Arthur O. Anderson, a medical doctor and scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick, said Duley's description of Ivins doesn't match his impressions of a man with whom he worked for many years.
Ivins, who was about to be indicted by the FBI in the anthrax mailings that killed five people and injured 17 others, was described by Anderson as a hard-working individual with a high level of integrity and pride in both his workplace and his individual work.
The only perceived weakness that Anderson could discern, and not all people would consider it a weakness, he said, was that Ivins "had relatively thin skin."
"His personality style was such that he was sensitive to public opinion," Anderson said Sunday. "There are individuals in our community whose lives are centered around protesting government programs. They're not necessarily interested in facts, but pushing an agenda."
Ivins would take it personally when seemingly unfounded criticism was aimed at something he believed in, Anderson said.
"He was concerned with how the Institute was perceived and how he was perceived," Anderson said. "That manifested itself in the care he took in conducting his research."
As a health care professional and bioethicist -- he heads USAMRIID's Office of Human Use and Ethics -- Anderson said he takes issue with what he views as Duley's professional betrayal of Ivins.
"I can tell you very clearly that the minute a conflict of interest occurs in the caregiver-client relationship É she has to withdraw as the caregiver," he said. "She can't ethically continue to gather information or share information -- betray that trust -- without disclosing to her client that she is sharing what he believes is confidential, privileged information."
Anderson said that if he was to betray a patient's trust in such a manner, he would be subject to medical disciplinary procedures.
In commenting about remarks made by Duley when she applied to the District Court of Maryland for a Peace Order, Anderson said he was amazed that a judge would allow hearsay to be entered on the record.
Duley referred to comments allegedly made by Ivins' psychiatrist about Ivins' homicidal and sociopathic tendencies, without confirmation to the court that the doctor actually made the comments.
"The remaining allegations about murderous ideas and plans sound so foreign to me that in the absence of contemporaneously documented evidence I would have to consider them items of Ms. Duley's vivid imagination or information fed to her by the people she communicated with outside the therapeutic environment," Anderson wrote in an e-mail to the News-Post. "It is not at all surprising to me that a patient whose therapist is serving as a double agent 'therapist' and 'accuser' would become very angry with the therapist and might make some rather dramatic expressions of that anger."
The doctor and scientist paused briefly after being asked if he believes Ivins committed suicide.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "I think all of the circumstances put him in a place where he felt he had no place to go."
Anderson said he became aware in June that the FBI had taken items out of Ivins' lab.
"The FBI took all of the stored things in his lab freezer," Anderson said. "They basically destroyed his life's work. I think that's what upset him the most."
Anderson said it is "highly incomprehensible" to him that Ivins would be regarded as the perpetrator in this case simply because he had access to anthrax.
He said he last saw Ivins around July 6. Ivins told him the FBI was stalking him, following him everywhere, Anderson said.
"He was animated and appropriately concerned, but certainly not out of control."
Anderson does not believe Ivins is responsible for the 2001 anthrax deaths.
"Now that he can't defend himself against the allegations, this will play out the way it will play out," he said.
But he firmly believes it wasn't guilt that killed his colleague and friend.
"I think it was the sense of betrayal and complete abandonment by those around him," Anderson said. "He cared so much and had so much pride in the work he did -- I don't think he could handle that sense of abandonment."
I’ve been wondering if he was related to Molly Ivins. Not siblings anyway—he was born in 1946 in Lebanon, Ohio; she was born in 1944 in Monterey, California.
Ivins' Estranged Sibling Believes Anthrax Allegations
Many friends and colleagues of Bruce Ivins, a government researcher who was under investigation for the anthrax attacks of 2001, have said they are certain that investigators are pointing to the wrong man. But at least one family member says he believes the allegations: Ivins' brother, Tom.
Tom Ivins, who lives in Middletown, Ohio, admits he hasn't spoken to his younger brother Bruce since 1985. He won't say why, except that there's no law that requires him to maintain contact.
"I don't owe him anything," Tom Ivins says.
Tom says he used to give his little brother rides in his bicycle basket when they were kids, but "we didn't play together because I was very athletic myself."
Their father was a pharmacist and their mother was a homemaker in Lebanon, Ohio. Tom played football in high school, while Bruce ran cross-country. But Tom says his brothers, Bruce and Charles, shared a disturbing family trait.
"They grew up with that attitude — I didn't — that they were omnipotent," Tom Ivins says.
He says there were no signs that something was wrong with his brother when they were younger, but he thinks pressure from law enforcement probably led to Bruce's suicide.
Tom says he is a much stronger man than Bruce was — proven by the way Tom says he handled questioning about the case by the FBI.
"They asked me a few questions, like 'What were you like growing up,' like family history questions, and I didn't buckle like the walls of Jericho coming tumbling down under their questioning, but it seems my two brothers did," he says. "Charles was not as strong as I am, nor was Bruce."
When asked if there's anything he liked about his brother, Tom replies, "No, I didn't."
He says he isn't sorry his brother is dead.
Charles Ivins declined to speak with NPR. But several of Bruce's friends and neighbors were eager to defend him.
Jaye Holly lived next door to the Ivins family in Frederick, Md., before moving to upstate New York a month ago — and she still can't process what she's hearing in the news with the man she knew.
"I was just stunned because it does not reflect the neighbor we had known for three years. I can't imagine that Bruce would have been involved in such a thing," Holly says.
Holly says everyone knew the neighborhood where so many employees of Fort Detrick lived was being watched.
"We knew that there was surveillance happening in the neighborhood, but we never knew who the surveillance was on," Holly says. "Because we knew that Bruce worked at Fort Detrick, we knew that he worked with pathogens, it was a possibility that the surveillance was on him, but it was such a remote possibility that we sort of dismissed it."
Dr. Kenneth Hedlund, who worked with Bruce Ivins at Fort Detrick, says he thinks the government needed a scapegoat. He says the FBI was under a lot of pressure after paying nearly $6 million to Steven Hatfill — another researcher who had been under suspicion in the anthrax attacks.
"Unfortunately, Bruce Ivins was a good guy — he was probably more vulnerable, and with the pressure they applied to him, they forced him to this position," Hedlund says.
-snip-"It's a damn shame that they've chosen him as a fall guy, and I think they've chosen him as a fall guy because he was too human," Hedlund says.
Several of Ivins' neighbors said they believe the government had the wrong man — and suggest that perhaps the real killer is still out there.
Anthrax Indictment May Have Been Weeks Away
by Dina Temple-Raston
NPR.org, August 3, 2008 · Government investigators tell NPR that they were still several major legal steps away from indicting army researcher Dr. Bruce Ivins for the 2001 anthrax attacks when he killed himself this past week.
While they had written up the case and told officials at the Department of Justice they were prepared to go forward, the department had not yet approved the case. What is more, the evidence against Ivins had not yet been presented in its entirety to a grand jury and jurors had not yet been asked to vote on an indictment. That process could have taken weeks.
There had been some media reports saying that Ivins killed himself on Tuesday because he had been told that he was going to be indicted imminently. People close to the case told NPR that the FBI had a discussion with Ivins’ lawyer and had presented him with some of the evidence in the case.
But the idea at the time was to convince Ivins’ lawyer that it was in his client’s best interest to admit to mailing envelopes with anthrax in the fall of 2001. People close to the investigation said it wasn’t so much a plea discussion as the FBI making clear that they were steaming toward an indictment of Ivins.
The FBI is expected to provide a briefing on the evidence as early as midweek. The timing depends on a number of factors.
The case has to be formally closed before the FBI is no longer bound by grand jury secrecy requirements. -snip -
I believe all this speculation about a frame-up is a useless waste of time.
“Duley herself has a history that, at the very least, raises questions about her credibility. She has a rather lengthy involvement with the courts in Frederick, including two very recent convictions for driving under the influence — one from 2007 and one from 2006 — as well as a complaint filed against her for battery by her ex-husband. Here is Duley’s record from the Maryland Judicial data base:
Just three months ago, Duley pled guilty and was sentenced to probation (and fined $1,000), as a result of having been stopped in December, while driving at 1:35 a.m., and charged with driving under the influence:
On April 21, 2006, Duley was also charged with “driving a vehicle while impaired by alcohol,” driving “while impaired by drugs or alcohol,” and reckless driving, and on October 13, 2006, she pled guilty to the charge of reckless driving and was fined $580. Back in 1992, Duley was criminally charged with battery against what appeared to be her now-ex-husband (and she filed a complaint against him as well). Later that same year, she was criminally charged with possession of drug paraphenalia with intent to use, charges which appear to have been ultimately dismissed.”
very very interesting.
So basically, anything she has to say ought to be tossed out, and then look at what is left.
Lebanon, Ohio - Barbara Weisenfelder didn't believe the FBI agents for one minute. They had told the director of this village's historical museum that they had come all the way from Washington to interview residents as part of an insurance fraud investigation.
The agents said Bruce Ivins, 62, the youngest son of the town's long-deceased druggist, had faked his death. And they wanted to know everything about him and his family. They even inquired about the name of the architect and contractor who built the family's beige-colored, single-story home on Orchard Avenue in the 1930s.
"We knew who they were checking on, and that's all we needed to know," Weisenfelder, 77, said yesterday, recalling the agents' visits in 2007 and 2008.
She called up an Internet-savvy friend, who Googled Ivins' name. The search produced an October 2004 article from USA Today about Ivins' failure to report contamination at his bio-defense lab at Fort Detrick. Weisenfelder said she "put two and two together" and then shared what she learned with other volunteer curators at the museum, a brick Colonial building that was once a gymnasium....
As many as four agents - from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Postal Service - came to two of their regular Wednesday meetings asking lots of questions....Did they know of a school or cemetery named Greendale?
"They asked the Greendale question repeatedly," said John J. Zimkus, Lebanon's historian. "I looked, and I couldn't find anything."
..."They mostly asked a lot of questions we couldn't answer," such as the name of the architect who designed and the contractor who built the house, said [homeowner] Mike McMurray. "They wanted to know if they could have a look around. I said, 'Yes,' but they never did."
hmmmm...
key quotes from the brother story....
” “we didn’t play together because I was very athletic myself.” “
“”They grew up with that attitude — I didn’t — that they were omnipotent,” Tom Ivins says.”
“Tom says he is a much stronger man than Bruce was “
“”Charles was not as strong as I am, nor was Bruce.” “
“He says he isn’t sorry his brother is dead.”
Something is telling me there is something more than a little “off” about this brother Tom.
Could be fun, but every time I dig down in that group I keep coming up with the same bunch of pukes.
I tend to believe the FBI here, mainly because the FBI initially leaked another suspect, who eventually cleared himself and got a boatload of money in a settlement. There was an example of a path he could take to clear himself and even make some money in the process, but he chose not to go that direction.
Instant paydirt. 7 DUI’s? No wonder she’s such a compliant informant.
Here’s the latest.
http://www.star-telegram.com/190/story/804739.html
Officials: Sorority obsession seen in anthrax case
WASHINGTON — The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday. Multiple U.S. officials told The Associated Press that former Army scientist Bruce Ivins was long obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, going back as far as his own college days at the University of Cincinnati.
The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The bizarre link to the sorority may indirectly explain one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why the anthrax was mailed from Princeton, N.J., 195 miles from the Army biological weapons lab the anthrax is believed to have been smuggled out of.
An adviser to the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at Princeton University confirmed she was interviewed by the FBI in connection with the case.
U.S. officials said e-mails or other documents detail Ivins’ long-standing fixation on the sorority. His former therapist has said Ivins plotted revenge against those who have slighted him, particularly women. There is nothing to indicate, however, he was focused on any one sorority member or other Princeton student, the officials said.
Despite the connection between Ivins and the sorority, authorities acknowledge they cannot place the scientist in Princeton the day the anthrax was mailed. That remains a hole in the government’s case. Had Ivins not killed himself last week, authorities would have argued he could have made the seven-hour round trip to Princeton after work.
Ivins’ attorney, Paul F. Kemp, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday but has asserted his client’s innocence and said he would have been vindicated in court.
He accuses his brothers of having feelings of "omnipotence", yet he sounds to me like he's gotten a pretty darn high opinion of himself as well. I wonder if he's estranged from his whole entire family. There's obviously a lot more to this family story than we'll ever know.
so...he was supposedly obsessed with the sorority - in general? And there just happened to be a chapter close to that post office?
weak.
very weak.
"They asked the Greendale question repeatedly," said John J. Zimkus, Lebanon's historian. "I looked, and I couldn't find anything."
It's a good thing I wasn't at that meeting. I would have fallen on the floor laughing at the mention of Greendale.
“He accuses his brothers of having feelings of “omnipotence”, yet he sounds to me like he’s gotten a pretty darn high opinion of himself as well. I wonder if he’s estranged from his whole entire family. There’s obviously a lot more to this family story than we’ll ever know.”
Contrast that to the way the unabomber’s brother reacted to his sibling’s descent into insanity.
He claimed love for his brother. He was saddened by his mental collapse, and turned him in to protect him from himself.
There is something very weird with this brother Tom.
“Obsession”
He thought the girls were hot or somethin’. Maybe there’s a website about them. So what.
And this leaked “angle” just happens to jive with the strange social worker story about hating women since his “graduate days”
Except he wrote a letter to his paper urging the Catholic Church to accept women as priests.
News coming in by the minute ! Ivins forwarded the famous Fox News email apparently.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,397325,00.html
Anthrax Suspect Bruce Ivins
This is a rush transcript from “America’s Election HQ,” August 1, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.HEATHER NAUERT, HOST: There is more breaking news today: The pieces of the nearly seven-year-old puzzle may be coming together. The 2001 anthrax attacks, the mystery may have been solved after all this time.Today, we learned that a top Army microbiologist was the same scientist who is developing a vaccine against anthrax — well, he, apparently killed himself just as prosecutors were getting ready to indict him for the worst bio-terror attack in United States history. The 2005 strike killed five people and sickened more than a dozen others. It crippled the U.S. postal system for weeks and weeks and sent an already-shaken America deeper into fear just after the 9/11 attacks.Now, this guy’s name was Bruce Ivins, he was 62 years old. And we’re taking a picture — a look at a picture of him right now. He once examined anthrax-laced letter that was sent to Senator Patrick Leahy years ago.• Watch Heather’s interviewRelatedColumn Archive
Case Closed? Does Anthrax Suspect’s Suicide Mean the Investigation Into 2001 Attacks Is Over? Lawmakers Propose to Legalize MarijuanaHave Doctors Found a Way to Kill HIV?Sordid Details From Oprah School TrialStudy: New Strategy Needed vs. Al QaedaFull-page Transcripts ArchiveVideo
Watch Heather Nauert’s interview Show Info
Airs Weekdays at 5 p.m. ET
E-mail the show: billandmegyn@foxnews.com Bill Hemmer’s bio Megyn Kelly’s bio Transcript archive But we’re going to kick off with a live report from our very own reporter, Catherine Herridge. She is the one who broke the news that scientists at Fort Detrick, were under suspicion in this case, months — well, actually years ago.Catherine, this has been a busy day for you. What all unfolded today?CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are several important developments really, Heather.First of all, in March of this year, we were the first to report that the FBI had, in fact, narrowed their pool of suspects to four and we were able to confirm that all of them were tied to Fort Detrick, this is the Army’s bioweapons research facility in Maryland and among that group was an Army scientist we now know that was Bruce Ivins.The information about Ivins is very significant because independently, we were able to obtain an e-mail forwarded by Ivins in 2005 and that e-mail claims that the powder in the anthrax letter was virtually identical to powder that was being made at Fort Detrick.Now, today, friends of Bruce Ivins told me that they believe Ivins was an honorable man and that he was one of the first people to draw attention to the Army base in Maryland as a likely source of the powder, also as the likely source of the base, if you will, for the person who sent those letters.Others would say that all of Ivins’ efforts were really an effort to deflect the suspicion away from him.There are other developments today. We were able to obtain court documents from the state court in Maryland. These documents suggest that the last weeks of Bruce Ivins’ life were very tumultuous and very tortured.A restraining order was taken out against him by an individual we believe was his therapist. And in those court documents, it says that the therapist believes Ivins had homicidal tendencies, could be violent, and that he was under investigation by the FBI and would be charged with five capital murder offenses at some point this year. That’s significant, because five Americans were killed in the anthrax attacks in 2001.I think that the bottom line for people is that everything over the last seven years and now, especially in the last 24 hours, and in the last few months that we’ve been really honing in on this case, it shows that it was not some foreign extremist who launched the worst bioterror attack on U.S. soil, in fact, it now appears that it was an Army insider.NAUERT: Yes.HERRIDGE: An Army insider who was responsible for this attack.NAUERT: And, Catherine, I think, a lot of folks would agree that that’s the most troubling thing of all. Catherine Herridge, thank you so much for bringing that to us.HERRIDGE: You’re welcome.NAUERT: So, the question is now — was Ivins the perpetrator that the feds have been looking for all this time?With us now is Greg Esslinger. He’s a former FBI special agent in counterterrorism.Greg, thanks for joining us. Let me start by asking you.GREG ESSLINGER, FORMER FBI COUNTERTERROR AGENT: No problem.NAUERT: You know, the Army said that this guy exhibited very unusual behavior after the attacks. Of course, this was quite some time ago. So, why — and he apparently was also testing some of these anthrax outside of what they considered the “safety zone” to be. So, why are we only hearing about this now? Why really only zeroing in on him and getting — indict him at this point?ESSLINGER: Well, you know, understand that these investigations can take a long time, even if there are some relative suspicions that the Bureau can follow up on, there’s still a need to build enough evidence to the level where the prosecutors can actually file an indictment. So, a suspicion or suspicious activity or somebody doing something that looks unusual is only the first step in an investigation and to actually build a full case against someone, often takes more than a year or even years.NAUERT: And it’s hard for a lot of folks to imagine that this could potentially be an American who is responsible for this, let alone someone who pledged to protect his country in working for the United States Army. Any chance of this could all be a big mistake?ESSLINGER: Well, I think, you know, with the person no longer alive to truly question and determine what the involvement was, it is going to be a question that may remain out there and whether or not this person did it by themselves, I think, is part of the biggest question in my mind or whether he was complicit, if he is guilty, with others. So, unless there’s other evidence that can point in that direction, it may be really hard to solve this case.NAUERT: And just quickly, what happens to the investigation now? He’s gone. They’re going to continue to talk to other people, I imagine, but are they going to want to pin this on him to just try to have this sewed up?ESSLINGER: Well, I think they definitely want to close the investigation. I think it’s been a very difficult investigation for the FBI. Obviously, a number of people were killed. So, this really — it’s a capital murder crime and the Bureau is very keen on getting some closure to it as anyone would be and all of America is.So, they will continue to investigate so they can try to get some closure, but that closure, obviously, could be quite difficult now, given the fact that a prime suspect is no longer with us.NAUERT: All right. Greg Esslinger, thank you so much for joining us.ESSLINGER: You bet.
Agreed. I don’t care what kind of family issues one might have, something is wrong with a person who reacts this way to a death in the immediate family.
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