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."
For some obscure reason they let this "newbie" DUI woman in close contact with Mr. Ivins.
All that does is raise the possibility that officials at the hospital, or on the board governing the foundation that owns and runs the hospital, are involved.
In case anyone sees a connection, take a look at their names at: http://www.sheppardpratt.org/sp_htmlcode/sp_about/sp_about.aspx
Guess you found the answer before I gave it to you...that's what I get for not reading the whole thread first, LOL!
“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.”
Is “forwarded” the same as “sent?” Did he write it? No>? How many forwarding parties? And so what? The feds claim they have the real science only in the past year or so.
“Except he wrote a letter to his paper urging the Catholic Church to accept women as priests.”
more inconsistency.
They want to portray him as a “devout pro-life catholic”
It would be a rare find to encounter a “devout pro-life catholic” who would write a letter supporting female priests.
Any catholic you meet who supports female priests tends to be pro-choice, and shows disdain for the authority of the pope.
So which was he?
hard to tell.
but it seems from the coverage that being devout and pro-life must make you suspicious as well.
I might have missed it, but...
any idea as to the man’s motive, if he was the one that did it?
But in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues."the stuff made by [name redacted]""Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'"
Reading Fox today, it doesn't sound like "Ivins" is the redacted name.
I don’t know, I see the opposite view...maybe Tom had good reason to keep his distance from the rest of the family if they were as strange as he says they are. I’ve known people like him that have disowned their families for one reason or another. Heck, I sometimes joke that I had to have been adopted and I am still searching for my real family ; )
“any idea as to the man’s motive”
About the same as Hatfill’s and Ken Berry’s.
The story with the succession of leaked and weak connecting the dots is a lot like how Hatfill’s story evolved.
No word of magical scent dogs yet, though.
I think the “social worker” was a gift to the Feds, and they are calibrating their leaks to confirm her claims.
I think it's at this point that the FBI STOPPED consulting with postal officials and experts.
Here's the situation ~ they found anthrax contamination in and on the collection box.
There are two ways this can happen. One is that a letter or two gets mailed and releases contamination on the way in. The other way is that a contaminated mail collection container is placed in the box. It releases anthrax spores that then contaminate the inside of the box and the letter drop area, and some may even waft outside and contaminate the outside.
We do not know that anyone ever mailed an anthrax letter at that collection box but we know with certainty that hundreds, if not thousands or even tens of thousands of contaminated postal letter and flat mail containers were released into the postal system from Brentwood facility LONG BEFORE the first case of anthrax was discovered.
We also know that the closest MPC (Mail Processing Center) to Princeton is in Central New Jersey and it was thoroughly contaminated with anthrax that then contaminated every letter and flat tray coming into or leaving the building. That particular MPC served Princeton (among other places).
The FBI simply discarded the idea that a collection box could have been contaminated by a piece of contaminated postal mail handling equipment, to wit, a letter or flat tray.
New flat trays are placed inside each collection box every day!
If this is the sort of evidence that the FBI hoped to use against Dr. Ivins they'd had best hope that no one who'd ever worked for USPS sat on a jury.
That’s also my reading. I think Ivins may the redacted name of the person who examined samples for the FBI - but the guy who actually made the most similar powder is definitely another person.
Darned, most of the Catholics I know are both pro-life and would like to see married priests, and women given a more positive position in church missions.
One of the fellows repeatedly identified here as someone for the FBI to look at closely lived off campus in the area ~ don't know the address he had at the time, but it's dollars to doughnuts it was Greendale.
If the new science the above article describes is valid, then it seems the FBI managed to trace the anthrax to Ivins's lab with a high degree of certainty. However, it appears that about ten other people also would have had access to the material and therefore also could have sent the letters. So, I think the FBI was hoping to get Ivins to confess and cop a plea or to do something else that would provide enough additional evidence to narrow the suspect list to him alone.
Of course, this assumes the scientific evidence is for real. I remember reading shortly after the attacks that it would be possible to detect genetic variations that build up across generations as the bugs divide. E.g., scientists A and B divide up some spores and go off to their separate labs, where they each brew up fresh batches of spores. Then they send letters off to senators X and Y. The FBI raids the scientists' labs and seizes remnants of the anthrax batches. Supposedly, the new science would be able to tell which scientist attacked which senator.
That is because they were entered at the First-Class Mail single-piece rate, were addressed in handwriting, and dropped in a curbside collection box (as far as anyone knows ~ even though they could have easily been dropped in the Boca Raton main post office letter drop ~ as revealed in the contamination trail in that facility - See Washington Post.)
The general public is very unaware of how poor service is for that category of mail.
the church does have married priests. Episcoplean priests who have converted are not required to give up their marriage.
I don’t know any pro-life catholics who support female priests.
But that isn’t the same as what you said.
you said..
“and women given a more positive position in church missions.”
At most parishes you will see women dominate church positions.
But that is a subject for another thread I suppose.
My point was that there seems to be a discrepancy to how the FBI is portraying this man, as opposed to the man his friends and family claim they knew.
Dr. Hatfill once lived in Harare, Zimbabwe. That city has a suburb named Greendale. Case closed. Not.
and upon news of your family member’s death - would you give similar answers?
Of course the FBI is misrepresenting everything. They want this case closed.
Been a while (6 years) since I tracked that bit down, but if you subscribe to the idea that the perpetrator(s) used real references to make up the addresses, etc. (kind of mental triggers), it's possible they simply reversed a ZIP on an address of meaning to them.
I haven’t followed this very closely, but in reviewing old threads there is this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2038676/posts
...quoting the Wall St Journal: “Throughout one of the largest investigations in law-enforcement history, agents were fixated on a ‘lone wolf’ theory that Director Robert Mueller’s FBI, for all intents and purposes, now admits was wrong. Helped along by a sympathetic press corps, the obsession with a domestic perpetrator has ended up in a dead end.”
And this was on June 30. Just a month later we have a lone wolf domestic perpetrator ended up dead. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
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