Ex-colleague questions government’s case against anthrax suspect
GREENCASTLE, Pa. — A former Fort Detrick employee is among those questioning the government’s case against Bruce Ivins, who authorities say was behind the post-9/11 anthrax letters.
Melanie Ulrich of Greencastle, Pa., who teaches at Hagerstown Community College, on Wednesday challenged circumstantial evidence against Ivins that has been made public.
...Authorities say advanced DNA testing matched anthrax spores in Ivins’ laboratory to those that killed five people in 2001, according to The Associated Press. ...Ulrich said she worked with Ivins at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., for about six years. The person she knew doesn’t match the troubled past Ivins is alleged to have had, she said.
Ulrich said other elements of the case don’t add up, including:
# Whether psychological instability in Ivins’ past could have lingered for years. Ulrich said that in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, anyone at USAMRIID who had access to certain biological agents, such as anthrax, had to go through an intensive, all-encompassing review as part of a Personnel Reliability Program, which trumped, for example, privacy rules for health records.
# A flask in Ivins’ custody that contained anthrax said to be the “parent” to powdered anthrax sent through the mail. Ulrich said different anthrax samples were genetically identical, so that flask can’t be proven to be the “parent” sample. Also, the flask was for aerosol use, which would have been done in a different building than the one in which Ivins worked, she said.
# Ivins’ alleged use of a lyophilizer to make powdered anthrax. Ulrich said Ivins signed out a SpeedVac, but not a lyophilizer, which is too large to fit in a containment hood, or secure protective area.
She said it would take about an hour to dry one milliliter of wet anthrax spores in one vial in a SpeedVac. It would have been impossible for Ivins to have dried more than a liter, which would have been required for the amount of anthrax sent in the letters, in the time frame they were mailed, Ulrich said.
Ulrich was a principal investigator in the diagnostic systems division at USAMRIID.
She said Ivins was a “geeky scientist” who wrote poems and was sensitive and unintimidating.
He had been to her home for USAMRIID social activities, including a barbecue and a party.
She said Ivins was upset the FBI was watching him, but handled it as well as he could. “I’ve never even seen him angry,” Ulrich said.
Ulrich left USAMRIID in 2007. She now teaches at HCC and coordinates the year-old biotechnology program.
Ulrich said the FBI interviewed her within the past year as part of its investigation. She said she can’t talk about what was discussed, but the points she expressed in this story didn’t come up during the interview.
I believe the FBI thesis is that the anthrax mailings were made just shortly before the discovery of people sick with anthrax, but after the 9/11 attack.
That's why they focus so closely on what Dr. Ivins was doing in the laboratory at night.
If, on the other hand the anthrax was acquired BEFORE the 9/11 attack, and was planned to be part of it, the spores could have been mailed in Florida (at Boca Raton in fact) as early as September 7 (Friday before the 9/11 attack).
The spore containing envelopes would have traveled by truck to Philadelphia as items later found to have been lost in the mail in surface transportation because all airlift capacity was grounded.
There were massive delays in processing mail for several weeks after 9/11. Most folks forget about that category of problems.
Iraq comes into the picture as a country well equipped to grow vast quantities of the Ft. Detrick spore sub-variety.
There are people in the FBI who do not want to implicate Iraq.
“but the points she expressed in this story didn’t come up during the interview.”
wow.