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When Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist, took a fatal overdose of Tylenol in 2008, the government declared that he had been responsible for the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, which killed five people and set off a nationwide panic, and closed the case. Now, a former senior F.B.I. agent who ran the anthrax investigation for four years says that the bureau gathered “a staggering amount of exculpatory evidence” regarding Dr. Ivins that remains secret. The former agent, Richard L. Lambert, who spent 24 years at the F.B.I., says he believes it is possible that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax...

From 60 Minutes last night: Susan Rice: Lesley, it’s been worth what we’ve done to protect the United States. And the fact that we have not had a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11 should not be diminished. But that does not mean that everything we’re doing as of the present ought to be done the same way in the future.

An international group of scientists this week ended a year-long moratorium on controversial work to engineer potentially deadly strains of the H5N1 avian flu virus in the lab. Researchers agreed to temporarily halt the work in January 2012, after a fierce row erupted over whether it was safe to publish two papers reporting that the introduction of a handful of mutations enabled the H5N1 virus to spread efficiently between ferrets, a model of flu in mammals (see Nature http://doi.org/fxv55r; 2012). Both papers were eventually published, one in Nature1 and one in Science2. Now, in a letter simultaneously published on 23...

Despite bipartisan congressional support for examining the FBI's gross mishandling of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, President Barack Obama is telling Congress that he doesn't want the agency to be scrutinized and held accountable. Dr. Steven Hatfill, one of the innocent victims of the FBI investigation, is preparing to go public with his account of how the Department of Justice (DOJ) violated his rights and tried to ruin his career and reputation. He will be the subject of a forthcoming Atlantic magazine article and will be sitting down for an interview by the NBC "Today Show's" Matt Lauer. The DOJ paid...

Ivins was bondage and sorority obsessed cross dressing yankee hater. March 1- After the Department of Justice last month formally closed its probe of the 2001 Anthrax attacks, the FBI released the years-long investigation that ended with officials concluding that Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who committed suicide in July 2008, was responsible for the mailings that killed five victims. ...

Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask. The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called...

A federal judge today ordered the Justice Department to release documents that explain why investigators suspected Steven J. Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill has since been exonerated.

Scientific impossibility: Did FBI get their man in Bruce Ivins? By Deborah Rudacille Examiner Correspondent 11/16/08 Bruce Ivins was a cold-blooded murderer, a deranged psycho-killer, who in the fall of 2001, cooked up a virulent batch of powdered anthrax, drove to Princeton, N.J., and mailed letters loaded with the lethal mix to five news organizations and two U.S. senators. At least, that’s what the FBI says. The letters infected 22 people, killing five, including two Maryland postal workers. The sixth victim of the madness was Ivins himself, a 62-year-old biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious...

On Friday, the government filed this statement of the facts in its memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment in a civil rights and Privacy Act lawsuit brought by Dr. Steve Hatfill. “The anthrax attacks occurred in October 2001. Public officials, prominent members of the media, and ordinary citizens were targeted by this first bio-terrorist attack on American soil. Twenty-two persons were infected with anthrax; five died. At least 17 public buildings were contaminated. The attacks wreaked havoc on the U.S. postal system and disrupted government and commerce, resulting in economic losses estimated to exceed one billion dollars....

WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

FBI Focusing on 'About Four' Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks Friday , March 28, 2008 By Catherine Herridge and Ian McCaleb WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned. Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID. The FBI...

New light is being shed on the 2001 anthrax attacks in a fascinating open letter to Ayman al Zawahiri of al Qaeda, written by a jihadi living in London. Numan Bin Uthman, a former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, provides yet more evidence that the global Islamic jihad movement is losing its resolve.  But the letter contains a startling admission. Uthman tells us of a conversation he had with al Qaeda leaders before the 9/11 attacks in which he urged them not to use WMD. From AKI News: Uthman also said that he had taken part in...

Agency says it remains committed to solving the 5-year-old mystery WASHINGTON - The top FBI official in charge of the investigation into the deadly anthrax attacks has left the case, NBC News has learned. Richard "Rick" Lambert had been the inspector of the so-called AMERITHRAX case since September 2002, and had run every aspect of the five-year-old investigation. Just last month, he was transferred to the Knoxville, Tenn., field office of the FBI as its special agent in charge, according to the FBI. Lambert was the public face of the case, and his transfer is sure to fuel speculation that...

TRENTON, N.J. -- Officials have found two missing vials of anthrax mislabeled at a state lab among the samples taken from the postal facility that processed tainted letters in 2001. The vials were among thousands of negative samples. There was a transcription error in the numbers when they were labeled, state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz said. Officials disclosed they had lost track of the vials nearly two weeks ago. Officials said they thought it was a clerical error and that no anthrax was actually lost. The FBI was investigating how the vials were misplaced. The anthrax vials were among 19,000 samples...

July 20, 2004 — FBI agents returned to search the U.S. Army's biological weapons labs at Fort Detrick, Md., as part of a last-ditch effort by the bureau to make a case in the 2001 anthrax attacks, federal officials tell ABC News. The FBI has set a self-imposed Oct. 1 deadline for its agents to build a case that will stand up in court, officials said. After matching the anthrax used in the deadly attacks with anthrax at the Army facility, investigators now hope to further narrow the hunt among the hundreds of researchers who have worked at the Fort...

/table> Some Fort Detrick Labs Closed 10:25 AM Jul 20, 2004 10:25 am US/Eastern Frederick, MD (WJZ)Federal agents are combing a number of laboratory suites at Fort Detrick in Frederick for evidence of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Fort Detrick spokesman Charles Dasey says the labs have been closed since Friday at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, home to the Army's biological warfare defense program. A law enforcement source tells The Associated Press that the activity is related to the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 in October of 2001. FBI agents have frequently...

<p>HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — The FBI, revisiting an old lead in the anthrax investigation, recently interviewed a former Fort Detrick researcher and his co-workers about his whereabouts when the letters were mailed, he and his lawyer said Sunday.</p> <p>Ayaad Assaad, who now works for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said the agents also quizzed him Tuesday about his knowledge of producing finely powdered anthrax like that used in the letters.</p>

(NOTE: SALIM MUWAKKIL is a senior editor at In These Times, a contributing columnist to the Chicago Tribune and a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute. This article is due to be published on 3/15). WHEN THE DEADLY TOXIN RICIN WAS FOUND February 3 in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), there was no change in Homeland Security colors. Although biological attacks on the apparatus of government are a veritable shortcut to domestic insecurity, they don't register on the chromatic terrorism scale. Americans have been trained to disassociate such attacks from the war...

<p>Bush was asked during a recent White House meeting whether American credibility was on the line in the search for illicit weapons.</p> <p>CNN's David Ensor examines claims that the Bush administration overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (part 1).</p>

<p>The CIA has been quietly building a case that the anthrax attacks of 2001 were in fact the result of an international terrorist plot.</p> <p>U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports tell us the information showing a terrorist link to the anthrax-filled letters sent by mail in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks is not conclusive. But it is persuasive.</p>