ANTHRAX UPDATE AUG 6

International Herald Tribune - A few days before the anthrax attacks of 2001, the scientist who has emerged as the suspect in the case sent e-mails warning that Osama bin Laden's "terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas" and have "just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans," according to documents released by the government on Wednesday. Moreover, the government said, the scientist, Dr. Bruce Ivins, was the sole custodian as a microbiologist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, of the particular strain of anthrax used in the attacks, although he was not the sole person with access to that anthrax. . .

The segment about the e-mails notes that the wording was similar, and in some instances identical, to the language in the anthrax-laced letters. "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" were phrases that appeared both in the doctor's e-mails and in the letters. . .

The envelopes that held the letters were "federal eagle" envelopes, so-named because of the eagle perched on a bar bearing the initials "USA" in the upper right-hand corner, and bore tiny but tell-tale defects that searchers determined were traceable to a post office in Maryland or Virginia, the official documents relate.

And of the 16 government, commercial and university laboratories that had virulent anthrax strains like the one used in the deadly mailings, only one was in Maryland or Virginia ? the Fort Detrick lab where Ivins worked before his July 29 suicide, the documents say.

In addition, searches of Ivins's home in Frederick, Maryland, turned up "hundreds" of similar letters that had not yet been sent to media outlets and members of Congress, people who were briefed by the FBI on Wednesday said. Those people said investigators found that Ivins sometimes kept odd, night-time hours in the lab, and that he would sometimes drive to mailboxes miles out of his way. . .

As for motive, the documents suggest that in addition to whatever long-term personal problems he had, Ivins was distraught because a company had lost its government approval to produce an anthrax vaccine for troops, and he believed the vaccine was essential. . .

Friends and colleagues, meanwhile, have offered a more detailed account of Ivins's difficult last nine months, saying that he was so distraught by the FBI's constant scrutiny that he began drinking excessively and had to be hospitalized twice for periods of weeks for substance abuse.

A friend and fellow member of a 12-step program for alcoholics who spent hours counseling him said Ivins, who at least in recent years had not been a drinker, went rapidly downhill after the FBI searched his house and questioned his wife and children last November.

The friend, a fellow scientist who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said Ivins had repeatedly denied sending the anthrax letters and was particularly upset at what he considered to be the FBI's aggressive questioning of his children, Andrew and Amanda, both 24, as investigators tried to get them to turn on their father.

"He said, 'I'm innocent of these charges,' " the friend said. "He was absolutely shocked they were going after him like this." Through much of the year, the friend said, Ivins was drinking large amounts of vodka, combined with Ambien and prescription tranquilizers. After being found unconscious in his home in March, he spent four weeks in a treatment program at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland After that he spent another four weeks in treatment at the Thomas Finan Center in Cumberland, Maryland, being released to go home to Frederick in late May.

Smoking Gun - Included in the affidavits is the government's bid to possibly explain why Ivins sent anthrax-filled letters to Tom Brokaw (an NBC investigative reporter had filed a Freedom of Information request regarding Ivins's laboratory work) and U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle (the pols' pro-life stance angered Ivins, a practicing Catholic). The documents also describe how Ivins created a bogus e-mail trail in a bid to deflect investigative attention from him to two other scientists at Fort Detrick, where Ivins worked. The documents also describe Ivins's fascination with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and how he engaged in an "edit war" on the group's Wikipedia page. Ivins, investigators reported, repeatedly posted negative information on the KKG page and was angered when it was removed from the site by other users. In a February 2007 online posting traced to one of his e-mail addresses, Ivins bizarrely claimed that the sorority had, many years earlier, labeled him an "enemy" and had issued a "Fatwah" against him. Following the September 11 attacks (but before the anthrax mailings), Ivins sent an e-mail to a colleague warning that Osama bin Laden disciples possessed anthrax and sarin gas. In other e-mails sent during 2000 and 2001, Ivins described his precarious mental state and wrote that he worried about someday reading a headline in the National Enquirer exclaiming, "Paranoid Man Works With Deadly Anthrax!!!" A July 11, 2008 affidavit reported that Ivins, angered at being the government's prime suspect, planned "to kill co-workers and other individuals who had wronged him." The law enforcement searches, executed by agents with the FBI and U.S. Postal Service, targeted Ivins's Frederick, Maryland home, his government lab, three automobiles, several e-mail accounts, and a safe deposit box.

Brad Blog - The first AP report relied heavily on testimony from Ivins' short-time social worker Jean Duley, who has a criminal record consisting of several drunk driving charges and narcotics possession. She doesn't know how to spell the word "therapist," according to her hand-scrawled note to the judge which she filed while seeking a restraining order against Ivins. . .

The Frederick News-Post then notes today that apparently the FBI encouraged Duley to seek the restraining order. "She decided to get the peace order after an FBI agent working the case suggested it," they write. . .

During a July 9 group session, Duley described Ivins as "extremely agitated" and "out of control." When she asked him what was going on, he told the group "a very long and detailed homicidal plan" including killing his co-workers and roaming the streets of Frederick trying to pick a fight with somebody so that he could stab the person.

Those are some very serious charges, obviously, but they should be easy to confirm, or quickly dismissed, by interviews with other patients, since it was group therapy after all, and theoretically, many others heard the same thing that Duley did. Has the FBI talked with those folks yet? If so, they haven't decided to leak the confirmation to the media. . . .

Duley had testified to the judge (on the suggestion of the FBI) that Ivins "has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic homicidal killer." Oddly enough, however, despite those supposed diagnosis, Ivins was allowed to continue working in his high-security job at a U.S. Army facility, with access to the world's most dangerous bio-terror viruses.

Stephen Kiehl, Baltimore Sun - The New York Times reported that investigators intensively questioned his children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24. One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Ivins' daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks. "It was not an interview," Byrne said. "It was a frank attempt at intimidation." Byrne said he believed Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. "If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?". . .

Rep. Rush Holt, who represents the central New Jersey district where the anthrax letters were mailed, said circumstantial evidence is not enough, especially after the series of mistakes made in this case. The FBI spent years investigating Steven J. Hatfill, another scientist who worked in the same lab as Ivins. The government recently agreed to pay a $5.82 million settlement to Hatfill.