New questions cast doubt on the guilt of Bruce Ivins who was accused in the Anthrax case.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago.

Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they had identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md.

On July 15, however, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

Earlier this year, a report by the National Academy of Science questioned the genetic analysis that had linked a flask of anthrax stored in Ivins’ office to the anthrax contained in the letters.

The court papers were uncovered by a reporter for the PBS program FRONTLINE which is working on a forthcoming documentary on the case with McClatchy Newspapers and ProPublica, the investigative newsroom.

In asserting that Ivins was culprit, criminal investigators pointed to his access to the specialized equipment at the laboratory. Officials drew up elaborate charts showing that Ivins’ time in the hot suites spiked in the weeks before the letters were mailed. But Ivins’ colleagues have said in depositions for the Stevens case that the powder could not have been made in the lab without sickening lab technicians and others who had not been vaccinated against anthrax.


Link:
http://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-filing-casts-doubt-on-guilt-of-bruce-ivins-accused-in-an