WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Friday it had made "substantial progress" in the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, but officials declined to comment on a report in The Times that the department was about to bring the first criminal charges for the attacks against a Maryland man who died this week.
The Times reported Friday that a top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 attacks had died in Maryland from an apparent suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him.
Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who had long worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick in Maryland, had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.
His name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case.
Paul Kemp, Ivins' lawyer, said in a statement Friday that his client was innocent of any involvement in the attacks, in which a series of anthrax-laced letters sent from New Jersey killed five people, injured 17 others and traumatized the nation weeks after Sept. 11.
"For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with [the anthrax] investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him," Kemp said. "We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law.
"We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial," the lawyer added. "The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death."
The Justice Department said in a statement that there had been "significant developments in the investigation," including "substantial progress" using "new and sophisticated scientific tools."
Law enforcement officials said that the department was in the process of deciding whether to officially close the investigation, one of the most extensive in FBI history.
If the investigation is declared over, the department will seek a court order releasing investigative documents in the case that have been under court seal, the officials said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
