WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary attempt to prove the guilt of a suspect now beyond their reach, government officials Wednesday released a wealth of new details about the troubled life of Bruce E. Ivins, and said they had evidence that would have convicted him in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people.
Hundreds of pages of previously secret documents show how the FBI, using new scientific tools, began to establish the guilt of one of the very scientists it had been relying on to crack the case. Ivins, 62, died of an apparent suicide July 29.
"We stand here today, firmly convinced that we have the person who committed those attacks," said Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, whose office would have prosecuted Ivins. "And we are confident that, had this gone to trial, we would have proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." He said Ivins had acted alone.
Ivins was the "sole custodian" of the unique strain of anthrax that caused the deaths of five Americans, and had started working late in his laboratory the nights before the letters were mailed, according to a federal affidavit from Thomas F. Dellafera, a postal inspector who was part of the investigation team.
When asked for samples of the anthrax he was working with, the affidavit said, Ivins purposely provided the wrong or unusable material until an FBI agent marched into his secure lab and seized a flask of the lethal bacterium.
The government used Ivins' own desperate words, found in e-mails sent in the months and days before the attacks, to show a man racked by paranoia who described himself as "scary." At the same time, he was increasingly upset by the trouble besetting an anthrax vaccine he was trying to return to production.
As described by authorities Wednesday, Ivins may have perpetrated the attacks in an effort to create fear that would, in turn, spur greater federal spending and overall support for biodefense.
The unveiling of the evidence implicating a man who last week apparently killed himself was met with relief from many relatives of the anthrax victims -- and with derision from Ivins' lawyers.
"The government's press conference was an orchestrated dance of carefully worded statements, heaps of innuendo and a staggering lack of real evidence, all contorted to create the illusion of guilt," said attorneys Paul F. Kemp and Thomas M. DeGonia.
