But Maureen Stevens, widow of the first victim, Robert Stevens, said she felt relieved after flying from Florida to Washington to attend a special FBI briefing.
"They've put it all together. . . . There is so much that they have gathered, and they worked so hard. I feel I can rest now," she said.
Taylor, joined by officials from the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service, referred to genetic testing of material retrieved from the tainted letters and the victims and detailed other evidence that he said proved Ivins' guilt. Yet the presentation fell well short of providing specifics that many experts say would be needed to rigorously analyze the government's conclusion that the anthrax powder could only have originated from a flask in Ivins' laboratory.
"I assume they can prove it," said Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist and retired Army major general who formerly oversaw research conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked. "But the question is, does that 'genetic match' match anything else in the world? Show us the data -- and let's see it published."
Asked at the news conference when the genetic-testing data would be made public, Joseph Persichini, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said: "I'm not going to comment on when the publications and the process will come out, but the FBI lab will do that accordingly."
The government's presentation also raised questions about why the FBI for years exhaustively targeted Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a former researcher at Ft. Detrick, while agents did not seek to search Ivins' home or vehicles for traces of anthrax until last fall.
This June, the government agreed to pay Hatfill $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit in which he asserted that the FBI and Justice Department had improperly leaked information about him -- some of it misleading or inaccurate -- to news organizations.
Wednesday's news conference was not attended by senior Bush administration officials, such as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who has presided over the investigation since soon after the mailings occurred in the fall of 2001. Earlier in the day, Mueller met with families of some of the anthrax victims. The director also briefed current and former congressional officials who were affected by the mailings that killed five people, injured 17 others and unleashed new fear after the Sept. 11 attacks.
