On June 27, 2000, Ivins wrote in an e-mail to a friend: "Even with the Celexa and the counseling, the depression episodes still come and go. That's unpleasant enough. What is REALLY scary is the paranoia."
A week later, on July 4, he wrote to his friend that his psychiatrist and his counselor now thought that his symptoms "may not be those of depression or bipolar disorder, they may be that of a 'paranoid personality disorder.' "
That Aug. 12, he wrote about what he called one of his "worst days in months."
"I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind. It's hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I'm being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don't spread the pestilence. . . ." he wrote. "I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs."
In one e-mail he acknowledged, "Sometimes I think that it's all just too much."
The first deadly mailings -- anthrax-laced letters sent to news media in New York and Florida -- were postmarked Sept. 18, 2001, a week after Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. A second batch of letters was sent that Oct. 9. After sophisticated tests were developed to identify the genetic material of anthrax spores, investigators used it in 2005 to trace the particular blend of spores recovered from the letters back to Ivins, then set about building a case against him.
The letters -- which mentioned Allah and called for the destruction of Israel and the United States -- forced the closing of a Senate office building, a newspaper headquarters and a large postal facility, and they made the entire nation, already on edge from the Sept. 11 attacks, fearful that foreign terrorists were now targeting the U.S. with a deadly microbe.
On Oct. 16, 2001, one of Ivins' co-workers communicated to a former colleague that "Bruce has been an absolute manic basket case the last few days."
From 2000 through 2006, Ivins was prescribed "various psychotropic medications including antidepressants, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety for his mental issues," the documents showed.
