In an order issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Daniel Hurley of West Palm Beach, Fla., said the government must ‘show good cause” before he will allow it to change the original filing, which lawyers for the department’s Civil Division made in an eight-year-old case brought by the family of one of the five victims.

That filing asserted that Bruce Ivins, who the FBI alleges made the anthrax in his government lab, did not have access in the lab to the special equipment needed to make the deadly powder. The Justice Department wants to revise the filing to say that Ivins did have access to the equipment elsewhere at the Army bioweapons facility in Frederick, Md., where he worked.

It’s unclear whether the department’s attempt to undo its filing in the civil suit will result in further disclosures about the FBI’s theory of how Ivins could have prepared the anthrax powder contained in letters mailed to Florida, New York City and Washington. Ivins, who committed suicide in July 2008 after learning that prosecutors were pushing for his indictment on five capital murder counts, had been known to work with anthrax only in a wet solution.

Hurley’s objection appears to be largely procedural. He advised department lawyers to seek court permission to file an amended motion, but he also said that such an amendment should include a showing of “good cause” as to why material statements accompanying a motion to dismiss the suit were being changed.

The $50 million wrongful death case was filed on behalf of the family of Robert Stevens, a photo editor for American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., who was the first person to die from inhaling the tiny spores. The anthrax letters were mailed to news outlets and two U.S. senators in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

McClatchy, ProPublica and PBS’ “Frontline” collaborated on this report.

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Although the seven-page correction, filed in federal court in Florida, addresses conflicts between lawyers in the Civil and Criminal Divisions, it does not erase depositions filed by the government that challenged the FBI’s finding that the late Bruce Ivins was the perpetrator.

The department’s legal dance stems from its two seemingly conflicting roles: backing up the FBI’s finding that Ivins, who committed suicide in July 2008, was the killer and defending an Army bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick, Md., against allegations of negligence.

The Civil Division is attempting to limit federal liability over the death of the first anthrax victim, a Boca Raton, Fla., man whose family is seeking $50 million in damages for alleged negligence by the lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

In trying to minimize USAMRIID’s liability, government lawyers have had to walk a fine line, because the FBI says Ivins produced the anthrax powder at the facility while the civil lawyers are arguing it could have been prepared elsewhere.

Tuesday’s retraction came a day after a collaborative report by McClatchy, the Public Broadcasting Service’s “Frontline” news magazine and ProPublica, an investigative newsroom, disclosing what appeared to be an explosive Justice Department revelation.

In a legal filing last week, department lawyers said that the lab lacked the “specialized equipment in a containment suite” needed for Ivins to have dried the deadly powder.

That and other statements raised hackles at the FBI and among prosecutors in the case, leading to hurried huddles at the Justice Department.

In a statement Tuesday, department spokesman Dean Boyd said that Civil Division lawyers had submitted “inaccurate information” and that “the Justice Department and FBI stand behind their findings that Dr. Ivins had the necessary equipment in the containment suite” to produce the spores.

Boyd noted that Ivins had ordered his own machine, known as a lyophilizer, which could be used for drying anthrax spores into powder. A lyophilizer labeled “property of Bruce Ivins” was located in a nearby containment suite, he said.

While amending the filing, the Justice Department could not take back what government scientists had said in sworn depositions.

Stephen Little, a technician at the Army lab, was asked whether the equipment could have been used to make the dried spore preparation used in the letters.

“Not any equipment I have seen,” Little replied.

Little said that there was “no way” Ivins could have moved the lyophilizer to the containment suite.

“The thing is as big as a refrigerator,” Little said.

Another scientist, Susan Welkos, said, “We don’t have any way to produce the massive amount of material that would have been necessary to grow up and dry in a way that wouldn’t have killed everybody in the institute.”

Both quotations were highlighted by Justice Department lawyers in their submission to the court last week.

Friday’s filing also said that Ivins sent anthrax from a flask in his lab — a flask that the FBI contends provided the parent material for the letter anthrax — to two outside laboratories, the Battelle Memorial Institute in West Jefferson, Ohio, and a lab operated by BioPort in Lansing, Mich.

The amended filing said that Ivins sent the spores only to Battelle, narrowing the number of parties who might have been considered suspects.

Boyd said that the department and the FBI “have never wavered from that view that Dr. Ivins mailed the anthrax letters.”

Ivins overdosed on Tylenol and two other drugs not long after learning that federal prosecutors were preparing to indict him on capital murder charges.

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Since that initial wave of doubt, the FBI’s case against Ivins has continuously deteriorated even further.  In February of this year, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences released its findings solely regarding the bureau’s alleged scientific evidence (independent investigations of the full case against Ivins have been successfully blocked by the Obama administration), and found — as The New York Times put it — that “the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by” Ivins; the Washington Post headline summarized the impact of those findings: “Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins.” 

But the biggest blow yet to the FBI’s case has just occurred as the result of an amazing discovery by PBS’ Frontline, which is working on a documentary about the case with McClatchy and ProPublica:

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins. . . . On July 15 [], 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.

The government said it continues to believe that Ivins was “more likely than not” the killer. But the filing in a Florida court did not explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that the lab “did not have the specialized equipment’” in Ivins’ secure lab “that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters.”

The government’s statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI’s eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder. . . .

In excerpts from one of more than a dozen depositions made public in the case last week, the current chief of of the Bacteriology Division at the Army laboratory, Patricia Worsham, said it lacked the facilities in 2001 to make the kind of spores in the letters.

Two of the five letters, those sent to Democratic U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, were especially deadly, because they were so buoyant as to float with the slightest wisp of air.

Worsham said that the lab’s equipment for drying the spores, a machine the size of a refrigerator, was not in containment.

“If someone had used that to dry down that preparation, I would have expected that area to be very, very contaminated, and we had non-immunized personnel in that area, and I would have expected some of them to become ill,” she said.

In its statement of facts, the government lawyers also said that producing the volume of anthrax in the letters would have required 2.8 to 53 liters of the solution used to grow the spores or 463 to 1,250 Petri dishes. Colleagues of Ivins at the lab have asserted that he couldn’t have grown all that anthrax without their noticing it.

That Ivins lacked the means, ability and equipment to produce the sophisticated strain of anthrax used in the attacks — especially to do so without detection and leaving ample traces — has long been one of the many arguments as to why it is so unlikely that he was the culprit (or at least the sole culprit).  That the DOJ itself — in order to defend against a lawsuit brought by an anthrax victim alleging that Fort Detrick was negligent — would admit that Ivins lacked the means to commit this crime in his lab, particularly without detection, is extraordinary.  Just like the NAS findings that cast doubt on the FBI’s genetic analysis (once deemed to be the strongest part of the case even by skeptics), this admission further guts the government’s claim to have solved this case.

It should be unnecessary to explain why the anthrax attack was so significant, and why discovering the perpetrators with confidence is so vital.  As I’ve argued before, the anthrax attack was at least as important as (if not more important than) the 9/11 attack in creating a climate of fear in the U.S. that spawned the next decade’s War on Civil Liberties and Terror and posture of Endless War; multiple government officials used ABC News‘ Brian Ross to convince the nation that Saddam was likely behind those attacks (as but one example, The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, in 2008, cited the anthrax attacks as his primary reason for supporting the attack on Iraq; in October, 2001, John McCain said on David Letterman’s program that there is evidence linking Iraq to the anthrax attack).  Even if one believes the FBI’s case, it means that one of the most significant Terrorist attacks in American history was launched from within the U.S. military.  As Alan Pearson — Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation — put it:  

If Ivins was indeed responsible for the attacks, did he have any assistance? Did anyone else at the Army lab or elsewhere have any knowledge of his activities prior to, during, or shortly after the anthrax attacks? . . . It appears increasingly likely that the only significant bioterrorism attack in history may have originated from right within the biodefense program of our own country.  The implications for our understanding of the bioterrorism threat and for our entire biodefense strategy and enterprise are potentially profound.

Indeed, Cohen claimed that “a high government official” told him shortly after the 9/11 attack to carry cipro as an antidote against anthrax.  The Editors of Nature added: “This case is too important to be brushed under the carpet. The anthrax attacks killed five people, infected several others, paralysed the United States with fear and shaped the nation’s bioterrorism policy.” 

But, of course, in the U.S., the nation’s most powerful political and financial factions — especially those who control the National Security State — are immune from meaningful scrutiny and investigation.  As a result, President Obama — in what I think is one his most indefensible acts — actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI’s anthrax investigation.  Democratic Rep. Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was the site where the letters were allegedly mailed and one of the bill’s sponsors, said at the time he was appalled that “an Administration that has pledged to be transparent and accountable would seek to block any review of the investigation in this matter.”

Indeed, the veto threat issued by the Obama White House was refreshingly (albeit unintentionally) candid about why it was so eager to block any independent inquiry: “The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”  That would happen only if the FBI’s claims could not withstanding independent, critical scrutiny.  But — as is even more apparent now than ever — the White House is fully aware that it cannot.  In a rational, non-corrupt environment, that would be a reason to insist upon — not take extraordinary steps to block — an independent investigation into one of the most consequential crimes ever committed on U.S. soil.  But that, manifestly, is not the world in which we live, and thus — despite continuously mounting evidence that we do not know anywhere close to the full story of who perpetrated this attack — the country’s political leadership continues to stonewall any efforts to find out.

The post DOJ Casts Serious Doubt on Its Claims About Anthrax Attacks appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

From the start, it was obvious that the FBI’s case against Ivins was barely more persuasive than its case against Hatfill had been.  The allegations were entirely circumstantial; there was no direct evidence tying Ivins to the mailings; and there were huge, glaring holes in both the FBI’s evidentiary and scientific claims.  So dubious was the FBI’s case that even the nation’s most establishment media organs, which instinctively trust federal law enforcement agencies, expressed serious doubts and called for an independent investigation (that included, among many others, the editorial pages of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal).  Mainstream scientific sources were equally skeptical; Nature called for an independent investigation and declared in its editorial headline:  “Case Not Closed,” while Dr. Alan Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation — representative of numerous experts in the field — expressed many scientific doubts and also demanded a full independent investigation.  I devoted much time to documenting just some of the serious flaws in the FBI’s evidentiary claims, as well as the use of anonymous FBI leaks to unquestioning reporters to convince the public of their validity (see here, here, here, and here).

Doubts about the FBI’s case were fully bipartisan.  In August, 2008, The New York Times documented “vocal skepticism from key members of Congress.”  One of the two intended Senate recipients of the anthrax letters, Sen. Patrick Leahy, flatly stated at a Senate hearing in September, 2008, that he does not believe the FBI’s case against Ivins, and emphatically does not believe that Ivins acted alone.  Then-GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, at the same hearing, told the FBI they could never have obtained a conviction against Ivins in court based on their case — riddled, as it is, with so much doubt — and he also demanded an independent evaluation of the FBI’s evidence.  And in separate interviews with me, GOP Sen. Charles Grassley and Democratic Rep. Rush Holt (a physicist who represents the New Jersey district from which the anthrax letters were mailed) expressed substantial doubts about the case against Ivins and called for independent investigations.

Despite all of this, the FBI managed to evade calls for an independent investigation by announcing that it had asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene a panel to review only the FBI’s scientific and genetic findings (but not to review its circumstantial case against Ivins or explore the possibility of other culprits).  The FBI believed that its genetic analysis was the strongest aspect of their case against Ivins — that it definitively linked Ivins’ research flask to the spores in the mailed anthrax — and that once the panel publicly endorsed the FBI’s scientific claims, it would vindicate the FBI’s case and end calls for a full-scale investigation into the accusations against Ivins.

But yesterday, the National Academy panel released its findings, and it produced a very unpleasant surprise for the FBI (though it was entirely unsurprising for those following this case).  As The New York Times put it in an article headlined “Expert Panel Is Critical of F.B.I. Work in Investigating Anthrax Letters”:  “A review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s scientific work . . . concludes that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins“; while the panel noted that the genetic findings are “consistent” with the claim that Ivins mailed the letters and can “support” an association, the evidence is far from “definitive,” as the FBI had long suggested.  The report, commissioned by the FBI, specifically concluded that “the scientific link between the letter material and [Ivins’] flask number RMR-1029 is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary.”  This morning’s Washington Post article — headlined:  “Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins” — noted that “the report reignited a debate that has simmered among some scientists and others who have questioned the strength of the FBI’s evidence against Ivins.”

In addition to reigniting doubts, the report has also reignited calls for an independent investigation into the entire FBI case.  Yesterday, Rep. Holt re-introduced his legislation to create a 9/11-style Commission, complete with subpoena power, with a mandate to review the entire matter.  Sen. Grassley told the Post:  “There are no more excuses for avoiding an independent review.”  Ivins’ lawyer added that the report confirms that the case against his client is “all supposition based on conjecture based on guesswork, without any proof whatsoever.”  All of that has been clear for some time, and yesterday’s report merely underscored how weak is the FBI’s case.

It is hard to overstate the political significance of the anthrax attacks.  For reasons I’ve described at length, that event played at least as much of a role as the 9/11 attacks in elevating the Terrorism fear levels which, through today, sustain endless wars, massive defense and homeland security budgets, and relentless civil liberties erosions.  The pithy version of the vital role played by anthrax was supplied by Atrios here and here; in essence, it was anthrax that convinced large numbers of Americans that Terrorism was something that could show up without warning at their doorstep — though something as innocuous as their mailbox — in the form of James-Bond-like attacks featuring invisible, lethal powder.  Moreover, anthrax was exploited in the aftermath of 9/11 to ratchet up the fear levels toward Saddam Hussein, as ABC News‘ Brian Ross spent a full week screeching to the country — falsely — that bentonite had been found in the anthrax and that this agent was the telltale sign of Iraq’s chemical weapons program, while George Bush throughout 2002 routinely featured “anthrax” as one of Saddam’s scary weapons.

That there’s so much lingering doubt about who was responsible for this indescribably consequential attack is astonishing, and it ought to be unacceptable.  Other than a desire to avoid finding out who the culprit was (and/or to avoid having the FBI’s case against Ivins subjected to scrutiny), there’s no rational reason to oppose an independent, comprehensive investigation into this matter.

The post Serious Doubt Cast on FBI's Anthrax Case appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Doubts lingered about Mr. Ivins’s guilt, in part because the FBI had had its sights on a different Maryland scientist for several years before admitting he was not the culprit. Now, a report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) raises new questions about whether Mr. Ivins was wrongly accused.

The lengthy report cites several instances in which the Justice Department appears to have overstated the strength of the scientific evidence against Mr. Ivins. For example, the department concluded that anthrax spores derived from the RMR-1029 vial in Mr. Ivins’s lab were used in the deadly attacks. The report takes exception. “We find the scientific evidence to be consistent with their conclusions but not as definitive as stated,” said Lehigh University President Alice Gast, who led the NAS committee. The report insinuates throughout that FBI failure to perform more tests or to be more precise could have erroneously eliminated other suspects or prematurely settled on Mr. Ivins as a suspect.
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Yet the report itself is at times misleading. Take, for example, the FBI’s assertion that Mr. Ivins deceived investigators by providing a sample purported to be from RMR-1029 but that the FBI concluded could not have come from that particular batch. “The genetic evidence that a disputed sample submitted by the suspect came from a source other than RMR-1029 was weaker” than stated by the Justice Department, the committee said. How much weaker? The NAS panel concluded that there was a 1 percent chance that the sample came from the key vial; that answer could be found only deep in the bowels of the document.

The NAS committee should not be blamed for nitpicking over the test results; that is essentially what it was tasked to do by the FBI, which commissioned its report. But the result is not satisfying – nor is it conclusive.

Congress should convene a nonpartisan commission staffed with individuals experienced in law enforcement to probe all of the evidence in the case, including that which the FBI claims shows Mr. Ivins had the opportunity and the wherewithal to carry out the 2001 attack. The inquiry should explore why and how the Justice Department eliminated other scientists who had access to RMR-1029 as suspects, and it should examine the security protocols at repositories for biological weapons. The exploration also should focus on the country’s preparedness to deal with such an attack in the future.

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