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Apparent Suicide In Anthrax Case
penguin_dance passes along the news that a respected anthrax researcher, about to be indicted, has committed suicide. The FBI has been investigating the case since anthrax-contaminated letters were sent to the media and various politicians in 2001. The AP's coverage mentions that prosecutors intended to seek the death penalty. The suicide was not the one you might imagine if you've been following the story. "A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution... The extraordinary turn of events followed the government's payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI's chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax."
"...injury is deliberately and gradually inflicted upon a person usually for gaining attention or some other benefit." He might have wanted his research to be better recognized and useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_syndrome_by_proxy
Shouldn't they confirm through investigative work that he did in fact commit these crimes rather than just assume since they were about to file charges & that he "committed suicide" that he did it? IT seems like poor reasoning on anyone's part to just assume this is the logical conclusion just because he offed himself before shit hit the fan. What if the suicide was for some completely different reason? Lots of people commit suicide for reasons other than legal troubles.
What's the best way to maintain plausible deniability? Kill the person who actually committed the crime. Your patsy does the dirty work, then you dispose of them.
What could possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately unless he wrote a confession note it's possible that he was simply depressed and the news of being prosecuted as his co-worker was acted as a last impetus to suicide. TIme will tell I suppose.
I want murderers to spend the rest of their lives horribly and end horribly
You conveniently ignore the fact that the law-enforcement system wrongly incarcerates many people, murderers included. We'll ignore your distopian ideal until they fix that glaring issue.
Given the overall tone of your post, may I suggest making some changes in your life to introduce a bit more positive attitude?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
But Dubya told me the terrorists were in Iraq!?!
Newer rule: Anyone posting suggestions for changes to slashdot's moderation system must not post as AC.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
I think you mean "Civilized people give civilized treatment". Otherwise, what marks them as civilized? Anyone can treat their own well - it's also treating those who are different that makes us a civilization and not a tribe.
The media and the FBI are a combination made in hell for law and order and justice. Just ask Hatfill and Richard Jewell among many others. There's nothing quite like getting convicted in the court of public opinion thanks to the media for making the FBI's job easier, and there's nothing like a high profile FBI investigation to make a story for the media...
The article was, predictably, poor in science, but it sounds like the reason the FBI suspected him was that there was an anthrax contamination that he bleached but didn't report and didn't recheck to be sure nothing survived.
While that would have been a good step to take, anthrax microbes by themselves aren't harmful, in order to be a weapon it needs to be processed. Purified anthrax spores are what will send you to the hospital. I don't know how that's done, but the point is that anthrax growing on your lab bench is not the same as having plutonium all over your lab bench. Anthrax bacterial contamination in a fume hood would be an annoyance, not a serious safety issue.
Furthermore, bleach is a heavy duty sterilizing agent. You douse your bench in bleach and you really don't have to worry about residual contamination in most cases. Reswabbing is easy to do and would have been the right thing to do, but it's understandable that he didn't: it's kind of like checking for a pulse in someone you just burned at the stake.
We're of course not getting the full story, and it's more suspicious that his house was in the area the letters were coming from, but from what the article is saying, it sounds like the FBI may have harassed a man into suicide over "evidence" that would have been dismissed as unimportant if it were put into context.
A dead enemy isn't a very effective manipulative tool;
They don't need an enemy, they just need a distraction. Enemies (better still, the shadowy faraway kind who wear scary headgear) can be manufactured at will.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
It was to the Senate Majority Leader and the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that happened to be Democrats. Maybe it was because of their positions of power within the Senate? Maybe he was an anarchist that saw a great opportunity to sow the seeds of confusion and fear? Maybe he was a Bildeberger neo-con front man determined to make sure that the PATRIOT act got passed to usher in a New World Order by eliminating two prominent opponents? Maybe he was just a nut case with an axe to grind that saw an opportunity to get at a couple of people that "wronged" him in the aftermath of a terrorist act?
If you look hard enough for conspiracies, you'll find them. They may not really be there, but it's pretty darn hard to prove something doesn't exist.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
There's no mention of any potential motive for a "top government scientist" to start mailing anthrax.
And yet all the suspects were top US government scientists.
Face it -- this terrorist attack came from a US citizen. Anthrax is hard to weaponize, and a US source was always the most likely origin.
The perpetrator probably had no relation to 9/11, or Iraq. In fact, his agenda may have been to increase domestic tensions to incite our invasion of Iraq. (Witness the spurious mention of bentonite, which was known to be an Iraqi addition to anthrax agents. It was not in the mailed anthrax, but plenty of news sources reported incorrectly that it was.) He might not have had any agenda; Ivins was obviously mentally ill.
No, sadly, I don't think these questions will ever be answered.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
One doesn't need to be Muslim to be a terrorist. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. The terrorists who assassinate doctors who perform abortions are Christians. Wikipedia says Bruce E. Ivins was a Roman Catholic. Terrorists can be any religion.
Um... you do realize that if this guy was responsible, that means that the anthrax came from inside one of the top anthrax researchers in a Army-run facility, sent with a clear intent to link the anthrax with Islamic terrorism in the wake of 9/11?
And if he didn't do it, what does that mean about the FBI investigation?
There is no good option here.
however, rabid, paranoid schizophrenic musings on all evil in the world falling at the government's doorstep
Oh. I recognize this strawman. Nevermind.
The enemies of Democracy are
I don't really wonder what was going on when three or four "well-placed sources" claimed that government tests had linked the anthrax to Saddam. Just toss the deceit on the pile; I think there's some space in between the "Smoking Gun Mushroom Cloud" and the "Mobile Biological Weapons Laboratories".
What I wonder about is:
Why hasn't ABC outed the people who lied to them?
Why is Glenn Greenwald the only person who seems to care that ABC is protecting government insiders who lied about anthrax attacks?
Ivins was obviously mentally ill.
Obviously? How do you figure that? All we know is that a dude who was sane enough for the FBI to work with for many months is now dead. Suicide has not been proved, and even suicide does not prove mental illness. Guilt has not been proved, and neither was the man ever formally charged. There is very little we know about this incident, and it is irresponsible of you to claim that anything is 'obvious' at this juncture.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
You also have to worry that he was involved but that he had co-conspirators and his suicide may prevent the investigation from getting to them.
There is also the possibility the co-conspirators stood with a gun to his head and forced him to swallow the over dose so he would be the fall guy and would have no chance to expose them in exchange for a plea deal.
You hate to think your government would have perpetrated the Anthrax attacks on purpose to amplify the fear after 9/11 and insure the country would support invading Iraq, but everything that's been unveiled about the Bush Administration in the last few years you KNOW they are ruthless enough and may well have been willing to do such a thing to get their way, and seem to have a pretty low regard for the rule of law or the value of human life. Addington in Cheney's office in particular seem to be capable of just about any kind of atrocity. It appears he almost single handedly pushed the U.S. in to torturing people.
I find it a little odd the FBI would have been quite as blatant as they were in tipping their hand to him that he was going to be charged, going to be charged with murder and he might get the death penalty. Its kind of like they were trying to force him to either flee or kill himself.
@de_machina
Read the article. He was going to a shrink for years, and admitted to thoughts of suicide. He died from an overdose of prescription medication. I think 'obviously mentally ill' is a valid supposition.
Whether he was guilty or not is another matter. That's why I used 'the perpetrator' in my post above.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
No, it doesn't. It has everything to do with the safety and wellbeing of the fellow prisoners, guards and Jeffrey Dahmer. Once you don't give him the same human rights as others, you're no longer acting civilized. Whether he himself has broken those rights is irrelevant -- our ability to not let that be a factor in how we treat him is what makes us civilized and unlike him.
If you let who people are decide whether you treat them with respect, you will quickly polarize the society into "those like us" and "those unlike us", and you'll be back to a tribal society, not a civilization. We're on the path there, I'm afraid.