Newly released files cloud FBI's anthrax finding

WASHINGTON - In early 2002, federal agents who were hunting the anthrax killer were trying to winnow a suspect list that numbered in the hundreds. They knew only that they were looking for someone with access to the rare Ames strain of anthrax used in research labs around the world. Profilers said the perpetrator probably was an American with "an agenda."

The powder-laced letters, which killed five people, contained no fingerprints, hair or human DNA, but they did offer one solid microscopic clue: The lethal spores in the powder could be made to produce a small number of genetically distinct variants, known as morphs.

So agents set out on an arduous task: Collect samples from Ames anthrax cultures around the world, sort through them and find one with morphs that matched the attack powder. Then they'd have a line on where the murder weapon was made and, perhaps, the identity of the killer.

Bruce Ivins, an Army scientist at Fort Detrick, Md., had a good idea where the inquiry was headed. In the months after the attacks, he'd schooled federal agents in the intricacies of anthrax, explaining how the telltale morphs can arise from one generation to the next.

In April 2002, Ivins did something that investigators would highlight years later as a pillar in the capital murder case that was being prepared against him before he committed suicide in 2008: He turned over a set of samples from his flask of Ames anthrax that tested negative, showing no morphs. Later, investigators would take their own samples from the flask and find four morphs that matched those in the powder.

Rachel Lieber, the lead prosecutor in a case that will never go to trial, thinks that Ivins manipulated his sample to cover his tracks. "If you send something that is supposed to be from the murder weapon, but you send something that doesn't match, that's the ultimate act of deception. That's why it's so important," Lieber said.

However, a re-examination of the anthrax investigation by "Frontline," McClatchy Newspapers and ProPublica turned up new evidence that challenges the FBI's narrative of Ivins as a man with a guilty conscience who was desperately trying to avoid being discovered.

Records recently released under the Freedom of Information Act show that Ivins made available a total of four sets of samples from 2002 to 2004, double the number the FBI has disclosed. And in subsequent FBI tests, three of the four sets ultimately tested positive for the morphs.

Paul Kemp, Ivins' lawyer, said the existence of Ivins' additional submissions was significant because it knocked down the allegations about whether his client was being deceptive. "I wish I'd known that at the time," he said.

THE SEARCH FOR SAMPLES

To understand how investigators eventually came to see almost everything Ivins did or said as proof of his guilt, you have to return to the fall of 2001.

The FBI wasn't equipped to handle deadly germs, so the attack powder was rushed to Fort Detrick, the home of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

From the beginning, Fort Detrick researchers played a prominent role in the inquiry. Ivins was among the most voluble, offering advice and a steady stream of tips about co-workers, foreign powers and former employees who might have carried out the attacks.

Investigators quickly recognized they were in an awkward situation. Any of the scientists could be the killer. Agents canvassed the tight-knit laboratory, inviting the researchers to finger their colleagues. "We were heroes in the morning and suspects in the afternoon," recalled Jeffrey Adamovicz, at the time the deputy chief of the Bacteriology Division, where Ivins worked.

At 8:45 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2001, Ivins typed out an email to colleagues offering to provide Ames strain "for genetic analysis or sequencing by whomever." He offered a sample of the original Ames anthrax taken in 1981 from a Texas cow and a collection of spores sent to Fort Detrick in 1997, mostly from the U.S. Army base in Dugway, Utah. Seven years later, prosecutors announced that they were certain the attack powder had been grown with germs from the Dugway flask Ivins was offering for scrutiny.

John Ezzell, a USAMRIID scientist at the time who assisted the FBI, said in an interview that it was likely that Ivins didn't think the technology could distinguish among Ames variants. But the record suggests otherwise.