WASHINGTON — Nearly two years after anthrax-spore mailings killed five people and sickened 17 others, Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins accepted the Defense Department’s highest honor for civilian performance for helping to resurrect a controversial vaccine that could protect against the bacteria.
At a March 2003 ceremony, Ivins described the award, which he received along with several colleagues, as unexpected. “Awards are nice. But the real satisfaction is knowing the vaccine is back on line,” he told a military publication.
Now, Ivins, 62, who the Maryland chief medical examiner said died last week by suicide, is being implicated in one of the FBI’s biggest unsolved mysteries.
The shy, socially awkward anthrax scientist was on the verge of indict -ment in the anthrax-spore mailings case, according to officials familiar with the investigation. He killed himself with a drug overdose as the FBI ratcheted up the pressure against him.
Among the small circle of scientists who worked with him, he was solid, quiet, eccentric and a bit nerdy. But court papers filed last month by Jean C. Duley suggested he also had a darker side. A social worker, Duley asked a Frederick, Md., judge for a protective order against Ivins, saying he had threatened her.
“Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapists,” Duley wrote in papers requesting protection.
She said Ivins’ psychiatrist had confided to her that the scientist was “homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions.”
She also noted that she had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury about a capital murder case involving Ivins.
Well-respected by peers
It was a far different view of Ivins from the man colleagues and neighbors knew.
As a microbiologist at the Army’s main lab for studying bio terror agents, Ivins labored for years on the development of anthrax vaccines and had access to various strains of the anthrax bacteria, including the one used in attacks on media outlets and congressional offices in the fall of 2001. Because of his unusual expertise, he was even tapped by federal investigators to help with the technical analysis of the fine, wispy powder used in the attacks.
“He always seemed on the edge — the kind of guy who might jump through the ceiling if you said ‘boo’ to him,” said former colleague Richard O. Spertzel, who worked with Ivins at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at the Fort Detrick army base in Frederick. “But he was a well-respected scientist.”
He was part of a response team that analyzed the handwritten letter sent to then-Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., packed with Bacillus anthracis spores that matched the primary strain used in Fort Detrick research.
Unusual behavior
In early 2002, without notifying his supervisors, Ivins began sampling suspicious areas in the Detrick lab space that he thought might be contaminated with anthrax. He took unauthorized samples from the laboratory containment areas and later acknowledged to Army officials that this was a violation of protocol.
Ivins tested dozens of samples from a changing room, his own office and a passbox through which anthrax was sent into a secured laboratory. He reported that the passbox contained heavy growth of Ames-strain anthrax, a disease-causing form of the agent that had been found in the Daschle letter. He said he also found it in his personal office.
The men’s changing room also tested positive for Ames spores and for another strain used at Detrick, Vollum 1B.
Ivins informed his supervisors of his findings, and more extensive tests were conducted.
Ivins’ odd behavior was detailed in an Army investigation of the matter, but his name never surfaced as a potential suspect in the mailings case.
“He was not on my radar,” said a Senate source whose office was briefed on the FBI’s progress.
He also never raised the suspicions of co-workers, many of whom remained convinced that Ivins had nothing to do with the anthrax attack.
“Almost everybody at ‘RIID believes that he has absolutely nothing to do with Amerithrax,” said a USAMRIID employee, referring to the FBI code name for the investigation. “The FBI has been hounding him mercilessly.”
Ivins worked at USAMRIID for 36 years and lived in Frederick in a modest, two-story frame house where he and his wife, Diane, raised a son and daughter. Friends said he was active as a volunteer for the local American Red Cross chapter and was a musician at St. John’s the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick.
