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FBI said to have stalked Ivins’ family
Diane Sweet
Raw Story
Wednesday, Aug 6, 2008
Did FBI cross the line in anthrax probe?
Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.
The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation.
The last thing the FBI needed was another embarrassment. Overreaching damaged the FBI’s reputation in the high-profile investigations: the Centennial Olympic Park bombing probe that falsely accused Richard Jewell; the theft of nuclear secrets and botched prosecution of scientist Wen Ho Lee; and, in this same anthrax probe, the smearing of an innocent man — Ivins’ colleague Steven Hatfill.
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In the current case, Ivins complained privately that FBI agents had offered his son, Andy, $2.5 million, plus “the sports car of his choice” late last year if he would turn over evidence implicating his father in the anthrax attacks, according to a former U.S. scientist who described himself as a friend of Ivins.
Ivins also said the FBI confronted Ivins’ daughter, Amanda, with photographs of victims of the anthrax attacks and told her, “This is what your father did,” according to the scientist, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because their conversation was confidential.
The scientist said Ivins was angered by the FBI’s alleged actions, which he said included following Ivins’ family on shopping trips.
Washington attorney Barry Coburn, who represents Amanda Ivins, declined to comment on the investigation. An attorney for Andy Ivins also declined to comment.
The FBI declined to describe its investigative techniques of Ivins.
Detox and rehab for Ivins?
The Washington Post reports today accounts from a fellow scientist, and Ivin’s counselor alleging that Ivin’s had difficulty with alcohol and prescription drugs that led to two inpatient stays for detoxification, rehabilitation, and therapy sessions from the counselor who eventually sought a protection order from Ivins:
“Late last fall, Bruce E. Ivins was drinking a liter of vodka some nights, taking large doses of sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs, and typing out rambling e-mails into the early morning hours, according to a fellow scientist who helped him through this period.
It was around the time that FBI agents showed Ivins’s 24-year-old daughter pictures of the victims who had died in the 2001 anthrax attacks and told her, “Your father did this,” the scientist said. The agents also offered her twin brother the $2.5 million reward for solving the anthrax case — and the sports car of his choice.
Ivins “was e-mailing me late at night with gobbledygook, ranting and raving” about what he called the “persecution” of his family, said the scientist, a recovering alcohol and drug user who had been sober for more than a decade. The scientist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that he had been contacted by a co-worker of Ivins’s at the sprawling Army biodefense laboratory in Fort Detrick and that the co-worker said the veteran anthrax researcher “has really gone down the tubes.”
The scientist agreed to help Ivins, focusing on a 12-step recovery program. He was one of many people who intervened in Ivins’s life before he committed suicide last week as law officials were preparing to indict him in the anthrax attacks that killed five people.
Before he died July 29 of a Tylenol overdose, Ivins, 62, had two inpatient stays at Maryland hospitals for detoxification and rehabilitation and attended two sets of therapy sessions with a counselor who eventually sought court protection from him.
Ivins had just returned from a four-week stay at a psychiatric hospital in Western Maryland in late May when he wrote the fellow scientist in recovery a calm, six-sentence e-mail. “I hope,” it said, “that both of us avoid relapsing into our previous substance abuse.” Since his death, Ivins’s long-term mental health and the psychological effects of the investigation have become increasingly prominent questions.
The counselor he saw for group therapy and biweekly individual sessions, who would eventually tell a judge that he was a “sociopathic, homicidal killer,” had a troubled past. Jean C. Duley, who worked until recent days for Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick, is licensed as an entry-level drug counselor and was, according to one of her mentors, allowed to work with clients only under supervision of a more-seasoned professional.
Shortly before she sought a “peace order” against Ivins, Duley had completed 90 days of home detention after a drunken-driving arrest in December, and she has acknowledged drug use in her past.
In a 1999 interview with The Washington Post, Duley described her background as a motorcycle gang member and a drug user. “Heroin. Cocaine. PCP,” said Duley, who then used the name Jean Wittman. “You name it, I did it.”
Ivins starting working with Duley after a stint in rehabilitation about six months ago. It was not the first time, though, that people sensed that he had an addiction problem. W. Russell Byrne, an infectious disease specialist who worked with Ivins in the bacteriology division at Fort Detrick until Byrne’s 2000 retirement from the Army, has kept up with his former colleagues. Byrne said he remembers offering Ivins a beer one night several years ago when Ivins made a rare appearance at a party at Bushwaller’s, an Irish pub in the heart of Frederick where their crowd of scientists sometimes gathered. “He declined,” Byrne recalled. “He said he had a family history of alcoholism.”
Gerry Andrews, who worked with Ivins at Fort Detrick for nine years and was the bacteriology division’s chief from 2000 to 2003, said that it was rare for Ivins to join the other researchers after work for beer and that Ivins drank so little he was kidded about being a teetotaler.
Andrews said that after he retired from the Army, he kept in touch with Ivins via e-mail, sharing jokes and pondering scientific questions. Then in fall 2007, Andrews said, “he kind of fell off the radar screen. I found out that there was some issues with his house being surveilled.”
According to the scientist, who said he spent about 80 hours with Ivins to help him recover from his addiction, the FBI agents pressured Ivins’s children, and they were pressuring Ivins in public places. One day in March, when Ivins was at a Frederick mall with his wife and son, the agents confronted the researcher and said, “You killed a bunch of people.” Then they turned to his wife and said, “Do you know he killed people?” according to the scientist.”
Case ’solved’ but will ‘remain open’
The case of the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001 and alarmed a nation already traumatized by the Sept. 11 terror attacks has been solved — but will remain open for now to wrap up legal and investigative loose ends, according U.S. officials.
The government were to begin briefing victims and their survivors at FBI headquarters Wednesday — eight days after the top suspect, Army biowarfare scientist Bruce Ivins, killed himself as prosecutors prepared to charge him with murder.
Ivins’ lawyer maintains the brilliant but troubled scientist would have been proven innocent had he lived. And some of Ivins’ friends and former co-workers at the Fort Detrick biological warfare lab in Frederick, Md., say they doubt he could or would have unleashed the deadly toxin.
But after nearly seven years — much of which was spent pointing the finger at the wrong suspect — the FBI is ready to end the “Amerithrax” investigation by outlining its evidence against Ivins, according to two U.S. officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Justice Department “has a legal and moral obligation to make official statements first to the victims and their families, then the public,” Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday. “And that’s the order in which we’re going to do it.”
Officially, the case will stay open for an undetermined but short period of time. That will allow the government to complete several legal and investigatory matters that need to be wrapped up before it can be closed, the officials said.
Families of victims were to get the first glimpse inside the case at the morning FBI briefing. The Justice Department, meanwhile, was expected to ask a federal judge to unseal documents revealing how the FBI closed in on Ivins.
That evidence should answer many questions in the bizarre investigation. Still, skeptics may never be satisfied if the documents fail to show conclusively that Ivins was solely responsible for mailing the anthrax letters that killed five and sickened 17 in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The case may turn on a couple of key points, including:
_An advanced DNA analysis that matched the anthrax used in the attacks to a specific batch controlled by Ivins. It is unclear, however, how the FBI eliminated as suspects others in the lab who had access to it.
_Ivins’ purported motive of sending the anthrax in a twisted effort to test a cure for it, according to authorities. Ivins complained of the limitations of animal testing and shared in a patent for an anthrax vaccine. No evidence has been revealed so far to bolster that theory.
_Why Ivins would have mailed the deadly letters from Princeton, N.J., a seven-hour round trip from his home. In perhaps the strangest explanation to emerge in the case so far, authorities said Ivins had been obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma for more than 30 years. The letters were sent from a mailbox down the street from the sorority’s offices at Princeton University.
Investigators can’t place Ivins in Princeton but say the evidence will show he had disturbing attitudes toward women. Other haunting details about Ivins’ mental health have emerged, and his therapist described him as having a history of homicidal and sociopathic thoughts.
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14 Responses to “FBI said to have stalked Ivins’ family”
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August 6th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
That is such a bunch of crap. First off, that “counselor” is not supposed to reveal anything that anyone in recovery tells her. Especially in a recovery facility. With Ivins going through severe harrassment and terrorism by the FBI, and then his checking in to a rehab to detox and then have a junkie who had no business being a counselor with only a few months sober herself after a lifetime of heroin and cocaine… I mean just on principle you can’t trust Duley. Much less the fact that she was a “motorcycle gang member”! Motorcycle gang members have been working as FBI informants since the beginning! REmember the Hells Angels Hyde Park beatings followed by the Altamont ritual sacrifice murder? That was an intelligence operation to destroy the hippie movement. Just like the purposeful release of LSD and the murder of dozens of the top minds in rock music during the late 50’s all the way through the early 80’s. Read Alex Constantine’s “Covert War Against Rock.”
August 6th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Bottom Line is the corrupt FBI could not pin this on this man for seven years! After the man dies they convict him in the court of public opinion, when he can’t defend himself. The overpaid Government boobs are saying their sure this is the man, Yeah Just like they were sure the poor security guard did the Olympic park bombing! This is a fram up, how in the Hell can one man do all of that and have it coordinate on the same day as the Trade Towers Bullshit!!!
August 6th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I find it very suspicious how the letters that I just saw displayed on CNN said “death to America” and “Allah is great”. These letters were obviously seen as, and meant to be or be seen as further terrorist attacks after 9/11, that the US was to be percieved as having had war declared on them by the terrorists. Certain Republicans such as McCain were on television(David Letterman Show for one – see it on Youtube)saying it was thought that the letters may have come from Iraq. How convenient is that? Now 7 years later and after already paying out millions for false allegations we are to believe, based on no real evidence whatsoever, that a man who apparently just committed suicide is definately the lone(lone so they can bury this case and have people forget it) perpetraitor??? This is a JOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 6th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
CIA
August 6th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I’m not buying, anyone else. These ass clowns are the biggest liars and terrorists on the planet.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
So after years of poping pills and heavy drinking he dies of tylenol?
How much tylenol do you need to kill yourself?
What no suicide note confession? Or denile “as god is my witness I am innocent”
If you were a scientist with access to all manner of deadly illness, wouldn’t you go out with some style?
August 6th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
not CIA
Army Intelligence
August 6th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Ivin’s therapist appears to be just that kind of witness that prosecutors love, one with criminal associates and a long criminal record (including drug associated evil) and therefore easily pressured into giving perjured evidence with threats of further charges and draconian penalties.
An undeniable fact is that the neocon/Bush agenda of invading Iraq benefited enormously from the anthrax attacks. Therefore the hypothesis that the attack was carried out by a bio-warfare expert on behalf of the neocons or the Bush administration has to be accorded signifigant probability of being true.
For arguments sake, let us assume that this is the case. Then the FBI would not go after the true perpetrator as he could threaten to implicate his bosses in the government, but they would want a suitable scapegoat to close the case. That the anthrax descended from that in a jar in Ivin’s laboratory would be meaningless as people working for the administration would be able to pinch a bit from any government lab in the nation.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Don’t you know our gov. is god now they can do anything illegal they want. Lawlessness for the controllers is now the norm. The lawlessness will only get more brazen as the law has been able to kill us in the US for years now and get away with it and every cop knows that…all they have to say is “I thought he/she had a gun.” And they walk scott free. This can not continue…at some point the average joe will become so disrespectful of authority and their double standard that ‘decent’ folks will join the rebellion, then all is lost for the ‘law and order’ folks…they will find themselves hanging out in prison to dry, or just hanging. What was it that one of our political fore fathers said, “We either hang together, or we will certainly hang separately.
If you support evil…you too are knitting the chains of your own bondage…where do they get the money to do all these things? They threaten you will jail if you don’t pay…like the hit man who said if you don’t give me more money to keep up my killing you’re next! So, what would you do when you know he’s got his eyes on your children to kill next? Pay? You low life coward!
Uncle Sam our local hit man has already murdered many of your children… not to mention hundreds of thousands of other people’s kids…your uncle is a killer and you give him your money to keep it up…you are responsible, your fear keeps you tied to this murdering…in a court of law you too are guilty of murder, you abet a criminal enterprise. You have the blood of many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of innocent victums on your hands…and what you you moral cowards continue to do? Pay!!!! You money just killed a 2 year old girl/boy playing a five year old going to school…if you pay you are scum in the eyes of any creator, who you pay to destroy its creation, where is the place do you think you are going to go after you die? Heaven? After helping to pay for all this murder?
August 7th, 2008 at 12:58 am
his word, his GLORIOUS WORD “STILL” STANDS! GODHATESFAGS.COM ergo GOD HATES ANAL COPULATORS LIKE PAUL(FECES EATING,FAG SUCKER OF VILE SODOMITE SPERM AND FECES ENCRUSTED SODOMITE RECTUM)WATSON! GODHATESFAGS.COM DEAL WITH IT ..!.,
August 7th, 2008 at 1:19 am
alex jones,paul watson= 2 fags SUCH VILE FILTHS
August 7th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Someone is in need of lovin…
August 7th, 2008 at 2:54 am
revfed: go find a hobby you moron!
This is just another in a long line of FBI fuckups. This bumch of worthless eaters are no better now than they were under Hoover the Great. Time for the FBI to go the way of the Dodo.
Elect Ron Paul!
August 7th, 2008 at 8:05 am
The government is using the Deception Execution Cycle against this man. They use it every day. Become aware and expose the crime.