Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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I'm an optimist, but there are times when, I have to admit, it feels like the universe is just piling on the bad news. You wake up with a sore throat, your car won't start till you're late to work, then your social media account gets hacked, and in my case, my house's sewage line blows up not once, but three times. Yet another mess to clean up.
And when that happens, wouldn't it be kind of great if we had somebody to blame for making life so chaotic? Some logical reason to explain why things go from bad to worse. Well, from late September to November 2001, letters containing anthrax were sent along the US East Coast. In total, 22 people contracted a severe illness, some of them died.
You'd think that would be bad enough. But the country was still in shock following the 9/11 terrorist attacks when the first letters were mailed out just one week later. It felt like the nation couldn't even catch its breath before this new onslaught. And then suddenly, something as mundane as an office mailroom seemed terrifying. Even while government officials urged the public not to panic,
The vice president was secretly traveling with a special suit designed to withstand biochemical attacks. Authorities spent seven years hunting down the culprit, using everything from computer records to security cameras to genetic testing in the hopes of finding the truth. But not everyone believes they got the right guy.
Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Today, we're exploring the 2001 anthrax attacks and the subsequent investigation led by the FBI.
at a reported cost of $100 million. The case dragged on for nearly seven years before a perpetrator was named, but there was one major hurdle to getting a conviction. The alleged terrorist was already dead.
In this episode, we'll try to take you back to the fraught period of time through the reports that dominated the daily news to my own recollections of living in New York City at 9-11 and the atmosphere of fear after those attacks. Stay with us.
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Hi there, Carter Roy here. If you're interested in true crime, especially unsolved murders, serial killers, and cold cases, you'll love my brand new show, Murder True Crime Stories. Each episode covers a notorious murder or murders with a special focus on those who were impacted the most. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why these stories need to be heard. You can listen to Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts.
The attacks that rain death and destruction on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania also callously ripped away the sense of safety Americans carried with them. The notion that ours is an invincible nation has been shattered, along with the World Trade Center towers and parts of the Pentagon. And Senator Charles Hagel says America is forever changed. America is in for a long fight.
Jackie Besharo, Washington. September 11th, 2001 is an infamous date to most Americans, myself included. It's the day 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes in an orchestrated attack on the United States.
In my case, I was living in New York at the time, but out of town, so I was actually on a plane back to New York when the attacks happened. So my plane was grounded, and then I spent the next few days on the phone with my fiancee, who was on the rooftop of our place in Brooklyn, watching the towers come down and calling friends to find out who'd been inside. It was a very tense and terrifying time for everybody. And not just because it was so sudden, but because of what it represented.
It was the first time a lot of Americans realized danger and violence could happen anywhere. We all hoped that feeling of unease would pass. Then came the anthrax attacks. In the weeks after September 11th, newsrooms across the country are abuzz, reporting every development. The work is constant. Reporters are exhausted. Anchors are hoarse. Everyone is trying to make sense of what happened.
Maureen Stevens knows this better than most. Her husband Robert is a photo editor for The Sun, a tabloid in Boca Raton, Florida. It's a subsidiary of American Media Incorporated. Ever since the attacks on the Twin Towers, things at the office have been incredibly hectic. Bob had to stay late at the office last night, even though they needed to get on the road early this morning.
Right now they're on their way from Florida to Charlotte, North Carolina to visit their daughter. It's a long drive, 10 hours, but it's good for Bob to get out of the office. They reach Charlotte by Friday, September 28th and pick up their daughter. Then they hit the road again on Saturday heading to Chimney Rock State Park for some hiking. Maureen notices Bob seems tired, which isn't necessarily surprising. He's been working hard and he's 63.
Hiking isn't as easy as it used to be, but her concern grows that night when Bob skips dinner and goes to bed early. The next day is Sunday and Bob still isn't feeling great. He has chills, exhaustion, and nausea. Even so, Bob drives them all the way home the next day.
When they get back to Florida that night, Bob's fever has gone up. He seems disoriented. Really early in the morning, basically the middle of the night, he jolts awake and throws up. Maureen decides to take him to the hospital. At 2:00 a.m., Maureen drops Bob off at the ER. She heads home for a few hours and returns at 8:00 a.m. She's likely expecting to get some answers about what's going on. But what she learns is shocking.
While Maureen was gone, Bob had a seizure and fell into a coma. The hospital has no idea what's wrong with him. They're concerned about how fast his health declined. According to David Willman's book, "The Mirage Man," five hours after Bob is admitted, his organs have shut down, his lymph nodes are swollen, and CT scans show his chest is inflamed.
There's some talk of meningitis or pneumonia, which can both cause fever, confusion, and vomiting. But those diagnoses don't quite fit Bob's symptoms. The hospital enlists an infectious disease specialist, Dr. Larry M. Bush, to help make sense of it all. Bush examines the scans and draws cerebrospinal fluid from Bob's spine. That's when he notices something strange. The fluid is cloudy. It definitely shouldn't be.
Maureen stands at Bob's bedside, horrified and confused. She spends the rest of the morning pressing doctors for information until she finally goes home to wait for more news. Shortly before 2 p.m., Maureen gets a call from the hospital. They tell her Bob tested positive for anthrax.
Okay, but what exactly is anthrax, you're probably wondering? To give you a brief overview, anthrax is a disease caused by a bacteria usually found in soil. It's not contagious. Most commonly, it's contracted when the bacteria gets in a cut or wound. This causes cutaneous anthrax.
which is most often seen in people who work with livestock. It's curable with a survival rate of almost 100% if treated correctly. But there's the more serious inhalational anthrax. It's caused when someone breathes in spores formed by those same bacteria. So the particles causing the disease are the same, but the way they enter the body is different.
Some of the initial symptoms of inhalational anthrax can mimic a cold or pneumonia, like developing a cough or breathing problems. But eventually, lesions form on the lungs. The bacteria can spread to the brain and cause lesions there, too. It's a horrible way to die. According to an article in The Atlantic, quote, "...as their minds disintegrate, victims literally drown in their own fluids."
With treatment, inhalational anthrax has a 55% survival rate. Without treatment, almost everyone who contracts it will die. Maureen asks Dr. Bush a hard question. Something along the lines of, "Is Bob going to survive this?" He tells her there's a chance her husband will be okay. But privately, Dr. Bush is probably more worried than he's letting on.
Bob Stevens has inhalational anthrax, the more severe form of the disease. And it's incredibly rare. He's the first known case in the US in 25 years, since 1976. There also isn't an obvious place he could have gotten it. He doesn't work with livestock and doesn't live in an area where he'd be exposed to something in the environment.
So the first, most pressing question is: where on earth did it come from? A clue comes two days later, when 73-year-old Ernesto Blanco is receiving medical treatment in Miami, Florida. He's also experiencing fatigue and trouble breathing. He soon becomes weak and confused. It feels really similar to Bob. The same symptoms, the quick decline, the severity.
And it just so happens that Ernesto distributes mail at the American media offices in Boca Raton, the same place Bob works. He started feeling sick the day after the Stevens family left for vacation. Ernesto is put on a respirator and spends the next few weeks fighting for his life. Tubes work overtime, draining fluids from his lungs as he loses weight at an alarming clip.
Doctors aren't sure he's going to live. Ernesto isn't sure he's going to live. But eventually, he turns a corner. He improves. Three weeks after he's admitted, he's cleared to go back home. His recovery is amazing to doctors, since inhalational anthrax is often deadly at such a late stage. Not everyone is so lucky. On October 5th, Maureen's worst fears are realized.
Her husband, Bob Stevens, dies. It's devastating for his family, who are left grief-stricken and baffled. The suddenness is hard to wrap their heads around, especially for Maureen. They were just on a family vacation a few days ago. Bob hiked. He laughed. He drove her home. Now he's gone, and no one can tell her why.
The doctors at the hospital are just as confused. So is the Florida Health Department and the infectious disease experts and the FBI and the CDC. Because at this point, authorities have heard about Bob's anthrax diagnosis and Ernesto Blanco's symptoms. They're worried. If the anthrax bacteria is lingering somewhere out there, in the environment or in a batch of contaminated animal products...
That means more people could come in contact with it, so they need to confirm where the men were exposed. Investigators from the FBI and CDC follow the route Bob took from Florida to North Carolina and back, swabbing whatever surfaces he might have come into contact with. Finally, they descend on the American media offices in Boca Raton.
This is the most obvious place to look, considering it's the common link between Ernesto and Bob. Members of a hazmat team get to work gathering samples from all over the office. As soon as they wrap up the next morning, they send the swabs for testing. Two samples from Bob's office test positive for anthrax. They came from his keyboard and mailbox.
Ernesto's illness makes more sense now. He's in charge of mail distribution. If he delivered a contaminated letter to Bob, that would explain the anthrax in the mailbox and why both men got sick. But no one can find the offending letter. Probably because American media doesn't ship its trash to a landfill where investigators could search for it. It uses an incinerator.
That means a key piece of evidence has, quite literally, gone up in flames. One mystery is solved. The investigators know where Bob and Ernesto got sick, but a thousand others remain. The most pressing of which is still, how did the spores get there? I'm repeating myself here, but remember, anthrax has appeared in the United States for the first time in 25 years.
It killed someone who had no proximity to obvious sources of the bacteria. The most likely scenario is that this anthrax isn't naturally occurring, but rather grown in a lab. It means someone did this on purpose. Still, the government suggests it's an isolated incident. There's no evidence of terrorism, so there isn't a need to worry. But a few days after Bob Stevens dies,
A new development proves them wrong. An assistant to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw has contracted a skin form of anthrax after opening a suspicious letter. That's Lauren Frayer, an Associated Press correspondent. It's October 12th, 2001, and she's breaking the news that there's been another anthrax poisoning in New York.
Tom Brokaw's assistant, Erin O'Connor, opened a letter containing white powder several days earlier. A sore formed on her skin, then turned into a blackened lesion. She goes to the doctor for a biopsy. While waiting for results, O'Connor is given Cipro, an antibiotic that fights anthrax infections. It's a precaution at the time.
But it turns out to be a good move. The biopsy comes back positive for cutaneous anthrax. It's terrifying. But O'Connor caught it early and the cutaneous form of anthrax is highly treatable. She'll be okay. Plus, this time the FBI found the letter that poisoned her, which makes it seem even more likely the anthrax is traveling by mail. But the evidence...
also makes the situation feel more dire. The envelope O'Connor opened is addressed to Tom Barocca. It has capitalized letters written at a sloping angle across the front and no return address. Inside is a photocopied piece of paper that says, "9/11/01. This is next. Take penicillin now. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."
The mention of the date, 9/11, is scary. It suggests the perpetrators of those attacks, the extremist group known as Al-Qaeda, might have something to do with this too. Immediately, it feels like the terror America experienced last month isn't over. When I got back to New York after the attacks, I was taking the subway one day and from Brooklyn to New York, and a woman grabbed my hand as we were going underground.
And we held hands the whole way and she turned to me after and said, "I'm sorry, but this is my first time underground since the attacks and I'm just so scared." And that's what it felt like all throughout New York and the East Coast that anything at any time could happen. And so this anthrax is now heightening that sensation. And politicians don't necessarily quell these fears.
The letter is the only piece of evidence that the two attacks are connected. So without more information, some choose to walk a cautious line. Here's House Minority Leader Richard Gebhardt on whether the anthrax attacks are the work of terrorists. I don't think there's a way to prove that, but I think we all suspect that. I think it's clear that these are people that are both up to no good and people who know what they're doing.
It's unsettling not having any answers. But if there's one thing America has figured out how to do in recent weeks, it's continue on. To go about our lives even though a dark cloud of uncertainty hangs over us. That's what Grant Leslie is doing. She is an intern on Capitol Hill. Four days after O'Connor tests positive for cutaneous anthrax, Leslie is going to work, ready for her morning duty,
Sorting Senator Tom Daschle's mail. Daschle is the Senate Majority Leader, so the internship is a big deal for a poli-sci major like Leslie, but she's not going to pretend that sorting the mail is exciting. She gets to it anyway. When she picks up a stack, she takes note of the letter on top. It's thick, with scotch tape on each side. The writing on the front is addressed to Senator Daschle, and it's in all caps.
A messy, slanted scrawl that looks like it was written by a kid. She checks the return address. It's from a fourth grade class in Franklin Park, New Jersey. She thinks it'll be sweet to read a letter from kids. So she takes a pair of scissors and cuts the top of the envelope. As soon as she does, white powder spills out. It gets all over her hands, her skirt, her feet, on the room's carpet. A cloud floats into the air.
Leslie holds the envelope, stunned. She calls out for help. The Capitol Police arrive on the scene. They test the powder with strips they have on hand and confirm that it's anthrax. They call in the FBI, including Agent Scott Stanley,
Stanley is a rare bird. He's a federal agent with a degree in biomedical sciences. He's actually vaccinated against anthrax because he's worked with it before. He helped develop the training course for those anthrax testing strips the Capitol Police are using. So he's the guy to have on the scene. When he arrives, he recognizes the smell in the room. It's a very specific scent he remembers from grad school.
culture broth used to grow bacteria. He also sees the positive tests the police are looking at. He says, "I think we have a problem here." Leslie's given Cipro immediately and authorities tell her what symptoms to look out for. She later tests positive for anthrax spores, but because of her quick treatment, she doesn't get sick. The offices are closed down and hazmat team floods Capitol Hill.
Investigators sweep the area and test employees. According to R. Scott Decker's book recounting the anthrax attacks, the ventilation system and foot traffic have already spread the spores to other buildings. There's a huge swath of contamination. 300 noses are swabbed, and everyone in Daschle's office is given a three-day supply of Cipro.
Of all the anthrax cases so far, this might be the most shocking. It's a direct attack on members of the American government. It behooves all Americans to be careful about letters and packages they receive. Here at the White House, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says steps are being taken. Like everybody else, we're being very cautious about what we open. The American people ought to be cautious about what they open.
That's Mark Smith, a White House correspondent. As he points out, it's not only the government that has to be careful. All Americans are told to worry about this. And remember, this particular kind of danger is new to most people. Unlike the attacks of September 11th, this threat isn't loud. It doesn't explode. It's quiet, insidious, and deadly. And it has a name. Bioterrorism.
The goal of bioterrorism isn't necessarily mass destruction. According to the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, quote, "...bioterrorism is better defined as a method chiefly designed to disrupt our way of life and make us acutely aware of our vulnerability. There are few things that make you feel more vulnerable than the potential of getting deadly bacteria delivered to your home."
So a lot of people start anxiously checking their mail for suspicious envelopes. The day after Grant Leslie opened the letter, an NBC producer's infant son tests positive for cutaneous anthrax. He's treated immediately and survives. On October 18th, a CBS employee and a New Jersey postal worker test positive. Both are mild cases, but the next victims aren't so lucky.
A government official says some tests for anthrax at a Washington area postal facility have come back positive. As AP correspondent Orla Reese reports, the Brentwood Postal Sorting Facility in Washington, D.C. is contaminated. Two of their employees, Joseph P. Kersine Jr. and Thomas L. Morris Jr., die from anthrax. Their deaths are announced on October 23rd. Almost every other day, there's news of another infection.
a State Department mailroom staffer on October 26th, another postal worker on October 28th. The deaths don't stop either. AP correspondent Warren Levinson reports.
Then, on November 21st, a 94-year-old Connecticut woman named Ottilie Lundgren dies.
According to Connecticut epidemiologist Dr. James Hadler, she was exposed probably from cross-contaminated mail that came to her house, a very low dose with sort of anthrax spores embedded in the envelope of a piece of bulk mail. And that spores would have been released when she tore the mail in half, which she usually did with her bulk mail. Ottilie is the last of five people to perish in the attacks.
By the end of November, 22 people have contracted anthrax. The victims span Washington, D.C. and four states, Connecticut, New York, Florida, and New Jersey. According to the Amerithrax summary, around 10,000 people were potentially exposed and 35 mailrooms and postal facilities were contaminated, as were 26 buildings on Capitol Hill.
The news is constant. Headlines scream from newsstands. Magazine front covers claim to have developments. People whisper about it in coffee shops, in doctors' waiting rooms, at work. They want to know who did this and why. So the authorities are under a lot of pressure to figure that out.
The FBI forms the Amerithrax Task Force and breaks the search into different arms, mainly Amerithrax 1 and Amerithrax 2. The second unit handles anything in the investigation that's science-related. The first, anything that isn't. Both branches start with what they have, the letters.
Authorities have four anthrax-laced letters. Two are addressed to senators, one to Tom Brokaw, and another to the New York Post. There might have been five if the Florida letter that killed Bob Stevens had been found. The letters to the senators are the only ones with return address. Fourth grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, New Jersey, 08852.
But that school doesn't actually exist. It's a fake address to throw investigators off. Luckily, investigators are able to pinpoint where the letters were actually sent from. A mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey. It's good information, but it only helps so much. They still don't know who actually sent the letters, and they can't rely on traditional forensics here. None of the envelopes have fingerprints or hair.
there's no saliva since each one was closed with tape plus it's hard to handle them seeing as they're contaminated by anthrax so amerithrax 2 the science division realizes they need to go a different route they're going to follow genetics not of a suspect but of the anthrax itself
Agent Scott Stanley is in Amerithrax 2 and he enlists some experts to help with testing. They determine the anthrax used in the attacks is from a strain called AIMS. R. Scott Decker, the author of "Recounting the Anthrax Attacks" and an agent working in Amerithrax 2, makes a list of all the labs in the country that handle the AIMS strain. There's at least 15.
The FBI requests samples from all of them to compare with the anthrax in the envelopes. They're hoping one of those samples or its mutations will be a match. If they find the lab, maybe they can find their culprit.
Meanwhile, investigators turn to the few researchers who work with Ames for help, like Bruce Ivins, an advisor on anthrax testing with the USAMRID, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a lab facility whose research is focused on protection against biological threats.
Ivins has worked with anthrax for over 20 years and gives the FBI access to the original Ames isolate for testing purposes. This parent strain is naturally occurring and had been found in a Texas cow during the 1980s. While Amerithrax 2 makes progress on the Ames strain, Amerithrax 1 is working on a profile to narrow down their list of over a thousand suspects.
The initial theory that Al-Qaeda is responsible is now on the back burner. According to the Amerithrax summary, investigators aren't able to find evidence that, quote, operatives had access to the type and quality of anthrax pathogen used.
The new theory is that the letters references to Allah and 9/11 are attempts to lead investigators down the wrong path. And the real perpetrator is someone acting alone, who knows a lot about anthrax and has a microbiology pedigree. Some of their suspects are from abroad, some are domestic, some work at companies in the biopesticide industry. But soon one man stands out above the rest.
His name is Steven J. Hatfill. The Bureau has gotten multiple calls about Hatfill, and when they look closer, they keep finding reasons he fits the profile. Reasons like Hatfill worked for the USAMRID for two years, and while he was there, he might have had access to the Ames strain of anthrax.
He'd also been in Zimbabwe during an anthrax outbreak and wrote an unpublished book about bioterrorism. While working as a contractor for Science Applications International Corporation, Hatfield applied for a top security clearance to work on CIA projects. His application was rejected after failing the required polygraph test. This happened just six weeks before Bob Stevens died.
to investigators that means he has the knowledge and possibly the motive so far this evidence isn't anything they can use to directly tie him to the attacks but then they get a clue that could change everything i'm appalled at the terrible acts of biological terrorism that have caused death disease and havoc in this great country starting last fall but i am just as appalled
That's Stephen Hatfill speaking, proclaiming his innocence. But investigators feel like they've drawn an ace in Hatfill. He filled prescriptions for Cipro in September and October.
Both came just two days before the New York and the Capitol Hill attacks, respectively. As I mentioned before, Cipro is an antibiotic for anthrax, so it's suspicious that he's taking it. What makes it even more suspicious is that Hatfield denied taking Cipro during the fall of 2001 in his initial statement. That lie drives the FBI to conduct surveillance and a search of his home.
The Attorney General publicly names Hatfill a person of interest in August 2002, but they don't find anything that directly connects Hatfill to the attacks. Plus, no one can prove for certain that he accessed anthrax when he worked at USAMRID. Even the Cipro lead is a dead end. Last fall, Hatfill had sinus surgery. The doctors prescribed him Cipro afterwards to prevent infection.
With nothing concrete, authorities are stuck. A year passes, then two, and while the government hasn't closed the case, they don't move forward with convicting Hatfield either. Then, in 2005, there's finally a break. Amerithrax 2 determines the anthrax attacks are likely from a single spore batch of the AIM strain, RMR 1029.
Agents determined this particular strain was created and stored in the USAM-RID labs. Stephen Hatfill worked there for a period of time. But eventually authorities look into the records for biocontainment suite B3, the room that stores RMR 1029, and find out he never had access. Which means there's no way he could have gotten his hands on the spores.
Instead of confirming Hatfield's guilt, this absolves him. For the FBI, it's a frustrating setback. Another year passes with no answers for the country. By 2006, the case boasts some impressive stats. Roughly 53,000 leads, 6,000 subpoenas, 67 searches, 9,000 interviews.
In the past five years, entirely new methods of scientific testing have been created and the boundaries of bioterrorism research have been expanded. But no arrests. And it seems to the public, no new suspects. It's hard for the families of the victims, who are clamoring to know why their loved ones are dead.
Some, like Maureen Stevens, have brought lawsuits against the government, asking them to answer for why this happened. Grant Leslie, who's gone back to work on Capitol Hill, doesn't think answers are coming. She says, "I think once things started getting out six months, a year, I just assumed that they had no clue what had happened." It seems exhausting for the task force too.
Some members keep their heads down and continue digging while others move on. News organizations are critical of the silence. They speculate the case has gone cold, that the killer has gotten away with it. But the Amerithrax Task Force does have a suspect. They just aren't ready to tell anyone. Early on, Agent Scott Stanley noticed a problem.
They'd enlisted a lot of experts on anthrax to help with the investigation. Those scientists provided tests, research advice, and samples to the FBI. They also let investigators into their facilities, which are adept at producing and testing anthrax spores. The thing is, the same thing that makes someone a good resource in advising on anthrax, also makes them a good suspect. That means the very people the FBI have been working with
the ones that they've trusted to guide them to the truth could be responsible for the murders. When the FBI looked at the records for suite B3, the ones that absolved Stephen Hatfill, they noticed some strange activity in one of the labs. Someone had been there on nights and weekends, alone, and the timing of these visits was suspicious.
According to recounting the anthrax attacks, someone worked three consecutive nights in the lab just before the New York letters were mailed. Then another three-night stretch just before the Capitol Hill letters were postmarked. That man was Bruce Ivins. I mentioned Bruce Ivins earlier. He works at the USAMRID and spent his life developing vaccines for anthrax.
He's written more than 50 publications about it and is an expert in anthrax spore production. He's the one who handed the original AIM strain over to investigators. According to the Amerithrax summary, the FBI determined that strain was under Ivan's, quote, soul and exclusive control.
Ivins had been one of many on the Amerithrax suspect list for a while, but now in 2006, he's risen to the top. The spore matches are a big reason. However, Ivins was also suspected of sending the FBI a set of misleading samples in 2002, which didn't have any genetic variants that would connect him to the powder used in the attacks.
Ivan's actually had AIM samples that did have those variants. To investigators, it seems like he purposely withheld them. He has no explanation for this apparent mix-up. And then there are the lab hours. Prior to the fall of 2001, he rarely worked late. So the uptick in activity, especially since it coincides with the attacks, feels like evidence.
Ivan's has no explanations for this either. And there's more. The four anthrax envelopes had some manufacturing information on the back. Just a few lines stating the year and that they were made with recycled paper. The sort of thing you probably wouldn't even notice. But the scientists who compared the envelopes found minor printing defects in this text. Because of these defects, they were able to determine the envelopes came from the same pack
which were sold at a post office in Frederick, Maryland, where Bruce Ivins just so happens to have a mailbox. The FBI is really starting to believe this is their guy. That's when they get access to Ivins' computer, which provides them with some unsettling insight into his life. Ivins uses a litany of aliases in his communications,
and his messages reveal a paranoid man who's frustrated with his career and marriage. According to some of his exchanges, he's also been diagnosed with personality disorders, anxiety, depression, and psychosis. He's on a few different psychotropic medications. There's evidence of some unnerving behavior too, like his fixation on a former female lab tech and a Princeton sorority.
It's eye-opening enough for investigators to continue moving forward. On November 1st, 2007, the Amerithrax Task Force searches Ivins' house, cars, and offices in Frederick, Maryland. They uncover a few suspicious items. According to the Amerithrax summary, those include, quote, "a large collection of letters that Dr. Ivins had sent to members of Congress and the news media over the previous 20 years,
including one sent to NBC News in 1987 at the same address for NBC used on the Brokaw letter. Some of these letters are program proposals, while the letters to Congress members were usually about politics. Ivins used pseudonyms in most of his correspondence. It's good news for investigators. That's one of the things they were looking for: addresses to where the letters were sent.
They also find some weapons: a few handguns, stun guns, and a taser. Over the next year, more searches are made, interviews are held, and authorities slowly gather more evidence against Ivins, including a threatening email he wrote to a fellow scientist and a violent outburst during a group therapy session.
By 2008, the FBI thinks they have enough to indict Ivins on five counts of murder with the use of a weapon of mass destruction. The death penalty will be on the table. But on July 29th, they realize they won't be able to charge him. According to the Los Angeles Times, Bruce Ivins died after taking... Ivins has died after he was told about the impending indictment.
Even though authorities identified Ivins as the culprit, his death leaves everyone with a lot of questions. Did he act alone? How exactly did he do this? When did he make this plan? The FBI's Amerithrax Task Force attempts to answer some of those questions.
That same year, the Bureau tasks the National Academy of Sciences, or the NAS, to look over thousands of pages of material and conduct their own review of how the FBI handled the scientific portion of the investigation. But in 2010, before the NAS finalizes their report, the FBI and the Department of Justice close the case and release a summary.
In it, they conclude that Ivins, and only Ivins, was the anthrax mailer. The summary gives the country some closure. It says the danger has passed, the perpetrator is dead, and maybe, just maybe, Americans can resume that normalcy that has been disrupted since 9/11. We can move on.
The NAS releases their independent review in 2011. Their conclusion? The scientific evidence used to close the case against Ivins is insufficient. The report states that while much of the FBI's work in the emerging branch of microbial forensics was commendable...
They hadn't actually proven that the anthrax mailed in the letters was, without a doubt, the exact strain Ivan's had access to. Later, a second review conducted by the Government Accountability Office comes up with the same findings.
After the NAS report, the FBI responds that they have far more than just scientific evidence on Ivins, and the leading federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice says they're confident he would have been convicted in a court of law. But not everyone is so sure, including, for instance, one genetics expert who worked on the FBI's case against Ivins. Given the evidence, she says...
she'd have no choice but to acquit. Even while acknowledging that Ivins was problematic, critics of the case ask, why would this supposedly cunning killer turn over the murder weapon to authorities? Well, the FBI remains certain that Ivins was behind the attacks. And after tens of thousands of leads, hundreds of thousands of hours, and a reported $100 million spent on the investigation,
They might be right. But Ivins died before a grand jury could indict him, before charges were brought against him, before the independent reviews called the scientific evidence into question, and after reports began cropping up criticizing the FBI's handling of the case and wondering if the years-long investigation had gone cold.
Ivan's death and the two contradictory reports make the whole thing feel like a half measure, a wink at closure, at normalcy. But the truth is, after the events of 2001, normalcy is probably impossible. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We are here with a new episode every Wednesday.
Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Do you have a personal relationship to the stories we tell? Email us at conspiracystories at Spotify.com.
For more information on the 2001 anthrax attacks, amongst the many sources we used, we found R. Scott Decker's book recounting the anthrax attacks, terror, the Amerithrax Task Force, and the evolution of forensics in the FBI, as well as reporting by ProPublica, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story
isn't always the truth.
Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Kate Murdock, edited by Karis Allen and Andrew Kelleher, edited and researched by Mickey Taylor, fact-checked by Bennett Logan and Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Russell Nash and Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor.
I'm your host, Carter Roy. This episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. When you feed your pet Hills, you help feed a shelter pet, providing dogs and cats in need with science-led nutrition that helps make them happy, healthy, and ready to be adopted. It's an initiative that Hills has supported since 2002. And since then, the Food, Shelter, and Love program has helped more than 14 million pets find new homes,
changing their life forever so they can change yours. Science did that. Learn more at hillspet.com slash podcast.