August 04, 2008	Monday	Sha'aban 1 429

WASHINGTON: Ezzell said the experiments did not involve anthrax in its dried form, the type found in the letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., that was so finely ground it could immediately become airborne. Ivins worked with small teams of scientists; their findings had global significance in the field of anthrax studies and were later used by opponents of a mandatory vaccination programme instituted by the Pentagon that has been highly controversial.

Meryl Nass, a physician and leader in the vaccine opposition movement, met Ivins at a conference in the early 1990s, and they talked regularly over the next decade. She said Ivins told her he had a chronic blood disorder and feared that it might be linked to the anthrax vaccine booster shots he had to take to work in the Fort Detrick laboratory.

“He had some issues with work,” Nass said in an interview.

Ivins eventually would be awarded the Defence Department’s highest honour for civilian performance for helping to resurrect a controversial vaccine that could protect against anthrax. 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.

After the anthrax mailings in October 2001, the Fort Detrick labs went into a frenetic response, testing suspicious mail and packages virtually around the clock. Ivins was part of a team that analysed the handwritten letter sent to Daschle, packed with bacillus anthracis spores that matched the primary strain used in Fort Detrick research.

In early 2002, without notifying his supervisors, Ivins began sampling areas in the Detrick lab space that he believed might be contaminated with anthrax. He took unauthorised samples from the lab containment areas and later acknowledged to army officials that he had violated protocol.

Ivins’ odd behaviour was detailed in an army investigation of the matter, but he did not surface 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.

In fact, in early June 2003, when the FBI drained a pond in rural Maryland in search of clues to the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, Ivins was one of the Red Cross volunteers who brought investigators coffee and donuts. Investigators, however, singled him out and asked him to leave “because he was somebody involved in the investigation”, said Byrne, Ivins’ former colleague and fellow parishioner.Outside the lab, Ivins’ neighbours, friends and pastor say, he played the piano every Sunday at what he jokingly called “the hippie Mass” in the school hall at St. John the Evangelist. He played keyboards in a Celtic band and founded the Frederick Jugglers.Over the past two years, many who knew him saw the effects of accumulating pressure as the anthrax investigation veered toward him. “He would tell stories about how he would come home and everything he owned would be in piles,” said a Fort Detrick employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because workers there had been instructed not to talk with reporters. “There were other stories of how his files, lab samples and equipment were frequently seized by authorities.”

He was finding it harder and harder to work and was planning to retire in September. But even as his troubles mounted and his mood darkened, “a lot of people cared about him”, Byrne said. “He is not Timothy McVeigh. He’s not the Unabomber.”

Still, by spring, Ivins’ life seemed to be falling apart. Police were first called to his house on March 19, when he was discovered unconscious and briefly admitted to a hospital. On July 10, they encountered Ivins again, this time after a counselor called from Fort Detrick to report that the scientist was a danger to himself, and was ranting about weapons and making death threats. He went peacefully with police to Frederick Memorial Hospital, where he was admitted to a psychiatric ward.

He was later released voluntarily, but his erratic behaviour prompted his therapist, Jean C. Duley, to seek a protective order. Duley wrote that Ivins “has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats and actions toward therapists.” She quoted his psychiatrist, Dr David Irwin, as calling him “homicidal, sociopathic, with clear intentions”. Irwin could not be reached for comment.

Early on Sunday, police were again summoned to Ivins’ house and found him unconscious on the bathroom floor. They took him to Frederick Memorial Hospital, where he died two days later.

That same day, the court dismissed Duley’s case. A clerk explained the reason in a brief, handwritten note: “Respondent deceased.”—Dawn/ The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post

Concluded