Bruce Ivins.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/12/entertainment/la-ca-david-willman-20110612
ETA: I'm sure it will be debated forever just like the Kennedy assassination, but I think we know the answer even if some people will never accept it.
You could be right, but I won't be able to agree until I've done this subject the treatment it deserves. And that won't be now. I'd have to do a lot of catching up and I'm already booked. But this being a strongpoint from your PoV and right here, I'll offer some thoughts:
The circumstantial evidence Willman lays out is strong, though not undisputed. Scientific tests identified the anthrax in the letters as coming from a unique batch Ivins had mixed at USAMRIID.
FBI science can wind up saying a lot of different things, depending. Even if this is a valid finding, is it meaningful? Did Ivins mix every batch for 20 years, even that later smuggled out by someone else? Too many unknowns for this to be as strong as it may sound. It does sound strong.
He had worked alone in a "hot suite" (a lab designed to keep dangerous germs from escaping) on a series of nights immediately before the two mailings of anthrax letters in September and October 2001.
And was that unusual? Do we know the Anthrax was that fresh? Did he ever take his work home with him like Steve did?
In August 2000, Hatfill trained forces at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, using a makeshift bioterror "kitchen" lab that he built himself out of scavenged parts, as well as biosafety cabinets taken from USAMRIID. The borrowed cabinets, suitable for turning germs into weapons, are still missing and are said to have been destroyed. Hatfill, a certified scuba diver, once spoke of how to use a pond in the Frederick Municipal Forest a few miles from his former residence in Maryland" to dispose of toxins. On that information, the F.B.I. searched Whiskey Springs Pond and found a homemade biosafety cabinet. The pond, when later drained, disclosed a rusty bicycle and a street sign but no new evidence.
His whereabouts were unaccounted for long enough for him to have driven on both occasions from Fort Detrick, Md., to the mailbox in Princeton, N.J., where the letters were posted — a mailbox adjacent to the office of Kappa Kappa Gamma, a sorority with which Ivins had been obsessed ever since one of its members turned him down for a date in college in the 1960s.
Long enough... near a place he's said to have an obsession over. Okay.
Did Hatfill get off the hook for being having an alibi for any of the mailings or related hoax mailings which, as Don Foster says in that amazing article "appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud."
Why would someone considered a harmless geek by his colleagues commit this murderous act? Willman plausibly argues that by early September 2001 Ivins believed "the anthrax vaccine program — the apex of his life's work — was stalemated" because of the doubts government officials had about its effectiveness and necessity. The anthrax letters buried those doubts, and Congress quickly voted a massive increase in funding for biological defense, including the anthrax vaccine.
This same basic motive has been ascribed to every other witness, and the initial profile. It doesn't make Ivins any more or less a suspect than anyone else.
At the very least, Ivins should have been among the suspects the FBI scrutinized in the investigation's early days, especially after a phone call in January 2002 from scientist Nancy Haigwood telling them she thought Ivins was the anthrax killer.
He probably warranted scrutiny, and I'd be surprised if he didn't get some. Do we know he didn't? Did Haigwood have amazing evidence, or a hunch?Loooots of tips were called in. Ivins was reported, and so was guacamole.
And Hatfill too. Like Patrick, he apparently wasn't looked at seriously at first, as the investigation seemed unable to do anything for several months. He was first fingered by at least two private investigators, separately, who gave these findings to the FBI. Then after getting sick of waiting for action, they took it to the media. It made so much sense, and was now so widely known, the FBI had to act.
What they
then did, as far as I can tell, was act like they didn't have enough, made sure to prominently hound the guy looking for more, even up to physically running over his foot, to illustrate that they were just harrassing and probably had northing, still, for all the effort. Once the public understood, they were happy enough when the pointless hounding stopped. And so was the investigators' work undone. I rather doubt any of the underlying facts changed.
Still a SS Rhodesian Nazi collaborator (and framed by Jews, says Magz), still working there when the SS killed hundreds with deliberate anthrax attack, still wrote that spooky novel (about a scientist based on him saving America from an Iraqi anthrax attack, which was actually a false-flag by the Russian mafia), the letters still claimed Arab origin, some versions using bad Engrish
with backwards (cyrillic) Ns, Bill Patrick is still creepy, and he and Hatfill still had their "Batman and Robin" team thing going on, etc.
