Answer:
Gun range, girls underwear, all sorts of strange things. There was no hard evidence that he committed the crime which made it difficult to prosecute him.
Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that he was "an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks". On July 29, 2008, Ivins committed with an overdose of acetaminophen
The 77-page report from the Government Accountability Office says the FBI's research, including novel microbial forensic tests, did not provide a full understanding of how bacteria change in their natural environment and in a laboratory. This failure to grasp the reason for genetic mutations that were used to differentiate between samples of anthrax bacteria was a "key scientific gap" in the investigation, the report says.
The GAO also found a lack of rigorous controls over sampling procedures and a failure to cite the degree of uncertainty in measurement tools used to identify genetic markers.
"Although the complexity and novelty of the scientific methods at the time of the FBI's investigation made it challenging for the FBI to adequately address all these problems, the agency could have improved its approach," the report said.
The GAO report confirms what I have often said — that the FBI's definitive conclusions about the accuracy of their scientific findings in the Amerithrax case are not, in fact, definitive," Holt said in a written statement.
An acclaimed government scientist who assisted the federal investigation of the 2001 anthrax mailings said Tuesday that he erred seven years ago when he told top Bush administration officials that material he examined probably had been altered to make it more deadly.
The scientist, Peter B. Jahrling, had observed anthrax spores with the aid of an electron microscope at the government’s biological warfare research facility at Ft. Detrick, Md
Explanation:
The presence of silicon was viewed with alarm because the material, if artificially added to the anthrax, would make it more buoyant in air and more capable of penetrating deeply into the lungs.
“I believe I made an honest mistake,” Jahrling said in response to questions e-mailed to him for this article, adding that he had been “overly impressed” by what he thought he saw under the microscope.
“I should never have ventured into this area,” said Jahrling, who is a virologist, referring to his analysis of the anthrax, which is a bacterium. Jahrling’s initial analysis -- and his briefing of officials at the White House
At Tuesday’s hearing, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), pressed Mueller anew about how the silicon got into the spores.
After being informed of the events at the hearing, Jahrling renounced his earlier analysis.
“In retrospect,” Jahrling said, “I believe I was mistaken and defer to the experts.”
