WORLD> America
FBI had, then tossed anthrax type used in attacks
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-19 09:49

The complete genome mapping of the unique killer strain, the cornerstone of the forensic case, won't be public for months, maybe more than a year, because it will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that take time. The outsiders who had questions about the government's case wanted to see the complete genomic map sooner.

"There are still many nagging questions about this," said Dr. Michael Stebbins, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' biosecurity project and wasn't at the Monday's briefing. "Unfortunately a lot of them are not going to be able to be answered in the immediate future."

Majidi understands that: "I don't think, No. 1, we're ever going to put the suspicions to bed."

FBI officials spent much of their time going into more detail about the specific four mutations in the strain of anthrax that led back to Ivins' Army lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. They were not easy to find, rare like red or green M&Ms in a flask mostly full of blue candies, Majidi said.

FBI officials and scientists had to come up with a technique for looking at the DNA of anthrax to whittle down the list of labs and suspects who could have produced it, creating a new field of forensic microbiology. That scientific technique to connect a lab with a unique strain wasn't available until after the FBI had destroyed its first sample from Ivins.

In February 2002, the FBI sent subpoenas around the world to labs handling the Ames strain of anthrax, which was the strain that killed five people in 2001. They got 1,070 samples and destroyed only one: the first one from Ivins. It was destroyed because Ivins didn't use the proper test tube and growth medium so it may have not been useful as evidence in court, officials said.

Ivins was one of the first to respond to FBI subpoenas, but his sample was deemed useless and he was asked to submit another. He gave investigators a second sample of anthrax from his lab in April 2002 to comply with standards in a subpoena issued in the case. But that sample contained a different strain than what he submitted two months earlier in what prosecutors call an attempt to deceive or confuse investigators.