Scientist Set to Discuss Plea Bargain In Deadly Attacks Commits Suicide

Video

Researcher at Center of Anthrax Case Dies

A top U.S. Biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him. The charges were in connection to the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

But just as fresh in investigators' minds was the need for precaution following the government's huge settlement with Hatfill.

Federal prosecutors even approached Hatfill as they advanced on his former Fort Detrick colleague, seeking assurances that he would cooperate with the government despite years of hard feelings, according to a source familiar with those discussions. Thomas Connolly, an attorney for Hatfill, declined to comment yesterday until the FBI could brief the victims' families.

Fort Detrick, located 50 miles north of Washington, has been a focus of Justice Department and FBI investigators since the anthrax bacteria killed two postal workers at the District's Brentwood Road facility, a Florida photographer, an elderly woman in Connecticut and a New York hospital worker.

For the past several months, a grand jury had been hearing testimony from scientists who worked alongside Ivins at Fort Detrick, researching inhaled anthrax spores, according to a report in yesterday's editions of the Los Angeles Times, which first linked Ivins to the investigation.

Kemp said Ivins had cooperated with investigators for the past six years and was a "world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years with the Department of the Army."

The mailings to then-Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), network television offices in New York and the company that owns the National Enquirer terrorized the nation and disrupted correspondence.

A spokesman for Leahy said the senator would have no comment on the developments.

Daschle said in an e-mail that "the FBI owes it to the country to provide some accounting of their investigation and their expectations for a successful conclusion."

President Bush "was aware there had been developments" in the anthrax investigation, according to White House press secretary Dana Perino. But she declined to comment about the reports of Ivins's suicide, and whether there was any connection to the anthrax probe.

National security experts said they have long suspected the anthrax outbreak could be traced to the country's own biodefense program because of the nature of the spores and the way the letters had been prepared.

Elisa D. Harris, a member of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, said Ivins's death leaves many important questions that now may never be answered. She said it is critical to identify where the material was acquired, whether security measures at U.S. facilities lapsed, where the anthrax was processed, and whether more than one person was involved.

"I certainly hope the FBI doesn't say 'case solved' and put this on a shelf," said Harris, who is now the pathogens project coordinator at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. "The answers to these questions fundamentally affect how we proceed in the future to prevent an insider from using material from a program like this for hostile purposes."

Staff writers Josh White, Nelson Hernandez, Aaron Davis, Dan Eggen, Mary Beth Sheridan, Spencer S. Hsu, Paul Kane, Michael S. Rosenwald and Marilyn W. Thompson and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.