Hatfill Ex-Colleague (Glenn Cross) Gets FBI Job

Source: Washington Post, September 7, 2003

Analyst Gave Details on 'Person of Interest' in Anthrax Probe
By Marilyn W. Thompson, Washington Post Staff Writer
The FBI has hired a former colleague of Steven J. Hatfill who provided the bureau with information about him for its long-running anthrax investigation, an unusual move that some experts said could pose an appearance of conflict of interest if the government tries to use the employee as a prosecution witness.
An FBI spokesman said the recent hiring of Glenn Cross as a full-time counterterrorism analyst based at FBI headquarters is "not related to the anthrax case" and would not prevent him from testifying before a grand jury or in a court proceeding.
Although Justice Department guidelines permit the FBI to make cash payments to confidential informants, lawyers say it is unusual for the FBI to give a full-time government position to a person who has worked with the bureau in developing a criminal investigation.
Such a relationship "blurs the distinction as to what this person is," said criminal defense lawyer Abbe D. Lowell, "and you never want to blur the purity of your witnesses."
Hatfill's attorney, Nick Bravin, declined to comment on Cross's new role at the FBI. Pat Clawson, a Hatfill friend who served until recently as his spokesman, said Cross's cooperation with the bureau was well known at the company where the two worked, Science Applications International Corp. in McLean.
Reached at the FBI, Cross declined to comment and referred questions to the FBI press office.
Hatfill, 49, has not been charged in connection with the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others, but he has been singled out by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft as a "person of interest" in the investigation.
Last month, Hatfill filed a lawsuit that accuses the FBI and the Justice Department of an unprecedented campaign of harassment. Now unemployed, Hatfill said that the FBI's tactics have included months of round-the-clock surveillance, wiretaps and job interference.
A federal grand jury has been empaneled in the anthrax case under the supervision of Roscoe C. Howard Jr., U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. In recent months, many of Hatfill's friends and colleagues and his former employers have said that they provided documents under grand jury subpoena.
Howard declined to say whether the grand jury has begun calling witnesses in the case, one of the largest and most expensive criminal investigations the FBI has ever conducted.
Sources familiar with the case said that FBI anthrax investigators have interviewed Cross extensively about his relationship with Hatfill and his concerns in the fall of 2001 about possible security risks posed by Hatfill's work with classified government projects.
Hatfill's supporters said that Cross and Hatfill were work rivals and that Cross reported information to his bosses and later to the FBI that heightened interest in Hatfill early in the anthrax investigation. Hatfill was first interviewed by the FBI in the fall of 2001 at his SAIC office. The company is a large government consulting firm whose work includes classified projects for the CIA and the Pentagon.
Clawson said that Hatfill told Cross exaggerated "war stories" about his years in Rhodesia and South Africa that Cross took seriously and reported to his superiors, expressing concern that Hatfill could be a security risk.
"Steve amused himself by telling him some whoppers," Clawson said. "Cross repeated these stories to government officials. The stories seemed to get larger and even more exaggerated with the retelling."
In August 2001, Hatfill lost his security clearance after a CIA-administered polygraph test yielded inconclusive results. Sources familiar with Hatfill's SAIC work record said that CIA polygraph examiners tested him as part of his application for top-secret clearance. They reported inconclusive results to questions about his years and relationships in Rhodesia and South Africa, and as a result, his regular security clearance was suspended.
After losing his clearance, Hatfill appealed the decision and continued to work on some SAIC projects, but the firm terminated him in March 2002 as the FBI intensified its scrutiny of him.
Cross remained at SAIC until October 2002, according to SAIC spokesman Benjamin A. Haddad. He said that Cross's job description was "property manager."
Citing privacy concerns, FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell declined to provide the precise date of Cross's hiring or his exact salary, which he said is somewhere between $35,000 and $87,000 a year. He said Cross was hired for his expertise in counterterrorism, an area that now ranks as a top FBI priority.
Cross's importance to the ongoing grand jury probe is unclear, but defense experts said that the FBI has created a thorny issue if it intends to rely on him as a government witness. Attorneys said that prosecutors would face a daunting challenge in trying to convince a jury that a newly hired FBI employee could offer impartial testimony.
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

What the Search Warrant Reveals About Hatfill's Claims/Boasts.....

What the Search Warrant Reveals About Hatfill's Claims/Boasts.....

Continued here

New details on FBI's false start in anthrax case

By Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau Published: November 26, 2008

WASHINGTON: A federal court on Tuesday unsealed documents that shed new light on why FBI anthrax investigators spent years pursuing the wrong man, Steven J. Hatfill, who was exonerated by the government this year and received a $4.6 million settlement.

Search warrant affidavits said that Dr. Hatfill filled prescriptions for the antibiotic Cipro, the preferred drug for treatment of anthrax, two days before each of the mailings of anthrax-laced letters in September and October 2001. Under questioning by agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he denied taking Cipro at that time, the affidavits said.
The documents report that Dr. Hatfill spoke of serving in a Rhodesian military unit accused of starting an anthrax epidemic in 1979, told an acquaintance that it would take a "Pearl Harbor-type attack" to awaken the United States to the bioterrorist threat and kept an anthrax simulant in his apartment. They said Dr. Hatfill had access to the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks while working at the army biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, from 1997 to 1999.

In August, after the suicide of another researcher who worked at the same army laboratory, Dr. Bruce Ivins, the FBI said it had concluded that Dr. Ivins alone had carried out the anthrax attacks, which killed 5 people and sickened 17 others.

The Justice Department then made public search warrant affidavits laying out circumstantial evidence against Dr. Ivins, including symptoms of mental illness, late hours in the laboratory before the mailings and genetic evidence linking the mailed anthrax to a supply in his laboratory. But no definitive evidence has tied Dr. Ivins directly to the letters or to the site of the mailings in Princeton, New Jersey, and many of his colleagues and friends have said they do not believe he committed the crime.

The Hatfill search warrant material shows how an accumulation of claims from acquaintances can cast an innocent person in a highly suspicious light, said Mark Grannis, a lawyer for Dr. Hatfill. As an example of how innocent details can be made to look suspicious, Grannis said Dr. Hatfill was taking Cipro, a widely prescribed antibiotic, after sinus surgery in 2001.

Search warrants, Grannis said, often use hearsay and unconfirmed information to convince a judge that a suspect is worthy of further investigation.

"Whether or not it was right for the government to rely on this kind of information to obtain a search warrant in 2002, we know in 2008 that Steven Hatfill had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks," Grannis said.

The FBI affidavits were used to obtain a search warrant in August 2002 for Dr. Hatfill's apartment and a basement storage room in his building in Frederick, Maryland, as well as his car and a storage locker he rented in Ocala, Florida The agency had conducted a search with Dr. Hatfill's permission two months earlier, but it was considered inconclusive.

In searching Dr. Hatfill's apartment, investigators seized biological equipment, glass laboratory slides, plastic tubing and a gun silencer, among other belongings, the documents say.

Dr. Hatfill was never charged in the anthrax case, but the searches and government leaks identifying him as a leading suspect drew widespread news coverage. He lost a teaching job at Louisiana State University after officials at the Justice Department, which was paying for the courses, objected to his employment. For months, FBI surveillance teams followed Dr. Hatfill every time he left home.

Dr. Hatfill later sued the FBI and the Justice Department for leaking information about him. A separate lawsuit he filed against The New York Times was dismissed and a lawsuit against Vanity Fair magazine was settled. More Articles in Washington » A version of this article appeared in print on November 26, 2008, on page A23 of the New York edition.

FBI's early anthrax hunches revealed in documents

The unsealed papers show how the FBI came to think Steven J. Hatfill was responsible for the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings.
By David Willman
November 26, 2008
Reporting from Washington -- Investigative documents unsealed Tuesday revealed provocative details behind early suspicions that led the FBI to target the wrong man in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people.

The misguided investigation continued for years into the original suspect, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who in June won a $5.8-million settlement from the FBI and the Justice Department for violating his privacy rights. On Aug. 8, the U.S. attorney for Washington explicitly exonerated Hatfill from any involvement in the mailings.


The documents were made public by order of a federal judge in response to a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Lawyers for the newspapers argued that the investigation of the mailings was a matter of high public interest and among the most complex and expensive in the annals of federal law enforcement.

The investigation culminated with the suicide on July 29 of Bruce E. Ivins, a government microbiologist who was about to be charged in the deadly mailings that also sickened or injured 17 people. Authorities said evidence showed Ivins, acting alone, carried out the attacks.

The unsealed documents dealt not with Ivins but with Hatfill, disclosing some of the early mistaken suspicions and false leads behind the troubled investigation.


In a sworn statement seeking a judge's permission to search Hatfill's apartment and other property in July 2002, FBI Agent Mark P. Morin alleged that Hatfill, while employed as a research scientist at Ft. Detrick in Maryland from 1997 to 1999, "had access to the unlocked storage freezers in which the Ames strain" of anthrax was kept.

Later, the FBI found that the unique formulation of anthrax powder used in the mailings was prepared by Ivins and was never accessible to Hatfill.

Morin's affidavit included a curious entry linking Hatfill in an unspecified way to the former Rhodesia. It cited the deaths of anti-government rebels from anthrax exposure. However, the FBI made no allegation that Hatfill had access to anthrax in what is now Zimbabwe.

The affidavit also suggested that Hatfill lied to the FBI about his use of Cipro, a drug that can save the life of a person exposed to inhaled anthrax. According to the sworn statement, in the months before and after the anthrax mailings, Hatfill filled several prescriptions for Cipro. The affidavit added, "During an interview with FBI agents on March 27, 2002, Steven Hatfill denied taking any Cipro during the months of September and October of 2001."

Hatfill's attorney, Thomas G. Connolly, said in an interview Tuesday that he was puzzled by the allegation that his client might not have been truthful about Cipro.

"It's well known that Dr. Hatfill had Cipro prescribed to him after nasal surgery," he said. That surgery, Connolly said, was performed on or about Sept. 11, 2001.

The attorney also issued a statement suggesting the unsealed documents be kept in perspective.

"Search warrant affidavits are designed to raise suspicion. . . . But like so much of what has been written about Dr. Hatfill in the past seven years, the affidavits released today cite sources whose names are unknown and whose credibility cannot be tested," the statement said.

"Our repeated experience has been that people make wild accusations in secret, only to retract them under public questioning. . . . [W]e know in 2008 that Steven Hatfill had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks."

One of the first federal investigators to question Hatfill about the anthrax mailings, now-retired FBI Agent Bradley Garrett, said Tuesday that Hatfill had remained the bureau's "only viable suspect -- until they figured out" Ivins.

Defenders of Ivins, including his lawyers and some former colleagues at the Army's biological weapons research institute at Ft. Detrick, contend that a trial would have exonerated the scientist.

Willman writes for the Los Angeles Times.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.

Judges throws out contempt order against reporter

By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press Writer

Nov 17th, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a contempt order requiring fines of up to $5,000 a day against a former USA Today reporter who refused to identify sources for stories about the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Toni Locy had been ordered by a judge to personally pay the fines unless she identified officials who discussed Steven J. Hatfill, who was named a person of interest in the anthrax attacks but was eventually exonerated by the Justice Department.

Hatfill, a former Army scientist, sued the federal government for violating his privacy by talking to reporters. Locy was drawn into the lawsuit after she was asked to reveal her sources.

When she said she couldn't remember, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered her to identify all her sources who discussed any aspect of the anthrax case. When she refused, Walton placed her in contempt and ordered the fines.

But since then, Hatfill has been awarded $5.8 million to settle the Justice Department lawsuit.

In another development Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Justice Department to release the information it used to persuade the courts to let it search Hatfill's home. Lamberth said the government's search warrants and supporting documents relating to Hatfill and his then-girlfriend Peck Chegne should be made public.

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times asked for the materials to be released, contending the public has a right to know why investigators wanted to search Hatfill's home and on what basis the courts agreed to allow those searches.

Five people were killed and 17 sickened when anthrax was mailed to Capitol Hill lawmakers and members of the media just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

After the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill "a person of interest" in the investigation, and stories by various reporters, including Locy, followed. Hatfill had worked at the Army's infectious diseases laboratory from 1997 to 1999.

In Locy's case, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the contempt order Monday and dismissed the case. However, judges Douglas H. Ginsburg, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Judith W. Rogers said the appeal raised "close questions" about federal evidentiary rules and the First Amendment.

"Because the underlying case has been settled, however, there is no longer 'a pending trial in which' the appellee's request for disclosure 'can be used,'" the judges wrote.

Locy, a former reporter with The Associated Press and other news organizations, now teaches journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.

"I am grateful that the appeals court vacated the contempt order against me but I am concerned that this matter may not be over given statements by Dr. Hatfill's lawyers that they intend to ask Judge Walton to force me to pay Dr. Hatfill's legal bills," Locy said. "The circuit did not deal with that issue and I could face a legal bill that far exceeds the fines that Judge Walton initially tried to levy against me."

Gregg Leslie, legal defense director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the dismissal of the case likely means that Hatfill will not be able to go after Locy for attorney fees.

"To go after someone for attorney fees you have to have substantially prevailed in litigation, and there's no order finding they prevailed," he said.

The panel's decision can still be appealed, Leslie said.

Lamberth said Chegne's search warrant material for her apartment and car should also be released, although she has not made her information public like Hatfill did with his lawsuit against the Justice Department. The judge said there were no "highly intimate or personal details of the kind that would present a compelling interest in not releasing the materials."

Hatfill and Chegne did not appear to argue that the material should be kept private. Justice Department lawyers, however, asked Lamberth to let Hatfill "get on with his life."

"The public has made a strong showing of need for the materials, much of the information is already in the public forum and there is no possibility of prejudice to an investigation or a future defendant," Lamberth said in the opinion. "These considerations, weighed against the government's generalized assertion that Dr. Hatfill has a privacy right to 'get on with his life,' mean that the Times would prevail even under a common law standard."

Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist eventually accused of carrying out the 2001 anthrax attacks, committed suicide in July as prosecutors prepared to charge him in the attacks.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects that Locy teaches at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, sted West Virginia University; INCORPORATES BC-Anthrax-Hatfill.)


Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Locy appeal dismissed, contempt order vacated

NEWS MEDIA UPDATE Washington, D.C. · November 17, 2008 · Reporter's privilege

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. threw out the appeal and the underlying contempt order against former USA Today reporter Toni Locy for refusing to reveal sources related to the government’s investigation of former Army scientist Steven Hatfill.

Hatfill sued the government for violating the Privacy Act when his name was leaked to the press as a “person of interest” in the 2001 anthrax attacks. In the course of his lawsuit, he subpoenaed Locy, as well as other reporters, for the confidential sources from the government. Last summer, Hatfill settled the Privacy Act claim with the government for $5.8. Meanwhile, the District Court in Washington, D.C., held Locy in contempt and imposed a daily fine.

Hatfill filed a motion to dismiss in September but Locy had urged the Court of Appeals to decide her case, arguing that the reporters privilege issues needed to be determined. The Court of Appeals on Monday agreed with Hatfill and held that there was no reason to decide whether Locy’s sources are privileged because Hatfill and the government had settled the case, thus the sources were no longer needed.

However, the court vacated the contempt order, thus eliminating the fear that the case would become negative precedent for reporter's privilege in D.C.

The Court acknowledged that the case raised important questions over the scope of the reporter’s privilege but held that: “Because the underlying case has been settled, however, there is no longer a “pending trial in which” the appellee’s request for disclosure “can be used.””

Besides holding her in contempt of court, the District Court decision also held that Hatfill may seek attorney fees from Locy -- which would end up being more expensive than any contempt fines. Now that the contempt order has been vacated, it is presumed that Hatfill cannot seek attorney's fees from Locy, because he cannot show he substantially prevailed in the litigation.

— Samantha Fredrickson, 6:18 pm

Copyright 2008 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

U.S. Loses Ruling on Hatfill

Tuesday, November 18, 2008; Page A14
A federal judge ordered the Justice Department yesterday to release documents that explain why investigators suspected Steven J. Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill has since been exonerated.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the Justice Department to make public affidavits and related records used to persuade judges to allow federal agents to search Hatfill's property. He also ruled that the government must disclose similar records involving Hatfill's girlfriend.

In ruling for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which were seeking the documents in a lawsuit, Lamberth wrote that the public has "a legitimate interest in observing and understanding how and why the investigation progressed in the way that it did."

In 2002, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft named Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the anthrax mailings, which killed five people and sickened 17 others. In June, the former bioweapons researcher settled a lawsuit alleging privacy violations by the Justice Department for $5.85 million. Prosecutors later officially "excluded" him as a suspect in the attacks.

Authorities now say that bacteriologist Bruce E. Ivins, who committed suicide in July, was the sole perpetrator of the crime.


-- Del Quentin Wilber

Capital Comment Blog

Your guide to the region's top events, mixed with some commentary about life, media, gossip and politics in Washington, DC.

The Guest List: November

By Garrett M. Graff

Welcome to the Guest List, a monthly roundup of the eight people we’d most like to have over for drinks, good food, and conversation.

1. Patty Stonesifer —The new chair of the Smithsonian regents is taking the helm during a trying time in the institution’s history.
2. Franklin Raines —The former Fannie Mae chief executive probably today wishes he’d never heard of the company.
3. Annette Nazareth —Talk about a well-timed hire: The former SEC commissioner said she was joining the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell just as the markets tanked.
4. George Parker —The head of the DC teachers union has a lot to say about how Michelle Rhee is doing turning around DC’s school system.
5. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin —The popular South Dakota congresswoman, who is expecting her first son in December, is one of the top “red state” Democrats.
6. Joe Persichini —So was Bruce Ivins responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks? The head of the Washington FBI office knows more than he’s saying.
7. Mary Brown —The head of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, which focuses on at-risk youth, won an Exponent Award, one of the region’s top honors for nonprofits.
8. Stephen Ayers —The acting architect of the Capitol is the man behind the December opening of the long-overdue Capitol Visitors Center as well as one of the lead planners for January’s inauguration.
This article first appeared in the
November 2008 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.

Capital Comment Blog

Your guide to the region's top events, mixed with some commentary about life, media, gossip and politics in Washington, DC.

The Guest List: November
By Garrett M. Graff

Welcome to the Guest List, a monthly roundup of the eight people we’d most like to have over for drinks, good food, and conversation.

1. Patty Stonesifer —The new chair of the Smithsonian regents is taking the helm during a trying time in the institution’s history.

2. Franklin Raines —The former Fannie Mae chief executive probably today wishes he’d never heard of the company.

3. Annette Nazareth —Talk about a well-timed hire: The former SEC commissioner said she was joining the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell just as the markets tanked.

4. George Parker —The head of the DC teachers union has a lot to say about how Michelle Rhee is doing turning around DC’s school system.

5. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin —The popular South Dakota congresswoman, who is expecting her first son in December, is one of the top “red state” Democrats.

6. Joe Persichini —So was Bruce Ivins responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks? The head of the Washington FBI office knows more than he’s saying.

7. Mary Brown —The head of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, which focuses on at-risk youth, won an Exponent Award, one of the region’s top honors for nonprofits.

8. Stephen Ayers —The acting architect of the Capitol is the man behind the December opening of the long-overdue Capitol Visitors Center as well as one of the lead planners for January’s inauguration.

This article first appeared in the November 2008 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.

SCIENTISTS SLAM FBI 'THRAX PROBE IN BID TO CLEAR BUDDY 'DR. DOOM'

Ivins told his lawyer that agents approached his adopted twins, Amanda and Andy, both 24. Ivins said they offered Andy $2.5 million and a sports car for information on his father, friends confirm. To Amanda, they showed pictures of anthrax victims and said, "Look at what your father did."

The equipment Ivins would have had to use to make the anthrax in the deadly mailings would have spewed poisonous aerosols and infected co-workers.

The colleagues of Army scientist Bruce Ivins , named last summer as the man behind the fatal post-9/11 anthrax mailings, want to sue the FBI, who they say fingered the wrong man.

SCIENTISTS SLAM FBI 'THRAX PROBE IN BID TO CLEAR BUDDY 'DR. DOOM'

By SUSANNAH CAHALAN

Last updated: 4:02 am

November 2, 2008

Posted: 3:21 am

November 2, 2008

It was an open-and-shut case, the FBI said.

But three months after agents pinned the post-9/11 anthrax mailings on Army scientist Bruce Ivins - who committed suicide as the FBI closed in on him - his former colleagues have approached a lawyer to sue the feds for fingering the wrong man, The Post has learned.
They argue that the FBI abused its power and violated its own policies as they probed an innocent man for six months.
One of Ivins' former colleagues was being aggressively pressured to confess to the crimes just two months before Ivins killed himself on July 29, he told The Post. And he identified at least one other employee who was under the same pressure.
The move by the Army scientists comes on the heels of a Senate Judiciary Committee demand for an independent review of the case following a hearing with FBI Director Robert Mueller in which committee members called the bureau's case an "open matter." The bureau has named a panel of independent scientists to review the evidence against Ivins - a probe that will take six to 18 months.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, a target of the 2001 anthrax attacks, said at the Judiciary Committee hearings that he doubted Ivins, who worked at Fort Detrick, Md., could have acted alone and that he believes "there are others who could be charged with murder."
Anthrax-laced letters were also mailed to then-Sen. Tom Daschle and news media outlets, including The Post.
"The people at Fort Detrick would love to see some suit brought, some way of reckoning, adjudicating this," said Ivins' Maryland-based lawyer, Paul Kemp. The Pentagon had refused a request to allow Ivins' colleagues to speak to Kemp.
The case the feds presented rested mainly on these FBI claims:
* The dry anthrax used in the mailings shared key genetic variables unique to a wet anthrax strain created by Ivins in his lab at Fort Detrick.
* Ivins logged an increasingly large amount of after-hours overtime in his lab in the weeks leading up to the anthrax mailings.
* Ivins submitted false samples of anthrax from his lab to the FBI for forensic analysis in order to mislead investigators.
* Ivins was psychologically troubled and told co-workers that he had "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times" and that he feared he might not be able to control his behavior. They cited his preoccupation with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma - which included altering its Wikipedia page, e-mailing former members and spreading Internet chatter about the sorority - as indications of an unstable and obsessive mind.

In interviews with a dozen of Ivins' colleagues at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, his friends and independent scientists, The Post found many of them would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they believed they were still under FBI surveillance and their phones were being tapped.
Together, those closest to Ivins cited a laundry list of holes in the feds' conclusions. They include:
1) Ivins could not have made dry anthrax spores in his lab without sickening people.
To convert the wet anthrax strain he had developed at Fort Detrick - the only strain he worked with - into dry anthrax, which can be inhaled and is much more lethal, Ivins would have had to use a lyophilizer, a freeze-drying machine that is able to dry large quantities of liquid.
Ivins' colleagues say they never saw the scientist working with dry spores - in fact, dry anthrax was not made at USAMRIID - until he was asked to examine the anthrax-laced letter sent to Daschle.
The lyophilizer, located in a hallway surrounded by four labs, did not have a protective hood. A hood is necessary to circulate and filter air and make it possible to use the lyophilizer to work with harmful bacteria without the bacteria becoming airborne. Co-workers say the hoodless lyophilizer would have spewed poisonous aerosols, infecting co-workers. But no colleagues of Ivins experienced any symptoms.
Co-workers also point out that the machine would have to be fully decontaminated after use - a 24-hour process called paraformaldehyde decontamination that involves locking down the lab.
Without a full decontamination, the machine would have contaminated other bacteria or liquids used on the machine at a later date. And if it had not been decontaminated, the FBI should have been able to find traces of the dry anthrax on the machine. Yet they swabbed Ivins' machinery numerous times and were unable to find traces of dry anthrax spores in his lab, Kemp said.
2) Records show that Ivins logged an average of only two hours of overtime in the weeks leading up to the attacks - and even at those times, he could not have gone undetected.
Even if Ivins did have access to a freeze-drying machine and a protective hood, sources who worked closely with Ivins estimate it would take a minimum of 40 days of continuous work without detection to create the volume of spores used in the attacks.
"If he was working eight hours a day on spore prep every day, it would be noticed," said Gerry Andrews, Ivins' supervisor between 2000 and 2003. "It's ridiculous."
Ivins' lab - just 200 square feet - was in "highly trafficked areas, and Bruce had colleagues that worked with him every day," Andrews said.
Meanwhile, in September and October of 2001, Ivins was involved in 19 research projects, including working on the Department of Defense-funded anthrax vaccine that is now in clinical trials, anthrax vaccine testing on rabbits and monkeys, and an outside project with a government-contracted lab, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio.
3) The FBI called Ivins the "sole custodian" of the strain of anthrax used in the mailings. But at least 200 people had access to the strain created by Ivins at Fort Detrick.
More than 100 people had access to Ivins' lab at USAMRIID. Ivins' anthrax strain, RMR-1029, was kept there as well as stored at a nearby building between 1997 and 1999, a building to which others had access. In addition, multiple facilities outside of Fort Detrick were sent RMR-1029 for their own research, including government laboratories, the Battelle lab and academic institutions like the University of New Mexico.
In September, FBI Director Mueller conceded other labs and scientists had access to Ivins' anthrax, but would not disclose how the bureau had ruled out other suspects.
4) The FBI has not released any physical evidence linking Ivins to the attacks or defined a motive.
After obtaining three warrants to search the Ivins home starting in October 2007, the FBI never found a single anthrax spore there - though scientists say the kind of airborne anthrax used in the mailings would have clung to any objects it came in contact with.
Nor were they able to place Ivins near the Princeton, NJ, mailbox from which all the lethal anthrax letters were mailed - though they noted that a Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter kept its rush materials, initiation robes and other property 100 yards from where the anthrax letters were sent.
Ivins passed two polygraph tests - one administered after the attacks and another when he became a suspect, according to his lawyer. He also submitted a writing sample that, Kemp said, did not implicate him.
Co-workers said Ivins stood to gain only $2,000 for a patent and minimal royalties from drug companies for the vaccine he helped produce.
"There is not one substantial motive," Andrews said.
In 2003, USAMRIID implemented a Personnel Reliability Program, with employees undergoing psychiatric evaluations, financial background checks and full medical exams. If Ivins had psychological issues, the Army never flagged them - and instead deemed him capable of working with biological weapons.
5) The FBI investigation was filled with inconsistencies and bordered on harassment.
The FBI claims Ivins was a suspect since early 2007, but they waited until July 23, 2008, to gather DNA evidence from him, delayed examining records showing Ivins' late nights spent in the lab, and waited years to swab the mailbox in Princeton.
They also allowed Ivins to have full access to the anthrax labs until November 2007.
Scientists at USAMRIID said the FBI was aggressively pursuing other suspects two months before Ivins killed himself.
In April 2007, the FBI sent Ivins a letter saying he was "not a target of the investigation" and said it was investigating 42 people who had access to RMR-1029 at the Battelle labs in Ohio, Kemp said.
Once they identified him as a suspect, the FBI investigators conspicuously tailed Ivins for six months before he killed himself, two neighbors of Ivins told The Post. They sat outside his house in their cars and rented the house next door for stakeouts.
After three months under surveillance, Ivins hired a lawyer, Kemp, to whom he complained that agents had approached his adopted twins, Amanda and Andy, both 24. Ivins said they offered Andy $2.5 million and a sports car for information on his father, friends confirm.
To Amanda, they showed pictures of anthrax victims and said, "Look at what your father did," according to Kemp. The FBI denied this.
Friends said agents took Ivins' wife, Diane, and the children to hotels where they grilled them for hours.
"Most people in Fort Detrick believe that [the FBI was] just going after the weakest link," said Dr. W. Russell Byrne, Ivins' supervisor between 1998 and 2000. "It looked like an organized effort in intimidation."
Co-workers of Ivins' were warned by USAMRIID officials not to speak with Ivins in his office, and he was told that he couldn't participate in work activities or parties. His friends say it was the last straw for a man who relied on work for his social life.
Since the investigation against Ivins began, workers at USAMRIID have been forced to sign confidentiality agreements.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said: "The FBI is still handling administrative business and closing the loop on outstanding issues. Therefore, the investigation is still pending. However, the case has been solved; as the FBI and the Department of Justice have stated publicly.
"The FBI is absolutely positive that Dr. Bruce Ivins and only Dr. Bruce Ivins was responsible for the anthrax mailings."

scahalan@nypost.com