Despite Demons, Ivins Stayed At High-Security Lab
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — What took so long?
Army scientist Bruce Ivins had a history of paranoia, obsession, and delusional thinking. And newly unsealed court documents show he didn’t keep them to himself.
Therapists knew.
Doctors knew.
Co-workers suspected. One complained he was a “manic basket case.” Another recalled him openly weeping at his desk inside one of the military’s top biological warfare facilities.
The Justice Department, too, had long focused on Ivins. Investigators discovered years ago that he worked late nights just before the 2001 anthrax attacks. And by 2005, government scientists had genetically linked anthrax in his lab to the toxin that killed five people.
Yet Ivins stayed on the job at the military lab at Fort Detrick.
As the FBI closed in on its top suspect, Ivins grew more unstable. He killed himself last week, more than a year after the FBI had gathered the primary evidence held up Wednesday as proof of his guilt.
Privacy concerns, bureaucratic loopholes, the demands of a criminal investigation — all combined to let Ivins keep his job and stay out of jail for years. And in the high-security lab until last November.
That question goes beyond the criminal investigation. It goes to the heart of how secure the nation’s nearly 1,400 biological defense labs are and whether the estimated 14,000 scientists working with deadly toxins are being screened for the kind of mental illness Ivins exhibited.
“The thinking now by the psychiatrist and counselor is that my symptoms may not be those of a depression or a bipolar disorder, they may be that of a ‘Paranoid Personality Disorder,'” he wrote in a July 2000 e-mail included in government documents released Wednesday.
Investigators said that between 2000 and 2006 Ivins had been prescribed antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety drugs. It wasn’t until November 2007, after the FBI raided his home, that Fort Detrick revoked his laboratory access.
Lawmakers have pledged to investigate the anthrax case and lab security generally. Bills in the House and Senate would order a review of how scientists work with deadly toxins.
