Anthrax Redux: Did the Feds Nab the Wrong Guy?

Illustration for WIRED by Goñi Montes

Noah Shachtman has an epic, 11,000 word piece in the current issue of Wired Magazine on the biggest case in FBI history. It's a long read, but an amazing one. Here's an intro to the story, from Noah:

For years, FBI agents insisted that they knew exactly who launched the
anthrax attacks that killed five people and scared the living hell out
of the county in the fall of 2001. Now, the Bureau is admitting for
the first time that the case still has major holes.

Days after Army biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins committed suicide,
the FBI declared that he was the one who mailed the lethal,
spore-filled letters. The combination of ground-breaking science and
circumstantial evidence damning Ivins was overwhelming, the Bureau
insisted. Then the FBI ended this biggest investigation in its
history: a nine-year, thousand-suspect manhunt to track down the
anthrax killer.

But in an interview with WIRED, agent Edward Montooth, who headed up
the anthrax investigation, acknowledges that he's still unsure of
everything from Ivins' motivation to when Ivins brewed up the lethal
concoction. "We still have a difficult time nailing down the time
frame," Montooth says. "We don't know when he made or dried the
spores."

And Montooth isn't alone. The scientists who developed the most
convincing evidence against Ivins have even deeper reservations. Paul
Keim, who identified the anthrax strain used in the attacks, now tells
WIRED, "I don't know if Ivins sent the letters." Claire
Fraser-Liggett, who used DNA sequencing to tie the killer spores to an
anthrax flask in Ivins' possession, concedes that "there are still
some holes."

It's been nearly a decade since the deadliest biological terror attack
ever launched on U.S. soil. The manhunt that followed it ruined one
scientist's reputation and saw a second driven to suicide. But an
in-depth look at the anthrax investigation in this month's WIRED
magazine shows that nagging problems remain. Despite the FBI's
assurances, it's not at all certain that the government could have
ever convicted Ivins of a crime.