folo

It only took our crack FBI seven freakin’ years to close in on determining who really did use envelopes of anthrax to kill five people, cripple the U.S. mail, shut down a Senate office building, and spread terror after the Sept. 11 attacks. And just as they were about to arrest the guy they think did it (after letting him know they were going to), he up and commits suicide on them, reports the LA Times.

A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator’s office in Washington.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI. …

Among the story’s details, I find this passage particularly appalling:

The extraordinary turn of events followed the government’s payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI’s chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax.

The payout to Hatfill, a highly unusual development that all but exonerated him in the mailings, was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.

Federal investigators moved away from Hatfill — for years the only publicly identified “person of interest” — and ultimately concluded that Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006.

I’ve never understood what’s kept Mueller in his job all these bungling years, and this story does nothing to solve that mystery.

UPDATE: Damn. Having just read Glenn Greenwald’s Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News, I hereby apologize to certain of the conspiracy-theorists whose tinfoil hats I’ve previously derided.