The FBI will never succeed in putting this matter to rest. They have convicted the wrong man and have destroyed any hope that we will find those truly responsible.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials on Monday laid out their most detailed scientific case to date against Bruce E. Ivins, the military scientist accused of being the anthrax killer, but they acknowledged that the many mysteries of the case meant an air of uncertainty would always surround it.
[...]Dr. Ivins, a longtime anthrax researcher at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Maryland, killed himself last month as the Justice Department was preparing an indictment against him. Since his death, a number of scientists have said that the limited forensic evidence that the F.B.I. made public in linking the attacks to Dr. Ivins is inconclusive.
The unusual presentation by the bureau on Monday was intended to quell those doubts, but some scientists remained skeptical. They said it would be months before they were able to evaluate fully the strength of the forensic evidence, and the new process used, in an independent setting.
At the briefing, F.B.I. officials disclosed that they first obtained a sample of a unique strain of anthrax from Dr. Ivins in 2002, one that could have led them back to the strain used in the 2001 attacks. But the bureau destroyed the sample because Dr. Ivins did not follow protocol in the way it was submitted, making it more difficult to use in court.
It was not until 2006, after a backup copy of Dr. Ivins’s sample was found by another scientist working with the F.B.I., that the bureau’s scientists realized it was the same strain used in the anthrax mailings. That crucial finding helped confirm other evidence pointing to Dr. Ivins.
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