Skeptics question FBI anthrax case

Zionist plot?
Others, especially anti-Jewish writers, blame the attack on a Zionist plot, with the anthrax being smuggled out a decade earlier by a Jewish scientist caught sneaking into the lab late at night.

One flaw in that theory is that the scientist is not Jewish — at least not according to his wedding announcement, which said he was Catholic. Another is that, according to the FBI's genetic analysis, the deadly anthrax wasn't created until years later — by Ivins.

University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster, an author of a book on conspiracy theories, said the anthrax case is perfect for conspiracy theorists because it is "as dangerous as it could possibly be, and also deeply mysterious." The Bush administration's penchant for secrecy doesn't help, nor does its intelligence failures on Iraq, he said.

There are also several unanswered questions that the FBI can only theorize about. For instance, investigators can't place Ivins in New Jersey when the letters were mailed. And they can't say for sure how he could have converted the anthrax into a powder, a process other scientists said would have been difficult to perform without being noticed.

And then there's Ivins, who cannot defend himself.

"It's almost a generic aspect of conspiracy theories that some of the most important witnesses, or the fall guy for that matter — think Lee Harvey Oswald — is now dead because they can't contradict or complicate a conspiracy theory," Fenster said.

Mysterious death
Hodges, the graduate student, said the Ivins case reminds him of the mysterious death of another Army former Ft. Detrick scientist, Frank Olson. The official explanation was that, in 1953, Olson unwittingly took LSD in a CIA experiment and leaped to his death from a 13th-floor window. His family says he was murdered to maintain secrets about government weapons programs.

As for Ivins, Hodges said a biologist would have known that a Tylenol overdose is a long and painful way to commit suicide.

Capitol Hill lawmakers have pledged to investigate the anthrax attacks and the FBI's response to them. Congressional hearings will answer some questions. Others may never be answered.

Lake, who runs the Web site AnthraxInvestigation.com, says the evidence so far suggests Ivins was the anthrax killer, even though it runs counter to his long-held theory that two men acted together.

But he wants to know more about the genetic analysis. He wants to know whether the anthrax really was "weaponized" as suggested early in the case and, if so, how Ivins learned how to do it. Those questions will silence some critics, he said, but not all.

"I've seen the theories that he was a pawn like Lee Harvey Oswald. That's going to be hard to disprove," he said. "How do you disprove that a dead man was not a puppet being manipulated by the CIA? You're talking about proving a negative. You can't prove aliens didn't mail the letters."

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