EXCLUSIVE

THE ANTHRAX KILLER
OR
AN INNOCENT MAN?

WHERE WAS
DR. BRUCE E. IVINS
COLUMBUS DAY HOLIDAY
WEEKEND 2001?

OCT 6th
OCT 7th
OCT 8TH

By Eric Longabardi

(Aug 7th, 2008 9:30AM PST)

The FBI and the Dept. of Justice say they know who mailed anthrax laden letters to members of the media and two members of Congress in September and October of 2001.  

They say the Anthrax killer is Bruce E. Ivins, a highly regarded scientist who worked at the US Army’s biological research lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.   Ivins committed suicide last week.  


Since there will be no trial, the Government is trying Ivins in the Court of Public Opinion. The Government has just released some of its evidence in the case.   The search warrants obtained by federal agents investigating the case describe what was seized (and not seized) during the searches.  The warrants also lay out the allegations brought by federal agents and why they suspected Ivins as the prime suspect in the case after 2005.  His access to the anthrax, which the government says was the exact batch that was used to create the anthrax used in the 2001 killings, was its primary piece of evidence.  The government says it had excluded other suspects and only Ivins remained.

If you take the government's evidence against Bruce Ivins as true there is still one glaring question. Where was Bruce Ivins when the letters were mailed? Did he mail them or did he have an alibi?  For Ivins to have mailed the letters he had to be in Princeton New Jersey to do so.  If he was not in New Jersey he didn’t personally mail the letters. Did he have an accomplice?  It is possible that someone else could have mailed them for him but the FBI doesn’t believe that and they say Ivins acted alone.

The government says the anthrax letters were mailed from a postal mail box at 10 Nassau Street in Princeton New Jersey. The two letters sent to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were postmarked on October 9, 2001.  The post mark bore a time stamp of 5:45P.  That means the letters had to have been put in the mail box during a window of opportunity - which according to the pick up schedule of the postal box in question was between Saturday Oct 6th (after 3PM) and until Tuesday October 9th.  The mail was not collected on Sunday or Monday October 8, 2001 because of the Columbus Day holiday that Monday.  The mail from that box was picked up on Tuesday October 9, hence the October 9th post mark on the letters.

So where was Dr. Bruce Ivins on those days?  The FBI, Postal Inspectors and the full weight of the US government investigative agencies cannot determine that.  Despite all the allegations and evidence presented to date, the government has not presented a single piece of evidence as to where Dr. Ivins was on those dates.  

The only evidence the FBI seems to have uncovered about Dr. Ivins whereabouts at the time in question is that he was in the lab at Fort Detrick until 12:45AM on Saturday October 6th.  They again provide evidence that he was again at work at the lab on October 9th in the evening.

The missing extended weekend of October 6th through the 8th is a massive hole in their case.  The drive from Fort Detrick, MD to Princeton New Jersey is about 3 1-2 hours.   So far the FBI and the U.S. Government have no “evidence” that they have shown where Dr. Ivins was when the letters were mailed.

In the press conference, US Attorney Jeff Taylor responded with this answer to a reporter who asked about the subject of Dr. Ivins whereabouts on the dates the letters were mailed:

MR. TAYLOR (sic) … With respect to the mailbox, as I laid out before, there is ample evidence in this case pointing to Dr. Ivins as the individual who drove to Princeton to mail those letters. He had the hours in the hot seat during the relevant times. We looked at the records when he was at work and when he would have had time to drive to Princeton, New Jersey. And it's clear from those records that he had time on the relevant occasions to drive to Princeton, mail the envelopes, and come back. There's also evidence I'll refer you to in the affidavits concerning where that mailbox was located in Princeton, New Jersey in relation to some obsessive conduct on his part with regard to a sorority. Again, it's a chain. It's a chain of evidentiary items that, assembled together, leads to one reasonable conclusion, and that is Dr. Ivins mailed that anthrax in those envelopes from that mailbox in Princeton.

QUESTION: Is there evidence like a gas receipt that shows that he was there, I mean, that actually proves that he was in that area?
MR. TAYLOR: We don't have that piece of direct evidence you mentioned.

If Dr. Ivins is the anthrax killer then the evidence of his whereabouts for those three crucial days when the letters had to have been mailed from Princeton New Jersey should be somewhere.

The case is still officially open so maybe there is more evidence to come.

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