Tonight, in the shadow of 9/11,
a new kind of terror strikes at the heart of America.
This is the first death by Anthrax in the United States
in more than 25 years.
This silent killer is out there.
You could just simply open up your mailbox,
and that could just kill you.
Every day, it seems as if more and more people
are getting sick.
Panic spreads around the country as the poisoned letters
keep coming.
This can spread very rapidly and it's very dangerous.
You could be looking at thousands of victims.
Random people seem to be getting sick and dying.
Fear and terror is really at a high.
The killer has access to military bioweapons labs.
Perhaps something has gone on
that the government doesn't want us to know.
Now, we investigate the top theories
surrounding the deadly act of bioterrorism
that shocked the nation.
Just who was responsible for the anthrax attacks of 2001?
October 2nd, 2001, just a few weeks
after the 9/11 attacks, 63-year-old Robert Stevens,
a photo editor for the "National Enquirer" tabloid,
stumbles into the ER with flu-like symptoms.
Robert Stevens is showing symptoms
including high fever, vomiting, and disorientation.
And the hospital admits him with a diagnosis
of bacterial meningitis, which is
swelling of the tissue around the brain.
After he's admitted, within five hours,
he starts having seizures and he slips into a coma.
Very quickly, multiple organs start failing
inside of his body,
and they recognize that they're in a race against time
to determine what's making this man ill.
When they take a spinal tap
and subject it to microscopic analysis,
they have a a real shock.
They're surprised to discover
that it's not bacterial meningitis.
This man has been infected with anthrax.
Anthrax disease caused by the bacteria Bacillus anthracis
and it's usually transferred cutaneously,
so through the skin.
Another type of way to get it is through ingestion
or the type of anthrax that Stevens has, inhalation.
And with inhalatial anthrax, about a hundred percent chance
that you're gonna die without treatment.
You don't get symptoms right away.
So it takes a while for those symptoms to show up
and by that time, sometimes people don't even respond
to antibiotics.
Then, your body just starts to really fail very quickly.
Stevens fails to respond to antibiotics
and the infection continues to ravage his body,
causing sepsis, and ultimately organ failure.
Stevens dies on October 5th,
four days after checking into the hospital.
The first anthrax fatality in the US in more than 25 years.
When Stevens dies from his anthrax infection,
basically a panic ensues, because they're not certain
where he could have possibly come into contact with anthrax.
This can spread very rapidly and it's very dangerous.
And if you have a massive outbreak, its self-propagates.
You could be looking at thousands of victims.
This is 2001, and it's less than a month
after the 9/11 attacks, so people are a bit on edge.
The Center for Disease Control,
even the FBI has gotten involved
'cause anthrax is a very, very scary and virulent condition.
What's also tricky with anthrax
is that it can take up to seven days
for anybody to exhibit symptoms.
Investigators go everywhere Stevens had been
in the last week, including his offices at American Media,
which owns the "National Enquirer".
They start doing a pretty intensive search
for the anthrax bacteria.
One place that pops up is on Robert Steven's keyboard.
They also find it in a mail room employee.
He's showing some symptoms.
So, they have those two cases.
And after that, they shut down the AMI offices.
If you're going into a space that has random spores
of anthrax just in the atmosphere,
that means hazmat suits, that means ventilators,
that means people in big masks in.
It looks like a science fiction movie.
It's very, very scary.
And now, you can't keep this under wraps anymore.
You've got additional people infected.
It's clearly not an isolated event.
For the authorities,
there's only one logical explanation.
This has to be an act of bioterrorism.
After World War I, there was a recognition
that chemical warfare was unacceptable,
but they did not necessarily extend to biological weapons.
In the post-World War II era, both the United States
and the Soviet Union produce substantial stockpiles
of bioweapons to include weaponized anthrax.
Anthrax, for a long time, has been thought of
as a potentially potent biological weapon.
It's indestructible, and that can be made into forms
that are very hard to detect and very small.
Ostensibly, biological weapons are outlawed
by the Biological Weapons Convention,
but they are allowed to produce stockpiles
for the purpose of research and the production of things
like vaccines, inoculations, and treatments.
The FBI tries to head off growing panic by insisting
that they're treating this as an isolated case.
But behind the scenes, there's definitely growing concern
that this might be part of a much broader attack.
On October 12th,
just four days later, the FBI's fears are realized.
An employee from "NBC News" in New York
has also been exposed to anthrax.
Casey Chamberlain, who works for Tom Brokaw,
opens his mail.
She'd received a letter, and it was very upsetting.
It had a childish hand scrawl,
and it said "Death to America.
Death to Israel.
Allah is great," in it.
And in addition, it seemed to have this strange,
powdery, sandy-like substance in the envelope.
She starts having flu-like symptoms.
It doesn't take long for it to become apparent,
she too has come down with anthrax.
The news raced across the city's ticker tape.
The mayor tried to reassure the population
this was just an isolated case.
It is likely that this issue
all began way back on September 25th.
So, one piece of good news
is that if anyone else was gonna be infected,
it would've happened by now.
Over the next few days,
seven additional anthrax cases are reported
at news organizations around New York,
including at NBC, ABC, CBS, and the New York Post.
And less than a month after 9/11,
everybody in New York is on edge.
We've been hearing since September 11th,
the enemy of America, who has shown a spectacular ability
to attack America, is Al-Qaeda.
So when a biological attack begins
so soon after September 11th, makes sense
that Al-Qaeda would be the first place you'd look.
On October 15th,
fears of a coordinated terrorist attack
are seemingly confirmed when anthrax
reaches the heart of the federal government.
Grant Leslie, an intern for Senator Tom Daschle,
opens up his mail,
and she sees an envelope
that's addressed to Senator Tom Daschle.
The return address is 4th Grade, Greendale School.
So she thinks by the block lettering
that this is a nice letter from some school children.
She opens it up
and a white powder comes out of the envelope.
The letter that is received is hand scrawled.
It's almost childish in the way it looks
and the message is similar too, but it's longer this time.
It reads, "9-11-01.
You can't stop us.
We have this anthrax.
You die now.
Are you afraid? Death to America.
Death to Israel. Allah is great."
Investigators come, they quarantine the office
and they find another letter.
This letter was addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy.
That letter also contained anthrax.
So, they close down the Capitol.
They treat all of the staffers there with antibiotics
and they find about another 30 infections
due to inhalation anthrax.
People are terrified, because they can't see anthrax.
They have no mechanism to
protect themselves against anthrax
and now, you have three discreet attacks
that are very obviously an ongoing campaign
and it's got the public in a panic.
The vast majority of the population
has leapt to the expectation that this is Al-Qaeda
carrying out the next stage in a terror campaign.
The narrative was already in place
that this was more likely another Al-Qaeda
terrorist attack on the United States
and so, people tried to start putting pieces together.
The ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta,
had been in South Florida,
not far from that AMI office,
learning to fly aircraft near an airfield,
where they had a crop duster
and he was asking a lot of questions about the crop duster.
It seems to some people
like there was certainly a lot of smoke there, if not fire.
That, of course, heightens the fear,
because the crop duster with anthrax
could put millions of spores across a large city
and kill millions of people.
Despite this public concern,
investigators can't find a clear link to Al-Qaeda.
The question is, who else is a suspect?
So the one unifying factor
between the attacks at the Capitol, the attacks on media
is that these are all being sent through the mail
at a large facility that actually sorts the mail
for the Capitol, two postal workers end up dying.
More people are infected.
Lots of people have been exposed.
So, the FBI immediately goes to the postal facilities
and starts backtracking where the mail was sent from
and they start checking the cameras.
They do multiple searches across dozens of sites
and nothing to show for it.
And so, the FBI really doesn't have a clue who's behind it.
By late October, 2001, nearly 20 people
have contracted anthrax infections
and three have died, with hundreds more being treated
for exposure.
Still, investigators have no idea
who's been sending the deadly spores through the mail.
As this investigation continues to expand,
the United States government sets up an anthrax task force
and they're going to pull in multiple agencies,
all of whom have overlapping responsibilities
to try to bring all of the resources together
to stop these attacks.
The first wave of letters sent to the news agencies
in New York all have a Trenton, New Jersey postmark address
and were all sent on the same date.
September 18th, 2001.
The letter to Tom Brokaw has no return address.
It's just addressed to Tom Brokaw, NBC News.
The letter to Tom Daschle does have a return address.
Return address is the Greendale School
in Franklin, New Jersey.
There is no Greendale School in Franklin, New Jersey.
It's a fake return address.
It becomes apparent that all of these letters
have been photocopied on a photocopy machine,
and then cut to slightly different sizes
before they're sent.
The other commonality between the two sets of letters
is they can't find any fingerprints, no DNA.
Whoever is doing these letters
actually understands how not to get caught.
What's most concerning
has to do with the anthrax spores themselves.
The airborne anthrax spores sent to the Senate,
which sickened many and killed two postal workers,
is found to be even more refined and potent
than the spores sent to the news organizations.
As they dig deeper, they determine
that this is weapons-grade anthrax,
which means by definition, it almost certainly
came from a bioweapons lab,
possessed by a major nation state,
but the one we're more focused on is Iraq.
Starting around 1985, Saddam Hussein begins
to develop massive biological weapons,
including anthrax.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s,
Iraq had deliberately subjected Iranian POWs
to chemical and biological weapons.
One story is that prisoners of war were tied to beds
inside of a room that was sealed up,
and then they released anthrax into this room.
And through an observation window,
scientists and military personnel
observed their horrific deaths.
After 1991, the Iraqis were expected
by the armistice negotiations
to destroy all of their stockpiles
of biological and chemical weapons,
as well as end any nuclear weapons ambitions.
But the Iraqis played a lot of games.
They tried to hide at least some of their materials
from weapons inspectors.
While the Iraqis publicly claimed
that they had destroyed the stockpiles, privately,
it's clear that they were holding things back.
Saddam Hussein has also been threatening revenge
against the US after his defeat in the First Gulf War.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11,
the US starts to point to Iraq
as a possible partner with Al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks
and any ensuing terror attacks against the country.
When scientists test the anthrax used
on Capitol Hill, some say they uncover the proof
of an Iraqi connection.
And in late October, we get this bombshell report
from "ABC News," that the anthrax
contained another material called bentonite
and it was made to weaponize anthrax
and make it easier to disperse and more lethal.
The intelligence said that bentonite
was only used for the production of anthrax
by one country in the world,
and that country was Iraq.
On October 31st,
two days after the news report
tying the anthrax attacks to Iraq,
there's another fatality.
So far, all of these have been targeted attacks,
the media, the financial institutions,
but then we have a 61-year-old stock clerk in the Bronx
who comes down with anthrax and she dies.
61-year-old Kathy Nguyen of the Bronx
died of the inhaled form of anthrax.
So far, officials have not been able to trace
how she got it.
She hasn't been to the offices of NBC News, recently.
She hasn't been to the offices of the "New York Post."
She hasn't been sorting mail.
So, how did she get this?
It raises this possibility that anthrax
is being dispersed in a way that could infect
anybody, anywhere, which is very scary.
A couple of weeks later,
94-year-old Ottilie Lundgren from Connecticut
also contracts inhalation anthrax and dies.
Now, this is a person that was basically home bound.
She did not leave her home very often.
She did not work for the media,
did not work for the government.
This is another innocent person that has no connection
to be a typical target for this attack, but another death.
Again, just showing how this killer is out there
and that you could just simply open up your mailbox
and that will just kill you.
This is a stark reminder that this is a spore
that has been upgraded
from its naturally occurring, very dangerous state
to make it possible for it to propagate
as widely as possible.
It's essentially an uncontrollable weapon.
Once you release it on the public, it could go anywhere
and this absolutely terrifies people.
And if there's a connection to an external actor,
like Iraq, that might be supporting
the world's largest and deadliest terror organization,
panic is about to ensue.
Reports then emerge
of a top secret Al-Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence meeting
in Prague, which if true would have explosive consequences.
There's one intelligence report
that the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta,
met with a member of the Iraqi intelligence
in a meeting in Prague.
The report backs up a growing suspicion of a link
between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
So when the anthrax attacks happen,
it's not a stretch to think that we're in the midst
of another targeted, coordinated attack,
with Al-Qaeda and Iraq working together.
Vice President Dick Cheney publicly confirms
that Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent
during a national media appearance.
Despite Cheney's suspicions,
no Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda is ever proven.
Scientists also begin to back off their claim
that there was bentonite, an Iraqi bioweapons signature,
found in any of the anthrax letters.
Despite the fact that it seems
like these two things are connected,
no link ever really emerges.
There's never proof that Al-Qaeda is working with Iraq
or with Saddam Hussein.
So ultimately, we're back to square one, not really knowing
where the attacks are coming from or who is targeting us.
In late October, 2001,
the anthrax investigation turns in a new direction.
The FBI reveals that the spores used in the attacks
came from a strain of bacteria
developed in US military labs.
It's known as the Ames strain.
The Ames strain was originally isolated
from an infected cow back in the 1980s
and it was taken and used by the military
to try and develop an anthrax vaccine.
Even after identifying the strain,
investigators are no closer
to finding out who's been sending it.
There's not really a way to narrow down
exactly where the source must have been,
because it is still distributed into multiple facilities.
And so, the next attack could be around the corner
and you're still not sure
where the original source material was
or how much of it was available to the attacker.
The strain was kept and used for research purposes
in 15 labs across the United States
and three labs internationally.
So, that was the initial focus
was to try to determine who in those labs
might have had the the means and the motive
to weaponize the spores for the anthrax attacks.
Meanwhile, Americans continue to brace
for another possible attack from Osama bin Laden
and Al-Qaeda.
With the public already on edge
about an external terrorism attack,
the FBI is wary of making the public even more jittery
about potential homegrown terrorism,
so they continue their investigation
in complete secrecy.
As the weeks pass with no news,
frustration grows,
especially within the scientific community.
For the scientists, they're horrified
that something they might have had a hand in producing
is being used to target and kill Americans,
but the FBI seems to be becoming more suspicious
and even adversarial towards them
as they the leadership of the investigation
becomes more convinced
that this was probably a domestic attack.
In February, 2002, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
who is the chairwoman
of the Federation of American Scientists
and somebody who's been a staunch
anti-bioweapons crusader,
she publishes a blog post called
"Is the FBI 'dragging its feet.'"
And she says that based on her conversations
with scientists, she believes that the attacks
are the result of a military-led bioweapons project
that's gone awry.
She claims that for months, the FBI has known
that the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks
is actually an American.
For the scientists investigating
this outbreak or attack on Americans,
they went from assisting with the investigation
to potentially being suspects of the investigation.
Then, you had no idea that all of this information
that you were being given by these various scientists,
if one of them was the culprit,
you may have gotten inaccurate information.
So, it completely changes the whole dynamic
of the investigation all of a sudden.
Rosenberg suggests
that the person who has done this,
the person who is behind these attacks
was probably preparing the anthrax in the summer of 2001.
Then 9/11 happens in September
and offers the perfect cover.
That instead of Al-Qaeda being behind this,
the killer is actually blaming Al-Qaeda
to hide their own nefarious activity.
There are certainly some that argue that handwritten
notes with basic grammatical errors
are not the hallmark of an Al-Qaeda communication,
but in the American mindset it played towards a stereotype.
If these attacks were carried out by an American,
that individual was using the anthrax letters
to throw off suspicion.
Rosenberg isn't alone in feeling
that something is amiss here in the FBI's investigation.
Other scientists claim that for one thing,
a single lone rogue worker wouldn't be able to create
the kind of spores that we see in the attacks.
She also suggests that the FBI
must know that the killer has access
to military bioweapons labs
and in these bioweapons labs,
perhaps something has gone on that the government
doesn't want us to know.
The assertion is tied
to an international bioweapons ban
that the US signed in 1972.
There are suspicions that despite signing this
treaty, the United States never actually dismantled this program
and that they've continued
to develop military grade bioweapons,
including anthrax for years.
If the US was caught in violation
of something like the Biological Weapons Convention,
certainly the US would lose some of its moral authority
in the international sphere.
It would certainly make us look like hypocrites.
Rosenberg's most shocking claim
is that the government is afraid to arrest
the person involved, because it will show
that the problem is linked to bioweapons labs,
potentially to activity that the government
isn't supposed to be doing
and that they're doing in secret,
and that as a result, they're looking the other way.
There's an enormous amount of political
and public pressure on the FBI to get results.
The public is starting to wonder
if maybe the FBI is the wrong organization
for this type of investigation.
The FBI vehemently denies dragging its feet
in order to prevent a national security scandal.
The FBI now turns its investigation
to homegrown terrorists.
They start focusing on suspects with scientific backgrounds
and access to the deadly pathogen
with ties to military infectious disease labs.
More than nine months
since the anthrax terror attacks began,
there's seemingly little progress in the case
and the FBI is under enormous pressure
to catch the perpetrator.
The FBI interviews hundreds of scientists
working in the field, pulls together their list
of potential suspects, and in June of 2002,
they close in on their man.
Steven Hatfill has a lot of the credentials.
He is somebody who works in microbiology.
He is a scientist and has connections
to an army research lab on infectious diseases
at Fort Detrick in Maryland
Under FBI questioning,
Hatfill denies having any involvement
or knowledge in the anthrax attacks
and even agrees to take a polygraph,
which he reportedly passes.
The FBI knows full well that polygraphs
are not legally admissible and they're not infallible
and so they continue to dig deeper into Hatfill's life.
So that they can go into Hatfill's home
and look for any evidence of any anthrax spores
or anything else that might implicate him in the attacks.
However, the FBI or at least someone within it
tipped off the press as to what they were doing.
An enormous media circus follows.
Hatfill's home is under constant observation by media
and Hatfill himself cannot set foot
outside without being constantly harassed.
As more information comes out about his background
in bioweapons, the public also becomes convinced
that he's guilty.
This is long before any trial.
He is not even been arrested yet,
but there's this sense that he must be the right guy.
The bureau seems to be developing almost tunnel vision.
They think they found the right person
and they're going to follow it up
until they prove that he's the responsible actor.
As agents
comb through Hatfill's background,
they uncover even more troubling connections to the case.
There's another weird coincidence
with Stephen Hatfill.
The return addresses to the Tom Daschle
and Patrick Leahy letters were from a place
called the Greendale School in Franklin, New Jersey.
Well, it turns out where Steven Hatfill
went to medical school in Zimbabwe,
there was a town right next to that place called Greendale.
In the late '90s, Hatfill gets a job
working for a large defense contractor with ties to the CIA,
but when he applies for a high level security clearance,
he reportedly fails his polygraph test.
This all happened in the summer of 2001,
about a month before the first of the Anthrax letters
is mailed.
A few years earlier,
Hatfill had been working on a contract about biodefense
and he commissions a study.
And this study was what would we do in the situation
where the US was being attacked by Anthrax through the mail.
He even figures out exactly how much anthrax
would have to be in each letter to be lethal.
Investigators believe
this could have served as a dry run for the 2001 attacks.
They soon find even more suspicious material.
On Dr. Hatfill's computer in his home,
when they execute the warrant, they find a novel
that he had written three years before the Anthrax letters
and it's about a rogue scientist
that unleashes a biological attack on Washington, D.C.
Another piece of interesting circumstantial
evidence is that Hatfill had actually been taking Cipro,
the very antibiotic that's used
to treat anthrax infections a couple of weeks prior
to the first launch of the attacks.
Although the case
against Hatfill seems solid,
he continues to insist he's innocent.
I am not the anthrax killer.
I know nothing about the anthrax attacks.
I had absolutely nothing to do with this terrible crime.
Investigators connecting these dots.
He wrote this book.
He wrote the blueprint to the anthrax letter.
He's taking Cipro, the actual drug that you would take
if you came in contact with anthrax.
It's not hard for them to believe that.
I mean, this has gotta be the guy, right?
Despite all the circumstantial evidence against
Hatfill, there's still not enough to arrest him,
but that doesn't stop FBI investigators
from continuing to look into him and surveil his home.
There are people following him everywhere he
goes, following him so closely that in fact,
in one instance, they run over his foot in a car.
Try as they might to connect the dots, they can't.
There just isn't any direct line
between the events of the anthrax attack and Hatfill.
They can't make it stick.
So the investigation against Hatfill
basically goes nowhere.
In 2003, Hatfill sues the federal government,
"The New York Times,"
and he eventually wins the lawsuit against the government
and they settle with him for about $6 million.
By the mid 2000s, this investigation,
they've had 9,000 interviews.
They've had 6,000 subpoenas.
They've done 67 searches,
and they have come up with nothing.
Five years after the anthrax attack,
the FBI regroups.
The new agent heading the investigation
orders task force members
to review the case files for overlooked leads.
The FBI never gives up on the investigation
and they are still following up
at the various bioweapons labs.
In particular, they're looking at Fort Detrick,
partially because its geographic location
puts it relatively close
to where the letters have been mailed.
One of the first things they do
is seize additional samples.
They wind up seizing a flask
of very synthesized, purified anthrax
labeled RMR 1029.
That's happens to be in the sole possession
of Dr. Bruce Ivins.
Bruce Ivins had been working with the FBI
all throughout the investigation.
He had supplied them with samples.
He trained them to recognize anthrax spores.
At the same time, he too had access
to the kinds of materials that you would need,
access to labs, and for the first time,
the FBI starts to zero in and question his own motivations.
Bruce Ivins is a senior microbiologist,
who has worked at Fort Detrick for 27 years.
20 of those years working with anthrax.
He is Dr. Anthrax.
He's one of the leading anthrax researchers
in the United States and after 9/11,
he's put under enormous pressure
to develop an anthrax vaccine for troops.
Just after the anthrax letters are postmarked,
he sends a letter to a friend
saying that bin Laden definitely has access to anthrax
and that he just decreed death to all Jews and Americans.
Many believe that he's really trying to draw attention
to the potential danger
associated with a widespread biological attack.
The argument is that he did this
to justify his own continued research.
That there had not been any anthrax attacks prior to this,
and so 9/11 gives him the perfect backdrop
to demonstrate the need for a vaccine
and the continued funding to continue to research
a viable vaccine.
And that according to the FBI is what prompted him
to carry out these attacks.
If Ivins is responsible
for carrying out these anthrax attacks,
he did a pretty good job of covering his tracks.
The FBI doesn't have hard evidence linking him
to the attacks yet and really doesn't have a clue
who's behind it.
Then a major scientific discovery
leads to a potential break in the case.
In 2007, breakthroughs in genetic testing
allow them to reanalyze the spores.
And this means they can trace the anthrax
back to its original batch.
They start analyzing
a thousand or more different samples
of the Ames strain from all the different places
that it's held and they discover
that there are unique markers in the specific spores
that were used in the attacks.
They're actually able to backtrack it
to one very specific batch of anthrax
that had been cultured and stockpiled at Fort Detrick.
For the FBI,
the discovery is a game changer.
What had once been the subject of a global hunt
now sits inside one flask on a lab desk.
There are around a hundred scientists
with access to the flask of anthrax that's labeled RMR 1029,
but the FBI turns its attention to the man at the top,
the sole person who has had sole possession of the flask
since the very beginning
and that's none other than Dr. Bruce Ivins.
There was numerous reasons to suspect Dr. Bruce
Ivins besides the fact that the Ames strain was his repository.
For example, right before the time
when the two batches of letters would've gone out,
he had late nights and weekends of work
that were unexplained, which was absolutely atypical
of anything he's ever done in the past.
He also tested his own laboratory
without authorization,
and then sterilized everything without telling people
what he was doing.
There was a lot of suspicious behavior on his part
that he himself couldn't explain
that suggested that he was a likely perpetrator.
When the FBI questioned him
about his changed behavioral patterns,
Ivins claimed that he was having marital troubles at home
and he was essentially throwing himself into his work,
but the FBI wasn't buying that story.
On November 1st, 2007, they executed a search warrant
for Bruce Ivins' home.
When they got inside, they discovered
that there was evidence of a lot of the materials
that would've been associated
with carrying out these types of attacks.
It's also found out that Ivins
had a history of mental health challenges,
but what's most damning for him is an email he sends
to his friends and colleagues.
In his emails, he seems to be suffering from delusions
and in addition, he states that he's afraid,
he will not be able to control his own behavior.
But Ivins
continues to stay a step ahead of the FBI
until he's tripped up by an old act of deception.
In the original investigation,
the FBI asked for samples from all of the different labs
that had military grade anthrax.
And the sample that Bruce Ivins had sent in
had been declared clear
from the strain they were looking for.
Around the same time, Bruce had sent core samples
to colleagues for safekeeping.
Now upon going back, the FBI would discover
these samples did test positive
for the strains that were used in the attacks.
The FBI contended that he had submitted false samples.
So in July of 2008, he's informed by the FBI
that he is about to be indicted
by a federal grand jury on multiple counts of murder.
He goes home.
He takes a fatal dose of acetaminophen with codeine
and three days later, dies.
After seven years
with more than 600 investigators on the job
at a cost of nearly $100 million,
the FBI believes the case is finally solved.
On August 6th, 2008 in the aftermath of Ivins' suicide,
the Department of Justice announces
that they hold him singularly responsible
for the anthrax terror attacks of 2001.
As far as the Department of Justice
and the FBI are concerned, the case has been closed
and because Ivins is dead,
there's no further requirement for action.
Despite the government's insistence
many remain unconvinced.
There are some critics of the investigation,
including some scientists who contend
that if the FBI fingered the wrong man in Steven Hatfill,
they also fingered the wrong man in Bruce Ivins.
That Ivins was incapable of carrying out these crimes.
It does leave open the door
in the minds of some people anyway
that the real killer may never have been brought to justice.
Despite the FBI's certainty
that Bruce Ivins is guilty of the anthrax attacks,
many believe the case remains unsolved.
The FBI is convinced and they close the investigation.
But in the months and years that follow, more gaps and holes
and questions remain.
One of the problems is exactly how you get the anthrax
to the very refined spores
that were sent in the anthrax attack letters.
Other scientists believe
that he didn't have the equipment necessary
to actually make that process happen,
at least not in the quantities
and certainly not in the refinement
that we see in the spores that were used in the attacks.
According to the former deputy director at Fort Detrick,
the spores that were used in the anthrax attacks
were actually substantially smaller
than anything that had ever been produced
in a US or Russian bioweapons program.
What's even stranger is the FBI
was never able to find any trace of spores on the equipment
Ivins was accused of using to develop the bioweapon.
Really, the most incriminating piece of evidence
the FBI was able to use against Ivins
was that he was in the vicinity of the flask
and that he had access to it,
but of course we already knew that other people had access.
There will always be debate
about the efficacy of the science
that was associated with this investigation
and it does leave the door open
as to whether the real killer was ever caught.
There is no direct physical evidence
to convict Bruce Ivins in this case.
Everything is circumstantial
and traditional forensics on this
come up with a big fat zero.
So no fingerprints, no DNA.
They do handwriting analysis of the envelopes
to known exemplars from his own writing
and they're not a match there.
There's no conclusive evidence
saying that he wrote these letters.
Handwriting analysis is not perfect
and so for the FBI, it's not really a surprise
that the handwriting on the letters
that accompanied the anthrax attacks
could never be perfectly tied to Bruce Ivins.
But for people looking to poke holes in the case,
that's yet another example
of this not being the perfect investigation.
Of course, the FBI was under enormous pressure.
A lot of time had gone by,
and there was a real desire to close the case.
That might mean pressure
to sweep inconsistencies under the rug.
Friends and colleagues to Dr. Ivins
state that it's the pressure from the FBI
that caused him to commit suicide,
not the guilt of committing this act.
And in just like Dr. Steven Hatfill,
many believe that if this went to court,
Dr. Ivins also would be exonerated of this.
Through the years,
several notable organizations
have also challenged the FBI's conclusions.
In 2011, the National Academy of Sciences
determines that the scientific evidence alone
was not enough to link the flask from Ivins' lab
to the anthrax used in the attacks.
The FBI's entire physical case around Bruce Ivins
revolves around the idea
that a single flask of anthrax spores was the murder weapon.
If for some reason that was an error,
then the entire case falls apart.
In 2014, a government body that was nonpartisan
also releases its report saying that the actual science
performed by the FBI was insufficient
and in fact, that genetic signature
might not have been that unique.
Perhaps most suspicious of all,
there's no way to go back into the evidence
with new eyes and new technology,
because the FBI destroyed everything,
including the spores,
when they officially closed the case back in 2010.
This is an investigation that's covered so
much ground.
It's been one of the most expensive investigations
in the history of the FBI.
They've interviewed 10,000 people.
They've issued 6,000 grand jury subpoenas.
And at the end, it has this conclusion
that to most people isn't very satisfying.
It's not just that there's some questions.
There are a lot of questions.
The constant speculation
and second guessing of the FBI investigation
definitely provides no comfort to the victim's families.
The idea that someone might have died
just for opening their mail is a terrifying concept
and we want to believe that our law enforcement agencies
are capable of solving this type of case.
And so to have somebody constantly questioning it
on the basis of a belief
that the FBI is not good at their job
can be very frustrating to a lot of those victims' families.
For many people, there's a great desire
to accept the FBI's conclusions.
For one thing, it means that they got their man
and we can stop worrying about any future attacks.
It's comforting, but it might not be the truth.
And if you don't accept those conclusions,
it means that it's possible that the anthrax killer
is still at large.
We may never definitively know if Bruce Ivins
was the man responsible for making weaponized anthrax
and sending the lethal letters.
His case was never brought to trial.
And while some have called on the FBI
to reopen the investigation, for now it remains closed,
leaving one of the deadliest bio-terrorism events
on US soil forever cloaked in mystery.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."