Here is the Complaint, filed on April 2, 2015 alleging gross mishandling of the case on many levels, and concealment of evidence exonerating Bruce Ivins:
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1714250-former-fbi-special-agent-in-charge-richard.html
Here is the story in the NY Times of April 8. Here is the story in Courthouse News.
Here is the story in the NY Times of April 8. Here is the story in Courthouse News.
And here are some extraordinary excerpts from the complaint that validate things I have previously pointed out:
5. This complaint further details how Defendants’ derelict failure to perform their mandated legal duties to Plaintiff was driven by Defendants’ blinding animus toward Plaintiff for Plaintiff’s prior whistleblower reports of FBI and DOJ mismanagement of the FBI’s investigation into the anthrax attacks of 2001 (code named “AMERITHRAX”).
From pages 23 to 25:
50. In the fall of 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, a series of anthrax mailings occurred which killed five Americans and sickened 17 others. Four anthrax-laden envelopes were recovered which were addressed to two news media outlets in New York City (the New York Post and Tom Brokaw at NBC) and two senators in Washington D.C. (Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle). The anthrax letters addressed to New York were mailed on September 18, 2001, just seven days after the 9/11 attacks. The letters addressed to the senators were mailed 21 days later on October 9, 2001. A fifth mailing of anthrax is believed to have been directed to American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida based upon the death of one AMI employee from anthrax poisoning and heavy spore contamination in the building.
51. Executive management at FBI Headquarters assigned responsibility for the anthrax investigation (code named “AMERITHRAX”) to the Washington Field Office (WFO), dubbing it the single most important case in the FBI at that time.
52. In October 2002, in the wake of surging media criticism, White House impatience with a seeming lack of investigative progress by WFO, and a concerned Congress that was considering revoking the FBI’s charter to investigate terrorism cases, Defendant FBI Director Mueller reassigned Plaintiff from the FBI’s San Diego Field Office to the Inspection Division at FBI Headquarters and placed Plaintiff in charge of the AMERITHRAX case as an “Inspector.”While leading the investigation for the next four years, Plaintiff’s efforts to advance the case met with intransigence from WFO’s executive management, apathy and error from the FBI Laboratory, politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters, and yet another preceding and equally erroneous legal opinion from Defendant Kelley – all of which greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.
53. On July 6, 2006, Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303. Reports of mismanagement conveyed in writing and orally included: (a) WFO’s persistent understaffing of the AMERITHRAX investigation; (b) the threat of WFO’s Agent in charge to retaliate if Plaintiff disclosed the understaffing to FBI Headquarters; (c) WFO’s insistence on staffing the AMERITHRAX investigation principally with new Agents recently graduated from the FBI Academy resulting in an average investigative tenure of 18 months with 12 of 20 Agents assigned to the case having no prior investigative experience at all; (d) WFO’s eviction of the AMERITHRAX Task Force from the WFO building in downtown Washington and its relegation to Tysons Corner, Virginia to free up space for Attorney General Ashcroft’s new pornography squads; (e) FBI Director’s Mueller’s mandate to Plaintiff to “compartmentalize” the AMERITHRAX investigation by stove piping the flow of case information and walling off task force members from those aspects of the case not specifically assigned to them – a move intended to stem the tide of anonymous media leaks by government officials regarding details of the investigation. This sequestration edict decimated morale and proved unnecessary in light of subsequent civil litigation which established that the media leaks were attributable to the United States Attorney for the District of the District of Columbia and to a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s National Press Office, not to investigators on the AMERITHRAX Task Force; (f) WFO’s diversion and transfer of two Ph.D. Microbiologist Special Agents from their key roles in the investigation to fill billets for an 18 month Arabic language training program in Israel; (g) the FBI Laboratory’s deliberate concealment from the Task Force of its discovery of human DNA on the anthrax-laden envelope addressed to Senator Leahy and the Lab’s initial refusal to perform comparison testing; (h) the FBI Laboratory’s refusal to provide timely and adequate scientific analyses and forensic examinations in support of the investigation; (i) Defendant Kelley’s erroneous and subsequently quashed legal opinion that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) precluded the Task Force’s collection of evidence in overseas venues; (j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence. Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions. Plaintiff further objected to the FBI’s ordering of Plaintiff not to speak with the staff of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes or investigative journalist David Willman, after both requested authorization to interview Plaintiff.
54. In April 2008, some of Plaintiff’s foregoing whistleblower reports were profiled on the CBS television show 60 Minutes. This 60 Minutes segment was critical of FBI executive management’s handling of the AMERITHRAX investigation, resulting in the agency’s embarrassment and the introduction of legislative bills calling for the establishment of
congressional inquiries and special commissions to examine these issues – a level of scrutiny the FBI’s Ivins attribution could not withstand.
55. After leaving the AMERITHRAX investigation in 2006, Plaintiff continued to publicly opine that the quantum of circumstantial evidence against Bruce Ivins was not adequate to satisfy the proof-beyond-a-reasonable doubt threshold required to secure a criminal conviction in federal court. Plaintiff continued to advocate that while Bruce Ivins may have been the anthrax mailer, there is a wealth of exculpatory evidence to the contrary which the FBI continues to conceal from Congress and the American people. The FBI vehemently opposes Plaintiff’s position.
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Here is the FBI's report (from 2011) about the enormous resources it expended on this case:
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Here is the FBI's report (from 2011) about the enormous resources it expended on this case:
"Over the course of the investigation, the FBI and the Postal Inspection Service devoted 600,000 investigator work hours to the case and assigned 17 special agents to a task force, along with 10 U.S. Postal Inspectors. The investigation spanned six continents; involved over 10,000 witness interviews, 80 searches, 26,000 e-mail reviews, and analyses of 4 million megabytes of computer memory; and resulted in the issuance of 5,750 grand jury subpoenas. Additionally, 29 government, university, and commercial laboratories assisted in conducting the scientific analyses that were an important aspect of the investigation."
15 comments:
Attorney Lambert says the FBI engaged in “an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt.”
That operation was in overdrive at the August 8, 2008 press conference when US Attorney made egregious misstatements about the distribution of the genetically matching Ames — and where it was stored and who had access.
The FBI’s genetic analysis merely narrowed things to several hundred scientists and others who had access. Any one of them could have given the genetically matching Ames strain to someone else. Security at labs was very lax. Anyone with access to a lab could simply walk out with a pathogen.
The FBI had estimated up to 377 had access required elimination — and that was just at USAMRIID. US Taylor nonetheless falsely claimed in August 2008 that only 100 needed to be eliminated at USAMRIID. He premised his conclusion on the claim that only those with access at USAMRIID’s Building 1425 had to be eliminated — overlooking the fact that the genetically matching Ames was also stored in Building 1412.
The potential access to Ames is not reasonably disputed. For example, a microbiologist connected to the Al Qaeda network, Ali Al-Timimi, shared a suite with the leading DARPA-funded Ames anthrax researchers at George Mason University. One, Ken Alibek, had been a former Russian bioweaponeer. The other, Charles Bailey, had been the former commander of USAMRIID.
Indeed, one non-citizen from Sudan and then Egypt for a few days in 1998 worked alongside Bruce Ivins in the B3 with Ames anthrax. He studied at Cairo Medical where Dr. Ayman Zawahiri recruited students to jihad every Friday. Dr. Ayman’s sister Heba taught microbiology at Cairo Medical.
David Relman, the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the science relied upon in Amerithrax, explained in “Science” that Ames was detected at a lab in Afghanistan. Indeed, Ames was detected in the remains of the hijacker who came in June 2001. The hijacker had been at Kandahar, where Yazid Sufaat’s anthrax lab was located. Whenever there was a positive finding, however, the FBI concluded it was a false positive. Yet when a genetics test narrowed 700-1000 researchers to 300, the FBI closed the case.
Yazid Sufaat told KSM that he was not at risk because he and his two assistants had been vaccinated to protect them against their work with virulent anthrax. One of those assistants was tortured and then kept in secret prisons in Jordan and Israel. He told his CIA interrogators that “I made the anthrax” but then later would recant.
Yazid Sufaat was head of Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab in Kandahar. In a filmed interview, he explained that previously he was part of a secret Malaysian biological weapons program. In correspondence with me, Yazid Sufaat does not deny responsibility for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. Instead he “pleads the Fifth.”
The former lead Amerithrax investigator writes:
"WFO’s insistence on staffing the AMERITHRAX investigation principally with new Agents recently graduated from the FBI Academy resulting in an average investigative tenure of 18 months with 12 of 20 Agents assigned to the case having no prior investigative experience at all."
That would explain a lot. It is only a couple years in the field that experience teaches you to vet your witnesses by checking to see if they have written a book they sell on amazon.com explaining that they are controlled by an alien that gave them instructions each night. I quickly discovered that the FBI's key witness says she was psychotic at the time and imagined murderous astral entities were attached to the clients in her new part-time addictions counseling gig.
You may recall that the FBI, in the case they initially touted as being established by the scientific evidence, then turned to its stock psychological profile of a lone nut. The FBI’s key witness however, was Dr. Ivins’ first counselor who has written a 2009 book explaining that when she counseled Dr. Ivins, she was receiving her instructions each night from an alien. She reports that the alien had implanted a microchip in her butt. She thought that murderous astral entities were attached to her clients in her new part-time addictions counseling gig. In her book, she explained that each night she would fly to Afghanistan and Ground Zero. The astral entities would chase her back home, and she would narrowly escape through a vortex of energy that would close up behind her. That counselor annotated the psychiatrists’ notes. Her notes and her annotations were handed to the second counselor in July 2008 — and the second counselor then sought a restraining order that day against Dr. Ivins leading up to Dr. Ivins’ suicide. She alleged he was a murderous sociopath — just as the first counselor controlled by the alien had claimed. This was part of the tragic chain of events that led to Dr. Ivins suicide.
The former lead Amerithrax investigator writes:
"Plaintiff continued to advocate that while Bruce Ivins may have been the anthrax mailer, there is a wealth of exculpatory evidence to the contrary which the FBI continues to conceal from Congress and the American people.”
The main evidence relied upon by the FBI was Dr. Ivins’ work at night and on weekends in late September and early October 2001. The documents eventually produced by USAMRIID under FOIA and published on Lew’s blog, however, show that Dr. Ivins was working on an experiment with 52 rabbits. Checking on animals at night and on weekends was a one person job and would take a couple of hours. That is the amount of time Dr. Ivins spent in the lab. The binding and mandatory protocol required that the principal investigator conduct the observations for the first 7 days after the rabbits were injected in early October 2001. US Attorney Taylor in explaining Ivins’ overtime in Fall 2001 (including November and December) overlooked the 2-person rule first implemented in January 2002 that precluded such overtime. That is why there would have been no continuing late night hours working alone past December 2001. The FBI’s Amerithrax Investigative Summary makes no mention of the rabbits — it either was negligent for the FBI not to know of the experiment — or 52 rabbits were knowingly stuffed down into a hat. Paul Kemp explained that Dr. Ivins explained the reason for his time at the lab at the last meeting with the AUSAs.
The former lead Amerithrax investigator discusses:
"the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence."
He writes:
Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions."
For example, a handwriting report by the FBI’s handwriting expert — nowhere mentioned in the Amerithrax Investigative Summary — concluded that Dr. Ivins probably did NOT write the letters. How could AUSA Lieber justify to herself failing to mention that trifling bit of evidence in a summary of the evidence relating to Ivins?
In para. 53, the former lead Amerithrax investigator addresses
"Defendant Kelley’s erroneous and subsequently quashed legal opinion that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) precluded the Task Force’s collection of evidence in overseas venues."
The genetically distinctive b. subtilis contaminant found in the Brokaw and New York Post anthrax letters was not found in Dr. Ivins’ lab. The FBI acknowledges it did not swab all the other suspect labs for the b. subtilis contaminant. Did Attorney Kelley think that FBI agents could not swab for b. subtilis in Afghan under OSHA regulations?
One of the most bald and extreme spins that US Attorney Taylor put on the evidence was his use of the phrase "the murder weapon" in association with Flask 1029. He never mentioned meglumine and diatrizoate was in Flask 1029 but not in the mailed anthrax.
Al Qaeda had a deep involvement in anthrax over many years
Dr. Ayman Zawahiri’s colleagues explained in 1998 that he intended to use anthrax against US targets to retaliate for the rendering of senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) leaders, to include Blind Sheik Abdel Rahman. Ali Mohammed, the EIJ head of intelligence, had a document on his computer seized by the FBI that outlined principles of cell security that would be followed. Ali Mohammed trained Dahab, a Cairo medical drop-out, to make deadly letters. Dahab was involved in the founding of the Blind Sheik’s Services Organization in Brooklyn.
Zawahiri recruited Pakistan government scientist Rauf Ahmad to infiltrate Porton Down-sponsored conferences in the UK in 1999 and 2000. In 1999, after visiting a first lab that did not have pathogenic strain, Rauf Ahmad arranged to visit a second lab. He ominously began a letter to Dr. Ayman about that visit to the second lab: “I have successfully achieved the targets.” The public still does not know the identity of that second lab.
Rauf Ahmad reported to Dr. Ayman that he had made contacts that were helpful in learning processing tricks. The official history of MI5 indicates that Ahmad was intercepted leaving with equipment and strains after the 2000 conference. At the 2000 conference, Rauf Ahmad and his co-authors presented a paper on harvesting anthrax in the wild and killing mice with 100 injected spores. That abstract is online. The FBI and CIA thus had reason to know that Al Qaeda’s anthrax scientist already had been working with virulent anthrax. The information on what he took with him from the 1999 lab continues to be suppressed. So it should be no surprise that the label of “anthrax spore concentrate” harvested in April 2001 appears to be in the handwriting of Rauf Ahmad. CIA Director Tenet reports in his book that Ahmad helped set up Yazid Sufaat’s lab in Kandahar in May 2001. Rauf Ahmad, in occasional correspondence, would not cooperate with me unless I paid him money. The Washington Post correspondent in Pakistan once arranged to conduct an interview but then the Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence backpedaled on its consent.
I think Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the mailer of the letters containing anthrax in Fall 2001.
A number of the individuals associated with Al Qaeda’s anthrax program were closely associated with Adnan El-Shukrijumah. Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the son of a salaried Saudi missionary who while the family lived in Brooklyn would translate for Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Shukrijumah was at a Sarasota, FL home with his accomplice, 911 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta. Shukrijumah called his mother on or about September 11, 2001 to tell her he was coming to the United States. He insisted he was coming over her protests that he would be arrested. The FBI reported that El-Shukrijumah, traveling under an alias, entered the United States sometime after September 1, 2001. The FBI did not tell the “Joint Inquiry” about Shukrijumah even though he was known to be an associate of Mohammed Atta. Shukrijumah was with Atta and the other hijackers at a Sarasota, FL home associated with a close advisor of a key Saudi Arabian prince.
Leaked detainee statements from Guantanamo indicate that Shukrijumah lived in safe houses in Karachi from February 2002 to April 2002. Hawsawi was KSM’s assistant and had documents explaining how to turn anthrax into a powder. Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab was equipped with a dryer, centrifuge and the other equipment the FBI deems necessary to make a dried powder out of anthrax. Shukrijumah was killed in a raid in Pakistan’s tribal area late last year. The public may learn more about Shukijumah and his association with Mohammed Atta in a litigation under FOIA .
Separately, documents in Ali Al-Timimi’s pending case may shed some light about his possible access to the genetically matching Ames. Ali Al-Timimi shared a suite with the leading DARPA-funded Ames anthrax researchers. “911 imam” Anwar Al-Awlaki was coordinating with his fellow Falls Church imam, Al-Timimi. The daughter of the lead Amerithrax prosecutor — a prosecutor who pled the Fifth Amendment in connection with leaking hyped details that derailed the investigation with the famous “Hatfill Theory” — then came to represent Ali Al-Timimi for free. Awlaki in the Al Qaeda publication “Inspire” — from his grave — urged followers to attack using a biological weapon. Ali Al-Timimi had unfettered access to American Type Culture Collection (“ATCC”) The ATCC bacteriology collection scientist was the future head of the Amerithrax science investigation who would help guide the review by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the production of documents from the FBI to NAS.
Who were the real perpetrators?
Yazid Sufaat was head of Al Qaeda’s anthrax lab in Kandahar. In a filmed interview, he explained that previously he was part of a secret Malaysian biological weapons program. In correspondence with me, Yazid Sufaat does not deny responsibility for the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings. Instead he “pleads the Fifth.”
As I mentioned, I believe Adnan El-Shukrijumah, who like Yazid Sufaat stayed at the house of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Kandahar in September 2001, was the lead anthrax mailer.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was identified as “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” by the 9/11 Commission Report.
Adnan El-Shukrijumah was an accomplice in Florida of the 9/11 hijackers. He was formerly from Brooklyn where his father, a Saudi missionary, translated for Al Qaeda spiritual leader Blind Sheik Abdel-Rahman. The FBI reports that Adnan El-Shukrijumah travelled to the United States in September 2001. Seized documents show he was directed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) to smuggle himself in through Mexico.
It's worthwhile focussing on this:
"53. On July 6, 2006, Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303. Reports of mismanagement conveyed in writing and orally included: [...]
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So, Lambert filed that report in July 2006, he was replaced as head of the Task Force the subsequent month (August 2006), meaning his criticisms aren't ALL just sour grapes from the subsequent wrangling over his post-retirement job in Knoxville.
Rather that wrangling and the lawsuit it generated became the vehicle for public exposure of long-festering criticisms Lambert had previously made as a G-man through established channels.
(r rowley)
Agree! He is a 24 year FBI veteran, and directed the investigation for the FBI. Mr. Lambert knows what he is talking about.
I have previously pointed out, beginning in 2002 (http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~atlee/anthrax_attacker.html)
that FBI failed to pursue a number of logical avenues of investigation. I for one was amazed at how the investigation proceeded in only the (obviously) wrong directions. Theatrical dog and pony shows were created by the FBI to indict Hatfill and then Ivins in the public eye, because DoJ had no evidence at all to actually indict them. Scapegoats? Patsies? Why were they needed? Who was being protected by only searching in the wrong directions?
The FBI has never before had to answer for its deliberately flaud investigation. That investigation cost Ivins' reputationa and life, Hatfill's reputation, and supposedly $100 million, as well as zillions of hours of FBI investigator time. Now we know most of those investigators had no previous investigative experience, and furthermore were prohibited from discussing the case with their peers.
Who besides Mueller in the Justice (sic) Department gave the orders to make this investigation self-destruct? Where did these orders originate? Will there ever be accountability?
The Global War on Terror has drained our treasury of several Trillion dollars and made us less safe. It ushered in the global war on our civil rights.
Will the American people ever see any justice in this affair?
Just a follow-up. Bruce Ivins first became a minor suspect ('person of interest') in March of 2004. Richard Lambert remained as head of the Task Force until August of 2006. Meaning that Lambert was Task Force head for the first 2 1/2 years (roughly) that Ivins was a suspect. Lambert would have known via FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE what exculpatory evidence was out there, including but not limited to the handwriting (printing) non-matches, the passed polygraph tests etc. In addition, I calculate that, as a professional courtesy, his successor at the Task Force, Ed Montooth, would have been willing to share from time to time
later developments. But Lambert's biggest surprise must have been when the Amerithrax Investigative Summary came out and he, conversant to a high degree with evidence and its admissibility, realized that aside from the flask of origin there was no physical evidence tying Ivins to the crimes.
(r rowley)
And from Lambert's filing:
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Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions. Plaintiff further objected to the FBI’s ordering of Plaintiff not to speak with the staff of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes or investigative journalist David Willman, after both requested authorization to interview Plaintiff.
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Naturally, had Lambert been interviewed, he would have explained why Ivins was a less-than-ideal suspect, based on the exculpatory evidence that Lambert had already remembered from the 2004 to 2006 period when he, Lambert, was the Task Force head. The two polygraph tests Ivins had passed in that timeframe. The two handwriting(printing) comparisons done which yielded 'probable non-match' to Ivins printing.
(r rowley)
Richard, actually, Rick Lambert would emphasize analysis of the Flask as exculpatory evidence -- and point to the meglumine and diatrozoate analysis for example. It was found in the flask but NOT in the mailed anthrax. His comment was in the context of me asking him what things should be the focus of FOIA requests.
As another example, he says the photocopiers at USAMRIID could definitely be EXCLUDED.
"You can't tell anyone about this." -Special Agent J.P. of the Raleigh FBI
"I need that letter. Go through your trash and find it. You're on the medicine so you'll be okay." -Special Agent J.P. of the Raleigh FBI
"Your test came up negative so you can stop taking the antibiotics." Special Agent J.P. of the Raleigh FBI
"It would be prudent to finish the Antibiotics" Later that same day -NC Health Dept. Dr. S.C. (I credit this man's advice for me surviving this incident)
"That's just a coincidence" -Special Agent J.P. of the Raleigh FBI in response to Ottillie, Cathy, and myself posting on the same message board around the same time.
"We'll send a couple of agents to talk to you." -Agent E.D at the time, now Special Agent E.D. of the Charlotte FBI; 14 years and still waiting for those agents to stop by.
"We are about to head to your house to decontaminate. Oh, you're not in Wake county? We can't come." -Wake County HAZMAT Team Commander
"That's interesting." -Agent E.D at the time, now Special Agent E.D. of the Charlotte FBI in response to a relative of mine who was a cop for a decade about my giving Agent E.D. Steven Hatfill's last name prior to Hatfill's name becoming public.
"The FBI said they investigated this and deemed your house to be free of Anthrax." -Acting Director NCDHHS L.D. Incidentally when I emailed her 7 years later for the written verification to her statement that I was promised but never received I got a short response with CC to the State Atty. affirming her "belief" that my house was free of Anthrax. She was relieved of the Director position 2 weeks later.
"Since his medical daignosis failed to substantiate his allegations no further investigation was conducted. We are therefore, unable to be of further assistance to him." -3rd page of FOIA request -Name redacted, Unit chief, Office of Public and congressional Affairs
I could go on and on with this. I have ALL the documentation. I also still have the Anthrax since I did not live in Wake Co. and no decontamination was ever done.
Personally I think SHAM is too nice a word for what the FBI did in this case.
To me the words CRIMINAL and TREASON would be more precise.
Initials used so Dr. Nass would publish this comment. If you want to find what those initials stand for simply Google my screen name.
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