No reason to assume the anthrax powder was produced in the week before the letters were sent/ GSN

From Global Security Newswire, including material from the Frederick News-Post:

The fact that Ivins kept very late laboratory hours in the days before the letters were mailed is not as unusual as the FBI contends, said former USAMRIID head of bacteriology Gerry Andrews. Ivins was working on multiple projects at the time could have kept him at the laboratory late, he argued.

"The FBI, I think, is trying to give folks the wrong impression of the time line," according to Andrews.

Critics contend that the FBI was wrong to assume that the anthrax spores could only have been produced shortly before they were mailed. They actually could date back to 1997, Adamovicz said.

"There is an assumption by the FBI that the spores could have only been prepared in the week before each mailing. This is a fatal error in logic," he stated. "The only reason that I can derive why the FBI has proposed this is that it is the only period that helps provide circumstantial evidence against Bruce..."

The motive imputed to Ivins--that his research program was about to be shut down--is entirely incorrect. It may be the result of FBI conflating massive problems with the military's anthrax vaccine immunization program, which used Bioport's (Michigan-produced) anthrax vaccine, and was about to be shut down in August 2001, with Ivins' anthrax vaccine research program at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Andrews also disputed the FBI assertion that Ivins wanted to create a massive public scare in order to secure more public funding for his anthrax vaccine research which was in danger of coming to an end. Rather, Ivins' work was funded until the end of 2005, he said (Eckstein, Frederick News-Post).