A behavioural panel probing the suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings case found he had ample motivation to carry out the crimes, backing up a government case against him, the FBI said.
Key issues that appeared to drive scientist Bruce Ivins to launch the campaign, which killed five people and injured 17, was a quest for “revenge, a desperate need for personal validation, career preservation and professional redemption”, said the Expert Behavioural Analysis Panel report.
These themes, said the panel, “guided him not only in making the attacks, but in choosing his targets and shaping his methods”.
The report was released a month after the National Academy of Sciences deemed there was insufficient scientific evidence to definitively conclude Dr Ivins’s role in the mailings.
The panel, however, delved into his mental state before and after the anthrax mailings to assess “possible motives – and the connections, if any, between his mental state and the commission of the crimes”, and uncovered a slew of factors behind the mailings.
The report, completed last August but only released on Tuesday, described patterns of abuse during Dr Ivins’s troubled childhood at the hands of his parents, and a history of loss of romantic interests as a young adult, which the panel said contributed to lifelong obsession with revenge against perceived enemies.
A growing penchant for manipulation of others also coupled with a history of criminal activity to intimidate and embarrass his former romantic interests.
Dr Ivins had ample opportunity to carry out the crimes, and a pressing urge to validate his work, said the panel, noting his position as a leading anthrax expert and bio-defence researcher at the US Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
“By launching the attacks, Dr Ivins showed that anthrax was a threat and the vaccine he helped manage was necessary to protect the public. The attacks in this sense achieved their goal,” said the panel.
The anthrax mailings in late 2001 rattled an already jittery American public just days after Al-Qaeda militants hijacked passenger jets and plunged them into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
The FBI has meanwhile concluded that the anthrax must have come from a single flask of patent spores that Mr Ivins had created, and which he alone had maintained.
The NAS report, however, said the type of anthrax contaminating the letters, which were mailed to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, the New York Post and senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, was correctly identified as the Ames strain of B. anthracis, which originated from a cow in Texas in 1981 and was shared with labs worldwide.
As such NAS deemed it not possible, with the scientific evidence that remains, to find Dr Ivins the definite guilty party in the case.
Dr Ivins committed suicide in July 2008 as FBI agents were about to bring charges against him.
The FBI said on Wednesday that the panel’s “analysis, findings, and recommendations provide important insight that will further contribute to the public’s understanding of the investigation into the deadly anthrax mailings”. The report, the bureau said in a statement, “also provides valuable perspectives that may be useful in preventing future attacks”.