Frederick attorney Paul Kemp believes he failed his former client, suspected anthrax killer Bruce Ivins, by not inspiring him to have more faith in the justice system.
Ivins, who lived in Frederick and worked as a scientist at Fort Detrick, killed himself in August 2008 rather than face a federal grand jury as the suspected perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax letters that killed five and injured 17.
The FBI named Ivins the likely culprit in a 2010 report, but Kemp and others, including New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt (D), believe the FBI did not prove that Ivins did it.
"Most people assume he probably did it," Kemp said in an interview Wednesday. "And I feel like the thing left undone is that I didn't give him enough faith in the system to keep going. That's a failing on my part."
He continues to speak on Ivins' behalf, in large part he said because he feels he owes it to Ivins. Kemp has spoken at the National Press Club and to various national media outlets on the subject, including National Public Radio. He was the guest speaker at the Frederick Rotary Club Wednesday at Dutch's Daughters restaurant in Frederick.
Though Kemp could not finish his remarks in the time allotted, he identified holes in the FBI's evidence against Ivins. Despite nine search warrants that included his house, car and any vehicle he drove, the FBI obtained no solid evidence of Ivins' complicity in the anthrax murders, Kemp said.
Nor could the FBI prove that Ivins was anywhere near Princeton, N.J., the source of the mailings, during the time in question. In the FBI's 2010 report, investigators said Ivins liked to take long night drives and that driving to Princeton would not be out of the ordinary for him, but had no toll receipts, camera images, or eyewitnesses to place Ivins at the scene.
"The investigation revealed no evidence against Ivins because he was not guilty," Kemp said. "But he was a troubled individual."
In sourcing the anthrax to Ivins from samples he gave the FBI in the early part of the investigation, Kemp said the FBI "overlooks its own ineptitude." In 2002, Ivins sent anthrax samples to the FBI and to a scientist working for the FBI. The FBI lost its original samples and asked for more. This time, Kemp said, Ivins sent samples in a different form, which the FBI said later was evidence of Ivins intentionally misleading investigators.
The FBI identified a beaker of anthrax as the source of the anthrax used in the letters, but failed to follow up with more than 100 other scientists who had access to samples from that beaker, including 42 scientists for Batelle Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio.
Those scientists and those at "super secret Dugway," an Army base in Utah where Batelle also manages and operates the laboratories, Kemp said, had the equipment necessary to aerosolize the anthrax so that it could be more easily dispersed. Ivins, he said, did not.
A May 19 article in the Miami Herald accuses the FBI of not pursuing other leads that could have led investigators to different conclusions, including the chemical makeup of the aerosolized anthrax in the FBI's own laboratory reports.
In February, a panel of independent scientists questioned the veracity of the science used to name Ivins the killer. A National Research Council committee reviewed the science involved in the FBI anthrax investigation, and found that it is not possible to reach a definite conclusion about the original source of the anthrax based on scientific evidence alone.
The FBI did not immediately return a call and email for comment, but said in a statement in February that the independent scientists' report "reiterates what is and is not possible to establish through science alone in a criminal investigation of this magnitude." The FBI acknowledged that science played a role in the investigation, but did not represent the "totality" of the investigation.
Congressman Holt has called for a congressional commission to investigate the anthrax attacks, but that has been tabled for now because the U.S. Government Accountability Office is in the process of reviewing the FBI case and plans to have a report out in the fall.
As for Kemp, he is convinced that the government could not have convicted Ivins on the evidence it had at the time of his death.
kheerbrandt@gazette.net
Source: http://www.gazette.net/stories/06022011/frednew164248_32546.php
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