Three key questions still unanswered in anthrax case

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/257/story/46774.html

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Despite the Justice Department's pronouncement that former Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins unleashed the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, three central questions about the case remain unanswered:

_ Can the FBI prove that a flask of anthrax in Ivins' bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Md., contained the same mutated strain of finely milled powder that was in the envelopes that were mailed to two U.S. senators?

_ Did Ivins, who committed suicide last week, have the technical capability to produce that form of anthrax?

_ Why, after he came under suspicion in 2005 or earlier, was Ivins allowed to retain a high-level security clearance that enabled him to continue working in the bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, apparently until this summer?

As federal prosecutors and FBI agents moved to close the seven-year investigation, former employees at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and other biological weapons experts Thursday expressed skepticism about the case that's been presented publicly.

The FBI said Wednesday that it had winnowed eight samples that contained all four of the genetic mutations in the anthrax-laced letters out of 1,000 anthrax samples from 16 laboratories and traced all eight to a batch in Ivins' lab that had the same "DNA fingerprint."