year post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina (“UNC”), Chapel Hill.
Dr. Ivins began his work with Bacillus anthracis at USAMRIID in 1980. According to leading scientists throughout the country, Dr. Ivins was one of the nation’s foremost experts in the production and purification of Bacillus anthracis. This assessment was confirmed by USAMRIID records, laboratory notebooks, written protocols, and his more than 50 professional publications regarding anthrax. From these sources, as well as from Dr. Ivins himself, investigators learned that he personally conducted and supervised Ames anthrax spore productions for over two decades. At the time of the anthrax mailings, Dr. Ivins possessed extensive knowledge of various anthrax production protocols, and was particularly adept at manipulating anthrax production and purification variables to maximize sporulation and improve the quality of anthrax spore preparations. He also understood anthrax aerosolization dosage rates and the importance of purity, consistency, and spore particle size, given his responsibility for providing liquid anthrax spore preparations for animal aerosol challenges. Dr. Ivins produced large batches of Bacillus anthracis to conduct these tests on vaccinated animals, during which they would inhale pre-defined doses of anthrax spores to assess the efficacy of the anthrax vaccine. Throughout his career at USAMRIID, he also supervised others involved in spore production.
- C. Opportunity, Access and Ability
As explained in the discussion of the genetic analyses, supra, a single spore-batch called RMR-1029 is the parent material to the spores used in the anthrax attacks. Distilled to its essence, this means that whoever mailed the letters had access at some point to RMR-1029. That person must have either had direct access to the source flask, created and controlled by Dr. Ivins and maintained in the walk-in refrigerator in his lab, or to a sample of RMR-1029 provided by Dr. Ivins. In this section, first the origins of RMR-1029 are traced, followed by a review of the scientific analysis that led to the conclusion that RMR-1029 is the parent material. Next is a discussion of Dr. Ivins’s suspicious hours in the lab housing RMR-1029 just before each of the mailings, followed by a discussion of others with access to RMR-1029, with a focus on those who had the ability to create the highly concentrated and purified spores used in the attacks. The section concludes with a more detailed discussion of Dr. Ivins’s considerable skill in anthrax spore production and purification.
- 1. The creation of RMR-1029–Dr. Ivins’s flask
In 1997, USAMRIID commissioned another Army research facility, Dugway, to prepare large batches of Bacillus anthracis spores for an upcoming series of studies testing the anthrax vaccine, because USAMRIID lacked the capacity to do so. By the fall of 1997, Dr. Ivins received from Dugway seven shipments containing the concentrated product of 12 ten-liter, fermenter-grown lots of Bacillus anthracis – the “Dugway Spores.” By Dr. Ivins’s own account, these spores were not in perfect shape, so he had to “clean them up.” Indeed, he even discarded the seventh shipment because he deemed it to be inadequate. He noted in his lab notebooks the
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