own e-mails and his prescription records, reveals that there were other times in those same years when he was experiencing personal difficulties. However, during none of those other time periods were his off-hours in the lab anywhere near the hours he spent there in the weeks leading up to the mailings. Further, his e-mails written contemporaneously with the mailings indicate that the circumstances surrounding his home life were improving. For example, in an e-mail to a former colleague, dated September 17, 2001, on the day before the first letters were postmarked, Dr. Ivins discussed his improving home life. In another e-mail to this former colleague, dated September 19, 2001, the day after the first letters were postmarked, Dr. Ivins reported that he had exercised for the first time in months and that he “felt good.”
Dr. Ivins also told investigators that he went into the lab, rather than just his office, because he was trying to get away from a security guard who used to harass him. However, a careful review of the access records to Building 1425 demonstrates that there were only rare occasions when this guard was even on the same side of the building as Dr. Ivins.
The picture that remains is that Dr. Ivins was alone in his lab for long stretches of time in the evenings and on the weekends leading up to the anthrax mailing events. This picture is in stark contrast to his behavior before and after the mailings.
- 4. Others with access to RMR-1029 have been ruled out
The efforts to identify and further investigate those individuals with access to RMR-1029 was a continuation of the Task Force’s strategy from the earliest days of the investigation: identify individuals with access to the Ames strain – now the specific culture of Ames – who were capable of creating spores of the high quality used in the mailings, and perform a more in-depth investigation of those individuals. As described more fully in the Traditional Investigation section, supra, by the time that RMR-1029 was identified as a focal point of the investigation, investigators had already established a pool of individuals who had access to Bacillus anthracis and the subset of those with access to the Ames strain. The Task Force had performed background investigations on those individuals to identify those with a motive to commit the crime, those who were in some way associated with an element of the offense, or those who had otherwise aroused suspicion. These early efforts provided a head start to investigators as they intensified their probe of those closest to RMR-1029.[1]
- ↑ Agents utilized a number of techniques to determine who had access to RMR-1029. They reviewed USAMRIID access control records to see who was in the laboratory housing RMR-1029 at various times. These access control records were invaluable, but contained one limitation: the records were available for the time period beginning in August 1998. Because RMR-1029 was formulated in October 1997, investigators had to use alternate methods to identify those with access in the window between October 1997 and August 1998. For this reason, they also reviewed laboratory notebooks and publications of all the researchers with authorization to enter the lab where RMR-1029 was stored, looking for references to work with the Ames strain, and RMR-1029 in particular, and interviewed researchers regarding their time in
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