As feds closed in, scientist snapped

Before his suicide, anthrax indictment loomed

WASHINGTON -- For most of his career, he was a casting agent's vision of a bench scientist: shy, eccentric, nerdy, soft-spoken. But sometime this spring, with the FBI closing in on him, Bruce E. Ivins' life took a dark turn that frightened his closest friends.

In March, police officers summoned to a quiet Frederick, Md., neighborhood found the 62-year-old microbiologist unconscious in his home. Four months later, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic after making wild threats to "take out" co-workers at the Army research institute where he kept his lab. Then, a week ago, his therapist urgently petitioned a judge for a protection from Ivins. She described a man spiraling out of control, making "homicidal threats, actions, plans."

His death Tuesday from an apparent drug overdose was followed by a revelation even more jarring to those who knew him: a report that Ivins had been implicated in the 2001 anthrax attacks, one of the FBI's biggest unsolved mysteries and most baffling technical cases. Ivins, a leading expert on anthrax vaccines, was on the verge of being indicted in the case, officials familiar with the investigation told news services, and took his life by swallowing a large quantity of prescription-strength acetaminophen.

The allegations of Ivins' possible link to the case known as "Amerithrax" dumbfounded friends and co-workers who knew him as a gentle, big-hearted family man who raised two children in Frederick, volunteered for community charities and played keyboards for the local Catholic church. His work with the deadly anthrax bacteria was devoted to developing more effective vaccines that could save lives in a future biological attack.

Yet, slowly over the past two years, FBI investigators began to focus on Ivins under the theory that he had used his knowledge of anthrax bacteria to pull off the nation's deadliest episode of biological terrorism. As a researcher for the Army's main lab for studying bioterror agents, Ivins had easy access to anthrax bacteria, including the specific strain of bacillus anthracis used in the attacks on media outlets and congressional offices in the fall of 2001. His expertise eventually earned him a front-row seat for the FBI's investigation.

Despite the allegations -- and even after Ivins' apparent plunge into mental illness -- longtime friends and colleagues say it is inconceivable that Ivins could have been a bioterrorist. Many contend that he was driven to depression and suicide because of months of hounding by federal investigators.

"He just looked worried, depressed, anxious, way turned into himself," recalled W. Russell Byrne, an infectious-disease specialist who last saw Ivins on a recent Sunday at St. John the Evangelist, the Roman Catholic church in Frederick. "It would be overstating it to say he looked like a guy who was being led to his execution, but it's not far off."

Ivins' attorney asserted the scientist's innocence and said he had cooperated with investigators for more than a year, The Associated Press reported.

"We are saddened by his death and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law," said Paul F. Kemp.

Key to vaccine studies

When Ivins applied to Fort Detrick in the late 1980s, he had "an impressive resume," said John Ezzell, a former top scientist there who was part of a hiring committee that selected Ivins to work on the human anthrax vaccine. "We thought he worked out really well. He was a critical part of our vaccine studies." Ezzell said Ivins participated in numerous animal experiments testing how the vaccine protected against various types of anthrax exposure.