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At a tense congressional hearing yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that an independent panel will review the scientific evidence that the FBI says proves government scientist Bruce Ivins’ guilt in the anthrax mailings of 2001. As Ivins killed himself in August before he could be indicted, the FBI has been forced to present much of its evidence to the public and has received criticism from some scientific experts and lawmakers who say the FBI hasn’t proved its case.

At the hearing, Senator Pat Leahy (who was a target of the anthrax attacks) told Mueller categorically that he simply does not believe that Ivins was the prime culprit if he was a participant at all, and said he is absolutely convinced that there were others involved in the preparation and mailing of the anthrax [Salon blog]. Leahy argued that the biodefense facility where Ivins worked, Ft. Detrick, didn’t have the capacity to produce the strain of anthrax found in the letter that was sent to him.

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Yesterday the FBI discussed the scientific investigation that led them to accuse the army scientist Bruce Ivins of sending the 2001 anthrax letters. The agency is attempting to prove its case against the researcher in the wake of his suicide but acknowledges that it will be difficult to reach closure without a trial. “We’ll never put all the questions to rest,” said Vahid Majidi, head of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. “There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll” [CNN].

The FBI’s case hinges on the genetic analysis of the anthrax found in the letters, which was eventually found to match anthrax in a flask in Ivins’ lab. Over the past several years, the FBI searched worldwide to gather 1,070 samples of deadly Ames-strain anthrax — the type used in the mailings. Only eight of those anthrax samples contained four distinct genetic mutations — the same mutations found in the mailings. And each of those eight samples, officials allege, could be traced to parent material known as RMR 1029 that was maintained by Ivins in a one-liter flask he controlled in a Ft. Detrick lab [Los Angles Times].

FBI officials say they then interviewed more than 100 people who had access to that flask, and used conventional police work to determine who could have created the anthax powder and mailed the letters during the crucial days in September 2001.

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The U.S. Government is closing the book on the anthrax case, pointing the blame at former Army scientist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide last week as prosecutors prepared to bring charges. The Justice Department said it was confident it could have convicted the scientist, who spent his career developing anthrax vaccines and cures at the bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick, Md. [AP]

Authorities say that DNA tests showed Ivins’ lab contained anthrax spores identical to those used in the attacks, and that building records show the scientist working late nights in the lab just before both of the 2001 attacks. U.S. Atty. Jeffrey A. Taylor says Ivins’ emails show a man growing frustrated with his lab work as his anthrax vaccine project had stalled, and that contributed to Ivins’ problem with mental illness. Taylor suggests that Ivins may have wanted to create a situation that would show the world the necessity of his vaccine, and that could have been the motive behind the attacks.

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Last week’s suicide by a government biodefense researcher who had been linked to the mailing of anthrax-laced letters in 2001 has raised thorny questions about whether the benefits of biodefense research outweigh the risks. Researcher Bruce Ivins had reportedly been informed by the FBI that he was about to be indicted for murder in the incident that killed five people and sent 17 more to the hospital.

Some observers point out that biodefense research has vastly increased since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and raise the question: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs? … Nationwide, an estimated 14,000 people work at about 400 laboratories and have permission to work with so-called select agents, which could be used in a bioterror attack, although not all are authorized to handle the most toxic substances, like anthrax [The New York Times].

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