October 20, 2025 • 64 mins
Mere days after the horrific events of 9/11, someone began sending letters laced with anthrax spores to senators and the offices of major media outfits -- by the time the attacks ended, seventeen people were seriously injured, and five victims had died. Today the FBI maintains the case has been solved: scientist Bruce Edwards Ivins, acting alone, was responsible. Ivins died of an overdose in an apparent suicide before any possible trial, and today, numerous people familiar with the case believe the official story doesn't add up. Tune in to learn more.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Folks, we are returning with a classic episode for you.
Travel back with us to two thousand and one, where
something gripped the nation. There was hysteria about it, and
then people promptly forgot all about the anthrax letter attacks.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yep, short memory sometimes, But I'm right there too, Ben,
I hadn't thought about the two thousand and one anthrax
letter attacks, which is fun to say in a very
long time.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
There's weird stuff the saga of these letters and the
anthrax and the strain and how it got there and
whether or not there was inside government stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, and there's also there's also a crazy context because
this occurs just days after the events of September eleventh,
two thousand and one, very very strange time for the
new cycle tragedy for the nation. Even back in twenty
twenty when we originally recorded this, folks were asking who
(01:02):
was actually responsible.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I seem to remember at the time kind of feeling
this sense of like adding insult to injury with this,
like after everyone was so you know, turned upside down
because of nine to eleven, that this just represented like
a further just destabilization, like everything's just going haywire, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, and people were worried about possible false flags or
trying to amp the country up into a war or
even you know, to MAT's earlier point, inside forces striking
out for internal division, and some of the anthrax was
fake by the way, also we learned later. Anyway, this
(01:42):
is the episode. We can't wait to hear your thoughts,
and if you can solve the mystery, we'd love for
you to solve it for us, because I don't think
we do in this episode. But tell us what you think.
We'll be back after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
My name is nol Our Rider Die Matt Frederick is
most likely playing Best Fiends while he's on vacation. They
called me Ben. We are joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control Deck and most importantly, you
are You are here and that makes this stuff they
(02:43):
don't want you to know. This is a very interesting episode.
It's one that has fascinated Good Pal Matt for a
number of years. This episode is something that he cares
deeply about. So we're gonna do our best to We're
gonna do our best to make them proud.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Speaking of Matt, you blasted right by this whole Best
Fiends business. We got a bombshell yesterday that Matt Frederick
has reached level seven hundred and sixty four in the
mobile game Best Fiends. And I don't know whether to
be proud of him or concerned for him.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I mean, that's you know, he's nothing if not a
passionate dude. But I was likewise surprised. Now, you know, Noel,
if there's one thing that longtime listeners have learned from
stuff they don't want you to know, it's this. You
can blast by a lot of headlines. You can get
a lot of buried leads. The mainstream news is a fickle,
(03:43):
ephemeral thing. Some stories that seem pretty innocuous can receive
international attention. Like remember when the world was obsessed over
figuring out what color address was on Facebook?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
What was the determination ultimately beij was it? What were
the choices? And how do you even interpret this? Ben?
With your color deficiency, did you feel that doubt of
that story.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
No, I wouldn't have participated even if known white color.
I think it was it was blue, or it was
gold or as black. There was a whole thing. But
there are other stories, though, tremendously important stories that seem
to fade from the spotlight, and they're only followed up
(04:27):
on by people in specialized internet forums or in specialized
trade publications. For example, this, this is weird.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Today's story comes to us from josh P. Josh P,
you emailed us to ask about the anthrax attacks of
two thousand and one. Now, right as we say that,
a lot of us in the audience are going, huh, anthrax.
I kind of remember that, right, I. I know it's
(05:00):
a thing, But what do you mean? Well, to answer
that question, we have to first tell you what anthrax is.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
So here are the facts. Yeah, So, just to get
it out of the way. No, not the thrash metal
band from the nineties with that ball dude with the
amazing goatee that you may have seen on episodes of
Beavis and butthead the CDC describes anthrax as a serious
infectious disease that's caused by something referred to as gram
(05:28):
positive rod shaped bacteria referred to as Bacillis anthracis, and
it is something that can absolutely sicken people when it's
inhaled or when they are they come into contact with
infected animals or you know, food stuffs. Another way of
(05:50):
looking at it is that it's a spore forming bacillus
that is absolutely deadly to humans. And there are three
main forms of transmission. Cutaneous which is when you contract
it through the skin. Gastro Intestinal which of course is
when you would ingest it when you know, eating a
contaminated food product. And then there is pulmonary, which is
(06:15):
mainly what we're going to be talking about today, which
is when it is inhaled.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's correct. So so a lot of
countries have stockpiled anthrax for a long time. When you
hear people talking about bioweapon research, they're usually referring to
things like anthrax. Because picture anthrax like picture it like
(06:43):
an agricultural product. With the right know how, you can
grow it, you can groom it, and you can change
it into various various mediums of consumption, right like you said,
with oral or pulmonary or cutaneous inhalation or ingestion. So
(07:04):
behind the scenes, while everybody is worrying about what color
addresses or what the Kardashians are doing, or you know
what the newest season of your favorite television show is,
governments and private partnerships around the world are constantly experimenting
with diseases. They're refining them. You're usually going to hear
(07:25):
about these in terms of national defense, right, like, like
I'm sure you know if you went to the CDC,
they would say, we're not making bioweapons, We're researching vaccines, right,
We're trying to save people, not harm them, That's right.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
And you might hear a term like weaponized grade you know,
like weapons grade plutonium or weaponized anthrax, and that just
means it's refined to the point of being more easily dispersed,
you know, through say air ducts, you know in a
building for example, or you know, it's when I say refined,
I literally mean made into a fine substance that can
(08:05):
be released and become very very dangerous because it is
transmitted through you know, airflow in the case of like
a building or even outdoors. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, And when we talk about these experts who are
working on depending on on what you believe, working on
either weaponizing diseases or on creating cures for these diseases.
They also work on plans on scenarios, right, They work
(08:35):
on what's called emergency preparedness plans.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, and the CDC on their website does have an
emergency preparedness plan in place for an anthrax attack, but
in my opinion, and I'm no expert, it seems pretty
broad and kind of vague, almost more of a stop,
drop and roll situation than actually some sort of larger
government response plan that's in place. And it's interesting. In
(09:03):
more recent times, focus truly seems to have shifted away
from you know, bioterrorism protection and more towards pandemic preparedness.
Though based on our current situation, that does not seem
to have worked out quite so well, so you know,
the jury is still out on that. But bioterrorism was
(09:25):
much more of a top of mind thing during these
attacks that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Right, Yes, fellow conspiracy realist, you may remember this story
from several years ago, almost twenty years ago now, beginning
on September eighteenth, two thousand and one, just a week
after literally just a week after the infamous terrorist attacks.
On September eleventh, two thousand and one, someone started mailing
(09:54):
letters laced with anthrax. They sent these to several places AB, NBCCBS,
the New York Post, American Media. That's that's such a
benign name. American Media is probably best known as the
publisher of the National Enquirer, a quite popular tabloid here
in the US. And they also sent someone sent these
(10:19):
sent anthrax leased letters to members of Congress.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That's correct, two Democratic Senators Tom Dashel and Patrick Lahey.
On October second, two thousand and one, the gentleman at
the American Media building in Florida, which is again the
parent company of the National Inquirer and also The Sun,
a photo editor by the name of Robert Stevens, opened
(10:44):
an innocuously labeled envelope and was exposed to anthrax. There
were various methods in these letters of dispersal, but like
some of them were more successful than others. And I
believe this is one where he pulled something out of
the envelope and it actually kind of ejected powder into
his face and he really took a deep whiff of
(11:06):
this substance.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yep, absolutely, that's correct. Two days later, October fourth, two
thousand and one, Robert Stevens is diagnosed with what's called
inhalational anthrax, meaning he ingested it just the way you
described nol. Robert Stevens dies the next day, October fifth,
two thousand and one, and three days later, authorities start
(11:32):
running tests on his office, on his workspace, and they
find that his computer keyboard also tests positive for anthrax.
This was only the first confirmed death overall so far
as we know today. In twenty twenty, the anthrax attacks
of two thousand and one left seventeen people infected and
(11:54):
five people died. Five people died from exposure to anth
This became a international story, and the problem with some
of these international stories is that for one reason or another,
copycats come into play.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
That's right. There was another copycat crime that occurred when
someone else mailed fake anthrax in the form of just
a harmless white powder, possibly baby powder or something like
that to the New York Times newsroom, and it was
opened by a reporter named Judith Miller. And it really
just goes to show, because of what you said, Ben,
(12:34):
that this truly just was a massive story because it
was in the wake of nine to eleven, where people
were just so on edge already and just really believing
that terrorism was coming at us from all directions, and
the close proximity to that attack on the World Trade
Center buildings really got people freaked out, and the FBI
(12:57):
acted accordingly, launching what they refer to as one of
the largest and most complex investigations in the history of
law enforcement and involved multiple agencies and thousands of hours
of investigative time.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So what did they find. Well, we have to remember,
as you said, that this occurred right after nine to eleven.
It is impossible to convey just how alert, how tense,
how crisis ready government agencies were. You have to remember, folks,
(13:34):
that war was in the air way before the anthrax.
It was already floating around, and war is its own
sort of infectious weapon, right, its own sort of disease.
The FBI scrambled and assembled what I think is a
terribly named task force, the Amerthrax Task Force. We didn't
(13:56):
write that, they wrote that.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It just does not really right off the tug, does it.
But you know, name aside, it was a serious business.
Roughly twenty five to thirty full time investigators from the
FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service and multiple other
law enforcement agencies, as well as federal prosecutors from the
District of Columbia and the Justice Department Counter Terrorism Section.
(14:22):
And as we said before, thousands of investigator work hours
were involved. That led to ten thousand witness interviews on
six different continents, execution of eighty search warrants, and the
recovery of more than six thousand items of potential evidence
during this investigation.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And you heard that right, six different continents. So that
means that the Amerithrax Task Force literally asked people everywhere
except for Antarctica. Somehow the folks in Antarctica slipped under
the radar. This case also ended up issuing more than
(15:02):
five seven hundred and fifty subpoenas for grand juries. They
collected five thousand, seven hundred and thirty environmental samples from
sixty different places they were on the search. This this investigation,
in addition to being very expensive, was very thorough. Here's
(15:23):
here's what they found. Here's how it shakes out. So
FBI agents trace the first wave of letters to a
single postmark. It's these letters came from Trenton, New Jersey,
and that's the first five letters. They had a theme
of sorts. You know, the letters weren't blank when people
(15:43):
opened the envelope, there was something written in there. And
we've got we've got the text of these. Let's let's
maybe start with the letter sent to New York Post
and NBC.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Absolutely, And by the way, if you want, you can
look up images of these. They've been cataloged and photographed
and you can see them. They're all handwritten in kind
of a weird, childish script. It's very Serial Killer esque, honestly,
the way the way they appear, and the notes really
lean into that. Even further so. The one said to
the New York Posts and the NBC News had this
(16:17):
note nine to eleven oh one, this is next. Take
penicillin now. Cool pro tip death to America, death to Israel.
Allah is great. Okay, it seems to have escalated there
to a little different place. But I appreciate the advice
about taking penicillin. I think that's actually really helpful.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
You know, they also misspelled penicillin, by the way, it's true.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
But also by the way, you know, people think of
anthrax and they think, like, I don't know, your mind
immediately goes to some sort of face melting, you know,
bio terror product, and it really just sickens you. It
can make you nauseous, and it's the respiratory thing that
can obviously kill you in the same way that COVID
nineteen can. I mean, it can escalate much more quickly.
But it is treatable with regular antibiotics. You know, it's
(17:04):
not a death sentence always. It's caught in enough time,
so it's not some kind of magical thing. It literally
is just a disease that can be treated with the antibiotics.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And we should note instantly, you know, the FBI investigators
had to say, well, is this a person writing English
as a second language, you know, or the ESL. Is
that why penicilan is misspelled? And of course you know,
there was a lot of anti Muslim sentiment at the time.
(17:37):
The letters sent to Senators Dashel and Lee he said
said very similar things. They said, you cannot stop us.
We have this anthrax. You die now, are you afraid?
Death to America, death to Israel Allah is great. So
clearly they're coming from the same source, just based on
(17:58):
the language there. You know, it is very difficult to
describe the level of panic that occurs here. We have
to remember this is again a week after the largest
attack on American soil in recent US history.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, so, I mean, obviously the first go to is
to investigate Al Qaeda. The White House pressured then FBI
Director Robert Muller to establish the letters were a second
wave of attacks relating to nine to eleven. And it's
always tough when you know, the brass kind of tells
you what results to get, you know what I mean,
(18:38):
because the question is like, you know, sure we can
read these and say, okay, is it an ESL situation
or is it someone trying to write in that voice
as to create that effect, you know what I mean,
to maybe cause that kind of panic. So yeah, obviously
that didn't pan out, this notion that this was in
fact the second wave, but that was whatever one thought.
(19:00):
I mean, it was just the first place your mind
would go. Hence the hysteria that was just you know,
in the air in our country at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, And Muller was definitely under pressure, but you know,
from his estimation, the facts just weren't there. There wasn't
there was one potential link. One of the nine to
eleven terrorists was exposed to anthrax at some point, but
(19:28):
that was that was pretty much all they could find.
The initial actual suspects of the investigation ended up all
being domestic US residents. There were probably about one hundred
people or so who would have the know how, just
to know how alone, just the expertise, not even the
(19:49):
motivation of the opportunity. The FBI first turned to a
man named Stephen J. Hatfil. Doctor Hatfhil is alive today.
He is a pathologist, he's a bioweapons expert, and the
FBI ruined his life.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, for all intents and purposes. In mid two thousand
and two, the FBI served him with a search warrant
of his home, wearing hazmat suits, investigating whether he was
in fact this anthrax killer, as was dubbed in the
media at the time. He was at that point considered
a major person of interest. His phone was tapped, he
(20:28):
got fired from his job at Science Applications International Corporation. Yeah,
like you said, Ben, I mean this really, you know,
in the terms of the court of public opinion and
just his other associations professionally, this absolutely railroaded him. He
did ultimately get exonerated. He was very, very public exoneration.
(20:51):
There's a great clip of him where he says, and
now I can look my fellow Americans in the eye
and say unequivocally I am not the anthrac killer, you know.
And he definitely got some money where his mouth was,
in the form of five point eight million from the
Justice Department and in two other undisclosed settlements from some
(21:12):
of these other agencies that were involved. It was very
clear that they were acting on spurious evidence at best
and made really jump the gun on nailing this guy.
And the way they did.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, I like that you bring up the court of
public opinion. One of those groups that reached an undisclosed
settlement with him was Conde Nast. It's a huge player
in the media. They own Reddit for instance. So Hathhil. Luckily,
if you're listening, doctor Hail, we are glad that you
were able to be exonerated for a crime that you
(21:47):
clearly did not commit. But it's tough to recover from
that sort of stuff. He was ultimately found innocent of
this crime. The primary conclusion of the FBI, the official story,
is this. They concluded that a scientist named Bruce Ivans,
(22:08):
acting alone, was the source of the entirety of the
anthrax attacks, and he has if you're a profiler, he
has all of the right red flags in all of
the right places. He worked directly with anthrax. He was
one of those people that we mentioned at the top
of the show who develops vaccines. So he was working
(22:31):
with anthrax officially to develop vaccines in case some other
government had a weaponized strain that they deployed in the
US or in a battlefield.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And Ben wasn't he even involved in the investigation to
a degree.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, he volunteered, right, He volunteered to test samples. He
sent samples from his own lab. He was around fifty
five years old when the anthrax attacks occurred. He said,
you know, I will help you determine the origin of
the powder. Because everybody in the scientific community, everybody in
the FBI, they knew only a few people in the
(23:12):
world would even understand the science evolved here. So remember
that part for later, folks. This guy volunteered to help
the FBI determine the origin of the powder.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And let's not forget how much pressure the FBI was under,
especially since this public exoneration and having that egg on
their face from wasting all those millions of dollars and
thousands of hours, you know, focusing on the wrong purp.
Doctor Ivans was literally right under their noses. I mean
(23:48):
he was working, you know, in their labs essentially. I
mean he was an agent of the government, and he, uh,
you know, was kind of a goofball. He was he
was sort of a kook like. He was described as
being a bit arrogant and something of a flamboyant figure.
And you know, that was a term that was thrown around.
(24:08):
I'm not sure if if that's meant to be a
pejorative or just that he was kind of a little
bit of kookie. That's kind of the vibe that I got,
but not necessarily a red flag in terms that he
seemed like some kind of sociopath. He would send these
like chipper emails with bad dad jokes, which I can
get behind, as he talked through the dangers of anthrax.
But he was by some seen as being a bit disturbed.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yes, that's correct, behind those puns, behind those cheerful exclamation
marks and tangents in his emails which the FBI obtained.
Of course, he had a lot of trauma. His therapist
said that he had a traumatic childhood and was described
as disturbing, and he himself as an adult seemed to
(24:58):
be disturbed. He was a married man, but back in
nineteen seventy six he was jilted by a fellow grad
student who would go on to be a colleague in
this field, a doctor Nancy Haigwood. And since he was
jilted again back in nineteen seventy six, he had apparently
(25:19):
become obsessed with her old sorority Kapa Kapa Gamma, and
sororities in general. One of boss. Yeah, yeah, he would
sit outside of sorority houses, just sit in this car,
and he would, you know, when he met a colleague
who was affiliated with a sorority, he would instantly start,
(25:43):
I don't know, like pressuring them, cracking down. He got
weird with it.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, But there's also part of me that like, is
he just socially awkward and maybe a bit on the spectrum,
or is this stockery kind of rapee behavior in saying
what's your secret password? What's your secret handshake? It seems
kind of like a goofball way of flirting, like saying,
ha ha, what's your secret handshake? You know what I mean?
(26:08):
As opposed to something genuinely creepy. But he was described
as as having an interest intellectually in secret things.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah he uh this this recollection comes from one of
his former bosses, doctor Priscilla Weirrick. She had a she
was in a sorority in college chi Omega, and she
said that he was doing exactly what you described, nol.
He was always saying, you know, what's your what's your
secret password, what's your secret handshake? So she thought that
(26:43):
he was just maybe, as you said, a guy was
a little bit off, brilliant but a little bit awkward
who was really interested in secret things. The person we
mentioned earlier, doctor Nancy Hagwood, is the person who actually
brought doctor Bruce even to the attention of the FBI.
So what was their official conclusion. We'll tell you after
(27:06):
a word from our sponsor and we're back. So Noel, officially,
there's no reason for us to look into this for
stuff they don't want you to know, because the FBI
has an official conclusion.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Right, Nothing I trust more than an official FBI conclusion. Ben,
Let me tell you so. Yeah, it's true. Today, the
FBI's official position is that doctor Bruce Ivans was a
lone wolf acted without any influence outside of his own
troubled mind, and that he executed these anthrax attacks alone.
(27:49):
And there's some things that check out here. He had
the know how, he had the access, he had the
opportunity to do these things, but he never can. And
to boot he's not in prison. Doctor Bruce Ivans took
his own life. He was discovered on July twenty seventh,
two thousand and eight, unconscious in his home and taken
(28:12):
to the hospital. He had overdosed, apparently on Thailand. All three,
I think is what it's called. It's a combination of
tilanol and codeine that you'd get for a toothache or
a minor surgery, but taken in large doses, is actually
the tile in all that kills you.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, yep. He died at Frederick Memorial Hospital on July
twenty ninth, two thousand and eight. The FBI had found
their bad guy. They would never have to investigate further.
They established, to their you know, to their satisfaction, the timeline.
(28:50):
They established that he did, as you said, have the expertise.
They established that he did have the opportunity do what
a note, by the way, there was no official autopsy
there's not one. There's not one on the record, because again,
there's this pressure we got to close the case. You know,
it's it's something that's very familiar to fans of shows
(29:13):
like The Wire. The FBI found their guy, but their
guy didn't have a day in court.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
No, if Ivan's dead, the FBI would never have to
prove their case to a jury. And we're going to
get into, you know, what their case was as we
progress with this episode. But what if Ben, what if
the official story kind of peters out in eight What
if another story begins because the case against Bruce Ivans
(29:44):
isn't nearly as ironclad as the news media and the
press conferences and briefings from the FBI would have had
viewers and citizens of the United States believe.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You see, one thing that was missing from the FBI's case,
one of several things was a real motive. There wasn't
one established. And this means that in the almost a
decade between when these attacks occurred and when this podcast publishes,
(30:19):
theories have proliferated. Speculation thrives even now about what actually happened.
The big question, the big what if here is what
if after millions of dollars and thousands of hours. The
FBI nailed the wrong man. Here's where it gets crazy. No,
(30:41):
let's like motivation, right. I love that you pointed out
the flamboyant thing, but the FBI didn't ever have like
a clear discernible reason.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And another thing we know from like murder shows is
you know, some murders don't have to have a motive.
It's not like a requirement. But with such an analytical
guy like this and such a pointed, targeted attack, a motive.
I would like to hear a little bit more about
a motive, you know what I mean? Like, I mean,
these were very specific individuals, politicians, news outlets that these
(31:20):
letters were sent to, seemingly for what you know, we
really just don't have the guy just crack. And if so,
why such a specific, targeted and pointed attack. Again, we're
not owed a motive. It's not a necessity to you know,
convict somebody of a crime. The possible motivations, like the
idea that he mailed anthrax NBC is a way of
(31:42):
punishing them. For journalist Gary Matsumoto's work on his lab
that fell apart. Because Matsumoto worked at ABC, not NBC.
He had written some not very flattering stories about some
of some of Ivan's research. Ben, isn't that right, Yeah, yeah,
that's correct.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
He did an investigation into the actual lab that doctor
Bruce Ivans was working at. But again he worked for
ABC not NBC, so that that motivation doesn't add up,
because if Ivans did this, he would have at least
(32:21):
been aware of which news organization this journalist was working
for at the time. Additionally, doctor Ivans passed a Lie
detector test a polygraph polygraphs. We should mention here I've
got a brain stuff episode about this. I think they're
not scientifically sound, but it is rare for a guilty
(32:43):
person to pass Lie detector tests usually unless you know
a few handy tricks here. They are really quick. Not
saying that you should ever lie on a polygraph, but
if you want to pass a polygraph test, again, because
they are not scientifically sound, you can employ any number
(33:04):
of tricks, including doing some things to mess with your
own body temperature, such as meditation, et cetera. You can
this is is fairly explicit, but back in the day
people used to just really flex their kegel muscle for
an extended amount of time. That'll do it. You could
put thumb tacks in your palm or and your shoe.
(33:24):
Of course, there are a number of ways to invalidate it.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Because it's all about sort of messing with that base level,
that baseline, right, and then you know, because what's the
polygraph if not just kind of a slightly you know,
more complex like stress test. So if you can establish
a baseline using that thumb tack in your palm, that's
you know, sort of an elevated baseline, then everything else
is going to kind of you know, be affected by
(33:48):
that absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And and we also know that during the investigation, even
right after the conclusion of the investigation and right after
it was re examined, first in two thousand and eight,
then in twenty eleven, a lot of people, people in power,
some like victims of these attacks, did not believe the
(34:12):
FBI's conclusion. They thought it didn't add up.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yeah. Even Senator Patrick Leahy, who you'll remember was the
target of one of the attacks, testify that he did
not believe that Ivans acted alone, though Senator Dashel, who
was the other political target, did not agree with that assessment.
So in two thousand and eight, FBI Director Robert Mueller figured, Okay,
(34:36):
if there's doubt, you know that's being publicly stated, let's
get to the bottom of this, and he called for
an independent review of the investigation by the National Academy
of Sciences, and that review found that prosecutors had largely
overstated the case in the certainty of their findings. Members
(34:57):
of that committee said that there there were some newly
available methods for testing these these samples of anthrax to
prove the FBI's case much more definitively or lead to
some other suspects, but they were not interested in exploring
such such tests. They relied on some I believe it
(35:23):
was a sort of a fingerprint to trace it back
to what they referred to as a flask of anthrax
that Ivans had control over. And it has a coded
kind of ID that I'm having a hard time finding
right now, but it's like two letters, a dash and
three numbers. And the technique involved tracing these particular mutations
(35:47):
that they could, you know, kind of match up with
the with the actual the flask that were it originated.
And apparently they tested more than a thousand samples throughout
this investigation and only eight of them had tested positive
for four of these mutations found in the germs that
were sent to Congress and the news media. So this
(36:09):
caused an issue. Even in the early stages of the investigation,
there was a group of scientists known as the Red
Team that said the FBI should do more basic research
and so why those mutations might have arisen, that it
wasn't a foregone conclusion just because the mutations existed, that
they necessarily were traced back to that original flask, and
(36:31):
that this woman named Jennifer Smith, who is a senior
manager at the FBI's lab, she expressed those concerns and
didn't feel that the FBI had a kind of full
understanding of how these mutations might have arisen and how
this would be seen by a judge, and how it
could potentially be thrown out entirely.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Right, right, this science is vital here that specific let's say,
brand or type of anthrax flask RMR ten twenty nine.
The reason we know this is because everything should be
obsessively documented in the field of biohazard research or bioweapons.
(37:19):
Right if you are working in the kind of lab
or situation that doctor Ivans was working in at the time,
your interactions with every single version of every single contagion
has to be documented, right, so that we know looking
(37:39):
at the records, we know every time the guy was
in his lab. We know that his time in the
lab on weekends and nights accelerated, right, He was spending
a lot of time there before the attacks occurred, and
we should know everything the guy touched. But even now,
even in twenty twenty, just it's like the experts you
(38:01):
mentioned earlier, Nol. We find large groups of people, including
some of the doctor's colleagues and some of his professional rivals,
who are convinced that this man was innocent. And you know,
the basis for their belief is not that they are
in a Bruce Edward Ivans fan club. In fact, one
(38:21):
of the reasons that a lot of people say he's
innocent is that they say the attacks were too sophisticated
for this guy to have figured out himself. The argument
is basically, yes, he had to know how and the
expertise to experiment with anthrax and maybe even to grow
this particular strain, but he had no training in the
(38:45):
delivery of bioweapons, which I think goes right to your
earlier point about how botched this attack was.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, that's true, and that all, honestly to me, in
some ways makes it seem like it could have been him,
because if it were executed by a more you know,
savvy group, then they maybe would have had a better
delivery method because you know, anthrax is toxic up to
the tiniest particles, and like we said at the top
of the show, you know, if dispersed through a ducts
(39:15):
of an office building could potentially infect thousands of people.
And as we know, the fatality count and even just
the people that were sickened by these was relatively quite low,
you know. So, yeah, definitely didn't seem like it went
as planned. But at the same time, the spores of
anthrax were like Walter White, Breaking Bad level, like strong,
(39:39):
high quality. You could, you know, call them something along
the lines of weapons grade, which is, you know, sort
of a vague term that doesn't necessarily mean one thing,
but it's the type basically, you know, the finest anthrax
grade that can be produced for bioweapons programs in either
the US or somewhere like Russia.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
To interject here, yeah, the reason I think Breaking Bad
is a great comparison. This is like the blue meth
level of weaponized anthrax. There's a there's a scary thing
here that often gets ignored in this story, which is
this the spores of anthrax not to get too far
in the weeds. They were only one point five to
(40:21):
three micrometers wide individual spores. And it is fine grade.
You're correct, it is Walter White level. This type of
anthrax is smaller than the officially acknowledged or even open
secret level bioweapons created by the US or by Russia.
(40:41):
That should disturb people because that means that someone somewhere
is making something that neither world power there acknowledges.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Which isn't that much of a stretch. We know that
governments hold back technology all the time, you know, and
keep it for a military use, and they wouldn't necessarily
want to broadcast that they have that. That's not something
that they just like announce, Hey, we made a scarier
version of anthrax. You guys like check it out, But no,
it's it's it's true. And again when we say fine grade,
(41:14):
we literally are talking about the particulate size, because that's
what allows it to be just dispersed, like the wind
can pick it up like a you know, a dandylion
down and just carry it across the land, infecting you know,
everything in its path potentially, and obviously you have to
breathe it in. But these are you know that they
could be you know, just millions of tiny, tiny, tiny
(41:35):
particles in an envelope a full of powder, a powdered
version of this stuff, right, and.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
You're opening it indoors. Yeah, and there are a lot
of people around, so yeah, you know, at the risk
of sounding cold, it is surprising that only seventeen people
were infected.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
There's another problem with this official conclusion, and that's the
doctor Ivans colleagues and people familiar with the lab can
confirm that the lab equipment cited in the FBI conclusion,
the lab equipment that he would have to have used
(42:15):
to create this stuff and to disperse it, that lab
equipment was not working. He did not have the capability
to make the spores if he were using the equipment
in that lab full stop. It was there. Yes, yeah,
the know how, but that equipment was broken down at
(42:38):
the time, you know what I mean. You can see
how this gets messy so quickly.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, you absolutely can. And just again to clarify, like
the we're talking about the flask that would be sort
of like the mother right, Like that's sort of the
origin material for what he would have used to then
I guess propagate them or grow them into you know,
a more usable version of of anthrax, and then you know,
make it into the powder. So yeah, that would require
(43:05):
a lot of know how and a lot of very
sophisticated equipment. And if it wasn't working in his lab,
what did he like have a secret lab like at
his house. I mean maybe you know, who are we
to say? But it definitely was highly unlikely that he
made it with its broken down equipment at his lab.
And numerous government officials and scientists also believe that this
(43:26):
official story doesn't add up. And there are numerous theories
that have kind of circulated in the years since this
conclusion about doctor Ivans, And we're going to get into
all of those after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And we're back. Yes, the conspiracies, the theories, the speculation thrives, proliferates,
And to be clear, the people who are proposing these
alternative conclusions or these problems with the official investigation, they're
not what you would call tenfoil hat people. They include
(44:09):
people who were working with the FBI and the investigation.
They include scientists, They include experts and anthrax and they
have a lot of valid concerns here. Doctor Ivans, as
I believe we said at the top, was only one
of at least one hundred people who could have worked
with this specific brand of anthrax. Of course, RMR ten
(44:32):
twenty nine not the sexiest name, but it's a technical term,
the first.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Superior to RMR ten twenty eight. Oh my god, I mean, really,
it was a good year. Don't even talk to me
about ten twenty eight. Are you kidding? Ten twenty nine?
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Come on, that's the connoisseur's choice apparently, But he was like,
he was not the only person who would have touched this. Also,
the FBI did not have a peer review of their
conclusions of the scientific end of it during their investigation.
The science, in short, to be very clear, the science
(45:10):
was not there.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah. Taking it a step further, even a twenty eleven
review of the investigation was not able to rule out
the possibility that someone or some group other than Ivan's
committed the crime. The Government Accountability Office or GAL as
I like to call it, because I'm an acronym Junkie
found this quote. The FBI lacked a comprehensive approach or
framework that could have ensured standardization of the testing process.
(45:35):
We jumped into that a little early when we were
talking about testing for that mutation or those mutations, and
how people even within the FBI's lab kind of warned
them against you jumping to conclusions about what could have
caused those mutations. They could have been something outside of
what they were using it as a kind of a
foregone conclusion and tracing it back. It's sort of like,
(45:57):
I don't know, maybe this is a stretch, and science
people please debunk the crap out of me, because I'm
just sort of spitballing here. But it reminds me of
the way certain ballistics technology have kind of been debunked,
where you can, you know, say the striations or whatever
like on a particular bullet could have only been generated
by this one gun. And there's a version of that
technology that was in fact debunked, and it caused some
(46:19):
people to be exonerated because they were convicted using that
kind of spurious conclusion derived from, you know, something that
could have been caused by other factors. So they go
on to say the Government Accountability Office. As a result,
each of the contractors developed their tests differently, and one
contractor did not conduct verification testing, which is a key
(46:41):
step in determining whether a test will meet a user's requirement,
such as for sensitivity or accuracy.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Broken test sounds familiar, unfortunately, and these are days of pandemic.
So if there are problems with the FBI's official investigation,
does that mean there are problems with the bi's official conclusion.
The answer there logically is yes. So now we have
to ask what actually happened, and that means that we
(47:09):
have to look at the conspiracies. There's what you know
that's pretty interesting because a lot of people don't know this,
but before Vice President Mike Pence was in office in
the US, he was also he had a different career
as a prominent radio host and then he moved into politics.
(47:32):
He has some stuff to say about this investigation, right.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, he did. He kind of just made some sort
of shot in the dark kind of claims, released some
statements saying some pretty interesting things about this substance. He
essentially said, quote in a statement, the material found in
my office and in others in Capitol Hill was finally
(47:57):
milled weapons grade anthrax that had been this is the
key part genetically modified to increase its virulence. Huh, what
does that mean, ben genetically modified?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I mean, it's it's the same, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
He's arguing that this was weaponized, and again we have
to remember that this this stuff was officially better than
anything the US or Russia or China could make.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
He was.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
I think at that point he was in a he
was a representative, right, he was a congressional representative before
he became governor of Indiana, before he became vice president.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
That's right. And you know, I mean it's he's The
notion that it was quote unquote weapons grade obviously is
true to a degree, though the term is a little
bit dubious in terms of like how it's used. The
idea of weapons grade. There isn't really a standard as
to what constitutes weapons grade anthrax. The LA Times reported
in an article by David Willman from July sixteenth of
(49:05):
twenty sixteen, and they spoke to a researcher at Johns
Hopkins University named Stephen L. Salzburg, who was actually part
of the first team to check out the material for
the US government, and he said that's just wrong. That's
simply wrong, and we knew at the time that.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
It was wrong.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
He's speaking, of course, of Pence's claims. And then Pence
even kind of doubled down further and said something to
the effect of, oh, it was coated with a chemical
of some kind. Like he definitely added some more fuel
to this fire in saying in a two thousand and
(49:46):
two letter to Ashcroft, the Attorney General, that the spores
had been coated with a chemical and that had also
been disproven by scientists at the SANDA National Laboratory in
New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Yeah, a few months before he told Ashcroft.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
That that's right. And I don't know, I'm fascinated by
this idea of it being genetically modified. And it's interesting
too because Colin Powell, who is a Secretary of State,
he used this, as you know, we know was a thing,
you know, in terms of weapons of mass destruction. He
(50:23):
used this as another call to kind of go to
war with Iraq, to support military action against Iraq that
you know, tying this these anthrax attacks and as we
did nine to eleven, which we now know really wasn't
the case at all, and we use that as an
excuse to go to war with Iraq, and that sort
of got us embroiled in the Middle East in a
(50:44):
way that we're still kind of dealing with today.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Still friends with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Though you
want to kill some journalists, want you want to support
some terrorists, that's fine. We'll see how oil prices affect
that geopolitical relationship. But that's a story for another day.
You're right, you know, people immediately tied this to terrorism.
Death to America, death to Israel is great, so on.
(51:11):
We also have to remember that at this time, millions
of innocent Americans are being vilified in the media for
their religious beliefs. Right. It's as dumb and disgusting as
any other sort of prejudice. So when we're talking about
the belief of terrorism or something, or you know, the
(51:34):
idea that religiously motivated terrorists might have perpetrated the anthrax attacks,
we're specifically talking about Al Qaeda. We're not talking about
some general, amorphous thing. We're talking about a real, concrete, discrete,
existing organization that did have a track record, a rap
(51:57):
sheet of committing terrorist acts.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Absolutely and let's also remember that this was used as
kind of, you know, a media device. Powell held a
press conference where he had a vial of white powder
in his hand, a small amount, and he said that
a teaspoon size quantity of anthrax in one of the
letters had you know, driven Washington into a state of chaos,
(52:24):
killed and killed two postal workers. And he suggested very
pointedly that Iraq had stockpiled enough anthrax to quote Phil
tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons, right,
I mean, he's definitely trying to stir up some this.
(52:44):
It's definitely it's a a fear bongering move, is what
it is. And maybe it's well intentioned, but it seems
to me like a you know, a pretty callous maneuver.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
I'm just laughing because I think that's a fantastic example
of the of just how far we in the United
States will go to avoid using the metric system. That's right, funny,
It's true though, He's like, he's like put it in
a number of people can understand.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Tens upon tens upon tens upon tens.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
If each if each sport of anthrax was the size
of an oreo and you stack them on top of
each other, they could reach you know whatever, as long
as we don't use the metric system. That's one of
the that's one of the big rules. But but there's
another conspiracy here, the idea that that the idea that
(53:38):
the threat came closer to home, the idea that this
was a false front, or that some faction of the
US government actually planned this attack. You can imagine that
for the people who believe nine to eleven itself was
a false flag, the anthrax attacks of two thousand and
one were just another planned event or another sequence, larger plan,
(54:01):
another inside job.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
You know.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
This school of thought frames those attacks as a plan B,
a backup measure, just in case nine to eleven was
not enough of a push to make the public and
the government move forward with certain actions. Then this, this
sort of the equivalent of a double tap, would ensure
(54:24):
that the public moved in the direction that these powers,
whoever they are, wanted. You know, it's it's strange because
there's something comforting. This is weird. Walk with me here.
There's something comforting about the idea that there is a
grand design, you know what I mean, The idea that
(54:48):
the same people who cannot get their stuff together on
any given Tuesday are somehow also capable of this Rube
Goldberg esque control of the past, the future, and the present.
I don't know. I don't know. I feel like the
(55:08):
idea that they're super villainy at work and a grand
conspiracy is much more comforting than the other side of
the coin, which is.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
That that it's just chaos, right.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Right, that maybe there's another conspiracy theory is that the
FBI is covering up for governmental incompetence, Like what about
that political pressure, Like what what if they just you know,
what if they have people breathing down their necks saying
close this case. Now, find me a person who's the
creepiest guy that we know has touched anthrax.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
This is the lowest hanging fruit possibility of them all.
I mean, it makes the most sense. You know, you
want to say face. You want to get the job done,
even if it means putting away the wrong guy. You know,
maybe they even had a hand in his suicide. You know,
crazier things have been reported, you know, in terms of
the government's involvement in assassinating folks, and you know, trying
(56:07):
to cover that up you know, so I just I
have no problem believing this, and I find the false
flag narrative to be just such a go to kind
of looney tunes one. Like people are saying that about
the COVID situation right now, that like it's fault like
you know, some people that don't believe that it's real.
I equate it to like Holocaust denial or something. It's like, dude,
(56:27):
there's bodies piling up, they're making like you know, ice
skating rinks in New York and to make shift Morgus
like it's real, you know, like move on.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Yeah, I would say, you know, to that point, the
US government is such.
Speaker 5 (56:40):
A byzantine, complicated maze like structure, with so many people
involved and so many groups involved, that it is completely
possible for factions.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Of the US government to do things that the you know,
the other groups in the government don't know about or
would object to, Like the CIA is the go to
example there. They're doing all sorts of dirty stuff, and
there are people who are supposed to have oversight of
that organization and they have no idea what's going on.
You know, they're in the dark. And the FBI has
(57:17):
done some very filthy things too in the past, so
I can see where this is coming from. At this point,
there is no conclusive proof that anyone affiliated with the
government in a law enforcement capacity conspired to mail anthrax
to people. But the problem remains. This is the biggest
(57:40):
problem here. The science, the science upon which the FBI's
conclusion depends is not itself sound. Regardless of whether you
think the FBI found their culprit or whether you you
know what, if you think that some government agents actually
conducted this attack, or if you think that political pressure
(58:03):
rushed the investigation, there is one thing for sure, and
that is numerous experts, not just doctor Ivans colleagues, agree
the FBI has never conclusively proven doctor Ivans was one
hundred percent the man behind the mail and all that
lab work. That is what the case hinges on it,
(58:25):
and it's not solid.
Speaker 2 (58:27):
There's a really fantastic series on pro Publica, one of
which was FBI's science good enough to id Anthrax Killer,
And we talked about this a little bit earlier, but
just to hit home again, to quote the article, investigators
had invented a new form of genetic fingerprinting for the
case testing anthrax collected from US and foreign labs for
(58:48):
mutations detected in the attack powder. Out of more than
a thousand samples, only eight tested positive for four mutations
found in the deadly germs sent to Congress and the
news media. Even so, the outside sciences quote known as
the Red Team just saying this is a quote, urged
the FBI to do more basic research into how and
(59:08):
when the mutations arose, to make sure the tests were
sound and the results unchallengeable. And they didn't do that.
So you know, this review showed that the FBI definitely
overstated its case and possibly would not have gotten a conviction.
In fact, seems to me quite likely would not have
(59:29):
gotten a conviction against Ivans because they based their conclusions
on some pretty shaky science.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
And what does doctor Ivans think. Will never know because
again he died of an overdose of thailand old codine
or as he said, an old tiler all three that
was ruled a probable suicide. So he never got his
day in court, and technically in this country, days in
(59:59):
court are you know, they're a thing. They're a tradition
that we like to say we practice.
Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
But you know what I mean, I would say it's
a formality. At times, it seems really just kind of
like a smoke screen of Hey, look, justice is being
carried out, you know, but it quite often is not.
You know, there there is that court of public opinion
and and this is really all doctor Ivan's truly got
tried in and he was pilloried and he you know,
(01:00:28):
lost his life because of it. And you know, he
may have been a weirdo and he may have had
a hand in this, but I don't buy that he
was acting alone, if he had anything to do with
it at all.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Yeah, yeah, that's the issue. Let's you know, there's one
person that we should introduce here at the toward the
end of this episode, and that is Claire Frasier Leggott.
She was a pivotal member of the Amerthracks I can't
believe that's the real name, the Americal Tracks investigation. And
(01:01:00):
she was a genetic consultant working with the FBI, one
of those people who helped nail down the specific type
of anthrax. Let's give the last word to her again.
This is an expert. This is one of the protagonists, right,
This is a person who's attempting to solve this case.
And she says, quote This was not an air tight
(01:01:23):
case by any means. You know, I think that for
an awful lot of people, there is a desire to
really want to say that, yes, Ivans was the perpetrator,
this case can reasonably be closed and we can put
this tragic chapter in US history behind us. But I
think part of what's driving that is the fact that
if he wasn't the perpetrator, then it means that person
(01:01:46):
is still out there.
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
So if not Bruce Ivans, then who That's the question
we leave you with today. What do you think? Please
let us know. You can write to us in the
usual usual places, the social media's or where some form
of conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show. You can also
find us as individuals on social media. I am on
Instagram at how Now Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
And you can find me on Twitter at Ben bullin HSW.
You can also find me on Instagram in a burst
of creativity calling myself at Ben Bolling. Do you hate
social media? Totally? Get it? Why not leave us a message,
give us a call. You can reach us at one
eight three three st d WYTK. It feels weird when
(01:02:31):
we're not saying it together. And you know, I miss.
When Matt says this, I hope he likes this episode.
I do too.
Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
I really hope he likes this episode. And it's a
bummer that he isn't here for it, but I hope
we did him proud. And speaking of Matt, if you
call that number that we just mentioned, even now while
Matt's on vacation, you may well he may give you
a call back. No promises, but he's been known to
do it. He's a lovely man and would love to
talk to you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Consider you know. I wouldn't even say that's a promise.
I would say consider it a warning. Be careful as
possible as you will exactly exactly so do let us know.
And while you're at it, let us know if there
are any other stories of scientists who have died under
mysterious circumstances. If there's another angle of the anthrax attacks
(01:03:13):
that you feel like your fellow listeners should know about,
you can tell us. As Noel said, on social media,
you can also find us on your local telephone. And
if you say, hey, I hate phones, Hey I hate
social media, but I have something you need to know.
We are all ears, we are all eyes. You can
(01:03:34):
reach us twenty four to seven, any day of the year,
anytime of the day, at our good old fashioned email
address where we.
Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Folks, we are returning with a classic episode for you.
Travel back with us to two thousand and one, where
something gripped the nation. There was hysteria about it, and
then people promptly forgot all about the anthrax letter attacks.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yep, short memory sometimes, But I'm right there too, Ben,
I hadn't thought about the two thousand and one anthrax
letter attacks, which is fun to say in a very
long time.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
There's weird stuff the saga of these letters and the
anthrax and the strain and how it got there and
whether or not there was inside government stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, and there's also there's also a crazy context because
this occurs just days after the events of September eleventh,
two thousand and one, very very strange time for the
new cycle tragedy for the nation. Even back in twenty
twenty when we originally recorded this, folks were asking who
(01:02):
was actually responsible.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I seem to remember at the time kind of feeling
this sense of like adding insult to injury with this,
like after everyone was so you know, turned upside down
because of nine to eleven, that this just represented like
a further just destabilization, like everything's just going haywire, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, and people were worried about possible false flags or
trying to amp the country up into a war or
even you know, to MAT's earlier point, inside forces striking
out for internal division, and some of the anthrax was
fake by the way, also we learned later. Anyway, this
(01:42):
is the episode. We can't wait to hear your thoughts,
and if you can solve the mystery, we'd love for
you to solve it for us, because I don't think
we do in this episode. But tell us what you think.
We'll be back after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Hello, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
My name is nol Our Rider Die Matt Frederick is
most likely playing Best Fiends while he's on vacation. They
called me Ben. We are joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control Deck and most importantly, you
are You are here and that makes this stuff they
(02:43):
don't want you to know. This is a very interesting episode.
It's one that has fascinated Good Pal Matt for a
number of years. This episode is something that he cares
deeply about. So we're gonna do our best to We're
gonna do our best to make them proud.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Speaking of Matt, you blasted right by this whole Best
Fiends business. We got a bombshell yesterday that Matt Frederick
has reached level seven hundred and sixty four in the
mobile game Best Fiends. And I don't know whether to
be proud of him or concerned for him.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I mean, that's you know, he's nothing if not a
passionate dude. But I was likewise surprised. Now, you know, Noel,
if there's one thing that longtime listeners have learned from
stuff they don't want you to know, it's this. You
can blast by a lot of headlines. You can get
a lot of buried leads. The mainstream news is a fickle,
(03:43):
ephemeral thing. Some stories that seem pretty innocuous can receive
international attention. Like remember when the world was obsessed over
figuring out what color address was on Facebook?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
What was the determination ultimately beij was it? What were
the choices? And how do you even interpret this? Ben?
With your color deficiency, did you feel that doubt of
that story.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
No, I wouldn't have participated even if known white color.
I think it was it was blue, or it was
gold or as black. There was a whole thing. But
there are other stories, though, tremendously important stories that seem
to fade from the spotlight, and they're only followed up
(04:27):
on by people in specialized internet forums or in specialized
trade publications. For example, this, this is weird.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Today's story comes to us from josh P. Josh P,
you emailed us to ask about the anthrax attacks of
two thousand and one. Now, right as we say that,
a lot of us in the audience are going, huh, anthrax.
I kind of remember that, right, I. I know it's
(05:00):
a thing, But what do you mean? Well, to answer
that question, we have to first tell you what anthrax is.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
So here are the facts. Yeah, So, just to get
it out of the way. No, not the thrash metal
band from the nineties with that ball dude with the
amazing goatee that you may have seen on episodes of
Beavis and butthead the CDC describes anthrax as a serious
infectious disease that's caused by something referred to as gram
(05:28):
positive rod shaped bacteria referred to as Bacillis anthracis, and
it is something that can absolutely sicken people when it's
inhaled or when they are they come into contact with
infected animals or you know, food stuffs. Another way of
(05:50):
looking at it is that it's a spore forming bacillus
that is absolutely deadly to humans. And there are three
main forms of transmission. Cutaneous which is when you contract
it through the skin. Gastro Intestinal which of course is
when you would ingest it when you know, eating a
contaminated food product. And then there is pulmonary, which is
(06:15):
mainly what we're going to be talking about today, which
is when it is inhaled.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's correct. So so a lot of
countries have stockpiled anthrax for a long time. When you
hear people talking about bioweapon research, they're usually referring to
things like anthrax. Because picture anthrax like picture it like
(06:43):
an agricultural product. With the right know how, you can
grow it, you can groom it, and you can change
it into various various mediums of consumption, right like you said,
with oral or pulmonary or cutaneous inhalation or ingestion. So
(07:04):
behind the scenes, while everybody is worrying about what color
addresses or what the Kardashians are doing, or you know
what the newest season of your favorite television show is,
governments and private partnerships around the world are constantly experimenting
with diseases. They're refining them. You're usually going to hear
(07:25):
about these in terms of national defense, right, like, like
I'm sure you know if you went to the CDC,
they would say, we're not making bioweapons, We're researching vaccines, right,
We're trying to save people, not harm them, That's right.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
And you might hear a term like weaponized grade you know,
like weapons grade plutonium or weaponized anthrax, and that just
means it's refined to the point of being more easily dispersed,
you know, through say air ducts, you know in a
building for example, or you know, it's when I say refined,
I literally mean made into a fine substance that can
(08:05):
be released and become very very dangerous because it is
transmitted through you know, airflow in the case of like
a building or even outdoors. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, And when we talk about these experts who are
working on depending on on what you believe, working on
either weaponizing diseases or on creating cures for these diseases.
They also work on plans on scenarios, right, They work
(08:35):
on what's called emergency preparedness plans.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, and the CDC on their website does have an
emergency preparedness plan in place for an anthrax attack, but
in my opinion, and I'm no expert, it seems pretty
broad and kind of vague, almost more of a stop,
drop and roll situation than actually some sort of larger
government response plan that's in place. And it's interesting. In
(09:03):
more recent times, focus truly seems to have shifted away
from you know, bioterrorism protection and more towards pandemic preparedness.
Though based on our current situation, that does not seem
to have worked out quite so well, so you know,
the jury is still out on that. But bioterrorism was
(09:25):
much more of a top of mind thing during these
attacks that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Right, Yes, fellow conspiracy realist, you may remember this story
from several years ago, almost twenty years ago now, beginning
on September eighteenth, two thousand and one, just a week
after literally just a week after the infamous terrorist attacks.
On September eleventh, two thousand and one, someone started mailing
(09:54):
letters laced with anthrax. They sent these to several places AB, NBCCBS,
the New York Post, American Media. That's that's such a
benign name. American Media is probably best known as the
publisher of the National Enquirer, a quite popular tabloid here
in the US. And they also sent someone sent these
(10:19):
sent anthrax leased letters to members of Congress.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
That's correct, two Democratic Senators Tom Dashel and Patrick Lahey.
On October second, two thousand and one, the gentleman at
the American Media building in Florida, which is again the
parent company of the National Inquirer and also The Sun,
a photo editor by the name of Robert Stevens, opened
(10:44):
an innocuously labeled envelope and was exposed to anthrax. There
were various methods in these letters of dispersal, but like
some of them were more successful than others. And I
believe this is one where he pulled something out of
the envelope and it actually kind of ejected powder into
his face and he really took a deep whiff of
(11:06):
this substance.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yep, absolutely, that's correct. Two days later, October fourth, two
thousand and one, Robert Stevens is diagnosed with what's called
inhalational anthrax, meaning he ingested it just the way you
described nol. Robert Stevens dies the next day, October fifth,
two thousand and one, and three days later, authorities start
(11:32):
running tests on his office, on his workspace, and they
find that his computer keyboard also tests positive for anthrax.
This was only the first confirmed death overall so far
as we know today. In twenty twenty, the anthrax attacks
of two thousand and one left seventeen people infected and
(11:54):
five people died. Five people died from exposure to anth
This became a international story, and the problem with some
of these international stories is that for one reason or another,
copycats come into play.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
That's right. There was another copycat crime that occurred when
someone else mailed fake anthrax in the form of just
a harmless white powder, possibly baby powder or something like
that to the New York Times newsroom, and it was
opened by a reporter named Judith Miller. And it really
just goes to show, because of what you said, Ben,
(12:34):
that this truly just was a massive story because it
was in the wake of nine to eleven, where people
were just so on edge already and just really believing
that terrorism was coming at us from all directions, and
the close proximity to that attack on the World Trade
Center buildings really got people freaked out, and the FBI
(12:57):
acted accordingly, launching what they refer to as one of
the largest and most complex investigations in the history of
law enforcement and involved multiple agencies and thousands of hours
of investigative time.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
So what did they find. Well, we have to remember,
as you said, that this occurred right after nine to eleven.
It is impossible to convey just how alert, how tense,
how crisis ready government agencies were. You have to remember, folks,
(13:34):
that war was in the air way before the anthrax.
It was already floating around, and war is its own
sort of infectious weapon, right, its own sort of disease.
The FBI scrambled and assembled what I think is a
terribly named task force, the Amerthrax Task Force. We didn't
(13:56):
write that, they wrote that.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It just does not really right off the tug, does it.
But you know, name aside, it was a serious business.
Roughly twenty five to thirty full time investigators from the
FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service and multiple other
law enforcement agencies, as well as federal prosecutors from the
District of Columbia and the Justice Department Counter Terrorism Section.
(14:22):
And as we said before, thousands of investigator work hours
were involved. That led to ten thousand witness interviews on
six different continents, execution of eighty search warrants, and the
recovery of more than six thousand items of potential evidence
during this investigation.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And you heard that right, six different continents. So that
means that the Amerithrax Task Force literally asked people everywhere
except for Antarctica. Somehow the folks in Antarctica slipped under
the radar. This case also ended up issuing more than
(15:02):
five seven hundred and fifty subpoenas for grand juries. They
collected five thousand, seven hundred and thirty environmental samples from
sixty different places they were on the search. This this investigation,
in addition to being very expensive, was very thorough. Here's
(15:23):
here's what they found. Here's how it shakes out. So
FBI agents trace the first wave of letters to a
single postmark. It's these letters came from Trenton, New Jersey,
and that's the first five letters. They had a theme
of sorts. You know, the letters weren't blank when people
(15:43):
opened the envelope, there was something written in there. And
we've got we've got the text of these. Let's let's
maybe start with the letter sent to New York Post
and NBC.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Absolutely, And by the way, if you want, you can
look up images of these. They've been cataloged and photographed
and you can see them. They're all handwritten in kind
of a weird, childish script. It's very Serial Killer esque, honestly,
the way the way they appear, and the notes really
lean into that. Even further so. The one said to
the New York Posts and the NBC News had this
(16:17):
note nine to eleven oh one, this is next. Take
penicillin now. Cool pro tip death to America, death to Israel.
Allah is great. Okay, it seems to have escalated there
to a little different place. But I appreciate the advice
about taking penicillin. I think that's actually really helpful.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
You know, they also misspelled penicillin, by the way, it's true.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
But also by the way, you know, people think of
anthrax and they think, like, I don't know, your mind
immediately goes to some sort of face melting, you know,
bio terror product, and it really just sickens you. It
can make you nauseous, and it's the respiratory thing that
can obviously kill you in the same way that COVID
nineteen can. I mean, it can escalate much more quickly.
But it is treatable with regular antibiotics. You know, it's
(17:04):
not a death sentence always. It's caught in enough time,
so it's not some kind of magical thing. It literally
is just a disease that can be treated with the antibiotics.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And we should note instantly, you know, the FBI investigators
had to say, well, is this a person writing English
as a second language, you know, or the ESL. Is
that why penicilan is misspelled? And of course you know,
there was a lot of anti Muslim sentiment at the time.
(17:37):
The letters sent to Senators Dashel and Lee he said
said very similar things. They said, you cannot stop us.
We have this anthrax. You die now, are you afraid?
Death to America, death to Israel Allah is great. So
clearly they're coming from the same source, just based on
(17:58):
the language there. You know, it is very difficult to
describe the level of panic that occurs here. We have
to remember this is again a week after the largest
attack on American soil in recent US history.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, so, I mean, obviously the first go to is
to investigate Al Qaeda. The White House pressured then FBI
Director Robert Muller to establish the letters were a second
wave of attacks relating to nine to eleven. And it's
always tough when you know, the brass kind of tells
you what results to get, you know what I mean,
(18:38):
because the question is like, you know, sure we can
read these and say, okay, is it an ESL situation
or is it someone trying to write in that voice
as to create that effect, you know what I mean,
to maybe cause that kind of panic. So yeah, obviously
that didn't pan out, this notion that this was in
fact the second wave, but that was whatever one thought.
(19:00):
I mean, it was just the first place your mind
would go. Hence the hysteria that was just you know,
in the air in our country at that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, And Muller was definitely under pressure, but you know,
from his estimation, the facts just weren't there. There wasn't
there was one potential link. One of the nine to
eleven terrorists was exposed to anthrax at some point, but
(19:28):
that was that was pretty much all they could find.
The initial actual suspects of the investigation ended up all
being domestic US residents. There were probably about one hundred
people or so who would have the know how, just
to know how alone, just the expertise, not even the
(19:49):
motivation of the opportunity. The FBI first turned to a
man named Stephen J. Hatfil. Doctor Hatfhil is alive today.
He is a pathologist, he's a bioweapons expert, and the
FBI ruined his life.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, for all intents and purposes. In mid two thousand
and two, the FBI served him with a search warrant
of his home, wearing hazmat suits, investigating whether he was
in fact this anthrax killer, as was dubbed in the
media at the time. He was at that point considered
a major person of interest. His phone was tapped, he
(20:28):
got fired from his job at Science Applications International Corporation. Yeah,
like you said, Ben, I mean this really, you know,
in the terms of the court of public opinion and
just his other associations professionally, this absolutely railroaded him. He
did ultimately get exonerated. He was very, very public exoneration.
(20:51):
There's a great clip of him where he says, and
now I can look my fellow Americans in the eye
and say unequivocally I am not the anthrac killer, you know.
And he definitely got some money where his mouth was,
in the form of five point eight million from the
Justice Department and in two other undisclosed settlements from some
(21:12):
of these other agencies that were involved. It was very
clear that they were acting on spurious evidence at best
and made really jump the gun on nailing this guy.
And the way they did.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, I like that you bring up the court of
public opinion. One of those groups that reached an undisclosed
settlement with him was Conde Nast. It's a huge player
in the media. They own Reddit for instance. So Hathhil. Luckily,
if you're listening, doctor Hail, we are glad that you
were able to be exonerated for a crime that you
(21:47):
clearly did not commit. But it's tough to recover from
that sort of stuff. He was ultimately found innocent of
this crime. The primary conclusion of the FBI, the official story,
is this. They concluded that a scientist named Bruce Ivans,
(22:08):
acting alone, was the source of the entirety of the
anthrax attacks, and he has if you're a profiler, he
has all of the right red flags in all of
the right places. He worked directly with anthrax. He was
one of those people that we mentioned at the top
of the show who develops vaccines. So he was working
(22:31):
with anthrax officially to develop vaccines in case some other
government had a weaponized strain that they deployed in the
US or in a battlefield.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And Ben wasn't he even involved in the investigation to
a degree.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, he volunteered, right, He volunteered to test samples. He
sent samples from his own lab. He was around fifty
five years old when the anthrax attacks occurred. He said,
you know, I will help you determine the origin of
the powder. Because everybody in the scientific community, everybody in
the FBI, they knew only a few people in the
(23:12):
world would even understand the science evolved here. So remember
that part for later, folks. This guy volunteered to help
the FBI determine the origin of the powder.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And let's not forget how much pressure the FBI was under,
especially since this public exoneration and having that egg on
their face from wasting all those millions of dollars and
thousands of hours, you know, focusing on the wrong purp.
Doctor Ivans was literally right under their noses. I mean
(23:48):
he was working, you know, in their labs essentially. I
mean he was an agent of the government, and he, uh,
you know, was kind of a goofball. He was he
was sort of a kook like. He was described as
being a bit arrogant and something of a flamboyant figure.
And you know, that was a term that was thrown around.
(24:08):
I'm not sure if if that's meant to be a
pejorative or just that he was kind of a little
bit of kookie. That's kind of the vibe that I got,
but not necessarily a red flag in terms that he
seemed like some kind of sociopath. He would send these
like chipper emails with bad dad jokes, which I can
get behind, as he talked through the dangers of anthrax.
But he was by some seen as being a bit disturbed.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yes, that's correct, behind those puns, behind those cheerful exclamation
marks and tangents in his emails which the FBI obtained.
Of course, he had a lot of trauma. His therapist
said that he had a traumatic childhood and was described
as disturbing, and he himself as an adult seemed to
(24:58):
be disturbed. He was a married man, but back in
nineteen seventy six he was jilted by a fellow grad
student who would go on to be a colleague in
this field, a doctor Nancy Haigwood. And since he was
jilted again back in nineteen seventy six, he had apparently
(25:19):
become obsessed with her old sorority Kapa Kapa Gamma, and
sororities in general. One of boss. Yeah, yeah, he would
sit outside of sorority houses, just sit in this car,
and he would, you know, when he met a colleague
who was affiliated with a sorority, he would instantly start,
(25:43):
I don't know, like pressuring them, cracking down. He got
weird with it.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, But there's also part of me that like, is
he just socially awkward and maybe a bit on the spectrum,
or is this stockery kind of rapee behavior in saying
what's your secret password? What's your secret handshake? It seems
kind of like a goofball way of flirting, like saying,
ha ha, what's your secret handshake? You know what I mean?
(26:08):
As opposed to something genuinely creepy. But he was described
as as having an interest intellectually in secret things.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah he uh this this recollection comes from one of
his former bosses, doctor Priscilla Weirrick. She had a she
was in a sorority in college chi Omega, and she
said that he was doing exactly what you described, nol.
He was always saying, you know, what's your what's your
secret password, what's your secret handshake? So she thought that
(26:43):
he was just maybe, as you said, a guy was
a little bit off, brilliant but a little bit awkward
who was really interested in secret things. The person we
mentioned earlier, doctor Nancy Hagwood, is the person who actually
brought doctor Bruce even to the attention of the FBI.
So what was their official conclusion. We'll tell you after
(27:06):
a word from our sponsor and we're back. So Noel, officially,
there's no reason for us to look into this for
stuff they don't want you to know, because the FBI
has an official conclusion.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Right, Nothing I trust more than an official FBI conclusion. Ben,
Let me tell you so. Yeah, it's true. Today, the
FBI's official position is that doctor Bruce Ivans was a
lone wolf acted without any influence outside of his own
troubled mind, and that he executed these anthrax attacks alone.
(27:49):
And there's some things that check out here. He had
the know how, he had the access, he had the
opportunity to do these things, but he never can. And
to boot he's not in prison. Doctor Bruce Ivans took
his own life. He was discovered on July twenty seventh,
two thousand and eight, unconscious in his home and taken
(28:12):
to the hospital. He had overdosed, apparently on Thailand. All three,
I think is what it's called. It's a combination of
tilanol and codeine that you'd get for a toothache or
a minor surgery, but taken in large doses, is actually
the tile in all that kills you.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, yep. He died at Frederick Memorial Hospital on July
twenty ninth, two thousand and eight. The FBI had found
their bad guy. They would never have to investigate further.
They established, to their you know, to their satisfaction, the timeline.
(28:50):
They established that he did, as you said, have the expertise.
They established that he did have the opportunity do what
a note, by the way, there was no official autopsy
there's not one. There's not one on the record, because again,
there's this pressure we got to close the case. You know,
it's it's something that's very familiar to fans of shows
(29:13):
like The Wire. The FBI found their guy, but their
guy didn't have a day in court.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
No, if Ivan's dead, the FBI would never have to
prove their case to a jury. And we're going to
get into, you know, what their case was as we
progress with this episode. But what if Ben, what if
the official story kind of peters out in eight What
if another story begins because the case against Bruce Ivans
(29:44):
isn't nearly as ironclad as the news media and the
press conferences and briefings from the FBI would have had
viewers and citizens of the United States believe.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You see, one thing that was missing from the FBI's case,
one of several things was a real motive. There wasn't
one established. And this means that in the almost a
decade between when these attacks occurred and when this podcast publishes,
(30:19):
theories have proliferated. Speculation thrives even now about what actually happened.
The big question, the big what if here is what
if after millions of dollars and thousands of hours. The
FBI nailed the wrong man. Here's where it gets crazy. No,
(30:41):
let's like motivation, right. I love that you pointed out
the flamboyant thing, but the FBI didn't ever have like
a clear discernible reason.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And another thing we know from like murder shows is
you know, some murders don't have to have a motive.
It's not like a requirement. But with such an analytical
guy like this and such a pointed, targeted attack, a motive.
I would like to hear a little bit more about
a motive, you know what I mean? Like, I mean,
these were very specific individuals, politicians, news outlets that these
(31:20):
letters were sent to, seemingly for what you know, we
really just don't have the guy just crack. And if so,
why such a specific, targeted and pointed attack. Again, we're
not owed a motive. It's not a necessity to you know,
convict somebody of a crime. The possible motivations, like the
idea that he mailed anthrax NBC is a way of
(31:42):
punishing them. For journalist Gary Matsumoto's work on his lab
that fell apart. Because Matsumoto worked at ABC, not NBC.
He had written some not very flattering stories about some
of some of Ivan's research. Ben, isn't that right, Yeah, yeah,
that's correct.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
He did an investigation into the actual lab that doctor
Bruce Ivans was working at. But again he worked for
ABC not NBC, so that that motivation doesn't add up,
because if Ivans did this, he would have at least
(32:21):
been aware of which news organization this journalist was working
for at the time. Additionally, doctor Ivans passed a Lie
detector test a polygraph polygraphs. We should mention here I've
got a brain stuff episode about this. I think they're
not scientifically sound, but it is rare for a guilty
(32:43):
person to pass Lie detector tests usually unless you know
a few handy tricks here. They are really quick. Not
saying that you should ever lie on a polygraph, but
if you want to pass a polygraph test, again, because
they are not scientifically sound, you can employ any number
(33:04):
of tricks, including doing some things to mess with your
own body temperature, such as meditation, et cetera. You can
this is is fairly explicit, but back in the day
people used to just really flex their kegel muscle for
an extended amount of time. That'll do it. You could
put thumb tacks in your palm or and your shoe.
(33:24):
Of course, there are a number of ways to invalidate it.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Because it's all about sort of messing with that base level,
that baseline, right, and then you know, because what's the
polygraph if not just kind of a slightly you know,
more complex like stress test. So if you can establish
a baseline using that thumb tack in your palm, that's
you know, sort of an elevated baseline, then everything else
is going to kind of you know, be affected by
(33:48):
that absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
And and we also know that during the investigation, even
right after the conclusion of the investigation and right after
it was re examined, first in two thousand and eight,
then in twenty eleven, a lot of people, people in power,
some like victims of these attacks, did not believe the
(34:12):
FBI's conclusion. They thought it didn't add up.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yeah. Even Senator Patrick Leahy, who you'll remember was the
target of one of the attacks, testify that he did
not believe that Ivans acted alone, though Senator Dashel, who
was the other political target, did not agree with that assessment.
So in two thousand and eight, FBI Director Robert Mueller figured, Okay,
(34:36):
if there's doubt, you know that's being publicly stated, let's
get to the bottom of this, and he called for
an independent review of the investigation by the National Academy
of Sciences, and that review found that prosecutors had largely
overstated the case in the certainty of their findings. Members
(34:57):
of that committee said that there there were some newly
available methods for testing these these samples of anthrax to
prove the FBI's case much more definitively or lead to
some other suspects, but they were not interested in exploring
such such tests. They relied on some I believe it
(35:23):
was a sort of a fingerprint to trace it back
to what they referred to as a flask of anthrax
that Ivans had control over. And it has a coded
kind of ID that I'm having a hard time finding
right now, but it's like two letters, a dash and
three numbers. And the technique involved tracing these particular mutations
(35:47):
that they could, you know, kind of match up with
the with the actual the flask that were it originated.
And apparently they tested more than a thousand samples throughout
this investigation and only eight of them had tested positive
for four of these mutations found in the germs that
were sent to Congress and the news media. So this
(36:09):
caused an issue. Even in the early stages of the investigation,
there was a group of scientists known as the Red
Team that said the FBI should do more basic research
and so why those mutations might have arisen, that it
wasn't a foregone conclusion just because the mutations existed, that
they necessarily were traced back to that original flask, and
(36:31):
that this woman named Jennifer Smith, who is a senior
manager at the FBI's lab, she expressed those concerns and
didn't feel that the FBI had a kind of full
understanding of how these mutations might have arisen and how
this would be seen by a judge, and how it
could potentially be thrown out entirely.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Right, right, this science is vital here that specific let's say,
brand or type of anthrax flask RMR ten twenty nine.
The reason we know this is because everything should be
obsessively documented in the field of biohazard research or bioweapons.
(37:19):
Right if you are working in the kind of lab
or situation that doctor Ivans was working in at the time,
your interactions with every single version of every single contagion
has to be documented, right, so that we know looking
(37:39):
at the records, we know every time the guy was
in his lab. We know that his time in the
lab on weekends and nights accelerated, right, He was spending
a lot of time there before the attacks occurred, and
we should know everything the guy touched. But even now,
even in twenty twenty, just it's like the experts you
(38:01):
mentioned earlier, Nol. We find large groups of people, including
some of the doctor's colleagues and some of his professional rivals,
who are convinced that this man was innocent. And you know,
the basis for their belief is not that they are
in a Bruce Edward Ivans fan club. In fact, one
(38:21):
of the reasons that a lot of people say he's
innocent is that they say the attacks were too sophisticated
for this guy to have figured out himself. The argument
is basically, yes, he had to know how and the
expertise to experiment with anthrax and maybe even to grow
this particular strain, but he had no training in the
(38:45):
delivery of bioweapons, which I think goes right to your
earlier point about how botched this attack was.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, that's true, and that all, honestly to me, in
some ways makes it seem like it could have been him,
because if it were executed by a more you know,
savvy group, then they maybe would have had a better
delivery method because you know, anthrax is toxic up to
the tiniest particles, and like we said at the top
of the show, you know, if dispersed through a ducts
(39:15):
of an office building could potentially infect thousands of people.
And as we know, the fatality count and even just
the people that were sickened by these was relatively quite low,
you know. So, yeah, definitely didn't seem like it went
as planned. But at the same time, the spores of
anthrax were like Walter White, Breaking Bad level, like strong,
(39:39):
high quality. You could, you know, call them something along
the lines of weapons grade, which is, you know, sort
of a vague term that doesn't necessarily mean one thing,
but it's the type basically, you know, the finest anthrax
grade that can be produced for bioweapons programs in either
the US or somewhere like Russia.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
To interject here, yeah, the reason I think Breaking Bad
is a great comparison. This is like the blue meth
level of weaponized anthrax. There's a there's a scary thing
here that often gets ignored in this story, which is
this the spores of anthrax not to get too far
in the weeds. They were only one point five to
(40:21):
three micrometers wide individual spores. And it is fine grade.
You're correct, it is Walter White level. This type of
anthrax is smaller than the officially acknowledged or even open
secret level bioweapons created by the US or by Russia.
(40:41):
That should disturb people because that means that someone somewhere
is making something that neither world power there acknowledges.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Which isn't that much of a stretch. We know that
governments hold back technology all the time, you know, and
keep it for a military use, and they wouldn't necessarily
want to broadcast that they have that. That's not something
that they just like announce, Hey, we made a scarier
version of anthrax. You guys like check it out, But no,
it's it's it's true. And again when we say fine grade,
(41:14):
we literally are talking about the particulate size, because that's
what allows it to be just dispersed, like the wind
can pick it up like a you know, a dandylion
down and just carry it across the land, infecting you know,
everything in its path potentially, and obviously you have to
breathe it in. But these are you know that they
could be you know, just millions of tiny, tiny, tiny
(41:35):
particles in an envelope a full of powder, a powdered
version of this stuff, right, and.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
You're opening it indoors. Yeah, and there are a lot
of people around, so yeah, you know, at the risk
of sounding cold, it is surprising that only seventeen people
were infected.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
There's another problem with this official conclusion, and that's the
doctor Ivans colleagues and people familiar with the lab can
confirm that the lab equipment cited in the FBI conclusion,
the lab equipment that he would have to have used
(42:15):
to create this stuff and to disperse it, that lab
equipment was not working. He did not have the capability
to make the spores if he were using the equipment
in that lab full stop. It was there. Yes, yeah,
the know how, but that equipment was broken down at
(42:38):
the time, you know what I mean. You can see
how this gets messy so quickly.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, you absolutely can. And just again to clarify, like
the we're talking about the flask that would be sort
of like the mother right, Like that's sort of the
origin material for what he would have used to then
I guess propagate them or grow them into you know,
a more usable version of of anthrax, and then you know,
make it into the powder. So yeah, that would require
(43:05):
a lot of know how and a lot of very
sophisticated equipment. And if it wasn't working in his lab,
what did he like have a secret lab like at
his house. I mean maybe you know, who are we
to say? But it definitely was highly unlikely that he
made it with its broken down equipment at his lab.
And numerous government officials and scientists also believe that this
(43:26):
official story doesn't add up. And there are numerous theories
that have kind of circulated in the years since this
conclusion about doctor Ivans, And we're going to get into
all of those after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And we're back. Yes, the conspiracies, the theories, the speculation thrives, proliferates,
And to be clear, the people who are proposing these
alternative conclusions or these problems with the official investigation, they're
not what you would call tenfoil hat people. They include
(44:09):
people who were working with the FBI and the investigation.
They include scientists, They include experts and anthrax and they
have a lot of valid concerns here. Doctor Ivans, as
I believe we said at the top, was only one
of at least one hundred people who could have worked
with this specific brand of anthrax. Of course, RMR ten
(44:32):
twenty nine not the sexiest name, but it's a technical term,
the first.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Superior to RMR ten twenty eight. Oh my god, I mean, really,
it was a good year. Don't even talk to me
about ten twenty eight. Are you kidding? Ten twenty nine?
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Come on, that's the connoisseur's choice apparently, But he was like,
he was not the only person who would have touched this. Also,
the FBI did not have a peer review of their
conclusions of the scientific end of it during their investigation.
The science, in short, to be very clear, the science
(45:10):
was not there.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah. Taking it a step further, even a twenty eleven
review of the investigation was not able to rule out
the possibility that someone or some group other than Ivan's
committed the crime. The Government Accountability Office or GAL as
I like to call it, because I'm an acronym Junkie
found this quote. The FBI lacked a comprehensive approach or
framework that could have ensured standardization of the testing process.
(45:35):
We jumped into that a little early when we were
talking about testing for that mutation or those mutations, and
how people even within the FBI's lab kind of warned
them against you jumping to conclusions about what could have
caused those mutations. They could have been something outside of
what they were using it as a kind of a
foregone conclusion and tracing it back. It's sort of like,
(45:57):
I don't know, maybe this is a stretch, and science
people please debunk the crap out of me, because I'm
just sort of spitballing here. But it reminds me of
the way certain ballistics technology have kind of been debunked,
where you can, you know, say the striations or whatever
like on a particular bullet could have only been generated
by this one gun. And there's a version of that
technology that was in fact debunked, and it caused some
(46:19):
people to be exonerated because they were convicted using that
kind of spurious conclusion derived from, you know, something that
could have been caused by other factors. So they go
on to say the Government Accountability Office. As a result,
each of the contractors developed their tests differently, and one
contractor did not conduct verification testing, which is a key
(46:41):
step in determining whether a test will meet a user's requirement,
such as for sensitivity or accuracy.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Broken test sounds familiar, unfortunately, and these are days of pandemic.
So if there are problems with the FBI's official investigation,
does that mean there are problems with the bi's official conclusion.
The answer there logically is yes. So now we have
to ask what actually happened, and that means that we
(47:09):
have to look at the conspiracies. There's what you know
that's pretty interesting because a lot of people don't know this,
but before Vice President Mike Pence was in office in
the US, he was also he had a different career
as a prominent radio host and then he moved into politics.
(47:32):
He has some stuff to say about this investigation, right.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, he did. He kind of just made some sort
of shot in the dark kind of claims, released some
statements saying some pretty interesting things about this substance. He
essentially said, quote in a statement, the material found in
my office and in others in Capitol Hill was finally
(47:57):
milled weapons grade anthrax that had been this is the
key part genetically modified to increase its virulence. Huh, what
does that mean, ben genetically modified?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I mean, it's it's the same, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
He's arguing that this was weaponized, and again we have
to remember that this this stuff was officially better than
anything the US or Russia or China could make.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
He was.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
I think at that point he was in a he
was a representative, right, he was a congressional representative before
he became governor of Indiana, before he became vice president.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
That's right. And you know, I mean it's he's The
notion that it was quote unquote weapons grade obviously is
true to a degree, though the term is a little
bit dubious in terms of like how it's used. The
idea of weapons grade. There isn't really a standard as
to what constitutes weapons grade anthrax. The LA Times reported
in an article by David Willman from July sixteenth of
(49:05):
twenty sixteen, and they spoke to a researcher at Johns
Hopkins University named Stephen L. Salzburg, who was actually part
of the first team to check out the material for
the US government, and he said that's just wrong. That's
simply wrong, and we knew at the time that.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
It was wrong.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
He's speaking, of course, of Pence's claims. And then Pence
even kind of doubled down further and said something to
the effect of, oh, it was coated with a chemical
of some kind. Like he definitely added some more fuel
to this fire in saying in a two thousand and
(49:46):
two letter to Ashcroft, the Attorney General, that the spores
had been coated with a chemical and that had also
been disproven by scientists at the SANDA National Laboratory in
New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Yeah, a few months before he told Ashcroft.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
That that's right. And I don't know, I'm fascinated by
this idea of it being genetically modified. And it's interesting
too because Colin Powell, who is a Secretary of State,
he used this, as you know, we know was a thing,
you know, in terms of weapons of mass destruction. He
(50:23):
used this as another call to kind of go to
war with Iraq, to support military action against Iraq that
you know, tying this these anthrax attacks and as we
did nine to eleven, which we now know really wasn't
the case at all, and we use that as an
excuse to go to war with Iraq, and that sort
of got us embroiled in the Middle East in a
(50:44):
way that we're still kind of dealing with today.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Still friends with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Though you
want to kill some journalists, want you want to support
some terrorists, that's fine. We'll see how oil prices affect
that geopolitical relationship. But that's a story for another day.
You're right, you know, people immediately tied this to terrorism.
Death to America, death to Israel is great, so on.
(51:11):
We also have to remember that at this time, millions
of innocent Americans are being vilified in the media for
their religious beliefs. Right. It's as dumb and disgusting as
any other sort of prejudice. So when we're talking about
the belief of terrorism or something, or you know, the
(51:34):
idea that religiously motivated terrorists might have perpetrated the anthrax attacks,
we're specifically talking about Al Qaeda. We're not talking about
some general, amorphous thing. We're talking about a real, concrete, discrete,
existing organization that did have a track record, a rap
(51:57):
sheet of committing terrorist acts.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
Absolutely and let's also remember that this was used as
kind of, you know, a media device. Powell held a
press conference where he had a vial of white powder
in his hand, a small amount, and he said that
a teaspoon size quantity of anthrax in one of the
letters had you know, driven Washington into a state of chaos,
(52:24):
killed and killed two postal workers. And he suggested very
pointedly that Iraq had stockpiled enough anthrax to quote Phil
tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons, right,
I mean, he's definitely trying to stir up some this.
(52:44):
It's definitely it's a a fear bongering move, is what
it is. And maybe it's well intentioned, but it seems
to me like a you know, a pretty callous maneuver.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
I'm just laughing because I think that's a fantastic example
of the of just how far we in the United
States will go to avoid using the metric system. That's right, funny,
It's true though, He's like, he's like put it in
a number of people can understand.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Tens upon tens upon tens upon tens.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
If each if each sport of anthrax was the size
of an oreo and you stack them on top of
each other, they could reach you know whatever, as long
as we don't use the metric system. That's one of
the that's one of the big rules. But but there's
another conspiracy here, the idea that that the idea that
(53:38):
the threat came closer to home, the idea that this
was a false front, or that some faction of the
US government actually planned this attack. You can imagine that
for the people who believe nine to eleven itself was
a false flag, the anthrax attacks of two thousand and
one were just another planned event or another sequence, larger plan,
(54:01):
another inside job.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
You know.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
This school of thought frames those attacks as a plan B,
a backup measure, just in case nine to eleven was
not enough of a push to make the public and
the government move forward with certain actions. Then this, this
sort of the equivalent of a double tap, would ensure
(54:24):
that the public moved in the direction that these powers,
whoever they are, wanted. You know, it's it's strange because
there's something comforting. This is weird. Walk with me here.
There's something comforting about the idea that there is a
grand design, you know what I mean, The idea that
(54:48):
the same people who cannot get their stuff together on
any given Tuesday are somehow also capable of this Rube
Goldberg esque control of the past, the future, and the present.
I don't know. I don't know. I feel like the
(55:08):
idea that they're super villainy at work and a grand
conspiracy is much more comforting than the other side of
the coin, which is.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
That that it's just chaos, right.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Right, that maybe there's another conspiracy theory is that the
FBI is covering up for governmental incompetence, Like what about
that political pressure, Like what what if they just you know,
what if they have people breathing down their necks saying
close this case. Now, find me a person who's the
creepiest guy that we know has touched anthrax.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
This is the lowest hanging fruit possibility of them all.
I mean, it makes the most sense. You know, you
want to say face. You want to get the job done,
even if it means putting away the wrong guy. You know,
maybe they even had a hand in his suicide. You know,
crazier things have been reported, you know, in terms of
the government's involvement in assassinating folks, and you know, trying
(56:07):
to cover that up you know, so I just I
have no problem believing this, and I find the false
flag narrative to be just such a go to kind
of looney tunes one. Like people are saying that about
the COVID situation right now, that like it's fault like
you know, some people that don't believe that it's real.
I equate it to like Holocaust denial or something. It's like, dude,
(56:27):
there's bodies piling up, they're making like you know, ice
skating rinks in New York and to make shift Morgus
like it's real, you know, like move on.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Yeah, I would say, you know, to that point, the
US government is such.
Speaker 5 (56:40):
A byzantine, complicated maze like structure, with so many people
involved and so many groups involved, that it is completely
possible for factions.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Of the US government to do things that the you know,
the other groups in the government don't know about or
would object to, Like the CIA is the go to
example there. They're doing all sorts of dirty stuff, and
there are people who are supposed to have oversight of
that organization and they have no idea what's going on.
You know, they're in the dark. And the FBI has
(57:17):
done some very filthy things too in the past, so
I can see where this is coming from. At this point,
there is no conclusive proof that anyone affiliated with the
government in a law enforcement capacity conspired to mail anthrax
to people. But the problem remains. This is the biggest
(57:40):
problem here. The science, the science upon which the FBI's
conclusion depends is not itself sound. Regardless of whether you
think the FBI found their culprit or whether you you
know what, if you think that some government agents actually
conducted this attack, or if you think that political pressure
(58:03):
rushed the investigation, there is one thing for sure, and
that is numerous experts, not just doctor Ivans colleagues, agree
the FBI has never conclusively proven doctor Ivans was one
hundred percent the man behind the mail and all that
lab work. That is what the case hinges on it,
(58:25):
and it's not solid.
Speaker 2 (58:27):
There's a really fantastic series on pro Publica, one of
which was FBI's science good enough to id Anthrax Killer,
And we talked about this a little bit earlier, but
just to hit home again, to quote the article, investigators
had invented a new form of genetic fingerprinting for the
case testing anthrax collected from US and foreign labs for
(58:48):
mutations detected in the attack powder. Out of more than
a thousand samples, only eight tested positive for four mutations
found in the deadly germs sent to Congress and the
news media. Even so, the outside sciences quote known as
the Red Team just saying this is a quote, urged
the FBI to do more basic research into how and
(59:08):
when the mutations arose, to make sure the tests were
sound and the results unchallengeable. And they didn't do that.
So you know, this review showed that the FBI definitely
overstated its case and possibly would not have gotten a conviction.
In fact, seems to me quite likely would not have
(59:29):
gotten a conviction against Ivans because they based their conclusions
on some pretty shaky science.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
And what does doctor Ivans think. Will never know because
again he died of an overdose of thailand old codine
or as he said, an old tiler all three that
was ruled a probable suicide. So he never got his
day in court, and technically in this country, days in
(59:59):
court are you know, they're a thing. They're a tradition
that we like to say we practice.
Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
But you know what I mean, I would say it's
a formality. At times, it seems really just kind of
like a smoke screen of Hey, look, justice is being
carried out, you know, but it quite often is not.
You know, there there is that court of public opinion
and and this is really all doctor Ivan's truly got
tried in and he was pilloried and he you know,
(01:00:28):
lost his life because of it. And you know, he
may have been a weirdo and he may have had
a hand in this, but I don't buy that he
was acting alone, if he had anything to do with
it at all.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Yeah, yeah, that's the issue. Let's you know, there's one
person that we should introduce here at the toward the
end of this episode, and that is Claire Frasier Leggott.
She was a pivotal member of the Amerthracks I can't
believe that's the real name, the Americal Tracks investigation. And
(01:01:00):
she was a genetic consultant working with the FBI, one
of those people who helped nail down the specific type
of anthrax. Let's give the last word to her again.
This is an expert. This is one of the protagonists, right,
This is a person who's attempting to solve this case.
And she says, quote This was not an air tight
(01:01:23):
case by any means. You know, I think that for
an awful lot of people, there is a desire to
really want to say that, yes, Ivans was the perpetrator,
this case can reasonably be closed and we can put
this tragic chapter in US history behind us. But I
think part of what's driving that is the fact that
if he wasn't the perpetrator, then it means that person
(01:01:46):
is still out there.
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
So if not Bruce Ivans, then who That's the question
we leave you with today. What do you think? Please
let us know. You can write to us in the
usual usual places, the social media's or where some form
of conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show. You can also
find us as individuals on social media. I am on
Instagram at how Now Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
And you can find me on Twitter at Ben bullin HSW.
You can also find me on Instagram in a burst
of creativity calling myself at Ben Bolling. Do you hate
social media? Totally? Get it? Why not leave us a message,
give us a call. You can reach us at one
eight three three st d WYTK. It feels weird when
(01:02:31):
we're not saying it together. And you know, I miss.
When Matt says this, I hope he likes this episode.
I do too.
Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
I really hope he likes this episode. And it's a
bummer that he isn't here for it, but I hope
we did him proud. And speaking of Matt, if you
call that number that we just mentioned, even now while
Matt's on vacation, you may well he may give you
a call back. No promises, but he's been known to
do it. He's a lovely man and would love to
talk to you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Consider you know. I wouldn't even say that's a promise.
I would say consider it a warning. Be careful as
possible as you will exactly exactly so do let us know.
And while you're at it, let us know if there
are any other stories of scientists who have died under
mysterious circumstances. If there's another angle of the anthrax attacks
(01:03:13):
that you feel like your fellow listeners should know about,
you can tell us. As Noel said, on social media,
you can also find us on your local telephone. And
if you say, hey, I hate phones, Hey I hate
social media, but I have something you need to know.
We are all ears, we are all eyes. You can
(01:03:34):
reach us twenty four to seven, any day of the year,
anytime of the day, at our good old fashioned email
address where we.
Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.