The weight of evidence is rapidly approaching the threshold of "beyond a reasonable doubt" that government bioweapons defense researcher Bruce E. Ivins was the 2001 anthrax terrorist. As Greg Cochran pointed out to me during a long conversation Wednesday evening, Occam's Razor is pointing right at Ivins. He had the means (he was the custodian of the anthrax used in the attacks) and he had motives that, while they remain uncertain, appear explicable (he likely wanted to focus attention and funding on his field of expertise -- anthrax vaccines).
What's indisputable is that Ivins, who killed himself on July 29, was a mad scientist.
Something I learned as I've gone through life that initially surprised me was what a high proportion of people suffer from mental problems at one point or another. The mind is very complicated and it can jump the rails more than you might think. For example, I'm about as even-keeled as anybody I know, yet I suffered panic attacks and depression for several weeks after I was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer a dozen years ago.
Ivins, though, didn't have run-of-the-mill mental health troubles. He was, during his worst years, bad crazy in a way that, fortunately, I've never come in contact with. Apparently, nine other people had access to Ivins' anthrax, but, as Greg pointed out, it's unlikely that any one of them was as crazy as Ivins.
From the New York Times:
In the summer of 2000, Ivins told a counselor that he was interested in a young woman who lived out of town and that he had "mixed poison" and taken it with him when he went to watch her play in a soccer match.
"If she lost, he was going to poison her," said the counselor, who treated Ivins at a Frederick, Md., clinic four or five times that summer. She said Ivins emphasized he was a skillful scientist who "knew how to do things without people finding out."
The counselor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that she was so alarmed by her client's emotionless description of a specific, homicidal plan that she alerted the head of her clinic, a psychiatrist who had treated Ivins and the Frederick Police Department. She said the police told her nothing could be done because she did not have the woman's address or last name.
The account of the counselor, who was interviewed by the FBI early last week, is part of a dark portrait of Ivins that emerged Wednesday.
Besides these kind of terrible impulses, he suffered from delusional obsessions. His psychiatrist in 2000 suggested he had "paranoid personality disorder." He believed that the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority was waging a "fatwa" against him. The LA Times reported:
Long before, however, Ivins had acted oddly; for example, the documents released Wednesday said that he had used two post office boxes over 24 years to "pursue obsessions" -- including an intense interest in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. One confidential witness said Ivins had admitted breaking into a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house to steal a secret handbook, apparently while he was pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina.
The documents also included a message board post by Ivins on a conspiracy theory website, www.abovetopsecret.com "> www.abovetopsecret.com . Asking for replies at the e-mail address goldenphoenix111@hotmail.com , he wrote that the sorority had labeled him as an enemy decades ago. "I can only abide their 'Fatwah' on me," he said.
He'd been on anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, and anti-psychotic medicines since 2000. The first two are used by tens of millions of people for problems that range from serious to mild. Anti-psychotic drugs, however, are very heavy, with nasty side-effects for many people.
So, let's try to put together a plausible picture of the man. He'd suffered mental health problems as far back as his youth. But much of the time he could keep it together -- he earned his Ph.D., got married, had kids, volunteered at his church. He wrote letters to the editor of his local paper, espousing what appears to be an eclectic moderate to liberal viewpoint -- pro-gay, anti-abortion, pro-Israel, anti-racist, anti-Religious Right. And he held a job for 28 years.
Unfortunately, that job, working at a government bioweapons lab on defenses against anthrax, was just about the worst job imaginable for a paranoiac. From the NYT:
“Paranoid man works with deadly anthrax!!!” he wrote in one e-mail message in July 2000, predicting what a National Enquirer headline might read if he agreed to participate in a study on his work.
“I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind,” he added a month later in another message to a colleague. “It’s hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I am being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don’t spread the pestilence.”
He continued, “I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there’s nothing I can do until they go away.”
He'd devoted years of his life to trying to come up with a way to protect America from anthrax terror attacks, and the "professional deformation" that presumably went along with worrying about national catastrophes compounded his existing problems:
His anxiety could be traced, the documents suggest, at least in part to complications that cropped up with an anthrax vaccine project he was working on in the late 1990s, which drew complaints from some Defense Department personnel who claimed the vaccine, which was mandatory, made them severely ill.
“I think the **** is about to hit the fan bigtime,” one July 2000 e-mail message said. “The control vaccine isn’t working. It’s just a fine mess.”
The summer of 2000 was when he told his counselor about his plan to poison the soccer girl if she lost the match.
And he went on what he called "mindless drives" to mail gifts and letters anonymously, the document said, and then "set back the odometer in his car" to fool his wife.
The next year brought 9/11:
His state of mind seemed to worsen after the 2001 terror attacks.
Didn't everybody's?
When you consider how crazy Ivins had been in 2000, and how crazy the country as a whole was after 9/11, the anthrax mailings start seeming pretty rational, at least as sensible as responding to 9/11 by invading Iraq.
We don't have Ivins' explanation for the mailings, but a simple guess would be that he didn't particularly want to kill people (for example, he didn't rig the envelopes to spew spores around), he just wanted to wake America up to the danger posed by anthrax terrorism, and maybe get more funding and attention for his vaccine project.
"I'm the only scary one in the group," he wrote on Sept. 26 after a group therapy session eight days after the first anthrax-laced letters were mailed. On Oct. 16, as the first victims were dying or hospitalized, one of Ivins' co-workers observed in an e-mail message that "Bruce has been an absolute manic basket case the last few days." ...
To the FBI's credit, they figured out early on, at a time when the White House and the media wanted the anthrax terrorists to be Arabs, especially Iraqis, that it had to an American scientist. That's better than all the warbloggers did. Unfortunately, they settled on Stephen Hatfill due to a series of coincidences, along, presumably, with prejudice against a man who had lived in Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. Worse, they didn't refocus their investigation until about a year and a half after early 2005, when the genome sequencing data absolved Hatfill and pointed toward Ivins.
The policy question that arises from all this is why didn't Ivins' employer do anything about him over the last 28 years? As Ivins himself noted,"Paranoid Man Works with Deadly Anthrax" is an inherently alarming sentence.
One reason might be the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes mental as well as physical problems. That far-ranging law has proven relatively popular and uncontroversial, in part because it acts as a system of social insurance against the detriments of middle age. None of us would like to be fired from our jobs just because we eventually suffer a physical breakdown or, as in Ivins' case, go a little nuts at age 54, as he did in 2000. So, Americans institutions are often quite forgiving these days of the personal problems of long-time employees.
As Jerry Pournelle has pointed out, government agencies, because they lack the profit motive, tend to forget about whatever original purpose they had and come to exist for the perpetuation of institution and the well-being of the employees.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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40 comments:
I don't disagree about the overall prevalence of mental problems, but I would hardly classify getting depressed after being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer as a good example. It seems a perfectly logical, rational response to a possible death sentence. (How else would one react?)
Well, I still see ZERO.
Let's take the most basic question. Ivins was a vaccine specialist, and there's no evidence that he even KNEW how to the produce the very deadly weaponized anthrax used in the attacks.
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2008/08/beyond-reasonable-doubt.html
And his motive? Well, according to the LAT story, he was something really bizarre called a "conservative."
I say "Where was Steve Sailer during the Anthrax attacks"...
And he went on what he called "mindless drives" to mail gifts and letters anonymously, the document said, and then "set back the odometer in his car" to fool his wife.
It is very difficult to turn back a car's odometer. I find this claim of Ivins hard to believe. Yes, it's a minor point, but if he lied on this one thing, it may call other claims into question.
"I'm about as even-keeled as anybody I know, yet I suffered panic attacks and depression for several weeks after I was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer a dozen years ago."
I don't think that this is mentally "jumping the rails." I think that this is probably a normal response to hearing that you have a life threatening illness so early in life. I also was diagnosed with Leukemia at age 34 and was depressed but I also felt angry and it does change your mental outlook.
"In the summer of 2000, Ivins told a counselor that he was interested in a young woman who lived out of town and that he had "mixed poison" and taken it with him when he went to watch her play in a soccer match."
Soccer match? So this girl must have been all of about, what, 12 years old? This guy sounds really creepy in any number of ways. Even some of his co-workers' E-mails reveal them to be aware of the fact that he was batty. But hey, he was a civil servant, and therefore just about untouchable.
Was it a solitary job? I don't see how he could have hidden his paranoid personality from his co-researchers for that long a period. Now, PhDs do tend to veer off into eccentricity at some point in graduate school, so that may have made him a different kind of normal in a group of eccentrics.
This is a bit far-fetched, but
say you were a sinister, or plain coldly-rational, co-worker of Ivins, wouldn't you see his paranoia as an opportunity waiting to be triggered? You could either do it yourself, guessing well that your coworker's eccentricities would make him a far more plausible suspect, or you could fuel his paranoia in daily water cooler conversations.
Isn't it commonplace to have peer supervision when it comes to accessing such dangerous materials in high-security labs? It would be foolish not to, given what you pointed out about the high probability of a period of mental instability in adult life, especially among highly intelligent adults.
Of course, one have to make sure that supervising peer group keeps changing on a regular basis to avoid the random paring of the evil guy and the paranoid fall-guy...
"he likely wanted to focus attention and funding on his field of expertise": like the Global Warmmongers, in fact.
A balanced and perceptive appraisal. Still, I can't help wondering if Steve - and, even more, his commenters - would demonstrate such equanimity with regard to this man, who killed several Americans and terrorized many more, if his name were, say, Bruce Schwartz?
Here's a poem by Dr. Ivins:
"I'm a little dream-self, short and stout.
I'm the other half of bruce -- when he lets me out.
When I get all steamed up, I don't pout.
I push Bruce aside, them I'm free to run about!
Hickory dickory Doc -- Doc Bruce ran up the clock.
But something then happened in very strange rhythm.
His other self went and exchanged placed with him.
So now, please guess who
Is conversing with you.
Hickory dickory Doc!
Bruce and this other guy, sitting by some trees,
Exchanging personalities.
It's like having two in one.
Actually it's rather fun!"
It's like something that would show up in a Thomas Harris novel. Apparently this was in his email; I wonder who he sent it to.
In a society where a number of people are completely capable of making sport of someone they know is delusional or even schizophrenic, you might not want to stop with "the mad scientist did it." I mean the homicidally insane don't usually wait until age 54 to act out violently. I don't know the statistics on it but people generally settle down as they get older. So, what if one of the other 10 exploited Ivin's weaknesses to send an otherwise harmless eccentric spiralling out of control?
Also, I'm sure the KKG's had declared a fatwa on Ivins as an undergrad - declaring him an untouchable either for dating or even for the geeky friend you study with. Let's face it, sorority girls can be brutal. Just imagine the barely concealed smirks on their faces when a young Ivins approached hoping to build up the courage to ask one out. Perhaps he did and was cruelly rebuffed for even daring to think... His attachment to this one sorority is of course an extension of the obsessive/compulsive highly detail oriented brain of a scientist. I shudder to think what would've happened if he'd realized all sorority girls considered him of no more significance than a fly - him with his genius IQ them with greek letters emblazoned across their breasts not unlike an equation for sex.
And why would he send anthrax to random strangers instead of acting out his aggression on the KKGs. Come on Sailer, you're good at making the most obscure connections between people and events. Had Ivins discovered links between the anthrax victims and the KKGs?
What's worse, this would be hilarious if no one had died. I suggest they start a new sensitivity training program at colleges across the US instructing sorority girls how to reject undesirable suitors without damaging them for life.
Great post, and great work on this subject overall, Steve. Holy Crap. Nice touch that Ivins addressed his anthrax letters to senior Dems in D.C., to make it look like a crazy right winger was sending them.
Any person who wants to handle nuclear weapons must go through a certification process that looks at his psychological profile, the medications he is taking and a variety of other factors. Is there a similar procedure for biodefense workers who have access to deadly germs? If not, why not? As the experience with Ivins demonstrates, the system clearly needs improvement.
"That far-ranging law has proven relatively popular and uncontroversial, in part because it acts as a system of social insurance against the detriments of middle age."
This is precisely why I oppose it.
In reality, such "social insurance" is available only to those who work as employees. The self-employed (like myself) not only do not benefit from this "insurance". We pay for it in the form of taxes, reduced economic growth, and (in the case of Dr. Ivins) psychopathic bio-terrorists who try to poison us with anthrax.
"We don't have Ivins' explanation for the mailings, but a simple guess would be that he didn't particularly want to kill people (for example, he didn't rig the envelopes to spew spores around), he just wanted to wake America up to the danger posed by anthrax terrorism, and maybe get more funding and attention for his vaccine project."
Every word up until this point in your post is about how the man is crazy, and now you're attributing quasi-rational motives to him. He strongly considered fatally poisoning someone. Killing people would have much more of an impact; and while it might be morally questionable, who cares? You're depressive and paranoid, and pissed.
From today's WaPo article:
"They did not try to match his crabbed handwriting with the distinctive block print on the 2001 letters." ("They" is the FBI.)
Why not? Why didn't they ask Ivins to write out in block letters text like that on the envelopes and in the letters? An earlier article said that his lawyer said that he was cooperating fully with the government.
Are there relevant samples of his handwriting around even now? There are said to be unmailed letters extant. I'd like a handwriting expert's testimony.
Dr. Meryl Nass, an anthrax vaccine specialist, has many doubts:
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2008/08/beyond-reasonable-doubt.html
"Paranoid man works with deadly anthrax!!!" he wrote in one e-mail message in July 2000, predicting what a National Enquirer headline might read if he agreed to participate in a study on his work.
One of the victims worked for the Enquirer.
Steve -- I think you are being too kind to Ivins if he is the culprit.
His professional expertise would lead him to know with a certainty that he WOULD kill people. Perhaps not thousands or hundreds but still, a number of people. If he was the culprit, he did it anyway and bears full responsibility.
Second, invading Iraq was quite logical as a response to 9/11. Given that the weak response to Saddam post-1991 Gulf War was specifically cited by AQ and AQ-leaning clerics as reason to attack America (lack of any danger of America's response), DETERRENCE really demanded that the US remove Saddam to induce fear.
That's particularly true given Pakistan's nukes and partial control by the ISI-Pashtun-Taliban nexus. Creating fear by making an example of someone close by is what America had to do.
The shock of 9/11 was how completely intellectually bankrupt the "end of History" notions a whole lot of people, from Clinton, Bush, Larry Johnson worldview really was, when confronted with reality.
Bottom line: modern technology + globalization = even poor nations like Pakistan or AQ ("borrowing" Pakistan nukes) have the ability to kill millions of Americans and rely on US legalism, moral relativism, and innate fantasies of peace and tranquility to prevent any response. To the extent that getting rid of Saddam destroys that estimation of America's response, deterrence is enhanced.
This all seems plausible, and maybe it's just what it looks like. The guy does appear, from the media reports, to have been a nut. But a bioterrorism attack which helps drive the country to war and antiterrorism siege mentality is traced to a government lab. This is closely followed by the convenient suicide of the main suspect. Damn, that just sounds fishy.
For example, I'm about as even-keeled as anybody I know, yet I suffered panic attacks and depression for several weeks after I was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer a dozen years ago.
Isn't that a normal part of the 'grief cycle' or whatever it's called? Going SlightlyNuts do to that is normal.
So, Americans institutions are often quite forgiving these days of the personal problems of long-time employees.
I'd say they're more concerned about being sued than because of actual caring.
Lugash
Lugash forgot to write "I am Lugash" before and after the body of his post.
Something I learned as I've gone through life that initially surprised me was what a high proportion of people suffer from mental problems at one point or another.
A brief or long-term mental disorder is a perfectly rational(?) response to the chaos and insanity of the world. We raise our children to believe that the world is far better than it really is, and when they grow up and realize how much bullshit that really is, a few are bound to suffer mental distress as a result. The really sick psychos, though, are mostly born, not made.
Thinks still seem pretty "fuzzy"
For example, the government says that Ivins "had sole control" over the guilty anthrax.
Maybe. But this morning's WSJ says that about 100 other people "had access" to that guilty anthrax.
Perhaps one or two of those other 100 bioterrorism experts also knew how to weaponize anthrax...which Dr. Ivins apparently did not.
After the events of the last few years, someone would have to be extremely stupid to still give the "benefit of the doubt" to the government and FBI over these sorts of "fuzzy" issues.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do hope, Mr. Sailer, that you'll be able to write a book about this subject.
The "crazy, anxious, paranoiac" passed two polygraph tests for what it is worth:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=71721
I doesn't seem to me like he was actually trying to kill people either, though he certainly must have known it might happen. As I recall, the letters themselves boasted about containing Anthrax, giving the recipients a chance to seek timely medical help.
Of the four who died, weren't a couple of them at the postal center? There was the reporter at National Enquirer, the old lady in the middle of nowhere... I don't think any of the political targets actually died.
If you want to see what people who actually intend to create large numbers of fatalities will do, you need look no further than the Japanese crazies of Aum Shinrikyo. From the CDC:
The cult attempted several apparently unsuccessful acts of biological terrorism in Japan between 1990 and 1995. As early as April 1990, the cult had tried to release botulin toxin from a vehicle driving around the Diet and other government buildings in central Tokyo. In early June of 1993, another attempt was made to release botulin toxin, this time in conjunction with the wedding of the crown prince. A vehicle equipped with a spray device was driven around the imperial palace as well as the main government buildings in central Tokyo.
Later that month, pursuing an alternative technology, the cult attempted to release anthrax spores from its mid-rise Tokyo office building laboratory. At that time, police and media reported foul smells, brown steam, some pet deaths, and stains on cars and sidewalks. Then, in March 1995, just before the sarin subway attack, an attempt to spray botulin toxin in the subway at Kasumagaseki Station was preempted by a cult member who opted not to load the improvised briefcase sprayers with actual agent.
Just think what might have happened if Asahara and Ivins had ever met.
They should look at what bugs Ivins had come in contact with. Age 54 is a little late to start going homicidal. Perhaps some of the germs at the lab alters a person's psychology so they go crazy. Now that would be a great movie: a bug at an Army lab makes people paranoid.
Paranoid Personality Disorder is certainly plausible, and that condition does not often respond well to medications. His ability to have some distance from his symptoms and look at them as something apart from himself pretty much rules out schizophrenia. I am surprised that there is no mention of OCD in any of the articles, as there are symptoms pointing to that. Schizoid and Schizotypal Personality Disorders are less likely, but would also be in the diagnostic conversation. Anti-depressant and anti-anxiety agents being mentioned would strongly suggest that an SSRI (Prozac, Luvox) was tried, and if those didn't give relief, OCD becomes less likely. I wouldn't hazard more of a guess without knowing more, and I haven't followed the case.
The counselor who believed she couldn't do a Tarasoff warning either doesn't know her business or lives in a state that has very different laws than mine. She doesn't have to know the victim's name. Anything said which gives reasonable indication of danger to a specific person is grounds for compelling an evaluation. That might not result in anyone being able to assemble enough evidence to commit him, but it's exactly the sort of thing that tells those around you - like your employer, for example - that something may be up.
Was Ivins really working alone? As I understand it, they don't have evidence that rules out the other major suspects -- just evidence that Ivins was one, but not necessarily the only, culprit. (I know they are trying to spin it that Ivins is the only culprit, but the evidence they presented proves no such thing).
Everybody working on the anthrax vaccine at that lab had the same incentive to show the world how important they thought their vaccine was. They had received a lot of criticism about Gulf War Syndrome allegedly caused by their vaccine and it was in their projects were in the process of being cancelled.
And why would he send anthrax to random strangers instead of acting out his aggression on the KKGs.
Because the world needs more Kappas. They are the best.
rku,
Well, according to the LAT story, he was something really bizarre called a "neocon."
Fixed it for you.
In reality, such "social insurance" is available only to those who work as employees.
That is to say, most Americans.
The self-employed (like myself) not only do not benefit from this "insurance". We pay for it in the form of taxes, reduced economic growth,
We all pay taxes. Sometimes we pay taxes for things that do not benefit us directly because they benefit society as a whole. Perhaps you believe that a society where people who become disabled are summarily fired would be a better one; apparently most people disagree. I suspect that Steve is right in that the ADA remains popular because most of us are dependent on our jobs for economic security and have enough imagination to realize that we, too, could fall victim to a physical or mental disability.
and (in the case of Dr. Ivins) psychopathic bio-terrorists who try to poison us with anthrax.
The ADA does not protect employees who are a danger to others. Employers are only required to make reasonable accommodation to disabilities; they are not required to (for example) allow blind men to perform surgery or lunatics to play with deadly microbes. Steve's point is that the Act has generally made people more tolerant of disability in the workplace. The fact that some employers are lax in discipling unsafe behavior doesn't mean the ADA is itself a bad thing.
I'm about as even-keeled as anybody I know, yet I suffered panic attacks and depression for several weeks after I was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer a dozen years ago.
I'll confess to having had what were possibly symptoms of mild paranoid schizophrenia when I was in my late teens for around a year and a half. Among other strange things, I would think that other people could hear my thoughts and weren't telling me. This culminated for a time in the obsession that someone or something was influencing my thoughts by some means (through electromagnetic devices or some other technology). It was very freaky. I would also experience depersonalization and the sensation that nothing around me was real. Fortunately, these disturbing obsessions subsided in time. It's quite unreal when I think back upon how I could have entertained such thoughts. I still experience the occasional bit of "magical thinking," such as being obsessed with taking a certain number of steps when walking toward an object (such as multiples of three), but I'm instantly able to dismiss such thoughts as illogical and not dwell upon them.
Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder seem to run on my father's side of the family and I cannot help but wonder if I barely dodged the bullet during those critical years when so many people lose it entirely.
I also briefly experienced anxiety attacks at one point. Those ceased as soon as I quit smoking.
A mind is a curious thing.
One reason might be the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes mental as well as physical problems.
Actually, it wouldn't matter if the ADA had never become law-- which extended civil rights protection to the private sector disabled. Government employees with disabilities (like Ivins) were already protected by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
I've often wondered whether the decline in the number of postal worker murder sprees is because, thanks to the ADA, the mentally disturbed were now spread thinly throughout the economy instead of concentrated in safe government jobs.
The issue isn't why wasn't he fired, it should be-- how the hell did he get (or keep) his security clearance? If the security officials can't screen out this guy, why bother screening anybody?
Makes you wonder who else has access to national security secrets and weaponry when they don't have the mental stability to be trusted with a dog.
Martin,
The unnamed soccer player isn't 12 or the NY Times would have referred to her as "girl" and not "woman".
My only mental image of a female soccer player is Kiera Knightley in Bend It Like Beckham.
http://tinyurl.com/6ab9gw
"beowulf said...
Martin,
The unnamed soccer player isn't 12 or the NY Times would have referred to her as "girl" and not "woman".
Not necessarily. The NYT probably considers the term "girl" to be sexist". They actually said "young woman", a term which can and is sometimes applied to 12 year olds.
I am Lugash
Lugash went a little crazy for a little bit. Lugash will attempt to introduce and conclude his posts appropriately.
One other point about the ADA and not firing semi-disabled employees is that women now make up more and more of the management ranks these days. 99% of them are emotionally unsuited to firing someone who is sick. Which is why they are far superior to men as nurses and other types of caregivers.
From personal observation the chronically sick are much more likely to be women and minorities as well, which makes it much more risky to fire anyone. Poor diet and lack of exercise seems to be a common cause. Not that Lugash is a health professional.
Lugash wonder what the typical white collar corporate policy is in India on these issues?
In any case, so much for American productivity.
I am Lugash.
tommy - OCD. Even with the thought-broadcasting.
BTW, it seems that the KKG's should be running our biodefense security. They were onto this guy 30 years before anyone else.
Peter wrote "And he went on what he called "mindless drives" to mail gifts and letters anonymously, the document said, and then "set back the odometer in his car" to fool his wife."
In a newspaper article a few days ago it was mentioned that he drove a very old car. Sorry I don't have the link.
- Maxwell
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