>> good afternoon. welcome to the forensic science institute. it's my honor and privilege to introduce our speaker for this afternoon. he is david will mapp. mr. willman is an investigative journalist with the "los angeles times" and has been employed by them since 1995.

prior to that, he worked with the pass -- pasedena star news and the san jose mercury news. in 2001, mr. willman was awarded the pulitzer prize for his work in the discovery of seven drugs that were erroneously approvedded by the food and drugged a mrgs. he has been the recipient of many other awards including the national press club award as well as the george polk award. that work was his work on presidential finance and the improper use of funds for presidential campaigns. the work of david willman has not simply been read and placed

on a shelf or in terms of newspapers, read and placed in the recycling bin. instead, his work has gone on to change public policy. for example, in 2005, his work changed a policy at the national institute of health regarding the payments to government scientists and those payments coming from drug manufacturers. in 2008, he was cited by the scripts of the howard foundation for his investigative reporting in the anthrax investigation. he was begin the award for the top news story in the washington, d.c. area in 2008,

and that's the reason we're here. it's regarding his latest publication, latest book called "the mirage man". that book is about the 2001 anthrax investigation, and i can tell you, having lived through that investigation as the former director of the fbi laboratory, that this work is very authoritative, very complete, and very thorough. i believe one of my favorite passages in the book occurs towards the middle of the book, and it talks about the dichotomy between the traditional up vest good faithive -- investigative approach and the psychotic approach in the investigation, and in that

passage he says in contrast to the spectacles that surrounded the searches of steven hatfield's apartments and the pond, the scientist's work continued methodically and quietly. that passage describe very well the two approaches to this investigation, and it was the efforts of many scientists both in the fbi laboratory and around the country that i believe led to the solution of this investigation and that solution, i believe, is captured expertly in the book called "the mirage man," and so with that, i would like for you to help me welcome david willman to the forensic science institute. [applause]

>> thank you very much. it's an honor to be with you all here. i'm pleased to see so many students who are being trained her for this important work, and i want all of you students to realize that a group of very well-prepared, rigorous scientists as was alluded to, actually, some of the clear-cut heros of my book, so some of their work was crucial obviously to unraveling the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 that stands as the most complex scientific challenge ever undertaken by the fbi. my message to you in brief is study hard, please, because we need you all. i'd like to briefly highlight some of the back story of the mirage man and i look forward, obviously, to taking all of your questions at the conclusion. this book stands on the shoulders as dr. adams eluded

to, my work with the "los angeles times". i looked into great depth into a battle behind the scenes in washington over the preexisting anthrax vaccine, the only one this country ever had, and a new one that was genetically engineered, and, in fact, invented by scientists at the united states army's biowarfare research complex in maryland that ties in directly soon enough here. i had also for the times dug into a lawsuit that steven hatfield, former biowarfare scientist had filed against the fbi and the justice department related to the treatment that he experienced in the initial years of the fbi investigation, and through reading the thousands of pages of sworn testimony gathered in that litigation in the exhibits along with the

testimony, it really gave me a valuable insight into what had happened with this investigation at least in the initial stages of it, so i was uniquely positioned by the spring of 2008, and my reporting was propelling me really towards the most unsolved mystery lingering from our fall of 2001 trama, and that would be the anthrax letter attacks. five people developed inha ligs anthrax infections from the attacks and were killed by the letters. each death remains a tragedy, and yet the letters had more far reaching effects on our society. legislation called the patriot act was introduced immediately after september 11th, and it was controversial and was questioned by many because it expanded the authority of law enforcement to spy on our citizens.

in the united states senate, the chairman of the senate judiciary committee was going to do what they do in the senate, which was to slow things down to make sure they actually read the bill to see what was in it, and then the anthrax letter attacks hit, and people on both sides of the aisle and both houses of congress told me during my research that at that point, it was game over. there was no chance for slowing down that legislation. it blasted through the congress and passed the senate by a vote of 98-1. another cause that was immediately sort of coupled with the anthrax attacks was the drive to take out saddam hussein and the iraq war. there were many within the bush administration, some in congress, and quite a few outside the commons area who were gunning for saddam hussein for a very long time. prom innocent members of the bush administration, don rumsfeld and others wrote a

letter to president clinton in 1998 saying the only viable policy in that part of the world was to take out saddam forcibly. the anthrax letters were really a gift in the lap of the ideolog, and they immediately began saying the anthrax attacks were sponsored by hussein, al-qaeda, or perhaps both interests. the third major policy consequence flowing from the attacks was called project bioshield providing billions of dollars of research into the development of new medical products, vaccines, other counter measures that may at some point make us safer in the event of god forbid, another bilogical attack. it's a dramatic expansion of the labs around the country at great ongoing expense around the country, and this means 11,000 or more scientists and technicians are being brought into the work handling high reportedble lethal pathogens

without the controls that would give us assurance whether these people were trustworthy to be handling these things, so these are very big things. buildings in washington were closed. the ordinary reason and prudence -- the operations of the united states supreme court was affected, and the mail was greatly disrupted, and so the mailbox had become an instrument of death. i'd like you to stand back from the yellow tape perimeter of the investigation and look at this. i mean, these are crimes of enormous magnitude, and there must be essential life saving lessons that can be learned and applied from these crimes, but it was my take away on doing my reporting initially that none of this could happen, the lessons couldn't be applied, that the fundamental facts surrounding the facts themselves continued

to be muzzled, confused, and vandalized. that's, you know, the country obviously deserved to know what happened here, and this is why i set out to research and write this book, to try to separate verifiable fact from fiction. i decided the book had to be on the record, let the chichs fall where -- chips fall where they may, and i should say we all, of course, heard of junk science, and i'm sad to say the coverage of the anthrax attacks too often amounted to junk journalism. at a time actually when the country most needed journalists to be skeptical in their reporting, too many accounts took is at face value or claims that was just dead wrong, so the anthrax attacks, of course, unfolded ten years ago as we know, and, in fact, it was on this very day ten years ago that a photo editor at the national inquirer in south florida named

robert stevens was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax with an extraordinary rare infection for a human being to have. behind the scenes, good scientific work was underway and a microbiologist arranged for a sample of the spinal fluid to be flown overnight to one of the top yes geneticists in the country at northern arizona university in flag staff. the next morning, they determined this was no ordinary anthrax. in fact, it was the aims string. material that was being used extensively in the u.s. biodefense research program, and most extensively by the u.s. army. bob stevens died that same day. some attention, some coverage, but the full view of the mailings didn't burst into view on object 15th. that day a letter addressed to

the senate minority leader was opened on the fifth floor in washington that powder came out of the envelope, fell on a couple of interns, fell on the floor. it was quickly sucked up into the ventlation system, and we had an immediate full blown crisis. i mean, it's difficult now standing here in oklahoma to overstate the fear and sheer panic that reigned in washington at that moment. hundreds of people that work in the building were thought to be at serious risk of the potentially fatal anthrax upfection. who did this? on october 26, 2001, ryan ross, the chief news correspondent of nbc news came on air to offer an answer, and he asserted in his exclusive report in world news tonight that this material

mailed to daschle was chemically treated and weaponnized with beans night which we knew was a signature of hussein's biowarfare program. you can imagine the impact of that story. similar reports persisted throughout the run up of the iraq war, and i just want to make clear it's not just mainstream news accounts that were purveying this information, if you can call it that. there were also articles in the scientific literature, most notely on may 1 #st, 2002, the american medical journal association plushed an article called the "consensus statement on anthrax" reporting the material mailed to senator daschle was "chemically treated to reduce clumping" that would enhance its qualities, but there's no cites for this

assertion. all of which regrettably fueled the rush to war. this book provides the first picture of another biowarfare scientist named bruce ivans, and to learn about bruce, i traveled to a small town 40 miles northeast of cincinnati called lebanon, ohio. it was there, lebanon was and remains a town of mid m america that -- middle america that evokes a norman rockwell sketch. bruce was born there in 1946, the youngest of three sons. his father was a pharmacist and second generation of ivans drugs established in 1893. they were a prominent family in lebanon, well known people, he was a graduate of princeton, university, well liked, not much of a businessman, but a very

well known person. he grew up in a home that was not moriman rockwell. his mother, mary, was a fierce presence. she was -- she exerted dominance over the home. she was meantly and physically cruel. she attacked bruce's fall, randall, with whatever was at hand. it could be a broom, a fork. one night it was a skillet to the head that knocked him out, and she micromanaged bruce who she saw him as her prodigy. bruce's schoolmates who i interviewed, and i interviewed dozens of people who grew up with bruce in those years, schoolmates, teachers, others, townspeople in lebanon, and they said mary ivans had left a mark on bruce, a lasting and haunting mark, so from an early age, bruce, however, was, he was a scientifically gifted student,

however, he was socially isolated. he never fit in for whatever reason, yet he craved and actually as he got older and older he demanded attention and approval, and those are two themes for the life of bruce. he sought them in strange hidden ways, in ma nip pewlative ways. he pursued them anonymously in ways 245 he could elude accountability for his misdeeds. he went to the university of cincinnati, an undergraduate in microbiology, and there an important event took place that would really cast some of his destiny. he asked a woman out for a date, and she declined his invitation, and she quickly forgot about this, but bruce never did. he attributed the rejection to her membership in a sore roarty

called kappa kappa gamma, and from then, he was on a mission to harass members of kkg. this was in full evidence after he received his ph.d. and moved over to chapel hill, north carolina, the university of north carolina, where he was employed as a researcher, and there he met a woman who he really took a shine to, a student named nancy hagwood who was a terrific student and woman and someone had clearly what you think would have a dynamic career. she quickly sort of determined that bruce ivans was peculiar, abnormally stranged, and rebuffed his overtures for a closer friendship.

this enraged him. most notely in the early stages, anyhow, in 1979 after he moves more than 300 miles away to maryland, he drove back to chapel hill, and obviously secretly broke into a room where nancy's lab notebook was kept, and a lot of you, i don't know if you appreciate it, but we didn't have computers then, no flash drive or backup, all of her data from her experiments, everything her ph.d. hung on was in that notebook, and now it was gone. she was highly concerned about it and looked around for it. here's a note that says if you go to this mailbox at this interaction in chapel hill, this afternoon, you'll find your book there. anonymous note. she enlisted the police, they go, find it, the notebook is there. in soon thereafter, bruce was

meeting with a psychiatrist in washington, d.c. not far from where he was working in maryland, and he confided to her, the psychiatrist, that he both coveted and hated nancy and saw in her qualities that he wanted but couldn't have perhaps in a wife, that he wanted and felt that he never received from his mother, so very deep feelings about nancy, and he confessed to the psychiatrist he developed and only recently abandoned a plot to poisen and kill her. bruce was hired in 1980 by the research institute there, hired to work with anthrax, to grow it, purify it, prepare it for tests for animals. the army hired bruce for that job because there was great concern in the intelligence community at that time that the soviet union was illicitly

pursuing a weapons program with anthrax even though they were in an international treaty that banned offensive use of the bilogical materials, but the fear was they were engaging in this program, and i'll tell you, that they were. okay. bruce ivans was a quick and seemless fit, very differential to the uniformed personnel there, and truth be told, he was a much better scientist than most, if not all the informed personnel, so that made his bosses like him, and he was a guy who was eager to do more, but his secret obsessions continued. he drove all the way out through western maryland out to morgantown, west virginia breaking into an office of kkg and stole various arty facts from the -- artifacts from the house there.

he stole the book of ritual including all the secret codes and passwords, rituals of that sorority, and this he would later acknowledge to the fbi, gave him a greatceps of power, he felt over the sorority and people affiliated with it. how did he exert the power? he took out classified ads and offered to anyone who wanted the book to write to him, and he'd send them the copy. a little twist, and this is a hallmark of bruce, and the twist was he placed the ad to be in the name of a woman, a woman's name, a derivative of the husband of nancy, and, in fact, he rented a mailbox in the name of that same man of nancy's husband. i should also say this was not his first burglarly of the kappa house. he burglarized the kappa house in chapel hill years earlier and got other artifacts that helped

his mission. meanwhile, back at the fort, his main objective by the mid-80s was developing a jen kneltically -- genetically engineered anthrax vaccine. this gained fuel in 1991 when you may be aware of the tremendous controversy because service personnel inoculated with the vaccine complained of the wide array of adverse effects, so there was a desire to come up with a better, safer, more effective vaccine that lasted longer on the shelf. in service of the work in 1997, bruce ivans put together, created a huge batch of purified spores of aims string anthrax, but this was anthrax he made sure was pristine, and it was going to support, he thought,

the balance of the animal testing needed to bring this next generation anthrax vaccine online. he indicated them under rmr1029. okay, so soon enough, however, bruce was voicing -- he was very self-aware of his own shortcomings and felt he was not given the respect and was not popular because of his lack of athletic looks and other things, and he was very concernedded about his -- what he believed was his own deteriorating mental state. in july 2000, that date is important for various reasons, and in july 2000, he wrote an e-mail that he was having "paranoid dilutional thoughts," and he worried he was becoming like his mother who he termed as an "undiagnosed schizophrenic."

he worried he was going to hurt and harm others and do horrible things. in july 2000, he acknowledged to another therapist that he 4 come up with a new plot that he had just abandoned once again to poisen and kill a lab technician of his that had sort of broken his heart by leaving. he was obsessed with this woman and remains such. let's stand back for just a second if i can ask you to do that. hindsight obviously is 20/20, but i think the more important and fair question for the united states army is what was known about bruce ivans in realtime? here's what i found. as of the year 2000, a number of his colleagues knew some very disturbing things about him. they knew he was receiving psych yatic treatment, group therapy, taking psychiatric drugs, taking

symbalta, lunesta, and his doses have been doubled. he kept it a secret to himself, never put this on a form when he was getting a booster shot of anthrax vaccine that he was also taking an anti-psychotic drug also. if bruce had been working with nuclear materials or chemical warfare materials, he would have been removed from duty immediately at the first sign of up stability or problems, but the army allowed him to have virtually unsupervised access by the deadliest anthrax kept by the united states, and this is highly portable material. the anthrax in the letters was less than a gram that was recovered per letter, so just a tiny amount of the material can create mass pappic and kill -- panic and kill people. one of the biggest surprises in

my research came in the mail with respect to a request i filed with the u.s. army. i asked for all documentation relating to any mental health evaluations relating to bruce. it was in english i could even understand said at no point during bruce's employment by the army had the service ever sought to evaluate his mental fitness to handle anthrax, so let's fast forward then to the spring and summer of 2001. the next generation anthrax vaccine was, in fact, beyond the back burner. those were the exact words, to me, of the supervising army major general who was over bilogical and keep -- chemical research. bruce knew it. he was being pushed to transition off of anthrax research and go into some other research. he was angry about this, rageful

about it, voiced it directly to colleagues, what could he do about it? well, bruce was a good student and a student of how fear moves the pure bureaucracy, moves the elected efficients, and how it moves policy. he knew fear and crisis was why he was hired, and he worked here during the days of the persian gulf war and seen a lot of things happen in amazingly fast time that without a crisis may have been delayed forever. in august 2001, he logged many late night hours and weeknights and weekends in the biocontainments. he did so alone. these hours continued through mid-september 2001. they picked up again in october, which i'll get to, but, of course, then, we had the september 11th attack, and bear with me here with a couple of what i think are very important dates.

on september 21, bruce sent an e-mail to nancy. she had not heard from him in heres, and it came out of the blue. he predicted another terrorist event, an event putting them into 24/7 action, similar to what happened in the first persian gulf war. on september 26th, he sent an e-mail to the departed lab technician, the same woman he planned to poisen with whom he remained obsessed. here's the exact quote in the e-mail, september 26, quote, "i just heard tonight that the bin laden terrorists for sure have anthrax. bin laden had just decreed death to all jews and all americans." these dates september 2 # 1 and 26th are important because at that point only the perpetrator knew that the first anthrax laced letters postmarked september 18th were still going through the mail, and here's the exact message in those letters,

quote, "we have this anthrax, death to america, death to israel." then we have, as i said a moment ago, the october 15th, 2001 letter to senator daschle is opened. the fbi rushes that letter to where? the fort because they have the suites to work on this kind of dangerous pathogen. there was immediate wild speculation about iraq in the attacks, perhaps al-qaeda, and bruce was right in the middle of it. in fact, he was handling the evidence. you can read the book for the details on that, but there was a tremendous breach in protocol how this was to be maintained, and he was telling bruce, anyone who listened to him, how frightening and how great this powdered material was. what it amounts to is maximum

shock and awe and a tremendous spectacle of fear. that's what the anthrax attacks were all about. certainly for bruce by this point, he was getting so much attention that he couldn't have been more content with the attention. let's go back inside moment -- momentarily into the investigation. each of the letters were postmarked in trenton, new jersey. the fbi and mail service inspected more than 1500 mailboxes. one box tested positive for spores which was an exact match for the anthrax used in the letter attacks, so with all of this in minute, an fbi agent working on her own time, a woman named robin powell asked the question yfs this one -- why was this one mailbox that had the spores selected? why 10 nassau street?

she did searching around and fed key words into the search. what about kappa gamma and princeton. that's across the street. boom, the address was at 20 nassau street right adjacent to the mailbox itself. that was a very powerful moment in the investigation. i mentioned up front the consequences of the attack including project bioshield, and the first contract awarded under that project was for $877.5 million for the development of the next generation anthrax vaccine upon which bruce held two pa tents. this contract never would have been awarded without the anthrax attacks. without the contract, with the contract, sorry, bruce had won not only the attention, but now he had the approval, the scientific validation that he

criefed. he had both things now. before closing, i'd like to up voke the wisdom of howard baker, the long time former senator from tennessee. senator baker once said in washington, he who does not toot his own horn may just find it untootive. with that inoculation, i want to share a brief passage about the book that was written and posted by karl cannon. he wrote, quote, "the mirage man should be required reading in every journalism school and law school in this country. it should be the textbook of a case study at the fbi academy in virginia and police academies everywhere, taught in college government classes and handed out to freshman members of congress when they arrive in washington and staffers assigned to the committees and white house national security counsel."

i'm not disagreeing with a word of that, and i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> i have the microphone, and i'm going to pass this around it you have a question, but because i have it, i'll ask the first question. [laughter] senator leahy was one of the intended targets by a letter that was unopened, and he remains, to this day, quite convinced that bruce ivans was not the only one responsible for this attack. in all of your research, did you find anything to support his contention that bruce ivans could not have agented alone? >> i did not, and i was there in the senate hearing room september 18th of 2008 when senator leahy interrupted the fbi director saying if bruce was the perpetrator that he, senator leahy, didn't believe he could

have done it alone, that there must be accomplices to be charged, accessories before or after the fact of mired. in contrast to that assertion, and i asked senator leahy's office to provide the basis for that assertion, and they have never done so. to my knowledge, he's never spelled out his thinking on this. he was an intended vick tills -- victims of the attacks and was frustrated at the early course of the investigation, but one of the most important things in my research, my conversations with them, a microbiologist namedded johnny, and he hired bruce in 1980s, and johnny's a respected biologist and ph.d. in his own right. there's only one person there who created powdered aim strain anthrax officially lawfully in an authorized fashion, and that

one microbiologist is johnny zell who did it with the equipment at the fort, he knows what can and can't be done, and dr. zell's quote to me is it's almost an insult to assert that mai cro biologists of bruce's skill could not have produced the material used in the letter attacks with the biocontainment resources he had there at the fort. >> other questions? >> you mentioned that the news media immediately diswrumped on the fact it was -- jumped on the fact it was a possibility it came from saddam hue sap or whatever, is that a wrong conclusion or just misinformation given out by a government agency or individual. any reference to that? >> i think a combination of both, but thank you for your question. one of the spectacles that is

deconstructed in the book is how a certain senior scientist who was not a bacteriologist, anthrax is a bacteria, this individual works on viruses. he's a virussologist. he looked at this material under a slide and came to a conclusion on what he was seeing that it must be chemically treated with some material. next thing you know, he's in a vehicle with a major general up there from frederick, and they come down to several top departments in washington, the department of health and human services, they go and meet with paul wolf, the deputy secretary defense at the pentagon, they were called into the white house and briefed several officials in the white house saying this material is chemically treated which, of course, was regarded as an indicator or signal of

saddam hussein's biowarfare program. that wrong conclusion and that scientist, by the way, peter jarling ultimately conceded to me, to his credit, that he was wrong, and that he was pining really out his lane to use his language, and he defers to the experts. the fbi laboratory engaged a national lab in this country, and they performed the most far reaching analysis of the attack material that has been done to date and conclusively established that the material was not treated with any chemical. >> other questions? >> was there a final piece of evidence that allowed them to catch him or was it just the

build up of a lot of things? >> the case rests on a combination of conventional law enforcement evidence and really cutting edge science, a lot of genetic work, so those two things merge together, and the fbi ultimately determined that the material that was used in the attacks came from this one flask that bruce ivans labeled, and he created the flask of material. he was the sole custodian of rmr1029 that was later provided to one other research facility in the midwest. what the fbi did through conventional law enforcement methods was to check out the potential alibis of any and all people who had access to rmr1029 narrowing it down to a group of 40 people who had not only access, but the expertise to do something with it, and bruce was

the only one who didn't have an alibi that stood up. he was the only one working in a hot suite for the extraordinary hours in the run up to the september 18th postmark and the second wave of mailings postmarked object 9th, so the government informed the attorneys that they were getting close to indictment and it could be a death penalty case. that was communicated to bruce directly, and on july 29th of 2008 he died of a massive overdose of tylenol pm, and the case was never brought to a conclusion in the judicial system of either a guilty plea or a trial. >> more questions? >> you had said that he had a flask with the anthrax in it.

was it ever determined how he got it out of the army's hands essentially? i mean, did he just walk out the front door with a flask of anthrax? >> there were no video cameras in the hot suites or elsewhere to monitor activity of that kind of nature. this is material that is so small that it could be put under a cuff and taken out. the simple answer to the question is no, there is no videotaped evidence of how anthrax was taken out of there. i would say two things though that i think reflect on that question or bear on that question. one is that bruce ivans in the court beginning in 2001 and several years thereafter was telling the fbi that any one of seven of his colleagues he thought may well have perpetrated the anthrax attacks, so he certainly thought it was possible. the other fascinating thing that

happened # that's in the book is in december of 2001, perhaps november or december 2001, bruce ivans ultimately acknowledged that he conducted a sort of stealth clean up campaign in his personal office outside the biocontainment zone and went around with bleach cleaning things up and determined they were positive anthrax spores, and he was asked by investigators, well, did you swab the areas to ensure you got it all? he was asked this in april of 2002 by army investigator, and his response was i can't remember whether i did that. think about applause the or lack thereof of that statement. this was an area outside the con tapement zone where family members come in, staff, none who are vaccinated against anthrax, and he can't remember if he got the spores out of there.

i think that statement is highly questionable, and i know it was a statement that investigators and the fbi viewed as highly important and would have been introduced in a trial, and the ultimate audit by army investigators to see if loose spores may have been in the spring of 2002 found spores only in one office space, and that was bruce ivan's office space. >> you put it in a cup, wouldn't you run the risk of exposing yourself? >> the question is what physical con taper would the material have to be put in. hypothetically someone of dr. ivan's skill could have had envelopes with him in the hot suite, could have loaded the spores into the letters, sealed

them with tight, all letters sealed tightly with tape, put them in a bag and walk out. >> [inaudible] >> forgive me if this is false information, but i did read that following after the united states anthrax letters attack, there were some, or there was a letter found in chili. is that connected to bruce ivan's attacks, or is that completely false information? >> well, there's a lot of letters that actually continue to be found around the country that are bogus hoax letters. there was no other letter in any

other part of the world that contained this unique batch of anthrax actually either aim strain, live spores of any kind, or certainly anthrax with spores derived with this unique flask of rma1029. >> the one that -- the people that have the letters sent to them laced with anthrax, why were they specifically targeted by bruce? >> great question, and i should point out that there were four letters that were recover covered. there appears there was a total of five letters. the letter sent to the parent officings of the national up qirer was never required. they get junk mail and throw it out, and it's almost immediately incinerated, regrettably for this investigation. there was a plume of anthrax

masked from the mail room of the parent company all along the path where the mail deliverer was delivering the mail, ander -- ernesto came down with the infection and survived. bear in mind the intent of the attacks was to create shock and awe and fear, okay? what better way than to stepped to the most prom innocent tabloid in the country, to send it to two highly placed individuals at the heart of the national government, the senate judiciary committee leader, senator leahy, senator dach l, and tom brokaw. if the intent is to create

shock, awe, fear, then the mission is accomplished. >> in regards to steven hatfield, do you know what any reparations were paid out to him by the fbi? >> i do. i believe it was on june 25th of 2008 that the government agreed to settle his lawsuit for $5.82 million. there was a cash payment up front and $150,000 annuity for 20 years. i interviewed steven hatfield for the book, and he remains of the belief that any opportunity he has for normal career in science is over at this point. >> for my own peace of mine, has

policy at the army lab changed at all? [laughter] or is there still a lack of surveillance and lack of protocol? >> i think this is really one of the most important questions to be asked in the aftermath of the anthrax letter attacks, and it goes to the lessons learned that could be applied but have not been applied to this point. i say if you read, read the epilogue. the denial and defense of bruce ivans and opposition to any new controls on how the materials are handled is laid out. things have gotten a bit tighter. they have video cameras now in hot suites. that's not a silver bullet and there's no one measure that can give complete confidence, but the entire community opposed certain mandatory controls. the biodefense community wants the federal money for these

facilities and the research without the controls. they oppose baseline psychological screening, and they oppose a mandatory two-person rule in the hot suites, so baseline psych yatic screening could have kept him out, and he articulated his one plot to kill nancy before he was hired by the army, and the two-person rule also would have greatly inhibited and probably prevented bruce from doing what he's doing. this point also goes back to an earlier question about how the fbi sort of narrowed down the list of suspects in this case. there was one research institute as i said earlier in the midwest also working with rmr1029. it turns out, there's a mandatory two-person rule now for a very long time, and the scientists working with rmr1029 did it in tandem and rarely the

same two working at the same time so it really cuts down on the possibility that there was some rogue insidious insider out there, but yet the community, the biodefense community, to this day, adamantly opposes the two-person rules saying it increases cost and it would infringe on academic freedom and work is done with work associated at the universities, and i say to that that working with anthrax, working with these highly portable and lethal pathogens is neither a right nor a matter of

>> what if there's another bruce ivans out there that creates it in their home or lab or whatnot. what the fbi or security doing to prevent something like that from happening again? >> well, regrettably, i think our national policy response to the anthrax letter attacks has exponentially grown the threat of another insider who can use his or her unique position and knowledge and access to resources to do something horrible that creates a mass panic in this country and kills people, so that is a reality out there. i think it's also true that law enforcement and fbi is better positioned to investigate the crimes. i wouldn't say they are better positioned to necessarily prevent them, but the first has for fire power in house than

existed in 2001. i think there were two microbiologists employed in 2001, and now that's changed dramatically. >> do you know if bruce had any close personal relationships with any high profile government officials? >> not to my knowledge. i know he was a real student of what was in the newspapers every day. he was always sort of latch ling on to the big story of the day. he was writing scores of letters to not only newspapers, but to members of congress, and he was very animated and agitated about any number of issues, sometimes you have to wonder if he really believed it. i mean, he wrote one letter to the frederick news post defending the civil rights of the national man-boy love association, and this prevoked a

dozen more angry letters, and then after, you know, this brush fire was lit, bruce came in with another letter saying, oh, well, everybody misunderstood. he was not trying to defend them, and he took a whack at them. that's not a direct response to the question, but to my knowledge, he didn't have a personal relationship with any of the legislated officials. >> other questions? >> from a forensic psychologist point of view, if he had a mother like carol brady, would this have happened? [laughter] >> who knows. i think we can all point to some familiarity directly or through

acquaintances with people who overcame traumatic childhoods. i'm careful to say people who grew up with him believe that his mother left this mark on him. to answer that authoritatively gets into the nature versus nurture question which i don't think has been settled yet. [laughter] >> the unique opportunity to purchase the mirage man in our atrium and have david willman sign that book for you, and that will be available immediately upon closing her, would you join me in thanking mr. willman for coming today? [applause] >> is there a non-fiction author or book you want to see featured on booktv? e-mail us at booktv it's

c-span.org. >> this is not just another straightforward biography of david crockett nor focus on just one slice of the pie, the alamo. there is much more to crockett than the last few weeks of his life, and it's not a regurgitation of the many, many myths and total lies perpetuated about crockett over the years. this is a book for people interested in learning the truth, or at least as much as can be uncovered about both the historical and the fictional crockett and how the two often became one, and hopefully, readers will gain new historical insights into the actual man and how he captured the imagination

of his generation and later ones as well. now, a few spoonfuls from crockett, the lion of the west. the first is just a graph or two from my preface. the authentic david crockett was first and foremost a three dimensional human being, a person with somewhat exaggerated hopes and well checked fears, a man who had, as we all do, both good points and bad points. he was somewhat ideosin karattic, possessed interesting views, prejudices, and opinions that governed how he chose to live his life. crockett could be calculating and selfless, but also as valiant and as resourceful as

anyone roaming the frontier. he was contrived, wise in the ways of the wilderness, and most comfortable when deep in the woods on a hunt; yet, he could hold his own in the halls a congress, a fact that distinguished him from so many other frontiersmen. remarkably, he enjoyed frat sizing with money of power in the fancy parlors of philadelphia and new york. crockett was like none other, a 19th centuryic enigma. he was jackson's bitter foe on the issue of indian removal -- of the issue of removal of indian tribes if their homelands. crockett's contradictions extended beyond politics. he had just a few months of formal education, and yet he read. he was neither a monkey nor a

great intellect, but always evolving on the stage of a nation on its adolescence, a pioneer whose dreams reflected a restless nation with a gaze pointed towards the west. perhaps more than any one of his time, david crockett was arguably our first celebrity hero inspiring people of his own time as well as the 20 #th century -- 20th century generation. the man, david crockett, may have per riched on march 6th, 1836 in the final assault of the alamo, but the mythical david crockett, a part of the american psyche, more than any other frontiersman lives powerfully on. in this way, his story, then, becomes far more than a one note wallet disney legend while his life continues to shed light on the meaning of america's national character.

a spoonful from a chapter entitled "kilt him abar." [laughter] david crockett believed in the wind and in the stars, the son of tennessee could read the sun, the shadows, and the wild clouds full of thunder. he was comfortable amid the thickets and cane breaks, the mountain balds, he hunted the oak, hickory, sweet gum forests that never felt an ax blade. he was familiar with all the smells, the odor of decaying animal flesh, the aroma of the air after rain, and the pungent smell of the forest. he knew the rivers lined with poplar and willow that breached the mountains with steep-sided gorges and strange sounding names with indian influences like the french