>> good afternoon. welcome to the forensic science institute. it's my honor and privilege to introduce our speaker for this afternoon. he is david willman.

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 pasadena 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 approved by the food and drug administration. 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. 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 the 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 scripps howard foundation for

his investigative reporting in the anthrax investigation. he was given the award for the top news story in the washington d.c. area in 2008. and that is the reason we are here. it is regarding his latest publication, his latest book called "the mirage man." that look 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 a authoritative. it is very complete, very thorough. i believe that one of my favorite passages in the book occurs toward the middle of the book, and it talks about the dichotomy between the

traditional investigative approach and the scientific approach that was being conducted during this investigation, and in that passage he says, in contrast to the spectacles that surrounded the these searches of steven hatfill's apartment and the pond, the science continued methodically and quietly. that passage describes very well the two approaches to this investigation and it was the efforts of many scientists oath 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." so with that i would like to --

for you to help me welcome david willman to the forensic science institute. [applause] >> thank you very much dr. adams. it is certainly an honored to be here with all of you at the forensic science institute of central oklahoma university. i'm pleased to see so many students who are being trained here for this important work and i want all of you students to realize that a group of very well prepared rigorous scientists as dr. adams alluded to, actually some of the clear-cut heroes of my book, so some of their work was crucial obviously to unraveling the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, which really stands as most complex scientific challenges ever undertaken by the fbi. so my message to you is to study hard, please, because we need you all.

i would like to briefly highlight some of the back story of "the mirage man" and i will look forward obviously to taking all of your questions at the conclusion. this book stands on the shoulders as dr. adams alluded to my work at "the los angeles times" and for those of you who aren't reading the "l.a. times" every day i look at great depth into the battle behind the scenes in washington over the preexisting anthrax vaccine, the only approved anthrax vaccine the country has ever had and a new product, the next-generation vaccine genetically engineered and in fact invented by scientists at the united states biowarfare research complex in frederick, maryland debt -- soon enough here. i also at the times dug into a lawsuit that's steven hatfill former biowarfare scientist had filed against the fbi in the justice department related to

the treatment he experienced in the initial years of the fbi investigation and rereading the thousands of pages of sworn testimony gathered in that litigation and 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 really was uniquely positioned by the spring of 2008 and my reporting was propelling me really toward the most important, the biggest unsolved mystery lingering from our fall of 2001 trauma and that would be the anthrax letter attacks. five people people developed inhalation all anthrax infections from those attacks and were killed by the letters. each death of course remains a tragedy and yet the people hadn't even -- it even more far-reaching effects on our society. legislation called the patriot act had been introduced in

congress immediately after september the 11th. it was very controversial and questioned seriously by many civil libertarians 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 that they actually read the bill to see what was in it and in bend the anthrax letter attacks hit them people on both sides of the aisle on both sides is of congress told me my research at that point it was game over and there was no chance for slowing down the 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 of administration, some in congress and quite a few outside the area who were gunning for

saddam hussein for very long time, prominent members of the bush administration, defense secretary donald rumsfeld, paul wolfowitz. i'm sure these are familiar names to you. they written a letter saying the only viable policy now part of the world was to take out saddam forcibly so the anthrax letter attacks were really a gift in the lap of the ideologues and they immediately began intimating that the anthrax attacks were somehow sponsored by saddam hussein. the third mater policy consequences that flowed from the anthrax letter attacks was something called project bioshield, which provided billions of dollars for research into the development of new medical products and other countermeasures that may at some point make us safer in the event of another biological attack. there was a dramatic expansion around the country and great

ongoing expense to the country. this meant that 11,000 more scientists and technicians have party been brought into this work handling these highly portable lethal pathogens without the commensurate control that would give us assurance whether these people were trustworthy to be handling these things, so these are very good things. buildings in washington were closed. the operations of the united und states supreme court were affected. government, residential, business mail was greatly disrupted and so the portal of daily life, the mailbox, have become an instant of death. so i would like to maybe ask you to stand back with me a little bit in the investigation and look at this. these are crimes obviously 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 during

my reporting initially that none of this could happen and the lessons can be a learned. they couldn't be applied as the fundamental facts continue to be muddled, confused and i dare say in some junctures vandalize. so that is, the country obviously deserve to know what happened here and this is why i set out to research and write this book to try and separate verifiable facts from fiction. i decided the book had to be on the record. i let the chips fall where they may and i should say that we have all of course heard of junk science and i'm sad to say that the coverage of the anthrax attacks too often amounted to junk journalism. at a time actually when the country most needed journalist to be scrupulous and skeptical in their reporting to many accounts took at face value or amplified claims that were just dead wrong.

so the anthrax attacks of course unfolded 10 years ago as we know. in fact it was on this very day 10 years ago that a photo editor at the national enquirer and south florida named robert stevens who was diagnosed with inhalation all anthrax and extraordinarily rare infection or human being to have. behind-the-scenes good scientific work was quickly underway and a microbiologists arrange for a sample of cerebrospinal flu to be flown overnight to one of the top geneticists in the country, paul kind at northern arizona university in flagstaff. by the next morning october 5, his team determined this was no ordinary anthrax. in fact it was the ames strain, material being used extensively in the u.s. biodefense research program and most extensively by the u.s. army at fort detrick. stevens died that same day. it garnered some attention, some

coverage but the full spectacle of the anthrax mailings did not burst into public view for another 10 days on october 15. it was on that day a letter addressed to senate majority leader tom daschle was opened on the fifth floor of the hart senate building, senate office building in washington. the powder came out of the envelope, and it fell on the floor. he was quickly sucked up into the ventilation system and we had an immediate full-blown crisis. it would be difficult now standing here in oklahoma to overstate the fear, the sheer panic there reigned in washington at that moment. hundreds of people who had worked in the hart building were thought to be at serious risk with the potential fatally anthrax infection. on october 26, 2001 the chief investigative correspondent at

abc news came on the air to offer apparently an answer, and he asserted in his his elusive report on world news tonight that this material mailed to senator daschle had been chemically treated, had an weaponized with a material called -- which we knew was the signature of saddam hussein's biowarfare program. you can imagine the impact of that story. similar reports persisted throughout the run-up to the iraq war and i just want to make clear that it's not just mainstream news accounts that were purveying this information come if you can call it that. there were also articles in the scientific literature co-most notably on may 1, 2002 the journal of american medical association published an article called the consensus statement on anthrax which reported the material mailed to senator daschle had been quote chemically treated to reduce

coughing, unquote and otherwise weaponized with aerosolization. i can tell you that my research for this book found that there was no credible basis for any of these assertions. all of which regrettably fueled the rush to war. this book also provides the first biographical portrait of another via warfare scientist, fellow named bruce ivins. to learn about bruce ivins i traveled to a small town about 40 miles northeast of cincinnati called lebanon, ohio. it was fair, lebanon was and remains a town of middle americe else greg -- norman rockwell sketch. his father randall ivins was a pharmacist and a second-generation proprietor of ivins drugs established in 1893. they were very prominent family

and well-known people. randall was himself a graduate of princeton university. he was well-liked, very generous to a fault, not much of a businessman but very gregarious person. bruce ivins however grew up in a home that was not norman rockwell. his mother mary ivins was a fierce presence. she was, she exerted tyrannical dominance over their home. she was mentally and physically cruel. she attacked bruce's father randall with whatever was at hand. it could be a broom, it could be a fort. one night it was a skillet to the head that knocked him out. she micromanage bruce who was, she saw him as her prodigy. versus schoolmates, and interviewed dozens of people who had been brought up with bruce in those formative years, schoolmates, teachers, other townspeople in lebanon and they told me that mary ivins had left

a mark on bruce, a lasting and harmful mark. so from an early age, bruce however was a scientifically gifted students. however he was socially isolated. he never could fit in for whatever reason. yet he craves and actually as he got older and older he demanded both attention and approval and those are two through line themes for the life of her is ivins. he sought these things in strange ways and hidden ways in whetham in the bud of ways. he held grudges and pursued vendettas almost invariably anonymously in ways that enabled him to elude accountability for his misdeeds. he went to the university of cincinnati and was an undergraduate in microbiology. it was there as an undergrad that a very important event to place that would really cast some of his destiny. he asked a woman out for a date

and she declined the invitation and she quickly forgot about this but where is ivins never did. he attributed the redact -- rejection to her membership in a server mr. reddy called kappa kappa gamma. from that point out for the next decade he was on a vendetta to harass this woman not only institution of kappa kappa gamma but certain members. this was in full evidence after he received his ph.d. in microbiology from the university of cincinnati and move to chapel hill north carolina where he was employed as a postdoctoral researcher and there he met a woman who he really took a shine to, a doctoral student named nancy haywood. nancy was an attractive woman, a terrific student and someone who clearly had what he would think it was going to take to have a dynamic career. nancy hegwood determined that bruce ivins was peculiar,

abnormally strange and rebuffed his overtures for a closer friendship. this enraged him and so he started a campaign against nancy hegwood that he proceeded on for decades. most notably in the early stages anyhow, 1979 after her is ivins had moved more than 300 miles away to the state of maryland, he drove back to chapel hill and obviously secretively broke into a room where nancy hegwood's lab notebook was capped and a lot of you i don't know if you appreciate it but we didn't have computers then. there were no flash drives or backups backup so all of her data and all of her experience experience -- experiments hung on that lab book and now was gone so she was highly concerned and apoplectic about it and started looking around for. lo and behold there's an anonymous note this is if you go to this mailbox at this intersection in chapel hill on this afternoon you will find

your lab notebook there. so she enlisted the authorities and they find the notebook. the notebook is there. soon thereafter bruce ivins was meeting with a psychiatrist in washington d.c. not far from where he was working in suburban maryland and he confided to her, they psychiatrist, that he both coveted and hated nancy hegwood. he saw her qualities as he wanted but couldn't have perhaps in a wife that he wanted and felt he never received from his mother. so very deep feelings about nancy hegwood and he confessed to the psychiatrist that he had developed and recently abandoned a plot to poison and kill her. very soon thereafter, bruce was hired in december 1980 by the te u.s. army at fort detrick the biowarfare research institute there, he was hired to work with anthrax, to grow it, to purify it, to prepare it for test with animals. it's important to note that the

army hired bruce for that job because there was great concern in the u.s. intelligence community at that time that the soviet union was illicitly pursuing a weapons program with anthrax even though they were a signer of the international treaty that -- treaty that banned offense of use of this biological material. the fear was that they were engaging in an illicit program and i will tell you that they were. okay, so at fort detrick bruce ivins actually was a quick and sort of seamless. is very different shall to the uniform personnel there and truth be told he was it was a much better scientist than most if not all of the personnel. so that ingratiated him to his bosses. they liked him and he was a guy who was always sorted eager to do more. his secretive sessions and vendettas continued. we drove all the way out to western maryland out to morgantown west virginia where he broke into an office of kappa

kappa gamma and andy stole various artifacts from the kappa house there, including what for him was really a trophy, the book of ritual for kappa kappa gamma that included all of the secret codes and passwords, rituals of that sorority. this he would later acknowledge to the fbi gave him a great sense of power he felt over the sorority and certain people affiliated with vista ready. how did he exert that power? he took out classified ads in "mother jones" magazine and rolling stones and offered to anyone who wanted the book book of ritual to kappa kappa gamma and he to write to him and he would send me an copy. will twist and this is a hallmark of bruce, the twist was that he placed the ad to be in the name of a woman, a woman's name who was a derivative of the husband of nancy hegwood. in fact he rented a mailbox in the name of that same man, nancy

hegwood's osman. i should also say this wasn't his first burglary. he had revised the kappa house in chapel hill a couple of years earlier and got another artifacts that helped his mission. meanwhile back at fort detrick, ivins top objective by the mid- 80s was developing a next-generation genetically engineered anthrax vaccine and this project gained important traction in the aftermath of the persian gulf war of 1991 when as many of you may be aware that was tremendous controversy because service personnel who were inoculated with this vexing complaint of a wide array of adverse effects. so there was a desired among many in the government to come up with a better, safer and more effective vaccine, vaccine that would last longer on the shelf. in service of this work in 1997 bruce ivins put together, created a huge batch of

purified, highly purified spores of strains of anthrax. this was anthrax he made sure was pristine and it was known as support, the balance of animal testing that would he needed to bring this next generation anthrax vaccine on line. the human tori does spores under the codename rmr1029. okay, so soon enough however ivins was very self-aware of his own shortcomings and felt that he wasn't given the respect and was wasn't popular was unpopular because of this lack of athletic looks and other things, and he was very concerned about what he believed was his own deteriorating mental state. in july 2000 that data is important for various reasons, in july of 2000 he wrote an e-mail since he was having quote

paralyzed -- paranoid delusional thoughts. he worried he was becoming like his mother returned a quote undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. he was talking about his impulses to do harm, worried he couldn't control them, worried he was going to physically harm others and to quote terrible things, unquote. and also in july 2000 acknowledge another behavioral therapist that he had also come up with a new plot he just abandoned once again to poison and kill a lab technician of his that had roker his heart by leaving for dietrich. he was obsessed with this woman and remains such so let's stand back for just a second if i could ask you to do that. hindsight in 2020. i think the more important and fair question for the united states army united states army is what was known about are his ivins in real-time? here is what i found. as of the year 2000 number of his army colleagues at fort

detrick newsom very disturbing things about him. they knew that he was receiving psychiatric treatment for his individual and group therapy and they knew he was taking a number of psychiatric drugs. they knew he was taking some balsa, valium trazodone valium and impact in july 2000 his doses of celexa had been double. he kept the secret to himself and never put this on a form when he was getting a booster shot of anthrax vaccine that he was as of july 2000 taking zyprexa which is an antipsychotic. if bruce ivins have been working with nuclear materials or chemical warfare materials, he would have been removed immediately at the first sign of any instability or problems but the fact is the army allowed him to maintain unrestricted virtually unsupervised access to the deadliest anthrax cap of the united states government. this was highly portable material. the anthrax that was in the letters was less than a-gram and

that was recovered her letter so just a tiny amount of this material can create mass panic and can kill people. one of the biggest surprises indeed of my research came in response to, came in the mail in response to a request that i filed with the u.s. army. i've asked for all documentation related to any mental health evaluations for bruce ivins and a response from the army major in declarative english that even i could understand said at no point during bruce ivins' employment by the army had the service ever sought to evaluate his mental fitness to handle anthrax. so let's fast-forward to the spring and summer of 2001. the next generation anthrax vaccine would have in fact be on the back or in her. those were the exact words to me of the supervising army major general who was over biological and chemical warfare research and bruce ivins knew it because he was hearing it firsthand at

meetings he was attending at the pentagon. in fact he was being pushed to transition off of anthrax research and go into something else, glandular research. he was angry about this. he was rageful about it and went directly to colleagues about it he do about it? ruse ivins was a good student and a student of how fear and crisis moved the bureaucracy, and how it moves elected officials, how it moves policy. he knew that here in crisis was how he got hired and he worked at fort detrick during the days of the persian gulf war man seen a lot of things happen in amazingly fast time that without a crisis would have been perhaps delayed forever. knobs to 2001 items began lugging many late-night hours on weeknights and week nights and on weekends in the biocontainment department at fort detrick. he did so long. these extort me hours continued through mid-september 2001 and picked up again and off over

which i will get to but of course and we have a september 11 attacks and i want to ask you to bear with me for a couple of very important days. on september 21 nancy hegwood was shot. she said it just came out of the blue in an e-mail ivins predicted another big terrorist event and event that would put fort detrick into 24/7 action similar to what happened during the first persian gulf war. on september 26 he sent an e-mail to his departed lab technician the same woman he previously planned to poison and here was his exact quote from his e-mail of september 26. quote i just heard tonight that bin laden terrorist for sure have anthrax. osama bin laden has just decreed staff to all jewish and americans. the states are important because

at that point only the perpetrator knew that the first anthrax laden letters postmarked september 18 were still going through the mail and here is the exact message in those letters. quote, we have this anthrax quote, death to america, death to israel, unquote. so then we have come as i said a moment ago the october 15, 2001 letter to senator daschle that was open. the fbi russ is that letter to where? for teacher as they have the biocontainment suites to work on this dangerous pathogen. there was immediate wild speculation about iraq in the anthrax attacks perhaps a cut in bruce ivins was right in the middle of it. in fact he was handling the evidence. i will let you read my book to see the exact details on that but there was a tremendous breach in the protocol for how the chain of custody was supposed to be maintained.

he was telling telling bruce anyone who would listen to him how frightening and how spectacular this powdered material was. what this all amounts to is really maximum shock and off and andrew chim and the spectacle of fear. that's what the anthrax attacks were all about. and certainly for bruce ivins by this point, he was getting so much attention that he could not have been more content with the attention. so let's go back momentarily to the investigation. as you might recall, each of the anthrax letters were postmarked postmarked -- the fbi and the postal service examined more than 600 mail collection boxes in that area. just one mailbox tested positive for spores in the spores were an exact match for the anthrax used in the letter attacks. so, an fbi agent who was actually working on her own time

a woman named robin powell, asked the question, why was this one mailbox that had the spores at 10 napa street selected? y. 10 nassau street? as she started doing searching around and she said key words into her search. how about kappa kappa gamma and princeton because 10 nassau street is across the street from princeton university. boom the address for kappa kappa gamma was that 20 nassau street right adjacent to the mailbox itself. that was a very powerful moment in this investigation. i mentioned up front the consequences of the anthrax attacks including project bioshield and it turned out the very first contract awarded under project bioshield was for $877.5 million for the development of the next generation anthrax vaccine upon which bruce ivins helped to patents. this would have never been awarded without the anthrax

attacks. without the contract, i'm sorry with a contract items had won not only the attention but now we have the approval, the scientific validation that he craved. he had both things do. now. before closing i would like to if you will indulge me in both the wisdom of howard baker the longtime former senator from tennessee. senator baker was -- once said that in washington he who does not to his own horn may find it on to did so with that as an inoculation i would like to share brief passage about my book that was written in posted by carl cannon, the washington editor realclearpolitics. mr. kent roe quote, the maras man should be required reading in every journalism school and law school in this country. it should be the textbook of a case study of the fbi academy in quantico virginia and police academies everywhere. should be taught in college

government classes and handed out to freshmen members of congress when they arrived in washington and the staffers assigned to capitol hill committees and the white house national security council. i'm not going to disagree with awarded that in a thank you very much and look forward to your questions. thank you. >> i see have the microphone and i'm going to pass this around. if you have a question, but since i have that i will ask the first question. senator leahy was one of the intended targets by a letter that was unopened and he remains to this day quite convinced that bruce ivins was not the only one responsible for this attack. and all of your research, did you find anything to support his contention that bruce ivins could not have acted alone? >> i did not and i was there in the senate hearing room on

september 18 of 2008 when senator leahy and directed the fbi to say that if bruce ivins was the perpetrator that senator leahy did not believe bruce ivins could have done this alone, that there must be accomplices that could be charged, accessories before after-the-fact to murder. in contrast to that assertion and i was at senator leahy's office to provide the basis for that assertion and they have never done so. to my knowledge senator leahy is never spelled out his thinking on this. i should reiterate senator leahy was an intended victim of the attack and was frustrated at the early course of the investigation. but one of the most important things to my research and my conversations with the microbiologist named johnny zell. johnny zell was one of the people who hired her as ivins in 1980 and john e. zell was a inspected microbiologist ph.d. in his own right. turns out or is only one person

at fort detrick who has created ames strain anthrax officially lawfully in an authorized fashion and one microbiologist who has done this was john e. zell. he knows what can and can't be done and dr. is l.'s quote to me was it was almost an insult to its to assert that a microbiologist at this skill could not have produced the resources that he had right there at fort detrick. >> other questions? >> you mention mentioned that the news media immediately jumped on the fact that it was a possibility that this anthrax came from saddam hussein or whoever. was that an issue of a wrong

conclusion or was there in from -- misinformation given out by some agency or individual? any reference to that? >> a think a combination of both but thank you for your question. one of the spectacles deconstructed in this book is how a certain senior scientist at fort detrick who was not a bacteriologist and anthrax of course this bacterial. this individual works on viruses and is a virologist but he looked at this attack material under sliding came to the conclusion based on what he was seeing that it must be chemically treated with them tonight or perhaps some other material so the next thing you know he is 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 met with paul wolfowitz that deputy defense secretary

and that same night they were called in to the white house and briefed to several cabinet officials in the white house that this material appeared to have been chemically treated with them tonight which of course was regarded as an indicator, signal of saddam hussein's i'll warfare program. that long conclusion and that scientist by the way his name is peter charlie and ultimately conceded to me, thing to his credit that he was wrong and that he was opining out of a sling to use his language and he defers to the experts. the fbi laboratory engaged one of the national labs in this country, the sandia national laboratories and sandia performed the most far-reaching analyses of the attack material that has been done to date and conclusively establish that material was not treated with any chemical. >> other questions

zell. >> was there a final piece of evidence that allow them to catch him or was it a buildup of a lot of things? >> the case of dr. adams in his introduction rests on a combination of professional law enforcement evidence and really cutting-edge science, lot of genetic work. so those two things merged together and the fbi ultimately determined that the material that was used in the attack came from a small flask. he created the flask of material. he was the sole custodian and auer rmr1029 was provided to one of their research facility in the midwest. the fbi through conventional enforcement efforts was to check out the alibis of any and all

people that had access to rmr1029 nine and that narrowed down to really a group of slightly more than 40 people that not only access but the expertise to do something with it. bruce ivins was the only one who didn't have an alibi that stood out. he was the only one working the extraordinary hours in the run-up to the september 18 postmark and the second wave of anthrax ailing switches postmarked october 9, so the government informed the ivins' attorney said they were getting very close to indictment and possibly could be a death penalty case. that was communicated directly to bruce ivins and on july 29 of 2008 he died of a massive overdose of tylenol pm. so the case regrettably was never brought to a conclusion in the judicial system either three 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 coffin taken out, so the simple answer to your question is no, there is no videotape evidence of how anthrax would have been taken out of there. i would say two things though, that i think reflects on that question or bear on that question. one is that bruce ivins during the course of the beginning and beginning in november of 2001 and for several years thereafter

was proud telling the fbi that any one of seven of his colleagues he thought me will have perpetrated the anthrax anthrax attacks so we certainly thought it was possible. the other fascinating thing that happened that is in my book is that in december of 2001, or haps november to december 2001 bruce ivins ultimately knowledge that he conducted a sort of stealth cleanup campaign in his personal office which was outside the biocontainment zone and he went around with bleach and clean things up. he had already determined that these appeared to be positive anthrax spores. he was asked by investigators, well, did you go around in swab those areas to make sure you got it all? he was asked this in april 2002 by an army investigator and his response than once i can't remember whether i did that. now think about the possibility or lack thereof of that statement. this was an area outside the

biocontainment somewhere family members come in, janitorial staff and none of them are vaccinated against the anthrax. i think that statement is highly questionable and i know that it was a statement that investigators and the fbi viewed as highly important and would have been introduced at a trial. the ultimate audit by army investigators to see where any loose boards may have been in the spring of 2002 found spores and only one personal office space and all of fort detrick and that was bruce ivins' office. [inaudible] >> i would think if you put it in a cup -- [inaudible] >> the question is, what physical container with the material have to be put in so

hypothetically, someone of dr. ivins' gill could've had the envelopes with him and could have loaded the spores into the letters, sealed them with a tape. all the letters were sealed tightly with tape, put it in a ziploc agee and out. >> forgive me if this is false information but i did read that following the united states anthrax letter attack there were some, or there was a letter -- is that connected to bruce ivins

attacks or is that completely false information? >> well there were a lot of letters that actually continue to be found around the country that were hoax letters. there was no other letter in any other part of the world that contained this unique batch of anthrax either mainstream after at -- like anthrax or certainly anthrax with spores derived from this unique flask of rmr1029. >> the people that have a letter sent to them laced with anthrax, why were they specifically targeted by bruce? >> that's a great question and i should point out that there were four letters that were recovered. it appears that there were a total of five letters. the letter that was sent to the offices of the national enquirer was never recovered.

the national enquirer gets tons of junk mail, not male and they throw it out and it's almost immediately incinerated regrettably for this investigation but there was a plume of anthrax that was masked from the mailroom at the parent company of the inquirer. along the path where the mail delivered ernesto blanco was delivering the mail and ernesto blanco by the way came down with an inhalational anthrax infection and survive. why those targets? bear in mind that i think the intent of the anthrax attacks which create shock and awe and fear. what other way than to send it to the most prominent tabloid in this country, to send it to two highly placed into guzzles at the heart of the national government, and the committee member pat leahy and senate majority leader tom daschle and throw in a national network news

agent tom brokaw and an editor at the "new york post" which is among mainstream newspapers the most prominent tabloid newspaper. to the intent was to create maximum shock and off, fear, crisis, mission accomplished. >> in regards to steven hatfill do you know what reparations were paid out to him by the fbi? >> i do. i believe it was on june 5, 2008 at the government agreed to settle this lawsuit for a $5.82 million. does a cash payment upfront and 150,000-dollar a year and a for 20 years. i interviewed steven hatfill at some length for this book and he remains of the believe that any opportunity he has for a normal

group career in science is over at this point. >> for my own peace of mind, has policy at the army lab changed at all? [laughter] or is there still a lack of surveillance and a 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 those lessons learned that could be applied that i don't think have been applied to this point. i would say up front if you read no aspect of "the mirage man" please read the epilogue where all the dynamics of denial and opposition to any new controls on how these materials are handled as laid out. things have gotten a bit tighter at fort detrick. they have video cameras now in a hot sweet. that is not a silver bullet. there is no one measure that

gives you complete confidence. i would say almost the entire biodefense community has opposed certain mandatory controls. the dot -- biodefense community wants money for this research. they oppose baseline psychological screening and they opposed mandatory two-person rule in the hot suites so baseline psychiatrics training may well have kept a bruce ivins out of anthrax work. bear in mind he had articulated his one plot to kill nancy hegwood before he was hired by the army. and the two-person rule also would have greatly inhibited and probably prevented bruce ivins from doing what he was doing. this point also goes back to an earlier question about how the fbi sort of narrow down the list of suspects in this case. there was one research institute as i said earlier in the midwest that have also been working with

rmr1029. it turns out there has been a mandatory two-person rule for a very long time and the scientist scientists who are working with rmr1029 were always doing it in tandem and there were rarely the same two working at the same time so it really cuts down the possibility that there was some rogue insidious insider out there but the community, the bio defense community to this day adamantly opposes the two-person rule. they say would increase cost. there's also a subtext that it would infringe upon the academic freedom. a lot of this work is done in and facilities associated with universities and i would say to that working with anthrax, working with these other highly portable and lethal pathogens is neither universal right, civil rights nor a matter of academic freedom. it is a privilege and yet our policymakers have yet to make these changes.

>> what if there is another bruce ivins out there? what if somebody creates in their home or in their lab or what not? what is the fbi or our security doing to prevent that from happening again? the regrettably i think our national polyp seed response to the anthrax letter attacks as a exponentially grown the threat of another insider who can use his or her unique decision and knowledge and access to resources to do something horrible that creates mass panic in this country and kills people, so that is the reality out there. i think it is also true that law enforcement and the fbi in particular is now better position to investigate these crimes. i wouldn't say they are in a

better position to necessarily prevent them but the fbi as dr. adams can attest now is a lot more scientific firepower in house then existed in the fall of 2001. i think there were two microbiologist employed by the fbi in the fall of 2001 and that is change dramatically. >> do you know if bruce had any close personal relationships with any high-profile government officials? >> not to my knowledge. i know that he was a real student of what was in the newspapers every day. he was always sort of latching onto a the big story of the day. he was writing -- he wrote scores of letters to not only newspapers but to members of congress and was very animated and agitated about any number of issues. sometimes you have to wonder if he really believed it.

he wrote one letter to the frederick news post that appear to defend the civil rights of the national man boy love association and this provoked a dozen or more frothing angry letters and then after this brushfire had been lit, bruce ivins came back and was another letter that said everybody must have misunderstood. is really i wasn't really trying to defend them and then -- that was not a direct response to your question but to my knowledge he didn't have any personal relationship with any elected officials. >> other questions? >> from a forensic psychology point of view, if he had a mother more like carol brady would this have happened?

[laughter] >> who knows? i think all of us in the room by the way can point to some familiarity directly or through acquaintances with people who have overcome dramatic childhoods, and so that is why in the book i am very careful to say that people in lebanon who grew up with him believe that his mother left his indelible and harmful mark on him. to really answer that authoritatively is a nature versus nurture question which i don't believe has been settled yet. >> the unique opportunity to purchase the "the mirage man" in our atrium and have david lowman signed up look for you, and that will be available immediately upon closing here. would you join me in thanking mr. willman for coming today?

[applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. every weekend. >> the panic virus is a book that i began working on because of a reason that very much relates to what we are talking about today. a little over three years ago, which was before i had a child, i started noticing that in conversations with my friends when the issue of childhood vaccines, vaccines efficacy started coming up, the answers i would get to questions about how people went about making these decisions were answers very much in the language of intuition. it feels to me like children

receive too many vaccines today. it makes sense to me that the number of antigens in vaccines overwhelms developing immune systems. and the reason i found that so interesting is because that was very antithetical to the approach and the language that my peers use when it came to other topics where there was an intersection between science and public policy. for instance global warming. if we had a conversation and someone said well, we had three feet of snow last year. it just doesn't feel to me like we should be going through global warming, or a conversation involving evolution where someone said well, it doesn't seem right to me that we could be dissented from apes. those were attitudes from the same group of peers were incredibly dismissive of and very much look down their nose

towards the stupid people who don't understand or accept the science involving these other topics. and what was interesting to me was not bad they were wrong in their opinion because actually i didn't know at the time whether vaccines were or for not connected in some calls a way to developmental disorders like autism, but that this was about mccain those decisions. so i naïvely started working on this project thinking that there would be an interesting, maybe magazine story, looking at how we decide what counts as truth and some of the issues that get raised in this and here i am three years later. i couldn't interest in the magazine in it and i think one of the oddities and vagaries of book publishing, and i've had this experience before, can

sometimes be hard to convince someone to let you write a 5000 word magazine story but you can convince somebody to let you write a 110,000 word book which is what happened here and happy -- may be why the book publishing industry and its in such trouble. [laughter] so, when i began working on this, as a book one of my thoughts was most of the books that are out there on this topic are written from someone who came into it was already in one camp or the other believing their child had been vaccine injured in vaccines were very dangerous or someone in the medical community. i thought well, i will write a book from the perspective of someone who isn't coming to this from one side or the other and then people will you now read it and think oh well that is interesting in this is something i can trust. and that is not the case. the people who have disagreed with my conclusions definitely

have not viewed this as an interesting book that someone happened to write. i learn daily about my ties to pharmaceutical companies and big asness and how they are paid to which i say if there aren't a pharmaceutical company reps out they will give you my bank account routing number. i'm happy to take your money at this point. the book is already out so i figure if i am getting winged i might as well see some of the benefits of that. [laughter] so, i have really been, i've been shocked and it has been somewhat eye-opening as to how much a topic of which i think there really is not a lot of continued debate, how much debate there is in both a political and public realm. and what the implications of that are. there are very severe implications. 10 children died of whooping cough in california last year.