After eight years, the U.S. Justice Department on Friday formally concluded its investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks by making public documents that support the assertion that the perpetrator was a former military microbiologist. 

U.S. authorities contend that ex-government researcher Bruce Ivins acted alone in developing and mailing the lethal anthrax spores to lawmakers' offices and media organizations. The spores killed five people and touched off a massive public scare not long after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The U.S. Justice Department believes it has an ironclad case against Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008 before facing any possible charges, though officials have no admission of guilt, fingerprints or witnesses who saw Ivins in the act of carrying out the attacks.

The evidence "established that Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters," reads the department's nearly 100-page summary of the case. That conclusion remains controversial.

Relying on Ivins' e-mails and recordings of discussions, hundreds of pages of documents detail actions taken by the scientist to cast blame on colleagues and deceive authorities over his capability to produce anthrax. This occurred while he was also experiencing growing psychological difficulties.

"I, in my right mind, wouldn't do it," Ivins said in one recorded June 2008 conversation about the attacks. He continued, though, that "it worries me when I wake up in the morning and I've got all my clothes and my shoes on, and my car keys are right beside there".

“I do not have any recollection of ever doing anything like that,” Ivins told a friend, according to the New York Times, “I can tell you, I am not a killer at heart.”

He said, though, in a 2008 e-mail message that “I can hurt, kill, and terrorize.”

“Go down low, low, low as you can go, then dig forever, and you’ll find me, my psyche," Ivins wrote.

The Justice Department summary purports that Ivins carried out the anthrax attacks thinking that the ensuing public response that would ensure funding to keep his anthrax vaccine program alive just as it was in jeopardy of being closed, the Post reported. The mailings did indeed lead to billions in public and private funding intended to safeguard the country from a biological weapons assault.

The FBI determined that the anthrax used in the attacks had the same genetic characteristics as spores developed by Ivins, who was also the only researcher determined to have access to that material at an Army biodefense facility at Fort Detrick, Md. Records from the site also show that he kept unusually long night hours just prior to the mailings and that he was gone for unexplained long periods of time when authorities believe he was traveling to New Jersey to deposit the letters.

Despite his ostensible efforts to deceive authorities to the contrary, Ivins admitted through e-mail and personal writings that he did have the technical ability and the necessary equipment to create the unadulterated spores found in the mailings.

Despite the conclusion of the investigation, some believe that the real culprit has yet to be identified. The probe's findings have been criticized for a lack of physical proof connecting Ivins to the mailings.

"Arbitrarily closing the case on a Friday afternoon should not mean the end of this investigation," said U.S. Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.), from whose district the anthrax spores were mailed. "The evidence the FBI produced would not, I think, stand up in court".

"All they have confirmed is that they suspected him belatedly after finding out he had psychological problems," said Ivins' attorney Paul Kemp. "Sadly they substitute that for proof."

Critics point out that the FBI spent a long time investigating biodefense expert Steven Hatfill, who spent time at the same laboratory as Ivins and who was eventually shown to be innocent, the Associated Press reported. There is nothing of substance indicating that Ivins was present in New Jersey as tainted letters were mailed, according to skeptics.

At the behest of members of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences has initiated an examination of the scientific methodology used by the FBI to connect the spores used in the attacks to anthrax samples that Ivins possessed.

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