Report: FBI Harassed Ivins; Social Worker Has Troubled Past

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

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Bruce E. Ivins, the FBI's prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, spent last fall drinking heavily, taking large numbers of pills and typing ranting e-mails late at night, a fellow scientist says.

But the FBI also offered Ivins' own son and daughter millions of dollars and a new sports car to testify against their father, and even confronted the entire family in public at a shopping mall, The Washington Post reports.

And the social worker who sought a restraining order against Ivins has her own checkered history of drug abuse and involvement with motorcycle gangs, according to the Post.

Ivins, a career government infectious-disease researcher, killed himself last week as the FBI was preparing to arrest him in connection with the anthrax attacks.

The anonymous fellow scientist tells the Post that Ivins "was e-mailing me late at night with gobbledygook, ranting and raving" regarding the FBI's "persecution" of his family.

That scrutiny involved showing Ivins' daughter photos of the victims and telling her "your father did this," the scientist says.

The bureau also coaxed her twin brother with the $2.5 million reward offered in what it called the "Amerithrax" case plus any sports car he wanted, the source says.

In March FBI agents confronted Ivins, his wife and son at a Frederick, Md., shopping mall, the source tells the Post.

"You killed a bunch of people," the agents told Ivins.

They asked his wife, "Do you know he killed people?"

Meanwhile, Jean C. Duley, the counselor who told a judge that Ivins was planning a workplace massacre, had also recently finished 90 days of home detention following a December drunk-driving arrest.

In a 1999 interview with the Post, she told of her days in a biker gang.

"Heroin. Cocaine. PCP," Duley said. "You name it, I did it."

• Click here to read the rest of the story in The Washington Post.