All language subtitles for How It Really Happened s08e03 Anthrax.eng

[audio logo]

This was a
mysterious illness that

caught everybody's attention.

Highly lethal, and it started
to spread, people died.

This was on the heels of 9/11.

It was chaos.

We didn't know what was
going to happen next.

We knew it was intentional but
we didn't know who was doing it.

[theme music]

Welcome to How
It Really Happened.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

A suspicious letter
arrives in the mail.

Inside the envelope,
a white powder.

The FBI responds because
today, thoughts immediately

turned to terrorism.

That fear was born out of
an attack in September 2001.

Just one week after
the tragedy of 9/11,

powder-laced letters
began to make their way

through the US Postal system.

The potential of murder by mail
gripped the country with fear

and launched one of the largest
investigations in FBI history.

This is how it really happened.

[music playing]

[people screaming]

Get out!

Get out!

Look out!
Look out!

Look out!

Today, our fellow
citizens, our way

of life, our very
freedom came under attack

in a series of deliberate
and deadly terrorist acts.

It was something that the
imagination didn't capture.

That is about as frightening
a scene as you will ever see.

I spent that entire day
in the presidential bunker,

trying to ground every
civilian aircraft which

had suddenly become a missile.

Terrorism is about
disruption and creating fear,

and it just woke us up to
a very different world.

[siren wailing in distance]

The entire country
was in shock.

We were all kind of
in that situation

where we didn't know what
was going to happen next.

The first thing we thought
of as the knowledge that when

there's one attack, you need to
be prepared for a second event,

so-called reload, or a
completely different event.

So while you're concentrating
on what's going on over here,

a clever terrorist
will figure out

how to do something over here.

It looked as if a threat
was going to pop out

of a door at any moment, that
it might come from anywhere,

that it might be
any kind of attack.

That was very much present
for us every single day

after September 11.

[ominous music]

My husband was in
his friend's wedding.

I was sitting by myself
in the back of the church,

and I had had this huge
blister on my finger.

I just thought it
was a bug bite.

And all of a
sudden, it ruptured.

It was like white
bubbly stuff just

spilled out all onto my skirt.

And then it turned
black, like jet black.

The inside was dry.

It was the strangest
looking wound.

I remember showing
people at work

and they were like, wow,
that doesn't look right.

And they kept spreading
around my finger.

And I started to feel
like I had the flu.

When I went to a walk-in type
of clinic and they thought

it was a spider bite.

Then I went to New York
University Hospital

and a surgeon came
in to look at it

after the doctor
had looked at it,

and they couldn't
figure out what it was.

I didn't think it was
like germ warfare.

And it was the first victim,
but we didn't know there

were other victims to come.

[waves crashing]

At 9 o'clock in
the morning, I'm

giving a lecture
across the street

from my office to
doctors and nurses

and paramedics on bioterrorism.

And I got a phone call.

The phone call was from
a Dr. Larry Bush, who

actually was a comrade of mine.

He worked at the same hospital,
infectious disease expert.

So Larry says, Jean,
close your door,

make sure there's
nobody else in the room.

And he told me that
he was the consultant

on the case of a patient,
Mr. Robert Stevens.

He had been admitted
during the evening.

He said to me, it
looks like meningitis.

There's a 63-year-old man
who presented with signs

and symptoms of meningitis.

He was confused, having
fever, and was vomiting.

But it just didn't
fit the picture

of what is going on here.

He had been a healthy
person and he came in with

no particular medical history.

And in the beginning, it
was a complete mystery.

I went over to the
hospital and interviewed

Ms. Maureen Stevens.

She gave us a love
story, a remarkable love

story of this man
that she just adored

and the children they had.

He liked to fish and
hike, he ate all kinds

of different things, he worked
at AMI, the National Enquirer,

and The Star, and Mirror.

These tabloids
that you see when

you're checking out
at the supermarket,

and Bob Stevens
was a photo editor.

His job was to take photos
and add them to the stories.

The first set of symptoms
was that he felt awful,

and it seems like the flu.

In the middle of the
night, early morning hours,

he's gasping for breath.

Maureen drove him up
to the emergency room.

When he was brought to the
emergency room at JFK Hospital,

he was not breathing properly
and he had to be intubated

and ventilated.

So no one ever spoke to him.

They go through all
the battery of the tests

and Dr. Larry Bush is looking
at Bob Stevens' spinal fluid

and he's not liking
what he's seeing.

When that doctor saw the
microscope appearance of what

was going on in the spinal
fluid of the patient,

he sounded the alarm.

And that's how it started.

[audio logo]

[music playing]

The case of Bob
Stevens was such

a mystery to the
emergency room personnel

because it made no sense.

The patient, a
63-year-old photographer,

showed up at John F. Kennedy
Memorial Hospital confused,

vomiting, and running a fever.

They didn't know
why he was sick.

Now, Larry Bush was very
attentive to

bioterrorism alerts.

He just knew that
something was not right.

So we discussed
this and I said,

given the situation we're having
today, we have to consider

this as a possibility.

This could be anthrax.

So we had Bob Stevens'
spinal fluid sent to the CDC

for analysis.

And the CDC identified the
sample from Bob Stevens

as anthrax.

The Centers for
Disease Control

has just confirmed the
diagnosis of anthrax

in a patient in a
Florida hospital.

That was really the
day 1 for us, October 4.

Most people knew nothing
about anthrax before 2001.

Anthrax has been called the
"poor man's nuclear bomb."

It is only a few
microns in size

and has the capability
to kill millions.

Anthrax is
actually the disease.

Bacillus anthracis is the,
we'll call it the microbe

that causes the disease.

So people use them
interchangeably.

Anthrax is a spore-forming
bacterium, easy to make,

easy to weaponize.

And the ability to grow up
anthrax in the laboratory,

turn it into spores,
and then distribute

those spores as a biological
weapon, it can be devastating.

But anthrax does
exist in nature.

Anthrax is a very
uncommon human disease

in the United States.

It's primarily a disease
of grazing animal, cattle.

You might see a farmer
in a certain situation

might be exposed to that.

But you don't
typically see people

working at like the
National Enquirer

being exposed to anthrax.

Anthrax comes in a lot
of different disease forms.

There's cutaneous
anthrax, meaning

it's infected in the skin.

And that usually presents
with a very unattractive

scab and scar, usually black.

The second form is
gastrointestinal, which

would be more likely
if you ingested

something that was contaminated
with anthrax spores.

But inhalational
anthrax is the form

that's used for
biological weapons

because that's the most
deadly form of anthrax.

Because the infection
that it creates in your lung

system is very toxic
and really shuts

down your ability to breathe.

And Bob Stevens
was very quickly

identified as a pulmonary
or inhalational case.

A Florida man is hospitalized
infected with anthrax.

I think it was 1976, was
the last inhalational anthrax

victim seen in the US.

I don't know if there
are any doctors in the US

who had seen an anthrax patient.

First priority is really to
investigate why, where,

when, how.

The pressing issue
now is determining

where the anthrax came from.

We interviewed the wife at
length for many, many hours.

I asked her to try do your
best going back to time,

place, person.

Where he went, where he
ate, where he played,

who he was with, and
give me descriptions.

He ate all kinds of
different things,

and he could have gotten
it from eating goat,

and he did buy goat
from a delicatessen

down the road from
where he lived.

During the time that Mr.
Stevens was incubating,

he was traveling up to North
Carolina to visit his daughter.

He had done a
hike in the woods.

He had drank some water
out of a spring there.

Could he had gotten
it from spring water?

There had been anthrax
historically in North Carolina.

So it wouldn't be impossible.

That's just really unusual.

You can't completely
rule out that thought.

But context is everything.

And in the context of 9/11 and
what we were looking for, we had

to on the side of assuming
that this represented

something intentional.

The people who flew those
planes on 9/11 learned

how to fly in our county.

Where sharecroppers
would use their planes

to fertilize their crops.

Mr. Robert Stevens, he lived an
hour from one of those airports.

Yesterday, the FBI issued
a nationwide alert indicating

the possibility of attacks
using crop-dusting aircraft

to distribute
chemical or biological

weapons of mass destruction as
potential threats to Americans.

And I went there and
actually saw white powder

all over the place.

So it didn't take too much
to put two and two together

that this could be a spot where
something like this could occur.

You're still open
to the possibility

of this being bioterrorism?

We're open to-- we're open
to the possibility of anything.

We contacted the people who
worked at the AMI building.

One of the co-workers
of Mr. Stevens

recalled that an envelope had
been received in the office

a few weeks before he was ill.

The letter had come
in addressed to J-Lo.

And so one of Mr.
Steven's friends

brought the letter
in to show him.

And Mr. Stevens, he
opens the ladder up

and the envelope had
some powder in it

and some of the powder
spilled on the keyboard.

When we examined AMI
building, we took a swab

and we swipe it
along the keyboard.

We put it in a little device,
clicked it sent it off,

and it was positive.

And the minute they found
that, they knew that this

was a bioterrorism attack.

[ominous music]

[audio logo]

[music playing]

The bad news came out.

Robert Stevens died of anthrax.

A Florida man infected with
an extremely rare and lethal

form of anthrax has died.

Earlier this afternoon,
he suffered a cardiac arrest

and passed away.

He never regained
consciousness from the time

he enters the emergency room.

I was always as
national security

advisor the kind of first
line to the president

with information.

And I remember first mentioning
it to the chief of staff,

to Andy Card, who went with me,
to tell the president that there

had been these attacks.

I said, people are dying.

And the first thing out of his
mouth was, "is it al-Qaeda?"

And I said, Mr.
President, we have no way

of knowing that right now.

Federal investigators are
working to find the cause

of a deadly anthrax infection
in Florida as co-workers

of the victim wait and worry.

All that night, we
contacted the people

who worked or were on
contract at the AMI building.

The building was shut down
and the process of sampling

began to see if there were any
spores that had landed anywhere.

But we also sampled
people's noses.

The nose was the
sniffer of the spores.

Not only did each of the
employees have to be tested,

all of their children
have to be tested.

We were leaving
no stone unturned.

We didn't want people to die.

By tomorrow, the FBI should
be done collecting samples

at the building where
traces of anthrax

were found on a
computer keyboard.

Robert Stevens,
who worked there,

died of anthrax last week.

But that wasn't
the end of the story

because we had to figure out,
well, how did it get there?

We traced the spores
back to the mailroom.

Ernesto Blanco worked in the
mail room sorting the mail.

And so they tested Mr.
Blanco, and lo and behold,

his nasal swab was positive.

And that's how we knew within
5 days it was in the mail.

I always credit
Dr. Brad Perkins,

who is one of the lead
CDC investigative officers

because Brad, he
literally traced backwards

from that mailroom throughout
the postal system, the vehicles

that move the mail, the
local postal facility,

and so on and so forth.

A very small
amount of anthrax was

found in a post office
sorting facility

in Boca that served
the AMI building.

We didn't know what
other letters could

have been sent, where that
particular letter could also

have gone.

Do you think this is some
sort of thing against you

and what you publish?

I think this is
attack against America

and that it could
happen to anybody.

[ominous music]

I was hired at Nightly
News a month before 9/11.

I was opening the mail as a
desk assistant for Tom Brokaw.

We received love letters,
we received hate mail.

It ran the gamut.

But I came across this letter
that looked a bit different.

I opened it, you know, it
said, 9/11, death to Israel,

Allah is great.

This is really creepy.

And I saw this brown substance
that looked like it was a cross

between brown sugar and sand.

And I took the substance,
I dumped it in the trash,

folded up the letter, put it
back in the stack of mail,

gave the stack of mail
to Tom's assistant.

10 days later, when I woke up
and my glands were enormous.

I basically had no neck and
I had a really high fever.

And it was like a
super intense flu

but in a totally different way.

Because I had lesions
all over my legs.

They look like dark bug bites.

I'm freaked out.

That time span and the
next week or so is when

Bob Stevens opened his letter.

[ominous music]

When I came back
to work, we learned

that Tom's assistant
was also ill

and had been out of the office.

And I mentioned that
there had been a letter

that I came in contact with.

Folks started to put
the pieces together.

This morning, we
received a positive test

for cutaneous anthrax
for one of our colleagues

who works on Nightly News.

So I'm back at work.

I just had a black lesion
removed on my finger.

I have this little funny-looking
cast on the tip of my finger.

And there are TV
monitors playing

news throughout the newsroom.

And the NBC case broke.

An NBC Nightly News
employee has tested positive

for a skin anthrax infection.

They were going over
all of the symptoms,

and I just slowly turned around
and looked at the television,

and my heart just
sunk to my stomach.

It was terrifying.

I was like, oh my
god, I have this.

It's anthrax.

Excuse me.

[ominous music]

Welcome back to How
It Really Happened.

Just weeks after
the terror attacks

on 9/11 while our country was
still reeling, another threat.

This time, by a silent killer.

Letters containing
deadly anthrax

are being sent to media
outlets around the country.

But why?

By whom?

And where would the
terrorists strike next?

The news story started to
break that I had anthrax.

There is a case of
cutaneous anthrax.

The woman diagnosed with it
works at The New York Post.

At the time, I did the arts
and entertainment calendar, so I

got tons of press releases.

And in the same
bins, we would also

get the letters to the editor.

The New York Post
editor received a letter,

but it was never opened.

It was a sealed letter,
and they found it sealed.

Yet three of us got sick
which just goes to show you

the potency of this chemical.

In the beginning,
I think there

was a sense that if
the mail wasn't opened,

it wasn't dangerous.

Obviously, a lot of us were
wrong in what we thought.

I mean this was a whole, whole
new world, and a scary one.

The president was
briefed every morning

on what was happening.

We knew that these letters
were arriving at news outlets.

America has now confirmed
several different cases

of anthrax exposure.

Yet another case of
possible anthrax exposure.

This one at ABC News.

The CBS News employee
who's an assistant

to anchorman Dan Rather has
tested positive for anthrax.

And that meant that we
had multiple outbreaks

happening simultaneously.

And there was going
to be more to come.

I'm Wolf Blitzer
reporting tonight

from Washington, where anthrax
has now hit Capitol Hill.

On the morning of October
15, I came to my office

and was told immediately
upon arriving

that an intern had
opened an envelope

that exploded in the office.

And they thought it was anthrax
and we were in a crisis.

It had at the top "9-11," 9,
dash, 1-1, reference to what

had happened 3 weeks before.

And then it said,
"Allah is great.

Death to Israel.

We have this anthrax.

Take penacilin."

Penicillin was misspelled.

They called the Capitol Police.

The Capitol Police, they had
field what we call tickets.

They're like a COVID home test.

They tested the powder.

The tickets turned a double line
of bright red, meaning positive.

At 10:30 this morning, we
had a staffer for Senator

Daschle open up a letter.

It was found to contain
a powdery substance

and it tested
positive for anthrax.

The staff who were
exposed, everybody

was confined to the room because
they were all contaminated.

The decision was made to
evacuate the entire Hart Senate

office building
almost immediately

because the assumption
was that the anthrax would

get into the ventilation system
and contaminate others as well.

We

Had to shut down the building,
an extremely daunting task.

We then learned other
senators had been targeted,

including Senator Leahy.

It appears that
the letter sent

to me may contain
enough spores to kill

well over 100,000 people.

A letter like that could hold
certainly billions of spores.

And a billion spores could kill
hundreds of thousands of people

if distributed properly.

It was pure chaos.

I just talked
to Leader Daschle.

His office received a letter
and it had anthrax in it.

I saw the news report
about Daschle's letter.

We knew that it had to
come through our building.

All of the official
mail, mail that

went to Congress,
the Supreme Court

would come through Brentwood.

So we knew that
this possibility

that we're in trouble.

Brentwood was
open 24 hours a day.

That moves thousands
and thousands of letters

through the system on a
minute by minute basis.

And it never stopped.

Thomas Morris worked in
the government mail section.

Joseph Curseen.

Joseph worked directly
on the machine that

processed Daschle's letter.

Those letter sorting machines,
the LSM 17, those rollers

go like 35 miles an hour.

They're pressurized machines.

All these letters
that come through here

drop some particles.

Those envelopes leaked
spores, and that's what happened

at the Brentwood Postal Office.

The Daschle letter
and the Leahy letter

came through on the 12th.

The 18th, Mr. Curseen
and Mr. Morris

are starting to feel sick.

My name is Thomas
L. Morris, Jr.

I work for the Postal Service.

I'm having difficulty breathing.

I suspect that I might have
been exposed to anthrax.

I think it was almost
an imperceptible moment

when your suspected
fears began to look

more and more like reality.

[ominous music]

First, it was members of the
media, then members of Congress,

and now it's US Postal workers
here in Washington, caught

in the evil web of anthrax.

I came to work and everybody's
wondering what's going on

and we learn Mr. Curseen
and Mr. Morris died.

It was an extreme
sense of sadness.

There was fear
because you didn't

know whether you were next.

And the FBI launched
what was maybe

their most expensive and largest
criminal investigation ever.

It was Major Case 184
known as "Amerithrax."

This became the Bureau's
number one crime to solve.

To date, we have 14
confirmed cases of anthrax.

It was immediately the
priority for the Office

of Homeland Security.

We are aggressively pursuing
every conceivable lead

to find and bring
to justice those

responsible for
these terrorist acts.

We were seeing
threats in every shadow.

And over the next
month and a half,

we would learn of a
potential smallpox attack.

We would learn that the
White House detectors

had detected botulinum toxin.

And as the vice president
put it to the president,

anyone who was exposed
was going to die.

And there was serious
discussion about the mail.

What do we do about mail?

Everywhere that
these letters went,

they left a trail of anthrax.

And those spores
started going around,

other letters got contaminated.

Some of those letters were
headed out around the world.

When do you shut down
a given postal facility?

Those were some of the
really toughest decisions

because there's a big
downside to shutting

down the US Postal system.

It basically shuts
down our economy.

We used to call it a weapon
of economic disruption,

even though postal didn't
shut down the mail system,

they did some procedures
that effectively

slowed it down dramatically.

We had truckloads,
tractor trailer

loads full of quarantine mail.

On the other hand, it's
tragic to lose postal workers

from something that had
we understood better what

was happening with
these envelopes,

we would have been
able to prevent.

At this point, we've
got to follow the trail

back to whoever sent this.

And we sent the letters down
to the behavioral analysis

units for analysis.

I think the
assumption was that this

was most likely foreign because
of the messages that had been

sent to many, including me.

It was deliberately
designed, the wording,

to make us look at the al-Qaeda
group as the perpetrators.

Given the events of 9/11,
some assume the anthrax scare is

connected to Osama bin Laden.

But what if it's not?

We dropped that theory
because the profilers

down in Quantico, the
behavioral analysis agents

said this is all intentional.

What you should be looking
for is what we call lone wolf.

Somebody very astute
scientifically.

FBI behavioral
analysts believe

it's most likely one person
sent the anthrax-laced letters.

They think it's
a male individual

with some scientific
expertise and capacity.

The person who picks
his targets carefully.

The profilers
are usually right.

We had to find this
person making bio weapons.

So evidence was taken
to Paul Keim's lab.

This high security lab
is one of the only places

in the world where genetic
fingerprinting of anthrax

bacteria is being done.

Paul Keim had an
identification system

for anthrax, which was his own.

He had invented it.

If a person started
using anthrax as a weapon,

we could identify it.

We could trace it back.

It's a fingerprint, the
bacterial fingerprint.

And that could really give you
clues used to solve a crime.

We started
analyzing the anthrax.

We started running
the DNA fingerprint

against our database.

And in all of the
letter cases, it

came back and lined up with
this one particular type

of anthrax known
as the Ames strain.

Well, we knew the Ames
strain really well.

We had the Ames strain
in my laboratory.

It was a strain that was widely
used for experimental purposes.

When you're trying
to develop a vaccine,

you've got to have
live anthrax to do it.

And the Ames strain was the
go-to strain in those days

for testing your vaccines.

Everybody who had
access to anthrax

from all the
different laboratories

across the United States was
on the potential suspect list.

Investigators are convinced
the anthrax used in the attacks

was produced in the
US but that doesn't

tell investigators who sent it.

The FBI Bob Mueller
came into the Oval

and said, Mr.
President, we think

it might be a domestic source.

I can't say it was comforting,
the idea that you had

a domestic terrorist out
there was not comforting

but it did take it in
a different direction.

A domestic individual,
a scientist, that's

who we should be looking for.

And we all looked at
each other and we started

to look at people we knew.

[ominous music]

There is somebody
out there who

is trying to murder Americans
by sending anthrax in the mail.

The Ames strain from an
investigative point of view

is sort of a lucky
break in some ways

because it was more likely
came from a laboratory.

So all we had to
do is find those

who had access because anybody
who has access is a suspect.

Access to Ames,
that was the key.

I sent out subpoenas
to all the laboratories

that maintain anthrax.

Once we figured out
where the Ames strain was,

then what they did was they
subpoenaed the actual samples.

So we can test it against
the stuff in the envelopes.

By the time we were
done, we collected 1,056

different samples of Ames.

By May of '04, we had
eight matches out of 1,056.

Eight of those matched the
spores in the envelopes.

And they were from the US
Army laboratory in Frederick,

Maryland, Fort Detrick.

Our country started a
program in the '50s to grow

anthrax and produce weapons.

And that was done
at in Frederick,

Maryland at Fort Detrick.

The United States abandoned
its bioweapons program

under the leadership
of Richard Nixon.

So Fort Detrick switched
gears from biological warfare

development to biological threat
agent research, which included

developing anthrax vaccines.

Sources say a scientific
examination showed the anthrax

used in the 2001 attacks
originated here at the Fort

Detrick army lab in Maryland.

They all focused down on one
flask which was the RMR 1029

flask that was being
maintained by a scientist named

Bruce Ivins for his research
on anthrax vaccines.

Bruce Ivins is a heroic
figure in biodefense.

Bruce Ivins sent this photo
of himself investigating anthrax

to friends and colleagues
shortly after the anthrax

attacks, attacks which
the government says

can be traced back genetically
to a flask in Ivins' lab

over which he had sole control.

Bruce Ivins was born and
raised in Lebanon, Ohio.

Bruce was a talented
scientific mind, I think,

from a very early age and
was recognized as such.

And ultimately went to the
University of Cincinnati

for his undergraduate
degree and his PhD.

He was hired at Fort
Detrick as a microbiologist

to start working with anthrax
inside USAMRIID, the United

States Army Medical Research
Institute for Infectious

Diseases, to help put the United
States in a better position

to defeat a bioterrorism attack.

On the surface, Bruce
Ivins was a sort

of a bubbling personality, known
as a sort of a centric sort.

And in the environment up
there at Fort Detrick, I mean,

that kind of personality was
welcomed because they're dealing

with pretty serious stuff.

I've been working
with Bruce since 1998.

Bruce was very smart, a
very smart guy but had

a number of little quirks.

Bruce had been called in
for more than one interview.

He was anxious to help
identify, especially people

he didn't like, as the mailer.

I was an addictions counselor.

Bruce Ivins, he
was in the group.

He blamed literally every single
one of his other coworkers

for the attack.

He would say, well, yeah, I'm
the foremost expert on anthrax

and I could see why they thought
it might be me, but it's not.

It isn't me.

It isn't me.

Ivins is not the only person
who works at USAMRIID so you

have to eliminate people,
you have to look at even

their access to the lab.

Each laboratory had a
magnetic reader, so you card in

and you card out.

And the security office
kept those records.

Right before each of the two
mailings that we knew about,

Ivins had changed his pattern
of working in the laboratory.

And before each mailing,
he had spent a lot of time

in the middle of the night
inside those laboratories.

He had never done that before.

So then the agents went in
to interrogate him further.

And we began to
see that, yeah,

this image that we had of him
was only a surface level thing.

In fact, Bruce did
have a dark side.

He had fixations
that lasted for years.

He had a fixation with Kappa
Kappa Gamma, a woman's sorority.

When he was in grad school,
he was turned down for a date

by one of the Kappa
Kappa Gamma sisters.

He hated that sorority.

When he was
interviewed, he admitted

burglarizing several Kappa
Kappa Gamma sorority houses.

But it's not an interest,
it's an obsession.

He admitted it.

That all started to point to
him as the strong candidate.

And of course, he is the one who
we know that created RMR 1029.

There was no one who
had greater access

to it, greater unfettered
access to it than Bruce Ivins.

They think it's him.

He was starting to
definitely realize that we

were looking at him now.

He was so paranoid
at that point.

He thought my office was bugged.

He thought the group
room was bugged.

He thought the
telephones were bugged.

He was just so worried that the
whole world was out to get him.

He was having difficulties at
home and difficulties at work,

drinking heavily and
taking medication.

And he was unraveling.

I was sitting in my office,
and the receptionist

came running into my office,
and she said something's

really wrong with Dr. Ivins.

Bruce just started
in with this tirade.

And he had this look
on his face that

was something I'd never seen.

And he just went on
this rant about the FBI

and how everybody wronged him.

And he started
talking about roaming

the streets of Frederick,
trying to find somebody to hurt.

And everybody was just silent.

And then he started
going off about the FBI

was about to indict
him on capital murder,

and he wasn't going down.

He was going to go out
in a blaze of glory.

He talked about having weapons.

He said he was going to
go to work the next day

and take everybody out.

I knew we had to report
it, so I called the police.

She realized that she was
under obligation to report

this to the authorities.

Patient-therapist privilege
no longer held because he had

explicitly made death threats.

I know if I hadn't
made that phone call,

other people would have died.

His whole life was kind
of coming down all at once

and that was kind of the
beginning of the end.

There are stunning
new developments tonight

in the investigation into
the deadly anthrax attacks

7 years ago.

The main suspect in the case,
army scientist Bruce Ivins,

committed suicide.

Bruce committed suicide as
the FBI was moving in on him.

He took a lot of
secrets with him.

I don't think we
know it conclusively,

but what we believe now is
that the person who mailed

these anthrax
weapons was convinced

that people were
ignoring the real threat

that bioterror can present.

And so his attitude was, I'll
prove to them how much fear

and concern and threat
that it really is.

During the summer
of '01, the Pentagon

began to wind down on the
anthrax research at that point.

What can he do to undo
that, he create a shock

and awe bioterrorism event.

If the goal was to
get the government

to think about the risk
and how much to invest,

that was achieved.

Billions and billions
of dollars of money

went into this area.

So maybe that was the
cause but we'll never know.

Biggest investigation
in the FBI's history

probably, not to go to court and
to be able to show the public

that we did solve it.

We found out who did it and
he or she is very unrewarding.

And as a detective,
you do feel cheated.

The bad guy wants his day in
court, his or her day in court,

so do we.

So 22 people
were known to have

been infected with
disease related

to this series of letters.

Five of those people died.

But everyone was affected.

Everyone in the
country was frightened.

All the horror of those
times, I think my brain

doesn't want to go there.

I still don't know
what to make of it.

Brentwood was the place
where we went and we laughed

and we joked.

It was like family, you know.

I've never stepped foot
back in that building.

There are a lot of
people who have not.

I mean, I have PTSD
still in many ways, tears

and anxiety and frustration.

I just want to make sure
that it never happens again.

[ominous music]

In February 2010, nearly 9
years after the anthrax attacks,

the FBI closed the case.

They named Dr. Bruce Ivins
as solely responsible

for the letters that
killed five people,

including a 61-year-old
New York City

hospital employee
and a 94-year-old

widow in Connecticut.

17 more people were included
in the government's list

of victims, but a
later study asserted

that dozens more were affected
by incidental infection.

Since the attacks, the
Brentwood mail facility

has been renamed the
Curseen-Morris Mail Processing

and Distribution Center
in honor of the two

postal workers who died.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.

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