On Sept. 7, 2007, as investigators were building the case against him for the deadly anthrax mailings, Army scientist Bruce Ivins sent himself an excited e-mail titled, “Finally! I know Who mailed the anthrax!”
The e-mail — along with other correspondence showing that Ivins more recently mused about how to blind or kill a reality TV participant — was among previously confidential investigative documents unsealed Wednesday by a federal judge.
Ivins, a microbiologist who specialized in handling anthrax at the Army’s biological warfare research facility at Ft. Detrick, Md., committed suicide July 29. Justice Department prosecutors were preparing to charge him in the anthrax mailings, which in 2001 killed five people and sickened or injured 17 others.
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Documents show that on Sept. 7 Ivins sent the e-mail to himself, proclaiming that he had solved the case: “Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!! I finally know who mailed the anthrax letters in the fall of 2001.
“I’ve pieced it together! Now we can finally get all of this over and done with. I have to check a couple of things to make sure … absolutely sure … and then I can turn over the info. I’ll probably turn it over to my lawyer, and then he’ll turn info over to the authorities.”
Ivins added — in an apparent reference to his colleagues at Ft. Detrick:
“I’m not looking forward to everybody getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will all be over. … I should have been a private eye!!!!”
Paul Kemp, a lawyer whom Ivins had hired to represent him, said the e-mail “was a note with himself to discuss with me certain information that he wanted to pass on to the FBI. He did, and I passed it on.”