US News

MAD ‘THRAX GENIUS WAS BANKING ON SUCCESS IN THE MAIL

The suicidal scientist revealed as the likely culprit behind the 2001 anthrax mailings was part of a megamillion-dollar deal to have his own vaccine mass produced in the wake of those biological attacks and the national panic they created.

Bruce Ivins, 62, was the co-owner of a patent on what was seen as a cure to the terrifying threat.

Before the attacks, the vaccine developed by Ivins – who killed himself last week as a seven-year federal investigation closed in on indicting him for five murders – garnered little attention. But the deadly post-9/11 mailings brought $50 billion in government funding to the field of bioterror prevention.

An $877.5 million contract was inked with biotech firm VaxGen to provide Ivins’ vaccine in a deal in which he stood to profit, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. One estimate put the potential windfall in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A VaxGen executive said his company did not have a profit-sharing agreement with Ivins personally, and he had no knowledge of what arrangement Ivins had with his employers.

A former senior official at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases – the high-security lab in Maryland where Ivins worked for 36 years – believed the mad researcher mailed the anthrax-laced letters to move government resources to his field.

“It had to have been a motive,” the official told the LA Times. “I don’t think he ever intended to kill anybody. He just wanted to prove ‘Look, this is possible.’ He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those envelopes and kill those postal workers.”

But the VaxGen contract was nixed two years after the signing date because the company could not meet several deadlines.

Ivins also had a patent pending for an additive that would improve vaccines that prevent deadly pathogens used in bioterrorist attacks. It also received federal funding, including $12 million to Coley Pharmaceutical Group to further test the additive.

The revelation of the potential motive came to light as a portrait emerged of a beautiful mind that became warped through frustration and anger over stalled research. Ivins appears as an incredibly intelligent man who lived life in a small world, estranged from his brothers, walking two blocks to work every day for decades and regularly weighing in on morality and mundane issues of life to the local paper.

In his final years, as the FBI began closing in on him as their prime suspect, the mild-mannered scientist purchased two high-powered handguns at a shop a block away from his Frederick, Md., Cape Cod-style home.

Jack Moberly, manager of The Gun Center, told The Post Ivins acted “nervous” and “rocked back and forth on his legs” as he purchased a .40-caliber Glock 27 pistol in 2005. He claimed he wanted the firearm for target shooting.

A few weeks later, he returned to the shop, and exchanged the gun for a .40-caliber Glock 23 because, he said, the Glock 27 felt too small in his hand.

Several months after that, Moberly said, Ivins again entered the store, this time to buy a spare gun, another Glock model.

As he came under increased scrutiny for the anthrax mailings – and was escorted off the Fort Detrick Army base where he worked, admitted to a psychiatric facility and banned from the premises – Ivins went into therapy and in one session claimed he was going to buy a bulletproof vest and shoot his co-workers. He also threatened his group therapist who filed for a restraining order.

She said he “has a history dating back to his graduate days of homicidal threats.”

In recent months, authorities had been called to Ivins’ home twice, once with a report of an “unconscious man” and again by someone asking that Ivins’ welfare be checked.

He overdosed over the weekend and died Tuesday, the same day that federal investigators were scheduled to meet with Ivins’ lawyers to discuss a plea deal that could have saved him from the death penalty.

The workaholic Ivins’ psychological seeds were sown in a strict, religious household dominated by a smothering mother, his brother told The Post.

“He was a mamma’s boy,” said his oldest brother, Tom. Their mother turned Ivins and other brother Charles into “wussies.”

Ivins grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, the youngest child of a Princeton-educated pharmacist, Thomas Ivins, and a civic-minded housewife, Mary Johnson Knight Ivins, who volunteered on the local school’s PTA.

Ivins’ mother emphasized their spiritual life, said Tom. The stern matriarch made sure the family attended mass every Sunday at Lebanon Presbyterian Church. Ivins later converted to Catholicism when he met his Catholic wife, Diane.

Growing up, household rules were strict. Tom remembered how he once borrowed his parents’ car and failed to come home one night. His mother never let him use a car again, he said.

Family ties were strained among the children as well, and the differences between Tom and his younger brothers were stark. Tom lettered as an athlete in high school, but the younger boys, who were much closer to their mother, were forbidden from playing sports.

“When my brother went into high school, he was sheltered,” Tom said.

Indeed, Bruce, a slight-framed, gawky teenager, sported dark-rimmed glasses and hit the books rather than the gridiron. He racked up academic achievements as a member of the National Honor Society and was a member in many extracurricular clubs, according to reports.

Ivins spent his extended school years a half-hour from home at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a BS with honors in 1968, and later master’s and doctoral degrees in micobiology.

“He had a master’s degree and a Ph.D. – he thought he was a big deal,” Tom Ivins said. “He had the feeling that he was lord and God and everything.”

Ivins remained devoted to his mother even after he moved away to work for the Army. He fed and nursed her as she was dying of cancer in 1979, caring more for her than his own father, according to his brother.

“He was completely dedicated to her,” Tom said.

He was surprised when Ivins married.

“He was a wussy, not a woman’s man. He wasn’t sociable. He wasn’t attracted to the opposite sex. I don’t know how he married that woman,” he said.

At their father’s funeral in 1985, Tom said he learned that Ivins and his wife had decided to adopt twins. Ivins raised twins Amanda and Andy, now 24.

Ivins increasingly became a pen pal with his local newspaper, The Frederick News-Post. His last letter, dated Aug. 24, 2006, supports a local rabbi who rejected the demands of a Muslim imam to start a dialogue. In it, Ivins rants, “By blood and faith, Jews are God’s chosen, and have no need for dialogue with any gentile. End of dialogue.”

On Feb. 5, 1999, he writes to say he switched morning radio stations because deejays said “God Damn” and mocked a caller as a “pinhead.”

Ivins’ first letter to the paper, on March 5, 1998, ironically defends religious critics of assisted suicide.

The letter argues that throughout U.S. history, religious movements have taken unpopular stances on issues but have proven morally right in the long run. “We should all be thankful that these religious opponents were quite willing to impose their moral views on others,” he wrote.

Colleagues yesterday continued to defend Ivins, saying he was incapable of such dark motives.

“It is hard for me to believe that he would be involved in anything like that,” said Dr. Daniela Verthelyi, who co-invented the patent-pending vaccine additive with Ivins.

Dr. Meryl Nass, an anthrax expert and an Ivins friend, said Fort Detrick employed only liquid anthrax in its testing, not the hard-to-make powered version Ivins was suspected of sending in letters.

“He was a gene splicer,” said a high-ranking lab colleague. “He did not have the skill set to make the powder. That is pretty sophisticated aerosol engineering, and he had no training in that whatsoever. None.”

The family has not made any public comments since his death, but daughter Amanda posted a heartfelt message on her MySpace page, where she listed her mood yesterday as “crushed.”

“Rest in peace daddy. You will forever be my hero, forever in my heart, and most of all, forever my daddy, I’ll love you always and forever!!!”

Additional reporting by Angela Montefinise

jfanelli@nypost.com