No matter what it does, says the FBI, there will always be those who doubt its case against anthrax-attack suspect Bruce Ivins.
“There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll,” said Vahid Majidi, head of the FBI’s WMD division, after the bureau this week again laid out its mostly circumstantial case against Ivins, who killed himself after learning he was about to be indicted in the attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others – including three at The Post.
That makes it sound like only wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who share Ivins’ reported paranoid delusions might possibly question the weight of the FBI’s evidence.
But questions do remain – legitimate questions – and likely always will.
And a large measure of the blame falls on the bureau itself.
Consider: What if Steven Hatfill, the scientist first publicly identified as “a person of interest” in the attacks, had – like Ivins – committed suicide during the course of the FBI’s investigation?
How likely is it that Ivins ever would have fallen under suspicion?
Not very.
The FBI almost certainly would have ended its probe and pronounced the case closed – and that would have been that.
As it turned out, Hatfill eventually was publicly exonerated – and the feds recently had to shell out $5.8 million to make up for his damaged reputation.
Two other notable FBI debacles involved wrongly accused suspects: alleged Atlanta Olympics bomber Richard Jewell and Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear scientist and alleged Chinese spy.
Even the agency’s handling of the Ivins investigation raises doubts about its credibility.
The unique strain of anthrax that it obtained from him back in 2002 was discarded because he hadn’t followed proper protocol. Not until four years later did the FBI obtain a duplicate sample.
Moreover, not a few reputable biologists say they have doubts about the science behind the FBI’s case against Ivins.
Yes, the circumstantial evidence against Ivins appears compelling – but, because of his suicide, it will never be challenged in an adversarial proceeding.
An independent investigation might help answer some of the lingering questions; absent that, the doubts are unlikely ever to disappear.
And the FBI has only its lamentably shoddy reputation to thank for that.