U.S. Settles Suit Over Anthrax Attacks

[alp227]

Source: NY Times

The federal government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and children of the first person killed in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, settling a lawsuit claiming that the Army did not adequately secure its supply of the deadly pathogen.

The settlement with the family of Robert Stevens, a tabloid photo editor in Florida, follows an eight-year legal battle that exposed slack rules and sloppy recordkeeping at the Army’s biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md. As part of the agreement, Justice Department lawyers are seeking to have many documents that were uncovered in the litigation kept under court seal or destroyed.

Mr. Stevens’s widow, Maureen, filed suit against the government in 2003, as evidence accumulated that the anthrax powder in the lethal letters had come from an Army laboratory. The F.B.I. finally concluded in 2008 that the letters were sent by Bruce E. Ivins, a microbiologist who worked on anthrax vaccines at the Army lab in Maryland, though some of his colleagues and friends have maintained that he was innocent.

Dr. Ivins killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to indict him in the attacks, in which letters were sent to media organizations and two senators in September and October of 2001, killing five people and sickening at least 17 others. The letters prompted fear nationwide, forced members of Congress and the Supreme Court from contaminated buildings and set off a long and troubled investigation by the F.B.I.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/us/anthrax-victims-family-to-receive-2-5-million-in-settlement.html

[shraby]

1. Why should the documents used in the litigation be allowed

to be destroyed or locked up? Those should be open records.

[Citizen Worker]

5. Don't be absurd, this is, after all, a democracy.

[Old and In the Way]

2. Wonder why Ivins would target Stevens?

Must be some evidence that would explain that rather strange target. I guess he was really upset with those Bush twin pics. /bullshit

[AntiFascist]

3. I don't know about the anthrax that Stevens was exposed to....

but the highly sophisticated weaponized anthrax sent to Sen. Daschle was likely produced at Dugway Proving Ground, not manufactured by Ivins in Fort Detrick.

[Kolesar]

4. See: www.pbs.org frontline anthrax-files 10-11-2011

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/anthrax-files/

[gvstn]

6. They have a good write up of this settlement

with a bit more detail: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/anthrax-files/government-settles-anthrax-suit-for-2-5-million/

[seafan]

7. This thread is a good place to include this information:

Many fishy details of this terrorist attack have never been addressed. Especially as the associated names include Rupert Murdoch and Rudy Giuliani.



Giuliani Partnership Tackles Boca Building, Will Move In, January 14, 2004

.....

(David) Rustine, (a Boca Raton-based developer) who bought the building from AMI in April 2003 for $40,000, said it's the best possible outcome for the building's decontamination.

"If I were to envision a scenario when I purchased this building, this would be it," Rustine said. "I don't think it gets any better than this."

Bio-ONE officials (Giuliani Partnership) are still working out details of what to do with the building's contents, but, Rustine said, they wouldn't be returned to AMI. When Rustine bought the building, he also acquired everything inside.

AMI's priceless archive of 3 million photos, containing thousands of celebrity images such as shots of Elvis in his casket, are among the abandoned items that will be destroyed, Rustine said. AMI employees be not allowed to retrieve items left behind when they were ordered to leave the building.

"I wish there was another way, but unfortunately, no," Rustine said.

.....

U.S. Settles Suit Over Anthrax Attacks, November 29, 2011


Many unanswered, haunting questions.