The U.S. Army could have “anticipated” and “prevented” the string of anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five and injured dozens of others, a panel of behavioral analysts has found.

Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist believed by the FBI to have conducted the mail attacks, exhibited unusual behavior that should have prompted the military to perform mental health examinations to determine his fitness for doing a job that required a high-level security clearance, the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel said in a 285-page report obtained by former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman, who is writing a book about the attacks. Ivins committed suicide in 2008.

Ivins, the panel found, “was psychologically disposed to undertake the mailings; his behavioral history demonstrated his potential for carrying them out; and he had the motivation and means.” He was a civilian microbiologist who worked in the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Ft. Detrick, Md.

The panel was formed in late 2009 under a court order and charged with reviewing “the mental health issues of Dr. Bruce Ivins and what lessons can be learned … that may be useful in preventing future bioterrorism attacks.”

In the fall of 2001, Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and several news organizations received anonymous letters laced with anthrax, prompting fears that the country was in the midst of a biological attack on the heels of the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Ivins emerged as the chief suspect for the mailings after the Army backed away from its initial accusations against virologist Steven Hatfill. The panel said it had found evidence in Ivins’s confidential records detailing his psychiatric history that provided “considerable additional circumstantial evidence” that he was the killer.

Had Army officials paid attention to the signs of mental distress coming from Ivins, they would have been able to test him and, if necessary, deny him the necessary clearance to work with anthrax, the panel found.

“Information regarding his disqualifying behaviors was readily available in the medical record and accessible to personnel had it been pursued under mechanisms that existed prior to and after 2001,” the report said.

But the Army made no effort to follow up on Ivins’s mental health disclosures.

On a 1987 government form, for instance, he left question marks next to “Memory Change,” “Trouble With Decisions,” “Hallucinations,” “Improbable Beliefs” and “Anxiety.”

He also had a history of “disqualifying” behaviors, including burglarizing two Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses and stealing the lab notebook of a colleague who had belonged to the sorority.

“Despite criminal behavior and sabotage of his colleague’s research, Dr. Ivins was hired by USAMRIID and received a security clearance, allowing him to work with potential weapons of mass destruction,” the report concluded.

(Source: Politico)