Gregory D.

Lee

Read Greg's bio and previous columns here

September 22, 2008

New York Times Editors Are No Crime-Solvers

A recent New York Times editorial criticizing the Federal Bureau of Investigation about its seven-year probe into the mailing of anthrax-laden letters to members of Congress, prominent media figures and others is a direct attempt to plant doubt in the minds of its diminishing readership.

The editorial read, “None of the investigators’ major assertions, however, have been tested in cross-examination . . .” Sorry, that test is moot when the suspect kills himself. Dr. Bruce Ivins, a mentally unbalanced scientist at the U.S. Army’s laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland, killed himself once he was informed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that he was the subject of a federal grand jury inquiry.

The Times editorial also stated that “. . . there is no direct evidence of his guilt. No witnesses saw him pouring powdered anthrax into envelopes. No Anthrax spores in his house or cars. No confession to a colleague or in a suicide note. No physical evidence tying him to the site in Princeton, New Jersey from which the letters are believed to have been mailed.” I guess if CNN wasn’t there to film the event, then it didn’t happen.

Why would a criminal allow someone to witness his criminal act? Would you bring dangerous anthrax spores inside your house or car if you had safe access to them at work? How much physical evidence can there be if you wore gloves to drop an envelope into a mail box within a day’s driving distance of your home? I think the paper’s editorial staff has been watching too many episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Watching such TV shows gives you just enough knowledge to be dangerous. “Hey, FBI, where’s his DNA, huh?”

One of the first things you learn as a criminal investigator is to not make a mystery out of something that isn’t. The evidence speaks for itself, and one piece of evidence is rarely enough to convince anyone, especially investigators, that a particular person committed a crime. It’s always the totality of the evidence that will prove guilt. FBI agents looked for a suspect who had the three main ingredients necessary to commit the crime – opportunity, knowledge and motive. Without the first two, it is impossible to have committed the crime. Motive can enhance the evidence, but it is not necessary to prove in a court of law. A businessman who has a great motive to murder his business partner for ruining the business cannot be a suspect if he was in jail for drunk driving when his partner was killed.

Another factor the Times discounts is that, unlike a conspiracy, in which two or more people act in concert to reach their goal, no one but the culprit knows who committed the crime. When co-conspirators or accomplices do not exist, the investigation becomes all the more difficult to crack because one suspect cannot be played against the other, and there are fewer people to make a mistake.

The FBI solved this case by utilizing good old (and new) fashioned police work. Agents looked for someone who had the opportunity to commit the crime, and the knowledge to pull it off. When a killer uses a highly toxic biological agent as a weapon, he must know what he is doing to avoid accidently killing himself in the process – thus the focus on the Fort Detrick laboratory. The FBI showed that Dr. Ivins had acquired the equipment necessary to turn wet anthrax into dry spores for mailing. That’s what we call in the business a “clue.” And the FBI laboratory scientifically proved that a telltale genetic mutation in the anthrax that was mailed had the same mutations present in a flask maintained by him at his workplace. That’s called direct physical evidence, which connects Dr. Ivins to the murder weapon that the Times said didn’t exist.

Sounds like pretty good police work to me. I guess without a videotape of the late Dr. Ivins pouring the anthrax spores into an envelope, and a written confession using an FBI agent’s blood as ink, the Times will never be satisfied that he committed the crime. But you must consider the source of the criticism. The Times wouldn’t support his death penalty either if he was convicted.

The FBI did a phenomenally thorough job. The individual agents and criminalists involved should be commended by Congress, not probed by it for the adequacy of the investigation, as the Times editorial has called for.

Gregory D. Lee is a nationally syndicated columnist and former DEA Supervisory Special who is the author of three criminal justice textbooks. He can be reached through his website: www.gregorydlee.com.

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