The Los Angeles Times has an exclusive story today suggesting that noted microbiologist Bruce Ivins had become a suspect in the 2001 anthrax murders. It further reports that Ivins has apparently committed suicide.

This comes on the heels of the government’s settlement with another scientist, Steven Hatfill, paying him over the next years $5.82 million for invading his privacy and ruining his career.

The story does not address the FBI investigation into Dr. Kenneth Berry, which we have covered extensively here. Dr. Berry has never been charged, either.

The LA Times story is very short on named sources, exactly the type of media attention that helped win Dr. Hatfill his money. The press’s record for reporting on the murders is full of errors due solely to their reliance upon anonymous sources. We know that most of the information leaked in the first months of the investigation was incorrect. It may be that the reports about Dr. Ivins are, as well.

The sloppiness of the technicians involved with the investigation is already known. At least two people contracted an anthrax infection due to their poor lab procedures while handling samples. Dr. Ivins was investigated for some poor lab practices as well, but that does not equate to his being the murderer. Nor does his apparent suicide equate to guilt. He was a proud man, with his job in doubt and expenses piling up. Understandable depression is not guilt.

The FBI has been using the media to attack people they view as “persons of interest” without regard to the normal protocols of criminal investigation and without regard to the damages caused these people by the leaks. The media, the LA Times, are cooperating in this character assassination with little regard for journalistic ethics or human decency.

Wizbang has some good links for Bruce Ivins, his scholarship and scientific stature.

Steven Hatfill has settled his claims against the Federal Government and the FBI for the sum of $2.825 million, CNN reports.

Hatfill, a former Army bioweapons researcher, has steadfastly denied involvement in the attacks and was never charged in the investigation.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, department officials said Steven Hatfill will receive a one-time payment of $2.825 million and a $150,000 annuity.

For all intents and purposes, this investigation is over. Seven years after the attacks and the FBI is no closer to determining who committed those murders than they were then.

The FBI has let us down. By focusing on Hatfill to the exclusion of other potential suspects, and by excluding state-sponsored terror from the very beginning, they failed to conduct a proper investigation. This was a case that any rookie detective could have followed procedure and process and investigated.

Instead we got leak after leak that was flat out wrong. We got a focus on one person, an abusive and punitive investigation that was leaked at every step to the media. Steven Hatfill was tried by media when the FBI was unable to discover any evidence linking him to the attacks.

Hatfill is not the only person ruined by the FBI in this botched investigation. Kenneth Berry lost everything and the FBI came up with zilch.

I wonder how the families of the five people murdered in these attack feel tonight? Where is their justice? Can the FBI explain to them why no one is in jail?

This guy was the subject of FBI raids last year, and I blogged about him several times.

Wellsville Daily Reporter

n his first interview since the national spotlight was pointed at Wellsville during the August anthrax investigation, Berry talked to The Daily Reporter about his current legal battles and the FBI.

“(The FBI investigation) totally destroyed my life. I lost my reputation, my wife, my family, my son, my job … everything,” he said.

The FBI has not said if it found any traces of anthrax, and it has not charged Berry in connection with anthrax. The FBI was in and out of Wellsville in one day.

However, his wife, Tana, from whom he is now separated, said she was not surprised the FBI showed up at the door that Thursday morning.

“He knew he was being investigated, he knew it would happen sooner or later, he knew a search warrant was coming,” said Tana.

When asked if the FBI investigation was a waste of time, she said, “That’s not obvious, not to me anyway.”

When asked to further explain, Tana said “no comment.” [snip]

“The most important thing is child custody of my son,” he said. “Basically, my wife is trying to deny I am the father of my son. He is (my son). I am her husband.”

Both parties agree on one thing, Tana was married to someone else during the pregnancy. However, the accusations start to fly after that.

Berry claims labor and delivery records along with birth certificates are missing from Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville, where he was the emergency room doctor from December of 1996 to October of 2001. Hospital officials did not return calls seeking comment.

“She had this whole thing set up four years ago including falsification of the birth certificates,” claims Berry. “I remember when the baby was born, the date, the time and the nurse.”

Tana countered, “That’s news to me and totally ludicrous.”

Berry has worked at a hospital in Pittsburgh, commuting by plane while living in Wellsville. He was married and had seven children from two relationships.

WGRZ Channel 2

Sources from within the law enforcement community tell Channel 2 News that federal authorities are “not excited” about what they found while searching the home of Dr. Kenneth Berry in the Village of Wellsville as well as his parents summer home in New Jersey.

The information does not give a concrete idea of what investigators found (or did not find) but it strongly reinforces what Channel 2 News has been hearing since the searches last Thursday — that Dr. Berry is, by no means, a prime suspect in the deadly anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001.

Times Herald

There are indications that Dr. Berry did things somewhat differently. His primary residence is Wellsville yet he has not had privileges at Jones Memorial Hospital since 2001 ‘ he has commuted to work at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in McKeesport, Pa. His past includes a criminal forgery case in which he pleaded to a lesser charge and there is a hint of self-promotion in materials touting his background as an expert in responding to large-scale medical emergencies, such as a biological attack.

Nevertheless, assuming we are still operating under the premise that all are innocent until proven guilty, one could question the treatment he and his family received at the hands of federal authorities the past few days. Rather than quietly search the properties, agents swooped into Wellsville and created a public spectacle, a spectacle that only an idiot wouldn’t have been able to anticipate.

If investigators had anything solid on Dr. Berry or anyone else in relation to the anthrax letters, one assumes they would have been charged. So far, all we have is a heavy-handed display which could be interpreted by some as cheap theatrics.

Hornell Evening Tribune

Helms does not see how Berry can go back to work at any hospital or work in his chosen field of counter terrorism.

“The FBI owes him an apology, big-time,” said Helms. “They harmed him and it looks like they harmed his family. I like both the agents who are primaries in this area – they also questioned me, because I am a webmaster for Preempt.org.” Helms said the web site has not been updated in a while. Not many people in Wellsville have said they were close friends with Berry, and many neighbors really didn’t know him. But Helms said that is not unusual.

“He worked at the hospital, he worked in counter terrorism. He didn’t have time to make a lot of friends, but the ones he did make are very loyal,” said Helms. “You won’t find a lot of (people who were) friends with Ken Berry … and ones he work with call him an S.O.B., but they call me that, too! Anyone who has anyone who worked for someone will have something bad said about them.”

Helms said Berry cold not be tied to mailing out anthrax letters in 2001. “Want a practical reason? He was getting ready to get married!” Helms says emphatically.

Helms also defends Berry’s character. “I think they have damaged his reputation to the point the United States has lost a wonderful asset,” said Helms. “He was a true American asset, if not a national treasure. “He’s a little unusual but most brilliant people are different. And he’s different,” Helms continued. “You get underneath that and he’s got a heart the size of Texas for an American.”

The head scratching continues about this “person of interest” [my term] for the FBI. A medical doctor has e-mailed me with his thoughts, and please note his final comment:

This guy is a zero. The American Univ of the Caribbean is a fifth pathway school — guys from the East Coast go there when they can’t get into a US medical school, and they then try to transfer to an American med school (the “fifth pathway”) prior to graduation. Used to work some (the Carter administration tried to make it mandatory for US med schools to accept fifth pathway transfers, but the med schools told them to shove it). But in the last decade or so transfers are almost completely shut down.

So our bright boy graduates from AUC. He is NOT going to get a good residency in the states in any specialty. St. Joseph’s Med Ctr — which St. Joe’s, there are a number of them. He did a community hospital residency in family medicine, probably a free-standing residency not affiliated with a university. Ick. Training is mediocre, more like an apprenticeship, with (mostly) a non-dedicated teaching staff and relatively few opportunities to distinguish himself.

Regardless, he gets a certification in family medicine. I’d like to know what the 2nd residency was all about. The AMA page doesn’t specify the order of residencies done, so I don’t know if the surgery residency was first (and he asked to leave) or second. But he’s not a certified surgeon, so he obviously didn’t complete it. And “Wilson Memorial Regional Medical Center” isn’t a stellar residency, either (Googled it to Johnston City, NY).

Rex is correct, there is no specialty training in WMD per se. Physicians with expertise in biologicals generally would be infectious disease specialists. For any, the Emergency Medicine docs would be expected to have good, basic knowledge in triage and treatment, but they wouldn’t be expected to have in-depth knowledge as to pathophysiology, research, etc.

Rex is also correct in noting that, especially for small hospitals in rural America, a family medicine doc who wanted to be an ER “specialist” could be one. Emergency Medicine as a specialty is a new idea, but their residency programs are cranking out graduates. Those new docs tend to cluster in better-supported, more desirable places to live. But if he wanted to be an ER doc in Wellsville, he could do it.[snip]

There is no “Board of Certification of Emergency Medicine.” There IS an American Board of Emergency Medicine, a member of the American Board of Medical Specialties. The ABMS certifies doctors in their specialties after training, and the ABEM would do the certifying of emergency medicine docs.

Go here for a description of their Board of Directors. It seems that one of the requirements is that you’re EM certified, which Dr. Berry apparently isn’t. He’s also not a graduate of an ACGME-certified (ACGME = American Council of Graduate Medical Education, which certifies the training programs) EM program, according to his bio.[snip]

I ran Dr. Berry’s name through PubMed, the interface for the National Library of Medicine, a premier search engine for health care. It lists and indexes every single article published in every medical and biological sciences journal that is indexed, and that’s a big list. “Berry KM” brings up 2 listings, neither of which is our guy.

In simple terms, Chuck: I think this guy stinks to high heaven.

Here’s where we stand.

• Dr. Berry’s public CV has some inaccurate names for groups that he should know the correct names of.
• He is not published in any manner that we can discover.
• His CV lists nothing that would qualify him to be an expert on WMD.
• Dr. Berry’s CV lists nothing that would have allowed him access to anthrax spores.
• His CV lists nothing that would make him in any way expert enough to be a part of the Flight 800 crash investigation, other than in a very minor role.

Let’s keep in mind that the FBI and the Postal Inspectors investigate a variety of crimes other than terrorism, and that the anthrax murders could involve other crimes. Is it possible that crimes such as mail fraud, extortion, or filing a false instrument might occur in the context of these murders? On the other hand, the problems with Dr. Berry’s past might all resolve if we postulate that he spent some time as a government employee which he cannot list on his CV for some odd reason.

Dr. Berry has not, as far as I know, been charged with a federal crime. And there may be very satisfactory answers to our questions about his CV. And… yes, he did not graduate for a prestigious medical school but that does not make him a bad doctor. So, he still remains a mystery to us.