2001 anthrax attacks
Based on Wikipedia: 2001 anthrax attacks
Someone mailed death to America in the fall of 2001. Not bombs. Not bullets. Envelopes. Inside them was a powder—sometimes coarse and brown like dog food, sometimes refined into a fine white dust—containing one of the deadliest natural substances known to science: anthrax spores.
Five people died. Seventeen more fell ill. And for nearly a decade, the Federal Bureau of Investigation chased a ghost through one of the most complex criminal investigations in American history, only to watch their prime suspect kill himself before ever facing trial.
The case remains, in many ways, unsolved.
A Nation Already Reeling
The timing could not have been worse—or, from the attacker's perspective, more calculated. The first anthrax letters were postmarked September 18, 2001, exactly one week after the September 11 attacks had brought down the World Trade Center, punched a hole in the Pentagon, and killed nearly three thousand people.
America was already in shock. Now came a new terror, one that arrived silently in the daily mail.
The first wave targeted media organizations. Letters went to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, and the New York Post in New York City. Another went to American Media, Inc., a tabloid publisher in Boca Raton, Florida, home to the National Enquirer and the Sun. These letters contained what scientists would later describe as a clumped, coarse, brownish material—granular, almost like animal feed.
The second wave, mailed three weeks later on October 9, escalated dramatically. Two letters went to the United States Senate—one to Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate Majority Leader, and one to Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both were Democrats.
The powder in these Senate letters was something else entirely. About one gram of nearly pure anthrax spores, refined into a highly concentrated dry powder. This was no amateur effort. This was the work of someone who understood exactly what they were doing.
What Is Anthrax, Exactly?
To understand why these letters were so terrifying, you need to understand what anthrax is—and what it is not.
Anthrax is not a virus like COVID-19 or influenza. It's a bacterium called Bacillus anthracis, named for the Greek word for coal because of the black skin lesions it causes. It lives naturally in soil, particularly in agricultural regions, and primarily infects grazing animals like cattle and sheep. Humans can contract it, but typically only through direct contact with infected animals or their products—wool handlers, for instance, used to develop what was called "woolsorter's disease."
What makes anthrax particularly sinister as a biological weapon is its ability to form spores. When conditions become hostile—when nutrients run out or the environment dries up—the bacteria essentially go dormant, encasing themselves in tough protective shells that can survive for decades. These spores are microscopic, invisible to the naked eye, and can be inhaled deep into the lungs without the victim ever knowing.
There are three forms of anthrax infection. Cutaneous anthrax, the most common and least deadly, enters through cuts or breaks in the skin and causes ugly black lesions. Gastrointestinal anthrax comes from eating contaminated meat. But inhalational anthrax—the kind you get from breathing in spores—is the killer. Without treatment, it's fatal more than eighty percent of the time.
The spores settle in the lungs, germinate into active bacteria, and begin producing toxins. By the time symptoms appear—fever, fatigue, muscle aches—the bacteria have already begun their assault on the body's lymph nodes and bloodstream. Death often follows within days.
The Victims
Robert Stevens was the first to die. A photo editor at the Sun tabloid in Florida, he walked into a hospital on October 2, 2001, vomiting and struggling to breathe. Doctors initially had no idea what was wrong with him. Four days later, he was dead.
The letter that killed him was never found. Investigators believe it was discarded as junk mail before anyone realized what was happening.
Two postal workers at the Brentwood mail processing facility in Washington, D.C., died next—Thomas Morris Jr. and Joseph Curseen. They had handled the letters bound for the Senate, and the fine powder had leaked through the paper, contaminating the sorting machines and filling the air with invisible death.
Then came two deaths that haunted investigators because they seemed to have no explanation. Kathy Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant living in the Bronx, worked in a hospital stockroom in Manhattan. She had no connection to any of the known letters. Ottilie Lundgren, ninety-four years old, was the widow of a prominent judge in Oxford, Connecticut. She rarely left her home. How either woman came into contact with anthrax spores remains, to this day, a mystery.
In total, eleven people developed inhalational anthrax. Another eleven contracted the less deadly cutaneous form. The Senate letters alone sickened postal workers, Capitol police officers, and staff members—including an aide to Senator Russ Feingold who was exposed when mail was sorted in nearby offices.
The Letters Themselves
The messages inside the envelopes were brief, written in blocky handwriting, and designed to look like they came from Islamic extremists. The first set, sent to the media, read:
09-11-01
THIS IS NEXT
TAKE PENACILIN NOW
DEATH TO AMERICA
DEATH TO ISRAEL
ALLAH IS GREAT
Note the misspelling of "penicillin." The letters sent to the senators three weeks later were slightly different:
09-11-01
YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
DEATH TO ISRAEL.
ALLAH IS GREAT.
The Senate letters used punctuation. The media letters did not. The handwriting on the Senate letters was roughly half the size of the media letters. Both sets were photocopies—the originals were never found—and each letter had been trimmed to a slightly different size, suggesting someone was being very careful about leaving evidence.
The return address was fake: 4th Grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ 08852. Franklin Park exists, but that ZIP code belongs to nearby Monmouth Junction. There is no Greendale School in either town, though there is a Greenbrook Elementary School in adjacent South Brunswick Township. Someone had done just enough research to create a plausible-seeming address that didn't actually exist.
The Investigation Begins—And Stumbles
The Federal Bureau of Investigation launched what would become one of the largest criminal investigations in American history. They called it Amerithrax—a portmanteau of "America" and "anthrax" that would become the case's permanent name.
Almost immediately, they made a catastrophic mistake.
Iowa State University maintained extensive archives of anthrax samples, collected over decades of agricultural research. These samples could have helped investigators trace the origin of the attack powder—to determine which laboratory had produced it, when it was cultured, and potentially who had access. In October 2001, just weeks after the attacks began, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized Iowa State to destroy its entire anthrax archive.
Why? The stated reason was biosecurity—fear that the samples themselves could be stolen or misused. But the destruction eliminated crucial evidence and would haunt the investigation for years.
Investigators did make some progress. They determined that all the anthrax came from a single strain called Ames, named (erroneously, as it turned out) after the town of Ames, Iowa. The strain had actually been isolated from a cow in Texas in 1981, but a mix-up with mailing labels had given it the wrong name, and the name stuck.
The Ames strain had been studied extensively at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases—USAMRIID, pronounced "you-sam-rid"—at Fort Detrick in Maryland. From there, samples had been distributed to sixteen research laboratories across the United States and three international locations in Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Radiocarbon dating conducted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in June 2002 established that the anthrax had been cultured no more than two years before the mailings. This wasn't decades-old material from some forgotten freezer. It was fresh.
The Weaponization Controversy
One question consumed investigators and scientists alike: had the anthrax been "weaponized"?
In bioweapons parlance, weaponization typically means treating spores with additives—often silicon dioxide, essentially powdered glass—to make them more easily dispersed and more readily inhaled. Soviet bioweapons programs had spent years perfecting such techniques. Iraqi scientists had worked on similar approaches. If the letters contained weaponized anthrax, it would suggest the involvement of a state actor or someone with access to sophisticated military technology.
The initial findings were alarming. Peter Jahrling, a scientist at USAMRIID, reported signs that silicon had been added to the Daschle letter anthrax. Under his microscope, he saw what appeared to be a coating on the spores—something that shouldn't have been there if the powder was naturally produced.
News reports ran with the story. Experts speculated about Iraqi involvement, about Al-Qaeda acquiring bioweapons, about a sophisticated state-sponsored attack.
Seven years later, Jahrling admitted he had been wrong. "I believe I made an honest mistake," he told the Los Angeles Times. He had been "overly impressed" by what he thought he saw under the microscope. Tests at Sandia National Laboratories in early 2002 had already confirmed that the attack powders were not weaponized—but by then, the narrative had taken hold.
What the scientists actually observed was more mundane but still scientifically interesting. Under an electron microscope, the spores appeared to have a strange coating that oozed when hit with the electron beam—what one researcher described as looking like "fried-egg gunk dripping off the spores." Further analysis revealed silicon and oxygen, suggesting silicon dioxide. But this wasn't necessarily evidence of deliberate weaponization. Some anthrax strains naturally incorporate silicon into their spore coats.
The distinction mattered enormously. Weaponized anthrax would have pointed toward state actors with advanced bioweapons programs. Naturally produced anthrax, even highly refined and concentrated, could theoretically be made by a single skilled individual with access to laboratory equipment.
The Wrong Man
For years, the FBI focused on the wrong suspect.
Steven Hatfill was a biodefense expert with a colorful background. He had worked at USAMRIID. He had trained with the Army Special Forces. He had traveled extensively in Africa and claimed (controversially) to have experience with biological agents there. He fit a certain profile.
Beginning in 2002, the FBI began investigating Hatfill intensively. They searched his apartment. They put him under surveillance. They drained a pond near his home looking for evidence. Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly called him a "person of interest"—a designation that, in the court of public opinion, was as damaging as an accusation.
Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College who had gained fame for identifying the anonymous author of the novel Primary Colors, attempted to link Hatfill to the attacks through linguistic analysis. Foster's theories were published in Vanity Fair and Reader's Digest, adding academic credibility to the suspicions.
There was just one problem: Steven Hatfill was innocent.
The evidence against him was circumstantial at best, speculative at worst. Foster's linguistic analysis proved worthless—he had tried to connect Hatfill to various hoax letters from the same period, but none of these letters had anything to do with the actual anthrax attacks. A letter from Malaysia that briefly looked suspicious turned out to contain nothing more threatening than a check and some pornography.
In 2008, the Justice Department settled Hatfill's lawsuit for $5.82 million. He was formally exonerated. The FBI had spent years destroying an innocent man's reputation while the actual perpetrator continued to work at Fort Detrick, just down the hall from where investigators were conducting their search.
The Real Suspect
Bruce Edwards Ivins was a microbiologist who had spent his career at USAMRIID. He was one of the nation's leading experts on anthrax vaccines, and he had actually helped the FBI with their investigation in its early stages—providing samples, offering technical advice, analyzing evidence.
He was also, as investigators would eventually discover, deeply troubled.
The FBI began focusing on Ivins around April 2005. The key breakthrough came from advances in genetic analysis. Scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research—known by its acronym TIGR—had been sequencing anthrax samples since December 2001. They discovered that the attack anthrax contained unusual genetic mutations: three relatively large changes in the DNA, each comprising regions that had been duplicated or triplicated.
These mutations were rare. They didn't appear in most samples of the Ames strain. But they did appear in a specific flask of anthrax held in Ivins' laboratory—a flask labeled RMR-1029.
Over the next several years, investigators screened 1,070 Ames strain samples from laboratories across the country. Only eight matched the genetic profile of the attack anthrax. All eight came from, or were derived from, the contents of RMR-1029. And Bruce Ivins was the sole custodian of that flask.
By April 2007, Ivins was under periodic surveillance. An FBI document from that month described him as "an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks." Investigators dug into his background and found a history of psychological instability—obsessive behavior, threats against coworkers, a fixation on a particular college sorority that bordered on stalking.
On July 29, 2008, Bruce Ivins died by suicide, overdosing on acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol. He never stood trial. He never confessed. He never had the opportunity to mount a defense.
Case Closed?
One week after Ivins' death, federal prosecutors declared him the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. The investigation, they said, was over.
Not everyone agreed.
Two days after the announcement, Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Rush Holt called for congressional hearings into the FBI's handling of the case. They questioned whether the evidence against Ivins was sufficient, whether the investigation had been mismanaged, and whether an innocent man might have been driven to suicide by relentless government pressure.
The FBI formally closed the case on February 19, 2010, but the questions persisted. In 2008, the FBI had asked the National Academy of Sciences to review the scientific methods used in their investigation. The Academy's report, released in 2011, was not kind.
The scientists confirmed that the anthrax had been correctly identified as the Ames strain. But they found "insufficient scientific evidence" for the FBI's assertion that the attack anthrax had originated specifically from Ivins' laboratory. The genetic analysis that had seemed so damning was, in the Academy's view, not conclusive enough to definitively identify a single source.
The FBI responded by pointing out that the panel had acknowledged that science alone could never provide absolute certainty in a criminal case. Other evidence—behavioral, circumstantial, testimonial—had contributed to their conclusion. But the scientific foundation of their case, the DNA evidence that had supposedly led them to Ivins' flask, was shakier than they had claimed.
Unanswered Questions
The case left behind a trail of mysteries that may never be solved.
How did Kathy Nguyen, the hospital stockroom worker in Manhattan, contract inhalational anthrax? She had no connection to any of the known letters, worked in a building that received no suspicious mail, and lived a quiet life in the Bronx. Did cross-contaminated mail somehow reach her? Was there a letter that was never discovered? No one knows.
How did Ottilie Lundgren, the ninety-four-year-old widow in Connecticut, become infected? She was essentially homebound. Her mail was delivered to a rural route. The FBI's theory was that her letters had been cross-contaminated at a mail processing facility that also handled the Senate letters—but the amount of contamination required to cause inhalational anthrax through such secondary exposure seems almost impossibly small.
Why did Ivins do it—if he did it? The FBI suggested he was motivated by concerns about the anthrax vaccine program he had devoted his career to. In 2001, the program was struggling, and a national anthrax scare might increase demand for vaccines and secure funding. But this motive has never been conclusively established.
And then there's the most troubling question of all: was Bruce Ivins actually guilty?
The genetic evidence placed the attack anthrax in his laboratory, but not necessarily in his hands. Others had access to RMR-1029. The behavioral evidence painted him as unstable, but being psychologically troubled is not the same as being a mass murderer. He maintained his innocence to family members and friends until the end.
Some of the evidence remains sealed. Details about Ivins' mental health records, about the investigation's internal deliberations, about what the FBI knew and when they knew it—all of this remains hidden from public view.
The Legacy
The 2001 anthrax attacks remain the only lethal use of anthrax as a weapon outside of warfare in recorded history. They killed five people, sickened seventeen others, and terrorized a nation already reeling from the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.
They also exposed devastating weaknesses in America's public health infrastructure. The initial response was chaotic. Doctors failed to recognize anthrax symptoms. Postal facilities continued operating even as workers fell ill. Communication between agencies was poor. The Brentwood mail facility, where two workers died, remained open for days after the Capitol building was evacuated—a disparity that many saw as reflecting differences in how the government valued the lives of office workers versus manual laborers.
The attacks spurred billions of dollars in new spending on biodefense. The BioWatch program installed air samplers in major cities to detect biological agents. The Strategic National Stockpile was expanded to include antibiotics and vaccines. Research funding for anthrax and other potential bioweapons increased dramatically.
Whether any of this would help in a future attack remains an open question. The 2001 attacks were crude by the standards of state bioweapons programs—no weaponization, limited quantities, delivery by regular mail. A more sophisticated attacker could do far worse.
The government eventually settled lawsuits filed by the widow of Robert Stevens, the first victim, for $2.5 million. The settlement came with no admission of liability. According to the agreement, it was reached "solely for the purpose of avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigation."
Twenty years later, boxes of evidence remain in storage. Theories proliferate online. And the definitive answer to who sent the letters—and why—may have died with Bruce Ivins in July 2008, taking his secrets to the grave.
Or perhaps the answer is still out there, waiting in some overlooked file or forgotten sample, for someone to finally piece together the truth.