In the last few weeks, the FBI revealed that they considered government microbiologist Bruce Ivins to be the lone individual responsible for the mailing of weapons-grade anthrax to media and political targets. The allegation left many people scratching their heads. What could possibly be the motive?
National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” ran a story using anonymous sources that solved the riddle. That’s right, he did it because he was Catholic and his family vigorously supported the sanctity of life. Seems counterintuitive, sure, but let NPR explain:
Bruce Ivins may have targeted Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy with anthrax-laced letters in 2001 because he saw them as bad Catholics owing to their votes in favor of abortion rights, officials close to the investigation say… .
There was some speculation that Ivins had targeted Daschle and Leahy because he saw them as holding up funding that would have helped pay for his research into an anthrax vaccine. Now, officials close to the investigation say another possible motive could have been that Ivins saw the senators as bad Catholics because of their votes in favor of abortion rights… .
Ivins and his wife were both practicing Catholics, and their children had attended and graduated from a Catholic high school in Frederick, Md. His wife, Diane Ivins, according to an e-mail Ivins wrote in 2002, was president of the Frederick County Right to Life, and the couple had connections to many other anti-abortion groups. In a July 10, 2002, e-mail cited in the affidavit, Ivins wrote: “I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-life, but I want my position to be one consistent with a Christian.”
The story says that unnamed, anonymous officials “close to the case” believe that Ivins’ “right-to-life fervor” was why he targeted Daschle and Leahy. Nope. I’m not joking. The story, reported by eight NPR staffers, didn’t bother to explain to listeners what the heck that motive had to do with mailing anthrax to the New York Post, or the National Enquirer, or the major broadcast news networks. What more evidence do you need to make this motive seem airtight?
For his part, Daschle thought an August 2001 letter he sent to the Pentagon questioning an anthrax vaccination Ivins developed, might “have provided a motive for the [October] attack on my office by someone with a personal investment in the future of the program.” Or, you know, maybe it was what NPR reported using anonymous sources.
The weird thing is that the utterly bizarre NPR story ran the same day — August 7 — as many saner stories in other media outlets. Take, for instance, this piece by Amanda Ripley that ran in Time. She deftly paints a portrait of a tortured soul. She takes readers through documents that reveal a mentally unstable man who struggled with his personal demons. She quotes colleagues who praise Ivins and his work. She mentions he played keyboard at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church and that he liked to write letters to the editors of local papers (which reveal his support for female and married clergy, among other things).
Ripley goes through the same affidavit that the eight NPR reporters did but finds a completely different and altogether much more complex story. He worked much later than usual in September and October of 2001. He sent disturbing emails about having two people inside of himself. Where NPR indicted the Catholic pro-life movement, here’s Time describing a different motive angle that also has the benefit of at least making some sense:
The hundreds of pages of legal documents suggest that Ivins stood to gain from causing an anthrax scare. Before the anthrax letters, his life’s work was in jeopardy because of questions about the effectiveness of anthrax vaccines in general. After the attacks, the Army’s vaccine got back on track with Ivins’ help. The lab also received a surge of resources and prestige as the deaths from the letters made anthrax a matter of national security. Ivins also gained financially as a co-inventor on two patents connected to his work, though it remains unclear how much money Ivins personally made from them. At the time of his death, according to the Army, he and his fellow inventors were collecting $2,000 a year each in royalties. In 2003, Ivins and his fellow scientists received the Decoration of Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to nonmilitary Defense Department employees.
That potential motive was revealed almost a week earlier by the Los Angeles Times that was all over this story. Here’s a great example of how the Time article weaves Ivins’ religious devotion in with the anthrax investigation:
Since Ivins’ death, his attorney, Paul Kemp, has repeatedly said he was innocent. He says Ivins cooperated fully with the FBI during two dozen interviews and passed at least two lie-detector tests. Kemp claims the FBI harassed his client for months, driving him into a spiral of alcohol and depression. Certainly, Ivins’ last months were tortured. He was twice hospitalized for depression, once after one of his counselors said he had threatened to kill his co-workers. By then law-enforcement officials had searched his home, his computers, his cars, his safe-deposit box, his office, his lab and all his e-mails. Agents had interviewed his children, showing his daughter pictures of the anthrax victims, according to Ivins’ friends.
On July 6, three days before he allegedly threatened to murder his colleagues, he played the keyboard at Mass. “He looked bummed out,” Byrne recalls, “but that was the norm for him these days.” Byrne remembers Ivins doing one small thing that seemed out of character as he began to unplug his piano. “There was a folding table in his way. And he shoved that table about one foot away. It shocked me because he always does things right. That was the most violent act I ever saw him do.”
Whether dealing with the completely contradictory portraits of Ivins painted by the government and his friends and colleagues, accounts about the ruined lives of previous targets in the anthrax case, or the growing questions about the government’s case, the media have actually done a great job on this story. Restrained, well-reported, and thorough. But that NPR story is a notable exception.
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Comments (31) |
August 13, 2008, at 11:07 am
Mind blowing. NPR is usually, well often anyway, better than this.
Is someone going to write NPR and nail them on this?
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August 13, 2008, at 11:19 am
What makes the LA Times story and reporting more believable than the NPR reporting? They both involve speculation, they both involve the same documents, the both are poorly sourced. Why is more believable he’d do this over $2,000 but not because of his pro-life views?
Both NPR and the LA Times have a reputation for strong, investigative reporting. The NPR reporters involved in the story included their top, award-winning reporters covering Justice and the Intelligence Community. So what is it, beyond a more palatable conspiracy theory, that separates the NPR story and the LA Times story?
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August 13, 2008, at 11:22 am
Why do I just know that someone is going to run with this and we’re going to see the “anthrax zealots” up there with the “abortion clinic bombers” as evidence of the organised mass conspiracy to roll back and do away with abortion rights?
An unwell man, under pressure in his career, seeing political enemies, creating an epidemic as a means of proving the vital necessity of his work and capitalising upon it sounds more likely than “I’m going to punish the bad Catholics” - that is, if the man in question actually was guilty, which seems to be still somewhat debatable.
I don’t want to start sounding like some crazy conspiracy theorist, but really - that NPR story sounds like someone’s personal agenda getting in the way.
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August 13, 2008, at 11:27 am
Michael,
I didn’t critique an LA Times story. I critiqued a Time story, however.
That Time story didn’t say the government’s case was that Ivins did this over $2,000 (NPR said the government believed he killed people because he was pro-life and Catholic).
The Time story took readers through a journey of the affidavit and showed a picture of a deeply tortured man who had psychological problems, who was liked by friends and colleagues, who may have stood to gain financially, etc. It included a bit of skepticism about the government’s actual case. NPR didn’t even have skepticism about an anonymous, unsourced government claim that didn’t even explain, well, anything.
Can you not really see the difference between the stories?
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August 13, 2008, at 11:29 am
Martha,
That’s actually why I did the story. I already had several friends who are mainstream media reporters more or less swallow this unsourced, anonymous NPR story. Here is a portion of one email I received a few days ago:
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August 13, 2008, at 11:35 am
Actually, the Time story does talk about what he had to gain from his research, including his $2,000 royalty. The LA Times, which you also linked to, included the same theory.
The stories are different, but I still don’t see why the NPR story if flawed while the Time (and LA Times stories) are considered more thorough. The difference is NPR offers a much more specific theory that is apparently based on reading more than the papers released by DOJ.
In that sense, the NPR story is better reported—albeit with anonymous sources—and goes beyond just the reporter’s look at the documents and a few “He seemed like such a nice guy” quotes from the people around him.
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August 13, 2008, at 11:44 am
I’d also point out that the NPR story is one of at least five stories they aired in a couple of days about Ivins. If you go to the links at the end of the pro-life theory story, you see an array of other coverage that goes into much greater detail about Ivins and the FBI’s handling of the case.
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August 13, 2008, at 12:02 pm
I encountered this same meme — Ivins did it because he was Catholic and pro-life — in a TV news story. I can’t recall if it was a national or local story but it had the exact same dynamics as the NPR story you’ve outlined here.
It didn’t even rise to the level of circumstantial evidence, which is still, you know, evidence. The TV reporter (who used NO named sources that I can recall) simply described Ivins’ Catholic faith, including the “fact that wasn’t a fact” — “Ivins’ wife apparently was at one time the chairman of the [local] Right to Life group” — and took the connection for granted. (APPARENTLY? How difficult is to check something like that?)
There was NO attempt whatsoever to actually make a connection between those “apparent” beliefs and his alleged actions in mailing anthrax around. What exactly would be the thought process that led from one to the other?
And why pick Daschle and Leahy? Both Maryland senators, Mikulski and Cardin, are solidly, emphatically 100% prochoice, according to NARAL’s website. http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/choice-action-center/in-congress/congressional-record-on-choice/maryland.html
Contrast that with Time’s Ripley: which is much more than mere speculation. At the very least, it’s informed speculation that identifies a plausible motive — that he stood to gain in terms of prestige, importance, in terms of validating his work.
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August 13, 2008, at 1:14 pm
Only in a society and culture that has a strong sub-strata of viral anti-Catholicism could such unsourced, speculative, vicious musings be considered worthy of broadcast or publication. And I was coerced into paying for it on NPR with my tax money.
8 reporters were set loose on this story on NPR alone. Couldn’t one have been sent to look to see if there was any truth to the Edwards’ story that had been loudly bubbling behind the scenes for months before???? In addition, is the media now going to be a slander platform for the FBI to use after a person dies who the FBI has been unsuccessfully chasing???
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August 13, 2008, at 2:10 pm
Now there are certain things we all have to remember about NPR: We hear this during the weekly pledge segments which take up about 50% of the airtime.
NPR listeners are more intelligent, more cultural, more sensitive, more affluent, more generous, more “ethical”, more “spiritual”, more informed, and generally, more “better”. Their news programs are more balanced: after all, on what other stations are Catholics for Reproductive Freedom and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and NARL, and NOW trotted out so consistently and frequently to represent the “enlightened” religious point of view. And when Margot Adler, New York’s very own witch, gives us the scoop we know we have gotten it straight from the underworld. NPR’s coverage of anything to do with abortion, embryonic stem cell research, Catholicism, evangelical Protestants, euthanasia, and some of the more extreme forms of “entertainment” would be laughable if it weren’t so consistently promoted as “good reporting” and “getting the whole story”.
Having heard Ms Gross for years (one of the truly egregiously bad interviewers in radio) and Scott Simon (one of the oiliest interviewers in radio - oh, how deeply solemn and reverential he speaks whenever he interviews someone who is a representative of the dominant gay culture in the US), I long ago stopped supporting NPR and other parts of the CPB complex. No endless programming of Doo-Wop Classics, Italian singers, Celtic Women, Suze Orman, Wayne Dyer and the other high priests and priestesses of the New Age, can distract from the fundamental dishonesty of public broadcasting’s news programming. And of course, whatever criticism is offered is ignored. But keep it up, Mollie. Someday when they have to pledge 300 days a year, they may get the point.
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August 13, 2008, at 2:38 pm
It’s the FBI’s theory not NPR’s theory. It was in the FBI affidavits that were published over a week ago (See http://www.fbi.gov/page2/august08/amerithrax_docs080608.html)
More at USA Today:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/08/daschle-tells-r.html
Daschle tells reporters about briefing on anthrax investigation
“Daschle says investigators came up with three possible reasons that Ivins targeted his office and that of Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who also received one of the anthrax-laden letters.
Those motives include Ivins’ concerns about abortion, the USA Patriot Act and waning support for an anthrax vaccine.”
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August 13, 2008, at 2:52 pm
Michael, this kind of reporting reminds me of the current Madeline McCann case - a young child goes missing while on holiday abroad with her parents - and the media frenzy around it.
We’ve been inundated with stories about the brave, grieving parents; the cold, heartless parents who are under suspicion; the helpful ex-pat who is liaising with them and the local police; the dodgy ex-pat who may have had something to do with it; kidnap-to-order for adoption; kidnap by paedophile rings; the child is still alive; the child has been murdered - and all these stories, or variants thereof, are running in the *same* newspapers.
Therefore, a paper can have a “world exclusive full story inside on pages 19-36” with the brave parents one week, and run a “world exclusive full story inside see pages 20-32” about the murderous parents the next - without seeming to see any incongruity.
That’s why I don’t trust these kind of sensationalist “he was an anti-abortion zealot and that’s why he did it” kind of angles - what’ll they dig up next week, he believed the Gray Aliens told him to do it?
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August 13, 2008, at 3:04 pm
Michael, I would also say that the story benefits from an application of Occam’s Razor: we have a plausible link between the method used (anthrax cultures sent to prominent individuals), the motives adduced (man working on anthrax vaccine which was being queried on grounds of utility, need, and funding sends anthrax to prominent individuals who can be demonstrated to have influence on his work - “Daschle thought an August 2001 letter he sent to the Pentagon questioning an anthrax vaccination Ivins had developed” and “targeted Daschle and Leahy because he saw them as holding up funding that would have helped pay for his research into an anthrax vaccine”) and the results of the letter campaign (“the Army’s vaccine got back on track with Ivins’ help. The lab also received a surge of resources and prestige as the deaths from the letters made anthrax a matter of national security. Ivins also gained financially as a co-inventor on two patents connected to his work, though it remains unclear how much money Ivins personally made from them. At the time of his death, according to the Army, he and his fellow inventors were collecting $2,000 a year each in royalties. In 2003, Ivins and his fellow scientists received the Decoration of Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to nonmilitary Defense Department employees”)
versus
“Bruce Ivins may have targeted Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy with anthrax-laced letters in 2001 because he saw them as bad Catholics owing to their votes in favor of abortion rights” and we know this how? the evidence is:
- “Ivins and his wife were both practicing Catholics”
Oh, well, that’s practically proof right there, isn’t it!
- “their children had attended and graduated from a Catholic high school in Frederick, Md.”
No! Zealots indoctrinating their helpless children in their twisted worldview!
- “His wife, Diane Ivins, according to an e-mail Ivins wrote in 2002, was president of the Frederick County Right to Life, and the couple had connections to many other anti-abortion groups.”
I note some commenters are questioning this and saying it is incorrect. Any proof one way or another?
- “In a July 10, 2002, e-mail cited in the affidavit, Ivins wrote: “I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-life, but I want my position to be one consistent with a Christian.—
And obviously “a position consistent with a Christian” means sending deadly poisons through the mail. Well, I’m convinced!
Now, if they can find and demonstrate anywhere that this man actually made threats, or said things about Catholic politicians and abortion, or about these particular two politicians’ positions, or the like, then fine.
But “some minor level government flack is floating this idea because they can’t make their case stick on the available evidence” - sorry, not good enough.
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August 13, 2008, at 4:07 pm
What if it’s 10 officials at DOJ and the FBI who are saying similar things? What if, on background, a number of people involved in the investigation say it could be related to this mentally ill man’s pro-life beliefs? What if the investigators have multiple theories—including both his financial/professional interests and his pro-life views—behind why he is the suspect.
If it were one “minor level flack,” I doubt NPR would be running with the story, regardless of ones suspicions of NPR’s alleged biases. So they think they have a credible theory that they’ve heard from a number of people.
That it is counterintuitive—because mentally ill people are ALWAYS logical—and makes pro-life people uncomfortable, is that a reason to dismiss the reporting?
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August 13, 2008, at 4:43 pm
Just a visitor. Got link from Google alerts.
Please, people, it’s not always about religion (or whatever the MSM — that I’m sorry to say includes NPR for the last several years) feeds you.
Daschle and Leahy opposed the Patriot Act and its inherent extension of Executive Privilege with further erosion of civil rights. A little anthrax and — Voila! — they signed on. And, by linking the anthrax attack to Saddam and Iraq initially, the administration scared Americans into supporting the war.
The evidence against Ivins is circumstantial — and weak at that. Has it occurred to anyone that he wasn’t guilty, that he’d been harassed beyond human tolerance for a year and that his “suicide” was mighty convenient for the DOJ that will now not have to take their case to trial where it would be subjected to challenge.
Please read Glenn Greenwald at Solon (and the comments) if you’re interested in some alternative (and compelling) interpretations of the evidence.
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August 13, 2008, at 4:57 pm
And Ivins was a life-long DEMOCRAT. But no one is mentioning that. It’s nice that the press cherry-picks the information.
Now, I don’t believe his party affiliation had anything to do with it any more than his church attendance.
IF he did it — he was out of his mind.
But, there is far too much speculation that the FBI’s “slam dunk case” is just a little too neat and tidy — especially given they investigated the wrong guy for four years and had to cough up nearly $6 milloin in damage.s
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August 13, 2008, at 7:36 pm
Michael, if the man did it, there were (as you point out) a plethora of reasons.
But NPR are saying that the main and sole reason he did it was because he was a pro-life Catholic and these were two Catholic politicians whom he felt were wibbly on abortion.
Which I’d like to see a bit more convincing about; generally, for such actions, there’s a connection made by the perpetrator along the lines of “this is God’s judgement on you” or “this is for supporting baby-killing” or the like.
You tell me how sending anthrax through the post with no indication why or what it’s about is going to help the man with a pro-life crusade? Hmmm - the politicians die and there’s an election and a pro-life candidate is elected in their place?
Reaching a bit there, man. Yes, there have been actions done in excess by zealots. But with no evidence (that I’m aware of) that he ever made any kind of threats in general or comments in particular about these two specific politicians, all we’re left with is -
- the guy was a Catholic. He and his wife were in a pro-life group. He said as much in an e-mail.
If that’s the level of evidence, then I’m a poison-letter sender candidate myself!
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August 13, 2008, at 7:53 pm
Actually, they aren’t. They use may and might, while also—in the first three paragrpahs of the story—give the theory that he did it because of his interests in Anthrax.
It’s a theory based on anonymous sources, part of a three-day coverage of the story where the “self-interest” and “obsessed with sorority girls” evidence has already been prevented.
Maybe it is far-fetched. But the guy allegedly sent Anthrax through the mail. We aren’t talking about someone who allows rationality to control his behavior. So maybe it was self-interest, maybe it was because of his pro-life views, maybe it was because he thought people in purple suits were telling him to do it.
Why is self-interest a more convincing reason to try to kill someone and send Anthrax through the mail? Why is that more rational for a mentally-ill man to do?
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August 13, 2008, at 9:36 pm
[…] Check out this GetReligion.org commentary on how National Public [partially taxpayer funded] Radio has decided that being a pro-life Catholic makes you a perfectly logical suspect in the anthrax murders. […]
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August 13, 2008, at 9:40 pm
I wonder how many of those NPR reporters have been repulsed by the concept of racial profiling. (irony…)
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August 13, 2008, at 9:46 pm
Yes, eight (EIGHT!) NPR reporters filed a story based on the government’s case. One (ONE!) Time reporter filed a story based on the government’s case.
The two stories could not be more different. NPR’s eight-reporter story uncritically quotes anonymous government sources coming forth with a theory that makes no sense and disparages an entire class of people. They cherry pick facts. It’s just a disaster. I have no respect for anyone who defends that story.
Time, on the other hand, cites multiple angles from the government documents and weaves them into a much fuller story about the complexity and torment of a man who has been accused by the government.
Both had religion. That’s about where the similarities end.
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August 13, 2008, at 10:00 pm
So he was a pro-life, liberal on ordination issues, modern American Catholic — and a Democrat.
That does sound dangerous.
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August 13, 2008, at 10:06 pm
Which may explain why Time wrote a single story and NPR has reported at least four different stories on multiple days about the case. Maybe eight reporters with multiple sourcecan find the complexity in a story, while the single reporter from Time didn’t bother to talk to any sources and regurgitated the same theory everyone else was floating.
You are comparing a second or third day story by people on a daily deadline with a magazine reporter who only has to produce a single story. Maybe it would be worthwhile to compare NPR’s day one story with Time’s single story.
Did you bother to read any of the other stories NPR did, or are you basing it on this single, second or third day story that pushes your pro-life buttons? If you are going to compare it to the Time story, you really need to contrast it with how NPR initially covered the story.
Here’s the link to most of the stories they’ve written, including the first day story.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93374304
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August 13, 2008, at 10:20 pm
Michael,
You inexplicably wrote:
A single story?
I mean, there was Ripley’s
How Solid Is the Anthrax Evidence?, Ripley’s Anthrax Mystery Deepens, the story we analyzed above, another piece on the documents the judge released in the case, this one on the status of the case, this one, this one on the sorority, and this one on how DNA was used to identify the suspect.
And I stopped looking after that.
Um, yeah.
WOW.
WOW.
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August 13, 2008, at 10:49 pm
Michael,
How about you resubmit your comment with an acknowledgment that you were wrong to say that Time had written one story on the Anthrax case and I’ll go ahead and take it out of moderation.
It’s unbelievably annoying. You allege something, I disprove it and you just move on to the next thing without recognizing all the work and effort I put into disproving your allegations.
I’ve had enough.
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August 14, 2008, at 8:10 am
Michael, let me flip the question to you:
Why are you so eager to believe he did this (if he did it) as an anti-abortion nutcase?
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August 14, 2008, at 10:39 am
NPR: Your tax dollars at work.
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August 14, 2008, at 2:41 pm
The accusations are the FBI’s not NPR’s, but thank God NPR has the courage to report it. The implications of Ivin’s anthrax terrorism begs the bigger question of why there is the rise of unchristian conservative violence being done in the name of Christian issues. Rejecting the possibility is almost condoning it.
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August 14, 2008, at 4:01 pm
Dan Crawford wrote:
This is a gratuitous religious slur that undermines the whole point Dan was trying to make in the same paragraph.
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August 15, 2008, at 2:01 pm
What I still want to know is why the anthrax guy targeted the late great Weekly World News. I mean, geez, who could possibly have a grudge against a fiction source that brought so much joy into so many grocery shoppers’ and college students’ lives?
Happily, I have recently learned that the Weekly World News lives again, in inserts in the Sun. Bat Boy lives!
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August 16, 2008, at 2:35 pm
Let’s have a little historical perspective on this, OK? Fanatic pro-lifers have murdered people, sometime from hiding. And have bombed clinics and otherwise engaged in domestic terrorism. The NPR story is bad journalism, but it isn’t crazy.
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