It was September 18, 2001, just seven days after al-Qaeda hijackers destroyed the Twin Towers. In the early morning darkness, a lone figure dropped several letters into a mailbox. Seventeen days later a Florida journalist died of inhalational anthrax. The death from the rare disease made world news. These anthrax attacks marked the first time a sophisticated biological weapon was released in the United States. It killed five people, disfigured at least 18 more, and launched the largest investigation in the FBI’s history. Recounting the Anthrax Attacks explores the origins of the innovative forensics used in this case, while also explaining their historical context. R. Scott Decker’s team pursued its first suspect with dogged determination before realizing that the evidence did not add up. With renewed energy, they turned to non-traditional forensics—scientific initiatives never before applied to an investigation—as they continued to hunt for clues. These advances formed the new science of microbial forensics, a novel discipline that produced critical leads when traditional methods failed. The new technologies helped identify a second suspect—one who possessed the knowledge and skills to unleash a living weapon of mass destruction. Decker provides the first inside look at how the investigation was conducted, highlighting dramatic turning points as the case progressed until its final solution. Join FBI agents as they race against terror and the ultimate insider threat—a decorated government scientist releasing powders of deadly anthrax. Walk in the steps of these dedicated officers while they pursue numerous forensic leads before more letters can be sent until finally they confront a psychotic killer.

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.

From the New York Times Bestselling Author of 'Zodiac' and 'Zodiac Unmasked'. AMERICA WAS THE CRIME SCENE Six days after the devastating events of 9/11, as the dust still clung to the air over New York, a new terror descended upon America. An invisible enemy that when inhaled, fatally ravaged the lungs, body, and brain. Mysterious envelopes filled with lethal powder contaminated everything and everyone they came in contact with. They began arriving at their destinations and unsuspecting victims inhaled the microscopic dust particles carrying the Bacillus anthracis bacteria, more commonly known as anthrax. In this weaponized form, inhalational anthrax is at its most lethal. These poison pen letters would contaminate USPS mailboxes, machinery, letter carriers, mailrooms, newsrooms, and the Capitol, all starting with an entire building in Boca Raton, Florida. Putting in motion one of the most critical manhunts in US history. This is the definitive story of the insidious threat--and the relentless hunt to stop America's most sinister bio-terrorist.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Sets forth the evidence that was developed in the Amerithrax investigation. In the fall of 2001, anthrax letter attacks killed five people and sickened 17 others. Traditional law enforcement techniques were combined with scientific analysis to trace the anthrax used in the attacks to a particular flask of material. By 2007, investigators determined that a single spore-batch created and maintained by Dr. Bruce Ivins at the U.S. Army Med. Res. Inst. of Infectious Diseases was the parent material for the letter spores. Evidence concluded that Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters. However, before the indictment process, Ivins committed suicide and died on July 29, 2008. Investigations confirm that Ivins perpetrated the anthrax letter attacks.

The 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the United States killed five people and wounded dozens. They were widely blamed on extremist Muslims and their backers and used to support the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They were also used to justify and hasten the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was being presented to Congress just as the first anthrax victim grew ill. In October 2001, one of the hypotheses that gained ground was that of the Double Perpetrator, the claim that al-Qaeda was carrying out the attacks with the support of Iraq. Much evidence was put forth to support this Double Perpetrator hypothesis but independent scientists soon discovered that the anthrax spores came from a domestic lab in the US serving the military and intelligence communities, not from al-Qaeda or Iraq. The FBI then quickly claimed that an individual was responsible for the attacks and began noisily looking for this “lone wolf.” In 2008 the Bureau named Dr. Bruce Ivins of the US Army Medical Institute of Infectious Disease as the “anthrax killer.” Although the FBI remains committed to the Ivins hypothesis, the case has been disintegrating for the last three years. Currently, it is justly held in contempt not merely by scientists who worked with Ivins but by many journalists as well as several US senators. But this raises the question: if Ivins did not commit this crime, who did? This book presents evidence to support the following points: (a) The anthrax attacks were carried out by a group of perpetrators, not by a “lone wolf.” The attacks were, therefore, the result of a conspiracy— by definition a plan by two or more people, made in secret and resulting in an immoral or illegal act. (b) The group that carried out this crime consisted, in whole or in part, of insiders deep within the US state apparatus. (c) These insiders were the same people who planned the 9/11 attacks (d) The anthrax attacks were meant to facilitate a seizure of power by the executive branch of government through intimidation of Congress and US civil society. They were also designed to achieve public acquiescence to and support for the redefinition of US foreign policy, replacing the Cold War with a new and aggressive global conflict framework, the Global War on Terror.

For the first time, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Willman tells the whole gripping story of the hunt for the anthrax killer who terrorized the country in the dark days that followed the September 11th attacks. Letters sent surreptitiously from a mailbox in New Jersey to media and political figures in New York, Florida, and Washington D.C. killed five people and infected seventeen others. For years, the case remained officially unsolved—and it consumed the FBI and became a rallying point for launching the Iraq War. Far from Baghdad, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, stood Bruce Ivins: an accomplished microbiologist at work on patenting a next-generation anthrax vaccine. Ivins, it turned out, also was a man the FBI consulted frequently to learn the science behind the attacks. The Mirage Man reveals how this seemingly harmless if eccentric scientist hid a sinister secret life from his closest associates and family, and how the trail of genetic and circumstantial evidence led inexorably to him. Along the way, Willman exposes the faulty investigative work that led to the public smearing of the wrong man, Steven Hatfill, a scientist specializing in biowarfare preparedness whose life was upended by media stakeouts and op-ed-page witch hunts. Engrossing and unsparing, The Mirage Man is a portrait of a deeply troubled scientist who for more than twenty years had unlimited access to the U.S. Army’s stocks of deadly anthrax. It is also the story of a struggle for control within the FBI investigation, the missteps of an overzealous press, and how a cadre of government officials disregarded scientific data while spinning the letter attacks into a basis for war. As The Mirage Man makes clear, America must, at last, come to terms with the lessons to be learned from what Bruce Ivins wrought. The nation’s security depends on it. From the Hardcover edition.

The relationship of scientific research on human sexuality (sexology) to society's legal, judicial, and law enforcement systems (forensics) is the focus of this encyclopedic volume. Editors James J. Krivacska and John Money have assembled contributions by leading experts, covering a wide range of legal and medical issues pertaining to the interconnection between law and sexual behavior. Section One examines the nature of paraphilic behavior and the social framework within which some of it becomes illegal. The topics discussed include sodomy, pedophilia, incest, sexual abuse, rape, exhibitionism, prostitution, and sexual harassment. Section Two looks at current strategies for assessing the problems of sex offenders and victims. Among the areas addressed are "real" sexual abuse vs. "manufactured" allegations of abuse memories, allegations of satanism and ritual sexual abuse, and the difficulties of treating sex offenders within a legal framework. The final section argues that sexology has much to contribute to the debate of the appropriate role of government in regulating the private sexual behavior of the citizenry. Sex education, contraception, abortion, AIDS, pornography, social tolerance vs. criminalization, and a comparative view of public sex policy in China and Russia are among the subjects reviewed.