Anthrax Killer Fuckup Will Cost Taxpayers Millions

Yes, everything Smirky/Darth touched turned to shit.

From McClatchy:

The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of mailing the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people and terrorized Congress a decade ago.

Shortly after Ivins committed suicide in 2008, federal investigators announced that they'd identified him as the mass murderer who sent the letters to members of Congress and the news media. The case was circumstantial, with federal officials arguing that the scientist had the means, motive and opportunity to make the deadly powder at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.

Now, however, Justice Department lawyers have acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab — the so-called hot suite — didn't contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.

But it gets worse:

From McClatchy:

Waffling by Justice Department lawyers in a wrongful death lawsuit that arose from the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks could boost prospects that the government will be liable for millions in damages for failing to prevent the killing of a Florida man.

Department lawyers created a stir in recent days, first by filing court papers that appeared to undercut the FBI’s finding that the late Army scientist Bruce Ivins was the killer. The filings said Ivins had no access in a secure lab to the sophisticated equipment to produce the anthrax powder. Four days later, the lawyers abruptly revised that statement to say he lacked access in his lab to a specific machine that could dry wet anthrax.

"I think it creates a great deal of problems for the government," said Paul Kemp, who represented Ivins before his 2008 suicide.

John De Leon, a Miami lawyer who's the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the legal flip-flop "undermines the government's credibility" in the civil suit, the only one to proceed so far on behalf of the families of the five people who died.

Liberals don't condone ignoring a genuine case of domestic terrorism to go haring off on a fake terrorism wild goose chase.