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: Lawbeat

Shane makes another run at Ivins case

By Mark Obbie

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It did not take long for The New York Times' Scott Shane to turn a skeptical eye on last summer's early onslaught of coverage of anthrax-attack suspect Bruce Ivins. To his credit, and his paper's credit, he explored those early warning signs in depth, yielding this front-pager five months later that stakes out a bold premise in the nut graf:

With the F.B.I. preparing to close the case, The New York Times has taken the deepest look so far at the investigation, speaking to dozens of Dr. Ivins’s colleagues and friends, reading hundreds of his e-mail messages, interviewing former bureau investigators and anthrax experts, reviewing court records, and obtaining, for the first time, police reports on his suicide in July, including a lengthy recorded interview with his wife.That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator.

Put aside the ambiguous boast of the "deepest look" line -- deeper than competitors'? than the FBI's? than the Times' own previous efforts? -- does the rest of this long story deliver? Yes, but not quite in the way that I expected. The story has no shockingly new revelations. It's an engaging narrative, focused on details about Ivins and the investigation that have been reported before, but not (to my knowledge) in such intimate, lush detail. It is, in short, a great read, leaving me where it intended -- wondering if Ivins was yet another wrongly accused scientist, "hounded to death" by the FBI, as Shane himself wonders but does not definitively conclude. That puts Shane and this report no closer to an answer, after five months of digging. But that's the point: that nothing evidently exists to firm up the government's suspicions. That makes this story both important and fair.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on January 04, 2009 (boomark / email).