MIAMI (AP) The U.S. government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and family of a Florida tabloid photo editor killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

WASHINGTON -- The Army laboratory identified by prosecutors as the source of the anthrax that killed five people in the fall of 2001 was rife with such security gaps that the deadly spores could have easily been smuggled out of the facility, outside investigators found.

HAGERSTOWN Two scientists say they've written a research paper questioning the government conclusion that an Army microbiologist at Fort Detrick was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened others.

WASHINGTON -- In March 2007, the FBI gathered an elite group of outside scientists to evaluate whether the recently invented science tying anthrax mailings to a single flask at an Army research lab was sound.

HAGERSTOWN Three scientists say theyre preparing a research paper questioning the governments conclusion that an Army microbiologist at Fort Detrick in Frederick was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

WASHINGTON A senior Republican senator has asked the Justice Department to explain why its civil lawyers filed court papers questioning prosecutors conclusions that an Army researcher mailed the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001.

Four days after filing court documents saying that Bruce Ivins did not have the equipment needed to prepare the anthrax powder used in the 2001 attacks, the U.S. Department of Justice took back that statement Tuesday and said it stands by its belief that Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the attacks.

The U.S. Department of Justice has found itself having to point out holes in its own case against the late Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins, accused of having committed the 2001 anthrax attacks, in order to fend off a civil court case by the family of one of the victims.

According to the official account of the anthrax attacks of 2001, Bruce Ivins, senior biodefense researcher at Fort Detrick, single-handedly grew the trillions of anthrax spores involved, processed these spores into a dispersible dry powder, loaded the anthrax letters, then drove to Princeton, N.J., and deposited the letters in the same mailbox on two separate occasions about 20 days apart, all without anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary.

HAGERSTOWN (AP) A court-ordered panel of experts says the Army failed to follow up on signs of mental illness that should have prevented them from allowing the apparent perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks to have access to the deadly material. The nine-member group established by the Justice Department held a news conference Wednesday in Washington to release the study first reported by

One year ago, the Department of Justice closed its case against Fort Detrick researcher Bruce Ivins, releasing a 92-page investigative summary declaring he was the sole culprit in the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five and sickened 17. The report touted "both direct evidence that anthrax spores under his sole and exclusive control were the parent material to the anthrax spores used in the attack and compelling circumstantial evidence."

WASHINGTON -- A National Research Council committee announced Tuesday that conclusions reached by the FBI about the 2001 anthrax attacks are not fully supported by science.

The National Academy of Sciences quietly delayed releasing its evaluation of the science used to link Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins to the anthrax attacks of 2001, a move that escaped notice of many, but drew criticism from one congressman.

A group of 25 scientists, professors, writers and terrorism experts convened Monday to discuss and debate the anthrax investigation.

Nine years have passed since five people were killed and 17 sickened by anthrax spores mailed to lawmakers and news outlets, and it's been nine months since the FBI closed its investigation into those attacks.

WASHINGTON -- The FBI may have closed its Amerithax case against Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins nine months ago, but some experts are not willing to let the issue die quite so easily.

The Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation into the scientific methods used by the FBI to determine that Fort Detrick researcher Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

It is absolutely impossible that Bruce Ivins (left), accused of mailing anthrax and killing five people in 2001, could have created and cleaned up anthrax spores in the timeline and manner the FBI alleges, Ivins' former co-worker said Thursday.

The National Academy of Sciences brought in former USAMRIID microbacteriologist Henry Heine to explain spore preparation to the panel.

President Barack Obama's administration is threatening to veto Congress' intelligence spending bill for this fiscal year, and further investigation of the anthrax mailings could be halted as a result.

The administration is citing U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett's amendment to investigate the FBI's handling of the 2001 anthrax case as one of many concerns with the bills. Bartlett is a Republican from Frederick who represents Western Maryland.

A New Jersey congressman is asking for a congressional investigation into the FBI's handing of the anthrax attacks.

Local police do not think suspected anthrax mailer Bruce Ivins was involved in any other unsolved criminal cases.

An FBI agent and a U.S. postal inspector kept watch on Bruce Ivins house on Military Road overnight July 26 to July 27, the night authorities said the 62-year-old microbiologist took a fatal overdose of acetaminophen. Ivins died July 29, 2008.

U.S. Reps. Roscoe Bartlett and Rush Holt moved Thursday to launch an investigation of the FBI's handling of the 2001 Amerithrax case, asking whether investigators overlooked the possibility of a foreign connection to the attacks.

The FBI's final verdict on the Bruce Ivins' Amerithrax case comes as no surprise whatsoever. Ever since Ivins apparently took his own life in late July 2008, the agency has been steadfastly holding to its view that he was the sole perpetrator of the infamous anthrax mailings shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001.

The FBI may have concluded Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks, but many others aren't convinced.

Scientists, Ivins' friends and others maintain the report is too flawed to have held up in court had Ivins been alive for a trial by jury.

A look back at the Bruce Ivins saga

Federal investigators closed the case Friday on this country's first major act of bioterrorism and sealed their findings that Bruce Ivins, a former Frederick resident and Fort Detrick scientist, acted alone in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others in the weeks after Sept. 11.

WASHINGTON A microscopy expert said there was nothing unique about the silica coating found in the anthrax spores recovered from the 2001 letter attacks.

WASHINGTON -- A colleague of suspected anthrax mailer Bruce Ivins presented the methods she and others used to isolate the strain of the bacteria used in the deadly 2001 letter attacks.

A panel of scientists and a group of concerned citizens gathered Tuesday to question what the Army calls negligible health risks from its under-construction infectious diseases lab in Fort Detrick.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin is calling for legislation selecting a lead agency to oversee security measures at high-containment laboratories like those at Fort Detrick.

WASHINGTON -- A panel of experts convened for a second day Friday to examine the scientific process employed by the FBI to identify the anthrax used in the deadly 2001 mailings.

Scientists this week will begin an 18-month review of the science the FBI used to identify Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins as the sole suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings.

The panel of 15 experts was convened by National Academy of Sciences and held its first meeting Thursday.

The group laid out its responsibility to study the process and procedure used by the FBI and potentially validate its findings.

A year after the apparent suicide of Frederick scientist Bruce Ivins, a TV documentary explores the FBI's case against the man the agency blames for the 2001 anthrax mail attacks that killed five people.

Some months ago, we editorialized our hope that the FBI-commissioned National Academy of Sciences study on the anthrax mailings case would clarify the guilt or innocence of former Fort Detrick microbiologist Bruce Ivins.

For Mary Morris, there is a difference between closure and something that's finished.

Eight years ago her husband, Thomas Morris Jr., died after breathing anthrax spores from contaminated mail at the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington.

A year ago she attended a meeting at FBI headquarters, where Director Robert Mueller told Morris that her husband's killer had been identified.

A Department of Defense study identified insider threats as one of the most grave concerns for military biolabs.

For the past year, government officials have remained quiet on the case accusing Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins of the deadly anthrax letter attacks.

The public has 20 days to comment on the makeup of an independent committee being assembled to study the science the FBI used in its investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings.

On May 14, The Frederick News-Post's lead editorial celebrated the agreement by the FBI to pay $880,000 to the National Academy of Sciences for a review of the science used in the FBI's investigation of the anthrax letters case ("Amerithrax"). According to the FBI, it took years and millions of dollars to develop and apply the science that incriminated Bruce Ivins.

The National Academy of Sciences and the FBI have agreed on the scope of the NAS' independent review of the science that the FBI used in its anthrax mailings investigation.

The FBI will pay the National Academy of Sciences $879,550 to review the science used in the bureau's investigation of the 2001 anthrax mailings.

Some have asked me why my columns on Fort Detrick are always negative. Don't I understand the contributions the base and its tenants have made to the community and this country? Or that it employs thousands, including some of world's best scientific minds?

Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick.

How do proponents of expanding USAMRIID's biodefense labs defend the indefensible?

The U.S. Army released 33 pages of Bruce Ivins' e-mails Thursday from his account at Fort Detrick.

An intentional overdose of acetaminophen led to kidney and liver failure and eventually death for Bruce Ivins, according to an investigation by the Frederick Police Department.