Aug 2, 8:08 PM EDT


Army declines comment on anthrax researcher

PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army refused Saturday to say whether it had been reviewing the security clearance of the chief suspect in the anthrax attacks who had mental problems and killed himself as federal prosecutors were planning to indict him.

Bruce E. Ivins was removed from his lab in Maryland by police on July 10 and temporarily hospitalized, according to court records, because it was feared that he was a danger to himself and others. But it was unclear whether he was still employed by the lab at the time of his death Tuesday.

That raises the question of whether Ivins still had his security clearance and, if so, how he kept it, given that his social worker said Ivins had been viewed as homicidal and sociopathic by his psychiatrist.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce declined to comment on Ivins' case.

"The U.S. government never discusses the specific security clearance of an individual employee or military member," he said.

He noted only that there are "time-honored procedures to examine security clearances on a regular basis, to verify information provided by the security-clearance holder, and traditional steps to ensure that only the appropriate level of security access is granted, largely based on the nature of the person's government job."

Boyce didn't respond to a question on what type of clearance microbiologists at the lab would have to hold.

Army regulations require that security clearances be reviewed every five years, but special investigations can be done if there are allegations against an employee or there is some other cause for concern.

In 2006, the last year for which data is available, less than 0.05 percent of some 800,000 people investigated for clearances to work in the military and other federal jobs were rejected on the sole issue of their mental health profile, officials have said.

That's because the clearance process is done on the whole-person concept - that is, it weighs a number of factors about the person's past and present, favorable and unfavorable. People can be prevented from getting a clearance if they have been convicted and imprisoned, are addicted to any controlled substance, have been discharged dishonorably from the service or are currently mentally incompetent.

David Danley, who used to work with Ivins other scientists at the lab at Fort Detrick, told National Public Radio Saturday that the facility had little security more than 30 years ago when Ivins was hired to study anthrax vaccines.

It wasn't until 1997 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established what it called a select-agent program to regulate toxins that can pose a severe threat to health and public safety. Danley said things changed at the lab only after five people died from anthrax-laced letters in 2001, the case in which Ivins had become the main suspect. Among changes was that everyone needed security clearances.

It's unclear how background checks apparently failed to catch what his therapist has called "a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, and plans."

Applicants for security clearances are required to fill out a form that asks about previous mental health problems.

"I don't believe that reviewing a person's medical record is part of a typical security investigation unless there is an indication that there's a concern there," Michael Woods, who used to be chief of national security law at the FBI, told NPR.

Woods said investigators only find what they look for. And what they look for depends on what the applicant reports and what other people say about that person.

"Any system will miss someone somewhere," he told NPR. "And the alternative here is to have a much higher level of scrutiny for everybody in the system. I don't particularly want investigators going through my medical records if there's not a reason, a security-related reason to do that."

For years, the applications for clearance to work in sensitive jobs included a question on whether the person had consulted a mental health professional in the last seven years. If so, they were asked to list the names, addresses and dates they saw the doctor or therapist.

Troops often said they were afraid to get psychiatric care because getting it - and acknowledging it on their forms - might mean denial of the clearance or hurt their careers in other ways. Seeking to encourage troops to get help for post-traumatic stress and other war-time mental problems, the Pentagon in May changed its application form, making it unnecessary to report therapy related to help they needed adjusting to combat duty or marriage or grief counseling not related to any violence behavior.

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END of AP Release