In 2008, following Ivins’s untimely “suicide,” Department of Justice civil attorneys in Florida, defending a claim by the widow of anthrax victim Robert Stevens, publicly challenged the FBI’s assertions that Ivins had been the culprit and instead pointedly “suggested that a private laboratory in Ohio” managed by Battelle and linked to the El-Hibris “could have been involved in the attacks.”61 DOJ headquarters quickly had its Florida attorneys rewrite their brief, omitting this claim.
