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rer dy To: Washington Field From: Washington wick Re: 279A-WF-222936-USAMRIID, 05/24/2005 many people for no real reason. Additionally, IVINS had no desire to cry "Wolf!" simply because he had found presumptive colonies that were not demonstrated to be B.a. or even Bacillus species. If the colonies were B.a., he felt that he had ively taken care of the contamination issue by cleaning ee eae IVINS reasoned that since USAMRIID personnel were extraordinarily busy at the time processing samples for Operation Noble Eagle, he believed that telling people of a potential breach of containment and that B.a. spores were inadvertently taken into non-containment areas would have served no beneficial purpose.*6 IVINS acknowledged, in retrospect, that although his concern for biosafety was honest and his desire to refrain from crying "Wolf!" unnecessarily was sincere, he should have notified his supervisor ahead of time of his worries about a possible breach in biocontainment. IVINS thought that quietly and diligently cleaning the dirty desk area would both eliminate any possible B.a. contamination, as well as prevent unintended anxiety and alarm at USAMRIID.*”’ IVINS indicated that he did not seek permission to conduct the survey, and he did not voice his concerns about a possible breach in containment because he felt that at the time, would have been dismissive of concerns. [__confixmed that IVINS had informed two days after he conducted an environmental survey of esk area in December 2001.°° IVINS told that he had swabbed(___—sdd i ecause he was rned about the comments made by IVINS advised that B.a. appeared to be present in some of the samples. During an FBI interview, [~~ indicated that[___]was not concerned by IVINS' news because it could have been anything, and[_|was vaccinated.*° [WRITER'S COMMENTS ~ IVINS' justifications of his actions following the independent sampling contradicted his explanation of motives for conducting the survey in the first place. If truly motivated by a concern of contamination on the cold-side of USAMRIID, upon evidence of such contamination, why did IVINS not pursue more extensive methods toward correcting the problem? How would improper handling of B.a. samples be corrected without passing along information that the current containment system was not working properly? Why even conduct the survey in the first place if he did not want to cause alarm, especially if he suspected that he would find contamination? IVINS had the courage to conduct the swabbing without command approval, yet lacked the initiative to inform the appropriate authorities when the results were presumptively positive? IVINS was obviously concerned enough about possible contamination to knowingly 6 [