Bruce E. Ivins, el científico del biodefense del gobierno se ligó a los correos mortales del ántrax de 2001, parados para ganar financieramente del gasto federal masivo en las consecuencias miedo-llenadas de esas matanzas, el Los Ángeles que los tiempos han aprendido.

Ivins se enumera como co-inventor en dos patentes para una vacuna genético dirigida del ántrax, los expedientes federales demuestra. Por separado, Ivins también se enumera como co-inventor en un uso para patentar un añadido para las varias vacunas del biodefense.

Ivins, 62, muertos martes en un suicidio evidente en Maryland. Las autoridades federales habían informado a su abogado que las cargas criminales relacionadas con los correos serían archivadas.

Como co-inventor de una vacuna nueva del ántrax, Ivins estaba entre ésos en la línea para recoger derechos de la patente si el producto había venido poner, según un ejecutivo al corriente de la materia.

El producto languished en estantes del laboratorio hasta el sept. 11 ataques y los correos del ántrax, después de lo cual los funcionarios federales compitieron con para almacenar vacunas y los antídotos contra terrorismo biológico potencial.

Una compañía de la biotecnología del Francisco-área del San, VaxGen, ganó un contrato federal digno de $877.5 millones para proporcionar las hornadas de la vacuna nueva. El contrato era primero concedido bajo legislación promovida por presidente Bush, llamado Project BioShield.

Un ejecutivo que estaba al corriente de la materia dijo que, como condición de su comprar la vacuna del ejército, VaxGen tenía convino los ingresos venta-relacionados de la parte con los inventores.

Una “cierta proporción habría sido compartida con los inventores,” dijo a ejecutivo, que habló anónimo debido a secreto contractual. “Ivins habría estado parado para hacer diez de millares de dólares, pero no de millones.”

Dos años después de que el contrato fue concedido a VaxGen, el pacto fue terminado cuando la compañía no podría entregar sus hornadas en horario. La terminación significó que VaxGen no era pagado, ni eran Ivins y sus co-inventores.

Ivins también fue enumerado como uno de dos inventores de otro producto biodefense-relacionado que ha ganado patrocinio federal.

Según su uso aún-pendiente para un E.E.U.U. patent, the inventors hoped the additive would bolster certain vaccines’ capacity to prevent infections “from bioterrorism agents.”

From December 2002 to December 2003, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency committed $12 million for additional testing of the experimental additive. That research money was designated for Coley Pharmaceutical Group, which was developing the additive. The company was acquired last fall by Pfizer Corp.

Samuel C. Miller, a Georgetown Law Center professor who is a patent-law expert, said that the extent to which Ivins stood to gain from the two issued patents or the one that remains pending hinges on the terms of the related contracts.

“It will depend on the business arrangements that are in place,” Miller said.

On Friday, colleagues and critics of Ivins pondered the mystery within the mystery: If Ivins did it, why?

One former senior official with Ivins’ employer, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, whom the FBI questioned at length about Ivins, said he believed his former colleague wanted more attention — and resources — shifted to biological defense.

“It had to have been a motive,” said the former official, who suspects that Ivins was the culprit. “I don’t think he ever intended to kill anybody. He just wanted to prove ‘Look, this is possible.’ He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those envelopes and kill those postal workers.”

Of the five people killed by the mailings, two worked for the U.S. Postal Service in the Washington, D.C., area; one was a photo editor in Palm Beach County, Fla.; another was a hospital supply provider in New York City; and the last known victim was a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut.

Several letters were addressed to prominent people — two U.S. senators and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, for example.

For nearly 30 years, Ivins served far from the limelight, a PhD microbiologist who drew a civil servant’s pay while handling some of the most deadly pathogens on Earth — live spores of anthrax.

The deadly mailings of anthrax-tainted envelopes transported Ivins from the backwater of government scientific research at Ft. Detrick, Md., to the center of the nation’s fledgling war on terrorism. It also spurred multibillion-dollar national security initiatives.

Ivins was thrust into the federal investigation of the mailings as well. He helped the FBI analyze anthrax recovered from a letter addressed to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

He also played a lead role in helping a private company, BioPort, win regulatory approval to continue making the vaccine required for U.S. service personnel deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions.

From 2000 to early 2002, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID helped BioPort resolve problems related to the potency of the vaccine. Because of those and other manufacturing difficulties, production had been suspended. The efforts of Ivins and his colleagues helped BioPort win FDA approval to resume production.

At a Pentagon ceremony on March 14, 2003, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID were bestowed the Decoration of Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to nonmilitary employees of the Defense Department.

“Awards are nice,” Ivins said in accepting the honor. “But the real satisfaction is knowing the vaccine is back on line.”

The Times sought earlier this year to obtain annual financial disclosure statements filed by Ivins with his employer. USAMRIID spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden said last month that Ivins had filed financial reports exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Ivins’ apparent suicide and the Justice Department’s decision to bring criminal charges against him were first reported Thursday night by The Times. On Friday, Ivins’ lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, defended his client and said that Ivins had cooperated fully with the FBI.

“We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial,” Kemp said, implicitly confirming that Ivins had been about to be formally charged. “The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people. . . . In Dr. Ivins’ case, it led to his untimely death.”

Kemp did not respond to telephone calls and e-mails for this article.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.