Bruce E. Ivins, de overheids biodefense wetenschapper met betrekking tot de dodelijke bloedzweerzendingen van 2001, bevond zich om financieel bij het massieve federale besteden in de vrees-gevulde nasleep van die moord te winnen, heeft de Tijden van Los Angeles geleerd.

Ivins is vermeld aangezien een mede-uitvinder op twee octrooien voor een genetisch gebouwd bloedzweervaccin, federale verslagen toont. Afzonderlijk, Ivins ook vermeld als mede-uitvinder op een toepassing is om een additief voor diverse biodefensevaccins te patenteren.

Ivins, 62, stierf Dinsdag in een duidelijke zelfmoord in Maryland. De federale autoriteiten hadden zijn advocaat meegedeeld dat de misdadige lasten met betrekking tot de zendingen worden ingediend.

Als mede-uitvinder van een nieuw bloedzweervaccin, Ivins onder die in lijn was om octrooiroyaltys te verzamelen als het product aan markt, volgens een uitvoerende huisvriend met de kwestie was gekomen.

Het product had op laboratoriumplanken tot Sept. gesmacht. 11 aanvallen en de bloedzweerzendingen, waarna de federale ambtenaren renden aan voorraadvaccins en tegengiffen tegen potentieel biologisch terrorisme.

Een het Francisco-Gebied van San biotechnologiebedrijf, VaxGen, won een federaal contract met een waarde van $877.5 miljoen om partijen van het nieuwe vaccin te verstrekken. Het contract was de eerste toegekend in het kader van de wetgeving die door President Bush wordt bevorderd, genoemd Project BioShield.

Één stafmedewerker die met de kwestie vertrouwd was zei dat, als voorwaarde van zijn het kopen het vaccin van het Leger, VaxGen akkoord was gegaan met aandeel op verkoopbetrekking hebbende opbrengst met de uitvinders.

„Één of ander aandeel zou gedeeld zijn met de uitvinders,“ zei de stafmedewerker, die anonymously wegens contractuele vertrouwelijkheid sprak. „Ivins zou zich bevonden hebben om tientallen duizenden dollars, maar niet miljoenen te maken.“

Twee jaar nadat het contract werd toegekend aan VaxGen, werd het pact geëindigdd toen het bedrijf niet zijn partijen op programma kon leveren. De beëindiging betekende dat VaxGen niet werd betaald, noch was Ivins en zijn mede-uitvinders.

Ivins werd ook vermeld als één van twee uitvinders van een ander op biodefensebetrekking hebbend product dat federaal sponsoring heeft gewonnen.

Volgens hun nog-hangende toepassing voor de V.S. 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.