布魯斯E。 Ivins，政府biodefense科學家與致命的炭疽病郵寄2001年在那些殺害恐懼被填裝的後果連接了，站立從巨型的聯邦消費財政獲取，洛杉磯時報學會了。

Ivins在二個專利被列出成一位co發明者為基因上設計的炭疽病疫苗，聯邦紀錄顯示。 分開地， Ivins在應用也被列出成一位co發明者給予專利一個添加劑因為各種biodefense疫苗。

Ivins， 62，星期二死去在明顯的自殺在馬里蘭。 聯邦當局通知了他的律師與郵寄有關將提出罪名。

作為新的炭疽病疫苗的co發明者， Ivins是在那些之中在線專利聚集王權，如果產品來銷售，根據一位執行委員熟悉問題。

產品在實驗室架子衰弱了直到9月。 11次攻擊和炭疽病郵寄，在之後聯邦官員賽跑儲備疫苗和解毒劑反對潛在的生物恐怖主義。

舊金山地區生物技術公司， VaxGen，贏取一個聯邦合同相當$877.5百萬價值提供批新的疫苗。 合同是首先被授予根據布什總統促進的立法，告訴Project BioShield。

熟悉問題的一位執行委員說，作為它購買疫苗的情況從軍隊， VaxGen有讚成份額與銷售相關的收益以發明者。

「某一比例與發明者將分享」，執行委員說，由於契約機密，講話匿名。 「Ivins將站立做成千上萬不是美元，但成千上萬」。

二年，在合同被授予了VaxGen之後，契約被終止了，當公司在日程表不可能提供它的批。 終止意味VaxGen不是有償的，亦不是Ivins和他的co發明者。

Ivins也被列出了成贏取了聯邦保證人另一個與biodefense相關的產品的二位發明者之一。

根據他們對美國的仍然即將發生的申請。 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.