CNN Domestic will tonight premiere a new investigation from Joe Johns. Details from CNN below.

CNN Press Release: The Anthrax Mystery – CNN’s Joe Johns Investigates. Death by Mail: The Anthrax Letters Debuts Sunday, October 2 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT

CNN’s Joe Johns reports for a documentary investigation into the anthrax letter attacks of 2001. Letters written with jihadist language and laced with deadly anthrax spores were sent via U.S. Mail to members of the news media and Congress in the weeks following the September 11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Five people were ultimately killed and 17 others were sickened by exposure to the letters directed to The New York Post, Tom Brokaw at NBC News, Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and others.



Drawing from recently released FBI and Justice Department documents of what is officially called the Amerithrax Investigation, Johns tells the story of the complex, seven-year investigation into what happened and who was allegedly responsible for the deadly letters, explaining the bizarre turns in the bioterrorism case that extended the nation’s horror.

The one-hour documentary, CNN Presents: Death by Mail – The Anthrax Letters, debuts Sunday, Oct. 2 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT, and replays on Saturday, Oct. 8 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT on CNN/U.S.

From the beginning, federal investigators turned for help to the scientific community on the belief that the killer may have been a rogue insider from the biotech industry. Thomas Dellafera, the now-retired U.S. Postal Inspection Service team leader on Amerithrax, describes how authorities even requested that the scientists working in bioweapons defense research submit to polygraph testing.

One scientist, Nancy Haigwood, suspected a former colleague and contacted the FBI with the name “Bruce Ivins.”

“In my mind, it was as though something clicked,” she tells Johns, “I just thought I might actually know the person.” She described Ivins’s years-long history of stalking and his odd obsession with her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma.

But for the next four and a half years, her tip was low priority. “We didn't know how it related to the crime,” says Dellafera.

Ivins escaped federal scrutiny for years while investigators pursued other leads, including targeting an innocent man. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly identified former U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) scientist, Steven Hatfill as a ‘person of interest.’ But, Johns explains, nothing collected in the Hatfill investigation ever connected him to the crime. Ultimately, Hatfill was determined not responsible for the crimes, and the federal government paid him nearly six million dollars to settle a lawsuit for allegedly violating his right to privacy.

Death by Mail reveals a hidden side of Bruce Ivins that federal agents remained unaware of until near the end of their investigation. In emails to colleagues, Ivins describes his disturbed mental state and fears he is becoming paranoid and losing control.

By July 2008, federal prosecutors believed they had enough credible circumstantial evidence to indict Ivins for Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Scientists hired by the FBI had matched four genetic mutations in the attack anthrax to the same mutations in a flask of anthrax in Ivins’s lab.

“There was no one who was more experienced at growing, purifying and handling, preparing anthrax spores at Fort Detrick than Bruce Ivins,” says David Willman, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and the author of The Mirage Man: Bruce Ivins, the Anthrax Attacks, and America’s Rush to War (April 2011).

Investigators theorize his motive may have been to increase interest and funding for a new anthrax vaccine that he had helped to invent, which he apparently feared had become a low priority.

Ivins denied having anything to do with the anthrax attacks, and to this day, Ivins has defenders. “How it was made, how it was prepared, where it was done, over what period of time -- there’s a total void of evidence,” Ivins’s attorney, Paul Kemp of Rockville, MD, tells CNN. And there is no direct evidence linking Ivins to the crime: no DNA on the letters, no fingerprints, and no eyewitnesses.

Bruce Ivins committed suicide just as investigators appeared to be ready to bring formal charges against him. No one has ever been officially charged with the anthrax letter attacks, though Johns’ report dissects the evidence, explains why doubts linger about the guilt of the main suspect, and asks if such an attack could ever happen again.

More information about Death by Mail can be found at www.cnn.com.

Andy Segal produced Death by Mail: The Anthrax Letters. Kathy Slobogin is a managing editor for the CNN Special Investigations unit overseeing production of this documentary. Lee Hughey and Dave Herrod edited Death by Mail.

CNN Press Release - In addition to CNN’s continuing coverage of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti and the upcoming State of the Union, CNN will devote programming to the impact of the economic stimulus plan one year after it was enacted. Beginning on January 24 and continuing through January 29, CNN will break down where the money has gone, whom it's helping, and who has abused the program. In advance of the January 30 release of new stimulus data, CNN will utilize its vast TV and online reach to inform its viewers about which projects have received the stimulus dollars, what is and isn't working, if Americans’ lives have changed for the better, and who's still fighting to get help. Beginning on American Morning and continuing throughout dayside and primetime programming, CNN will highlight the stories of everyday people, offering viewers an understanding of the good, the bad and the reality of whether the stimulus money is being well spent or going toward wasteful projects. In his first television interview, Inspector General Earl Devaney, “the stimulus watchdog,” will sit down with CNN correspondent Kate Bolduan to give his take on how the stimulus money has been spent.

Leading the coverage on CNN/U.S. will be chief business correspondent Ali Velshi and CNN business correspondent Christine Romans. Velshi, along with CNN anchor TJ Holmes and correspondents Tom Foreman and Josh Levs, will review stimulus projects from CNN’s “Stimulus Desk,” and bring to light those that are the most interesting and newsworthy. CNN correspondents including Elizabeth Cohen, Drew Griffin, Joe Johns, Randi Kaye, David Mattingly, Ted Rowlands, Gerri Willis, and Kareen Wynter will fact-check the plan and report on which projects have been funded so far, where the jobs are, whether these projects will help the economy recover and where the loopholes are. In addition, CNN’s All Platform Journalists (APJs) have been deployed across the country on “stimulus patrol” and will contribute pieces throughout the week about various projects and people across the country that have been affected by the stimulus.

Online, CNNMoney.com is the premiere destination for all news, information and analysis related to the stimulus, and will feature multi-media photo galleries, text stories and video. Additionally, as part of "The Stimulus Project," CNNMoney.com is launching a data visualization that details how much stimulus money has been spent thus-far and on which programs. The first of its kind, this interactive graphic will provide users with the most comprehensive and accessible view into the state of the stimulus. CNN's chief business correspondent Ali Velshi also will use the data visualization on the Magic Wall on CNN/U.S. to help television viewers understand how the money is being used.

Additionally, at www.CNN.com/Stimulus, CNN.com has a special report that features an economy tracker which shows how stimulus money has been spent so far by state, and where new jobs have been created according to government information, an info-graphic that takes a look at some key factors of the economy and how it has gone up and down. In addition, the section includes opinion pieces on how the stimulus has worked and how it hasn't. CNN iReport, the network's user-generated news community, is asking iReporters to share their personal stories to add color to the numerical data.

Viewers can call CNN at 1-800-TIPS-LINE, to explain what's going on in their communities and how they feel the stimulus has impacted their jobs and lives. CNN will also conduct a poll and release numbers daily about Americans’ views of the stimulus package and the economy as a whole.

CNN is the only cable news network that provides non-partisan programming representing all points of view.

CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.