Film Review: "The Anthrax Attacks in the Shadow of 9/11" (2022).

From Netflix and the director of The Kill Team comes The Anthrax Attacks in the Shadow of 9/11. This documentary film directed by Dan Krauss. Days after 9/11, letters containing fatal anthrax spores spark panic and tragedy in the US. This documentary follows the subsequent FBI investigation.

Beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax (a portmanteau of "America" and "anthrax", from its FBI case name), occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing five people and infecting seventeen others. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement". A major focus in the early years of the investigation was bioweapons expert Steven Hatfill, who was eventually exonerated. Around early April 2005, Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, became a focus. In early April 2007, Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that he was "an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks". In late July 2008, Ivins committed suicide with an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol). In early August 2008, Federal prosecutors declared Ivins the sole perpetrator based on DNA evidence leading to an anthrax vial in his lab. Two days later, Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Rush D. Holt, Jr. called for hearings into the Department of Justice and FBI's handling of the investigation. On February 19, 2010, the FBI formally closed its investigation. However, in 2008, the FBI requested a review of the scientific methods used in their investigation from the National Academy of Sciences, which released their findings in the 2011 report Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters. The report cast doubt on the government's conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator, finding that the type of anthrax used in the letters was correctly identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, but that there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI's assertion that it originated from Ivins's laboratory. Some information is still sealed concerning the case and Ivins's mental health. The government settled lawsuits that were filed by the widow of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens for $2.5 million with no admission of liability. The settlement was reached solely for the purpose of "avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigations", according to a statement in the agreement.

The series successfully deconstructs the complicated events leading up to what happened, and how it irrevocably changed the way we saw the world at the beginning of a new century. It's insightful, enlightening and compelling documentary making that not only remembers a dark moment in human history, but also addresses the impact and legacy of the action taken in response.

Simon says The Anthrax Attacks in the Shadow of 9/11 receives: