This documentary by Dan Krauss revisits the case against a scientist the F.B.I. maintained was responsible for a series of bioterrorism attacks after Sept. 11.
In the weeks following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, news organizations and two United States senators were sent letters that contained deadly anthrax spores. These bioterrorist attacks killed five people and sickened at least 17 others. In 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed the case and continued to maintain that the perpetrator was Bruce E. Ivins, an Army biodefense expert who killed himself in 2008 as preparations to indict him were underway.
In “The Anthrax Attacks,” the director Dan Krauss (the 2014 documentary “The Kill Team,” which he later reworked into a dramatized feature) takes viewers through the investigation. While much of the movie plays as a standard documentary — it features interviews with scientists, former F.B.I. agents, victims of the attacks and the sister of a postal employee who died — it makes substantial use of re-enactments.
The actor Clark Gregg stars as Dr. Ivins, and a title card says that his words were taken directly from Ivins’s emails. As portrayed in the documentary, Dr. Ivins was operating under the investigators’ noses. His strange behavior, the timing of his lab activities and his access to an incriminating flask are all held out as evidence against him, although the evidence, the film notes, was also largely circumstantial and lacked a firm link between Dr. Ivins and the mailings themselves.
Still, it is slightly sneaky for the film to set up Dr. Ivins as the obvious suspect by making him the film’s center — and by having Gregg play him as an officious, mild-mannered weirdo — only to raise doubts toward the end, in particular pointing to a 2011 report that said the available scientific evidence did not make it “possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the anthrax.” Many documentaries have dealt with real-life ambiguity by making it part of their structure and argument. This one treats it as an afterthought.
The Anthrax Attacks
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
