CLASSIC: The 2001 Anthrax Letter Attacks: Who was actually responsible?

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.3 • 10.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mere days after the horrific events of 9/11, someone began sending letters laced with anthrax spores to senators and the offices of major media outfits -- by the time the attacks ended, seventeen people were seriously injured, and five victims had died. Today the FBI maintains the case has been solved: scientist Bruce Edwards Ivins, acting alone, was responsible. Ivins died of an overdose in an apparent suicide before any possible trial, and today, numerous people familiar with the case believe the official story doesn't add up. Tune in to learn more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Folks, we are returning with a classic episode for you.
0:03.9	Travel back with us to 2001, where something gripped the nation.
0:10.2	It was hysteria about it.
0:11.6	And then people promptly forgot all about the anthrax letter attacks.
0:16.3	Yep.
0:17.1	Short memory sometimes.
0:18.8	But I'm right there, too.
0:20.3	Ben, I hadn't thought about the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which is fun to say in a very long time.
0:26.0	There's weird stuff in the saga of these letters and the anthrax and the strain and how it got there and whether or not there was inside government stuff going on.
0:38.0	Yeah. And there's also a creative. and whether or not there was inside government stuff going on. Mm-hmm.
0:38.9	Yeah. And there's also a crazy context because this occurs just days after the events of September 11th, 2001.
0:50.6	Very, very strange time for the new cycle, for the nation even back in 2020 when we
0:58.7	originally recorded this folks were asking who was actually responsible i seem to remember at the
1:04.9	time kind of feeling this sense of like adding insult to injury with this like after everyone was so
1:10.5	you know turned upside down
1:11.9	because of 9-11 that this just represented like a further just destabilization like like everything
1:17.7	is just going haywire you know yeah and people were worried about possible false flags
1:23.0	or trying to amp the country up into a war, or even, you know, to Matt's earlier point,
1:32.5	inside forces striking out were internal division.
1:37.3	And some of the anthrax was fake, by the way.
1:40.1	Also, we learned later.
1:41.5	Anyway, this is the episode.
	...

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