The Los Angeles Times reports a top government scientist has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the 2001 anthrax attacks. The attacks killed five people and crippled the national mail service. According to the report, the scientist Bruce Ivins had recently been informed of his prosecution in the anthrax case. Ivins had worked for the past eighteen years at the government’s elite biodefense research labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Ivins had never been previously identified as a suspect. He was actually part of a team that helped the government investigate the anthrax attacks after Sept. 11.