The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation last Friday that would require continued investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter mailings, despite the Justice Department’s decision last week to formally conclude the case, the Baltimore Sun reported. The newly released Justice Department summary of the anthrax investigation found that a former Army microbiologist acted alone in producing and mailing the anthrax letters that killed five people and caused a national scare not long after the September 11 attacks. The FBI contended that the suspect, who worked at a biodefense facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, was motivated by a desire to secure more public funding for his anthrax vaccine research. A Republican congressman, whose district includes Fort Detrick, and a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, who represents the area from which the anthrax letters were sent, added a mandate to the fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill. They want the national intelligence director to probe possible foreign ties to the mailings. “Many questions remain” regarding the FBI investigation, the Democratic congressman said in a prepared statement, including the possibility that foreign involvement was “overlooked, ignored or not pursued.”

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