By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The widow of a tabloid photo editor who died in the 2001 anthrax attacks insisted in a $50 million federal lawsuit filed years ago that the US government was ultimately responsible for his death.
Now that the FBI is pinning the blame on government scientist Bruce Ivins, the lawsuit brought by Maureen Stevens looks positively clairvoyant. And results of the FBI investigation could have a major effect on the outcome of her case.
"We were right all along," Patrick Hogan, the son-in-law of Maureen and the late Robert Stevens, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It seems to me it's pretty much a slam dunk."
Stevens was a photo editor at American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Sun and Globe gossip tabloids, when he was exposed to anthrax that was mailed to AMI offices in Boca Raton. Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, the first of five people to be killed and 17 others to be sickened in the anthrax attacks.
Two years later, Maureen Stevens filed her lawsuit. In it, she claims the US government was negligent because it failed to safeguard strains of the deadly anthrax bacteria at the US Army disease research center at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store