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The significance of the address used in anthrax mailings to Capitol Hill in October 2001 — “4th GRADE, GREENDALE SCHOOL” — has long puzzled investigators.
But suspect Bruce Ivins may have been referring to the Greendale Baptist Academy in Greendale, Wis., a southern Milwaukee suburb, U.S. Postal inspector Thomas Dellafera said in a court filing unsealed Wednesday.
Ivins was a member of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian ministry that pursued a high-profile 1999 lawsuit involving a fourth grade student at the school, the affidavit noted.
“What a strange twist,” said lawyer Steve Crampton, who represented the Tupelo, Miss.-based association in the case.
Ivins, a brilliant but troubled government scientist, committed suicide last week as prosecutors were preparing to charge him in the attacks. Prosecutors said Wednesday they believe he was the only person responsible for the attacks that killed five and injured 17.
The “GREENDALE SCHOOL” return address was used in letters sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. It listed Franklin Park, N.J., as the location for the school.
Michael Dean, a lawyer who represents Greendale Baptist Church, which operates the school, said its leaders were shocked when they learned about the link Thursday. They had never heard of Ivins and had no contact with him, he said.
“It seems plausible that he would look for something so utterly unsuspecting as a way to avoid detection,” he said. “You pick a Christian school, the least conceivable organization that would be sending something in the nature of a terrorist weapon, and you slap that on your return address.”
The dispute that may have caught Ivins’ attention started in 1998 when Milwaukee social workers began investigating whether the school’s corporal punishment policy was leading to abuse of students.
Social workers showed up at the school demanding to interview a boy who had been spanked. They didn’t have a warrant or the boy’s parent’s consent and the principal objected.
The workers got the interview after they called in police and cited a state law allowing government officials to interview children without consent.
Backed by the American Family Association, the school and the boy’s parents filed suit, alleging the interview was a violation of their constitutional protection against unlawful searches and seizures.
The association publicized the case in its monthly journal, which Ivins received at his Maryland home for years, according to the affidavit. Ivins and his wife donated money to the group one month after the article was published in October 1999, their first donations to the group in two years, it said.
Association general counsel Patrick Vaughn said the two donated $335 in small gifts over nine years. The association cooperated with authorities looking into Ivins — but was unaware its name was “entangled in a terrorism investigation” until Thursday, he said.
AFA members reacted strongly in 1999 after learning about the heavy-handed tactics used to investigate a private school’s practice of spanking, Crampton recalled. A number of them called in with similar stories of government intrusion, he said.
Crampton said the government’s theory linking the return address to the school sounded reasonable.
“I don’t know how else he got Greendale’s name and fourth grade of course was exactly what grade this boy was in,” Crampton said. “There’s some sense to it, but who can say what was going on in this man’s mind?”
He added: “It appears to me he was a very troubled man psychologically. It’s a most unfortunate incident, and all I can say is that we would never condone such behavior in reaction to this lawsuit or anything else.”
Vaughn said the association “deplores the terrorism represented by the anthrax mailings.”
An earlier government theory on the return address turned out to be false. When the FBI was mistakenly focusing its investigation on Ivins’ colleague, Steven Hatfill, investigators noted that he once lived in Harare, Zimbabwe, near the suburb of Greendale.
A Harare school known as the Greendale School was named for Courtney Selous, a famed white hunter and the namesake of the Selous Scouts, a military force that fought black rebels. Hatfill bragged of serving in the Selous Scouts.
Hatfill, whose career was ruined after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft named him a “person of interest” in 2002, was exonerated and awarded a $5.8 million legal settlement in June.
