IMPEACH BUSH

WASHINGTON — The federal government may be liable for tens of millions of dollars in negligence claims over its assertion that one of its own scientists used anthrax from a government laboratory to kill five people, injure 17 and terrorize the country, legal experts say.

At issue is whether the government knew or should have known that scientist Bruce Ivins, whom the Justice Department says carried out the attacks alone, was potentially dangerous, said Jonathan Turley, professor at the George Washington University Law School. Ivins' lawyers dispute the government's assertions.

In unveiling its case against Ivins last week, the government released evidence showing that Ivins was deeply disturbed. He worked for 35 years at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., with access to lethal substances.

Even if his employers didn't know he was unstable, "the question is whether they should have known," Turley said. "It's like saying that you didn't know that a physician was a perfect lunatic at a hospital. The expectation is that a hospital would have sufficient monitoring to detect lunacy."

One lawsuit alleges that the government failed to properly monitor, store and secure the anthrax at Fort Detrick. The suit, seeking $50 million, was filed in 2003 on behalf of the family of Robert Stevens, the photo editor who died after anthrax was mailed to his company's headquarters.

"One of the people that worked at the laboratory told me they had better security at a 7-Eleven than they did at the … laboratory where they had the most dangerous substances known to mankind," the Stevens family attorney, Richard Schuler, said last week.

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said, "There's nothing we can say. It's ongoing litigation."

Under the law that regulates suits against the federal government, negligence claims in the anthrax case may be warranted, said Michael Elsner of the Motley Rice firm in South Carolina. "I think that anyone who is handling materials like this has a very heightened duty to make sure that they remain in a secure environment, and that duty also extends to hiring employees who would be working in that environment to make sure that they are of sound mind," he said.

Former Justice Department lawyer Richard Silber added: "This guy was clearly a nut case, and he wasn't a secret nut case. And yet he was allowed to operate with unfettered access to these very lethal pathogens."

In June, the government reached a $5.8 million settlement with Steven Hatfill, a scientist who was wrongly suspected in the case. Last week, the Justice Department exonerated him.