Anthrax Investigation Documents Released

A federal judge has approved the release of hundreds of pages of documents from the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, a court official said Wednesday. The records include 14 search warrants, information used to request those warrants and summaries of what was found, the court official said. The official declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The documents were expected to implicate Army biological weapons researcher Bruce Ivins in the anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened more than a dozen.

The FBI is expected to detail the evidence linking Ivins, who authorities said committed suicide last week, to the anthrax attacks in a briefing in Washington with survivors and relatives of victims, a government source familiar with the case said Tuesday.

The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to release the documents Wednesday morning, sources with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. Those records are expected to be unsealed Wednesday afternoon.

Ivins spent more than 30 years as a civilian microbiologist at the Army's biodefense lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where he was trying to develop a better vaccine against the disease. A lawyer for Ivins said last week that his client was not involved in the attacks, and that the pressure of the investigation led to his death.

The case will not be considered closed because of incomplete administrative details, the source said.