Let's assume for a moment that Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense researcher who committed suicide last week after the FBI made him the lead suspect in the 2001 anthrax terror attacks, is guilty. After all, he's dead now, and one of the first things they teach you in journalism school is that you cannot libel the dead.

What could possibly have motivated him to send weaponized anthrax through the mails? Was he simply mentally unhinged as several stories have darkly hinted, alluding to his recent death threats to co-workers? Did his more than two decades of dedicated service to the U.S. bioweapons and anti-bioterror programs (the two, of course, are intimately related) send him over the edge?

Or, could it be something as mundane as the need to make bioterrorism part of the War on Terror, the only U.S. growth industry other than health care in the first decade of the 21st century?

Let's recall the political landscape that existed on September 10, 2001. Bioterror and bioweapons research had become backwaters under the Clinton administration, its researchers underfunded and under-appreciated. The United Nations had declared Saddam Hussein's biological and chemical weapons programs completely dismantled. The Soviet Union was long gone, and discussions about its bioweapons program centered on finding work for its former scientists, not countering the threat posed by the remote possibility that their handiwork might fall into the wrong hands.

How hard is it to imagine that a frustrated researcher saw 9/11 as a golden opportunity to add bioterror to the national outrage over the assault on the Twin Towers? Murder wasn't the goal, just a little scare (it's hard to know how well aerosolized anthrax is going to work since it has never been tried on human populations). As the nation geared up for a War on Terror, shouldn't the dedicated researchers who labored in the backwater of bioweapons research for decades get a piece of the action?

And then there's the prospect of personal gain. As reported over the weekend by the Los Angeles Times, Ivins held three patents on anthrax vaccine technology and stood to benefit financially through federal procurement contracts. Add it all up and what we have is what every mystery writer knows is key to a good story: a motive.

Alas, the story needs a better villain for its made-for-TV incarnation. Ivins, a 62-year-old microbiologist with 28 years of government service, committed suicide last week as federal investigators closed in. He was no Dr. No, just another scientist trying to get a grant and make a buck.

Here are the sordid details: Ivins is listed as a co-owner of the government-invented anthrax vaccine later licensed to VaxGen, a Bay Area company awarded nearly $900 million in federal contracts under Project Bioshield. The contract was cancelled in 2006, the New York Times reminded us Sunday. Moreover, government researchers are usually limited to $150,000 per year in royalties when their inventions are licensed to the private sector. There's hardly enough money here to fill up the suitcase that Hollywood would have him lugging onto the escape helicopter.

Let's pause for a moment and recall all the media stories (especially ABC News and Judith Miller of the New York Times) that sought to link Saddam Hussein to the anthrax attacks in the U.S. Congress should investigate the FBI investigation into this seven-year-old case, which led to the deaths of five people, including several postal workers who were exposed to the deadly spores. Was there ever a moment when the investigators in charge of the case thought someone other than an insider at the U.S. Army’s Ft. Detrick, Maryland facility, which has long been the home of the U.S. bioweapons and biodefense research programs, was responsible? In June the government agreed to pay government researcher Steven J. Hatfill $5.82 million after wrongfully making him a “person of interest” in the case, leaking his name to the media, and ruining his reputation.

Congress should also investigate precisely what "spin off" technologies we have gained from the anthrax-initiated War on Bioterror. The U.S. government, i.e., me and you; has awarded nearly $50 billion in biodefense research contracts to major universities and defense facilities since the 2001 anthrax attacks. Infectious disease researchers have criticized the program (you can read my 2003 story on that subject here) for draining talent and resources from research into infectious diseases like tuberculosis and leishmaniasis, which are endemic in the developing world and badly in need of new drugs. In 2005 more than 750 scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health protesting the way the anti-bioteror program was skewing infectious disease research.

It would be a fitting end to the story if a new Congress in its next session transfers some of those billions to more productive uses. Fade to black.