More on Mr. Ivins

The government, who just paid Steven Hatfill millions of taxpayer dollars for leaking slanderous info about his non-role in the anthrax case, has seemingly not learned their lesson with Bruce Ivins. Here's a recap of some of the stories released today.

There was a shipment of milled anthrax from Dugway to Fort Detrick, handled by Ivins in the late 90s, which seemingly takes away the need for him to clandestinely manufacture product off site; he had some kind of fixation with a sorority (don't we all) but one with a branch at Princeton University only 100 yards from the mailbox used to send the letters; and only three locations sold the franked envelopes used in the mailings, one of which Ivins frequented and held an anonymous post office box. All circumstantial, but when taken together pretty damn damning.

But that said, the Wall Street Journal is certainly correct in their opinion:

..we use the word "reportedly" here because everything we know about the case against Ivins has been leaked to reporters without official attribution. This is the way the Justice Department has behaved for nearly seven years, and much of what it previously leaked has turned out to be false.

Enter the sockmeister Glenn Greenwald, who's keeping hope alive on his grand smoking gun conspiracy linchpin theory implicating BushCo, which requires a conspiracy with the bentonite and a tearing down of the main prosecution witness so far, the mysterious Jean C. Duley, now ensconced in a secret location. It'll be fun to watch Greenwald if news breaks that Ivins was one of the sources of the bentonite claim.

But he threw his usual PC caution to the wind as to whether Duley might be a fellow Bush-hatin' hard liberal gay marriage lovin' friend and dug deep into her personal history (Bush would be proud) otherwise known as her arrest record, which he suggested was extensive. It wasn't, but it did reveal some points of interest, such as her "race":

RACE: WHITE, CAUCASIAN, ASIATIC INDIAN, ARAB

Unless I'm misreading the form, a rather odd combination indeed but something not odd enough for Greenwald to note. She's also coming off a recent DUI. Since we're wildly speculating it would seem possible someone with a recent conviction might benefit from cooperation with the authorities over other matters. Just a guess.

Anyway, putting it all together after four days of reportage:
Ivins was a brilliant and award-winning microbiologist who heroically helped analyze the suspect anthrax in 2001 but only to cover his secret "revenge of the nerd" plot to bring attention to WMDs and later garner windfall profits for himself through government patents while hating women. All of this is suggested by the fact he wrote letters to the editor of newspapers and had a fixation with sorority girls at Princeton and threatened a certain social worker with a criminal background (unlike his), while spending hours at the lab after 9/11 and going to the post office.

These smoking guns explain why he targeted liberal Senators, the National Enquirer, George Bush, TV personalities, little old ladies and postal workers beginning exactly one week after the worst terrorist attack in US history and on the same day the Czech republic announced they had evidence that Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi spy in Prague. All accomplished while never being seen by anyone or any camera.

How bizarre. Especially considering the fact he might be the one.

MORE 8/4/08

Here's a NOVA interview with Bill Patrick, former Detrick researcher and a pioneer in the US bioweapons program, on making an agent:

Broad: Is this hard or easy for anybody to do? What does it take to develop the agent and get to the point that you can disseminate it?

Patrick: Well that's a difficult question for me because it is second nature to me. But it is a little bit more difficult for a Tom, Dick, and Harry type of terrorist. Now what concerns me are graduate students and professors in microbiology and chemical engineering who have a better appreciation of the finer points of detail. If they were to get disgruntled, I think they could, with a little trial and error, come up with a reasonably acceptable BW agent. But, they are going to have problems with its dissemination.

Meanwhile, here's what the New York Times had to say:

Hundreds of people have been polygraphed. Investigators have compiled minute-by-minute chronologies of the lives of some subjects, examining their whereabouts when the letters were sent. Forty of the F.B.I.'s 56 field offices and many of its 44 overseas legal attachés have been asked to help. The F.B.I. has established 112 separate databases to store information about the case.

In June, 2002. A very interesting look back.

MORE 8/5/08

This is choice. The Brad Blog has determined that Ivins is a registered democrat and has voted in every election, including primaries, since 1996. He whines:

Kincaid, who conceded during our interview that the revelation of Ivins' party registration, in and of itself, was not necessarily "probative," still found it difficult to believe that someone as virulently rightwing as the author of the anthrax letters was believed to have been, would continue year in and year out to vote in Democratic primary elections.

Translated, "the killer couldn't be one of us because only virulent right wing Bush lovin' fascists are capable of terrorizing people through the mail". Mmm, no.

Despite their best efforts the BDS just leaks out sometimes. Apparently these sherlocks haven't considered the person(s) writing the letters might have tried to intentionally deceive people. In that case it makes sense for a life-long Dem to target Dem leaders of the Senate, knowing they would be protected with Cipro anyway. That also ties in to the funding angle. And hey, are they admitting that Brokaw was an undisputed liberal? Interesting.