Another One Down?

News out of Pakistan:

Younis al-Mauritani's arrest -- made public five days before the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks -- was seen as a blow to Al Qaeda's central leadership in Pakistan, further degrading its ability to mount terrorist attacks abroad. The terrorist organization has seen its senior ranks thinned since Usama bin Laden was killed May 2 along with Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group's No.2, in a CIA missile strike last month.

Who is Mauritani? Thomas Joscelyn says he's not 'number three' (which used to be a source of derision during the Bush years) but he's certainly involved with plots against the west.

The interesting aspect of this bust was the location--Quetta. Long known as a city that has harbored the worst of the worst, Quetta is a city our drones can't hit due to the dense population and likely collateral damage and its resulting PR blowback. Obviously the Pakistanis are making a big deal of this capture since it shows their cooperation still exists despite the alleged simmering anger from the Abottabad raid. Perhaps money has soothed their rage, or perhaps they've cleaned house a bit after their embarrassment.

At any rate, this capture is only symbolic if CIA/FBI agents aren't allowed access. We still haven't heard an official word about what happened to Taliban Number Two Mullah Baradar after he was captured by the Paks.

MEANWHILE..

With the 9/11 anniversary approaching a previously unreleased video of the smoldering remains of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania has surfaced. It really doesn't show anything unusual or unexpected, just smoke rising from the horrific crash site. Still, such evidence must really annoy 9/11 truthers, some of whom believe the government just opened a hole in the ground and claimed there was a plane crash. They once crucified a woman who came forward with a still photo of the aftermath showing similar rising smoke over the horizon, therefore it's no wonder this person wanted to remain anonymous.

What some of these folks don't understand is the force of an aircraft plowing into the ground at full throttle, inverted. According to a new book by Laurie Garret entitled "I Heard the Sirens Scream", FBI investigators autopsied the hijacker bodies from Flight 93 and found evidence of anthrax exposure. If true that would be a pretty big bombshell in its implications, but according to another book, "American Anthrax" by Jeanne Guillemin, FBI investigators did indeed forensically test those bodies, which required them to dig down 90 feet into the impact hole to reach the crushed cockpit section.

Their tests turned out negative, according to Guillemin. But the depth of their dig illustrates why there were no large pieces of fuselage visible on the ground at the site. Even small aircraft can produce 20 foot smoldering holes if the worst occurs. This is not intuitive, which is why many truthers won't believe it.

But as the ten year anniversary arrives perhaps this new video and the passage of a decade will finally serve as a cure to some of the skepticism, most of it rooted in denial. Perhaps Rosie and various other Hollywood celebrities can help by speaking out.

Hannity and the Letters

There's a "Wired" story going around the net about Bruce Ivins and the anthrax letters that succinctly states what everyone already knows--Dr. Ivins appears guilty as sin but he's dead; there's no smoking gun; and even some of the investigators are still not convinced. So if he didn't do it, who did?

The article breaks some new ground making Ivins look even guiltier, but it also suggests the FBI had their suspicions from at least 2003 onward. At the time Steven Hatfill was their official non-official suspect in the media. Why did the Bush Justice Dept leave him out there? Yeah, it's not too hard to imagine a sinister lefty fantasy where evil Bush warlocks used him as a foil to invade Iraq...wait, how would that have worked again?

Seems to work better to consider that if Hatfill was indeed a foil he would have been more useful as a focus to get America's mind OFF state-sponsored (or rogue non-state terrorist) culprits rather than the reverse. It was the classic lone wolf. Besides, he was paid well in the end. The plausible reason is that they needed someone, anyone, to assuage public paranoia, and if the public believed the suspect was under surveillance, the threat would be reduced.

At the same time it might also act to lessen the worry of the real culprit, leaving them open to error. But as the Wired story suggests, nothing is crystal clear. A lot seems to depend on the mailer and his/her targets--mainly media figures. In looking back at some of the early coverage a story emerged that didn't ring a bell in the ole memory banks:

A series of hoax anthrax letters are sent to Fox News commentators Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Hannity will later say he began receiving the letters in the winter of 2000 and then a second batch in August 2001. Most of them were sent from a postmark in Indianapolis, Indiana, but “one or two were from Trenton,” New Jersey, where the deadly anthrax letters will be sent from shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

The FBI will later allow the New York Post to see copies of these letters, which have block handwriting sloping down to the right and other features remarkably similar to the later letters containing real anthrax. Hannity will later say: “When I saw the Tom Daschle envelope and the Tom Brokaw envelope, I immediately was stunned. It was the exact same handwriting that I had recognized.… When I saw it I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s the same guy.’”

Were those letters ever published? If Hannity was getting hoax attack letters sans powder leading up to 9/11, and postmarked from Trenton, NJ--the same place the actual attack letters were sent--that seems kind of important. In the least it would provide another opportunity to check Ivins' alibi as to his whereabouts during the likely mailing windows for those letters, that is, if Hannity wasn't just blowing smoke trying to horn in on a big story after 9/11.

Also, if the Hannity letters were a match does it make sense for AQ or Iraq or some other terrorist entity to have been sending them empty before 9/11? Maybe, maybe not. Supposedly an anthrax letter was sent to Canadian authorities in early 2001 in an effort to get an Egyptian terrorist released. A hoax powder letter was also sent to former NY Times writer Judy Miller in the period after 9/11 but before the letter story had become news, and she had written a book on bioweapons. So it's hard to speculate precisely. Which is the jist of the Wired story.

Persons of Interest

Every now and then it's fun to drop by Ed Lake's site and see what the conspiracists are saying about Dr. Ivins and the anthrax letter case. For those not keeping score the case was officially closed a short while ago but it's still open in the minds of many doubters, some of whom will be attending a scheduled panel discussion about the case this Monday in Washington, DC.

While Ed has dismissed most of these 'true believers' (he's the Jack Webb of the internet--just the facts) he seems mildly intrigued with a last-minute addition to the panel, a 'terrorism expert' by the name of James Van de Velde. According to Ed's quick search and a explanatory subsequent email Mr. Van de Velde was added "because he was the DOD key government analyst on anthrax."

Lo and behold his resume indicates he has held top clearances and even interviewed a couple of AQ perps at GTMO suspected for their involvement in the AQ bio-weapons program. But there's more.

Seems Mr. Van de Velde was once a 'person of interest' in a murder case himself, much like Dr. Steven Hatfill, except in the former's case there was even less published evidence. Both were seemingly thrown to the media without formal charges due to lack of suspects.

What Ed didn't mention is even more interesting--details about the case--which seem to be right up his alley. Mr. Van de Velde was an educator teaching a military strategies political science course at Yale in 1998 when Suzanne Jovin, a popular 21 year old German-born student was brutally murdered off-campus. Keep that year of 1998 in mind while reading how Wiki describes her last day on earth:

After dropping off the penultimate draft of her senior essay on the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden,

A bit of a 'wow' sentence in hindsight. So, what did her draft thesis suggest?

[read the rest here]

Hatfill Surfaces

I missed the Steven Hatfill interview on the Today Show last week but after having watched the replay it's evident he's an interesting study. His stare-down of the Justice Dept was impressive. By the way, you'll need to read the accompanying article to get a better picture of what he actually said due to selective editing by NBC of the video, but his answer to Lauer's question about Ivins' guilt was perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, and Hatfill didn't really answer it.

He excoriates the government and their lapdogs in the media for propagating the myth he was the killer and calls America a police state, yet let's not forget he's 5 million richer for his troubles--thanks to the government. In the Atlantic interview he admits being friends with high-level intelligence members and also states he always thought al-Qaeda would be found responsible.

So where does that leave us? Well, we know the left is still interested in this because they think it's evidence of Bush setting the table for Iraq or GWoT initiative and are still hoping for a frogmarch one day. But the question is--why would Obama repel an independent investigation?

After all, if there was any culpability on the part of Bush or Cheney it seems odd he wouldn't go there, at least surreptitiously. Perhaps he's generally convinced of Ivins' guilt based on the evidence at hand. Or perhaps he's not completely convinced but doesn't need a war with the FBI right now over this subject with other fish to fry. Or maybe he's afraid of what might come out and how it might affect his narrative. He certainly knows all there is to know on it.

One thing's for sure, unlike other unsolved mysteries this one DOES have mainstream media attention due to the damage they think it might cause the right. Not that they'll get any answers, just sayin.

MORE 4/25/10

Thinking a bit about Hatfill's admission that all during the ordeal he thought AQ was responsible. Isn't such a statement a bit odd considering the government was going after him? And not just any government, but the Bush government? Perhaps the interviewer, had he any presence of mind, might have asked why he would think the Bush government would want to pin a terrorist attack on a lone scientist when 1) he knew he was innocent and 2) they were in the midst of fighting a war on terror all over the place.

Or was it just a throw-away line?

MORE 4/26/10

Something strikes me from the LA Times article linked above regarding the 2.82 million lump sum and 150K annual annuity that Hatfill will be receiving from the government for settling the lawsuit. Here is that something:

The lawsuit was filed in August 2003, but U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton delayed permitting Hatfill's lawyers to question FBI and Justice officials or news reporters for two more years. The government contended that the depositions of agents and FBI leaders could interfere with the investigation.

It's interesting that according to the intrepid Ed Lake's Bruce Ivins timeline, 2005 was the year he believes the FBI finally realized they had their man. According to Lake's data, on July 28th, 2005 the FBI first ran surveillance on Ivins' home to look for suspicious activity, and Ivins first realized he would need a lawyer during further interviews. That was almost two years to the date from judge Walton's 2003 order, meaning Hatfill's lawyers were about to be unleashed on the FBI, DoJ and media figures the following month.

Duley on Ivins

CNN's Anderson Cooper ran a feature last night on the mysterious therapist who was seeing USAMRIID microbiologist Bruce Ivins before he died, Jean Duley. FBI says Ivins was the anthrax killer, Duley said she's sure of it. I'm fairly sure but not as sure as she is.

But she was there, at least towards the end. And her testimony matches the circumstantial evidence. Yet CNN didn't make a big effort of pointing out her own troubles with the law leading up to her involvement and the possibility she got helped by helping. It would have been nicer had they had gotten the psychiatrist who called him homicidal and sociopathic rather than a therapist, although she seems to be telling an honest story (but I'm far from a body language expert).

While the evidence is convincing I still have a few nagging questions. For instance, if Ivins was emotionally unstable how hard would it be for him to hide his involvement from co-workers all these years? The constant back and forth of a professional life, eating lunch in the cafeteria and dealing with meetings and deadlines and such, all while assisting the FBI and working with infectious diseases while under emotional stress AND the stress of being the unintended murderer of five people--seems a hard task. I say unintended because there's a conventional wisdom that he did it as a patriotic gesture to help America withstand a bio attack and never intended to murder anyone. Does his involvement actually suggest he was more the vicious murderin' type all along and not a hero? It would be interesting to hear perspective from his colleagues and a few mental health professionals on that question.

Also, I don't see the double overwrites in the Brokaw letter quite the way others do. To me it appears that both "O"s in the "death to.." sentences are overwrites. There's clearly a double loop there. This seems crucial because if only one letter is off the code is off and the link to Ivins (and his pet peeves PAT and FNY) is weakened.

Anyway, whatever the case Ivins once asked the FBI towards the end how they could think he was the anthrax killer. Yeah, it's what a perp might say and it doesn't establish innocence by any means but I get the feeling he wasn't the boldest of individuals, which could perhaps explain that comment if it wasn't subterfuge.

He obviously had problems with women. The evidence suggests his marriage wasn't very strong yet they never pinned him with any lovers, hookers, etc, only women he harassed or communicated with over the internet. And when these women would object to his behavior he would back off. When the sorority house objected to his harassment, he backed off.

According to Duley he made plans to go out in a blaze of glory but telegraphed everything beforehand to his therapy group. Sorta takes away the surprise. Did he chicken out or was he announcing this in an effort to be committed permanently so more people wouldn't die (which leads back to the above question about noble intentions)? Instead he ended it all with Tylenol and didn't leave a note just months after being busted as a cross-dresser. It's sensitive and none of my damn business, but wonder what his wife thinks about all this now?

Some are lobbying for an independent investigation and that would be nice--just to nail down the science--but it's hard to believe there's enough support in Congress for keeping this sore subject alive. Even Glenn Greenwald, who was all over it in 2008 when Ivins was first announced and who said this late last year:

UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler notes that the FBI has become increasingly defiant towards requests that its claims be reviewed by an independent panel; of course, that couldn't happen unless the White House and Congress permitted it to.

..has not yet penned a Salon article about the closing of the case. Not sure if this means he's still working on one or whether he was simply overwhelmed with the circumstantial evidence, or whether he's lost all his vigor for Bush-bashing.

Because let's face it, most of the undercurrent for questioning the FBI's motives in fingering Bruce Ivins has been wrapped around the faint hope it was really a Rove-Cheney operation or perhaps something cooked up by Big Vaccine or Defense (just don't call them anti-government types).

MORE 3/8/10

Is it possible that Ivins was guilty but at the same time was not a lone wolf? In August 2008 his older brother Tom was interviewed by several media outlets. The guy sounded like a real winner--not sorry his brother was dead, calling him a wuss and figuring he was guilty. But here's how he put it:

"People around him used his position to do this," said Tom Ivins, who settled in Middletown after suffering a stroke. "I think it happened and somebody influenced him, making him think he wasn't doing wrong."

If he had not talked to his brother in 20 years how would he know this? Who was talking to him about his brother, and why were they mentioning a crowd rather than just him? Meanwhile, before the Ivins story broke Fox News had this story in early 2008 that stated the following:

The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Unless this was disinformation designed to get Ivins to make a move--and admittedly that's a big likelihood--then the only conclusion is they had others under suspicion right to the bitter end. With all the circumstantial evidence pointing to Ivins it's amazing they could have been seriously considering anyone else.

Ivins Case Closed

In the midst of the Tiger Woods mea culpa and the DOJ's Yoo/Bybee exoneration another document dump was executed on Friday--the closure of the anthrax letter case. Since I've wasted more than a few words on it here it's only appropriate to comment.

Do I think the FBI got their man? Probably. No, there's still no eyewitnesses to the production or mailing of the material and granted, it seems strange they weren't onto Ivins much earlier, but at the same time the evidence clearly wasn't invented. If they were framing him they certainly got lucky--this guy even admitted to driving hundreds of miles to mail packages to friends so they wouldn't know they were coming from him. How coincidental is that? He had no alibi for the windows of opportunity or the extra time spent in the labs during production. It would have been a heckuva circumstantial case.

Yes I know, few trust the government when it comes to lone wolves, me included. The vacuum between Hatfill and Ivins propagated many conspiracies. On the left some are disappointed because they believe in their heart of hearts the attack was either from Big Defense or BushCheneyBurton--the former to gain lucrative contracts and the latter to gain Iraq. But neither really required an attack. 9/11 itself was probably big enough to do the trick; Big Defense and Big Vaccine Contractor were probably going to get second looks for increased funding without the risk. Besides, they have lobbyists.

As to Iraq, had Bushitler ordered the attack one might think they would have left a better Iraqi fingerprint. Instead, they harassed Steven Hatfill for years and invaded Iraq without using the attack as a casus belli, and when reports surfaced about a bentonite/silica coating on the spores (used by Iraq) they quickly dismissed them.

Even more disappointing to the left--since the report was released using a Friday document dump this means their hero prezOne has either abandoned them, gone over to the dark side, or believes the FBI, since as president he likely knows the truth.

Some, primarily on the right, were figuring AQ was involved. However, many experts believe if they had acquired anthrax or any other WMDs they'd have had little hesitation in using them in a much less judicious fashion than the letters. This was pointed out today in the New York Times by former CIA and DOE analyst Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who conceded Zawahiri was in charge of a bio-weapons program (and warned they may still be pursuing one--AQ Khan is free again).

The one theory that made some sense was the 'warning theory' from Saddam after 9/11, ie, Saddam ordered proxies or his own intelligence agents to send the letters as a warning to Bush not to attack Iraq in response to 9/11. He did send two rambling 'open letters' to America after 9/11 and the second one even mentioned the anthrax. At the time he was harboring one of the bomb mixers from the first attack on the Trade Centers, Abdul Yasin. The first anthrax letter was postmarked on the same day the administration leaked the "Atta in Prague" story.

Surely if the attacks were messages from Saddam the Bush administration wouldn't have had an appetite to divulge the 'brutal' truth, thinking more WMD attacks might be in the offing. Amateur sleuths took hints from Bob Woodward's book on the subject, and certainly one could tie Bush's tippy top secret terrorist surveillance program into that theory.

Maybe Hatfill was either a willing or unwilling dupe targeted by the government to give the impression of a lone wolf to ease public fears while they looked for the real killer(s). At last check Mr. Hatfill and his millions were last seen heading off into the sunset, so perhaps we'll never know (and BTW, this theory works just as well with Ivins as the perp).

But Dr. Ivins seems to shut the door. He had motive, knowledge, access to the material, and psychological issues. The latest documents suggest he lied, tried to finger others, and towards the end even admitted he wasn't a monster but might not remember his actions during that period. As caretaker of the RMR-1029 stock used to prepare the attack material he was evidently above suspicion for awhile but as we've seen in Alabama and Texas over the past ten days, just having a college pedigree or academic title does not remove all suspicion. And sometimes there really are lone nuts.

MORE 2/21/10

The ultimate anti-conspiracist Ed Lake has been going over the FBI pdf and points out a few smoking guns. First, the revelation that Ivins may have used secret codes in the letters that referred to DNA coding must sting because Lake has insisted for years that Ivins got a child to write the letters. Anyway, this does make some sense:

And, for me, on top of that "clincher" is a likely reason why Dr. Ivins probably put a secret message into the media anthrax letters in the first place: He expected to be a hero as a result of sending the letters. He didn't think anyone would be killed. Like many other scientists, he expected a real biological weapons attack from Muslim extremists to follow the 9/11 attacks. By alerting the media and the nation to that possibility with his letters, he probably imagined that he would be saving tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of American lives. And knowing the hidden code would allow him to prove that he sent the letters, even though he'd taken every other precaution he could think of to prevent the letters from being traced back to him.

In other words, Ivins knew the public wasn't prepared for such attacks and wanted to raise awareness but didn't want to kill anyone, while at the same time he was selfish and arrogant enough to want the credit at some future point. He points to the letters being sealed with adhesive and taped in such a way as to limit cross-contamination in the mails as a clue that it was more the work of a hero rather than a terrorist, which also makes sense.

But the most interesting bit of information might be the release of Ivins' email to CDC after the death of National Enquirer editor Bob Stevens, the first known victim (page 9 and again later in the document):

When Robert Stevens became the first victim of the anthrax attacks, Dr. Ivins sent an unexplainable e-mail to a contact at the CDC on October 4, 2001, the day after Stevens was diagnosed with inhalational anthrax. Dr. Ivins, one of the nation’s foremost anthrax scientists, speculated that Mr. Stevens’s infection could have been the result of Stevens drinking infected creek water. This proffered explanation, was impossible because the anthrax had been inhaled. Alternatively, he proposed to the CDC that Stevens could have contracted the disease from infected alpaca used in wool socks or a sweater. Both a renowned microbiologist at another lab and a scientist working at USAMRIID found these suggestions absurd. The microbiologist at the other lab described them as “laughable,” and the USAMRIID scientist called them “fishy, any reasonable scientist would say this doesn’t make sense.” 44

The FBI considered this a fishing expedition and proof of a guilty conscience while Lake sees it as absolute denial after Stevens' death, which wasn't supposed to happen.

Oddly, this very same 'creek water' explanation was actually floated in the press the very same day as the Stevens story broke. From Ari Fleischer's book, page 191, regarding a Tommy Thompson press briefing on Stevens:

"We do know that he drank water out of a stream when he was traveling in North Carolina last week.."

Where did Thompson get the creek water angle? A CBS reporter also asked whether Stevens had been in contact with wool, which was also mentioned in the email. That's certainly a weird one. If Ivins was just a thoughtful patriot who had just accidentally killed a man trying to prevent bio attacks why would he dialogue with CDC about such inane possibilities and not say something like 'hey, this might be AQ we better get prepared'?

The only explanation that makes sense is that he was more sociopath than patriot. Only a sociopath would send yet another batch of even more potent letters a week or so later, after Stevens' death and with the story still in the media, and knowing more deaths may occur.

Perhaps that's why the FBI took pains to reveal Ivins' many idiosyncrasies, which all pointed towards a sort of split personality, one good, one evil, something Ivins himself seemed to accept towards the end. Unfortunately dead men tell no tales, so we'll never know for sure. But as to the far-out Iraq angle--if the letters really were warnings from Saddam Hussein then Bush called his bluff, and we see the results.

MORE 2/24/10

The letter to CDC mentioned above (coming on the same day as the first anthrax media briefing regarding the verified case of inhalation anthrax in Florida) was described by the FBI as "unexplainable" in the summary report:

When Robert Stevens became the first victim of the anthrax attacks, Dr. Ivins sent an unexplainable e-mail to a contact at the CDC on October 4, 2001, the day after Stevens was diagnosed with inhalational anthrax. Dr. Ivins, one of the nation’s foremost anthrax scientists, speculated that Mr. Stevens’s infection could have been the result of Stevens drinking infected creek water. This proffered explanation, was impossible because the anthrax had been inhaled. Alternatively, he proposed to the CDC that Stevens could have contracted the disease from infected alpaca used in wool socks or a sweater. Both a renowned microbiologist at another lab and a scientist working at USAMRIID found these suggestions absurd. The microbiologist at the other lab described them as “laughable,” and the USAMRIID scientist called them “fishy, any reasonable scientist would say this doesn’t make sense.” 44

They didn't post any of that email, so apparently now the recipient has leaked the actual content:

From: Ivins, Bruce E Dr USAMRIID
To:
Subject: Florida case(?)
Date: Thursday, October 04, 2001 9:57:19 PM

Hi,

I just heard this evening (and read over internet news) that a case of pulmonary anthrax may have been identified in Florida. Is this true, or is this just hysteria? The only Florida strain of B. anthracis that I am familiar with is V770, which is the parent of V770-NP1-R, the strain used in production of the human anthrax vaccine. (I believe that V770 was originally isolated from a cow in Florida in the early 1950s.) The article said that this person was an “Outdoorsman,” and had drunk water from a creek in North Carolina. If he really does have anthrax, could he have gotten it this way, or did he get it by tromping around some dusty field area. (Has North Carolina been dry this summer?) I know that in the wild in Africa, animals are supposed to be able to get it from water holes by stirring up spores and presumably ingesting and possibly inhaling them as an aerosol. Could this have happened? What if an animal had died upstream and the stream was contaminated? (Drinking from a stream or creek without boiling or purifying the water first is an invitation to intestinal disease or parasites, but have any other human anthrax cases been documented from people drinking contaminated water?)

You called me several times in the recent past with regards to another anthrax issue. If there’s anything I can help with here (if you or coworkers are involved) please let me know. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do, but I’m certainly willing to provide whatever informational assistance I can. (I would have been less surprised if the Florida man had been hunting deer in Texas, where there is identifiable anthrax. I don’t recall North Carolina as having ideal soil for preservation of anthrax spores or for anthrax cycling of spore-vegetative cell-spore-vegetative cell etc., but I suppose there could be areas of higher soil calcium and alkalinity.)

Anyway, please don’t hesitate to give me a call if there’s anything I can do. We are currently testing the virulence (in immunized and unimmunized guinea pigs) of B. anthracis strains from all over the world, including China, and we’ve come up with some very interesting differences in virulence among the strains.

Take care of yourself,

Bruce
-

Assuming this is the entire email mentioned in the summary report (and the only one) and the scientist in question didn't do some creative editing (or perhaps the blog he released it to), then it seems we can look at this two ways, a guilty conscience or within bounds of his scientific field.

Guilty: he's ticked off that Stevens died--nobody was supposed to die--so he's trying to suggest to CDC that it could have been something innocent, ie, creek water, dust, etc. A guilty person might do that, along with offering their services to 'help' solve things in hopes he could later manipulate the results showing his guilt. The fishing aspect would be that he knew there was a "AQ did it" letter with the powder so he wanted to see if CDC would confirm that in reply, confirming his involvement and his murder. After all, it could have been a coincidence. Based on the time and header of the email he was also in the lab working late, but this wasn't listed in the FBI time card release.

Within science: Ivins was one of the foremost b anthracis researchers in the world and the email showed he had had prior communication with the CDC contact. It is certainly within the bounds of natural scientific curiosity and human nature to contact a friend and get the inside skinny on an event so close to his field and one which he'd worked to develop vaccines against, especially a month after 9/11. My take- definitely fishing trip, leaning towards the guilty side but not all the way.

The only reason it's not 'all the way' is because the FBI misrepresented this email, claiming he was blaming it on creek water. And he never even mentioned wool or alpacas. Why play fast and loose with facts when trying to convince the public of a circumstantial case?

Nat Geo Anthrax Show

Just watched the NatGeo show and it definitely favored the conspiratorial side of the house. That's usually what happens when the FBI cannot provide a spokesman to prevent their side--this is still an open investigation (for now). Of course it's also sexier.

Some thoughts: The handwriting expert they had on said the writing on the attack letters suggested a Muslim. Why? She didn't say, only suggesting a Muslim was ruled out because the date (9-11-09) used the standard US non-military protocol, as if a Muslim terrorist might not deliberately try to throw off the authorities by using our standard convention.

Also, the use of Ivins' former supervisor at Fort Detrick as a source of information--a man who believes he wasn't the killer--was a fairly powerful voice against the FBI version.

Other than that, the show really didn't provide much new information. I've always wondered why someone couldn't have parlayed a sample off one of the eight matching vials of RMR-1029 outside Ft. Detrick and how they would know this didn't happen.

And have we ever heard Steven Hatfill explain why he thought the FBI pursued him so vigorously and publicly? Wonder if he considers himself a foil for the government to keep people from worrying about the possibility of more attacks or just the victim of gross incompetence? A book would be interesting.

Anyway, the NatGeo show didn't interview Ed Lake or some of the other web sleuths who've covered this story forever. Checking his site there's nothing up yet about the show at the time this was written. He did link to this summary of the online debate, which no doubt includes those who believe the letters were done by a government lab and may even one day track back to Dick Cheney. Or even unravel the entire 9/11 attack itself as some kind of neocon inside job. C'mon, you know who you are!

At the same time some of those same folks are probably laughing hysterically at the Obama "Birthers". Scott Shane from the New York Times was interviewed extensively for the anthrax show and seems unconvinced of the official story. Meanwhile, his paper basically laughed off the birth cert thing over the weekend. Sure, parts of it deserve to be laughed off (for the record, I believe Obama is a natural born citizen) but it does seem weird that a near genius like Obama would so adamantly insist his college transcripts be hidden from public view. Perhaps Mr. Shane could do some digging around, if he has the time.

Dead Fish and White Powder

What the heck's up with this?

A Homeland Security intelligence official was responsible for bringing a package containing a dead fish and white powder to department offices in downtown Washington Friday, an apparent violation of security protocols that set off a significant security incident, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Wow, the official brought those items in deliberately? Was it a prank or a serious crackup? Not really.

The article repeatedly points out the angst over the security violation without bothering to speculate on why a Homeland Security official working with WMDs might have received such a package to begin with. According to the story the official, Maureen McCarthy, was

"a holdover from the Bush administration, [she] is one of a number of officials who agency insiders say remains at the agency in positions created for them."

What are the chances this 'agency insider' doesn't think too much of either her or her position?

Admittedly this might be a big 'who cares'; a minimal incident caused by a prank or some petty bureaucratic jealousy or vendetta. Or it may be something else. Ms. McCarthy's resume makes it a little more interesting in light of the fact the package's return address was from Batelle, Inc, the Ohio weapons lab often mentioned in lefty posts about the anthrax letter attacks.

A cadre of people, mainly hard lefties, believe Batelle might have been involved in the attack for a variety of reasons, perhaps some due to previous clandestine testing programs involving bio-weapons back in the 90s that supposedly violated the bio-weapons non-proliferation treaty. As the story goes, neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations took a fancy to strict compliance with the treaty since it hampered their ability to do the necessary research to test methods of defeating bio weapon attacks--perhaps dispensed by proxy groups affiliated with hostile signatory countries.

Part of the conspiracy involves factoids such as Bush officials being placed on Cipro the night of 9/11 (not after the first letter was discovered), which is supposed to prove the government's foreknowledge and explain why Dr. Bruce Ivins was scapegoated. In truth, they probably DID fear such attacks, and would have been idiots to think otherwise.

Purveyors of these stories usually fail to mention that US military personnel were receiving anthrax vaccines in the late 90s--a concoction co-developed by Ivins himself [why would they need such a thing if Saddam was harmless? -ed]. Nevertheless Senator Leahy, himself an anthrax letter victim, has suggested that Congress should ask a few questions via some sort of truth commission, no doubt an exercise bent less on learned lessons than sticking the last wooden stake in the GOP's floundering heart. Obama remains luke-cool on the issue, probably because he knows it would open a whole new can of nuts.

Anyway, that's enough background to make the mailing of a dead fish and some white powder to a high level government official working with bio-weapons prevention, including oversight of the mysterious Plum Island facility, a raised-eyebrow event.

Keep in mind Plum Island was mentioned on an al Qaeda laptop confiscated in Afghanistan in 2001 and was recently in the news due to the capture of Pakistani AQ scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who was evidently researching an attack on it at some point (she attended school here). Siddiqui just happens to be a relative of another famous Baluch-Pakistani currently being held at Gitmo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and by extension his nephew Ramzi, a lifer resident of the Supermax.

But aside from all the shadowy GWoT or Clancy-esque intrigue stuff, and discounting typical personal shenanigans between adversaries, is it possible we're seeing a kind of purge taking place against Bush holdovers? Let's hope not--our government workforce needs all the harmonious tranquility it can muster, especially in her specialty area.

Case Closed

When one of the most skeptical reporters covering the 2001 anthrax letters case appears convinced, it might be over. Scott Shane's seven page NY Times online expose of Bruce Ivins leaves little reason to believe the killer(s) are still loose. If so, they got extremely lucky.

Surely this piece will be rapidly dismissed by those who currently think Mike Connell's plane crash was murder and who are holding out faint hope for a final world inquisition of the "Bush crime family" at the Hague. Conversely, it might also bust the bubble of those who still firmly believe AQ or Saddam were involved, a group to which I formerly belonged.

But the circumstantial evidence is simply too overwhelming to ignore. He had opportunity (lab access to Ames) and hubris (emails showing himself working around cultures without gloves). He had no alibi during the mailing windows and enough time to drive up and back. He worked late in the lab before both mailings. His psychiatric history suggested a propensity to compartmentalize nefarious behavior. He had previously taken long overnight drives to deliver packages or mail letters from different postal zones. Imagine if they had that much evidence against Rove--for anything?

By all accounts he was a brilliant but rather thin-skinned man who never forgave his high school peers for not treating him better. No, they never put the letters in his hand but a smart guy like Ivins would have taken precautions and he knew how to handle germs.

Some ask why he wasn't a suspect early on (including me) but think about it--if it came down to a nerdy 'goody-two shoes' type who juggled and was helping the FBI (and had even signed up to volunteer at the Red Cross after 9/11) versus a guy like Steven Hatfill, who had written an unpublished novel about bioterrorism, briefly worked at Fort Detrick via a forged a PhD, who would you choose? The irony is that while volunteering for Red Cross, Ivins was attending therapy.

Many claim he had no motive and admittedly, securing funding for his anthrax vaccine by sending deadly letters sounds foolish since 9/11 would have likely done the trick by itself. Perhaps it was more towards preparedness than funding. The letters created a frenzy in businesses all over America as to proper ways of sorting mail and handling hazardous materials, and made everyone more vigilant about odd parcels.

Recall that at the time everyone thought the 'other shoe' would soon drop, many believing it might be of a bio-terror nature. It was well known that Zawahiri was pursuing anthrax for AQ and Saddam's unaccounted-for stockpiles were legend. As Shane pointed out, crop dusters were banned for a long period of time after 9/11 and they had a bio-terror expert into the White House for a briefing on the evening of the attack. Reportedly Dick Cheney carried around a bio-hazard suit wherever he went for awhile after the attacks.

But perhaps the weirdest part of Shane's article was Ivins' final request, via a will:

But he left one more surprise for his family: a clause in his will intended to enforce his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered. If his demands were not met, $50,000 from his estate would go not to the family but to Planned Parenthood of Maryland, whose abortion services Mrs. Ivins abhorred.

It was one last, devious step for a man whose oddities, for many people, made the F.B.I.’s anthrax accusation more plausible.

Just speculating, but many Catholics do not condone cremation and especially the scattering of ashes. So rather than suggesting he'd had a change of heart as to abortion or was trying to enact a last-minute revenge on his wife, maybe this was Ivins' way of taking his punishment by a last act of self-desecration, knowing the PP threat was the only way she'd agree to it.

If Bruce Ivins was indeed the culprit it doesn't signal an end to the bio-terror threat against America by any means. Our enemies would likely do a lot more than a few letters. And it would be nice to see somebody, anybody, interview Steven Hatfill, although it's fairly obvious as to why he wouldn't want to talk.

But the conspiracies will never die, therefore it'll be interesting to see if the new Congress takes them up with any hearings. Chances are with Bush gone and Ivins not exactly a neocon they'll forego such inquiries in an effort to pursue more pressing issues.

MORE 1/4/09

Those of you who read Shane's summary of events:

That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator.

..might be wondering what's gotten into this blogger by suggesting the Times article hints the case might be solved. Well, it's what Shane did not say that was key for me.

He quickly dismissed the terrorist angle after ruling out the source of the material being anywhere but Frederick, MD due to water testing. That's significant, meaning the material would have had to have been stolen from the Fort if Ivins didn't do it since we know it was RMR-1029. That wouldn't preclude a terrorist or other nut from coming to Frederick with stolen RMR-1029 then making the concoction using local water but with all the circumstantial evidence pointing to Ivins such begins a journey into fantasyland.

In sum, I think Shane threw in the above paragraph to appease the many moonbat readers of the Times then proceeded to all but prosecute Dr. Ivins with the rest of the article. Ed Lake seems to agree.

OF COURSE... 1/4/09

They've never found Abderraouf Jdey, something that has long bothered those who believe AQ might have been involved. He was based in Canada, a hot bed of jihadi activity when 9/11 occurred:

Following 9/11, United States security officials looked across the border, towards Montreal, Québec where Ressam alleged that over 60 trained Jihadists remained. Of particular concern were two Tunisian-born Canadians, Abderraouf Jdey [1] and Faker Boussora [2]. The two had settled in Montreal in the early 1990s, and like a number of local militants, had also attended the Assuna mosque. There, they most likely met with Ahmed Ressam’s recruiter and fellow Tunisian, Raouf Hannachi, before being sent to train in Afghanistan. Jdey was subsequently chosen by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to pilot an airliner in a second wave of suicide attacks supposed to take place following 9/11. [3]

One can make connections between his group and those associating with Mohamed Mahjoub, who was also linked at one point to a man whom the 9/11 Commission called a WMD procurement agent for bin Laden, Mubarak al-Duri. Had there ever been any connection between this al-Duri and the slightly more famous one in Iraq then perhaps the circle would be complete. But both the FBI and CIA interviewed him in the Sudan after 9/11 and left him alone.

Why would this not come out? I can think of a couple of good reasons... 1) if Jdey was indeed on AA 587 in November 2001 and crashed it with a shoe-bomb (which sounds about as bizarre as excessive rudder travel causing the tail to fall off during wake turbulence) it could have nose-dived the struggling aviation industry. We had already bailed them out with 15 billion dollars. 2) to stop panic--if the public knew for sure AQ had anthrax it could have been a game changer. And 3) if the WMD material was linked back to Saddam the government wasn't ready to do anything about it at that point, especially since they didn't know what might happen next.

But that still leaves the source material issue. The only way Jdey could have sent the letters is if he or someone complicit stole material from Fort Detrick and passed it to him, OR, if the FBI switched out the letter powder at their crime lab with an RMR-1029 mixture to hide the event from the public. They wouldn't do that, would they? At any rate, Ivins' weirdness was not something manufactured by the Feds. Ignoring him requires a belief in other fantastical circumstantial evidence. Considering him does not require a giant conspiracy and follows more in line with Occam's Razor.

MORE 1/6/09

I've received some private correspondence that suggests my reading of Mr. Shane's column is erroneous; that he does not think the case is closed by any means. That may well be true. My post was a gut reaction to the tone of his column, which was top heavy with the dark side of Ivins and pretty thin on evidence for terrorists, both corporate and Islamic. At some point you go to conclusions with the facts you've got.

That doesn't mean my mind is now locked to any future developments, it just means the evidence shown so far looks worse and worse for Dr Ivins. The skeptics need to somehow get the same genetic mutated RMR-1029 (and now believed to have been cooked in Frederick, MD) out of the building somehow, preferably into the hands of a terrorist. The Feds have reportedly checked all the instances of the material leaving the facility, at least those reported. But would anyone admit a breach under the circumstances, especially if it was due in part to their own hubris?

Maybe, as it would mean moving the interrogation lamp to someone else. But there's always that liability aspect to consider along with the fact the Fort might not have defended indivuduals who didn't follow the rules. Hopefully the FBI has already considered and followed this line of thought to it's conclusion.

Guilt by Radical Association

In the new movie "An American Carol" there's a scene shot in front of a mythical "Che Guevara Hospital", intending to spoof the Michael Moore propaganda health care trip to Cuba. It's kinda funny in the context of the film but does it actually hit a bit too close to home for some on the left, especially in regards to Obama?

Up to now the mainstream media has largely depended on Obama's own fight the smears website to debunk the charges of radical associations, which stands in sharp contrast to their investigative blitzkrieg towards newcomer Sarah Palin.

Before proceeding it's fair to note that Obama has been in the public eye for 2 years and Palin 2 months, and he's been asked a lot more questions and been through several debates. The point is, they're taking his word for everything. Sean Hannity may be a right wing tool but he's dead on accurate when he says 2008 was the year journalism died.

All of this is about to change, or be rearranged. The WaPo just printed an article Friday about team Maverick's newest strategy, which is to hit Obama with his radical associations. The column mentions William Ayers, but spells his name "Ayres", not including it as a hyperlink as with most other names on the page. Rather fitting, eh?

Speaking of Hannity, he'll be doing a show on the associations this weekend. He'll probably feature the various Che Guevara posters spotted on the walls of several Obama supporters during TV interviews without mainstream follow-up investigative reports, perhaps comparing them to hypothetical discoveries of Eric Rudolph, David Duke or Jerry Falwell posters on the walls of Palin supporters (which would have relegated her to a footnote of history by now). All of this will force a response.

Meanwhile, a former Democratic official in Pennsylvania has had a pending lawsuit over Obama's birth certificate for months to almost no fanfare. Actually, players on both sides have written the guy off as either a nutbar or disgruntled Hillary hack, but now the DNC is trying to legally quash the suit. That's only fit to print at World Net Daily for some reason. Can anyone define the real Truth Squad?

As to Ayers, Just One Minute has been channeling another Democrat, Chicago web reporter Steve Diamond, in trying to expose Obama's association with the socialist and former terrorist. After a year of pretending Ayers doesn't exist the Gray Lady finally sent reporter Scott Shane out on the case. The result is, as Maguire describes it, an apologia:

Mr. Hayden, 68, said he has known Mr. Ayers for 45 years and was on the other side of the split in the radical antiwar movement that led Mr. Ayers and others to form the Weathermen. But Mr. Hayden said he saw attempts to link Mr. Obama with bombings and radicalism as “typical campaign shenanigans.”

Once again they've misplaced the outrage--nobody is attempting to link Obama with actual bombings--they are linking him to a person who did the bombings and remains unrepentant. Is that too nuanced for Shane?

In other words, if Obama has no problem working on education projects with a psuedo-Marxist unrepentant domestic terrorist who only avoided jail time through a technicality associated with domestic eavesdropping by the FBI and a politically well-connected father, what are his real feelings towards A'jad and Chavez? It's clear he wasn't interested in removing Saddam and later wanted to throw up a white flag on our mission in Iraq despite the potential for devastating after-effects. And it's clear he's been down with allowing himself to be used in PR photo-ops with various dictators, ala Dennis Kucinich and Nancy Pelosi with Bashar Assad.

Shane mentions that Ayers received a doctorate from Columbia University in 1987 without mentioning the Obama campaign's refusal to release Obama's Columbia transcripts or whether they knew each other when. One of the favorite euphemisms of the Obama campaign of late has been the folks on Main Street, yet those folks must provide copies of their college transcripts when applying for federal jobs to stand any chance of success. Apparently that doesn't apply to the presidency.

One final note. It's ironic that a reporter like Shane, who has been on the leading edge of plumbing the deep depths of a domestic terrorist attack using anthrax, sees absolutely no hidden smoking guns when it comes to an actual domestic terrorist and his association with a possible president.

MORE 10/04/08

Talk about apologists:

While it is known that Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood, served on a charity board together and had a fleeting political connection, it's a stretch of any reading of the public record to say the pair ever palled around. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts.

Again, nobody is insinuating Obama was chummy with Ayers during his Weatherman days, and it's in the public record that Obama deplores the actions of the former domestic terrorist. Problem is, the former domestic terrorist does not.

This screed was disguised as a news story from the AP. Jaw-dropping, but typical of what McCain/Palin will face by going down this road--mainstream media reporters acting as fight the smears teammembers. It's another desperation play by the fighter jockey, who is clearly trying to make an end-run around the media and go right to the people like Reagan did. Tuesday's debate might be very entertaining.

Ivins Update

It's mostly forgotten amidst all the financial news but information continues to trickle out about Dr. Ivins regards the anthrax mailings. A log has surfaced of his security in/out swipe card register showing in detail when he entered/exited the various facilities at the Fort on September 17/18 and for October 6-9 during the mailing windows.

This is new information--the original affidavit had a log of his evening visits that stopped on September 16, saying, "after September 16, Dr. Ivins did not enter Suite B3 in the evening again until September 25". There was similar language after October 5th. Both are seemingly contradictory to this new log information.

You may recall that some lefties (who generally can't wait to prove the government mailed the envelopes) got lathered up over this WaPo article last month that purportedly attributed Ivin's leave taken during the day on September 17th as the window of opportunity, that is until the lefties reminded everyone the postmark would have been on the 17th. The window was then moved forward to the overnight hours of the 17th-18th.

Ed Lake has a synopsis but he apparently made a mistake on September 18th, the day the letters were postmarked. Ivins either had two windows of opportunity that day or something is amiss with the logs.

More here..

Weaponization Blues

During Robert Mueller's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony this past Thursday a rather animated Senator Leahy asked what he thought was a trick question: which labs other than Dugway or Battelle could have produced anthrax similar to the letters? Mueller came back after the break with an answer, which he couldn't repeat in open session, but seemingly satisfying the Senator. Did Leahy think the spores were weaponized?

The weaponization question has the "govt did it" types flummoxed at the moment. Ed Lake points to this Scientific American article about the involvement of Sandia National Labs in unlocking the mystery of the spores. It doesn't seem to unlock the mystery of the case, though.

Beginning a few paragraphs down the article talks about Dr. Michaels discovery that the spores weren't really coated with frosty silica glass as earlier stated, rather the silicon naturally occurred in the spore casing itself as it was grown. But then came the headscratcher:

It was this key information that helped the FBI to rule out the likelihood that a terrorist organization was behind the anthrax mailings and prompted the agency to turn its attention to U.S. government labs as the possible source of the anthrax.

Actually, in 2006 the FBI announced a new direction on the case; new leadership in the investigation; and a view that anyone with biological knowledge and know-how could have manufactured the attack anthrax. In effect, this ruled out weapons labs such as Dugway, Battelle, and God knows what in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, but not necessarily terrorists.

After all, we knew al-Qaeda wasn't capable of producing weapons grade material by themselves. We knew the material in the letters wasn't coated with bentonite, a typical Iraqi additive. So if the material was simply purely refined, not weaponized, why wouldn't that rule in al-Qaeda or other assorted terrorist groups, perhaps using rogue scientists in rogue labs working with stolen material? The CIA reportedly had a Zawahiri Task Force.

If a foreign country wanted to use AQ as a proxy to warn America to stay back after 9/11 then it might make sense for them to use their own product as a calling card. On the other hand, if AQ had clandestinely acquired material from a foreign country who didn't want to be known then it wouldn't make sense for them to implicate said country using a traceable product, unless they were trying to blackmail or frame that particular country.

But if AQ wasn't involved (and it seems a long shot) that strongly suggests Ivins was involved assuming everyone else with access to the 4-marker RMR-1029 sample had alibis. Did they? In the Spring of this year Fox News reported the FBI had narrowed down their investigation to 3 people at Fort Detrick and one outside (someone in an American lab), yet we've never learned how or why these other folks were eliminated. Nobody has asked.

Mueller meets Congress

Robert "three sticks" Mueller faced the Judiciary Committee today and was peppered with questions about Dr. Bruce Ivins and the anthrax case. OK, he was peppered with two. Glenn Greenwald was none too happy. Matter of fact, he was darn near meltdown, lamenting about all the Bush officials who've evaded a frogmarch over the years by not publicly admitting their clear and obvious guilt to these committees.

Funny how someone can so quickly go from a liberal hero to villain in just a few days.

Mueller's two main non-answers were covered by Greenwald and Ed Lake but quickly summarizing, he didn't know the weight of the silicon content of the spores (in their scientific press briefing the FBI background official called it "significant") and he didn't expose the root of all nutroot evil--how they eliminated the CIA contractors at Battelle Memorial institute. For the record, in this instance the CIA is bad but when Valerie Plame worked there they were good.

Their unified theory seems to be that the spores were weaponized and sent out by the Bush machine via contractors to feed the war wagon against Saddam. This despite the fact the administration went out of their way to downplay the bentonite claim when ABC sprang it, then later fingered an American scientist and harassed him for 2 years, even naming the investigation "Ameri" thrax. Oh, and disregard that secret story about Cheney toting around a bio-suit, he clearly wasn't protecting himself from himself.

BTW, Lake mentioned the "Quantico letter", which was finally published. Not sure where the semblance to the anthrax letters exist, though. The person writing claims to be a current co-worker with Assaad, which Ivins was not in 2001, but that could have been designed to finger someone else. And it comports with some of his email diatribes. So it's interesting. But even more interesting is the question not asked--how did the FBI eliminate the possibility some of the RMR-1029 samples sent to outside labs didn't disappear along the way? They would have seemingly also had the four genetic markers and would never have been sent to the repository.

Whatever the case, the nutters were certainly correct about Mueller being vague. He said the National Academy of Science would take an independent look and of course they will, but that takes time and the public's memory is short. The longer these kinds of things drag on, the less likely an adequate resolution will ever be seen, as illuminated by a highly animated Chairman Conyers. If only he would have been that excited about TWA800.

MORE 9/17/08

Mueller met in front of the Senate Judiciary today. No video yet, but the skinny is that Leahy doesn't believe Ivins was the killer (he provided no factual reason why) and Grassley's questions weren't answered. Here's some restrained musings from Greenwald including an interview with Nadler, who hints that he'll be pushing for Congress to investigate the Bush administration after they leave regardless of who wins in November, and will also soon try to introduce a law restricting presidential pardons to only those who've already been prosecuted.

My concerns continue to lay with the possibility some of the RMR-1029 material escaped from a legitimate lab, which if used later for the letters would seemingly also display the 4 mutations present in Ivins' flask yet wouldn't have been sent to the FBI repository for evidence. I'm not an expert so this might be very easily proven an erroneous concern (although someone familiar with Fort Detrick was once quoted as saying material could be easily smuggled out at one time) but I haven't heard or seen it significantly addressed by anyone in power yet.

Another Ivins update

Expect more news on the anthrax letter case during the next two weeks as Congressional testimony is scheduled from FBI Director Robert Mueller September 16th and 17th. Here's the New York Times today quoting Senator Charles Grassley:

“If the case is solved, why isn’t it solved?” Mr. Grassley asked. “It’s all very suspicious, and you wonder whether or not the F.B.I. doesn’t have something to cover up and that they don’t want to come clean.”

The story also mentions several boxes of material Ivins had kept in relation to the case:

A government lawyer not involved in the investigation will soon review the papers with Mr. Kemp, who said some might be given to investigators or made public.

It's hard to imagine Ivins would have kept anything in those files to completely exonerate himself otherwise his lawyer would already have them. They may tend towards incriminating him, which if true could close the case for all but the wackiest of conspiracy theorists. We'll see. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I've spent some time perusing the transcript of the August 18 briefing held by FBI featuring some of their lab scientists and other scientists who worked on the case speaking with members of the press. My thoughts are stashed at this new continuation site, for those who give a rip.

Various and Sundry

Sort of a catch up post here on a few different subjects. Hope all are having a great Labor Day weekend..

HURRICANES AND SINKHOLES

Gustav is a monster, heading right for Louisiana. Oddly, it may be the first time in history an event in Minnesota has been canceled due to a hurricane, depending on what McCain does My suggestion--cancel. Even if it peters out to a CAT 1 Hanna is still swirling around off the east coast of Florida. It would be refreshing to see McCain, Palin and families handing out water bottles or filling sand bags--we know Obama and Biden will be doing it.

Meanwhile here in our fair city a sinkhole has been blocking southerly access to the Amtrak depot going on six months now. Instead of the mayor saying "deal with it" he apparently has said "squabble with the railroad so we all look like fools". And lo, it has now come to pass. Amtrak's special evacuation trains from New Orleans will now have to make some kind of convoluted detour, backing into the station from the north. Well played, King.

PALINMANIA

The maverick selection of Sarah Palin has really separated the liberal wheat from the moonbat chaff. The level of vitriol is mind-numbing--making Sean Hannity's bash of Joe Biden look like Biblical text. This trash festival will only be formally closed when someone invokes Godwin's Law, if it hasn't already happened.

By the way, the left is worried about McCain not being able to fulfill his duties, leaving her the Commander-in-Chief (which hasn't given me any warm fuzzies either) but think about it--if Palin becomes president she can nominate another Vice President (subject to Congressional approval) who would most likely be a seasoned veteran like perhaps Minority Leader John Boehner or a statesman of her choice. Isn't that about the same as having a lightweight on opening day?

DR. BRUCE IVINS

The Congress may take the anthrax story up during the next few weeks. Senator Charles Grassley expects it to come up when FBI Director Mueller testifies but it's not a special session. Questions remain, such as why Ivins would incriminate himself by sending his own attack sample to the FBI for testing, even using the wrong format. But he still looks guilty.

One thing's for sure, he couldn't take the intense scrutiny Hatfill endured. Times writer Nic Kristof, who helped make Hatfill's life miserable, wrote an apology piece a few days ago. No word on Hatfill's response--no word from Hatill at all--but perhaps it would be something like, "..you've been had".

IN GOD WE TRUST ON THE MONEY

Some want it gone. MSNBC is running a poll on whether to remove it or not--I voted no. My view is that the mention of "God" on money does not endorse Christianity or any other religion as most believe in some kind of God-like deity. Even the Indians worshipped a 'Great Spirit'. Wonder if the same people would complain if they changed it to that?

State of the Sponsorship

Scientists at Sandia National Labs have been freed to discuss their detective work on the anthrax mystery and have elaborated on the lack of a silica coating to the spores, suggesting it tends to rule out state sponsorship. Not really.

Indy researcher Ed Lake has always been a lone nut proponent and tends to bristle at those who don't share his view. The following blockquote is his reaction to an email he received from an expert regards the Sandia silica conclusion:

Unfortunately, this is one of those occasions where general terms and suggestions may be more appropriate than universal truths, since the statement seems to have given license to all the people who were previously arguing that the anthrax was weaponized to now argue that the lack of weaponization means nothing, and they can still argue that there was a "state sponsor" behind the attacks. Or al Qaeda could have done it.

While his reasoning is sound (some want it both ways) the spore coating scenario really only made sense if someone stole American or Russian powder (the bentonite-Iraq story was shot down by the White House early on) or if AQ was advertising they'd figured out the process, which was near-impossible.

It's actually worse to think it wasn't weaponized. We'd have to change 'Axis of Evil' to 'Axis of Idiots' to think one of them would have attacked America a week after 9/11 using their own material fingerprint. As the emailer alludes, the lack of a coating doesn't rule out a state from sponsoring a proxy terrorist group by supplying necessary primary ingredients and know-how, leaving their own mark off the product, which has always left AQ in the picture.

That doesn't take Ivins out of the picture--he still looks pretty darn guilty. But on the same token, why would he leave his own material fingerprint by using the RMR-1029 supply then send the FBI a sample of it? Being the killer he'd have known it could be genetically tied back to his stock, even if sent in the wrong format. We'd have to believe he was either overly arrogant and nearly insane or in the least impulsively stupid, which the FBI has been trying hard to prove of late. But some of those constructs also apply to terrorists.

But back to that pesky state sponsorship thing. We know proxies and even lone wolf terrorists like anniversaries. McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal building on April 19, 1995 on the one year anniversary of Waco. But how many knew April 19 was also the anniversary of the creation of UNSCOM to enforce UN Resoltion 687 in disarming Saddam Hussein?

Here's a video that discusses anniversaries (via Jack Cashill). Warning, it's somewhat truther-ish in music and overtones--just watch for the dates:



He left a few out. Yousef entered America in 1992 with a fake Iraqi passport. It had a date stamp of September 11, 1990 on it (refer to Mylroie's "The War Against America" page 53). Why use a fake Iraqi passport with 9/11/90 when he knew Iraqi nationals needed a visa to enter the US, which he didn't have? Andy McCarthy believes it because he wasn't very bright, yet he made his way past immigration and later set off the bomb and almost knocked down the towers (where would Clinton have retaliated for that?).

Evidently he favored that date because years later federal prisoner Yousef sued the Bureau of Prisons for what he called "draconian restrictions" at ADX Florence. The lawsuit was filed on 9/11/98.

The lefties might call these coincidences 'neocon fantasies' and OK, perhaps they are. But the folks who are 100 percent invested in Iraq being harmless and inconsequential to the GWoT--like Barack Obama--will never compromise on this issue. They simply can't. On the other hand, Joe Biden was once a major advocate of regime change and voted yea for the use of force before he started blaming Bush for worldwide terrorism. Maybe the verbal volcano will spurt out some kind of inconvenient truth along the way if pressed regards this issue. Could be fun to watch.

End Game

The New York Times, reporting today on new scientific revelations about the anthrax:

By late 2005 to 2006 it became clear that just eight of the 1,070 samples collected included all four morphs. And one of the samples was the ancestor of the other seven. The seven samples came from Fort Detrick and one other laboratory in the United States, F.B.I. scientists said at the Monday news conference, held at F.B.I. headquarters.

The Washington Post, commenting on the latest updates on the case in September 2006:

"There is no significant signature in the powder that points to a domestic source," said one scientist who has extensively studied the tan, talc-like material that paralyzed much of Washington in the deadliest bioterrorism attack in U.S. history.

Still a little strange, but maybe they were trying to spook Ivins into reacting. Why though, if they were making such good progress in the lab in 2006, was the leader of Amerithrax, Richard Lambert, transferred? Grassley asked some questions then, too.

Anyway, the scientific revelations released today will satisfy some while offering more fodder to others. The slow trickle is cooling off some of the conspiracists and even Greenwald seems to have curtailed the chase based on his last few columns. Maybe that's because it's obvious Ivins had time to make the trip, was skilled enough to not leave traces in his car or home (or kill himself), had emotional issues and was a little weird to boot. 9/11 was a traumatic event for many, and maybe it was enough to snap him. Perhaps he wasn't trying to kill anyone, just scare the nation into a preparedness frenzy based on what he knew of the threat.

Thing is, today's information didn't shine any light on that possible motive nor did it seem to link the attack anthrax to Ivins' Fort Detrick lab. One of Senator Grassley's recent questions was whether it was possible any of the substance fell into the wrong hands--it would seem from today's story that if any RMR-1029 material ever unofficially walked out of that lab it would have displayed the same key mutations (and a former employee has admitted such a thing was possible).

But it's rather amusing that as this story begins to fade away the Times remains vigilant while showing nowhere near the same curiosity about Obams's ties with an unrepentant domestic terrorist, one who gives interviews with socialists sitting in front of Che Guevara flags. Wonder which end game Times staffers like Nic "I'll apologize to Hatfill real soon" Kristof believe in? Doubtful it's the Ross Getman Islamic terrorist version.

After all, their former run-amok expert on germs and Islamic terrorism was a friend of another world-class microbiologist who 'committed suicide', former UNSCOM inspector Dr. David Kelly. Miller was cut adrift about the same time the Times turned on Bush by giving up the terrorist surveillance program. One could assume they might have strong feelings about all this, especially after Miller's starring role in the Plame affair.

Speaking of starring roles, the Miller character will soon be appear on the silver screen portrayed by the lovely Kate Beckinsale in the film "Nothing But the Truth", which debuts in Canada in September. Most of the flick was filmed here in Memphis, and rumor has it a local blogger might even make a cameo.

Ivins update II

The FBI held a technical session at its HQ this afternoon to discuss the anthrax whodunit in more scientific detail. The media was invited, sans cameras, for what that was worth.

The news clarified last Friday's New York Times report that said, seemingly contrary to previous reports and the affidavits themselves, that Ivins's initial sample actually did match the evidence anthrax. Not quite.

According to today's session the first sample indeed did match the evidence but was destroyed by the FBI because it didn't follow the protocol that Ivins himself helped to structure. Since it was not in the same format as the thousands of other samples under subpoena they claimed it wouldn't be admissible. Before destruction they sent a copy to a scientist at Northern Arizona University, then promptly forgot about it.

Ivins claimed to have known a few months after the attack that the evidence had similar qualities to his flask of RMR-1029. The FBI claims he was lying. By now saying they destroyed the first batch it takes away any possibility they could have told him or any other scientists three months after the attacks.

The fact the first batch was a match means he took a great risk by sending what he knew was the culprit anthrax to the FBI, even with incorrect format. We know it was viable because later it came back to bite him through DNA testing--he would have known that was possible. Incredibly risky, but we don't know what was being said around the water cooler at the time. Wonder if that April 2002 sample is still around for some independent testing?

It's interesting the stories say the FBI learned their error (destroying the sample) three years after 2002. Still somewhat confusing. When the Feds went to visit Ivins on March 31 2005 they were grilling him on why his April 2002 submission didn't match his RMR-1029 flask they had seized, not on why his first and second submissions in 2002 didn't match. According to reports they couldn't have known such a thing at the time because the NAU batch wasn't discovered until a year later in 2006, unless I've missed something, a decent bet with this mess.

Ironically, only nine days before the March 31 face-off an anthrax scare occurred at the Pentagon, hardly publicized by any major media:

Harris also said the anthrax in the initial samples was the same strain as the organism used during the first anthrax attack via U.S. Mail facilities in the fall of 2001. This was not surprising, however, he said, because it is the most common strain.

The material was tested at USAMRIID, who found nothing, but showed a positive when tested by a contractor who had never experienced a false positive in thousands of previous tests.

Greenwald and his co-conspiracists will probably claim the destroyed evidence was some kind of ruse after the fact to explain why Ivins had to be lying during the following conversations:

As indicated in previous paragraphs, the RMR- 1029 submission provided by Dr. Ivins in April 2002 did not match genetically or phenotypically. Therefore, neither SA Steele nor any other member of the Task Force could make a comparison between the Ames strain used in the mailing and RMR 1029, until after the June 17,2004 submission and subsequent laboratory analysis.

When interviewed again on May 7,2007, Dr. Ivins told investigators that, within three months after the letter attacks, he was aware that his stock of anthrax, RMR-1029, exhibited unique morphological similarities to the anthrax-used in the attacks, and that he allegedly learned this information from three coworkers at USAMRTID who participated in the forensic analysis of the anthrax in the letters. Each of those three coworkers was interviewed by the Task Force, and deny disclosing such information to Dr. Ivins.

We know someone had the February 2002 sample the entire time and it's not clear whether the botched sample could have been tested before being destroyed. That leaves open the possibility that although perhaps inadmissible, someone still tested it and could have told Ivins as he indicated.

Greenwald might also claim the seizure of RMR-1029 from Ivins's lab in 2004, which was tested off-site by the Navy and determined to be a match to the evidence anthrax, cannot be trusted without independent verification. They may also ask why the Feds would have needed Ivins's 2002 initial botched sample to crack the case when they had control of his entire flask of RMR-1029 (which the 2002 sample was based on) as early as 2004. Overall it seems somewhat odd they wouldn't have indicted him in 2005 based on the severity of the situation (WMDs). So far we've been told they were waiting to end the Hatfill defamation cases. As good an answer as any, I suppose.

MORE 8/19/08

Frankly, after re-reading the convoluted scribblings above I'm reminded of when Obama lost his train of thought on stage one time. This investigation seems to be going around in overlapping circles with bits of evidence being sprung on the public and press in little spurts, sometimes seeming to contradict itself. But frankly that's a drawback of speculating based on media reports. Even some trained microbiologists are falling into this trap, some perhaps because they don't want it to be a lone wolf--or one of their own. Just gotta be Cheney.

Like Spertzel, I thought it was Iraq or AQ. But after digesting this WaPo report and the ones from yesterday Ivins looks a lot worse, and my questions have narrowed:

1. They are saying the silicon was basically an environmental contaminant of the lab when the product was made. Was it in the first batch, and if not, why not? The labs were supposedly the same.

2. Are we going to get a timeline on when they determined RMR-1029 was the suspect source? When did they narrow it down to eight batches and two labs when they supposedly didn't have Ivins sample until seizing it in 2004.

3. Was Ivins really stupid enough to think he could use stock from his own lab, knowing his extra time spent there before the mailings would be highly incriminating as would the substance itself? This is why they've provided the emails, but at the same time he was together enough to be added to the investigation team in 2001 and win an award in 2003.

4. What effect did the Hatfill lawsuits have on whether and when Ivins was targeted for indictment?

5. As to the alleged coming indictment, we were first told it was imminent when the story broke, along with mention of the death penalty. Monday's briefing said they're months to even a year from getting all their forensic techniques accepted via peer review. Were they really that close to an indictment after all?

6. Was the 2005 Pentagon anthrax scare ever confirmed one way or the other?

7. How did he handle the letters during transit? Is it that easy?

8. Why are they protecting the name of the other lab?

9. What happened to Hatfill? Is there a book forthcoming? An interview?

I can easily imagine a scenario where Bruce Ivins could have committed this crime. He had weak motive, an unstable personality, worked for Red Cross (bringing in a preparedness angle), had access to almost everything he needed and the knowledge required to do it. He doesn't have a rock solid alibi for either mailing window, and has no rational explanation for why he was in the lab after hours before each mailing. He liked to mail things from distant post offices to throw people off, and also liked to take long drives for no reason. He messed up his samples after having helped FBI set up their evidence lab. And he spiraled down towards the end under growing pressure and better genetic testing.

Inconsequential items= the franked envelopes (anyone could have purchased); the Florida letter they never found (probably tossed and currently buried in the dump--nobody knew there was an anthrax threat at that point); the threats to the social worker (he was distraught and paranoid, so he could have figured people were trying to frame him if he wasn't guilty).

For what it's worth, Ed Lake still has the most rational coverage of all of this mess, quite a contrast to the sock puppet.

But I think it's important to remember one thing. Even if Ivins settles in as the likely culprit it doesn't mean there is no external threat, or never was. I'm still wondering what happened to Mubarak al-Duri, bin Laden's "WMD procurement" person according to the 9/11 Commission. Interview in 2001, but no rendition, only tracking. Weird.