What the FBI Knows: For Bruce Ivins and for us

What the FBI Knows: For Bruce Ivins and for us

“I don’t think the FBI knows what the FBI knows” – Richard Clarke testifying before the 9/11 Commission

In the summer of 2001, two hijackers were renting lodgings from an FBI asset in San Diego, California. But the FBI couldn't be bothered to know in the same way that they ran off John O’Neill when he was “on fire” about Bin Laden and they couldn't be bothered to listen to him. The next thing you know, thousands of people are dead, John O’Neill is dead and there’s a scar in the heart of Manhattan. In 2005, the FBI is sure, knows with cold institutional certainty that Steve Hatfill is the anthrax mailer and before you can turn around, they’re paying out 5 million dollars for ruining the life of an innocent man and publicly, too, by pillorying him in the press. You’d think they’d have learned by now. You’d think they’d have a picture of Richard Jewell up in every single FBI office and a special promise to say silently every morning before sitting down to the day’s work.

You’d think by now the FBI would have long needed moment of ontological panic and ask themselves how they know what they know. In 2003, they mapped out every single minute of Steve Hatfill’s life on the days surrounding the two anthrax mailings and they were not loathe to announce that to the New York Times. But in the last few weeks, when they were accusing Bruce Ivins in the press, they didn’t seem to know that Ivins couldn’t be in Frederick, Maryland at 4:30 and in Princeton, New Jersey at 5:00 p.m. on September 17th, 2001, although they seemed to know each fact separately. It’s as if the FBI has had the membrane connecting the two lobes of its institutional brain slashed, isolating one working hemisphere from the other.

The FBI claims that new technology can trace DNA from the weapon to Dr. Ivins when the tech to map a genome was available in 1998 and while withholding the exact nature of that new technology. Do you believe in magic? They claim that Ivins was the sole custodian of that flask of anthrax but do not mention the origins of that anthrax at the Dugway Proving Ground and they also elide the fact that ten other researchers had access to that same anthrax at Fort Detrick alone. And that’s without considering all the researchers and labs that obtained samples from Dr. Ivins over the years, or the fact that Ivins helped evaluate the letter sent to Tom Daschle. The FBI is dealing with a crime scene faceted over space and time as if it was a simple plane, or a projection, a Power Point presentation they can point to unambiguously. The FBI does not know what it knows. Richard Clarke was right.

I’d like to ask them if Bruce Ivins was so careful that he could drive weaponized anthrax two hundred miles and mail it without leaving any trace at all on his person, in his car or around his residence or, if he was so careless that he mailed anthrax to Pat Leahy and Tom Daschle and didn’t know that postal machines would pound the deadly powder out into the public sphere long before the envelopes were delivered. Which is it?

The FBI has said Bruce Ivins was afraid his vaccine program would be canceled and that motivated him to mail the anthrax. How is that possible? Ivins had a new vaccine in the works. No matter what happened to the BioPort vaccine he had been hired to fix, Dr. Ivins would get work. Make no mistake about it. Even if BioPort’s product went down in flames, Dr. Ivins had another vaccine in development and his expertise would be in demand. There is always work for skilled people like Bruce Ivins. As a consumer of the BioPort vaccine himself, Bruce was as motivated as anyone to get a better vaccine in place.

In 2001, the FBI knew the anthrax mailer was a loner
Source: Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2001.

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MEGAN GARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WASHINGTON -- The FBI is increasingly convinced that the person behind the recent anthrax attacks is a lone wolf within the United States who has no links to terrorist groups but is an opportunist using the Sept. 11 hijackings to vent his rage, investigators said Friday.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/lonerlikelyanthrax.html

The FBI is still pushing the idea that Ivins fits the "loner" description. But he doesn’t. He was a married man with two adopted children, with mentees and colleagues and neighbors.

Fairfield resident recalls time at Fort Detrick; worked with suspected anthrax terrorist

While civilians like Battersby work at Fort Detrick, the site has military management, she said. And some people, such as those who want to advance their careers, have stayed quiet about their experience there, according to Battersby. (Emphasis added.)

But the few people not worried about talking about their experience with the government should talk, she said. "It's painful to me on a whole bunch of levels," Battersby said. "I feel like I should tell my story because I know I can."

http://www.eveningsun.com/news/ci_10157273

Are people who knew Bruce Ivins afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs if they disagree with what the FBI "knows"? Battersby seems to say exactly that.

The reality is that this case hinges not on what the FBI knows but what the American public can be made to fear. Again. When asked last week why the FBI didn’t take Ivins into custody, a Defense Department spokesperson (spokes spinner?) said the FBI didn’t want to compromise the investigation – when the whole neighborhood saw how Bruce could barely get around FBI vehicles to get into his own driveway. It’s one of the few acts of solidarity seen lately between DoD and Justice. They haven’t co-operated so well since the Justice Department came up with the rationale for torture and the Defense Department found the means to implement that policy. (And here there is a subtext of corruption so profound that you wonder how long, if ever, it will take to clean up the Justice Department and how long it will be before we can again believe the Defense Department deserves the respect our uniformed children pay it by their service.)

To grease the hinge of this case, last week the FBI fronted Jean Duley, a low level mental health worker, in a much challenged recovery herself to be generous or just plain “wet” in the vernacular of alcohol rehab. She lit up the media like a Christmas tree. Instead of quietly seeking a restraining order in private, she chose to go to a public hearing and to do a very bad impression of the clinician she is not. She accused Ivins of being a revenge killer, of hating women, of being a homicidal sociopath as if that was a diagnosis in the DSM IV, which it is not.

It’s worth mentioning that while Ms. Duley was making these serious accusations, Ivins had no criminal record at all but, she did.

The media lit up like Macy’s on Christmas Eve when the Salvation Army bell is ringing loudest over the heads of hassled shoppers. In particular, there was a pair at the Associated Press that could not recycle these outlandish claims often enough and without a shred of skepticism. From that venerable fount, these claims were spammed all over the American press and the cable channels. The fact that Ms. Duley was only recently out of house detention for her own problems or that she had no degree in psychology or that she had only seen Ivins a handful of times over the period of six months or that she was firmly in the hands of the FBI while making these claims, never seemed to make it into even the fifth paragraph of any of these cloned stories.

Predictably, the resulting spam from the AP hit pieces wind up reducing Bruce Ivins into a stereotype at Wikipedia, where as late as last night he is described as a “conservative Catholic”. Bruce Ivins was not a conservative. His letters to the Frederick News-Press are the letters of a curious, left-leaning, inclusive writer. A person with a quiet and persistent sense of humor that is often turned on himself. A thoughtful person who believes women should be included in the priesthood, that people are indeed born gay, that all people deserve the respect of their fellows. Someone who cared deeply about his community. These are not the letters of a hidebound ideologue or an abortion clinic bomber. But, like those iconographic portraits of Renaissance monarchs, Bruce Ivins the person is becoming indistinguishable from the FBI Bruce Ivins caricature at Wikipedia, illustrated but not represented.

Contrast this public misrepresentation with the issue of coerced silence brought up by Battersby who remembers the actual man. The best example of that silence may be the hundreds of people attending Ivins’ two memorials last week in Frederick, ironically one private and one public, their very attendance a rejection of the official story in favor of honoring the man they knew who juggled with their children and wrote songs to celebrate their promotions.

On July 31st, in the middle of the Ivins tragedy and in the middle of the FBI claiming to know more than they know and more than they will tell the public, the Department of Health and Human Services took new bids for the national stockpile of anthrax vaccines from contractors in Maryland. The news item stuck in my mind because July 31st is my son’s birthday.

I need to get this clear for my son, in the way that mothers always need to get danger real clear. The anthrax attacks were terrorism, not discrete attacks on individuals. Whoever mailed that anthrax meant to terrorize, not to attack specific targets. Those envelopes were all mailed to executives and anyone sophisticated enough to mail that substance was sophisticated enough to know that executives don’t open their own mail. So, when the FBI makes claims about Ivins’ motives regarding the addressees, it just makes them look impotently disconnected from their own purpose. Ivins had no motive to send those envelopes to those people. No one did. That mail was sent to frighten a people, not to attack anyone in particular.

And as for Dr. Ivins in particular, there is nothing in his mountain of writings that demonstrates he ever imagined hurting other people in particular or in general. When his relapse was pounding him, he drank, he wrote to his friends and he went to his doctor. He made up silly jingles about his symptoms in the way that optimists deploy humor against danger. But there is not one sentence anywhere that indicates he even considered harming another as a solution to his distress. The FBI cannot place him at the scene of the crime – not physically and not in imagination. If there is more, we haven't seen it.

This has been the the biggest investigation the FBI has taken on in its entire history second only to 9/11. What a spectacular failure. And how identically twinned that failure has been by our media’s failure to interrogate, at every point and over and over, the shoddy media circus that has passed for crime solving.

Rush Holt and Pat Leahy are rumbling about Congressional hearings but as well intentioned as they are, there is no reason to have confidence that our Congress will resolve this crime against the American people, against Ivins, his family, or the Fort Detrick community just there is no reason to have confidence that appointing an independent investigative panel will mend our broken justice system. How sad is it that we cannot rely on our institutions to take care of us in this most basic way.

We have slipped so far down the rabbit hole of unaccountability, I only hope that the next time someone decides to send vectors into the public sphere, the deaths will not be too terrible and the fear will be more mercifully short. At some point, though, you have to wonder who our media believes will consume its product if we are rightfully unwilling to handle our own mail.

The anthrax attacks were deadly and we can never forget those terrible losses. It’s equally true that the Bush Justice Department and its shameful media gaggle have been more destructive than the person who deliberately put that deadly substance into our mail. Between them, they misled us into bombing an innocent people – enabling hundreds of thousands of deaths, the displacing of millions and the irresolution of this case which speaks to the foundation of any government: the safety of its citizenry. There is no reason to have confidence in either the remains of the Justice Department or in the remains of our news media.

And in the meanwhile, Bruce Ivins was driven to suicide. How can anyone feel all right with that when there is not only a “reasonable doubt” of his guilt, but a doubt so big that the Grand Canyon could safely use it for a pit stop?

Who can feel safer today knowing Dr. Ivins is dead and will not get a day in court? Without that process, who can trust that this case has been closed against future harm to the American people? Some wise guy said, “Trust but verify”. When did verifying the most basic elements of our system of justice become so impossible in our country? I don’t trust the FBI to know what it knows. I don’t see our media checking behind them. To quote Mr. Poe of Texas, “And that’s just how it is”.

"Gerard P. Andrews, another of Dr. Ivins’ former colleagues, said he knew that Dr. Ivins was frustrated, but that he doubted that Dr. Ivins would consider such a step."

I’m with you, Mr. Andrews. A lot of us are frustrated. I don’t know if Bruce Ivins did the crime that he has been convicted of in the press. I sincerely doubt it. That we allowed him to be so convicted is more destructive than the original crime.

If the civil, peaceful and private expression of frustration is now a terrorist activity by implication, rumor or assertion, and without resort to a court of law, then the attacks on us, on the American people are ongoing, no matter what the FBI believes it knows or refuses to know, and no matter how cheerfully this doubtful "knowledge" is broadcast by a contaminated press.

Elizabeth Ferrari
San Francisco

isolating one working hemisphere from the other."

No shit. That's what happens when it becomes so politicized it can no longer function in its core duties.

How many has Cheney killed now?

K & R!!!


Thank you so much!

Amazing writing!

I was struck by the OP's phrase "so far down the rabbit hole of unaccountability" and I realized that the only way to have prevented the anthrax letters was to have been so passionate about the republic that we burned tires in the streets in front of the Supreme Courthouse after the stolen election, but the country was so politically divided (thanks, Rove) that we couldn't unite for a principle. As a people, we've never been real good at picturing the consequences before they've happened, and sometimes not even then.

There is a possibility regarding Ivins other than innocent or guilty. He writings did reveal a fragile, but inflated sense of self-importance. It could just be that he was tricked into providing the anthrax to another person who showed him government credentials and said it would be used for an ultra-secret test of the vaccine on, say, the criminally insane, using the excuse that even though normal channels wouldn't permit the trial, the government urgently needed the vaccine to protect top officials against terrorists. If there was a hint that Ivins had realized and eventually began to talk about it to a therapist or anyone, someone would have felt very threatened. As Thom Hartmann has long said, the mailings to Leahy & Daschle were timed to abort their opposition to the Patriot Act. The perpetrator had to get the weaponized anthrax somewhere, and the best disinformation campaigns contain just enough truth to make them plausible.

But the point, as the OP said, is that since Ivins was hounded to his death rather than properly investigated and tried, we'll never know. That failure really sharpens the focus on how our government has morphed, and the consequences of removing the most potent peaceful remedy against a runaway Executive branch--impeachment.

Brava, and thanks for a really thought-provoking post.

I'm reviewing th FBI presser on this case and the spinperson says, Ivins innoculated himself -- as if all pros working in this field don't.

Breathtaking, really.

If they were in support of these mailings, how could they be a response to 9/11?

ETA: The article that statement is in was from Nov 2001. So it's not something they are necessarily saying now.

no one except the FBI believes the equipment required to create the weaponized anthrax is at the lab Bruce was working at.

So I suppose the implication is he was preparing the anthrax and letters during the evening work hours. Given he could not have been "weaponizing" the anthrax on site the fact he worked late really proves or even suggests nothing.

that doesn't work for them is typical.

It's all in the presentation.

See my Kos diary on this:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/9/165317/0021/1018/565461

I do think this is questionable on Ivins' part, but it doesn't rise above reasonable doubt to me, especially considering the slanted way the FBI presented the evidence. The statement in the Nov 2001 article was made before they knew of Ivins' work schedule, most likely, but it shows an early assumption that they would have to discard to accuse Ivins of these crimes.

Meryl Nass has 13 points up at her blog which you might find interesting regarding the FBI case:

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=66277

How many government workers put in a few extra hours in the days after 9/11?

Does the room Ivins worked a few extra hours in contain the equipment necessary to freeze dry anthrax spores, refine them to a trillion spores per gram and mill them to a particle size of 1-3 microns?

So why are you even discussing this except to point out the FBI's obvious frame job of Ivins?

That is what I mean.

don't believe he had the equipment, expertise or the time to weaponize anthrax.

So, in that view, he could have lived in that B3 lab and it wouldn't make any difference.

and the necessary equipment needed to construct it, we won't know one way or the other. I've not sat down and tracked out the different ways the anthrax has been presented. That would be worth a digging.

Ivins' guilt is migitated by the fact that FBI itself rules him out from being present at the scene.

The second mailing, I don't know much about his actual whereabouts but the substance that was mailed is not within his skill or the technical capacity of his lab to mail.

Much more work needs to be done here and I suspect, it will not be done.

/oops

If anyone could make anthrax this lethal by spending a few hours alone in your average microbiology research lab, why do we still hand out anthrax to hundreds of researchers every year? What are the new controls we need to start employing? What kind of lab equipment needs to be more closely tracked?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

"the Armed Forces Institute of Technology (AFIP), one the military labs that examined the Daschle anthrax, published an official newsletter stating that silica was a key aerosol enabling component of the Daschle anthrax."

So how did Ivins dry and mill anthrax and silica into an aerosol by working late a few hours? What is the timeline for the trips he would have had to make to New Jersey and how do they match up against his known movements and proven cell phone/land phone and credit card records? Does/did his car have OnStar or some other similar tracking system? If so, what do these records show? How do the credit cardit gas charges he did make synch up with his regular driving habits over the period in question? How well does Ivins' handwriting match that used by the person who wrote and addressed the anthrax letters?

What we know for a fact is that the FBI has not yet shown means, opportunity or even a believable motive. The guy doesn't even fit their own profile of a lone culprit in the least. Nobody who knows him thinks he did it. Nobody in his office evens thinks he could have done it. He has been "convicted" out of nothing but convenience.

:hi:

You are not alone in thinking that the story the FBI is putting out doesn't pass muster. They were able to go back and account for Hatfill's time (minute-by-minute) by they were unable to do it for Ivins?

Why did none of Ivins' co-workers or supervisors think his time in the lab was unusual? At the time that the anthrax was mailed and no one knew who sent it or where it came from and yet, no one thinks that Ivins' time in the lab is unusual. I mean, if you were working in a lab that had a biological agent that had just been used as a weapon against other Americans and you saw one of your co-workers doing something you wouldn't expect them to do, wouldn't you report it?

I'm also assuming that Ft. Detrick is a secured area. Wouldn't Ivins need to go through some sort of check point to get to the cache of dangerous biological agents that the US is storing? I'd also assume there'd be some sort of log. Was there anyone else with access or interest in the labs that arrived around the same time as Ivins? It is not implausible that Ivins was not alone and that two people entered on his pass. It is also not implausible that someone could have used Ivins' pass or a forgery of it.

Why did the FBI first push the theory that Ivins did it for monetary benefit and then back off of it? Why did they release the information that Ivins had a PO Box where he received porn and/or pictures of blindfolded women? Is this why did the tape of Duley's restraining order hearing, where she said that Ivins had a history of retaliation especially against women, was made public? Were we to think that this lonewolf also had sexual dysfunctions that lead him to pornography and violence? Ah, that would explain it all wouldn't it? A psycho-sexually dysfunctional lonewolf with a vendetta against women.

And might I add that this lonewolf volunteered in various organizations, was friendly and helpful around the neighborhood, and seemed to have a number of friends? Oh yeah, add that the lonewolf was also married and had adopted two children. It doesn't add up.

And speaking of Duley, did you notice how reports went from her being advised by her assigned agent to file a restraining order against Ivins to her having limited interactions with them and that they told her she was on her own?

Why is the media ignoring aspects of the story like
Were Ivins' mental problems indicative of the vaccines he was receiving to work with the anthrax? Remember the number of violent incidents and spouses being murdered at Ft. Bragg when troops first started returning from Iraq and the speculation (that disappeared) that the vaccines might be part of the problem?

What about the medications that Ivins was on? How did they affect his behavior? More specifically, what meds was he on, how much he drinking and how often was he drinking when the FBI started tailing him. And, if Ivins was drinking wouldn't that account for some of those late night sessions at the office? Did the lab provide him a safe place to drink? Or was the lab the place he hid and viewed the porn that he allegedly received at his PO Box?

According to several of the search warrant documents the FBI was looking for equipment in Ivins home that he could have used to make the anthrax in 2001. According to one of the search warrant docs (http://www.usdoj.gov/amerithrax/07-524-M-01%20attachment.pdf pages 22 and 23) they were looking for items like lab equipment, salt and pepper, sales receipts, oatmeal, bank documents, stamps, protective gear and computers. It is a wide range of items to be looking for but what gets me is that six full years after the anthrax was mailed they were still trying to find his banking records and/or sales receipts? Couldn't they get those from the entities with a subpoena?

Is there any connection between his e-mail offer to be a case study (as long as he remained anonymous) in 2000 and the sessions with a counselor he saw "four or five times" in 2000 when he said he had mixed up poison and taken it to a soccer game? You may recall that there was an article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/06/AR2008080604020.html) that said he saw a counselor back in 2000 at Comprehensive Counseling Associates which is the same place he ended up at Duley's therapy group in July of this year.

Here's an excerpt from the WaPo article:



According one of the search warrant docs, here are the e-mails that Ivins sent that appear to fit the same time frame, i.e. summer of 2000. It would also explain the changed diagnosis in early July and possibly (because what the counselor thought is redacted) again on July 23.



So where did Ivins learn about a case study, what kind of case study was it and was the study being conducted at CCA? I don't know, it just strikes me as a strange thing. I guess what bothers me is that Ivins was hospitalized and sought treatment multiple times but only the people at the CCA are the ones that he talks to about violent thoughts? Why did none of the other facilities in which Ivins was hospitalized or sought treatment not recognize that he was enough of a danger to notify officials? Moreover, why does the majority of psychological evidence as to Ivins' mental instability that the FBI uses in its search warrants from Comprehensive Counseling Associates?

I don't know. I could go on and on with things that are wrong and need more scrutiny.

break confidentiality and reveal (if it was a revelation and not something else) the bit about the soccer game. That breach calls into question the counselor's veracity.

and took it to a soccer game. The implication was that he wanted to poison some woman. But, that's as concrete as it gets. Who said it? Why did they say it? When was it? How do we know if it's true? The usual.

:shrug:

Means, motive & opportunity be damned.

Thanks for posting this!!!

And on watching the FBI briefing yet again, Jeffrey Taylor, US Attorney for DC, says they usually don't release evidence against a deceased suspect because of the presumption of innocence BUT, in this case, they will make an exception for the public interest.

:puke:

Great job, Beth.

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

:hi:

That's a problem, all by itself. :shrug:

Who knows what was actually in those shots perhaps above and beyond a highly dangerous vaccine? Plus, Ivins was in "therapy" that probably included at least one of the many all-too-commonly prescribed antidepressants.

It's no stretch to believe that Ivins was personally troubled in many ways. But that description fits well over 20% of US citizens. How many are posthumously convicted of mass murder because of this? Who will it be next? Why do so few people seem to care about this?

on anti-depressants, tranqs and anti-psychotics, pain meds and Ambien. Now, the way it's reported, it's very vague and just meant to scare you.

But, as suffragette pointed out last week, Ambien can make you paranoid. And so can anti-depressants and anti-psychotics.

FBI tried to use his own vaccinations against him as if that wasn't SOP for someone working with anthrax. They did the same with the psych meds, of course.

to read and absorb later.

You deserve it for this post.

What does it say about the depth our "republic" has submerged to that everyone who has examined this agrees the FBI has no case against Ivins, yet our outrage fatigue is such that most of us would simply rather not think about it?

and walk the puppy. :)

There was a "file dump" needed so new info can be processed. Have you been checking Meryl Nass's blog? She put up a new "13 points" refuting the FBI yesterday. Also, there is a good new diary at OpEdNews that goes much further than I feel comfortable doing and the main course there are the links:

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8590

TY!

where the US Attorney for DC, Jeffrey Taylor, is spinning like a top.

This is who he is:


Jeffrey A. Taylor


Jeffrey A. Taylor was initially appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on September 22, 2006. He was sworn in and took office on September 29, 2006. He has since been appointed by the U.S. District Court.

From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Taylor served as Counselor to Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Gonzales, where he handled a broad array of matters, including oversight of the Department’s national security, terrorism, and criminal litigation and policy, as well as the operations of the Department’s law enforcement components.

Mr. Taylor served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California from 1995–1999, where he prosecuted a variety of criminal matters, including international drug trafficking organizations. From 1999-2002, Mr. Taylor served as Counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, working on issues including criminal law, terrorism, and national security.

Mr. Taylor began his legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable John C. Mowbray, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada, from 1991–1992, and then worked for three years in private practice. He obtained his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School and his Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University. Mr. Taylor, and his wife, Marcia Taylor, are residents of the District of Columbia.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/US_Attorney/index.html

He sounds like a used car salesman unloading a Pinto.

as soon as reporters began expressing the doubts about the investigation they were out of there.

with a 10 foot containment chamber.

Thanks for the thread, sfexpat2000.:thumbsup:

lol

Thanks, Uncle Joe.

unless you can pick a guitar after the nurse spanks you, they just put you back in for more developing!:hi:

...An aspiring guitar player decides to go to Music City for a while and see if he can cut it. The best advice he gets before heading out is to make sure and stop for gas as soon as he hits the city limits. Hand the gas station guy the guitar and, if he plays better than the pilgrim does, it's time to make a u-turn, go back home and practice like hell for another three or four years before trying it all over again.

I've always believed this story because I was a touring guitar player for several years back in the day. On one of these endless tours of the humidity belt, we were booked for one night in Nashville. What an opportunity to test the hypothesis.

So, even though it felt kind of hokey, I followed directions to the last detail. Fortunately, the gas station guy had an ace bandage wrapped around his right arm from his hand to his elbow. He told me the wrist was badly sprained and he probably wouldn't be able to play for at least a couple more weeks. So I was spared the indignity of being smoked by a guy who wasn't even playing for a living, and becoming a real-life character in an urban legend in the process.

And that's the trooooooooff.

Great, great article Elizabeth, btw. You tell the story better than any other coverage I've yet seen.


wp

lol

:)

...and I think Hatfill also felt the same way about his treatment ---

It looks like feigned stupidity and cover-up ---


And this is the saddest thing I've read recently about our country because it's a truth
that we are going to have to face and acknowledge ...

Rush Holt and Pat Leahy are rumbling about Congressional hearings but as well intentioned as they are, there is no reason to have confidence that our Congress will resolve this crime against the American people, against Ivins, his family, or the Fort Detrick community just there is no reason to have confidence that appointing an independent investigative panel will mend our broken justice system. How sad is it that we cannot rely on our institutions to take care of us in this most basic way.

We have slipped so far down the rabbit hole of unaccountability, I only hope that the next time someone decides to send vectors into the public sphere, the deaths will not be too terrible and the fear will be more mercifully short. At some point, though, you have to wonder who our media believes will consume its product if we are rightfully unwilling to handle our own mail.

The anthrax attacks were deadly and we can never forget those terrible losses. It’s equally true that the Bush Justice Department and its shameful media gaggle have been more destructive than the person who deliberately put that deadly substance into our mail. Between them, they misled us into bombing an innocent people – enabling hundreds of thousands of deaths, the displacing of millions and the irresolution of this case which speaks to the foundation of any government: the safety of its citizenry. There is no reason to have confidence in either the remains of the Justice Department or in the remains of our news media.

where are you, now that we need you?

:(

:applause:

Great summary and analysis of the situation.

I wonder how much of the depiction of Ivins as conservative leaning was put out there by the FBI to get us lefties to back off. As you note, his own writings don't fit with that portrayal of him. If that was their intent, they failed miserably. They really don't get they we truly care about justice and about when an injustice has been done, to this man and to his family from the FBI's harassment and assignment of guilt based mostly on innuendo and circumstantial evidence, and to the victims and the American public, who still deserve a full and honest investigation into what really happened.

Outstanding piece! Bravo!

And more please!

a suspect to death and that's what they did to him.

all these "stories of the century" are just laying there beneath the surface with no one in congress, the justice department, the FBI, or the press willing or able to get to the bottom of it.

A HUGE story. Sad for Ivins...but also sad for us.

to the truth.