Glenn,

This is an excellent post, and I fully agree with the main thrust of your argument. However, I think that the issue of Brian Ross' sources might be a little more complicated than you present. I think it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that the sources themselves had been lied to. In other words, the sources themselves may not have fabricated the story but were (knowingly or not) passing along a falsehood. In this case, the source of the falsehood should be identified, but that source might not be known to Ross. This, of course, does not excuse their failure to issue a correction and apology.

One other thing, just for the sake of accuracy. You dismiss the claim of the diagnostic value of the presence of bentonite in the anthrax spores by noting the widespread availability of bentonite. However, my reading of the reporting is that bentonite is supposedly diagnostic not because it is rare or available only in Iraq, but because its use in weaponizing antrhrax was unusual (and perhaps unique to Iraq).

That bentonite is used for other purposes does not mean that it is useful as an additive to anthrax. In fact, one could imagine that bentonite would cause antrax spores to clump and therefore make them less rather than more dangerous. It seems to me that in order to refute the claim that the presence of bentonite was diagnostic you need to demonstrate either that other countries commonly added this to anthrax, or that Iraq was not known to use bentonite. Apparently, bentonite wasn't actually present in the spores. However, the question here is whether it was diagnostic if (as Ross presumably honestly believed) it was, in fact, present.

Again, these are minor points and don't challenge the basic thrust of your argument (which I agree with), but I think they are worth considering.

Glenn,

Thanks for the thoughtful response to my comments. At the risk of seeming picky (I fundamentally agree with your post) I want to clarify my comments about bentonite. I really am a scientist, though I am a biochemist and know nothing more about anthrax weaponization than you. However, I do know that sometimes having a written protocol and access to the necessary chemicals is not sufficient to reproduce a result, even for someone who is skilled in that particular area. Sometimes, the key to getting the desired result lies in the subtleties of just exactly how an experiment is done. Those subtleties can be difficult to impossible to adequately describe in scientific publications (or sometimes those subtleties are not adequately appreciated by the publishing scientist, and so are left out). The point is that sometimes it is the technique and not the materials that make producing something difficult.

It’s entirely reasonable to think that the Iraqis could have used bentonite precisely because it is cheap and readily available. Iraqi scientists may have found a very clever, low technology way to process bentonite such that it was particularly useful in processing anthrax. The U.S. and other countries, having access to more sophisticated materials than the Iraqis, may not have spent the time necessary to perfect the use of bentonite. Further, it is not unreasonable to think that a particular method of using bentonite could have produced markings that would be distinctive under an electron microscope (which is something I do know a bit about). Of course, the fact that there really was no bentonite in the antrhrax is proof that the electron microscopy “results” were a fabrication. However, my point here is that, given what ABC reporters were told at the time, it really was not unreasonable (and certainly not “absurd”) to think that the presence of bentonite (along with the purported electron microscopy results) was highly indicative of Iraqi involvement.

Again, the thrust of your post (that ABC news was wrong in its reporting, and hasn’t corrected their error) is unquestionable. I particularly like reading your blog because you are generally scrupulously fair in your posts. I just think that ABC wasn’t necessarily as negligent about this particular point as you made it appear in your post.

Glenn,

Excellent post. I would just like to add one irony that you did not mention. Many of the same people who are claiming government persecution and the “criminalization of politics” are the very same ones who refuse to believe that the Justice Department could have targeted US Attorneys who failed to falsely prosecute “voter fraud” against Democrats or who too aggressively targeted Republican crimes. So, they would have us believe that a Republican administration and Republican prosecutors are so corrupt that they would falsely accuse conservative Republicans of crimes but would never, ever falsely accuse Democrats or protect Republicans. The cognitive dissonance here is truly amazing.