1. First thought: these guys are good. Of course, they have all the major resources at their command. But this is clever PR.

2. First question: was this really anthrax or just a hoax? If it's just a hoax, I would guess Karl Rove is behind it - brilliant way to muddy the waters, give the whole anthrax story a less blatantly obvious political motivation, and feed the core base believers something they can hang onto. If it really WAS anthrax, then assume Cheney is involved too. What a team - targetting their own ground staff without a qualm.

3. One person who will not be a suspect this time around: Dr Bruce Ivins.

4. I see that Ivins' lawyer is now telling people the FBI did not harrass his client to death and they should not be held accountable for his suicide. Wonder what he got offered? A career to watch.

5. The Democrat convention is coming in Denver and this story grabs the local headlines. It's all about controlling the narrative, and these guys always look for a secondary benefit when they make a play. A familiar modus operandi to anyone who's been paying attention.

Well it looks like it was another hoax (there were a lot of them after October 2001 too). From KWGN:

Both envelopes had Denver return addresses, according to the Secret Service, and were mailed from an inmate at the Arapahoe County Jail.

Investigators said the inmate, Marc Ramsey, has been in the jail since September 2007 on felony menacing, harassment and assault charges.

Did Ramsey do this off his own bat, for some strange purpose? Could be. Or it could be that somebody put him up to it, as part of a release deal. A lot of strange things happen behind bars, and not much of it makes it out into the real world. Once again, we will never know: the powers that be hold all the cards.

No wonder Glenn is talking about character attacks and media stooges again. What's to be gained by pursuing this anthrax line, except a massive Conspiracy Theorist label?

I note this from sciencedaily.com:

“Initially, scanning electron microscopy [SEM] conducted at another laboratory, showed high silicon and oxygen signals that led them to conclude that the spores were a weaponized form, says Kotula. “The possible misinterpretation of the SEM results arose because microanalysis in the SEM is not a surface-sensitive tool,” says Kotula. “Because a spore body can be 1.5 to 2 microns wide by 1 micron long, a SEM cannot localize the elemental signal from whole spore bodies.”

Using more sensitive transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Kotula and Michael’s research indicated that the silica in the spore samples was not added artificially, but was incorporated as a natural part of the spore formation process. “The spores we examined,” Kotula says, “lacked that fuzzy outer coating that would indicate that they’d been weaponized.”

Sandia’s work was the first to actually link the spore material in the New York Post, the Daschle and the Leahy letters. The elemental signatures and the locations of these signatures, while not indicating intentional weaponization, did show that the spores were indistinguishable and therefore likely came from the same source. That conclusion was corroborated a few years later by the DNA studies.

Link at my sig.