I saw the Kos article on this and I think you guys need to read a bit more before you start writing on complex issues like this. As noted earlier in this thread, Spertzel was a big-time Iraq War supporter who eagerly hyped Saddam's WMD connections in the same WSJ (being consistently wrong doesn't lose you a gig in Murdoch/WSJ World, it boosts your resume).

Sure, it's interesting that Spertzel doesn't buy the Ivins story, but OTOH he has always said Iraq was behind this so he has a barrow to push. And what about this bit:

"The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying "to reverse engineer" (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases. So why should federal investigators or the news media or the American public believe that a lone scientist would be able to do so?"

But this is from Wikipedia:

Erroneous press reports in 2003 indicated the FBI failed to reverse engineer the type of anthrax found in the letters.[11][12] According to Chemical & Engineering News, December 4, 2006,[10] there was never any attempt to "reverse engineer" the attack anthrax."

If that's true, Spertzel should know it. I really cannot figure out his game.

And speaking of the Murdoch media, I am wondering if this March 2008 story (again via Wikipedia) is what triggered the FBI's suddenly increased interest in Ivins:

But in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

"Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'"

Who wrote that email? Was Bruce Ivins the name redacted? Will the Feds produce this email as evidence? And isn't that, you know... hearsay?

Here's a couple of other interesting quotes from that Wiki page before I go to sleep (in Australia). This is what George Tenet said in his book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA:

“The most startling revelation from this intelligence success story was that the anthrax program had been developed in parallel to 9/11 planning. As best as we could determine, al-Zawahiri’s project had been wrapped up in the summer of 2001, when the al-Qaida deputy, along with Hambali, were briefed over a week by Sufaat on the progress he had made to isolate anthrax. The entire operation had been managed at the top of al-Qai’da with strict compartmentalization. Having completed this phase of his work, Sufaat fled Afghanistan in December 2001 and was captured by authorities trying to sneak back into Malaysia. Rauf Ahmad was detained by Pakistani authorities in December 2001. Our hope was that these and our many other actions had neutralized the anthrax threat, at least temporarily.”

This is what former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said:

"The quality anthrax sent to Senator Daschle's office could be produced by a Ph.D. microbiologist and a sophisticated laboratory."

The inmates have been running the asylum for a long time now, haven't they?