I am starting to think that Spertzel himself must be a primary suspect for anyone who doesn't believe Ivins did this. As he said himself:

"In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them."

He insists the quality of the anthrax sent to Senator Daschle in particular was "better than that found in the Soviet, U.S. or Iraqi program, certainly in terms of the purity and concentration of spore particles".

He told Laurie Mylroie (still via Wikipedia) that Syria might be behind it, with Iraqi help. This excerpt from that letter repeats the "dryer" theme from WaPo yesterday:

Iraq had air-freighted into Baghdad two Niro spray dryers that were of the type that would yield "plus or minus any particle size" the producer desired. One of these was located at Al Hakam and was destroyed under UN supervision in May/June 1996. The other one we were unable to locate (and, of course, Iraq did not know its whereabouts) until spring 1998. Within two weeks I had a sampling team in Iraq to thoroughly sample the 2nd dryer. Unfortunately, Iraq suddenly had an urgent need for the dryer and had thoroughly disassembled it, cleaned and sterilized it and then reassembled it. We were not able to get permission to destroy it but we kept tabs on it. However, UNMOVIC never checked for it and I believe the US did not after the war. It very well could have been moved to Syria.

http://www.lauriemylroie.com/files/Spertzel_on_Shoham_Jacobsen2.htm

Also, for anyone who needs a moment of levity, The Guardian's piss-take is pretty good:

ometimes incompetence is so spectacular it looks like a conspiracy. Since its manifest Clouseau-like failures with the big one – the attack on the World Trade Centre, it seems to have indulged in a frenzy of persecutions to cover its stupidity with more examples of malicious incompetence.

The Bureau is a fitting faith-based institution for the times. It has a definite and distinctive modus operandi: to decide upon unlikely suspects and then to pursue them with an unshakeable conviction of guilt regardless of the failure to win conviction. In a sadistic form of barratry, the Bureau treats each failure to secure a conviction as an opportunity to raise new and ancillary charges and all the time leaks to reporters in a way that would in most common law jurisdictions have the judge throwing the case out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/anthrax.internationalcrime

PS: Question for the US press corpse: did any other Fort Detrick scientists borrow that dryer?

Glenn, by his own admission General Zod has been on the piss all night. He waded in critiquing others' contributions while admitting he hadn't bothered reading the whole thread. I wouldn't waste too much time in him!

Maybe you need some more levity? Still from that lovely Guardian story:

Perhaps we should count our blessings that they haven't yet reinvented the ducking stool and left its modern variant to [the] CIA.

In the case of Florida professor Sami al-Arian. Despite being acquitted by a jury and entering a plea bargain to be deported to escape the harassment, the FBI now has Arian in prison for contempt charges for refusing to appear as a witness in an entirely unrelated case. Typically, the US justice department has spent $50m on this case. With the happy exception of Hatfill, one sure consequence of their persecution is that their victims have to bankrupt themselves paying lawyers to defend against the charges. Their persecutors just send their bills to the taxpayers. No wonder that suicide seemed a reasonable way out to Ivins, even if he were innocent.

Certainly the pattern is so pronounced that I would seriously consider signing a petition to re-examine Al Capone's case.

I was also suspicious of Ivin's chosen course of (alleged) suicide. An informed reader working in the hospital industry sent me this:

As far as easy ways to go, a Panadeine OD is not one of them either. It's hard to kill yourself with acetaminophen, even if it has codeine added. (That's a prescription-only med in the U.S., BTW, not over-the-counter as it is here.) I've had several patients who tried to OD on Panadol in the U.S. but it's fairly benign unless you have liver disease. More of a thing to use for suicidal GESTURES, not actual death-plans. I'm suspicious of the death too, because a scientist who wanted to off himself could have done it more efficiently.

Juan Cole reminds readers today that it was Reagan's administration who gave Saddam anthrax... and it was the Ames strain! And that was AFTER he gassed the Kurds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article807098.ece

Think Progress reminds readers that Colin Powell mentioned Saddam's anthrax in his UN speech:

Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002472.html