The story about Cheney setting off the White House alarm was fed to the author of "The Dark Side" by White House staff.

If it's true, it certainly deserves more investigation.

If it's not true, what does that say about their motivation in feeding the public such a lie? Why does Cheney feel the need to paint himself as a victim, unless he has something to hide?

For anyone wondering whether this story might just disappear off the media radars, it's interesting that I have had recent hits on my blog from army.mil (the ISP is listed as "HQ US Army Medical Research and Development Command", and they were Googling the name Richard O. Spertzel) and darpa.mil (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in Virginia).

So SOMEBODY is still on this story. My guess is that Ivin's colleagues might be doing their own detective work.

Let me also throw in this quote from Dick Cheney on Meet the Press, 8 September 2002:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: The president’s going to address the General Assembly of the United Nations this week. He will lay out his concerns at that point. We have begun to share, as much as we can, with committees of Congress. A lot of this, I hope, eventually will be in the public arena so that we’ll be able to discuss it not only with our allies overseas, but also with the American people here at home. They have a right to know and understand what it is that’s happened here.

It’s also important not to focus just on the nuclear threat. I mean, that sort of grabs everybody’s attention, and that’s what we’re used to dealing with. But come back to 9/11 again, and one of the real concerns about Saddam Hussein, as well, is his biological weapons capability; the fact that he may, at some point, try to use smallpox, anthrax, plague, some other kind of biological agent against other nations, possibly including even the United States. So this is not just a one-dimensional threat. This just isn’t a guy who’s now back trying once again to build nuclear weapons. It’s the fact that we’ve also seen him in these other areas, in chemicals, but also especially in biological weapons, increase his capacity to produce and deliver these weapons upon his enemies.

MR. RUSSERT: But if he ever did that, would we not wipe him off the face of the Earth?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who did the anthrax attack last fall, Tim? We don’t know.

MR. RUSSERT: Could it have been Saddam?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I’m not here today to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it’s the nature of terrorist attacks of these unconventional warfare methods, that it’s very hard sometimes to identify who’s responsible. Who’s the source? We were able to come fairly quickly to the conclusion after 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was, in fact, the individual behind the 9/11 attacks. But, like I say, I point out the anthrax example just to remind everybody that it is very hard sometimes, especially when we’re dealing with something like a biological weapon that could conceivably be misconstrued, at least for some period, as a naturally occurring event, that we may not know who launches the next attack. And that’s what makes it doubly difficult. And that’s why it’s so important for us when we do identify the kind of threat that we see emerging now in Iraq, when we do see the capabilities of that regime and the way Saddam Hussein has operated over the years that we have to give serious consideration to how we’re going to address it before he can launch an attack, not wait until after he’s launched an attack.

Tom Engelhardt has a few good questions on this case today (link at my sig below) including:

Why wasn’t the Bush administration’s War on Terror modus operandi applied to the anthrax case?

For example, 911 suspects were shipped to secret gulags and tortured, sometimes to death. Why not anthrax suspects?

Another point worth making here: IF the anthrax investigation is NOT a cover-up, then why has nobody in a position of responsibility been held accountable? I mean, surely somebody in authority should have been sacked by now, if not arrested and charged, for: (a) letting Ivins develop the anthrax, and (b) letting him then keep working at the lab for so long, even helping in the investigation, and (c) botching the FBI investigation over such a long period?

As always, nobody is ever held accountable for seemingly massive "mistakes" in BushWorld (remember that "Bin Laden determined to strike" NIE?). One can be excused for assuming that everybody, including Fort Detrick supervisors and FBI head Robert Mueller, did exactly what they were told. Medals of Honor on the way soon, no doubt.

Finally, like others here, I suspect that questions from Glenn and other bloggers are what the FBI is responding to with their contradictory updates and leaks. Ironically, this online debate may actually be playing to the FBI's advantage here (assuming they are just trying to shut down the case rather than find the real perps). If the FBI can keep updating their story whenever someone spots a new hole in it, one day they might have something ready to present to the public: not an airtight case, of course, but something with minimal holes in it. It seems pretty obvious that's all they want.