This morning the New York Times reporter, Eric Lichtblau, was on C-Span's Washington Journal. A caller brought to his attention what John McCain had said on Letterman about the connection with anthrax and Iraq. Lichtblau claimed to know nothing about McCain having been on Letterman or what McCain had said on the Letterman show. Lichtblau, in fact, was of the opinion that there was nothing to the story of the connections that were being made about the anthrax/Iraq pre-invasion case. A 'just put that down the memory hole' attitude was what he was expressing. Another reporter for the New York Times claiming either complete ignorance or complete incompetence, or something else.

Whoever framed Steven Hatfill for the Anthrax attacks had intimate knowledge of his personnel file and had to have done extensive research on diverse subjects of the sort that a government intelligence agency would know. They knew Hatfill would make an unsympathetic and plausible fall guy.

First: Hatfill lied on his resume about his education in Rhodesia and South Africa. Apparently his employer didn't catch him or he would have been fired. But those who framed him did know.

Second: Greendale. The Greendale School was on the return address of one of the anthrax letters. Greendale was and is the posh suburb a few miles east of the capital city of Rhodesia, then called Salisbury, now Harare. How many Americans can name, or even find out, the equivalent suburb of Capetown, a much larger city?

Third: The Rhodesian government experimented with anthrax to kill the cattle of unfriendly Matabele villages. They found that bullets kill cattle much more efficiently than anthrax and the experiment was abandoned. NOT a well-known incident until the Hatfill affair.

Fourth: They had to know that Hatfill lied not only on his academic resume but also on his military resume, trying to appear macho. "The older I get, the better I was" sort of guy.

All this information came out remarkably quickly once Hatfill became the designated fall guy. It turns out there was another potential fall guy who was totally ignored. Dr. Philip Zack is the preferred fall guy for the anti-government blogs. Supposedly, he was caught on video in the government anthrax facility AFTER being fired for a racially motivated attack on an Egyptian coworker. I can imagine that if our government were anti-Israel, instead of pro-Israel, Dr. Zack would be lying on a gurney with a needle in his arm.

Looks like they're trying to wrap up a lot of unfinished business before the Presidency is turned over to someone else.

The Anthrax Thing has been a burr under the saddle for quite a while, and paying off one suspect seems to have triggered the "suicide" of another, someone who apparently wasn't a suspect at all until very recently. Or was he? Dunno.

But the issue is to close out this investigation, which it looks like they are doing with all deliberate speed.

And you've heard about Zawahiri? Again. Dead you know. Well, badly injured. Again. Like his pal Osama. Again. Convenient.

At least with the Anthrax Thing, there is no longer any doubt that it was a domestic, non-Islamic, certainly non-Iraqi conducted terrorist incident. Right? All the signs point to Ft Detrick, as they have for years and years. Whether or not the exercise was ordered up by Cheney, it did, apparently, originate at a government facility using American bred anthrax on American victims. For the purpose of... ?

Well, we saw what the result was. In Congress it was the passage of the Bushevik's primary Enabling Act (aka the Patriot Act). In the media, it was the unquestioning acceptance of whatever it was the Busheviks wanted.

Mission accomplished.

And then we need to think through what was going on with the DC Sniper exercise...

Hmm.

Many people protest that Ivins has not been proven in court to have committed any crime. But isn't this a matter of national security, and doesn't the President have the power to take any action necessary? Why wasn't Ivins sent to Gitmo as soon as he came under suspicion? Shouldn't he have been tried for war crimes by a military tribunal like bin Laden's chauffeur?

I lost any faith in ABCs integrity when they squelched the DC Madam's story. It seems they have a lot of connections to poor people who conveniently commit suicide before their trials.

Rather leaves one to wonder how many other copy-cats are out there today, and just how much material remains unaccounted for.

Screwy world, no?

Wolf Blitzer laments that people might continue to doubt the official government version of the anthrax story while windbag Cafferty can't heap enough praise on the FBI for continuing their investigation for all these years as if it were some extracurricular activity.

Then Cafferty tops it all off by celebrating how much money the taxpayer saved by Ivin's suicide -- "if he was the guilty guy."

BLITZER: Thanks very much, Jeanne, for that update.

Let's go back to Jack. He's got "The Cafferty File."

You and I, we lived through that horrendous period of those anthrax attacks. I remember it oh so vividly. You know, let's hope case closed. But, you know what, the problem is that people have lost so much reassurance or assurance in what the government doing nowadays, there's going to be some people who are going to always ask questions about this.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, but I'm impressed that the FBI stayed on the case. And apparently they were getting close to busting this guy. I mean good for them.

BLITZER: Right.

CAFFERTY: I mean that was one of the biggest and most bizarre mysteries to come around in a long, long time. And I think they deserve a lot of credit for the diligence and hanging in there.

And you know what, good, he killed himself. Because if he was the guilty guy, it saved the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Compare that not only with Glenn's remarkable journalism yesterday but with the conversation that went on here in the comments and just shake your head in disbelief.