Did you email Cohen? .. his email address(for the WaPo anyway .. is public record

So, what needs to happen, it seems to me, is for the victims of the anthrax attacks to sue Ivins' estate (in federal court, if possible), and then subpoena ABC News and Brian Ross. If it really was Ivins who fed the info, then I would think that they would not be able to assert any journalist privilege -- who would they be protecting? In any case, given the current state of the journalism privilege under federal law, there's a distinct possibility ABC would be compelled to disclose anyway.

I agree that this is all a little suspicious, and I'm about as willing to accept nefarious actions by the Bush admin as anyone, but there seems to be two missing points here: 1) why did these people make the anthrax attacks? and 2) were these isolated actors or were they taking orders? Obviously, the only way for these questions to be cleared up would be for the remaining 3 "sources" (assuming the suicide was one of the 4) to make confessions. DoJ is clearly moving on these guys (the apparent trigger of the suicide was the indictment after all), but there's no reason to believe that there will be any transparency on this, so ABC should come forward with the names. Glenn is right: sources cease to deserve anonymity once it is revealed that they were lying about their information (see: all Bush White House "leaks").

But to come back to motive: does anyone really believe that the Bush cabal ordered the anthrax attacks that could have killed dozens of American citizens (I have no idea how much anthrax was in the letters or how much it would have spread, but the sense at the time certainly was that everyone in the building was someone in danger if such a letter arrived; was that fear real or just hype?)? Does anybody still believe that Bush ordered the 9-11 attacks? My guess, assuming these 4 were involved (and there is no conviction yet is they were acting alone under some kind of misguided attempt to remind the nation of the threat of biologics (see: "Live Free Die Hard").

Glenn, I applaud your investigation of this issue. People have largely forgotten about the anthrax attacks, and the "investigation" has completely disappeared down the memory hole.

The Bush Administration started taking Cipro on 9/11

http://www.judicialwatch.org/1967.shtml

Glenn, you're peeking down the rabbit hole...do you need to borrow some tin-foil?

I'm going to repost this link to an article from Bill Christison, published almost 2 years ago. Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies.

After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm

Maybe "actually studying" the events of 9/11 might be a good place to start?

I know of some instances where folks who need a supply of this drug readily at hand were beginning to hoard it because it had become difficult to find about this time.

“Given that the anthrax case is an active investigation,”

How does an “active” investigation take this long? Doesn’t sound very active to me. I know justice moves slowly. This seems like deliberate slowed motion.

The argument that the anthrax letters "were actually more consequential" than 9/11 is indeed going too far. The Bush administration was in a state of confusion after 9/11 and did not push the anthrax matter very hard.

I suggest you read the opening chapter to Jane Mayer's new book, "The Dark Side." The anthrax attacks created an extremely paranoid atmosphere in the White House and, particularly, in Cheney. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that this paranoia was a significant contributor to the assault on our civil liberties and destruction of American ideals that this administration then perpetrated.

Back in 2002, many of us decided that the 9-11 attack had a great deal more in common with the Reichstag Fire than it did with Pearl Harbor. The motivations and intentions behind Pearl Harbor were clearer than were those of the Reichstag Fire (Actually, a lefty from Counterpunch made the persuasive case that the fire was not planned in advance and so I don't necessarily draw the conclusion that the 911Truthers are correct, either), but how the two crises were handled afterwards was an extremely important distinction between the two cases. After Pearl Harbor, there was an obvious foreign foe to hit for it, after the Reichstag Fire, the "enemies" were mostly domestic ones and the 2001 Patriot Act had many curious similarities with the 1933 Enabling Act.

What's that old quote... "I hate that my government makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist"?

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1022-08.htm

Published on Monday, October 22, 2001 on The Progressive

Iraq, Anthrax, and the Hawks

by Matthew Rothschild

It didn't take long for the hawks to seize on the anthrax scare as a justification for the United States to go bomb Iraq.

"By far the likeliest supplier is Saddam Hussein," The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial on Oct. 18.

James Woolsey, former CIA director, said almost the exact same thing in the Journal's adjacent guest column. After speculating about Iran's involvement, he said: "But by far the more likely candidate for involvement with al Qaeda is Iraq."

Richard Butler, the bellicose leader of U.N. inspections in Iraq in the late 1990s, took to the op-ed page of The New York Times the same day to insinuate that Iraq was behind the attacks: "If the scientific path leads to Iraq as the supporter of the anthrax used by the terrorist mailers, no one should be surprised."

Three things need to be noted about this "Let's Go Get Iraq" chant.

First, the hawks wanted to get Iraq even before any anthrax was delivered.

Second, the evidence against Iraq is not overwhelming.

Third, it makes no political sense for Iraq to be behind the anthrax attacks. .....