Years ago, when I did volunteer work at a teenage runaway shelter (in CA), we were strictly advised NOT to promise unconditional confidentiality. If we found cases of child abuse, etc. we were required to report it, and we let the kids we were dealing with know that up front. We didn't abuse the trust of the kids by lying to them, the trust is what was needed to help them.

Very true. And while I agree that much about this anthrax case, including issues relating to Ivins, reek to high heaven, based only on what I've read about his therapist's actions, she did what was legally required of her -- if the facts she recited are true.

The FBI early on focused their attention away from Iraq and on to the lab Ivins worked in. After this incident Ivins and the lab got the money they had been seeking from the government to develop vaccines for anthrax. The real investigation should be did Ivins and his colleagues let loose the Anthrax spores on purpose to get funding they had been denied in the past.

We really need to stop wasting our tax dollars on bio terrorism.

Again, only Dugway, now under the management of Battelle, could have produced the Daschle and Leahy material. No other site on earth could have done it.

That's all great and interesting work. Do you have any source that clearly states that only Dugway would be capable of producing strains that were that refined?

Also, did I understand you correctly that the offensive strains that Dugway produced were sent to Ft. Detrick, enabling scientists there to have access to it? Or do you consider the fact that only Dugway could have produced the anthrax to mean that it originated there, not at Ft. Detrick?

The UCLA School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology has a nice archive of articles for the roughly two years following the onset of the anthrax scare (Fall 2001 through Fall 2003) to get a sense of the cases - and false alarms -and the ensuing investigation, such as it was. It was especially helpful those like me who needed a reminder of not only how these events served to create a sort of siege mentality but also how long that damaging mindset lasted. (I may be using the wrong verb tense there.)

Glenn is correct in saying the other day that this poisonous climate may not have prevailed with just the events on 9/11/01 alone. The Hart Senate building was shut down for four months and the postal service was turned upside down, forever changed. Anthrax spores were being found well into 2002. (See 8/20/02 NYT article from earliest UCLA archive on spores that were found in a Princeton, New Jersey mailbox.)

The articles can be found at the following (in chronological order, and be sure to look under Anthrax News Stories and Journal Articles sections):

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/archivesbio2.html#Anthrax%20News

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/archivesbio1.html#Anthrax%20News

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/bioterrorism.html#Anthrax%20News

What the UCLA archive does not portray is the early push, particularly through television and radio, to tie Iraq into the anthrax as has been discussed at length. It is exactly the same thing we’ve seen time and time again from Bush/Cheney: they have already decided how they want the investigation to turn out and then do their damnedest to make it come out that way - a sound investigation and the public safety be damned.

Remember - and this is absolutely the best light that can be put on it - that while positive anthrax medical cases were continuing to be reported from early October to as late as early December 2001, the administration chose to focus the enormity of their investigative resources on finding ways to connect Iraq to the attacks to suit political purposes and presumptions rather than methodically and objectively going about finding and stopping the killer or killers who were still out there and, as far as anyone would know, still a threat. This decision alone to waste taxpayer dollars and put citizens at greater risk is worthy of a congressional investigation. From a December 22, 2001 article by William Broad and David Johnston in the (earliest) UCLA archive:

Shortly after the first anthrax victim died in October, the Bush administration began an intense effort to explore any possible link between Iraq and the attacks and continued to do so even after scientists determined that the lethal germ was an American strain, scientists and government officials said.

But they said that largely secret work had found no evidence to back up the initial suspicions, which is one reason administration officials have said recently that the source of the anthrax was most likely domestic.

For months, intelligence agencies searched for Iraqi fingerprints and scientists investigated whether Baghdad had somehow obtained the so-called Ames strain of anthrax. Scientists also repeatedly analyzed the powder from the anthrax-laced envelopes for signs of chemical additives that would point to Iraq.

"We looked for any shred of evidence that would bear on this, or any foreign source," a senior intelligence official said of an Iraq connection. "It's just not there."

The focus on Iraq was based on its record of developing a germ arsenal and also on what some officials said was a desire on the part of the administration to find a reason to attack Iraq in the war on terrorism.

"I know there are a number of people who would love an excuse to get after Iraq," said a top federal scientist involved in the investigation.

...

One discovery early in the inquiry seemed to undercut the foreign thesis. The anthrax used in the first attack, in Florida, and in subsequent attacks turned out to be the Ames strain, named after its place of origin in Iowa. While investigators found that this domestic variety of anthrax had been shipped to some laboratories overseas, none could be traced to Baghdad.

Nevertheless, government officials continued pushing the Iraq theory, scientists and officials involved in the inquiry said. They saw an intriguing clue in reports that Iraq had tried hard to obtain the Ames strain from British researchers in 1988 and 1989, raising suspicions that it had eventually succeeded.

...

But in the end few samples from Iraq's arsenal were found, and those that were turned out to have nothing in common with the Ames strain, officials said.

...

The Iraq inquiry also looked for chemical clues. An early focus was bentonite, a clay additive that is one of the few substances identified publicly that can help reduce the static charge of anthrax spores so they float more freely and potentially infect more people.

Richard O. Spertzel, a retired microbiologist who led the United Nations' biological weapons inspections of Iraq, told investigators that Iraq had explored using bentonite in its germ weapons programs. But Maj. Gen. John Parker of the Army's biological research center at Fort Detrick, Md., said in late October that tests had turned up no signs of aluminum -- a main building block of bentonite.

"If I can't find aluminum," General Parker told reporters, "I can't say it's bentonite."

...

It remains unclear whether the focus on Iraq diverted investigators from the domestic inquiry. But some scientists say a decision made early on suggests that it might have.

In early October, the F.B.I. raised no objections when officials at Iowa State University, where the Ames strain was discovered, said they planned to destroy the university's large collection of anthrax spores for security reasons. Many biologists now say that step might have destroyed potential genetic clues to the culprit's identity.

I’m betting Spertzel is one of Brian Ross’s sources.