Why, if Cheney was given cipro on the night of the 9/11 attacks, was he allegedly "convinced that he had been subjected to a lethal dose of anthrax" on October 18, and that this fear is what led him to seek refuge in "undisclosed locations" and thereafter support an array of hard-line tactics against suspected terrorists?

I'm not sure I understand this point. Cheney was almost certainly treated prophylactically with cipro, the antibiotic of choice, at the time of 9/11. This would have cleared his system before October 18. If he thought he had been exposed again at that time empiric treatment would have been restarted with cipro awaiting lab results.

The odd thing here is that if Cheney thought he had been infected you might think that because of his high position he would have been put in some kind of hospital situation for a day or two for medical monitoring but this apparently never happened.

The confidentiality bond between patient and therapist is not, at law, without exception. A therapist who knows or strongly suspects that a patient is about to harm another is (at least in many jurisdictions) required to warn the potential victim and/or alert law enforcement. Lawyers -- ordinarily bound by strict client confidentiality -- may not advise clients as to how to commit future crimes (and in some jurisdictions must report any such attempt), and therapists may not sit by passively knowing they have a client who is actively planning a homicide -- including the murder of the therapist.

-- -Mona-

Most states now have similar exceptions to confidentiality and privilege and reporting requirements modeled after California's as a result of Tarasoff.

http://www.therapist4me.com/Limits%20of%20Confidentiality.htm

Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, 17 Cal. 3d 425, 551 P.2d 334, 131 Cal. Rptr. 14 (Cal. 1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of California held that mental health professionals have a duty to protect individuals who are being threatened with bodily harm by a patient. The original 1974 decision mandated warning the threatened individual, but a 1976 rehearing of the case by the California Supreme Court called for a "duty to protect" the intended victim. The professional may discharge the duty in several ways, including notifying police, warning the intended victim, and/or taking other reasonable steps to protect the threatened individual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasoff_v._Regents_of_the_University_of_California

An article in the Washington Post mentioned in passing that Mr. Ivins and his fellow researchers conducted animal tests in the course of their work. I think it's very important for us as a people, allegedly a civilized people, to keep in mind that animals are also the victims of biowarfare. As you read this, mice, and most likely cats, dogs, ferrets, monkeys, and even chimpanzees are being dosed with anthrax, plague, smallpox, ebola, nerve and other poison gases, and all the other ghastly creations of our military. They are suffering horrible fates so that we humans can continue to devise monstrous weapons, to defend against those weapons should other people use them on us, and to create our own weapons for use on other people.

Draw your own conclusions, but ask yourselves whether our species is truly the "superior" species -- made in God's image, the wisest and greatest creatures on this planet -- and whether our fate is even worth bothering over.

As per your 12:10 pm comments, what seems to be lies by Hatfill on his resume or Ivins' long-documented history of homicidal rage are just the rewriting of history by our government. How ironic that Alexander Solzhenitsyn died. He probably couldn't take anymore.

Mental health counselors have a legal obligation to tell authorities if a patient is making death threats. And if he's working with weaponized anthrax? Please! And if he were making death threats prior to 9/11 and then it happened, Ivins' counselor would have been at the gates of Fort Detrick immediately. Or on the phone to the FBI. The FBI wouldn't have been investigating for another seven years.

Hatfill had claimed on his resume that he'd gone to the Army's Institute for Military Assistance, a Green Beret school in Fort Bragg that trained solders for "unconventional warfare" and "psyops." Then, according to his resume, he went to Rhodesia and fought with the white supremacists in the Selous Scouts, an irregular military unit that is the only unit in history to have been accused (with extensive documentation) of using anthrax against civilians.

If you're working in human resources at Fort Bragg you don't accept people's resumes as gospel. The Army now denies that Hatfill was a Green Beret. Why would Fort Detrick, run by the U.S. Army, hire someone who lied about his military service? And why would they hire someone who either was part of a group murdering people with anthrax, OR lying about it.

You see, this whole thing smells. But keep moving, nothing to see here.

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

I've been close to 100% convinced of that since last April, when I first wrote about this.

See also: Trevan, Tim; Woolsey, James.

Ross sent someone an email today (the authenticity of which I want to have ABC confirm) saying this sources were "current and former government scientists" and that he "believe[s] now the scientists got it wrong although they insisted they were correct long after."

That applies to Spertzel (who insisted on the Iraq connection for quite awhile and even today is quoted in the Post insisting on the high potency and complexity of the anthrax). See this 12/10/2001 Newsweek article where Spertzel vehemently denies that the anthrax attacker is domestic:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/76270/output/print ("The domestic scenario is bull----," says Richard Spertzel, formerly a U.N. inspector in Iraq and a U.S. bioweapons expert. If the attacks are the work of Al Qaeda terrorists, they would have to be making anthrax themselves or getting it from somebody else. Spertzel and Bill Patrick, a leader in the U.S. bioweapons program from 1951 to 1986, believe Iraq is the leading candidate as sponsor of the anthrax attacks.)

Still, it seems clear that someone at Ft. Detrick at the time -- at least one source -- claimed that tests revealed bentonite. The fact that this false claim came from the exact same place where the attacks (allegedly) originated makes the identity of that source(s) vitally important information.