If I were a reporter and someone used me like that, I'd be pissed. What was taken from Brian Ross was his credibility. He can't move on to another story and reasonably expect to be believed. He needs to pursue this zealously, or else hang up his spurs and go home.

"... a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it ..." (Drum)

Yes, that would be a small start in the right direction. I live in a country that has a government that wants to watch every tiny move I make, including my grocery store habits. If we have moved into an age of "transparency" then it is high time we found out who these anonymous sources are.

I see not reason for the government to have any secrets at all. In a democracy, transparency of government is the gold standard to measure freedom. These so-called reporters, helping government agents manipulate public opinion by passing propaganda off as "whistle blowing", are a blight on the republic. Therefore, a repeal of all "shield laws" has to come soon for the health of the country.

Real whistle-blowers can find ways to get the inside information out to the public without reports having a law that lets them write anything and claim anonymous sources.

Have you noticed that secrecy is the root of many of the abuses of the last 8 years?

Which why Bush so zealously guards his secrets.

And which is why only the removal of Bush from office offers and hope of getting to the bottom of those abuses.

And which is why the abject failure to impeach Bush serves only to perpetuate those abuses.

It could be that impeachment is off the table for the simple reason that there's plenty more anthrax where that came from, and worse.

Great post Glenn, but you might want to ask one more question:

if ivins was the primary suspect in the anthrax terrorist attack (ie the goverment believed he was a terrorist and was about to indict him for it), why did they not use the same powers they have abused so often in connection with other terrorist cases like jose padilla? why was he not declared an enemy non-combatant and taken into detention where he could have questioned in detail and protected from suicide?

in fact, why wasn't every scientist at ft. detrich taken to quantanamo? were they even forced to take lie detector tests?

...also, this case is also strongly connected to your ongoing concern about the outsourcing of national security functions. take a look at Battelle (battelle.org), the massive, "non-profit" that has seen it's business with the federal government balloon to over $4B. One of their biggest lines of business...running most our most secret labs for the pentagon and the department of energy.

of another American citizen that was trampled underfoot by the power that be, Wen Ho Lee. Republicans did everything in their power to push the narrative that a permissive and weak Democratic administration was enabling Chinese espionage, and a Democratic administration, quite willing to prove that it was "tough" on national security issues, offered up a scapegoat. The MSM relished the story, jumped in with both feet, and skewered Dr. Lee.

From my closer than the average American's viewpoint, it appeared to me that the Lee's biggest mistake was being known to the FBI. Sylvia Lee had helped out the FBI on multiple occasions with their on-going counterintelligence operations. I suspect that a similar dynamic happened in Bruce Ivin's case.

Yes, Dr. Lee did mishandle classified information (not hard in an environment where everything is classified automatically at "birth"). Still, the over-riding lesson for me was that "when the elephants fight, it's the grass that is trampled."

Leahy: We won't go any further. As I say, I feel somewhat reluctant because I was one of the targets. But I gotta say, what families of the people who died went through, what families of the people who were crippled went through, even what my family went through. A lot of people are concerned and I won't say more because we are in open session but I think you and I probably should have a private talk about this sometime.

Mukasey: That's fine.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/07/10/yeah-what-about-that-anthrax-terrorist/

Maybe Senator Leahy could fill us in on how that private talk went.

Glenn,

While I applaud your efforts to expose the absolute corruption that has infected our entire mainstream media and their news organizations and their complicit role in propagating the lies of the Bush Administration, I am afraid that it's going to take some very great, very shocking event to change the direction of the media in becoming an arm of the US Government (GOP-style).

Just as it took Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon to bring about the reforms in intelligence gathering of FISA, it only took thirty years for the thugs in our government to destroy those reforms.

It will take a special prosecutor, then impeachment hearings, then criminal prosecutions of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld before any change occurs. But the Democrats in our government do not have the stomach for these investigations because so many of them are also complicit with the authoritarians on the Right.

I don't know how you keep from getting too discouraged to work, Glenn, but I salute you for it. Keep trying.

if ivins was the primary suspect in the anthrax terrorist attack...why was he not declared an enemy non-combatant and taken into detention where he could have questioned in detail and protected from suicide?

That's a pretty good question.

were they even forced to take lie detector tests?

I believe I read somewhere that one of Ivins' colleagues (possibly it was Hatfill?) said that they all took lie detector tests.

A suspect cannot be compelled to take a lie detector test. Well, at least in jurisdictions like mine where the fifth amendment is still good law. I'm not really sure what the feds are up to these days.