To clarify---I wasn't laughing at, but with you. I agree with your analysis to the effect that we are seeing (if I may interpret) a huge number of parallel microidiocies rather than a single conspiracy of All Them. As many others here have noted---sometimes over and over in the space of days---connections are everywhere. It's easy to get freaked.

Connections are not conspiracies---they are real, or can be. Still, stupidity, greed, and malice rule the world, not clever schemes. But so does cowardly butt-covering and hubristic bureaucratic reaches that exceed any realistic grasp.

And it doesn't help when life starts resembling an episode of Millennium.

To clarify---I wasn't laughing at, but with you.

Oh. Nevermind.

Emily Litella

The Truman Show just goes on and on. I have been reading a news article regarding the latest news story about the anthrax attacks of 2001. It seems all of a sudden that a new suspect (Bruce E. Ivins) has been identified, but unfortunately he committed suicide so we won't be able to question him or his motives. Dr. Steven Hatfill was the government's prime suspect for over seven years but was cleared by the Justice Department recently and received $5.8 million for his troubles. Here is a quote from the news release:

"Ivins worked at the Army's biological warfare defense labs at Fort Detrick, Md. for 35 years until his death on Tuesday. He was one of the government's leading scientists researching vaccines and cures for anthrax exposure. But he also had a long history of homicidal threats, according to papers filed last week in local court by a social worker."

Now let's see what is wrong with this picture and or the FBI is so incompetent that field agents are lucky to find their way home at night with or without a GPS device.

For seven years, the FBI investigates Dr. Hatfill as the prime suspect while ignoring Ivins with a long history of homicidal threats. Seems ridiculous to me. Yes, and of coarse, we are reassured that the very people working on plagues for our government just happen to be homicidal sociopaths. But then who would suspect a simple homicidal sociopath? Certainly not the FBI at least not for six or seven years.

Here is another quoted absurdity: "Authorities were investigating whether Ivins, who had complained about the limits of testing anthrax drugs on animals, had released the toxin to test the treatment on humans." Apparently, Dr. Ivins wanted to test the anthrax on political humans and members of the press. He just happened to select Senators Leahy, Daschle, and Finegold by accident! These three were voicing the greatest opposition to the passage of the patriot act at the time. He also went after the Sun/Times of Florida, a supermarket tabloid in Boca Raton, Fl. This paper had the nasty habit of writing negative stories about the Bush daughters at the time. Seems also like a good place to test the toxin to see if it works in a sunny hot southern clime. Anthrax spores were also sent to NBC, ABC and the New York Post as cover.

It seems that Dr. Ivins did all of this field testing of anthrax in 2001 and then later in 2003 he received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees. This award is often given out to homicidal sociopaths, but then again homicidal sociopaths in the Defense Department – sounds like this actually has a ring of truth to it.

The important thing to remember is that Dr. Ivins is dead and the case can now be closed because the FBI after seven long years got their man or at least their man got to himself with an overdose of Tylenol 3 with codeine. You would think that a biology PHD could fine a better overdose choice than Tylenol 3, but at least they were handy. And the Truman show goes on and on!

It will be a criminal trial. Something about anthrax murder. And it doesn't matter if she's not the defendant. Rule 609.

Furthermore, I was referring only to her claim that she was threatened by Ivins, not her expert evaluation of Ivin's mental health. For that proposition, I presume they'll be getting the calm, sober, and undoubtedly silver-haired Dr. Irwin to testify. I am talking about a very specific assertion of lack of credibility and the use of irrelevant criminal records to back it up. It's a pretty disturbing journalistic technique and well-accepted, but not illegal.

For the record, and whether he did it or not, I'm sure Ivins is getting unfairly tarred himself. I really don't have a dog in this one.

You mentioned Tom Ivins as the other witness. He was asked to comment on Duley's statements, IIRC, and thus her statements affected his comments.

David Willman wrote today in the LA TImes:

"Ivins' government work with the separate batches of dry powder anthrax was not widely known at USAMRIID. Two former top officials there told The Times in recent weeks that they had no idea until being contacted by a reporter that USAMRIID had received anthrax in either powder or wet form from Dugway or Battelle, whose own anthrax testing is done in Ohio."

If these two former officials word is correct, why did Scott Shane write for the Baltimore Sun in Dec 2001:

"For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people, government sources say.

Until the anthrax attacks led to tighter security measures, anthrax grown at Dugway was regularly sent by Federal Express to the Army's biodefense center at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, where the bacteria were killed using gamma radiation before being returned to Dugway for experiments."

The Times seems to have this very wrong. Who are those former officials that spoke with the Times?

Willman also writes:

"The forensic analysis of the anthrax sent in the mailings had long posed a challenge to the FBI, whose in-house scientists were not equipped to decipher the potential origin of the material. Some of the first analysis was performed by Ivins and other scientists at USAMRIID; such efforts also were attempted at Battelle, but technicians there rendered some of the material forensically useless by first sterilizing it with steam, scientists told The Times. A spokesman for Battelle, T.R. Massey, declined earlier this year to discuss Battelle's role."

But:

New Scientist magazine posted a story in May 2002 that reports the Institute for Genomic Research, and a team at the University of Northern Arizona found the attack strain, derived from the first victim, Roebert Stevens, "identical" to the Ames reference strains they received from USAMRIID, Dugway, and from a UK biodefense lab at Porton Down. The UK strain was non-pathogenic. The link to that article is: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2265

And I have also read, but lost the link, that Battelle after destroying the first sample in a steam autoclave, received a second sample, analyzed it, and confirmed what TIGR and UNA determined, that the attack strain was identical to the Ames reference strains they were looking at. Willman is not clear about what he means by forensic analysis "long posed a challenge..." to the FBI. They had multiple labs telling them in early 2002 that the DNA sequences of the attack strain and the Ames reference strains were identical. And Shane's article in the Sun points out that as many as 50 labs worldwide may have had cultures of the Ames strain. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1212-01.htm