The Baltimore Post

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/bal-te.md.ivins03aug03,0,1282203.story

or click on sig

"Members of the Ivinses' immediate family hadn't lived in Lebanon since the early 1980s. According to Bruce Ivins' eldest brother, Tom Ivins, he came to town to move their father, T. Randall Ivins, to Maryland after he wrote a $10,000 check to a woman who had befriended him."

"After completing his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati, Bruce Ivins is believed to have returned to the county seat of about 20,000 only to sell the house and attend his father's funeral.

"Bruce Ivins was so seldom present that the "Memory Lane" columnist for the local weekly newspaper, The Western Star, once erroneously reported that he had died. The author corrected the error in a subsequent column.

"Bruce Ivins' mother died in 1970. Tom Ivins said that Bruce was at her side in the hospital. Randall Ivins closed the drugstore soon thereafter, and Bruce sold the family home - which locals say his father had built to resemble a house he saw in France - in the mid-1980s.

----

and from the beginning of the article:

"The agents said Bruce Ivins, 62, the youngest son of the town's long-deceased druggist, had faked his death. And they wanted to know everything about him and his family."

I may have missed it, there have only been three bilion posts here since Friday, but...

Putting to one side, momentarily, all the other intriguing unanswered questions, I have this one:

Did the FBI ask Ross to identify who supposedly told him that there was bentonite in the anthrax?

I see where Ross asked the FBI to "release" him from a "confidentiality" pledge regarding Hatfill, but that appears to involve the suspicions over Hatfill. I see where the FBI has been so very diligent in its "investigation". I also certainly see where the false information provided to ABC News about a supposed "bentonite/Iraq link" was as, if not more, disastrous for the United States than even the anthrax attacks themselves were.

So does Ross contend that he has refused to disclose the "sources" of the bentonite lie even when requested to do so by the United States government during the "official" investigation? GG's initial post here actually says only that ABC News is continuing not to disclose the answer, and rightly points out that whoever said this to Ross was not a "source" so much as a criminal [fraudulent propagandist?].

And if Ross has never been asked, by the FBI or other government investigators, what four (four?) "informed government sources" told him there was bentonite in this anthrax, suggesting Iraqi origin, why not? Not interested in knowing the answer to this? Maybe they can mention the answer to the "bentonite lie" when they give their "closing briefing" in the Ivins matter?

If I missed this information, sorry.

That site: www.teachingamericanhistory.org/

Is part of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University.

http://www.ashbrook.org/

It must be an iniquitous den of rabid, warmongering neocons or leftists! Same difference!

It is to laugh.

Later.

Since the government's case is reportedly all circumstantial, I assume there was no evidence he wrote those "anthrax letters," which would exonerate him. Absolutely, the perp may have altered his style, but the consistency of handwriting in all the letters makes me think that's not the case.

Thank you for the detailed and ongoing analysis of this case. This is the sort of connecting the dots work everyone touts you for and it is refreshing to see in a case that is so clearly screwed up and suspicious in the MSM.

I'm interested in all of the facts and pertinent characters but particularly how this affects ongoing events in politics. Tying the attacks to Iraq beefed up the case for war and an early drum beater on this was McCain (as seen in that video clip you posted yesterday.) With this whole mess it is not just a matter of figuring out what happened and the FBI case but about our ongoing political future and the leaders who exploited the horrible crimes to build a case for war against a country that did not attack us and was not an immediate threat.

Nice try, but Glenn asked me not to engage an idiot like you on that subject as it detracts from the work.

So, I'll just ask what other country of that time period needed a bloody war of brother against brother to end slavery? No historian has ever found one yet, perhaps they are also idiots.

Does the figure 600,000 mean anything to you Lincoln worshipers? Lincoln violated the constitution, just like Bush. I guess you love them both.

PS: Glenn, just this one and I'm done on the fool's Lincoln fantasies.

The standards in a court proceeding and journalism are essentially the same - relevance.

You need to decide just what it is you're trying to do - because you're doing one thing while claiming to do another. You say you're just interested in what's "relevant." But what you're doing is bringing up slime-throwing irrelevancies that are not about examining the media coverage of whatever case there may or may not be against Ivins but are rather about actively undermining that case.

Again, just noting that the case against Ivins' mental state is based on the uncorroborated claim of a single source should have been enough. It would have made the point. But for you, it wasn't and didn't; instead, it was necessary to destroy the reputation of the accuser. Because even though you claim

it is relevant to her credibility and to the credibility of her accusations,

that blunt fact is, no, it isn't. A couple of DUIs and a single altercation with her ex-husband are not relevant to her ability to judge Ivins' state of mind. (Sidebar: What the hell does the fact that one of DUIs was at 1:30am have to do with anything? Would it have been less serious if it was at 5:30 in the afternoon?) Trying to make them relevant, even central, is not the practice of a media or news analyst but the tactic of a defense attorney trying to smear the character of, and so discredit, a hostile witness. Which are you again, Mr. "I have no opinion?"

Even cheap slams have a place:

It has nothing to do with her handwriting

Then why in heaven's name did you find it necessary to describe it as a "scrawl?"

Ultimately, you do not address my charges that you intended to assail Duley and her qualifications and to imply she's emotionally unstable except to confirm them, justifying yourself solely on a spurious claim of "relevance." Bottom line here, and I will leave it at this, is I do not believe and cannot believe that you have "no opinion" about Ivins' guilt. You may not think he's innocent, but you clearly suspect he's being railroaded, ala Dr. Wen Ho Lee, and so set out to destroy part of the "case" against him by destroying an accuser. To insist otherwise is disingenuous at best, deceitful at worst.

And the piece remains a disgrace.