I will admit that there are many, many questions left to be answered.

But I shall propose a new 9/11 conspiracy theory here. Much of the speculation is based on the secrecy after, shoddiness of security during, and possible foreknowledge leading up to the events. However - and I've had a few to drink, so pardon my poor usage - I have an engineering education and have read a lot on both sides. I am now convinced that planes did indeed crash into, and cause the collapse of WTC 1 and 2, and that the damage sustained by WTC 7 was sufficient to cause its collapse (which incidentally wasn't as "pancake" and "controlled demolotion - like" as the conspiracy theorists present it). Also, I am pretty sure that an American Airlines 757 (or was it 767?) hit the Pentagon and that there was wreckage on scene to back this up, all mysterious CCTV video tape confiscations and subsequent refusals to release aside.

My theory re: 9/11 and the gov't. It was indeed perpetrated by the hijackers named, in the actual planes named, and in the manner we all saw, exactly as we saw it (with or without government foreknowledge and perhaps complicity). The Bush administration would rather that the intelligent people working on all the conspiracy theories spend their time doing just that than investigating and detailing the *real* law breaking going in such as denial of habeas corpus, illegal spying, torture, rendition, encroachments on civil liberties and the Constitution in general, illegal invasion and privatization for multi nationals of Iraq, etc.

Again, my two cents...hiccup.

*controlled DEMOLITION. duh.

Dr Zod et. al.:

I sent this to Glenn; but one wonders if he will be able to crash-dive through all of his e-mail. A little-remembered fact from May 21, 2001:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/may/21/usa.marktran/print

So, what offensive stockpiles of Anthrax the U.S. might have possessed were never the subject of scrutiny.

Tran ended the article:

"By spurning the 1972 protocol, the Bush administration has taken the wrecking ball to yet another international arrangement. It has already turned its back on the Kyoto accord on global warming and it wants to junk the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. The administration appears determined to make the world a more dangerous place for everybody, including itself."

So, now we have sororities in peril, and stories of "borrowed" dryers that produce weapons grade Anthrax from stocks that were apparently never monitored.

The unimpeachable (pun intended) evidence points more towards the administration than a lone whacko who was not ideological.

I hadn't yet read your post when I hit publish but thanks for reinforcing my point.

I suggested Glenn might have put this in bold:

None of this is to defend Ivins, nor is to suggest that this constitutes evidence that Duley is lying or is otherwise inaccurate in her claims. As I said, it's perfectly possible that Ivins is guilty of being the anthrax attacker. I have no opinion on whether he is. The point is that nobody should have any opinion on that question -- one way or the other -- until they see the FBI's evidence.

We don't know what the FBI knows. And we should know what they know, if they know anything at all. Without going into great detail, this is highly unlikely:

The obvious suggestion here is that some of these sources are in fact the attackers

I'll be the first to admit that if there is any involvement by rogue elements in our government, and it would have to be "rogue elements" in these events, it was with these mailings, but we have no evidence of that as yet and I rather doubt that Glenn is more or less suspicious about this than most of the rational skeptics out here. We need a congressional inquiry and investigation into this matter. We need to see what evidence the FBI has. It has to be rogue elements because this is not the kind of thing that would remain secret for long if it was hatched in brainstorming sessions in the WH. It's less than a year since Cheney thought dressing up SpecOps or SEALS or whatever as Iranians might be a good idea and we already know about it, and it didn't happen. Cooler heads prevailed, and even leaked it. This is just the same dynamic that had people all worked up about Iraq and WMDs - in reverse.

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-anthrax-attacks-sunlight-is-best-disinfectant

I have no idea what the "point" that you refer to is, and I don't follow most of what you wirte in your post addressed to me.

All I'm saying is Glenn tends to portentously string series of facts together in ways that I think are intended to lead the reader to a place that Glenn himself carefully does not go. i find that evasive and I wish he would be explicit about his larger points, or state credibly (which is to say not simply deny that he does what he does in fact in the same column do) that there isn't one. But obviously others appreciate his methods, as his comments run about 80 percent supportive.

There seems to be a deliberate process of leaks going on ahead of any possible "case closed" press conference. This is just in from the NYT:

Dr. Ivins, who had a history of alcohol abuse, had for years maintained a post office box under an assumed name that he used to receive pornographic pictures of blindfolded women.

Years ago, he had visited Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses at universities in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, an obsession growing out of a romance with a sorority sister in his own college days at the University of Cincinnati — although someone who knew him well said the last such visit was in 1981.

I think it's important to remember that Ivin's character is not the issue here. Even if he was a sleazy pervert, as the Feds seem to be trying to establish, that doesn't make him guilty. Conversely, even if he is innocent that does not make him a saint (he may have been a willing member of the Camel Club's anti-Arab harrassment, for example).

The NYT article also notes some more disturbing elements of the investigation:

They had even intensively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, “Your father did this,” according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend.

As the investigation wore on, some colleagues thought the F.B.I.’s methods were increasingly coercive, as the agency tried to turn Army scientists against one another and reinterviewed family members.

One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Dr. Ivins’s daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks.

“It was not an interview,” Dr. Byrne said. “It was a frank attempt at intimidation.”

Dr. Byrne said he believed Dr. Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. “They figured he was the weakest link,” Dr. Byrne said. “If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?”

Another former co-worker, Dr. Kenneth W. Hedlund, who collaborated on anthrax research with Dr. Ivins in the 1980s, had a similar theory.

“The investigators looked around, they decided they had to find somebody. They went after all of them but he looked the most susceptible to pressure,” Dr. Hedlund said. “It is like prisoners of war: if they are harassed enough, they will be driven to do anything. But I don’t believe he would have done what they say he did.”

But I guess the really critical part of the NYT article is the scientific explanation, which goes pretty far:

F.B.I. officials say they do know a great deal about what happened and will make it public, possibly as early as Wednesday. They say the core of their case will be the science, which produced the giant step from a globe of possible suspects to a single lab and a single flask...

Further, the attack strain contained bacteria with both the flipped and the unflipped DNA, showing that it was a mixture of two strains, which analysts later found reflected a mix of origins — 85 percent from the Dugway Proving Ground of the Army in Utah and 15 percent added at Fort Detrick, according to one person close to the investigation.

To make sure the case for the distinctive features of the attack anthrax could hold up in court, agents collected thousands of samples of Ames strain anthrax from labs around the world, said scientists familiar with the F.B.I.’s thinking. “This is the step that took so long,” one scientist said.

There's a lot more scientific stuff in the article, linked at my moniker below.

This NYT article still does not establish Ivin's guilt in any way. I'd be interested to see if they think they can prove he sent the Quantico letter, if they are going to keep ignoring that part of the case.