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Thanks, PTA Mom, for your post of the hearing transcript, and to macgupta for the link to the WP article.
Stints in rehab, followed by relapses with alcohol and prescription medications, with increasingly erratic behavior and statements (angry emails about fighting back alternating with crying at his desk, for example) - this is exactly how you would expect a private, work-centered person with tendencies to depression and alcoholism to react to hyper-aggressive law enforcement intimidation.
His death also now reads clearly as either a circumstantial accidental overdose or suicide-while-intoxicated, not something that resulted from any serious thought or plan. To me this truly sad ending is in itself is an argument aginst Ivins being the sort of person who could have cold-bloodly plotted murder by biological agent (not to even mention the fact that the work to which he was so obviously dedicated was preventing that kind of fatality).
On the other hand, I was startled how coached or fabricated Duley's testimony seemed. Rather than the statements of someone remembering specific, startling incidents she had personally witnessed in a drug rehab context, her testimony struck me as hesitant, stilted, and vague, as if she were trying to remember what she was supposed to say, not recalling actually experienced events. It's certainly possible that Ivins made reckless, aggressive statements as his condition deteriorated - he was, after all, not delusional about Duley cooperating with the FBI - but the general impression of a vengeful serial killer with hatred for women out to whack all his co-workers seems right out of a bad 90's movie.
In following this amazingly freakish yet not wholly suprising story, I've found myself drawn to the human side of things, such as who Ivins really was and what that possibly can tell us about his likely guilt or innocence. With what we already know it's hard to imagine this man having anything to do with the anthrax plot, particularly since absolutely nothing has surfaced suggesting he exhibited any kind of aberrant or irrational or incriminating behavior then. If he had sent anthrax to Duley in July, for example, it would at least have made some psychological sense. Ivins sending it to tabloid editors and Democratic politicians in October 2001 is plain off-the-charts implausible.
