Ivins sent an e-mail to [REDACTED] a few days before the anthrax attacks warning [REDACTED] that “Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas” and have “just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans,”

Why does that draw attention? Millions of Americans were thinking so too - that Bin Laden has decreed death to all Jews and all Americans, and that Bin Laden has anthrax.

E.g., here is a Sept 27, 2001 article from the New York Times (Ivins' email is from Sept 26), emphasis added.

" A NATION CHALLENGED: FEAR OF INFECTIONS; Anthrax Scare Prompts Run on an Antibiotic

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: September 27, 2001

Many New Yorkers -- and to a lesser extent, people across the country -- are stocking up on Cipro, an antibiotic that they believe can be used to treat anthrax.

Most scientists say that taking Cipro after the appearance of symptoms of exposure to anthrax, a potentially deadly form of bacteria, is useless.

But Sebastian Manciameli, a pharmacist at Zitomer Pharmacy on Manhattan's Upper East Side, said: ''We can't keep it in stock. It started the day after the World Trade Center, with a few prescriptions, and now there's more and more.''

Mr. Manciameli added, ''I usually keep 100 tablets in stock, but this time I ordered 3,000 and sold out. One person bought 1,000 tablets.''

At the Village Pharmacy in the Boston suburb Brookline, Mass., Donald Silkes said that enough people had been asking about antibiotics to prompt him to place an extra order.

''They say, 'I've spoken with my doctors and we decided this would be the best in the case of anthrax,' '' Mr. Silkes said. ......

Is the complete e-mail available? Because the sentence “Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas” and have “just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans” could be a quote from Lieberman or Cheney any day of the week. That sentence without the rest of the e-mail doesn't mean much one way or another.

".....Mr. bin Laden's declaration of war on Feb. 23, 1998. He proclaimed from his Afghan redoubt: ''To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able.''"

Bentonite, dentonite, shmentonite. Too complicated for my non-scientific brain to keep straight. Sorry, messed that punch line up -- but I did get it right three days ago, just couldn't remember it. Not the first time, won't be the last. Must have been from trying to figure out what a liposucker was. Lost track. Ah, well. Maybe it was the hijacker who got dentonite training from the Abu Nidal School of Oral Hygiene in Iraq, is that what Susskind just wrote about?

Everybody go back to the document dump now, please. Nothing to see here.

I hate sloppy writing, especially by myself -- drop the apostrophe from "Ivins'" in my recent header, and "desconstruct" is obviously "deconstruct."

Macgupta -- the email doesn't prove that Ivins was responsible for the attacks, but it raises legitimate suspicions. We need to examine all the data in the document dump to see how the evidence hangs together.

We need to see the entire email, and other contextual email, for sure. This is the kind of thing that Glenn Greenwald is brilliant at tracking down. Let's see what he turns up.

Uh, "Suskind", not "Susskind". I feel strangely compelled to fix that PDQ, he said sheepishly.

Give your post a real quick spel-chek before you hit send. Especially if you are a good speller, which you are, and then there can be mistypings which you won't notice. Takes only a second or two. The Google tool bar has a good one, which also covers a lot of proper nouns in the news, and it's quick.

Keep in mind that when one side has all the documents and can pick and choose to make their own case, leaving out the parts that undercut the picture, and with nobody else having the full documents, it is VERY EASY to make things look however you want.

That first FBI document -- the Probable Cause Affidavit summarizing the case against Ivins -- contains some persuasive circumstantial evidence, no doubt about it. But it also contains very little SCIENTIFIC evidence, and more to the point, circumstantial evidence is EXTREMELY easy to manipulate when you're the only one who has it.

Will keep reading . . .

I take back about 90% of what I said re: Ivins' probable or at least possible guilt the other day.

This document dump is really quite empty of any smoking gun. A bunch of warrant affidavit, warrant, and return documents. We get to see what was seized, but never the significance or whether any reasonable physical or circumstantial evidence was obtained as a result.

This case looks shoddy. Very shoddy.

http://www.usdoj.gov/amerithrax/

no one else that I've seen ...

One does not need to be a "Zionist" to "hate" Arabs ... lots of folks "hate" Arabs of the terrorist variety. Mr. Ivins apparently felt that "the Jews" did not owe the Arabs/Moslems the civility of that forum. I do not think that makes him either a "Zionist" ... we know he was a Roman Catholic ... they come in many "flavors" as well...

Anyone alive circa 1970s, Munich, the Achilles Laro, various plane highjacking and the Iran hostage crisis etc. and the rest. More recently there was the Beruit baracks bombings, the Cole, the outrages of the Taliban -- ALL BEFORE 09/11 -- if anyone was paying attention.

I had a thirty-something Syrian coworker in 1995 who regaled me with stories of the harrassment she and her family (elderly parents) had experienced during the Gulf War and after ... lots of "why don't you go back where you came from" and anxiety about attending their mosque.

Anti-Arab sentiments did not begin on 09/11, they are not rare, and they do not necessarily imply "zionist" tendencies ... just regular bigotry.

The following excerpts from Ivins' email are presented in one of the affidavits for a search warrant:

"September 15, 2001, "I am incredibly sad and angry at what happened, now that it has sunk in. Sad for all the victims, their families, their friends. And angry. Very angry. Angry at those who did this, who support them, who coddle them, and who excuse them."

September 26, 2001, "Of the people in my "group", everyone but me is in the depression/sadness/flight mode for stress. I'm really the only scary one in the group. Others are talking about how sad they are or scared they are, but my reaction to the WTC/Pentagon events is far different. Of course, I don't talk about how I really feel with them - it would just make them worse. Seeing how differently I reacted than they did to the recent events makes me really think about myself a lot. I just heard tonight that Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas. You [redacted-about 3/4 of a line]

In that same September 26, 2001 email, Dr. Ivins states "Osama Bin Laden has just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans" -- language similar to the text of the anthrax letters postmarked two weeks later warning "DEATH TO AMERICA", "DEATH TO ISRAEL".

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There's lots of other stuff, read it if you can.