Frederick, Maryland to Princeton, New Jersey

160 miles.

Under the right conditions and late at night with a top of the line radar detector and police band scanner I could do that in under an hour. Two hours, no problem while half asleep. When I was younger, of course.

Things are getting weird. Now we know how our parents and grandparents felt when they killed JFK.

Actually, how we still feel, and not just about JFK, but also MLK and RFK. And then there was Kent State. That still bothers me, too. Among other things...

Let's be reasonable here, and I'd need a rice rocket to do that.

But two hours is quite possible. Round trip for him, easily done in 6 to 8 hours under optimal conditions. That's why I want to know if the guy was a tweeker. Using crank.

"If the mailbox in Princeton had anthrax spores presumably the car in which the mail was conveyed to Princeton might have some as well?"

Not unless the mailer wanted to get anthrax himself. I'm assuming that the perpetrator knew how to handle dangerous biohazard material. Anyone who knows how to work with this stuff safely can't and won't go shedding the material in his/her cars, personal property, etc. If he did, there would be a string of illness and death wherever he went, presumably.

Intuitively, it seems there must be a way to securely transport weaponized anthrax so it will not 'leak' until the user wants it to leak, or doesn't care about leakage any longer.

There was an earlier linked posted in this thread for the Washington Times. It was unnamed "intelligence sources" who said that bin Laden was making anthrax and sarin gas. Perfect timing too. If this false story were circulated by "intelligence sources" wouldn't what the FBI finds suspicious in Ivins' email make those intelligence sources suspicious? You know, if they were actually investigating this.

Aum Shinrikyo, cultic religious nutbars in Japan did make and use both sarin and anthrax. The sarin killed people. The anthrax didn't. Why that failed might be an heuristic line of inquiry for the science geeks. If anyone here is suggesting that bin Laden wasn't exploring the possibility of making or acquiring such substances and other WMDs, they are probably wearing enough tinfoil to deflect my Gigantic Ray of Ridicule right now.

I still want a full spectrum of tox screens. DNA analysis of hair, etc. to see what drugs he was taking as far back as one can go.

What do you expect to find? And, what would it tell you if you found it? Even if I let my imagination run wild with this, I can't dismiss the idea that Ivins was in a hospital when he died, with - presumably - a full array of medical resources available to him.

And, even if I go way out on a limb and imagine someone injecting him with some toxin, is it also not equally reasonable to speculate that such a substance would be chosen for it's rapid metabolization and likely wouldn't show up on a toxicology screen.

Backing up from such a fantasia, even if Haldol, Thorazine, methamphetimines, Ecstasy, PCPs, Versed, and/or whatever psychotropic one could imagine showed up, then what? What do you imagine finding that would make the situation any more clear? What would you look for, and then what inferences would you draw?

I do not know if Dr. Ivins committed these crimes or not. We will probably never know for sure.

But I wish Mr.Greenwald and the press in general would stop throwing around the term "circumstantial" as if it meant "shaky." Almost all cases are circumstantial. When a killer is caught with blood on his hands, as it were, often there isn't even a trial.

That is not to say that a circumstantial case must not fill as many holes as possible, and there are plenty of holes to fill here.

I have higher expectations of Mr. Greenwald as an attorney and legal scholar.

Also, Mr. Greenwald expresses deep skepticism because it appears that no trace of anthrax was found on Dr. Ivins possessions. I am not intimately familiar with how dangerous substances are handled, but, since great care is taken to keep them in the lab, I would think it highly likely that no such substances are likely to be found outside the lab unless one is careless--especially a number of years after commission of the crime.

This is something for an expert to address.

Just as I thought. The dark side has this down pat.

On August 6, the International Herald Tribune (which is owned by the New York Times, I believe) made the claim that Bruce Ivins used the exact phrases "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" in his emails:

BEGIN QUOTE

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/06/america/07anthrax.php

The segment about the e-mails notes that the wording was similar, and in some instances identical, to the language in the anthrax-laced letters. "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" were phrases that appeared both in the doctor's e-mails and in the letters.

END QUOTE

In which email message or messages did Ivins use these phrases? Has anyone been able find and link to them?

"If Ivins cannot be placed in New Jersey on those dates, he is not the attacker..."

This is an egregious non-sequitur. Actually, if Ivins cannot be placed elsewhere for at least some of the time intervals on which the letters must have been sent, the circumstantial case is not invalidated (Glenn should know this). Even if Ivins had an unbreakable alibi for personally sending the letters from New Jersey, that would not prove that he did not plan the attack and prepare the anthrax, just that he had some kind of collaborator (if he was in fact involved). And having a collaborator does not prove a government conspiracy - McVeigh and Nichols were not part of the government.

Everything about this case points to a single, deranged, right-wing perpetrator who had access to anthrax. In fact this was apparent from the beginning and the evidence obtained by the FBI only substantiates it. The question for the Bush administration and the media is why the true nature of the attack was not publicized immediately. Glenn and other have asked this question repeatedly, and it has not been answered.

A valid question for the FBI is why they concentrated on Hatfill for so long - where are the documents on that? And again, how could it possibly take over six years to assemble the evidence against Ivins? What exactly were the FBI agents doing over this time?