I find it extremely difficult to believe that you have read Glenn's posts and the accompanying comments sections and still believe that the FBI has made a credible case. Perhaps you've read them but lack the knowledge to understand the points being made, or perhaps the implications of the questions raised and the directions in which they point are too frightening so you'd prefer to live with denial.

And please note, the FBI isn't just "updating their theory" as some in the MSM suggest. They are contradicting earlier claims and leaking new information in an attempt to buttress their case. Supposedly, they had a convincing enough case that they were ready to indict Ivins. If this was so, why would they be scurrying to cover legitimate criticisms raised here and elsewhere in the blogosphere. I have strong suspicions that you are naive or trolling.

which makes it easier to slander Bruce Ivins in the press.

Very important point because it's shaping the public conversation.

There are only two possibilities involved here and whichever one is correct, the FBI knows the answer:

1. Ivins did it. After positively identifying Ivins, the FBI knows that they would really look bad if the real perpetrator ever 'got religion' and confessed. They are not going to risk this happeing.

2. Ivins didn't do it. The FBI knows he didn't do it, but they know that whoever did do it is never going to 'let the cat out of the bag.' This would mean the government was involved in the antrax murders to provide cover for whatever they had in mind.

Note: I have not read all the comments. Please disregard if someone else has advanced this theory.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/18/11055/

or click on signature.

Asks some different questions; and is complimentary to GG:

More recently, Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com has done superb work on the anthrax story. In 2007, he wrote a striking column, “The unresolved story of ABC News’ false Saddam-anthrax reports,” on some crucially bad reporting by Brian Ross and ABC, and he followed up after Ivins’s suicide with a piece, (“Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation,”) that has more unsettling questions about the anthrax case than any other 16 pieces I’ve seen. It’s a must read. Jay Rosen, at his always interesting PressThink blog, took up Greenwald’s challenge to Brian Ross and ABC on its reporting and pressed the point home in two recent posts, here and here.

Paging Dr. Philip Zack.

Essentially, the FBI has blown their case, even if the press doesn't want to admit it. Why?

1) Genetic forensics is invalid and would be tossed on chain-of-custody and contamination issues alone, regardless of the (still secret) nature of the genetic tests.

2) The physical forensics rule out Ivins as a culprit, assuming the reporting of Richard Preston and Gary Matsumoto on the work of scientists at USAMRIID and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology is correct - and it has never been contradicted, nor has the press asked the FBI to contradict it. Oddly enough, the FBI did slap a gag order on USAMRIID scientists - while at the same time allowing their FBI lab rat, Douglas Beecher, to publish unsupported claims about the anthrax in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a leading microbiology journal, in 2006!

That last bit in particular is outrageous.

3) The forensics do seem to indicate that the real culprit(s) are connected in some way to Dugway Utah and Battelle, based on the Ames strain being used, as well as the proprietary aerosol technology controlled by Battelle.

There is really only one way to individually coat spores - make an aerosol mist were each micron-sized droplet contains just one spore and some chemical additives, then evaporate off the water - and the additives (silica + ?) then splat onto the surface of the spores. That could probably be done with a BattellePharma Electrospray Nebulizer, which is probably itself an attempt at commercializing a secret military biowarfare technology. Tracking all of them down would probably be a good thing for the FBI to do.

So, the FBI's case is nonsense, and there are multiple other suspects that were not investigated - Battelle, Dugway, and anyone who might have worked at those locations with the Ames strain and the top-secret anthrax bioweapon recipe.

This leaves the FBI and Justice with a dilemma - how to answer the critics? The latest strategy on their part is to claim that all their critics are conspiracy theorists, a theme that the press has also chosen to parrot, as well as bloggers.

For example, if you read wingspan_too's posts, he continually refers to me and then goes off on some jaunt about how "the Battelle conspiracy" is responsible, how it must have been Bioport (even though they changed their name to Emergent Biosolutions), etc. Some of these issues did come up before, but it was all recycled garbage put out by two authors, Horowitz and Fitrakis, who have zero reliable knowledge about anthrax or about the history of the U.S. and Soviet biowarfare complexes. Horowitz believes that AIDS and Ebola were deliberately made by the Rockefellers to kill off Africans and homosexuals, for example. They pretty much fall into the Bermuda Triangle zone.

Wingspan_too has also informed me I need to be on the lookout for the black helicopters. Sure it's not the space aliens?

I would say that people like wingspan_too are con artists working to re-spin this story for the benefit of the FBI, whose spokespeople are now including the phrase "wild conspiracy theories" in every press release on the issue.

What is wingspan NOT talking about? Shady public-private partnerships between government agencies (like CIA and DIA and DHS) and private interests, which is probably the real locus of the foul little nest spawned the anthrax attacks.

So, to summarize:

1) The FBI's case is shot to pieces, and comes nowhere near any "reasonable doubt" standard, based on the forensics alone.

2) There are many individuals and groups for which a purely circumstantial case (lacking any forensic evidence or direct witnesses) could be drawn, and many possible scenarios that fit the reported facts.

3) Wingspan_too is a con artist and a fraud out to paint anyone who disagrees with the FBI conclusion as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist.

By the way, my name isn't "Cargo Cult", it's Ike Solem, as noted before. You can head off your response with "@ike solem" if you like.