I'll check it out.

Susan,

Based on what I've seen and read, he was "creepy" to those people he harassed and intimidated. The Microbiologist who is now at the Primate Center in Oregon is a credible witness. A dream witness. It is highly unlikely being blackmailed, threatened or intimidated by the FBI into telling lies to frame Ivins.

Junk,

It is possible to make that round trip. That's all I will say. I do not know who did it. Ivins was "creepy" to some people. Perhaps not to his coworkers. He was an intelligent person and if he had borderline sociopathic personality, like most sociopaths, he could hide that from many people. Ted Bundy was a very charming man. Most of his victims went with him willingly.

You guys should keep looking at the other stuff. Ivins will turn out to have actually been a nutbar. Take my word for it. That, in and of itself, means nothing. Most nutbars are harmless. Ivins, I think we will find, had a dark side, which still is not evidence of anything other than that.

I do object to that "creepiness" is being given so much air-time as this story is doled out... and that it appears to be feeding the "creepy nerdy mad scientist" stereotype... oh, and his brother was amazed when he married because he was such a mama's boy.

It's not just the black community that has trouble convincing young kids that learning and doing well in school is cool.

The entire Bush administration has been characterized by "gut feelings" and prejudices ... the popularity of these infinite vague conspiracy theories, imho, are fed by a "facts are fungable," secret-knowledge, "it could happen, dude" cabals.

Regardless of Ivins' foibles or pathologies, he was a valuable member of the biowarfare program for 30 years ... loathsome as that may be ... he's being deliberately reduced to a cartoon and a cartoon that offends me deeply. Prejudice based on "gut feelings" has been legitimized. Screw those fact-things.

What cost $100 in 1907 would cost $2280.06 in 2007. Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2007 and 1907,they would cost you $100 and $4.51 respectively. All that in only one hundred years. A few humans live that long. They live long enough to see their dollar lose almost all its value!

So? Are you looking for a revival of the gold standard or something?

Simply saying that we slaves, ah voters, are treated better here than somewhere else is pure meaningless bunk.

By your definition, we've always been fascists. For that matter, what country DOESN'T have close relations between the people that make stuff, and the people that tell us what can be done with it? If every country is fascist to one degree or another, you'll have to develop another scare word for Hitlerism.

So far all I hear from you is whining that the world isn't perfect. What exactly are you expecting? Is there any change in the system that you think would be the magic key to happiness? Or perhaps you just like being morose? What's your problem?

LWM,

Have any people you have encountered in your life considered you to be "creepy" and possessed of a "dark side"? (Generally I find people who compulsively use the word "nutbar" in conversations to be extremely annoying, if not necessarily creepy. One wonders how they can parse a typical GG paragraph.)

If the FBI had a strong case against Ivins, they wouldn't have felt the need to introduce so much irrelevant garbage to try to make a very feeble case that includes no hard evidence to support their half-baked theory. Not even the mainstream media are buying the FBI's case -- in fact, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other MSM outlets kicked the case to the curb, after poking one large hole after another through it. This story is barely getting underway -- the real culprits behind the 9/11 anthrax attacks are still out there and represent a grave threat to Americans. They will probably strike again.

A big story on the horizon: precisely which members of the Bush 43 administration have tried to control the FBI investigation into the 9/11 anthrax attacks? What precisely has been their agenda?

You know, if you were to just rewrite your letter, and replace "Ivins" with "Hatfill"... Pretend it is 2002:

Anthrax Inquiry Draws Protest From Scientist's Lawyers

New York Times

THIS ARTICLE WAS REPORTED BY WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID JOHNSTON AND KATE ZERNIKE AND WRITTEN BY MR. BROAD.

Published: August 10, 2002

What was the theory of the attacker, again?

"For more than six months, some biowarfare experts in and out of government have spoken quietly of him as fitting their profile of the anthrax attacker: a knowledgeable person worried enough about the nation's vulnerability to germ weapons to send anthrax spores to the news media and Senate as a warning. By this theory, the attacker's motivation was never to kill or hurt but rather to alert the nation to a looming threat."

Interesting how they can just change their profile to that of a dark, obsessed, creepy, sorority-stalking lunatic, isn't it? Here's some more:

For their part, government officials say their interest in Dr. Hatfill has grown for several reasons. He clearly had the skills and access necessary to obtain anthrax spores and turn them into a weapon. He has also long complained publicly that the government was paying too little attention to the bioterror threat. Finally, investigators have uncovered aspects of his past that raise suspicions and have discovered inconsistencies in his accounts of his life.

I mean, it is the exact same kind of innuendo and character assassination that is now being applied, posthumously, to Bruce Ivins. Hatfill's Greendale school? Ivin's sorority?

One fact about his time in Zimbabwe later caught the eye of investigators: he lived near a neighborhood called Greendale, and a nonexistent ''Greendale School'' was the return address on the anthrax envelopes sent to Senators Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont last fall.

In the absense of the forensic evidence, wouldn't you agree that there is nothing that convincingly links Ivins to the letters?

On the other hand, some scientist or small group at Battelle could easily have done this. The anthrax could have been prepared at Battelle Labs in West Jefferson Ohio (they had access to both the Ames strain and the preparation technology, as does Dugway Utah), loaded into the letters and safely sealed. From there, it could have been transported to Battelle Ventures, in Princeton NJ, only 1.5 miles from the mailbox. Then it's just a quick trip - down Pike, a left on Washington, right on Stockton, and there you are. That would account for why multiple letters were posted from the same site on different dates (why on earth would Ivins have driven there TWICE?).

As long as were coming up with unsupported hypothesis, that one seems as likely as any other.