Have any people you have encountered in your life considered you to be "creepy" and possessed of a "dark side"?

No. My entire family and all my friends, neighbors and co-workers think I'm a sincere, kind, sensitive, intelligent and caring person. Boy! Do I have them fooled!

god help all the amateur geneology buffs out there...

She may well have felt "stalked" in a vague way (as she indicated, he sometimes seemed to know things she didn't remember telling him) ... but it was a very low level stalking ... even if she feared what he might do if he found out she had contacted the FBI over the photo ...

A photo which I personally didn't find scary or "inappropriate," much less "significant" ... these folks had been working with the Ames strain daily for years before September 2001 ... (I can understand her alarm because lots of people were being alarmed ... she seem to think it was nothing to joke about ... well, she didn't work with it daily.)

Reminds me of Duhley having had the fear-of-god put in her by the FBI ... where did that young woman run off to ... her boyfriend promised she had much much more to tell.

Ivins did very well for himself in his chosen field, apparently in his marriage, his church, his children, etc...

So did the BTK killer. Not one of his friends, neighbors or co-workers ever suspected him as he hid in plain sight for years. His wife was even more stunned than the people less close to him. They all said the same thing. Nice, kind, friendly churchgoing....

If his wife and both children swear that Dad came home that night, watched TV and went to bed, I guess that gives him a pretty good alibi.

So, if you're the FBI and you think the kids are lying to cover for Dad, you show then pictures or offer sports cars to get them to change their story.

And if you couple that with the article seanmcbride cited stating; "More than 250 people attended the hourlong service. Speakers cited the turnout as evidence of how important Ivins was to the church community.", then it really becomes hard to make the leap to the diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder, which Ivins in one of those e-mails, claimed his psychiatrist had arrived at. Here's the Wiki definition

The DSM will be revised again in a few years and we'll all have to learn new diagnostic terms. I'm not a clinician and I haven't examined him even if I was. But I'm not going to leap to the conclusion that any diagnosis by of the professionals who have examined him in a clinical setting is being fabricated to frame him. That's just silly.

who complained to me about a certain older man who was paying her much too much attention and who creeped her out ... (she was actually almost 30 but acted about 22) ...

I explained that she might report him to our supervisor with a complaint of sexual harrassment if he was being too forward or explicit or demanding or gross ....

Her forehead clouded and she frowned, thinking hard, that would be serious and would get him into a lot of trouble, wouldn't it? I nodded. But, it is harrassment isn't it? and he shouldn't be doing that?

I sighed, "Actually" I said, "there's the rub. Since you engage in similar "friendly," flirtaceous behavior with (I named 3 regular young stud visitors to her desk), it might be hard to make much of a case ... y'know? Perhaps you could just tell him you're not interested and ask him to leave you alone.

She looked strickened. Well, she didn't really want to hurt his feelings, y'know ... he just grossed her out ... being so old and all.

(I see far too much of this sort of passivity these days... )

The harassment can't really start until the guy is given a clear "shove off" from the other party.

Many's the time I thought I was being charming, witty and romantic, right up until the girl called 911.

I checked on Duley, and she rides a "cruiser" style motorcycle. What else do you need to know?

she was a delicate blossom who did very little work -- and I had to work in the same room listening to her giggling with her bevy of swains and on the phone all day long ...

I probably should have specified that I was joking when I suggested "sexual harrassment" ... I fear that like her, you are too sensitized to the issue to immediately grasp the absurdity ....

It was amazing how often I had to pick up the phone in that office -- both she and our "receptionist" being on personal calls or being unwilling to interrupted in-person chit-chat ...

Our supervisor liked a "happy office" and I was the only unhappy one there ... so, I left as soon as I could.

What I was doing was pointing out a seeming inconsistentcy in what's available in the public record. You may have noticed that's basically what's been going on here for the last four days.

"But I'm not going to leap to the conclusion that any diagnosis by of the professionals who have examined him in a clinical setting is being fabricated to frame him." -- L.W.M.

No but you are going to pretend that I made that leap in order to make my postion seem silly. It's a cheap rhetorical trick.

BTW, I'm sorry I can't agree with the theory you've obviously embraced that the 250 people who came to Ivins' funeral are part of a conspiracy to discredit his psychiatrist. That's just nutbar.

See how that works?

Three key questions still unanswered in anthrax case

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/257/story/46774.html

WASHINGTON — Despite the Justice Department's pronouncement that former Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins unleashed the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, three central questions about the case remain unanswered:

1) Can the FBI prove that a flask of anthrax in Ivins' bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Md., contained the same mutated strain of finely milled powder that was in the envelopes that were mailed to two U.S. senators?

2) Did Ivins, who committed suicide last week, have the technical capability to produce that form of anthrax?

3) Why, after he came under suspicion in 2005 or earlier, was Ivins allowed to retain a high-level security clearance that enabled him to continue working in the bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, apparently until this summer?

So far the answers are:

1) No, because the FBI has not revealed what "new genetic tests" they used to confirm the strain that they recovered (in 2004) was the same as in the letter. They also have not revealed what samples were tested along with the flask - Dugway? Battelle?

2) No, because all the reported details are that the spores had been coated with silica and another unique additive, polymerized glass. This requires access to advanced materials science equipment, unusual drying apparatus, centrifuges - and a contained lab, probably a biosafety level 4-lab, and there are only a few of those. Detrick does not make dried powdered anthrax, and does not have that kind of technology, by all accounts - Dugway and Battelle do.

See http://cryptome.org/anthrax-powder.htm (Science Nov 28 2003):

Glassy finish

More revealing than the electrostatic charge, some experts say, was a technique used to anchor silica nanoparticles to the surface of spores. About a year and a half ago, a laboratory analyzing the Senate anthrax spores for the FBI reported the discovery of what appeared to be a chemical additive that improved the bond between the silica and the spores. U.S. intelligence officers informed foreign biodefense officials that this additive was “polymerized glass.”...Also known as “sol gel” or “spin-on-glass,” polymerized glass is “a silane or siloxane compound that’s been dissolved in an alcohol- based solvent like ethanol,” says Jacobsen. It leaves a thin glassy coating that helps bind the silica to particle surfaces...

...By March 2002, federal investigators had lab results indicating that the Senate anthrax spores were treated with polymerized glass, and stories began to appear in the media. CNN reported an “unusual coating” on the spores, and Newsweek referred to a “chemical compound” that was “unknown to experts who have worked in the field for years.” When Science asked the FBI about the presence of polymerized glass in the Senate powder, an FBI spokesperson said the bureau “could not comment on an ongoing investigation.”

3) Well, from 2002-2006 the invetigation was run by Richard Lambert, who took over from the team led by Van Harp, John Hess, and David Lee Wilson, after which the theory of the crime was entirely revamped:

By the fall of 2002, the awe-inspiring anthrax of the previous spring had morphed into something decidedly less fearsome... The reversal was so extreme that the former chief biological weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, Richard Spertzel, found it hard to accept. “No silica, big particles, manual milling,” he says: “That’s what they’re saying now, and that radically contradicts everything we were told during the first year of this investigation.”

Their focus was mostly on painting Hatfill as the culprit, so trying to paint anyone else as the culprit would have been counterproductive.

Indeed, it might be the case that Richard Lambert and Director Mueller were deliberately leading the investigation away from places like West Jefferson and Dugway. "Agents were required to provide daily progress briefings" - that's a good way to make sure they don't start investigating in the wrong places.

Unbelievably, the Justice Department is now saying it will declare the case closed - before even allowing any of the actual details of the forensics to be examined.