The Times seems to be asking for something the FBI doesn't claim to have. The case is circumstantial: the totality of the evidence excludes the possibility that anyone else could have done it.

What has been released are multiple copies of an overview affidavit supporting search warrants, which only require "probable cause" to believe that the search will produce evidence the might be related to a crime. No FBI evidence whatsoever has been released. The warrants only provided a summary of the "beliefs" of investigators.

Of course, I totally agree that all of the evidence should be disclosed ... to Congress, if not a special commission ... for thorough, but prompt, public review and reporting.

Frankly, if the summaries are true and correct, I think they had a very strong case. But, the public is owed the truth, even if it discloses (especially if it discloses) FBI incompetence, mismanagement and foolish errors.

We paid for seven years of work. The FBI owes us the results of that effort.

At what I'd estimate Ivins pay grade to be, it's true that folks don't get overtime but instead get "comp time." In the VA, at least, they call it that rather than Administrative Leave and they're so stingy with it that it's almost not worth asking for. I'll take your word on Army reg's.

By second day, do you mean the letters that went out on ~ 10/9? Seemingly, no revelations about that.

Have a problem with the time line generally. According to Marcy's summary, Ivins had been taken off the Special Immunization Program in the Spring of '01 (possibly for psych problems/alcohol rehab?) and didn't return to it until 9/7. Seems as though he would have had to be awfully efficient to be ready to launch the first letters within a few days. Wouldn't his extra hours be explained more logically by attempts to get caught up at work? According to his e-mail, they were finishing up what was apparently the "last of their AVA" with nothing to replace it and under a lot of pressure.

I don't know if Ivins was involved (although on a personality basis I rather doubt it - more so since the document dump) but increasingly I'm convinced that neither Ivins nor any other Lone Ranger could have pulled off this complex and highly sophisticated operation. Looks to me like a well-funded and tightly coordinated effort by folks with lots of money and zip in the way of conscience. Guess I'm partly influenced by looking at who profited. They got their war in Iraq (and associated profits) and their Patriot Act, and Battell got Ft Frederick and a very fat contract. Motive? Yeah. Frightening! But I think most folks are more comfortable believing it's some poor, lone nerd. Besides, they're too busy watching the latest pol scandal.

Mousauoui, Padilla, the paintball kids, the Lackawanna 6, the Seven Seas, the current midwest credit card transaction terrorism, etc.

Something is just wrong. Despite all their newfound Patriot Act "freedoms," they seem to be having real problems making cases -- even when they virtually entrap wannabes by posing a financial aids or create "terrorism" convictions out of blatant terror tactics of their own (threatening life sentence charges in exchange for fairly minor plea bargained confessions) Too fonvictions have been for "materially aid" which was pretty trivial, imho.

In one of the NYT articles, I couldn't find it when I looked, one of the FBI guys responding to criticisms that Ivins was "hounded" got all "John Wayne" about how hard it was "pretty" when you, irrc, sit across from these guys for months as they lie to your face ... He sounded full of personal animosity, seething towards Ivins ... and I thought, gee, I thought you guys were supposed to be the professionals.

Much like the revelations about pre-09/11 funtion, they appear "dysfunctional."

The antrax mailings was a real crime with a pretty small number of people with access, etc. I'm not saying it was "easy" but it appears it got off irrevocably off the tracks early on when they fixated on Hatfill. A lot of this may be justifiably "top secret" but it appears to me something is seriously "off" in how this agency is doing its job. Too many big deal initial charges plea bargained down in ways that looked like they were trying to avoid court. The treatment of Ivins looks like they were trying break him to avoid court as well. Well, they broke him, allright.

1) Genome screening:

So, if I read your comment right...you're supposed to use the rapid-test to screen for potential matches, and then do full-sequence scans on those matches to verify? And they stopped at "well, this potentially matches, so it's good enough for us", without testing any strains from other labs? -- Silash

Given the very limited information in the FBI documents, it’s pretty much impossible to tell what they did. They say they have four markers, which sounds like the older work done by the Keim group. Without looking at the actual details, very little can be said - but it doesn’t appear that they sequenced whatever was in the flask - work that would have been done by TIGR. From the Aug 04 LA Times article:

As the investigation ground on, authorities enlisted colleagues of J. Craig Venter, founder of a Rockville, Md., institute that had helped map the human genome...

...Venter said federal investigators within the last two years retrieved the anthrax evidence from the institute. "FBI came in and took freezers and all the samples," he said in an interview Sunday.

So, it doesn’t look like any whole genome sequencing of the flask strain was done.

2) Regarding Battelle (propensity):

Battelle calls itself a non-profit organization promoting scientific research. They are certainly a defense contractor, but not in the typical Lockheed/Boeing kind of way.

That’s not actually true. For example, Battelle is the lead technology owner on the so-called FutureGen project - the implausible plan to burn coal without emitting anything that was championed by the Bush Administration, a billion dollar project that the DOE recently pulled out of.

Battelle has many sections and divisions and is pretty hard to track down. It often acts as a subcontractor for a wide variety of companies, often quite secretly (for example, the only place Vaxgen disclosed that all of its anthrax vaccine work would be subcontracted to Battelle was in SEC filings.)

Battelle also manages five other labs for the federal government, and is involved in a whole host of other projects, always hiding behind some other named consortium. The Midwest Research Institute, that controls the direction of research at the National Renewable Energy Lab? A Battelle-Bechtel collaboration. Oak Ridge nuclear labs, Idaho nuclear labs, Brookhaven nuclear labs - all are managed by Battelle, indirectly via consortiums that Battelle belongs to.

Lawrence Livermore LLC? Also a Battelle, Bechtel, BWXT, U Texas / U Calif consortium. There are quite a few other examples. The role that Battelle Ventures plays in all of this is unclear - a fund that channels cash to other areas? They claim to be a non-profit, so their finances enjoy an extra level of shielding - so all in all, they are not really like Lockheed - Boeing - they are something much stranger and far more secretive. From all appearances, they sit right at the heart of the U.S. nuclear and biological warfare complexes.

What they also are is a federal poster child for public-private partnerships, the seamless joining of corporate and government interests, where funding is provided by the government, and patents are privately held, and there is zero legal accountability for the actions of the government “partners”. Battelle, in other words, is a techno-science version of Blackwater. If Dr. Strangelove was alive today in the United States, he’d most likely be a Battelle employee.

It’s not too hard to understand why this government would be willing to go to great lengths to protect this particular institution - the world’s largest privately held R&D corporation. They’ve been around ever since the Manhattan Project, when they were involved in the gaseous diffusion plant in Oak Ridge, TN.

As far as the non-profit status? Well, there are reasons for that, mostly related to Battelle’s long-term involvement in nuclear R&D for civilian and military purposes - it’s mostly about avoiding liability:

The 1988 amendments to the Price-Anderson [Nuclear Accident Indemnity] Act enabled DOE to assess civil fines and penalties against its contractors, but it specifically exempted DOE nonprofit contractors as well as their for-profit and nonprofit subcontractors and suppliers

Yes, they are on the short list of DOE exempted contractors. Exposure of Battelle as the source of the anthrax would likely have far-reaching consequences, and could easily lead to a large review of the entire issue of unaccountable public-private partnerships and government defense contracting. That may be the main reason for this state of affairs, perhaps.

Ike Solem