FNORD

I wonder whether he, too, was a big Hannity/O'Reilly fan?

Is it normal to warn of impending charges in a criminal case? And why oh why did he not kill himself with a gun or anthrax even, instead of a codene/tylenol mix.

The Bush administration gets its man!
(Only six years and 10 months after the crimes.)

Kevin, there are a lot of reasons someone innocent under this sort of investigation might decide suicide was better.

It's a pretty big, daunting, depressing fight. Maybe he knew what had happened to Hatfill and didn't want to fight that fight.

Even in the land of Innocent Until Proven Guilty.

Richard Jewell

Seriously Kevvy, it's Orange County asshole thinking like yours that make smearing others such a profitable venture for the Jerome Corsi's.

If he was innocent why did he kill himself?

Maybe he was afraid of the death of a trillion jerks.

Innocent until proven guilty. Or until we see the evidence they have against him and it is air tight.

There is a question mark after the title, folks.

I'm far from sure that Kevin has convicted anyone...it was a query, a question.

And why attach Mr. Drumm? I come here to see things I might miss otherwise. So I'm glad I got to see this.

jeez, jerry, defensive much? Kevin is personally responsible for hounding a (possibly) innocent man to his death!

My tinfoil hat is telling me this Ivins guy could be a setup - killed, with the murder made to look like a suicide, so the real perpetrator(s) could throw off suspicion. Yeah, that's the ticket.

The most interesting thing, to this day, about the anthrax attacks is the fact that the two strongest attacks, using weaponized anthrax, were targeted against the offices of two senior Democratic Senators. What was that about? I doubt it was an accident.

Is it normal to warn of impending charges in a criminal case?

It's not unheard of. For some reason they probably didn't consider him someone who they had to worry about trying to flee prosecution. Or maybe the evidence wasn't quite as strong as the prosecutor would have liked to indict, but they thought that letting him know that he was a target in the investigation might provoke him into making some kind of a mistake that turned up more evidence- especially if they already had enough evidence to justify putting him under some kind of surveillance.

Anyway-- why haven't we heard about this yet? Just because he was the right guy and the FBI didn't manage to get him? Bad PR? That's lame. We need to be able to make things like the FBI better, not just be led around by the dick by them. Guys like the FBI aren't the smartest guys in the world, and they shouldn't be able to hold themselves above public scrutiny. They're the only thing we've got to protect us against a lot of dangers.

And why attach Mr. Drumm?

If you don't attach Mr. Drumm, it can fall and break Mr. Toee.

Fox has figured out that by simply putting a question mark at the end of something, you can say f**king anything.

Is Kevin working for Fox?

I'd bet that the prosecutor had enough evidence to indict, but he wanted more stuff to confront the suspect with during an interrogation and / or to make the case more air-tight for trial.

They made a decision that if they told the guy they were after him, it would be more likely that he would do things that confirmed or dispelled their suspicions about him than that he would successfully conceal or destroy evidence before they were aware of it, or that he would successfully flee.

Or more likely the incompetence continues when it comes to not finding out who actually mailed all the anthrax. Let's face it--the FBI and the Busholini Administration aren't above calling someone who kills themself "anthrax mystery solved!"

At least they didn't describe him as presumptuous, although that might be construed from the context.

The Castle Anthrax

Curious that there was no mention of motive in the article. The brother apparently knows a lot about the guy. Just seems strange not to mention why the anthrax was sent.

Jeezzzz....the government pursues an innocent man for years. Finally has to pay him a 5 million dollar settlement. Their next rock-solid suspect conveniently commits suicide. This crime solution stinks to high heaven. How can anyone have any confidence in the FBI?

For some reason they probably didn't consider him someone who they had to worry about trying to flee prosecution.

He was under treatment for depression, had told a colleague he was considering suicide, and had spent three weeks in the hospital being treated for his depression shortly after the Hatfill settlement. It's not clear exactly when they told him he was going to be charged, but if they wanted him alive, you'd think they'd have figured out a way to get him in custody to keep him from "fleeing prosecution" on a permanent basis.

I wonder how many more loose ends Cheney has to tie-up. Especially now that the lizard thing is out. No sleep for the wicked.

Read Glenn Greenwald on the betonite flim flam. He's on the right track.
www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html

This will do nothing to squelch the conspiracy buffs, naturally. Suicides are like red bullfighter capes to them.

When you factor in that 'sources', much like what Greenwald notes in his Salon op-ed today, used the anthrax attacks to ratchet up the Iraq war drums, and that just as quickly this story dropped off the radar once it was proved Iraq couldn't have been involved, makes a Cheney/neocon-backed conspiracy a more feasible plot than usual.

"Suicides are like red bullfighter capes to them."

And heart attacks:

PETE RAFFA, Perrysburg, a member of Alpha Sigma Phi and soccer coach, died Dec 2 [2001]. Pete was a Lt. Col. In the Ohio Air National Guard, 180th Fighter Group and served as the Operations Group Commander for the past two years.

How Fumbling, Bumbling, and Incompetent can an organization founded by a drag queen be? Arkincided more likely.

Sometimes law enforcement uses innovative ways to get old cases off the books. First a suicide, then an announcement that charges were to be brought. Case closed, and the G-men triumph again.

Don't forget the convenient heart attack that Enron's Kenny Lay had just before he might have testified about Bush's family inolvement in that scandal.

Motive? What was the motive?

Glenn Greenwald has an important column on this topic over at salon.com. In a nutshell, the press was sold the lie that the anthrax used in the attacks came from Saddam's Iraq, and the "evidence" (shown subsequently to be false from the get-go) came from the same government facility where this scientist worked. Really worth a read.

I'm anxious to learn more about Ivin's political leanings and the types of books he read and TV programs he watched. Any bets on whether he was a Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly fan like that piece of shit that killed the people in the church in Knoxville, Tennessee? Given that his targets were Tom Daschle and the New York Times, I'm taking odds.

Conservatives like Timmy McVeigh think they can and should use violence to settle political differences. Conservatism is clearly a dangerous form of mental illness.

President Bush:

As all Americans know, recent weeks have brought a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country...Four Americans have died as a result of these acts of terrorism...The Postal Service and the FBI have offered a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest and the conviction of the anthrax terrorists...We do not yet know who sent the anthrax -- whether it was the same terrorists who committed the attacks on September the 11th, or whether it was the -- other international or domestic terrorists. We do know that anyone who would try to infect other people with anthrax is guilty of an act of terror...I'm proud of our citizens' calm and reasoned response to this ongoing terrorist attack.

How long before Laurie Mylroie shows up on Fox to declare that Ivins was an Iraqi spy, maybe even one of Saddam's own doubles?

"Given that his targets were Tom Daschle and the New York Times, I'm taking odds."

Get with the program. The man was a pawn. The targets were chosen in the Vice President's office. They probably had some video of him and a sheep.

Hmmm - So now, where did all that supposed evidence from conservatives that Saddam was behind the anthrax attacks come from?

The power of the Net: Wikipedia already has an article about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_E._Ivins

Maybe Scrivener at 10:58 has it right-- maybe they just wanted to let the public think that maybe it was Saddam until it doesn't matter anymore.

Kevin Drum >"...The story doesn't indicate what kind of evidence the government had against him..."

Evidence ? You want evidence ?

What are you, a commie or something ? The Lizard King don`t need no steekin evidence.

"...Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid...." - Voltaire

I too would be interested to know more about Bruce Ivin's politics. My assumption is that he was right wing Republican. The anthrax attacks in 2001 were mostly directed against media figures the right wing constantly excorciates as "liberal".

If Stephen Hatfill had committed suicide amidst the smear campaign and harassment, the spin would have been that the anthrax attacks were "solved" then, too.

While there is lots of insinuation, all the stories I've seen don't point to any actual evidence, just an intense effort direct at finding some against him by turning every aspect of his life upside down.

I'm not saying that there isn't evidence, only that what is public so far seems to present little basis on which to conclude that there is even any substantial basis for suspicion against him, much less that the attacks had been "solved".

As noted upthread, Glenzilla's all over this. Newsmedia-wise, there are a couple of exceedingly disturbing things.

-ABC news claimed it had been told by 4 different official sources that the anthrax had contained bentonite and that meant it was linked to Saddam. ABC stuck to this story long after analysis had established the stuff was from an American lab. Glen points out that this means ABC knows the names of 4 gov't sources who on the face of it lied about this event in order to direct attention to Saddam. How is that not a huge news story, and what possible interpretation of protecting anonymous sources covers such a monstrous act of calculated disinformation?

-Richard Cohen, "America's Concern Troll," claims he was told that he should start taking Cipro before the anthrax attacks, also by gov't sources. Thus Cohen, too, knows the identities of US government sources who, apparently, had advance notice some kind of attack was imminent and knew the attack was going to originate from within the US, since whoever conjured up the "bentonite" thing had to have known it was a crock. Atrios points out: How is it not a major story--or even a matter of mild curiosity--to The Dipshit of the WaPo OpEd Page that US officials had advance warning of an attack from within the US gov't's own bioweapons community?

From ABC "news": [crickets chirping]
From "journalist" Cohen: [crickets chirping]

If I work at it really really hard I can look at all this and NOT see the outlines of some kind of collusion or conspiracy. But I have to work at it really hard.

Folks, go on over to Eschaton, and there are all kinds of interesting posts and comments. There's a link to http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html about how ABC kept pushing "bentonite" - "proof" of Iraqi origin - as claimed by its sources *from the same lab* that this Ivins worked in (and about the only one in US capable of making it?) But now we know the bentonite wasn't even in the anthrax. Then there's dopey Richard Cohen writing that some high-up government official told him to get and take Cipro, before everyone else heard about that - and as Atrios shows in his inimitable sarcastic play acting style, why would a doctor prescribe it for Cohen, who wrote of "having" it - Cipro is illegal without a prescription.

Something is ready to blow here, and it's high time. We can help push it into the fan ...

I've never been a believer in conspiracy theories, but after reading the anthrax story I came across this post from "Crooks & Liars" which made me wonder if Dr. Ivins' death was really suicide:

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh - a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker - revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’� according to one of Hersh’s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build - we in our shipyard - build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of - that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

This is not a new technique. Remember one of the revelations from the Downing Street Memo was that Bush had suggested to Blair that they paint one of our air force planes to UN colors to try to entrap Saddam’s army into shooting it down? It’s like our foreign policy is being decided on by a protege of Wile E. Coyote.

If Stephen Hatfill had committed suicide amidst the smear campaign and harassment, the spin would have been that the anthrax attacks were "solved" then, too.

Spot on observation. But the focus on Ivins either way distracts from something that, as Glen points out, is absolutely NOT in doubt: the fact that there were inside gov't sources at the time who were a) knowingly lying about the attacks to direct attention to Saddam when the actual source of the attacks was domestic; and b) according to R. Cohen, had advance warning such an attack was imminent.

The information to pursue that investigation is in the hands of two premier US "news" organizations, who apparently aren't the least interested in how or why those things occurred.

Hmmm - So now, where did all that supposed evidence from conservatives that Saddam was behind the anthrax attacks come from?

Precisely the question.

I was never much of a conspiracy guy until this administration and its conspiracies came into power. Ever since the Supreme Court conspired to let the ultra right wing have its day, we have suffered miserably. This convenient attack was administration inspired if not directed. Even McCain was pointing to the Iraqis as part of a coordinated effort to sell America on an attack there. Remember, the letters were designed to implicate Islamic terrorists. And they inspired jingoism and terror disproportionate to their scale. And various government officials took Cipro BEFORE the attacks. Link the Cipro ingestion order and free wheeling availability of a prescription antibiotic prior to an attack, and I think the roads lead to Cheney. The DoD had Cipro available in quantity. Rumsfeld and his group certainly are probably also implicated.
The anthrax attack needs continuous investigation, Kevin. It is the story that really implicates the administration and needs real investigation by the press--less Fox "News" and ABC of course. Lots of convenient suicides these days, even within senior Pentagon staff. This trend also needs some investigation.

Hmmm - anyone hear of Dr. Philip Zack? I picked up the name in an Atrios thread, Google it up and find interesting stuff like:
http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01241_philip_zack_steals_anthrax.html
More sauce for the pot ...

It is very convenient for the inept Justice Dept. to have their newest suspect in the anthrax killings commit suicide, which strongly suggests to the public that the suspect was the perpetrator and finally found out by prosecutors. The media will not be skeptical about the evidence or suicide, but will play along with the Justice Dept. to insinuate the suspected person behind the anthrax attacks was the perpetrator.

This is getting really interesting.....

I don't want to seem like a tinfoil hat guy here, because I really am not one. However, the book, Vaccine A by Gary Matsumoto, mentions Dr. Bruce Ivins prominently by name.

The premise of this book is that U.S. military personnel have been unwittingly used as guinea pigs by the U.S. Army for an anthrax vaccine.

I report - you decide....

My guess, a small drug company called BioPort that produced an anthrax vaccine had lobbyists pushing legisaltion pending before the US gov. to buy a stockpile of the vaccine before the attack. After the attacks the bill passed. So, Ivins gave the anthrax to the drug co. BioPort (ceo is El Hibri from Lebanon, but born in Germany) who then mailed it. simple. (becuase politician recieved money from Bioport, no real investigation can proceed.)

And then there was that fellow (disease expert) that "jumped off" a bridge and left his car running during a meeting he was attending.

Odder & odder it seems.

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." - Edmund Burke

Does anmyone else find it odd that this administration pays out (or off) $6MM to an individual who had his civil liberties violated. How many other cases has this occurred? Was there a real court case made or simply a settlement? I've always wondered if the case against Hatfill was purposely sabotaged, thus killing the real investigation and, ironically, getting the taxpayer to pay this guy off. See Nick Kristoff's 2002 column on this guy's work on bio-warfare in South African during the apartheid era.

Regarding Ivin's, Firedoglake has links to a local online newspaper with a few LTTE's that Ivins wrote over a decade. While he's obviously a pro-life, anti-euthanasia Catholic, I don't see evidence of rantings from a raving RW lunatic. In fact, I detect a lot of liberal social justice comments that make it more difficult to me that he'd unleash an anthrax attack on innocents to push a radical agenda. Obviously, his faith was important to him...hard to believe that he'd commit suicide and violate a tenant of his religion that makes this a mortal sin.

On July 10, police responded to Fort Detrick to speak with Ivins. He was ultimately removed from his job and taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation because of concern he had become a danger to himself or others.

?????????????????????????????????????????????/

Ivins worked at the Army's biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., for 18 years until his death on Tuesday the 29th. He was one of the government's leading scientists researching vaccines and cures for anthrax exposure. But he also had a long history of homicidal threats, according to papers filed last week in local court by a social worker.

�The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.� TR

Vote for Theodore Roosevelt in "08"

Everyone SHOULD read his letters to the editor. The man was:
1) religious
2) not homophobic and apparently agreed that homosexuality could be genetic and not some mutable lifestyle choice
3) encouraging of female clergy and married clergy
4) appalled by racist statements and racist personalities on the radio

I have no idea of his guilt or innocence, but the letters themselves do not support the notion of some religious rightwing nutcase.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=78274

In the pre-Bush days, I scoffed at conspiracy theories, but by now I'm more than a bit paranoid. A bizarre crime goes unsolved for seven years, and all the evidence oddly points toward the chief germ warfare lab of the United States. The sophisticated nature of the agent demonstrates a technical mastery implausible in an amateur operation. The strain is one favored by US investigators. A peripheral figure is persecuted and hounded out of job and friends on the thinnest of evidence - after the story has been leaked to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, back at Fort Detrick, a prominent Anthrax investigator is having red signs painted all over his back - psychiatric and counselor testimony paints him as a lifelong psychopath with homicidal fantasies and tendencies. Not, however, till the Bush administration winds down, does anybody find this strange enough to remove him from contact with our most deadly agents.

Shortly thereafter, just as the FBI is getting ready to move in, he commits suicide. Is the FBI in the habit of announcing to homicidal multiple murderers that it's planning to arrest them?

This case stinks to the heavens.

BBC Online (UK version) had a write-up yesterday (31 July) about this. In the story they mentioned that Ivins had developed a method for detecting anthrax and had conducted several "unauthorized" sweeps to check for anthrax in and around the offices where he worked. He apparently discovered traces if anthrax at a desk/work station of a female co-worker and several other places where there shouldn't have been any traces of the stuff.
Perhaps he WAS on to something? Could his depression have been due to what he was finding out? Tin-foil hatting is fun! I hope that is all it ever is...

Doug, there is no way in Hell that is all it is in a reeking case like this one.

We need to work this story until we get the enough facts for the Hague. Ivins did not work with powdered Anthrax, either, apparently. If our government loosed this against its own people, and the facts are looking like they did, there is no point blogging on lightweight topics and acting the Pollyanna any further.

This is the coincidence administration.

As BradBlog pointed out, Ivins worked only with liquid anthrax, never with the dry powdered anthrax used in the attacks. Any attempt to convert between the types would have been detected.

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