— Brad Friedman
The case against the supposed “Anthrax Killer,” Bruce E. Ivins, a researcher who worked at the Army lab confirmed by the government as being the source for the dry, powdered anthrax used in the letters targeted mainly at Democrats and other perceived “liberals,” is going from bad to worse. At least the coverage of it from mainstream outlets such as AP is.
We noted, when we first jumped into this horrendous beat last Friday, that AP and many of the other corporate outlets failed to even bother noting the perceived “liberals” who made up the targets of the post-9/11 terrorist attacks. Today, Glenn Greenwald (who’s been doing yeoman’s work on this beat) notes AP’s latest unnamed government source-based buffoonery.
Offering a fresh new bizarre angle in the anthrax case — as per their wont, from “Multiple U.S. officials,” all unnamed and all who “spoke on condition of anonymity” — AP purports to explain Ivins’ supposed seven-hour round-trip drive from Frederick, MD, to Princeton, NJ, to mail his letters, by describing a long-term obsession he supposedly had with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.
“The bizarre link to the sorority,” AP’s report proffers based on leaks from those unnamed officials, “may indirectly explain one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why the anthrax was mailed from Princeton, 195 miles from the Army biological weapons lab the anthrax is believed to have been smuggled out of.”
Oookay…we’ll bite. But then, with the unsubstantiated genie out of the bottle, a few problems appeared as AP’s initial report then morphed shortly thereafter, and an update was filed…
Greenwald picks up the absurdities [emphasis his]:
The mailbox just off the campus of Princeton University where the letters were mailed sits about 100 yards away from where the college’s Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter stores its rush materials, initiation robes and other property. Sorority members do not live there, and the Kappa chapter at Princeton does not provide a house for the women.
That would be quite an unusual and bizarre way for such an obsessive interest to express itself — he used a mailbox in proximity not to a sorority house, which doesn’t even exist on that campus at all, but was merely near a storage room the sorority uses to store some material.
Oookay…
Both AP reports go on to note that nobody had actually seen Ivins, at any time, in Princeton, and that “Kappa Kappa Gamma also has chapters at nearby colleges in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington.” But instead, Ivins decided to drive 195 miles each way instead, in order to be near the sorority’s storage facility in New Jersey.
The first AP report then concludes by dutifully repeating the government’s still-undisclosed case theory, despite any known evidence to actually back it up. In one neat nutshell for the record:
That so-far unsubstantiated claim — that Ivins offed himself “knowing investigators were closing in” — was somewhat softened in the update to read only: “Ivins, 62, killed himself last week as the Justice Department prepared to indict him on capital murder charges”.
Given this entire bungled mess, while we are not fond of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, it sure seems there damned well better be good documentation for the “killed himself” part as well at this point.
It’s been announced there would be no autopsy of Ivins, since the blood tests reportedly confirmed his death by an overdose of Tylenol with codeine, as the original media accounts had said. But now even that’s been softened to “an overdose of acetaminophen, the key ingredient in Tylenol.”
The first AP report relied heavily on testimony from Ivins’ short-time social worker Jean Duley, who, as we noted yesterday, has a criminal record consisting of several drunk driving charges and narcotics possession. She doesn’t know how to spell the word “therapist,” according to her hand-scrawled note to the judge which she filed while seeking a restraining order against Ivins, but nonetheless she’s being treated as credible by AP. Their update to the story relies somewhat less on Duley and more-responsibly reports that she “has a minor criminal record.”
The Frederick News-Post then notes today that apparently the FBI encouraged Duley to seek the restraining order. “She decided to get the peace order after an FBI agent working the case suggested it,” they write.
And again…Oookay…
They also confirm an earlier report that Duley claimed Ivins had made some extraordinary claims during a group therapy session:
Those are some very serious charges, obviously, but they should be easy to confirm, or quickly dismissed, by interviews with other patients, since it was group therapy after all, and theoretically, many others heard the same thing that Duley did. Has the FBI talked with those folks yet? If so, they haven’t decided to leak the confirmation to the media, even though they bothered to leak the sorority house nonsense.
After all, Duley had testified to the judge (on the suggestion of the FBI) that Ivins “has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic homicidal killer.” Oddly enough, however, despite those supposed diagnoses, Ivins was allowed to continue working in his high-security job at a U.S. Army facility, with access to the world’s most dangerous bio-terror viruses.
The News-Post also reports that threatening phone calls Duley says that Ivins made to her were not entered “into evidence for the court because FBI agents had taken them for their investigation.”
So we suppose we can look forward to hearing those tapes soon, as word has it — again, from the always-reliable MSM — that the feds will reveal all tomorrow.
See Greenwald at Salon today for much more in this quickly disintegrating matter, and the FBI’s apparent drive “to demonize Ivins as a creepy, porn-loving drunk,” in lieu of any apparent legitimate evidence brought forward so far.
As well, he goes on to pick up our scoop from last night, in which we reported that Ivins was, oddly enough, a long-time registered Democrat. We further, personally, confirmed the information — originally tracked down and shared with us by our friend, Bob Kincaid of the Head-On Radio Network — this morning with the Frederick County, MD, Board of Elections.
Noreen Schultz, Frederick County’s Deputy Election Director, confirmed to us that Ivins had been registered as a Dem there since 1982, and has voted in every Democratic Primary since 1996, which is as far back as their database goes. “He was a very regular voter,” she noted during our phone call earlier today.
It seems curious then that a Democrat would target only Democratic government officials in these attacks, clearly meant to look as if they were coming from Islamic jihadists. It seems at least as curious that Ivins, a devout Catholic by all accounts, and one who even is said to have volunteered regularly at his local parish, would target Senators Daschle and Leahy, also both Roman Catholics themselves, before committing suicide — a mortal sin in the Catholic faith — and then finally fail to leave even a suicide note.
But what do we know? We don’t have any “unnamed government sources” whose information we repeat without even bothering to ask for evidence to support their claims.
On the Radio…
We’ve picked up on this case in a number of radio venues over the last 24.
Early today, we did a quickie with our bud Stephanie Miller’s show (appx 5 minutes)…
…Followed by a longer conversation on the good Michael Jackson’s program. The first segment features Jackson’s interview with bio-weapons expert and Ivins’ former colleague Dr. Meryl Nass who has been a valuable resource to us on this case. We chat with Michael then in the subsequent two segments of the show:
Appx 40 mins. Download MP3, or listen here…
…And finally, if you missed it in our update to yesterday’s story, here’s my interview with Bob Kincaid from last night, concerning many issues in the case, including his scoop about Ivins’ Democratic voter registration:
Appx 1 hour, Download MP3, or listen here…
You make us proud; great reporting. Not from the gaybot clones and helmet head barbies of network news today; but, from the bowels of the internet.
http://ccoaler.blogspot.com/200...-slumping.html
GOP voter rolls slumping
Wilbur ~ “a creepy, porn-loving drunk” . . .
Why, that’s over half the humans in America !
He must have expected to meet a dame. Gotta love a gal that will meet you in the mailroom.
Although it is not impossible or entirely unreasonable to believe Ivins might be the perpetrator if he was the insane, roque bio-weapons expert the guvmint claims he was, it seems highly unlikely. The unique targets, wording, and timing of the lethal letters so conveniently played into the hands of the extremely corrupt heads of our guvmint that were champing at the bit for a pretext to attack Iraq, to portray Muslims as America’s enemies, and rush Congress into passing the [Un]Patriot Act to put a tight rein on American citizens’ liberties and push us toward a police state and the aggrandizement of power of these corrupt heads of state. This was all just a “coincidental” and fortuitous outcome of this government employee’s alleged criminal acts.
It seems incredible in the extreme that a supposedly insane rogue at Fort Detrick could have developed such a focused geo-political strategy for his homicidal acts and no apparent motive for doing so except to express his inner turmoil and rage (and at whom or what?). Because Ivins was supposedly “insane” we are supposed to suspend our natural curiosity to ask why Ivins should have chosen such targets and such a means to unleash his rage. It doesn’t have to make sense, according to the FBI. We are to believe them because they tell us to believe.
After reading the Greenwald stuff it dawned on me that the FBI does this all the time.
It leaks the weaker evidence that they have hoping someone will question it, it helps them to plug holes in same weak evidence or eliminate it all together…a trial balloon…
That’s why they leak first before providing what they have, someone might have the answer for them.
Reminds me of the kid who didn’t study for the exam in school looking over at the other kids test for the answers.
Typical “Just Us” behavior. Remember Demjanjuk? Decide who is guilty and create a case. Sometimes it’s even believable. But this one meets my dad’s pitchfork test. “You don’t have to fork over the whole pile to find out what’s in it!” Keep swinging that pitchfork! You’re doing a lot better than the clowns who decided Ivins was the bad guy. IF he was any kind of a biologist, he coUld NEVER HAVE NADE THE EGREGIOUS ERRORS THAT THE ANTHRAK MAILER DID! Also, if he was the obvious sociopath his revilers make him out to be, he could NEVER have kept his employment at a sensitive Government lab. “There is something rotten – – -etc.”
[Ed Note: Comment deleted. Spam. – BF]
It seems one fact to come out is that the anthrax spores came through Ivins’ lab in Fort Detrick.
Now… how many people had lab access there during the fall of 2001 besides Ivins?
Were careful records kept? (And are now suppressed/lost.)
I believe that shipments of the two anthrax strains were carefully tracked and signed for…. so who signed for them?
This looks and smells like the old patsy routine… and an extremely bad job of scapegoating… isn’t it?
Now who has such an MO?…. Why the current administration of course!
Do they have proof that he was in NJ that day? If so, I’d bet they’d have produced it by now. They’ve had plenty of time to produce it.
The “Foreign Terror Attack” that wasn’t.
The “Iraqi Anthrax” that wasn’t.
The Sorority House that doesn’t exist.
The Autopsy that didn’t happen.
The “Therapist” that wasn’t one.
The “Political Motive” that does not exist.
The “Suicide Note” that doesn’t exist.
THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK?
Al Qaeda does not exist.
Osama Bin Laden does not exist.
There were NO hijackers on 9/11.
There were NO cell phone calls from planes on 9/11.
No commercial “plane” hit the Pentagon.
Cheney + Rumsfeld = 9/11 + Anthrax.
All the same attack:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904degrand.html
Here’s the FBI Agent charged with covering up BOTH attacks:
http://cpjc.cooperativeresearch...spike_)_bowman
Here’s where the co-conspirators trained to implement their plan:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200403/mann
A Bush method of cleaning house before he leaves office.
Who in their right minds would follow orders to purposely destroy someone innocent. I can’t conceive anyone being that loyal, you have to live with yourself.
Kmac, a good part of it is incompetence with a little greed mixed in.
Loyalty/ideology with a little fear of lead poisoning also.
Take your pick. 😛
Fearmongering = Profit
http://usliberals.about.com/b/2...u-pandemic.htm
Jerome Hauer’s Role:
http://www.fromthewilderness.co..._tyranny.shtml
Why did Cheney, CEO of Halliburton, acquire Dresser Industries, whose liabilities included billions of dollars in Asbestos-related lawsuits?
In 1998, Dresser merged with its main rival, Halliburton, and is now known as Halliburton Company. Dick Cheney negotiated the $7.7-billion deal, reportedly having done so during a weekend of quail-hunting. In 2001, Halliburton was forced to settle the asbestos lawsuits that it acquired as a result of purchasing Dresser, causing the company’s stock price to fall by eighty percent in just over a year.
Cui Bono?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresser_Industries
http://www.washingtonpost.com/w...2005Jan10.html
How did Cheney ensure that the biggest Asbestos liabilities would go away?
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk...le.asp?ID=4373
http://www.commondreams.org/hea...03/0823-03.htm
COLLEGE STUDENTS DYING FROM INHALED ASBESTOS:
http://www.bupipedream.com/pipe...le.php?id=3259
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc.../asbestos.html
How did Bush play his part?
GW included the issue in his State of the Union speech in 2005:
“To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs. Small business is the path of advancement, especially for women and minorities, so we must free small businesses from needless regulation and protect honest job-creators from junk lawsuits. (Applause.) Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back by irresponsible class-actions and frivolous asbestos claims — and I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.”
While you’re connecting the dots…connect ALL the dots.
I’m understanding a different, more reasonable motive, that might suggest that Ivins WAS the attacker. He developed a vaccine for VaxGen, which lost out on government contracts to Bioport because of heavy lobbying with former Dick Cheney aides. Apparently, based on this Randi Rhodes report from the other day, Ivins would have made a lot of money had the government went with VaxGen. So maybe, just maybe, he was posing as a terrorist and liberal hater to make us think it wasn’t him. Just a thought. I’m curious what others think of this angle.
Plunger
. . . and pelosi was going to drain the swamp as house speaker
Congrats!
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected CACI International’s defamation lawsuit against the talk-radio network Air America and one of its hosts, Randi Rhodes. AP
I think the official version would have a bit more believable twist if he was suicided by means of a sure-fire concoction. According to Marylands Medical Examiner’s website law requires an autopsy for all suspicious deaths. Assuming everything was done within the law, the family must have had religious beliefs that prohibited post mortem examination that the Medical Examiner was unable to have a court injunction overturned.
Glad you’re on this story, Brad. Sadly it points out how far we still have to go with regards to our so-called media. Why would ANYONE accept this “suicide” uncritically? How stupid are these mopes? haven’t they seen “Michael Clayton”? Mean, motive, opportunity. Who has MOTIVE to off Ivins? The real perpetrator, of course–to use him as a fall guy. It’s so friggin’ obvious, yet as usual the MSM falls into line uncritically accepting the official story form a government with a 100% lack of credibility. Christ.
Hey, mainstream media — WAKE THE HELL UP!
Now they are claiming that he took a machine home from the lab that was capable of making small batches of dry, powdered anthrax in one day. If true, that would be pretty convincing evidence that he had the capability to do it. Presumably there are logs showing when the machine was checked in and checked out of the lab. He does appear to have been a vodka-swilling, pill-popping nut job from what some of his co-workers have said. Although there does seem to be many inconsistencies with much of the released “evidence,” we shall see if they don’t get ironed out as more evidence is released. I don’t know what to think.
The whole pile is out now iffin you want to stare at it
Link
Yesterday, Tuesday, Aug. 5th, my wife and I both heard on our NPR station that Ivins was in a play as a high school student, and he was cast in the role of a murderer. So there you have it.
I’m serious. It was offered up without laughter, as though it was actually meaningful.
When things like that get reported, that’s when you know that the reporters on the ground don’t like how they are being treated, and so they serve up stuff that will seem to serve their masters’ ends, but really do more to point out that this just isn’t even remotely news any more, but just pure BS propaganda.
For the love of truth,
Maybe it’s coincidence but this story is so similar to the suicide – now ruled homicide – death of Dr David Kelly of the UK who had top secret clearance and was reported to have committed suicide just before his trial for revealing state secrets about falsified documents used to approve the invasion of Iraq. He was found in woods near his house in a staged death made to look like suicide. I guess the bushes are just tying up loose ends before he runs out the door.
The main point is the government doesn’t care if the Ivins story is consistant – they want you to know that they can cause the death of a random citizen who may have something to do with a government sponsored event, and THIS is a tactic used by Mao and other totalitarian regimes to freighten people into submission.
Quoting a bit of TEDEGER COMMENT #7 “IF he was any kind of a biologist, he coUld NEVER HAVE NADE THE EGREGIOUS ERRORS THAT THE ANTHRAK MAILER DID!”
Um, what errors are you talking about? People died, people were very scared, so …?
One egregious error was to make it so readily traceable to his own lab. Ivins would have known that was doable, whereas powerful but stupid others would not.
Does anybody remember that the lab that kept all the reference samples of anthrax, I think it may have been in Iowa, destroyed all the samples right away supposedly after asking the FBI if they should destroy them?
Dr. David Irwin, Psychiatrist, Gaithersberg, MD, attached to the Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, MD Medical License No D01714.
Has anybody bothered to follow up on the Jean Duley reference to this person?
ou’re a biologist, presumably with knowledge that you’re carrying death in flimsy envelopes. You drive several hundred miles to mail them? Also look at the notes that came along with the deadly packages. NO scientist would have written them that way. And the clumsy reference to Allah – Muslims respect their creator, and the Quran prohibits the use of His name in this fashion.
Democracy Now! interview with Meryl Nass, M.D.
Meryl Nass, M.D.’s personal blog
Brad I read that drivel in the Post today.. How’s this for a slam dunk?:
“As for motive, investigators seemed to offer two possible reasons for the attacks: that the brilliant scientist wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that the anti-abortion Catholic targeted two pro-choice Catholic lawmakers.
[…]
According to an affidavit filed by Charles B. Wickersham, a postal inspector, the scientist told an unnamed co-worker “that he had `incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times’ and ‘feared that he might not be able to control his behavior.'”
A mental health worker who was involved in treating Ivins disclosed last week that she was so concerned about his behavior that she recently sought a court order to keep him away from her. ”
~ LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers
Question: WHY NOW? What is so important about right now that the FIBBIES pushed until, it seems, they broke him? I’m not saying I’m 100% right, but this stinks like the standard FIBBIE bullcrap. Who can trust these clowns, these tools? What mischief are the Feds up to, and what is their next step?
Did you guys see this by Andrew Tilghman (TPM) Great questions that will not likely be answered but better than a kick in the ass with a frozen boot I guess…
“Last night, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) sent a three-page letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI Director Robert Mueller III, asking them to respond to 18 questions about virtually every aspect of the probe.”
Link
#23 marzi You know I think you may have hit the nail on the head. I really believe the FBI, CIA, the bush criminal gang know who actually did it, may have paid them to do it…
Oh… how do you ever get out from under this dictatorship? You need a surge badly, a reaming (no not in a dirty way 🙂 but like this definition, “the dentist reamed out the debris in the course of the root canal treatment” of all the evil.
You know Bamboo I may have to change my name too after tonight 🙂
It’s your cheap, but good, Yankee Jim beer… by Big Hole Brewing Co. so say no more.
Suicide by acetaminophen poisoning? That’s a crappy way to die. Seriously. At best, death occurs within a week. Otherwise, it’s up to a month of hospitalization with agonizing liver failure, and other problems.
At about the 20 minute mark of the last interview I think the “theripist” may have had access to Ivins past psyche records, as Brad suggests, but more likely than that, is that she probably had an FBI agent telling her that Ivins was the Anthrax killer and was feeding her the “forensic” psyche report that the FBI did in the aftermath of the anthrax attack. Here is the math:
Anthrax attacks occur + FBI psychologists accurately diagnose that whoever did it must be a total psycho + FBI agent tells Dulley that Ivins is the killer + original diagnosis of unknown psycho is attributed to Ivins by Dulley as a matter of fact = boozehound testifies in court that Ivins is a “revenge killer”
The illusion here is that anyone might truth-movement their way out of this mess, or, vote their way out of this mess, or, perhaps just be-smarter-than-these-guys-are their way out of this mess?
Not a snowball’s chance in hell do you have here though. These guys are professionals.
You’ll all go to sleep tonight thinking someone is on the job and taking care of business. And they are.
The very same people who did 9-11 and the anthrax attacks are doing exactly that. They run the whole show. They fight on both sides in every war, and they investigate themselves endlessly.
Sleep tight! Happy dreams!
But wake up tomorrow with a whole new attitude about what the truth is.
Hey, you’re a highly specialized bioweapons scientist, but you choose to take your life with
codeineacetaminophen, which takes two full days to kill you.Who writes this stuff?