White Powder Snow Job - Updated

When the Double G Glenn Greenwald latches on to something, he doesn't let go. He's been the point man on everything doing with the Constitution for the Netroots (most recently FISA) and in the last week he's chomped down on the Bruce Ivins Anthrax Case.

It's certainly possible that once the FBI closes its investigation and then formally unveils its evidence -- which apparently will happen tomorrow -- a very convincing case will be made that Bruce Ivins perpetrated the anthrax attacks and did so alone. But what has been revealed thus far -- through the standard ritual of selected Government leaks which the establishment media, with some exceptions, just mindlessly re-prints no matter how frivolous -- is creating the opposite impression. The FBI's coordinated leaking is making their claim to have solved the anthrax case appear quite dubious, in some instances laughably so.

One glaring and important exception to the dynamic of uncritical media recitation is this morning's New York Times article by Scott Shane and Nicholas Wade, which evinces very strong skepticism over the FBI's case thus far and discloses facts that create more grounds for skepticism. Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims.

When you add on to that the magnitude of this case and the ample reasons for error and deceit -- it's the first lethal bioterrorism attack on the U.S., one which, according to the Government itself, originated at a U.S. Government facility, perpetrated by a U.S. Army scientist, that was then used by numerous factions inside the Government and out to ratchet up fear levels and falsely blame Iraq and/or Al Qaeda for the attacks and, thereafter, was blamed on someone who appears to have been completely innocent -- what minimally rational person would be willing to assume that the Government's uncorroborated, unexamined, untested claims are accurate?

The Bush Administration has lied about pretty much everything it has done since day one. Believing them now on the Ivins case is tantamount to falling into the trap of Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We should assume they lie until proven otherwise.

Everything the Bushies have done rests on this one lie at its base: Anthrax spores sent in the mail, tied to Iraq, trumpeted by ABC News and other media outlets, were the Reichstag Fire the Bushies needed to get us into the whole Islamofascist War, the PATRIOT Act, FISA, Iran, everything. We were told that this was proof that around every corner, under every rock, behind every bush, was an Islamic Terror Machine waiting to kill us.

We were told war was the only answer.

Now we're being told "Um, yeah, about that, it was a...CRAZY MAD SCIENCE GUY! Yeah, that's it. Oh, and he killed himself. Case solved. Let's go to the pretzel place at the mall."

The Village has bought this and is spewing out The Stupid for us to munch on.

A federal judge has approved the release of hundreds of pages of documents from the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, a court official said Wednesday.

The records include 14 search warrants, information used to request those warrants and summaries of what was found, the court official said. The official declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The documents were expected to implicate Army biological weapons researcher Bruce Ivins in the anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened more than a dozen.

The FBI is expected to detail the evidence linking Ivins, who authorities said committed suicide last week, to the anthrax attacks in a briefing in Washington with survivors and relatives of victims, a government source familiar with the case said Tuesday.

The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to release the documents Wednesday morning, sources with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. Those records are expected to be unsealed Wednesday afternoon.

Hooray, the villian has been caught and is dead. Justice for all!

Double G calls bullshit and lets slip the dogs of accountability with Rep. Rush Holt.

Rep. Rush Holt represents the Central New Jersey district where at least one of the anthrax letters was sent. Rep. Holt's Congressional office was one of the few in which traces of anthrax were found. He is also a physicist and has been an outspoken critic of the FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks. Perhaps most importantly, he is the Chairman of the House's Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, which very well may hold hearings to examine the FBI's investigation and conclusions.

This morning, I spoke with Rep. Holt for roughly 20 minutes. During the discussion, Rep. Holt:

• indicated his support for the creation of an investigative body, with full subpoena power, along the lines of the 9/11 Commission, to investigate all unresolved aspects of the anthrax attacks;
• enumerated the many reasons why a rational person would lack confidence in the the FBI's investigative abilities;
• complained that the FBI has continuously "stonewalled" both him and all other members of Congress, for years, as they tried to exercise oversight over the FBI's investigation into the anthrax case;
• declared that nobody should conclude, without much further proof, that the actual anthrax killer has been identified.

Particularly on matters of intelligence and science, Holt is one of the most informed and intelligent members of Congress. When those attributes are combined with the fact that his district was directly affected in several ways by the anthrax attacks, his views on this case are well worth listening to.

The Dems absoultely need to follow this for the good of the country. At the core of this Humongous Pile Of Stupid is Bush and his lies. There are questions of treason here, things that even Nancy "Off The Table" Pelosi has to admit are disturbing. If Bruce Ivins was a lone nutjob, how come this took 7 years to get to the bottom of, all the time the government saying it was Iraq, it was Saddam, it was a terror attack.

Remember the Maine, indeed.

UPDATE: Double G has even MOAR on today's docudump on the Ivins case.

What is most conspicuously absent from these FBI documents is any real forensic evidence linking Ivins to the anthrax that was sent. That's particularly striking because the FBI took numerous swabs of Ivins' residence, his office space, his laboratory devices (presumably including the lyothilizer he used), his locker, his cars. If they had discovered any anthrax traces that genetically matched what was sent in 2001, they certainly would have said so. But they don't.

It's long been claimed that the property that rendered so dangerous the anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy was that it was airborne. At times it was even claimed that the anthrax was aerosolized. Under all circumstances, in order for it to be inhalation anthrax, it would have to disburse rather easily. Wouldn't one expect that the FBI's swabs would reveal traces of anthrax somewhere on the clothes, in the home or other physical surroundings of the anthrax attacker? Yet apparently those multiple swabbing episodes turned up nothing, at least based on the documents that were released today.

Nor are there any real answers to the question of how Ivins would have manufactured, on his own and without being detected, anthrax grade of the type that was used in the attacks. The numerous hours he spent alone in the lab doesn't address what many of his colleagues said would have been his technological inability to produce anthrax of this type.

After all, this was a lethally hot bioagent that demanded the utmost care and caution in a highly specialized environment. Ivins would have known exactly what this stuff was capable of doing after being an expert on the substance for 20 plus years. It was designed to spread quickly and kill and manufactured to do exactly that, hence the term weapons-grade biological agent. He apparently got this stuff out of a weapons lab AFTER 9/11, and he apparently was able to get the job done in a week. Yet he apparently stuck it in a freaking ordinary envelope.

Reflect on the sound of that one hand clapping, my son, and why it took them seven years to bust this guy.