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PrintAugust 7, 2008
Government docs show anthrax suspect to be a vengeful, disturbed man
Glenn Greenwald calls the document dump by the government in the Anthrax case "incomplete." No doubt it is. But since most of the documents are court related and contain the FBI "theory of the case," at the very least we can be assured that this is what the government intended to take to trial.
For that reason, we might have some confidence that at least the information - even if selectively leaked - tells us something about Bruce Ivins. And what emerges is not pretty - a vengeful, spiteful man who believed himself to be mentally unbalanced:
In short, we are very little further along than we were when the news first broke of Mr. Ivins suicide. And with talk of the FBI closing the case, I fear the entire truth will be buried along with whatever incompetence and stupidity by government investigators who couldn't solve the case in the first place.
For that reason, we might have some confidence that at least the information - even if selectively leaked - tells us something about Bruce Ivins. And what emerges is not pretty - a vengeful, spiteful man who believed himself to be mentally unbalanced:
The email evidence would seem to be compelling - unless you believe the FBI faked it. As for the speculation about Brokaw and the senators, it rings plausible but how they were going to prove those motives is not revealed.
As seen below, included in the affidavits is the government's bid to possibly explain why Ivins sent anthrax-filled letters to Tom Brokaw (an NBC investigative reporter had filed a Freedom of Information request regarding Ivins's laboratory work) and U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle (the pols's pro-abortion stance angered Ivins, a practicing Catholic). The documents also describe how Ivins created a bogus e-mail trail in a bid to deflect investigative attention from him to two other scientists at Fort Detrick, where Ivins worked. The documents also describe Ivins's fascination with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and how he engaged in an "edit war" on the group's Wikipedia page. Ivins, investigators reported, repeatedly posted negative information on the KKG page and was angered when it was removed from the site by other users. In a February 2007 online posting traced to one of his e-mail addresses, Ivins bizarrely claimed that the sorority had, many years earlier, labeled him an "enemy" and had issued a "Fatwah" against him. Following the September 11 attacks (but before the anthrax mailings), Ivins sent an e-mail to a colleague warning that Osama bin Laden disciples possessed anthrax and sarin gas. In other e-mails sent during 2000 and 2001, Ivins described his precarious mental state and wrote that he worried about someday reading a headline in the National Enquirer exclaiming, "Paranoid Man Works With Deadly Anthrax!!!"
In short, we are very little further along than we were when the news first broke of Mr. Ivins suicide. And with talk of the FBI closing the case, I fear the entire truth will be buried along with whatever incompetence and stupidity by government investigators who couldn't solve the case in the first place.
