Even The American Conservative thinks the FBI's "case" against Bruce Ivins is a joke.

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http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/aug/25/00006/

Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois who drafted the 1989 Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act signed by President George H.W. Bush, advised the FBI in its initial investigation of the anthrax letters. Along with several other American bioweapons experts—among them Jonathan King, professor of molecular biology at MIT, and Barbara Rosenberg, who studied biowarfare with the Federation of American Scientists—Boyle warned early on that the spores issued from inside a U.S. research operation, possibly one that was classified. He provided the FBI with lists of scientists, contractors, and laboratories that had worked on anthrax projects, but he is skeptical of Ivins as the lone killer: “The Feds pursued the same strategy against Ivins as they did against Hatfill—persecute him until he broke, which Ivins did and Hatfill did not. Dead men tell no tales.”

Ivins, says Boyle, just doesn’t fit the bill. “It does not appear that he had the technological sophistication to manufacture this super weapons-grade anthrax, which would have included aerosolization, silicon coating, and an electrostatic charge.” Jeffrey Adamovicz, who directed the bacteriology division at Fort Detrick in 2003 and 2004, told McClatchy that the anthrax mailed to Sen. Tom Daschle was “so concentrated and so consistent and so clean that I would assert that Bruce could not have done that part.”

Following the release of the FBI’s public case against Ivins, the New York Times editorialized that “there is no direct evidence of his guilt” and decried the “lack of hard, incontrovertible proof.” The Washington Post called the case “admittedly circumstantial.” Investigators failed to place Ivins in New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when the letters were reportedly mailed from a Princeton location. They swabbed his residence, locker, several cars, the tools in his laboratory, and his office space, but found no trace of anthrax that genetically matched the bacteria in the letters. Indeed, some of the evidence—all circumstantial, none forensic—was downright laughable. Ivins at one time maintained a mailbox under an assumed name where he received pornographic magazines. He had once been “obsessed” with a Princeton sorority because of a failed college romance, and the Princeton mailbox where one of the letters originated was located within 100 yards of a storage facility used by the sorority—in a location Ivins apparently last visited 27 years ago. He drank. He made homicidal statements to a mental-health support group. He wrote rambling letters to the editor of his local paper. How any of this motivated Bruce Ivins to kill fellow Americans with a bioweapon is not established.

Moreover, his former colleagues have repeatedly told the media that, as far as they are aware, Ivins didn’t know how to weaponize anthrax. He was a vaccine specialist, not a weaponizer. The assumption is that Ivins kept his weaponizing skills secret from his coworkers. But how did he learn those skills? Perhaps colleagues at Ft. Detrick provided the help in casual conversation. Yet there’s not the slightest indication that during his years at Ft. Detrick Ivins even once asked fellow scientists about weaponizing techniques. Nor is it clear why Ivins—a registered Democrat—would single out Sens. Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle to receive lethal letters. Interestingly, both had been critical impediments to passage of the Patriot Act. The first wave of anthrax mail, sent Sept. 18, 2001, targeted major media; the second round, posted Oct. 9, went to Congress. On Oct. 25, amid widespread panic, the act passed. Yet it is improbable that a mad scientist would specialize in such targeted political activity—or that he personally benefited from the repercussions. Many others did, however. “In the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event,” Salon’s Glenn Greenwald writes. “It was really the anthrax letters that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years … that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.”

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This is actually an excellent article that I wholeheartedly recommend. As I have said many times before, the only informed individuals defending the FBI's "evidence" in this case are whorish members of corporate media, politicians and ex-politicians. Everyone else can tell that the FBI has been transparently smearing Ivins with the help of our complicit corporate media in order to gain a "conviction" in the arena of public opinion without a single shred of hard evidence and without even demonstrating any means, motive or opportunity.

[mhatrw]

1. kick n/t

[mhatrw]

2. This article should be read. n/t