More foil on anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins from the All-Spin Zone:
- The timing is certainly curious. If Ivins offed himself several days ago, why is the report just coming to light?
- Reports indicate that Ivins had been informed of his pending indictment. I’m not sure how that happened, as federal grand juries operate in secret, most importantly so indicted suspects don’t hit the road before they can be detained.
- The method of his reported suicide simply doesn’t square with how men kill themselves. Men put guns to their head or jump off a bridge; they generally don’t pill themselves to death. Plus, I’d hazard a guess that someone would have to take a whole lot of Tylenol III’s (a controlled substance) and get no medical attention in order for death to result.
- The first question that any amateur CSI sleuth asks is, “What’s the motivation?” According to earlier reports, Ivins was loosing the deadly spores into the wild in order to field test a vaccine that he’d been involved in developing. Is that a normal government protocol for testing bioweapons? (Just kidding. Maybe.)
I think we should all just trust the government.
My favorite detail from the AP coverage -- also the last sentence in the story -- is this one:
He and his wife, Diane, owned a small white home just outside the main gate to Fort Detrick, about two blocks from an apartment where Hatfill once lived.
Not the connection to Hatfill detail, but living outside the main gate.
Maybe he slipped in at night to check the fridge? If so, who knew about that?
NOTE And, dammit, remembering this truly weird conversation between Leahy and Mukasey:
Leahy: We won't go any further. As I say, I feel somewhat reluctant because I was one of the targets. But I gotta say, what families of the people who died went through, what families of the people who were crippled went through, even what my family went through. A lot of people are concerned and I won't say more because we are in open session but I think you and I probably should have a private talk about this sometime.
Mukasey: That's fine.
Makes you think.
Crinkle, crinkle.
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hmmmmmmmmmm
dept of we need to know more
I knew a man who killed himself with a small bottle
of Nyquil (the teensy travel sized versions), 18 Tylenol and a handful of aspirin. He consumed them at 11am, was lucid though groggy at 10pm and then dead at midnight. He didn't even throw up that much. He was a fit, surfing enthusiast. He claimed to be turning into a reptile at the time of his sucide but other than that, was in good shape and conducting his profitable business affairs as normal.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Must read Glenn re: anthrax
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2...
Patterns of evidence
The case laid out here and by Greenwald assembles a goodly number of facts that taken in the aggregate certainly can be seen as having the appearance of a larger conspiracy. That perception is doubly reinforced by the additional fact that BushCo/VRWC
have established and continue to participate in a large number of conspiratorial enterprises, all of them evil. In this one, however, I suspect that what happened was a convergence of interests that only appear to be organized.
Tylenol is the single most popular method for suicide in the UK; has been for many years, and anyone having even a passing familiarity with pharmacology knows the fatal dose. At 150 lbs, only a dozen 500 mg (extra-strength) Tylenol taken at once with alcohol is enough to kill. Taken with codeine as Tylenol-3, a person would pass out and never awaken. The number of pharmacological suicides has been increasing in the US for some years, for both men and women.
The timing issue is resolved by recognizing that his death was not particularly noteworthy until the facts of the investigation were released; until that happened, nobody outside government aside from Ivins and his attorney knew about the depth of the investigation and the indictment.
That Ivins and his attorney were notified is not all that unusual. The proceedings of a grand jury are supposed to be confidential, but indictments are not unless they are sealed by a judge. The seal can be complete or there can be exceptions, and the prosecutor is given wide latitude in how to determine those exceptions. In a case like this one, where the suspect has been cooperative and a good relationship exists between the attorney and the prosecutor, it is not at all unusual to give a heads up so the suspect can settle his affairs and prepare his loved ones, then make an arranged surrender. In this case, no one anticipated a suicide.
As to motivation, sometimes acts are irrational and the motive does not appear to normal people as sensible. With Ivins dead, we may well never know what he was thinking. Perhaps he wanted to be a hero, like a fire fighter setting a blaze only to report it and claim credit for saving the forest. By several accounts, Ivins was "eccentric" and at least one brother had severed all ties. Maybe he was functional crazy, there are a lot of those people wandering around and they are hard to identify. Some of them get elected president.
Glenn's sleuthing around early notification of biowarfare and recommendations to buy Cipro are unfounded. Within hours of the 9/11 airplane attack there was a considerable buzz over other possible means of attack, and weaponized anthrax has been a standard bugaboo in both the Black Helicopter set and with legitimate counterterrorist professionals. Anyone making a list of What Next? would have that near or at the top, and since Cipro is a cheap, effective and readily attainable defense it would be something that any well-informed person who considered themselves a potential target would get hold of.
If Ivins were the fall guy, why would DOJ & FBI waste all that time chasing after others, embarrassing themselves and racking up a huge settlement with the earlier prime suspect? Why, indeed, not do away with Ivins much earlier on? Any competent conspiracy would seek to eliminate loose ends; if Ivins was a cognizant part of it, or simply a patsy, or an unwitting fall guy, it would still have been better to have killed him sooner than later. Waiting until all of this investigation has been done and an indictment issued is far too risky, for no gain.
That BushCo was quick to exploit the anthrax poisonings could easily have been nothing more than opportunism on their part. The goal above all on taking office was to justify attacking Saddam, and everything was twisted to that aim. Along with 9/11 itself, aluminum uranium-enrichment centrifuge tubes that were actually small rocket components, yellow cake purchase documents that were obviously forged, and satellite photos of mobile chemical warfare equipment that were actually ammonia fertilizer generation trucks, the anthrax attacks were just folded in to the great deceit that was being woven to fool the US public.
Sometimes, crazy people do crazy stuff. Many times, we never can figure out why. How very sad for the victims, and for Ivins’ family and friends. How sad for Ivins himself, consumed by his own demons.