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Apparent Suicide In Anthrax Case
penguin_dance passes along the news that a respected anthrax researcher, about to be indicted, has committed suicide. The FBI has been investigating the case since anthrax-contaminated letters were sent to the media and various politicians in 2001. The AP's coverage mentions that prosecutors intended to seek the death penalty. The suicide was not the one you might imagine if you've been following the story. "A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution... The extraordinary turn of events followed the government's payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI's chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax."
A suicidal man getting the death penalty. If I rob a bank will they give me double the amount of the cash I steal?
When I die it will likely be a horrible death, like most people - cancer, heart disease, accident, violence, falling down in a nursing home, alzheimers, etc.
But a murderer gets euthanized, like a beloved pet is put down.
I want murderers to spend the rest of their lives horribly and end horribly, like most of us non criminals. I don't mind my tax money going to incarceration of violent people, but I do mind my government murdering in my name. We should join the civilized world and stop executing people.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"...injury is deliberately and gradually inflicted upon a person usually for gaining attention or some other benefit." He might have wanted his research to be better recognized and useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_syndrome_by_proxy
I've grown increasingly cynical about government in recent years. I wonder, did the feds see that this guy knocked himself off and think, "Hey, here's a perfect target we can accuse and use to divert attention from the Hatfill mess and the fact that we haven't found anybody in 6 years."? Not saying that happened, but it's telling that it was the first thing that went through my mind when I heard this.
Shouldn't they confirm through investigative work that he did in fact commit these crimes rather than just assume since they were about to file charges & that he "committed suicide" that he did it? IT seems like poor reasoning on anyone's part to just assume this is the logical conclusion just because he offed himself before shit hit the fan. What if the suicide was for some completely different reason? Lots of people commit suicide for reasons other than legal troubles.
He just accidentally mixed up his crack and his research material.
What's the best way to maintain plausible deniability? Kill the person who actually committed the crime. Your patsy does the dirty work, then you dispose of them.
What could possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately unless he wrote a confession note it's possible that he was simply depressed and the news of being prosecuted as his co-worker was acted as a last impetus to suicide. TIme will tell I suppose.
But Dubya told me the terrorists were in Iraq!?!
Moreover, significant progress was made in analyzing genetic properties of the anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two senators.
I wonder if he faked his analysis and used it to frame Hatfill (the guy the Government had announced as a person of interest, sued the NYTimes and the Justice Dept. for libel and got a big settlement from the later) Also from TFA:
Soon after the government's settlement with Hatfill was announced June 27, Ivins began showing signs of serious strain.
Maybe he knew they were closing in on him?
Huh, funny. But he was a terrorist, right?
Maybe a relevant question is to ask his political affiliations. The contaminated mail was sent to Democrat Senators. You decide.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Salon has a updated story today http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/
relating to false information provided to ABC news early on about the investigation. Really makes you wonder what was going on here.
There's no mention of any potential motive for a "top government scientist" to start mailing anthrax.
Why did he (allegedly) do it? Why did it occur in the month following 9/11? What was his relation to the 9/11 terrorists?
Bruce E. Ivins doesn't sound like a Muslim name. Did he have any friends or relatives in the Middle East? I'm disappointed that TFA doesn't address any of these questions. I wonder if they'll ever be answered.
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
You may not have noticed the icons at the top of the story, but this was classified under "Government", "Biotech", and "Science". I think rightly in all 3 cases.
You could perhaps make a case for the argument that the "Government" stuff should not be on slashdot, but the other two categories certianly belong here.
I'd argue you the first one too though. Politics is most assuredly "stuff that matters". And if you don't think political people are "nerds", you clearly have never heard Markos (of DailyKos) speak.
Newer rule: Anyone posting suggestions for changes to slashdot's moderation system must not post as AC.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
The media and the FBI are a combination made in hell for law and order and justice. Just ask Hatfill and Richard Jewell among many others. There's nothing quite like getting convicted in the court of public opinion thanks to the media for making the FBI's job easier, and there's nothing like a high profile FBI investigation to make a story for the media...
Let's see - this is about a mysterious case involving weaponized anthrax that had to be developed by someone with pretty specific technical knowledge. Futhermore, it involves the FBI, DOD biological weapons labs, conspiracy theories, etc. Seems to me to be pretty geeky.
Don't like it - don't read it.
The article was, predictably, poor in science, but it sounds like the reason the FBI suspected him was that there was an anthrax contamination that he bleached but didn't report and didn't recheck to be sure nothing survived.
While that would have been a good step to take, anthrax microbes by themselves aren't harmful, in order to be a weapon it needs to be processed. Purified anthrax spores are what will send you to the hospital. I don't know how that's done, but the point is that anthrax growing on your lab bench is not the same as having plutonium all over your lab bench. Anthrax bacterial contamination in a fume hood would be an annoyance, not a serious safety issue.
Furthermore, bleach is a heavy duty sterilizing agent. You douse your bench in bleach and you really don't have to worry about residual contamination in most cases. Reswabbing is easy to do and would have been the right thing to do, but it's understandable that he didn't: it's kind of like checking for a pulse in someone you just burned at the stake.
We're of course not getting the full story, and it's more suspicious that his house was in the area the letters were coming from, but from what the article is saying, it sounds like the FBI may have harassed a man into suicide over "evidence" that would have been dismissed as unimportant if it were put into context.
It was to the Senate Majority Leader and the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that happened to be Democrats. Maybe it was because of their positions of power within the Senate? Maybe he was an anarchist that saw a great opportunity to sow the seeds of confusion and fear? Maybe he was a Bildeberger neo-con front man determined to make sure that the PATRIOT act got passed to usher in a New World Order by eliminating two prominent opponents? Maybe he was just a nut case with an axe to grind that saw an opportunity to get at a couple of people that "wronged" him in the aftermath of a terrorist act?
If you look hard enough for conspiracies, you'll find them. They may not really be there, but it's pretty darn hard to prove something doesn't exist.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Before everyone runs off and drinks yet some more governmental press release kool aid, apply some normal flatfoot 101 to this situation, use a clean slate.
Look at who got the mailings, and when they got the mailings, and what was coincidently in the news at the same time, to establish a probable motive. Also note the "cover letters" which were meant to cast blame on "islamic terrorists", with a lot of death to the infidels and america and israel, etc nonsense written in pidgin misspelled english.
who = news media sources, and two *important* high ranking Dem senators. The first news media source, the tabloid writer in florida, who was infected and later died, is a wildcard, no ties whatsoever with the others for any apparent motive, except one. He was working on a story that dealt with a leadership position in a tangential way, something that would have embarrassed some powerful people. The other newsies were top dogs in their fields, meaning they have huge propaganda influence. Some of the letters were mailed, some hand delivered, but no one is saying by whom, this has never been publicly determined.
when and what = right before debate on the Patriot Act. How coincidental. congress gets shut down, hysteria in the news headlines, anthrax mailings happen, made to look like Abdul J. Jihad did it, patriot act passed easily, despite overwhelming and clearly just plain wrong big brother aspects to it.
So maybe he did it, maybe not, but there are some juicy bits there to think about. Maybe he was meant to be a patsy and fall guy, after first getting his cooperation by enlisiting his sense of "patriotism" and telling him "sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet" or call it "unfortunate collateral damage, but the strike had to be done". Maybe he was a manchurian brainwashed asset, maybe....but the timing and targets will remain highly suspicious, especially because of the obvious attempt at misdirection and the tremendous political and economic gains to be had by changing the direction of the US in a huge way. And there's your few trillion dollars in motive, along with control of the most powerful government on the planet, and the direction of mideast geopolitical and energy ppolicy, and increasing daily.
Next question: Who profits? Add it up.
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"No karma bonus" checked, but feel free to mod down further if you wish, as it is no more on-topic than the parent post.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Actualy... No.
However, when Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont announced in May 2001 that he was leaving the Republican caucus to become an independent and would caucus with Democrats, this returned control of the body to the Democrats and Daschle again became Majority Leader.
He was the Majority Leader during the anthrax attack because a Republican changed party affiliation and Daschle was the leader.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Um... you do realize that if this guy was responsible, that means that the anthrax came from inside one of the top anthrax researchers in a Army-run facility, sent with a clear intent to link the anthrax with Islamic terrorism in the wake of 9/11?
And if he didn't do it, what does that mean about the FBI investigation?
There is no good option here.
however, rabid, paranoid schizophrenic musings on all evil in the world falling at the government's doorstep
Oh. I recognize this strawman. Nevermind.
The enemies of Democracy are
He didnt do it, for those who havent been following-
1. Ft. Detrick doesnt have the weaponization capability.
2. Illegal (i.e. violates the Biological Weapons Convention) U.S. offensive anthrax weaponization is run out of Battelle Memorial Institute under Project Jefferson under the DIA.
3. The Anthrax letters were a copy of the CIA operation that used anthrax substitute in their tests.
4. The DIA comes under the DoD, the CIA under the White House, the only place those two mandates meet is at the pleasure of POTUS, like they said about Saddam, he killed his own people.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
I don't really wonder what was going on when three or four "well-placed sources" claimed that government tests had linked the anthrax to Saddam. Just toss the deceit on the pile; I think there's some space in between the "Smoking Gun Mushroom Cloud" and the "Mobile Biological Weapons Laboratories".
What I wonder about is:
Why hasn't ABC outed the people who lied to them?
Why is Glenn Greenwald the only person who seems to care that ABC is protecting government insiders who lied about anthrax attacks?
As someone that got his dick caught in a door by some cops using very very shady maneuvers.... The government zealously threatening to ruin your life as you know it can easily lead you to thoughts of suicide. I went as far as carrying a bottle of carbon monoxide and mask around in the spare tire compartment of my car in case things went south quickly during the legal process. I was not about to become someone's bitch for something I didn't even do, and apparently neither was Dr. Ivin. I honestly can't blame him. When I was in that situation suicide seemed like the wisest thing TO do considering how my life would be after going thru the prison system. I kept thinking that if I didn't kill myself now, I'd be sitting in prison, innocent!, and wishing I had. Luckily, I guess you could say, I was able to pay a lawyer THOUSANDS of dollars to eventually get the case thrown out on entrapment (after a year and a half of HELL). When you are a good person and get in a sticky situation with the chips stacked against you.... you mental health turns to the dark side rather quickly. May he rest in peace.
"The irony when tending a flock of sheep is the dogs you put in place to protect them are genetically mutated wolves"
Government arranging for a causus belli is the traditional way to start wars and drive people to support things. Even Sun Tzu taught this. - Is it so far fetched that the teachings of the holy book of US military might have been used in arranging for "a new Pearl Harbor"?
Apparently to you it is, but also Cheney seems to have done it again, just recently, concerning Iran:
To Provoke War, Cheney Wanted Navy Seals As Iranians
Now, how far fetched is it to bribe an anthrax scientist to send letters and then help cover up the deed inside the investigating team?
Do remember, Dick Cheney went on Cipro a month before the letters started.
If you check out the spin in the headlines , you can already tell that they are trying to convict the dead guy for carrying out the attacks.
In a couple of days or so, they will spin it all as 'case closed', in the hope that everyone forgets the real story.
If the guy had been 'suicided' too early, that would have taken away the talking point that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks.
Now, that the bush administration has declared 'mission accomplished', it may have been time to clean up loose ends.
</tinfoil>
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.