The case against Bruce Ivins is pathetic
by Justin Raimondo
The release of the FBI’s “evidence” against http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5335, the now-deceased Ft. Detrick scientist targeted by the FBI as the alleged culprit in the 2001 anthrax letters case, demonstrates either (1) the FBI is covering for the real culprits, or (2) what we are witnessing is a dramatic drop in the intelligence of the average FBI official – maybe it’s something in the water.
In making the case for the latter, I offer as exhibit number-one the FBI’s contention that the origin of the return address on some of the anthrax-laden envelopes – “Greendale School” – was explained by Ivins’ membership in the American Family Association, a group of Christian fundamentalists who often lobby and litigate on behalf of conservative causes:
“The http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5313 into the fictitious return address on envelopes used for the second round of anthrax mailings, ‘4th GRADE,’ ‘GREENDALE SCHOOL,’ has established a possible link to the American Family Association (AFA) headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi. In October 1999, MA, a Christian organization, published an article entitled ‘AFA takes Wisconsin to court. ‘The article describes a lawsuit filed in federal court, by the AFA Center for Law and Policy (CLP), on behalf of the parents of students at Greendale Baptist Academy. The article focuses on an incident that occurred on December 16, 1998, in which case workers of the Wisconsin Department of Human Services went to the Greendale Baptist Academy in order to interview a fourth-grade student. The case workers, acting on an anonymous tip that Greendale Baptist Academy administered corporal punishment as part of its discipline policy, did not disclose to the staff why they wanted to interview the student. The case workers interviewed the student in the absence of the student’s parents and informed the school staff that the parents were not to be contacted. The AFA CLP filed suit against the Wisconsin Department of Human Services, citing a violation of the parents’ Fourth Amendment rights.”You ask: so what? As do I. But those geniuses over at FBI headquarters are waaaay ahead of us:
“[Redacted donations were made to the AFA in the name of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Ivins’ on eleven separate occasions beginning on December 31, 1993. After an approximate two year break in donations, the next donation occurred on November 11, 1999, one month after the initial article referencing Greendale Baptist Academy was published in the AFA Journal. It was also discovered that the subscription to the AFA Journal, in the name of Mr. & Mrs. Bruce Ivins … was active until March 2005.”
This doesn’t even rise to the level of a logical fallacy, which has to have at least some internal coherence to so qualify. It’s just plain weird. At this point, one has to wonder if the FBI itself has become a casualty of some previously unknown biological agent that has caused its employees to be afflicted with the Algernon Syndrome.
There is, however, an internal consistency in the body of “evidence” released so far, and it consists of stretching even the most marginal bits of information to the breaking point in an often hilarious effort to prove Ivins’ guilt. The AFA angle may seem bizarre, but it is no less so than the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority gambit, which the FBI engages in to divert attention from the fact that they at no point place Ivins anywhere near the Princeton, N.J., location the deadly missives were mailed from. Instead, they point to Ivins’ alleged “obsession” with Kappa Kappa Gamma and the fact that the group maintains a storehouse near that location.
What are they smoking over at FBI headquarters?
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13270