Color Congress skeptical on Bruce Ivins

FBI overlooks the obvious — Ivins would have been the perfect person to frame if someone else in his lab actually is the guilty party.

Almost riffing on “Skeptic’s Dictionary” author Bob Carroll, plenty of Members of Congress are skeptical about the
FBI official line on Bruee Ivins as the “lone anthrax gunman.”

“My conclusion at this point is that it’s very much an open matter,” Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate committee, said

No doubt he once again trotted out his Warren Commission credentials, but, snark aside, if Specter wants to be a bulldog on legal lines of reasoning, he can.

The NYT story is full of tidbits, such as noting that as late as April 2007, Ivins was officially NOT an FBI “target.”d

Also, after its history of screwups on this case, plus Richard Jewell, the Unabomber, et al, did the Men In Black think Congress would give their claims a blank check? Apparently so, per Rep. Rush Holt:

“I think they’re probably surprised by the level of skepticism.”

Here’s the main deal the Eff-Bee-Eye apparently hasn’t even had come across its collective radar screen.

The same variety of circumstantial evidence it says point to Ivins as the culprit also point to something else.

Ivins would have been the perfect person to frame if someone else in his lab actually is the guilty party.

Did the Bureau ever check to see who might have a grudge aginst Ivins, and stuff like that? How thoroughly they interview his coworrkers, many of whom think the square nuts (Google it) folks are full of crap:

“Despite the F.B.I.’s scientific and circumstantial evidence, I and many of Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues don’t believe he did it and don’t believe the spore preparations were made at Detrick,” said Dr. Gerry Andrews, a microbiologist who worked at the Army laboratory for nine years and was Dr. Ivins’s boss for part of that time.

Read the full story for the complete flavor of the incredulousness leve.