Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Key senators dispute FBI's anthrax case against Bruce Ivins

Key senators dispute FBI's anthrax case against Bruce Ivins
(updated below) 
I'll have more to write about it when it is over, but the Senate Judiciary
Committee today -- following the House Judiciary Committee yesterday -- is
conducting an "oversight" hearing of the FBI at which FBI Director Robert
Mueller is testifying. That hearing can be viewed here. 
Already, after 30 minutes or so, the two ranking members of the Committee
have both told Mueller that, in essence, they do not accept or believe the
FBI's accusations against Bruce Ivins. The Democratic Chairman of the
Committee, Pat Leahy (who was a target of the anthrax attacks) told
Mueller categorically that he simply does not believe that Ivins was the
prime culprit if he was a participant at all, and said he is absolutely
convinced that there were others involved in the preparation and mailing
of the anthrax. Leahy began the hearing by identifying the U.S. Army's
Dugway Proving Ground and the private CIA contractor Battelle Corporation
-- but not Fort Detrick -- as the only two institutions in the U.S.
capable of producing anthrax of the strain that was sent to him and Sen.
Daschele. Leahy asked Mueller whether he was aware of any other
institutions capable of producing the anthrax, and when Mueller --
amazingly though unsurprisingly -- claimed he couldn't answer, Leahy
demanded that he obtain the answer during a break and tell the Committee
today what the answer is. 
GOP Senator and former prosecutor Arlen Specter was just as emphatic in
telling Mueller that the FBI's case plainly fell short of what could have
been used to convict Ivins in a criminal trial. He said he had grave
doubts about the FBI's case, and demanded Mueller's consent to allow an
independent body to review the FBI's evidence (though Specter, as usual,
is either confused or being deliberately obtuse because Mueller keeps
committing to having outside scientists review the FBI's scientific
methods but not the entire case against Ivins -- a distinction which GOP
Sen. Charles Grassley, one of the key skeptics in the Senate regarding the
FBI's case, just highlighted and objected to). 
Grassley sent a letter to the FBI a month ago demanding answers to a whole
slew of questions, and as he is asking them, Mueller -- as he did
yesterday -- continues to say that he doesn't have the answers and will
obtain them at some point. The Senators are indignant over this, but don't
appear to intend to do anything (just as was true for the House members
yesterday), though Leahy is at least demanding that Mueller obtain these
answers not at some point in the indefinite future, but today, during the
breaks. 
The bottom line is that it is quite extraordinary that the FBI has claimed
it has identified with certainty the sole culprit in the anthrax attacks,
but so many key Senators, from both parties, simply don't believe it, and
are saying so explicitly. Leahy's rather dark suggestion that there were
others involved in these attacks -- likely at a U.S. Army facility or key
private CIA contractor -- is particularly notable. It has been crystal
clear from the beginning that the FBI's case is filled with glaring holes,
that their thuggish behavior towards their only suspect drove him to
commit suicide and thus is unable to defend himself, and yet, to this day,
the FBI continues to conceal the evidence in its possession and is
stonewalling any and all efforts to scrutinize its claims. 
It takes a lot for Senators from both parties to so openly and explicitly
say they don't believe the FBI's definitive accusations in such a
high-profile case. Perhaps that will be understood as a reflection of how
dubious the FBI's case here is. Given what far-reaching impact these
attacks had, and given that these attacks were -- as our own Government
claims -- ones that originated from U.S. Army facilities and perpetrated
by U.S. Government employees, it ought to be understood as exactly that.
UPDATE: This blogger offers some well-reasoned defenses of the FBI's most
recent claims -- or, more accurately, some well-reasoned criticism of some
of the claims from FBI critics, including me. I don't entirely agree with
several of his points, but his analysis is worth reading. 
The crucial point, at least from my perspective, isn't that the FBI's
accusations against Bruce Ivins are demonstrably false, and it's not that
Bruce Ivins had no role in the anthrax attacks -- there is ample grounds
for believing both propositions to be true, but I'm not at all suggesting
one can reach a definitive conclusion based on what is known. Rather, the
point is that the accusations that the FBI has outlined and the
evidentiary case it has disclosed are so full of substantial holes that
the FBI ought to disclose all of the evidence in its possession --
scientific and non-scientific -- and fully cooperate with a real,
independent review of all of that evidence by an investigative body
possessing subpoena power and whose mandate is both to examine the anthrax
attacks and the FBI's case from scratch.
-- 
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CHECK OUT THIS EXCLUSIVE STORY PUBLISHED TODAY AT 
ERSNEWS.COM
 / THE
ENTERPRISE REPORT
 ABOUT THE BRUCE IVINS / ANTHRAX CASE ...
http://www.ersnews.com/permas_stories_updates/anthrax.htm