According to the WaPo, Bruce Ivins took personal leave time on September 17, 2001, which, the FBI argues, is when he would have driven to Princeton to mail the anthrax.

Meanwhile, bits of fresh information continued to come out. A partial log of Ivins’s work hours shows that he worked late in the lab on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 16, signing out at 9:52 p.m. after two hours and 15 minutes. The next morning, the sources said, he showed up as usual but stayed only briefly before taking leave hours. Authorities assume that he drove to Princeton immediately after that, dropping the letters in a mailbox on a well-traveled street across from the university campus. Ivins would have had to have left quickly to return for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m.

Ivins normally got to work early–around 7:30 AM. Assuming his brief stay was half an hour (are they suggesting he went in and picked up the anthrax? and if so, did anyone ask why he’d do so during daytime hours?), he would have had eight hours to drive to Princeton and back. That’s certainly doable–Google says the drive takes 3 hours and 25 minutes. Who knows whether Ivins sped much in his 1993 Honda Civic (in 2001, he also had a 1996 Dodge van; he did not yet have his 2002 Saturn). But even if he went faster than Google says he should have (he would have been driving on I-95, after all, which pretty much requires speeding), he almost certainly would have hit rush hour traffic at least once in his drive, if not twice.

In other words, Ivins could have made the drive, but just barely.

All of which ought to raise the stakes on the FBI’s really dubious explanation for why Ivins purportedly mailed the anthrax in Princeton. After all, there are Kappa Kappa Gamma chapters at George Washington in DC, at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and Washington and Lee in Lexington, VA–all much closer to Ft. Detrick than Princeton. So what’s the explanation for driving to Princeton (twice), when Ivins could have associated the anthrax mailing with KKG which much less effort if he had mailed it from any of a number of other schools.

And then there’s this bit, which really damns the FBI case:

Federal agents did not interview owners of shops on the street where the mailbox is located to place Ivins at the scene, judging that any witness identification would have been inherently unreliable after nearly seven years. Nor did they uncover tollbooth footage or credit card or phone records that would directly link Ivins to the day’s events.

The FBI never asked anyone in Princeton whether or not they had seen Ivins. However, we know that in August 2002, they did ask 200 people in Princeton whether they had seen Steven Hatfill.

…once the government determined the anthrax letters were mailed from Princeton, New Jersey, FBI special agents showed over 200 residents of Princeton only one photograph–a photo of Dr. Hatfill–and asked whether anyone saw him in the area.

[snip]

Immediately after Dr. Hatfill’s [August 11, 2002] public statement, in an effort to obtain any evidence adverse to Dr. Hatfill with public relations value, however unreliable and inadmissible in court, federal investigators began showing a single photo of Dr. Hatfill to residents of Princeton, New Jersey in the hope that someone would place him at he scene of the anthrax mailings. The presentation of a single photo instead of an array of photos, in dereliction of FBI protocol is so unfairly suggestive–particularly during a week in which Dr. Hatfill appeared on television and in newspapers around the nation and during the same week Newsweek published a two-page spread featuring several photos of Dr. Hatfill–that no criminal investigator could rightfully believe it to have a proper law enforcement function.

So after having asked 200 people if they had seen Hatfill, they ask no one if they had seen Ivins. I understand that Ivins didn’t become a suspect until much longer after the mailing in question. But if Ivins really had an obsession with this particular KKG chapter, rather than the ones in DC or Baltimore or Lexington, VA, perhaps he might have returned to the scene of the crime.

But the FBI didn’t check, I guess because they don’t want to subject their fragile explanation for how or whether Ivins was ever in Princeton to any scrutiny.

And this is the utterly convincing evidence (not!) that the FBI has offered to explain their certainty that, rather than leaving work and handing off the anthrax to someone whose handwriting matched the envelopes, Ivins risked missing his afternoon appointment to mail the anthrax from close to a KKG chapter that was nowhere near the most convenient to his office.

Update: Hold on. It would not be possible for Ivins to have mailed the anthrax. According to my calculations above, the window during which Ivins could have put the letter in the mailbox on September 17 was from 10:25 to 1:35. But here’s what the FBI itself says about the window in which the letter was mailed:

The investigation examined Dr. Ivins’s laboratory activity immediately before and after the window of opportunity for the mailing of the Post and Brokaw letters to New York which began at 5:00 p.m. Monday, September 17,2001 and ended at noon on Tuesday, September 18, 2001. [my emphasis]

In other words, had he mailed the anthrax when they’re arguing he did, the letter would have been picked up at the 5:00 PM pick-up (if not an earlier one–often boxes have a mid-day pick-up as well), and post-marked on September 17, not on September 18. [Note, suffragette and I were thinking along the same lines.]

Update: fixed the title per skdadl.

Check out this WSJ article chronicling Bruce Ivins’ reactions to the anthrax investigation as it moved forward (h/t Hmmm). The article notes that many of his actions might be natural responses to the attack itself–or they might be efforts to cover up his own involvement in the attack.

Most interesting, though, is confirmation of a detail alluded to by Ivins’ lawyer, but never confirmed. Ivins took–and apparently passed–a lie detector test just after the attack. The FBI never asked him to take a second one, not even when they were having other scientists do so.

That winter, the FBI asked Dr. Ivins to take his first and only lie-detector test, according to a law-enforcement official. The polygraph was part of the bureau’s vetting of investigators. The FBI hasn’t released the results. Dr. Ivins retained his role in the investigation.

[snip]

By this time [spring 2002], all of the scientists in the bacteriology division were under the FBI’s investigative microscope, people working there at the time said. One after another, they submitted to a 3½-hour polygraph test. Dr. Ivins "was in the safety zone" because he had already passed his polygraph, Dr. Andrews said. Dr. Ivins was never tested again, a law-enforcement official said.

I understand lie detector tests can be really unreliable and some people can game them. But we’re talking about a guy who, even by his own admission, was an emotional basket case. No wonder the FBI didn’t mention the lie detector test when it applied for search warrants on Ivins, nor did it mention the test in its press conference the other day. Either the apparent results of his test refute their claim he was emotionally unstable, or they suggest he wasn’t the culprit.

Chuck Grassley has asked the FBI for details on any lie detector tests Ivins submitted to.

Was Dr. Ivins ever polygraphed in the course of the investigation? If so, please provide the dates and results of the exam(s). If not, please explain why not.

It’ll be interesting to see how the FBI gets around the fact that the polygraph seems to poke a pretty big hole in their case against Ivins.

Someone really ought to call Fred Fielding on his bullshit. Today, perhaps because he reads Murray Waas (I promise, I will return to that post), Fred’s offering further negotiations in the matter of Harriet and Josh and Karl and a stack of documents. In his latest letter to Conyers, Fred says,

[A stay on Bates’ order pending appeal] will provide appellate consideration of the novel questions at stake in this matter [my emphasis]

Fred. I’m not a lawyer, so I could be wrong here. But if even you are admitting that these are "novel" questions, aren’t you, in fact, agreeing with what both John Bates and Linda Sanchez have said all along, that you’re just making this shit up!!! As Bates said,

Indeed, the aspect of this lawsuit that is unprecedented is the notion that Ms. Miers is absolutely immune from compelled congressional process. The Supreme Court has reserved absolute immunity for very narrow circumstances, involving the President’s personal exposure to suits for money damages based on his official conduct or concerning matters of national security or foreign affairs. The Executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law.

This absolute immunity shit doesn’t exist. Linda Sanchez knows it, John Bates knows it, and, apparently, you know it. So drop the pretense and send us Turdblossom to testify already, okay? 

Remember Rashid Rauf? Because of him (and Dick Cheney, as I explain below), you’ve got to either try to squeeze your Tom’s of Maine down into 3 ounce tubes or use crappy sugar-sweet toothpaste when you travel.

Rauf is the Pakistani who was kibbitzing a bunch of British wannabe terrorists without passports, teaching them how to make bombs out of liquids in airplane bathrooms.

The story around Rauf’s arrest (and the subsequent fear-mongering about the purported plot) was always sketchy. As I wrote in 2006, news reports basically said he got arrested, without explaining how or by whom.

Here’s me reading the MSNBC scoop about the US launching the arrests before the Brits were ready:

Americans pushed the Brits to do two things they didn’t want to do. First, they pushed the Brits to arrest Rashid Rauf before they wanted to.

The British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the U.S. would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.

British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody "in circumstances where there was due process," according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.

This passage is actually quite interesting. The US wanted Rauf arrested. The Brits wanted to wait–they wanted to wait until they could arrest Rauf in such a way that he could be tried in the UK. The US threatened to render him. The Brits tried to hold out, so they could prosecute him legally. And then … that’s where the article is less clear. Was Rauf arrested using due process? Will Rauf be a defendant and witness in the UK? Or did the US snatch him, making him useless for a legal prosecution and possibly endangering the larger case in the UK?

So to put Murray and MSNBC together, the US wanted Rauf arrested right away. The Brits wanted to wait so they could use due process. The US threatened to "render" Rauf. The Brits complained.

And then he got arrested.

But by whom, and in what way? As I suggested before, the MSNBC article just drops the whole question, making it clear that the US won that battle, somehow. But it doesn’t explain–was he rendered? Did the US force Pakistan to arrest him? Where is he now? Who has custody?

Well, apparently, Suskind answers the unanswered questions about Rauf’s arrest … and would you be surprised if I told you Bush ordered Cheney to have it done in time to fear-monger leading up to the 2006 elections? Here’s Ron Suskind on Fresh Air describing what happened, transcribed at AfterDowningStreet:

NPR: I want to talk just a little about this fascinating episode you describe in the summer of 2006, when President Bush is very anxious about some intelligence briefings that he is getting from the British. What are they telling him?

SUSKIND: In late July of 2006, the British are moving forward on a mission they’ve been–an investigation they’ve been at for a year at that point, where they’ve got a group of "plotters," so-called, in the London area that they’ve been tracking…Bush gets this briefing at the end of July of 2006, and he’s very agitated. When Blair comes at the end of the month, they talk about it and he says, "Look, I want this thing, this trap snapped shut immediately." Blair’s like, "Well, look, be patient here. What we do in Britain"–Blair describes, and this is something well known to Bush–"is we try to be more patient so they move a bit forward. These guys are not going to breathe without us knowing it. We’ve got them all mapped out so that we can get actual hard evidence, and then prosecute them in public courts of law and get real prosecutions and long prison terms"…

Well, Bush doesn’t get the answer he wants, which is "snap the trap shut." And the reason he wants that is because he’s getting all sorts of pressure from Republicans in Congress that his ratings are down. These are the worst ratings for a sitting president at this point in his second term, and they’re just wild-eyed about the coming midterm elections. Well, Bush expresses his dissatisfaction to Cheney as to the Blair meeting, and Cheney moves forward.

NPR: So you got the British saying, "Let’s carefully build our case. Let’s get more intelligence." Bush wants an arrest and a political win. What does he do?

SUSKIND: Absolutely. What happens is that then, oh, a few days later, the CIA operations chief–which is really a senior guy. He’s up there in the one, two, three spots at CIA, guy named Jose Rodriguez ends up slipping quietly into Islamabad, Pakistan, and he meets secretly with the ISI, which is the Pakistani intelligence service. And suddenly a guy in Pakistan named Rashid Rauf, who’s kind of the contact of the British plotters in Pakistan, gets arrested. This, of course, as anyone could expect, triggers a reaction in London, a lot of scurrying. And the Brits have to run through the night wild-eyed and basically round up 25 or 30 people. It’s quite a frenzy. The British are livid about this. They talk to the Americans. The Americans kind of shrug, "Who knows? You know, ISI picked up Rashid Rauf."

DAVIES: So the British did not even get a heads-up from the United States that this arrest was going to happen?

SUSKIND: Did not get a heads-up. In fact, the whole point was to mislead the British…The British did not know about it, frankly, until I reported it in the book…

What’s interesting is that the White House already had its media plan already laid out before all of this occurred so that the president and vice president immediately–even, in Cheney’s case, before the arrest, the day before–started to capitalize on the war on terror rhetoric and political harvest, which of course they used for weeks to come, right into the fall, about, "The worst plot since 9/11, that has been foiled, and this is why you want us in power." [my emphasis]

None of it surprising (though the news that Jose Rodriguez is the guy who did Cheney’s political dirty work for him makes Rodriguez’ destruction of the torture tapes more interesting). But useful to have more details about how these fuckers work.

And of course, Cheney’s personal involvement in Pakistan policy is one of the reasons things are going FUBAR over there today.

And we’re all still surviving on hotel shampoo when we travel, two years later.

I see that Henry Waxman’s just as focused on oil as those Republicans trying to stink up the House–only in Waxman’s case, he’s demonstrating that the Iraqi budget surplus is almost the same amount as the money Americans have spent on Iraqi oil.

On Tuesday, the Govemment Accountability Office reported that by the end of this year Iraq may amass a budget surplus of between $67 billion and $79 billion as a result of windfall oil sale revenues.

This is roughly the same amount U.S. consumers have paid to purchase Iraqi oil since the war began. According to data provided by the Energy Information Administration, the United States is the single largest purchaser of Iraqi oil, and U.S. consumers will have spent between $70 billion and S74 billion to purchase Iraqi oil by the end of this year.

This means U.S. consumers have been paying record gas prices at the pump to build up Iraq’s massive budget surplus. At the same time, U.S. taxpayers have paid $48 billion to fund Iraq’s reconstruction. I am writing to ask what steps the Bush Administration is taking to ensure that Iraq contributes its fair share to finance the reconstruction.

I’m sure the international oil market doesn’t work on a one-to-one correlation like this. But the American consumers paying $4 a gallon to fund their 30 mile commutes don’t know that–nor do they care, I suspect. Waxman writes:

Based on this information, it appears that U.S. taxpayers are paying twice – once through their taxes to pay for lraq’s reconstruction and a second time at the pump to help build Iraq’s massive surplus.

Shorter Waxman: Why have American taxpayers been asked to forgo necessities to line Nuri al-Maliki’s pockets?

Don’t get me wrong. There’s absolutely no excuse for a country hosting the Olympic games to detain the press corps traveling with one of the visiting dignitaries.

A charter airplane carrying the White House press corps was detained for nearly three hours Friday at Beijing’s international airport not long after President Bush arrived to attend the Olympic Games.

The flight crew of the Northwest Airlines 747 had been expecting to park at a VIP terminal, but after landing was instead directed by the control tower to a normal international gate.

White House officials would say only there were "logistical problems" getting clearance to unload the aircraft. The flight crew was told the Chinese were insisting that all luggage be inspected.

Detaining the plane carrying the White House press corps makes China look like the still-authoritarian nation they denied they were (and are) when they first got the games.

And, no doubt, when they were "inspecting" all the baggage on the plane, I’m sure they snuck a few bugs in here and there among the electronics, just for good measure.

But really, China. Of all the journalists covering the games this year, do you really think the White House press corps are the journalists you ought to be intimidating? By habit, these journalists are among the most domesticated of western journalists, wiling to cow to authority to retain their spot on the plane (particularly since Helen’s out still sick). Both from a PR perspective–in that, before this happened, China was likely to get a good review from these journalists–and from a power perspective, I’d be a little more worried about the ESPN crew than the White House press corps.

Nevertheless–may all the journalists on board check their equipment carefully and have a safe rest of the trip.

As a number of you pointed out last night, Philip Giraldi says Suskind got the forged uranium document close, but no cigar.

An extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community has informed me that Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but that a number of details are wrong.

[snip]

My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.

Now, I’m not at all surprised that Giraldi says Suskind got details wrong. The story always had a fundamental logical flaw (which Giraldi points out), which is that Cheney and CIA hate each other–and particularly hated each other in this period, when OVP believed Tenet had forced DOJ to open the Plame investigation. Note, there is significant reason to believe that Tenet knew Cheney declassified CIA properties over his objections, so things were probably quite tense between CIA and OVP, just as OVP was handing over documents showing that Cheney was the one pushing to leak Plame’s identity.

Also, as I pointed out here, Bob Woodward (well, consider the source) has said that Suskind’s CIA sources have led him astray in the past. And, as I pointed out here, there is something surprisingly credible about Tenet’s insistence that he always–up to and including late 2003–refused to endorse the Iraq-Al Qaeda claims. So there is reason to take Giraldi’s post seriously.

But something still doesn’t sit right with Giraldi’s story, either. As Sara points out, Iyad Allawi was a CIA guy, not–at first–an OVP guy. (OVP’s guy, Ahmad Chalabi, himself a fan of forgeries, discredited this one right away.) But that actually doesn’t discredit the story entirely; Allawi was auditioning to be named Prime Minister in this period, and I can imagine he would do a great deal to win that prize. Here’s Joe Conason on that point:

On Dec. 11, 2003 — three days before the Telegraph launched its "exclusive" on the Habbush memo — the Washington Post published an article by Dana Priest and Robin Wright headlined "Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. to Stem Attacks." Buried inside on Page A41, their story outlined the CIA’s efforts to create a new Iraqi intelligence agency:

[snip]

So Allawi was at the CIA during the week before Coughlin got that wonderful scoop. That may not be proof of anything, either, but a picture is beginning to form.

That picture becomes sharper in the months that followed Allawi’s release of the Habbush forgery, when he suddenly returned to favor in Baghdad and eclipsed Chalabi, at least for a while. Five months later, in May 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council elected Allawi as his country’s interim prime minister, reportedly under pressure from the American authorities.

So Allawi certainly had reason to plant the forgery, and Chalabi’s debunking of it suggests the forgery may have been a prop in their rivalry. That still leaves the little issue of whether Tenet would cooperate with Dick Cheney during this period.

Just for shits and giggles, I looked at Tenet’s book to see whether anything he admitted to during this period seemed to suggest he would cooperate with Dick Cheney to plant disinformation. And two things stick out. First, Tenet describes the struggle to get the Administration to agree to establish an Iraqi intelligence service.

In the midst of all this [dispute over de-Baathification], we started pushing for the establishment of a new Iraqi intelligence service. Any government intent on protecting people needs an organization to acquire information regarding internal security and external threats. That much seems obvious, but we ran into strong and immediate resistance to our suggestions on building such a service.

Thus, the acceptance of such an idea in December 2003 suggests the sharp decline of Iraq under Jerry Bremer may have put Tenet, however briefly, into a more central position in formulating the Administration’s Iraq policy.

Tenet also describes being asked–after the forgery was planted–to try to persuade Allawi to serve as Defense Minister.

I’d met Allawi a number of times before, in Washington and London. We didn’t know each other well, but as DCI, I was a beneficiary of all the trust and goodwill that the CIA had built up over the years with him and the INA.

He goes on to describe what we already know–that when Allawi became Prime Minister in 2004, people thought it was a CIA plot. Of course Allawi became Prime Minister just as four things happened: the torture policy in the Administration increasingly put the CIA at legal risk, it became increasingly clear that CIA didn’t cover for OVP in the Plame leak, with Woodward’s publication of Plan of Attack and with it the "Slam Dunk" claim it became clear that the Administration had thrown Tenet under the bus, and, finally, Tenet’s resignation.

But those are the things that happened six months after the planting of this forgery; back when it was planted, Tenet was in a reasonably strong position with NSC, if not with OVP. We know that Tenet was still trying to sustain the WMD myth in January 2004; what’s to say that in fall 2003, he wasn’t willing to use his position of influence to contribute CIA assets to bolstering that claim?

At this point, I’m not sure what confluence of bureaucratic in-fighting in the Administration concocted that letter–it could be any weird combination of contributions. But one thing seems clear. That letter was a US-backed forgery. 

About Murray Waas’ latest, in which he reports that Karl Rove had several people claim he was not involved in potentially criminal behavior, even though he had been?

While a central focus for investigators apparently has been the role played by aides to Rove in the Griffin matter, some witnesses to the investigation told me that they have been asked specifically about Rove’s own personal efforts.

Two former senior Justice Department officials, former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and principal Associate General William Moscella, have separately provided damaging information to the two internal investigative agencies.

Both, according to sources familiar with their still-confidential testimony, said they inadvertently gave misleading testimony to Congress about the firings of the U.S. attorneys because they were misled by Rove himself in addition to other White House figures.

In his March 6, 2007, testimony to Congress, Moscella contended that all but one U.S. attorney was fired because of issues related to their performance. When specifically asked if Rove played any role in the firings, he testified: "I don’t know that he played any role."

But one day before the congressional testimony, on March 5, 2007, McNulty and Moscella attended a strategy session at the White House in which they discussed Moscella’s testimony and how he should answer allegations that most of the U.S. attorneys were fired because of politics.

McNulty and Moscella told investigators that among the attendees were Rove and Sampson, then Gonzales’ chief of staff. Neither Rove nor Sampson, both men told investigators, told them anything about their own role in the firings even as they encouraged Moscella to say politics had nothing to do with it.

He didn’t have anything to do with outing a CIA spy … He didn’t have anything to do with placing his vote caging specialist in a big swing state … He didn’t know Jack Abramoff, either. 

I mean, you’d think some enterprising Republican would start a 12-step program, "Republicans Who Have Vouched for Karl Based on His False Representations" Anonymous.

Joe Persichini, the Assistant Director of the DC FBI Field Office said of Bruce Ivins yesterday, "It appears, based on the evidence, that he was acting alone."

Yet he and DC US Attorney Jeff Taylor seem painfully aware that their evidence doesn’t add up to a compelling case. In particular, Taylor and Persichini dodged and weaved whenever asked about any hard evidence that tied Bruce Ivins to the mailing–rather than just the production–of the anthrax.

For example, Taylor made an incredibly misleading statement to suggest that the envelopes used in the attack were only available in Frederick Maryland. He claimed that,  "based on the analysis, we were able to conclude that the envelopes used in the mailings were very likely sold in a post office in the Frederick, MD post office in 2001." He continued to say that Ivins maintained a PO Box "at the post office from which these pre-franked envelopes were sold."

But the truth is that Frederick Maryland is just one of hundreds of post offices at which those envelopes would have been available:

Subsequent to the attacks, an effort was made to collect all such envelopes for possible forensic examination, including the identification of defects that occur during the envelope manufacturing process. As a result of this collection, envelopes with printing defects identical to printing defects identified on the envelopes utilized in the anthrax attacks during the fall of 2001 were collected fiom the Fairfax Main post office in Fairfax, Virginia and the Cumberland and Elkton post offices in Maryland. The Fairfax Main, Cumberland, Maryland, and Elkton, Maryland post offices are supplied by the Dulles Stamp Distribution Office (SDO), located in Dulles, Virginia. The Dulles SDO distributed "federal eagle" envelopes to post offices throughout Maryland and Virginia. Given that the printing defects identified on the envelopes used in the attacks are transient, thereby being present on only a small population of the federal eagle envelopes produced, and that envelopes with identical printing defects to those identified on the envelopes used in the attacks were recovered fiom post offices serviced by the Dulles SDO, it is reasonable to conclude that the federal eagle envelopes utilized in the attacks were purchased from a post office in Maryland or Virginia. [my emphasis]

In other words, Taylor suggests, inaccurately, that Ivins’ post office was the only one where those envelopes were available, rather than one of many post offices.

Then, when Persichini was asked about whether there was any hard evidence found in the searches of Ivins’ car and home, Persichini dodged by directing reporters back to the documents–documents which say nothing about such hard evidence.

QUESTION: A question for Mr. Persichini. You build — this is obviously, at this point, a circumstantial case. You build a strong circumstantial case. What direct evidence do you have? For instance, do you have any tape that was used on the envelope that was recovered from his home? Do you have any other — any other evidence that clearly would link him? For instance, in the affidavit, it mentions that people of this sort often keep souvenirs. Did you find anything like that at his home?

MR. PERSICHINI: Well first, I would refer back to the documents, because that’s the purpose of our press conference today, to provide you the documents and the information pertained in the documents. As it relates to admitting evidence into it, I’m going to refer back to Jeff. But again, we’re looking at the document itself and the purpose of our release and providing this information to the families. That’s first and foremost for us. So I won’t discuss the actuality of evidence, then.

Another reporter asks whether Ivins’ handwriting or hair matches up with the evidence found (note, the official transcript is inaccurate here; I’ve made corrections in brackets).

QUESTION: Jeff, did you find any handwriting samples or hair samples that would have matched Dr. Ivins to the envelopes where the hair samples were found in the mailbox?

MR. [PERSICHINI]: We did not find any handwriting analysis or hair samples in the mailbox. So there were no facts and circumstances of that part. [Persichini walks away from the podium.]

QUESTION: You didn’t take handwriting samples from Dr. Ivins? MR. TAYLOR: We examined handwriting samples but then there was no comparison made or a specific identification of the handwriting. It appears that when the analysts would look at it, that there was an attempt to disguise the handwriting. So it was unable to make a comparison.

With respect to handwriting samples, we did have indications from individuals with whom we spoke that there appeared to be some similarities in handwriting that were apparent. That said, we did not have a scientifically valid conclusion that we thought would lead us to be able to admit that in evidence.

Persichini, in particular, doesn’t seem to want to talk about the handwriting samples–and the lack of any real evidence matching Ivins’ handwriting to that used on the envelopes. Furthermore, he outright lies when he says there were no hair samples taken from the mailbox.

The collection box on Nassau Street was identified through forensic biological swabbing of every U.S. Postal Service drop box that collects mail to be processed at the Hamilton facility. Further forensic examination of the contaminated mailbox recovered a number of Caucasian human hairs fiom inside the box, which are suitable for comparison.

Granted, there’s no reason to think that the Caucasion hair in the Nassau Street box had anything to do with the anthrax case–but wouldn’t it be more honest to say that?

In short, while Taylor talked a lot about the possibility of making an entirely circumstantial case and claimed repeatedly that, had they tried this, they would have been able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Bruce Ivins was "acting alone," they tried to dodge admitting that while they have fairly strong evidence tying Ivins to the anthrax used in the case, their evidence goes to shit as soon as you try to prove that Ivins then took that anthrax and mailed it to reporters and senators.

[I’ve updated this timeline with dates from the DOJ documents.]

July 6, 2000: The last lot of BioPort’s anthrax vaccine fails potency tests; Ivins say the shit is about to hit the fan

August 12, 2000: Ivins says "last Saturday" (August 5) was "one of my worst days in months"

Spring 2001: Ivins taken off Special Immunization Program

September 7, 2001: Ivins put back on Special Immunization Program

September 14, 2001: Ivins works late for 2 hours 15 minutes

September 15, 2001: Ivins works late for 2 hours 15 minutes

September 16, 2001: Ivins works late for 2 hours 15 minutes

September 18, 2001: Less lethal "media" anthrax letters postmarked

September 26, 2001: Ivins emails, "I just heard tonight that Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas" … "Osama Bin Laden has just decreed death to all Jews and Americans"

September 28: Ivins works late for 1 hour 42 minutes

September 29, 2001: Ivins works late for 1 hour 20 minutes

September 30, 2001: Ivins works late for 1 hour 18 minutes

October 1, 2001: Ivins works late for 20 minutes

October 2, 2001: Ayaad Asaad interviewed about claim he was a bioterrorist; Judy Miller’s Germs published; Ivins works late for 23 minutes

October 3, 2001: Ivins works late for 2 hours 59 minutes

October 4, 2001: Ivins works late for 3 hours 33 minutes

October 5, 2001: Ivins works late for 3 hours 42 minutes; Bob Stevens, photo editor of Sun newspaper, dies

Almost immediately after attacks: FBI works with Ft. Detrick scientists to identify anthrax

October 2001: Ames strain at Iowa State destroyed with consent of FBI

October 9, 2001: Ivins works late for 15 minutes; Daschle and Leahy letters postmarked

October 12, 2001: Judy Miller gets fake anthrax letter

October 14, 2001: Ivins works late for 1 hour 26 minutes; Guardian first suggests tie between anthrax and Iraq

October 15, 2001: Daschle letter opened; Bush presses FBI to look into Middle Eastern links to anthrax

October 16, 2001: Ivins’ coworker emails "Bruce has been an absolute manic basket case the last few days"

October 18, 2001: Nerve attack scare in White House situation room

October 18, 2001: John McCain links anthrax attack to Iraq and Phase II of war on terror

October 21, 2001: First of two DC postal workers dies of anthrax poisoning

October 22, 2001: Secret Service reports traces of anthrax on letter opening machine in White House

October 24, 2001: USA PATRIOT passes House

October 25, 2001: USA PATRIOT passes Senate

October 26, 2001: USA PATRIOT signed into law; ABC News cites well-placed sources (now explained to be then current and former scientists conducting analysis of the anthrax) with bentonite claim

October 29, 2001: General John Parker mis-reports that silica found in anthrax sample

December 2001: FBI investigators start questioning Ft. Detrick scientists

December 2001: Ivins improperly cleans worksite

December 5, 2001: Leahy letter opened at Ft. Detrick

December 12, 2001: Reports first tie anthrax to Dugway strain

February 2002: Ivins turns over samples but fails to follow protocol

April 10, 2002: Ivins turns over samples

May 2002: FBI tests mailboxes in Princeton, NJ

May 10, 2002: Ivins speaks to investigators about his efforts to clean worksite in December 2001

June 18, 2002: Barbara Hatch Rosenberg briefs Leahy and Daschle with her US scientist theory–naming Hatfill directly

June 25, 2002: FBI conducts consensual search of Hatfill’s apartment–tips off media

July 2002: MZM receives White House contract for "threat mail technology insertion"

Late July 2002: FBI Special Agent Bob Roth ignores Hatfill’s lawyer’s offer for consensual interview

August 1, 2002: FBI conducts second search–media again tipped off; DOJ gets Hatfill fired from new job at LSU

August 6, 2002: Ashcroft names Hatfill person of interest

August 11, 2002: FBI leak of contents of Hatfill novel to ABC news pre-empting Hatfill public statement; FBI canvasses Princeton residents to see if they had seen Hatfill in Princton

August 12, 2002: Newsweek reports on use of bloodhounds

August 13, 2002: Hatfill files formal complaint with DOJ

October 5, 2002: Richard Lambert assumes Inspector in Charge role in investigation

November 2002: Robert Mueller incorrectly announces FBI trying to reverse engineer strain

January 9, 2003: Officials at counter-terrorism conference tell ABC Hatfill most likely suspect

March 14, 2003: Ivins recives honor for getting anthrax vaccine back into production

April 11, 2003: OPR says investigation into leaks reveals no leakers

May 5, 2003: Supervisory Special Agent Van Harp (previously in charge of investigation) retires

May 11, 2003: WaPo reports that FBI draining pond in search of clues on Hatfill

August 26, 2003: Hatfill sues DOJ

November 21, 2003: DOJ moves to stay suit

December 12, 2003: FBI finds additional samples of Ivins’ samples

January 5, 2004: DOJ moves to dismiss suit

April 7, 2004: Ivins submits new samples to FBI; FBI seals flasks with evidence tape

May 2004: Roscoe Howard, later named as source for several journalists, resigns as US Attorney

June 17, 2004: The seized Ivins samples submitted to Navy Medical Research Center

October 21, 2004: Judge Walton grants Hatfill discovery on press reports, not investigative files

February 22, 2005: DOJ demands that Hatfill have identity of leakers to pursue privacy case

Contrary to plaintiff’s assertion, because his claim for damages requires him to establish that any disclosure of information protected by the Privacy Act was “intentional or willful,” he cannot prevail without establishing the identity of the individual who made any such disclosure and the circumstances surrounding the disclosure.

February 23, 2005: Hatfill moves to question Van Harp (who admits contacts with many of the journalists who reported on Hatfill)

March 31, 2005: Ivins confronted with the fact his samples didn’t match

June 22, 2005: DOJ opposes Hatfill deposition of Virginia Patrick, wife of Bill Patrick

November 19, 2005: Ivins writes email naming two colleagues as potential anthrax culprits

April 21, 2006: Jean Duley caught drunk driving

July 17, 2006: Hatfill files motion to compel, including material from depositions and Congressional contacts

August 2006: Douglas Beecher publishes article stating that FBI misunderstood nature of anthrax used in attack

October 13, 2006: Jean Duley pleads guilty to DUI

October 24, 2006: Grassley writes letter following up on reassignment of Lambert to Knoxville; Lisi and Montooth would have replaced Lambert

May 7, 2007: Ivins claimed he was aware that his anthrax matched that used in the attack within three months of the attack; he claims he was told by three colleagues who had tested the anthrax used in the attacks

July 18, 2007: forensic psychiatrist profiles Ivins

August 13, 2007: Judge Walton orders some reporters to reveal their sources

November 1, 2007: Ivins’ house searched

December 23, 2007: Duley caught driving with no headlights, DUI

March 2008: FBI Agents confront Ivins and his wife, accusing him of killing people

March 7, 2008: Judge Walton holds Toni Locy in contempt

March 19, 2008: Ivins found unconscious in his home

March 28, 2008: Fox News reports four suspects in case

April 10, 2008: Duley’s DUI and driving with no headlights not prosecuted

April 24, 2008: Duley pleads guilty to DUI

May 26, 2008: Ivins finishes four weeks of rehab

June 27, 2008: DOJ settles with Hatfill

July 9, 2008: Duley alleges Ivins makes threats; Ivins interviewed in presence of attorney; Pat Leahy asks Mukasey about anthrax case (12:20 PM)

July 10, 2008: Ivins attends bubonic plague vaccine meeting, then barred from Ft. Detrick and taken for psychiatric evaluation

July 24, 2008: Duley signs complaint against Ivins

July 29, 2008: Ivins dies of apparent suicide