i wasn’t at the time you wrote, but now i have a bit of a break from nails and screws.

if you are willing to believe (recent local story) that the u.s. cdc,

in order to gain congressional attention and increased funding for its tuberculosis programs,

exploited the situation of a young lawyer with t.b. who went to greece to get married,

by treating the case sensationally as an instance of a thoughtless purveyor of a terrible infectious strain of tb traveling heedlessly around the world on crowded airplanes,

then you might believe what i believe about the anthrax matter.

which is,

that it was a deliberate effort, possibly by dod officials, to add to the fear generated by the sept 11 assault on the wtc.

and that, specifically, it was intended to generate and reinforce in the public mind the notion that the “weapons of mass destruction”, not just an airplane or two, would be a threat from terrorists.

while there was eventually talk of mushroom clouds,

much of the initial chatter from the wise folk in dc involved death from things humans have feared for eons,

small pox and bubonic plagues, anthrax, botulism (locally, birders were detained by police because they were using binocs at a water reservoir), poison gases.

as p.r., the anthrax attacks were a stroke of genius.

were they “on the books” of the dod?

or

“off the books” of the dod – relying on the private institutional partners of the offensive being readied to go after saddam hussein?

of course, it could have been some kid with a chemistry set,

or maybe it was them russians.

Or are you saying the McCain bus fired an RPG at the IVAW bus?

do you mean like this?
http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.c…..obile.html

Thanks for the reminder.

Emptywheel and I worked on a timeline, of sorts, in 2006. It includes Hatfill, Curveball, JudyJudyJudy, David Kelly and the Iraqi mobile weapons labs.

(Hatfill was working on a top secret program building a number of mobile weapons labs)

Now two points need to be made. Anthrax weaponry is serious, coming close to nerve gas or nuclear materials. Perhaps not as deadly overall, but in it’s own way with some worse characteristics.
1.) It doesn’t dissipate or go away like most nerve gas.
2.) It is not as easily detectable as most nuclear material.

The point is made that these events didn’t occur again and this is a similar justification like comments made in the Atlanta serial killing of young black boys which stopped once the primary suspect Wayne Williams was arrested and jailed. “Investigate, watch or jail the prime suspect, and see if the crimes stop.“

I won’t argue that too much. And Hatfill does now have recourse financially to regain some of what he lost in the courts.

The main thing I do wish to say is that I would take the Bloodhounds alerting very seriously.
On scent dogs I am very familiar. When I was growing up with a father and two older brothers that loved to hunt, I was exposed to dogs and their abilities. I remember being curled up next to my mom at the fire roasting hot dogs, and marshmallows, and heating coffee, and hot chocolate, while the hounds sounded in the distance and my father and brothers and other male members of the family bounded about the dark country side hunting raccoons. My mom and I liked to shoot, and mom was a skeet champion as a young girl, but we liked to shoot targets, not animals, and sometimes vied against each other at the fair shooting ducks (the mechanical kind).

Most people don’t know it, but bloodhounds are tested in trials, time and time again, and the current (at the time) best bloodhound in the country alerted again, and again to Mr Hatfill and his vicinity. Other dogs not as accomplished alerted a lot of the time.
However other less famous cases have shown the dogs, or at maybe better to say, the dogs and their handlers have made obvious errors. For example the serial rape of 3 young girls in Florida where a man arrested after “Tinkerbell” alerted to him was freed after 3 months in jail once the DNA was checked.

Personally I think the handlers made the mistake with the “scent pack” given the dog in that case.

These kinds of things are worrisome to anyone that deals with particularly noxious materials.

The fact that the FBI found a manuscript written by Mr Hatfill about these kinds of things also was real problem for him.