A long-term marriage and happy neighbors is no proof that Ivins was not a sociopath. Sadly, women married to men like that often lie, bail them out of financial difficulties, and basically cover for them in all sorts of ways, sometimes for years or decades, while the sociopath charms people around him to get what he wants. And many times people who were conned, cheated, or screwed over by the sociopath remain silent because of their shame at having been taken in. Not all sociopaths are killers, and not all of them have multiple divorces. They come in a variety of flavours!

Also, it’s very common that most of the only people who really get close to sociopaths, close enough to see through the facade, are people with mental illnesses, alcohol problems, and personality disorders, because they are the most vulnerable to a sociopath’s manipulations, and most likely to put up with the crap – so often they’re so unstable themselves, that nobody believes them. This social worker therapist sure could seem to fit into that scenario.

Although ironically, it’s not usually therapists who first recognize the sociopath as dangerous. Ask any spouse of a sociopath who’s gone to Marriage Counciling. Usually the victim spouse complains that therapist winds up as an unwitting accomplice of the sociopath.

On the other hand, a sociopath can’t help but leave a trail of trouble, broken hearts & broken promises in his wake, no matter how smooth his facade. And if Ivins was a sociopath, within months we should see at least a few people from the past 30-60 years step out to tell tales of recklessness, abusiveness, womanizing, cheating & conning, or general accusations of immorality or unethical behaviour.

Such as how after the arrest of Mechele Linehan, people started posting comments on blogs about knowing her when she was a teenager, and remarking on her bad character back then.

Or how after the death of Nils Antezana on Mount Everest, horror stories about his mountain guide, Gustavo Lisi came out in force, on how he was a con, inept, careless, selfish, unethical, and a liar, on expeditions on other mountains, years earlier.

In my own local area, a con man homebuilder, Scott Binsack, had a history of lawsuits against him, and STILL managed to open another business in the same line of work, and garner the support & adoration of local media & the affluent social set. He was treated like a celebrity… But once criminal charges were brought against him, not only did the newspaper tear into the whole of his shady history, but people who knew him 15 years ago started posting tales of the sinister & nasty about the guy on internet forums.

Though sociopaths can fool a lot of people a lot of the time, and many times the people who see the truth are silenced, or drowned out, by the believers & supporters who are under the sociopaths spell…
Usually once an arrest is made or something drastic occurs to out the sociopath, there’s no shortage of people who come forward to add their voice to a barrage against the person.

If that doesn’t happen with Ivins, within months, I’d say it would make the social worker’s accusation extremely suspect.

And I keep going back to Marcy’s point about how the during the doj politicization hearings, the judge and whoever made those statements about someone “getting a way with it”. It just makes me think that they were a lot farther away from convicting him (if he indeed is who they are referring to). It doesn’t fit the scenario or timeline that they would make statements that sound as if they “know” who it is, and that this person is not going to be held accountable. I would think…that this guy was self destructing pretty obviously (for several months) and that someone at that hearing might have been in the know about it, and hopeful that he was soon to crack.

I don’t know. It doesn’t fit the details of what we know today. I am not sure what it really means factually. It could be they weren’t aware they Ivins was “blowing up” but that seems doubtful to me. It could mean that they didn’t figure he would tell the truth and that they knew they didn’t have enough facts to convict him.

That one sticks in my craw more than some of these other revelations.

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM

WASHINGTON – In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was “beaten up” during President Bush’s morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

“They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” the retired senior FBI official told The News.

If you have good reason and good evidence to go to war, you don’t need to invent it. They needed to invent the Casus belli.

If Congress let’s this stand, there are allowing the politicization of crime (not to be construed as the criminalization of politics), and they will. Congress is rotten.

Success going after the blue dogs can set the stage for influencing the rest.

such as, the evidence the FBI has is circumstantial, they couldn’t connect his whereabouts to the mailbox from which the anthrax envelopes were mailed, ten people in the lab had access to the materials, the FBI was investigating Ivins for about a year now, the social worker who pulled the protective order was his group counseling therapist, there’s a recording of her on the podcast… her statement about Ivins’ mental health doesn’t seem ENTIRELY credible to me… some of it may be copacetic.

The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday. Multiple U.S. officials told The Associated Press that former Army scientist Bruce Ivins was long obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, going back as far as his own college days at the University of Cincinnati.

This one really must make the AP reporters proud to be journalists; it sure makes me proud of our fine, fine government. No evidence for the so-called “obsession” but the word of unnamed sources. The admission that there’s nothing that places Ivins in the area when the letters were mailed. Beyond disgusting.

Day 1) Suspect commits suicide (no autopsy required).
Day 2) The Department of Justice leadership announces they had not yet approved bringing charges (insufficient evidence).
Day 3) Case closed.

Yup, sounds about right.