Wool, meet eyes

One 0f the joys of the Internets is the possibility of encountering someone who actually knows something of what they are writing about. It's even better when they are writing about something that reveals, just by its expertise and clarity, the swamp of misinformation that is presented in our national press.

Meryl Nass, M.D. writes a blog about anthrax. She's a leading expert in the field of anthrax vaccines, and know many of the people involved with anthrax research, both living and dead.

I strongly suggest reading in its entirety this post where she reviews an article by the NY Post, and contrasts it with an article in the WaPo. However, here is a money quote:

New information in this story includes the fact that the FBI was renting the house next door to Ivins, the better to perform surveillance (and this establishes FBI harrassment, since surveillance is properly performed in secrecy mode).

"One of Ivins' former colleagues was being aggressively pressured to confess to the crimes just two months before Ivins killed himself on July 29, 2008, he told the Post. And he identified at least one other employee who was under the same pressure."

At risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, the available facts in this case point to only one conclusion: the Justice Department was desperate to "solve" (read bury) this case any way it could before the Bush administration left office. To accomplish this feat, the FBI illegally harrassed at least 3 Fort Detrick employees. Recall that Perry Mikesell, a former Fort Detrick scientist under FBI surveillance, began drinking heavily and died in 2002.

This is an accusation of a criminal conspiracy involving the FBI to 'solve' the anthrax attacks by harrassing scientists, such as Steven Hatfill, to confess to crimes they did not commit, and that the FBI knew they did not commit.

Since these crimes and the cover-up obviously involve people at the top level of both the current administration and the federal bureaucracy, they will not only never be solved, they will never be investigated. Right, President Obama?

But thanks anyway to Dr. Nass and her attempts to pull the wool back from our eyes. She can't help it if it keeps being pulled up again, and that (almost) nobody even complains.

Also, there is a lot of other good material at her blog about the current effort to legally protect the manufactuers of the current anthrax vaccine. Read it, what you don't know could hurt you.