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Now when Professor Frances Boyle raises these same questions, we can take note that he reports he is on a terrorist watch list and avoid the question. When Barbara Rosenberg raises these questions, we can appreciate that she is a longstanding Administration critic on the issue of the proliferation of biological weapons. But Freeper Great Satan once derisively described me as the FBI’s “fanboy” — and even I think there are interesting questions raised by people like TrebleRebel. Only the integrity of the folks leading the investigation provide any assurance that the investigation has always been on a sound course.

Assistant FBI Director Michael Mason for a time was head of the Amerithrax investigation as head of the DC Field Office. In March 2004, Michael Mason explained to students gathered at his alma mater: “Our No. 1 job is disruption today. Now you have 100,000 pieces to a puzzle. Somebody has carted off all the box tops, and embedded inside those 100,000 pieces is a 20-piece picture of an event that you have to get out in front of and prevent before it happens while at the same time trying to preserve all the freedoms and liberties that we have come to embrace in this country.” He continued: “But we still have to do the job the right way. My job is to make sure that we do it the right way — that, in our zeal, we do not do anything that takes away from what defines us.” “If we lose confidence in our institutions, then we tear away at the very fabric that defines democracy. When you no longer trust the courts, the police, congressmen, senators, that’s the beginning of the end. That’s some of the most important work that we do.”

Joining the bureau in 1985, Special Agent Mason handled narcotics violations, violent crimes, white-collar crimes and public corruption. He once worked undercover capacity and as a sniper on SWAT teams, and he has headed up large operations at FBI Headquarters. He was especially relieved the time he did not have to shoot the suicidal Elvis impersonator in a Sears parking lot. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he served as special assistant to FBI Director Robert Mueller.Growing up in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood, he came to Syracuse and ended up in Buffalo — then went to head the office in Sacramento, before moving on to DC. When he became assistant director in charge of the Washington, D.C., field office, he oversaw the office’s massive counterintelligence efforts against foreign intelligence agents based in Washington, DC. While in Buffalo, harking back to his days watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. on television, he addressed the portrayal of the FBI in “X-Files”, suggesting that reality was just as interesting. Special Agent Fox Mulder on “X-Files” might say “There’s no such thing as coincidences.”

Mason was in the Syracuse office, when 2:15 a.m. one night, a 115,000-volt transmission tower came crashing down not far down the street from me. Mason investigated when the tower on the nearby Onondaga Indian reservation came 50 feet from landing on a cigarette shop, near where the local residents buy their smokes.

“This is a serious felony. It is more than just criminal mischief,” Mason said. The Niagara Mohawk spokesperson declined to comment on what caused the tower to fall. But a local Onondaga businessman Oliver Hill said he knew. The tower missed crushing his cigarette shop by about 50 feet, which had been opened without the permission of the local Onondaga tribal leaders. “There has been sabotage on that tower because on each leg there are 20 to 30 bolts,” said Hill. “All the bolts were taken out on all four legs. So when the bolts are taken out, there’s nothing to hold it up so it fell over. Yes, it was sabotage.” I didn’t call the local FBI office about the tower incident. After all, smoking kills 400,000 people a year.

Instead, I contacted the FBI office to tell them that a Ronald Reagan mask had been found along with a bank bag where the man lay in wait with a semi-automatic — first for my brother, and then the next week my father. The FBI agent in the small local office, who did not identify himself, said something to the effect: “We killed the Closing Time Bandit who used a Ronald Reagan mask in robbing banks. So this guy can’t be responsible for those robberies.”

Ronald Petersen had been killed Aug. 15, 1996 by FBI agents in the Rochester suburb of Henrietta while plotting another heist. The rightist, who had been tracked by a miniature television camera on a telephone pole outside his home, died in a hail of bullets. When police searched his house in Liverpool, a Syracuse suburb, they recovered 20 guns, including two Uzis, 20,000 rounds of ammunition and a cache of explosives.

“I know. “ I said, “This guy’s parole officer says his apartment in Watertown is covered with newspaper articles glorifying famous New York State criminals. He’s trying to make you fellows look foolish. By being a copycat and making it look like you killed the wrong guy.”

The ex-convict and three-time loser who tried to take my Dad away at gunpoint that night before Christmas got 25 years to life. Robbery was the apparent motive. That night, the police siren had come on in within seconds of the 9/11 call coming in. The gunman spent the night holed up in a nearby garage and was captured after a psychiatrist/hostage negotiator came from Syracuse and talked him out of the garage. He asked that they kneel and pray together. (I never said the gunman, a former altar boy, was very bright). So why, as a liberal, am I such a booster of the FBI and local law enforcement? Of Agent Michael Mason in particular? Because it is their job to protect and serve when some among us, overcome by anger and not being properly socialized, resort to hurting innocents, such as the elderly Mrs. Lundgren or the infant at ABC. It’s time to stop second-guessing the FBI based on inadequate information and be supportive even if we might disagree with them.

Mason was a friend in Syracuse, anti-war activist Kathleen Rumpf, who calls herself a “felon for peace” and is a staunch IANA supporter. She had been a personal hero of mine long before I met her. She spent several months in prison for trespassing during a demonstration against the School for the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. She has worked for years fighting for prisoner rights and other issues. When Mason showed up there one of the first things he did was meet with her. “He’s quite wonderful,” Rumpf told the Sacramento Bee in an interview from the Syracuse offices of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He was incredibly responsible and treated me with great respect.” Mason says: “I’m not complicated enough to be political. It’s too hard.”

As part of canvassing as part of a local political campaign, I was walking up a street in Syracuse in front of Kathleen Rumpf’s home on October 15, 2003 when my wife drove up, pointing out that the very short street had both Rumpf and the Berrigans (related to the recently deceased famed Catholic anti-nuclear pacifist). My time would be wasted urging them to vote for The Candidate, my mother-in-law. They were long-time family friends. I had been at a charity fundraiser when she ran merrily around the crowd — at the egging of one of the performers on stage — when the elder Berrigan spoke eloquently against the war in Iraq.

This is how this liberal could be in favor of the Patriot Act — and not as concerned about the privacy rights, for example, associated with what people read in the library. This is just a couple years after I crusaded for what I argued was widespread illegal wiretapping by the local law enforcement authorities in some states such as Vermont. (With the advent of digital wiretapping, the potential for abuse is huge).

The week before, I bought a bumper sticker from Barrie Gewanter, the local ACLU activist, at the Syracuse Festival of Races. I told her that I greatly admired her work and that reasonable people can disagree. The key, I said, to achieve the best balancing of interests was to have an informed debate. But when I know that people like Michael Mason are advising Director Mueller, I feel both secure and confident that authorities will always continue to strive to strike an appropriate balance.

Mason once gave a speech to 250 high school students gathered at the Syracuse University campus in 1998 for High School Press Day in which he explained to the students that it was important for both the FBI and the media not to rush to judgment. He drew parallels between the two professions, explaining that the most important characteristic in either profession is integrity. On another occasion, he spoke bluntly to young inmates and told them there were consequences to their actions. Another time he and the DA spoke to kids about violence at the request of area educators.

One of his most baffling cases was a rash of thefts of two-way radios throughout the area.

Mason realized the importance of catching a lucky break in a case. Once, in 1998, he had been working for 4 months trying to track down the 2 year old daughter who had been taken by a divorced father from the mother. He fruitlessly tracked leads that seemed to lead to Australia and London. Then one Saturday he went to work to collect his thoughts and plot a new strategy, when someone called from Montreal to describe the drunken boasting of the father in a bar in Montreal.

Before moving on to Washington, D.C., Mason said his most memorable case was the “Closing Time Bandit,” a dangerous bank robber who left few clues. Not long before he was shot dead as 40 FBI agents surrounded him at Henrietta, New York, the robber had decorated his yard with balloons on his daughter’s birthday.

Mason investigated teenage Animal Defense League members in connection with an attempted bombing incident at a local meat plant noting that the FBI was not targeting their beliefs, but their actions when those beliefs turned to violence. During his stay in Syracuse, his only apparent involvement in matters relating to radical islamists was to read of goings-on at the kitchen table in the morning. “Bomb focuses on radical cleric: Imprisoned sheik’s followers might have sent letter bombs,” investigators say,” Syracuse Herald-Journal, Jan. 4, 1997

Mason once described how a bank robbery was solved by discovering that the bank note had been written by a second grader. The bank robber, Michael Davis, handed a teller at the Marine Midland Bank a note demanding money on January 5, 1990. On the bottom half, police found part of a letter to a child signed by “Santa’s Helper.” Agents traced the letter to a second grade class at Franklin Elementary School, where the bank robber’s stepson attended. The FBI then was able to match the robber’s palm print to the note. Let’s hope Mason, while he was working Amerithrax, was working Saturdays — and has a SWAT Team at the ready (and a camera on the telephone pole outside) — and not hoping that a kid wrote the anthrax letters.

How many does it take to monitor one person who needs to be closely surveilled? As many as eight agents per shift if he is mobile. Another half-dozen to listen in on his calls. Others perhaps to file wiretap reports or handle aerial surveillance. A couple supervisory agents to oversee the case. $55 an hour for an agent. $150 for a plane. A lot more for electronic surveillance.

Consider the example of a 35 year-old fellow named Mubarak, who was a friend of Murad, a key player in Bojinka. He lived with Murad before Murad had gone to the Philippines and plotted to blow up a bunch of airliners simultaneously. And, yes, Mubarak went to flight school. Agent Michael Mason, who headed the FBI’s Sacramento Office and then came to head Amerithrax, said “there were sufficient connections that necessitated his removal to another country.” “If he were a U.S. citizen, he might be walking around the [Sacramento] area today,” Mason said. “But .. inasmuch as his residency in this country was an issue, that just became another arrow in my quiver to neutralize the threat.” The same article also provides interesting examples of associates of the likes of 9/11 hijackers and former Falls Church residents Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour.

“What we have over the U.S. is a net,” Mason has said. “At best, what we’re doing is shrinking the mesh in the net. We’re trying to kick down the door of the person who’s going to drive the truck loaded with explosives. But can we do it in time?”

When I told Agent Mason that I thought Zawahiri was behind the anthrax mailings, he responded by email that the FBI had not reached any conclusion but was leaving no stone unturned.

Numerous illustrious legal beagles have been hard at work developing an entire new field of science that would stand up to a withering OJ-worthy scrutiny. “This book describes the new and growing field of Microbial Forensics-the science that will help bring to justice criminals and terrorists who use biological material to cause harm. This book describes the foundation of the field of microbial forensics and will serve as a basic primer to initiate those scientists and officials that have an interest in the topic. It covers a variety of areas from forensic science, to microbiology, to epidemiology, to bioinformatics, and to legal issues.”

Authors of the lead chapter “Microbial Forensics” include Bruce Budowie of the FBI Lab and James P. Burans. Burans, as honored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at a Washington, D.C. ceremony in 2002 for his help during the anthrax attacks. He was a scientific consultant to the FBI on the analysis of the mailed anthrax. The Federal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association also named Burans Civilian of the Year for his assistance.

Names familiar to many who have followed Amerithrax closely include the author of “Bacterial Pathogens” Paul Keim, who has been part of FBI investigation working on the DNA sequencing of Ames and John Ezzell, author of the section on “Forensic handling of biological threat samples in the lab.”

The most interesting chapter is “Non-DNA methods for biological signatures” with a raft of authors.

“Population genetics of bacteria in a forensic context” may not pinpoint the lab, without more, but Paul Keim stands ready with co-author Richard E. Lenski to explain how it can narrow the field.

And to balance the pessimistic comments by former FBI Lab Director Murch to CBS, about whether the science could prove the Amerithrax case, rounding out the text are articles reminiscent of OJ. Joseph M. Campos offers “Quality management in forensics laboratories” and Rock Harmon writes on “Admissibility standards for scientific evidence.” A former long-time Assistant District Attorney from California, he helped develop the protocol to assist law enforcement agencies in solving previously unsolved cases through the use of DNA typing.

Working for the HSD, the Biosecurity and Nanosciences Laboratory has built a computer database of biological signatures, an approach that in Amerithrax is complementary to Keim’s PCR technique, which focuses on DNA signatures. (PCR means polymerase chain reaction.) A detector using PCR amplifies a short stretch of a pathogen’s DNA to determine its characteristics. Dr Yoreo’s lab characterize, for example, single spores of anthrax with high sensitivity. One scientist at the lab has “correlated the growth and processing of samples with results from different techniques (e.g., atomic force microscopy that provides molecular level pictures of bio-agents)” and “looked at surrogate (i.e., harmless) samples of different strains of anthrax, then looked at harmless ‘weaponized’ anthrax surrogate samples.” “Her goal is to identify the growth medium for anthrax, then compare its signature with our library.”

Internal newsletters indicate that the Lawrence Livermore was first enlisted to combat the Bin Laden anthrax threat in 1998 by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. And so although former FBI Lab Director Murch, who once played a key role in charting direction of DTRA research in 2001 and 2002 was quoted in a press account saying there is no “smoking gun” in Amerithrax, these young and talented folks keep looking.

I, for one, sleep well at night knowing men with the integriy of Mason and Mueller are on the job. You should too.

At a recent June 28, 2007 fundraiser for Al-Timimi’s friend, a local oncologist Rafil Dhafir who had been IANA Vice-Chairman, I sat down with his closest supporters and laid out my theory of Amerithrax. The fundraiser was held at the local university with a wonderful buffet at the local mosque afterwards. The day before someone had sent 70 letters from the Queens, NY area purporting to be from AQ USA and threatening an attack on Goldman, Sachs. On July 11, the same sender wrote a letter stating that the first letters had been a hoax by three teenagers pulling what they thought was a funny and creative prank. The second letter said that in connection with the first, furniture polish had been used to wipe fingerprints from the envelope and stamp. That was an odd and intriguing reference given that the July 11 letter also said that the teens had worn gloves. Furniture polish tends to have silicone. Was the sender trying to draw attention away from silica being key to understanding the forensics in Amerithrax? Unlike in Amerithrax, in connection with the Goldman Sachs letters, the sender had made a key mistake and so, according to one FBI official, an arrest was inevitable.

Life continues to be a grand mystery and the answers are seldom going to be found in a book or on a webpage.