[TrebleRebel]

Yesterday it was a glove box. Today it's a tub with holes. An old tub used by children to make a raft perhaps - with some sludge trapped inside that contained anthrax spores - to be expected in any soil sample with a highly sensitive test.

Talk about fitting the crime to the person. They even worked in that the perp had to go into the water to transfer the anthrax to the envelopes. I can just imagine the prosecutor in court to their expert witness "So Dr. Rosenberg, in your opinion this bathtub with the holes could have been used by an expert diver to underwater to transfer anthrax to envelopes, is that correct?"

Then, during cross-examination "Dr. Hatfill - you're an accomplished diver, is that correct? - No further questions your honour".

[TrebleRebel]

ping

[Lee'sGhost]

There are "tubs," and then there are "bath tubs." The article did not say bath tub.

[templar]

It could also be an old sandblasting box (home made or commercially made) that was disposed of in the pond or washed into the pond during a rain from elsewhere. Ponds tend to collect a lot of garbage, and the article suggests that a lot of other stuff was removed from the pond. I wouldn't make any connection to the anthrax attack yet.

[ravingnutter]

The correct term is an "isolation glove box". We are not talking bathtubs here...

[harpseal]

I am really sick of seeing Hatfillaccused without evidence. I suggest the FBI either charge him or start looking at alternatives. as directly as they are studying Hatfill. From what they have released so far it does not appear that there is any real evidnece against him.

[The Great Satan]

What we are talking about here is establishing deniability. We saw this with the faux "decapitation strikes" on Saddam Hussein during the recent dust-up in Iraq. The purpose of releasing this glove box story now is to plant the notion that we "have our man" -- and it's not Saddam Hussein. That probably means that we are going to be learning about the fate of Saddam Hussein in the not-too-distant future, and it's going to look awfully like he made a deal with somebody -- perhaps the same person who brokered our deal with Aziz. The purpose of the deniability is to provide an excuse for the fact that we haven't arrested our man, and aren't going to arrest our man, or even empanel a grand jury assembled from randomly-selected members of the public, any time soon.

If you have been following this case, then you know that the discovery of a makeshift glove box, anthrax spores and vials "wrapped in plastic" in a pond in a search ostensibly inspired by a scene in Hatfill's unpublished bioterrorism novel is incredibly incriminating. If taken at face value, I'd say, skip the trial -- let's go straight to the execution. This great discovery is supposed to have happened four months ago. And yet, no charges, no grand jury. What does that suggest to you about the veracity of this story? I suggest that it's all about as veracious as the story that a CIA operative "earprinted" Saddam Hussein entering a bunker on March 20, and spied him being med-evaced from the scene with an oxygen mask over his face after the US rained forty cruise missiles down on the bunker a few hours later. In other words, it's a complete fabrication -- window dressing to avoid the impression that Saddam Hussein whacked the United States and got off with his life by virtue of his threat to use WMD on the American public.

The FBI has been criticized by some conservative commentators for seeming to ignore the possibility that foreign terrorists or Iraq might have been responsible for the anthrax mailings. Some suggested the case might be solved by the discovery of biological weapons facilities in Iraq, but little evidence of recent Iraqi bioweapons activity has turned up.

The purpose of Amerithrax is to convince us that the origin of those anthrax threats has been a big mystery to the United States. In fact, it never was a mystery. At the highest level, we always understood perfectly well that those threats came from the state which attacked us using terrorist proxies on September 11, 2001. See Woodward, Bush at War, p. 248, for the real story.

[aristeides]

I thought it was significant that yesterday's Washington Post article did not call the box a "glove box," but only strangely implied that it was.

[yarddog]

I recall about 15 years ago the FBI caused a real stir regarding the investigation of the murder of a Federal Judge.

They suddenly swooped down on a junk dealer in Enterprise, Alabama and began to search every inch of his business including the pleasant job of digging up the septic tank.

I was watching this on TV with another grad student and we both laughed. It was so obvious listening to the owner that he was not the mad bomber that it was literally funny. Of course it turned out he had nothing to do with it and the only evidence was that the typewriter used to write some letter had once been in his junk.

Of course they have to check out all leads but this was ridiculous. The really do appear to be incompetent sometimes.

[cynicom]

I bet they are really looking for Rudolph, the guy they never found in North Carolina.

[ChefKeith]

Federal Bumbling Idiots strike again!

[The Great Satan]

For anybody who's interested in l'affaire Hatfill, there are some leads in the public domain which could be the basis for an investigative journalism project. It might help to be based in DC. For example, I believe it should be possible to go down to the US Copyright Office and take a look-see at Hatfill's book, which supposedly inspired this alleged pond search. Here's the entry in the database for the novel, Emergence:

Registered Works Database (Author Search)

Search For: HATFILL, STEVEN J., 1953-
Item 1 of 1

---

1. Registration Number:		TXu-887-264
Title:		Emergence.
Description:		198 p.
Claimant:		acSteven J. Hatfill , 1953-, & acRoger Akers , 1947-
Created:		not given on appl.
Registered:		26Aug98
Author on © Application:		text: Steven J. Hatfill; revisions & some text: Roger Akers.
		1/B

I would also recommend any journalists interested in the case call the FBI Washington Field Office, (202) 278-2000, and check if Pamela Lane and Jennifer Grant, the two FBI agents who Hatfill referenced in his August 2002 news conference, actually exist and can address Hatfill's claims that they mistreated his mysteriously shy girlfriend:

It is definitely not good to be the girlfriend of a person of interest. My girlfriend was locked inside an FBI car and hauled off to FBI headquarters and interrogated for hours, without once being told she has the right to leave any time she wished. Her requests for a lawyer were delayed and made difficult. Her purse, although not on the search warrant, was taken from her and its contents examined after the interrogation process while she was being driven back to her residence.

She was screamed at by FBI agents and told that the FBI had firm evidence that I had killed five innocent people. This was told to her by FBI agent Jennifer Grant and FBI agent Pamela Lane. Can you imagine that?

The FBI trumpets that I am not a suspect, and the woman I love is told the FBI -- told by the FBI that I am a murderer.

This is the life of a person of interest, Mr. Ashcroft. But that's not all. My girlfriend was told that she better take a polygraph examination and cooperate, or else. Her home checkbooks, computers, private papers and car were seized. As for her home, it was completely trashed, as is appropriate for the home of a girlfriend of a person of interest.

Some of her delicate pottery was smashed. The glass on a $3,000 painting was broken. This painting was wrapped in bubble wrap, by the way. Neatly stacked boxes awaiting shipment to her new home were ripped open, instead of opened with due regard to their contents.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have pictures of how FBI left this apartment, her apartment, which, at the time of the raid, was neatly prepared for a move to Louisiana, with all her belongings packed in nicely stacked boxes. This is one of the pictures.

I refuse to allow my girlfriend -- to this treatment, as the girlfriend of a person of interest. She is not here today. I love you. I will not state her name here. And I ask the news media, please, for common decency, if you know it, please leave her alone. She will not make a statement.

Of course, the big score for a journalist who wants to make a name for himself with this story would be to find Hatfill and his girlfriend, and get them on the record, up close and personal, about their treatment by the FBI. I mean, either this fellow is guilty of five murders and is the author of a plot which terrorized the whole country, cost us $2 billion, and was used by Colin Powell to justify attacking Iraq, or he's been the victim of a monstrous smear campaign. The public has a right to know which it is. It might also be interesting to see what kind of lifestyle Hatfill now enjoys, having supposedly been without his $150K/yr from the DOJ for the last eight months. Perhaps this will all have a happy ending and Hatfill will be shamed into tieing the knot, seeing as how his girlyfriend has presumably been making up the $150K/yr shortfall in their joint income for all this time -- perhaps by selling some of those $3,000 paintings that grace the walls of her lavish, sensuously oriental, ultra-feminine apartment:

Have at it, boys!

[Shermy]

Is this "find" in the area where Hatfill's fictional novel have someone dispose of incriminating material?

I like the "drain the pond" angle. < /gag> Sounds like a way to burn up some budget and accrue overtime pay.