A late friend of mine participated in the 1963 US-backed coup which culminated in the assassination of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Only twelve men knew about that mission, including the participants. All twelve died without the US role in the coup becoming public knowledge. If you have followed politics for any length of time, you should not find it hard to identify many similar instances. Keeping secrets is much easier than you think. If you look at the Amerithrax operation and count the number of people who would have to be in on the secret, it's tiny: below Ashcroft and Mueller, I would count WFO director Van Harp, SA Bob Roth, US bioweapons expert Steve Hatfill, and his flack, Pat Clawson. That's just the "right size" for this kind of operation. Indeed, the fact that Amerithrax is, contrary to what you would expect, not a massive, highly-staffed operation, and the fact that no grand jury has been empanelled, almost a year and half into the investigation, should prompt the question: why is that, exactly? I think the answer is only too obvious.