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First, lets have a look at our Anthrax Timeline courtesy of Firedoglake's emptywheel.



Then lets take in the fact that:Exclusive: Government's Purported 'Anthrax Killer' Was a Registered Democrat

Bruce E. Ivins, reportedly on the verge of being indicted for capital murder in the anthrax killings, was a registered Democrat, according to the Fredrick County, MD, Board of Elections. He had been registered there since 1982 and records indicate that he voted in "every election since 1996," including Democratic primaries, according to the official who responded to a request from West Virginia-based radio host Bob Kincaid. More

Why is this important?

With the mainstream corporate media reports today on the apparent suicide of Bruce E. Ivins of the U.S. Government's bio weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, MD, who was reportedly about to be charged with the Anthrax murders of late 2001, it's curious --- if hardly surprising --- that none of the major outlets reporting the news bothered to note that the attacks were all made on perceived "liberals."

Letters, seeming to appear as if they were from Muslim extremists, declaring "Death to America...Death to Israel...Allah is Great," were sent to then-Democratic Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, powerful Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and then NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. More

Quite. But this symbolic of the utter fuckitude of the media in reporting this incident. As Glenn Greenwald reports:

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."
ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein.

As but one very illustrative example, The Washington Post's columnist, Richard Cohen, supported the invasion of Iraq, came to regret that support, ....Cohen -- in a March 18, 2008 Slate article in which he explains why he wrongfully supported the attack on Iraq -- disclosed this:

Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid. The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.

...

Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks -- persisted.
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ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.
They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds...

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See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios writes: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?" That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack?

Quite. For recapping purposes: Glenn Greenwald continues to ask more questions
here and here and here.

More good analysis from emptywheel, who asks who first spread teh anthrax story; while the Carpetbagger Report locates an Oct 18,2001 Letterman interview with John McCain, in which he makes the Iraq connection to the anthrax before ABC News did. Truth Justice and Peace makes some pertinent points and has links to even more pertinent questions. Like this one:

And Ivins, a strict Catholic, was opposed to mercy killings or assisted suicide, so you would think he's not a likely candidate for suicide.

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Annnddd this one, linked from a blog called Brendan Calling:

It’s fascinating how so many people who might prove troublesome for BushCo, the neocons, or the Republican party have this odd habit of dying unexpectedly. Like Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the DC madam many suspected of having the goods on David Vitter and a number of other corrupt Republicans (but I repeat myself), who “committed” “suicide”.
Or Ken Lay, head of Enron, Bush pioneer, and convicted criminal, who had a “heart attack” right before he was sent to prison.
Or David Kelly, who exposed the lies over Iraq’s imaginary “wmd program”, and whose “suicide” is to this day questioned.
Yes, it’s all coincidental I’m sure. Nothing to see here.

Ain't that the truth?