Update to Ivins' "Sorority Obsession" Story (OMFG)

[alcibiades_mystery]

From Glenn Greenwald's latest update:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

This is simply pathetic. The original AP article linked above -- containing the Grand, Super-Incriminating Sorority Obsession Leak -- contained this paragraph:

The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said today.

Wow. Incriminating. Now, the AP article has been "updated" to this (h/t Jim White):

The mailbox just off the campus of Princeton University where the letters were mailed sits about 100 yards away from where the college's Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter stores its rush materials, initiation robes and other property. Sorority members do not live there, and the Kappa chapter at Princeton does not provide a house for the women.

So apparently, the Big Incriminating FBI Leak of the Day is that Ivins was so obsessed with this sorority that he used the mailbox near where it "stores its rush materials, initiation robes and other property," and used that mailbox to send anthrax to Pat Leahy, Tom Daschle and Tom Brokow. That's really convincing. Let's close the investigation. We clearly got the Anthrax Killer. The FBI looked through its bag of conclusive evidence and that is what they chose to leak today? And amazingly, the Keystone Cops in our Government and their Media allies can't even get a leak this laughable right the first time they convey it.

----snip----

READ GREENWALD!!! It's terrific stuff.

But this is really a WOW moment. They went from "He mailed it within 100 yards of his sorority obsession" to "He mailed it within 100 yards of where his sorority obsession stored some of their shit." Has there been a more ridiculous story in recent memory? And this AP reporter will not even feel BURNED by his FBI sources for making him look like such a fool in public. That's the fucking scary thing.

[SeattleGirl]

1. I kept hearing about this "sorority obsession" and the mailbox

on the news today, and every time I did, I thought, "WTF? Where's the rest of the story? How does the one equal the other?"

It was just another rotten tomato thrown at the general public, and at Ivins by the totally irresponsible, lazy, fuckass "press".

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. I hope his family is in contact with some very good litigators

Scratch that. mediocre lawyers could get a judgment on this obvious tortious conduct.

AP should have to pay through the fucking nose for their despicable antics this last week.

[Supersedeas]

3. If Mukasey is authorizing these leaks....the Judge must think that its pretty damned important

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

4. ROTFLMAO!!!!!

:rofl:

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. For this leak to be convincing, we'd need

1) Actual evidence that Ivins was "obsessed" with this sorority, whatever that means
2) A better narrative connecting this obsession to the crime than "The anthrax was mailed within 100 yards of KKG's storage locker at Princeton."

I mean, that's just fucking stupid.

[Supersedeas]

17. But do you have a picture of Orwell in your office? Mukasey does, so sorority fixations must matter.

I mean Mukasey is THE PEOPLE'S attorney, the attorney general of these United States, so this sorority stuff must matter...right.

[suffragette]

5. OMFG is right

This is making a fast descent into the absurd.

Are they just hoping people only read the headline and form an opinion based on that?

Later in the article they again allude to the allegations of Duley prefacing it with "Other evidence." Of course, there's no real evidence presented before that statement and no real evidence after it either.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. It's fucking Kafkaesque

:wow:

[suffragette]

8. They've already been cribbing "The Trial" for their treatment of

prisoners.

Maybe "Metamorphosis" is next. Any reports of rather large dung beetles by the AP yet?

[eek]

9. Feh.

Golly! How cool,yet, how wackily co-incidental, that we are getting to the bottom of these elusive cases during the Final Days.
Almost as if t'were planned.
Huh. :eyes:

[Kaleko]

10. Sorority alumna denies any contact by Kappa members with Bruce Ivins

Anthrax Suspect Obsessed With Sorority,
Officials: Suspect Fixated On Sorority Near N.J. Mailbox Where Toxin-Laced Letters Were Sent

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/04/national/main4320091.shtml

Excerpt:

Katherine Breckinridge Graham, a Kappa alumna who serves as an adviser to the sorority's Princeton chapter, said Monday she was interviewed by FBI agents "over the last couple of years" about the case. She said she could not provide any details about the interview because she signed an FBI nondisclosure form.

However, Graham said there was nothing to indicate that any of the sorority members had anything to do with Ivins.

"Nothing odd went on," said Graham, an attorney.



More at the link above.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. NY Times now saying that no "sorority" activity since 1981

If there was any at all. He dated a Kappa in college, and apparently visited 3 houses in the late 1970's. That's the personal quirk that they're splashing all over the news to damn him in the eyes of the public.

This is a fucking disgrace.

[Kaleko]

12. Got a link to the NYT story?

And how about adding our findings here to

autorank's BIG Anthrax Research thread?

:hi: hi, fellow sleuth!

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. My bad

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/washington/05anthrax.html?hp

[Kaleko]

14. Related excerpts from your link:

....

But the investigators found some personal quirks, according to law enforcement officials and people who knew the scientist well. They found that Dr. Ivins, who had a history of alcohol abuse, had for years maintained a post office box under an assumed name that he used to receive pornographic pictures of blindfolded women.

Years ago, he had visited Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses at universities in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, an obsession growing out of a romance with a sorority sister in his own college days at the University of Cincinnati — although someone who knew him well said the last such visit was in 1981.

---(snip)-----

They had even intensively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, “Your father did this,” according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend.

As the investigation wore on, some colleagues thought the F.B.I.’s methods were increasingly coercive, as the agency tried to turn Army scientists against one another and reinterviewed family members.

One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Dr. Ivins’s daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks.

“It was not an interview,” Dr. Byrne said. “It was a frank attempt at intimidation.”

Dr. Byrne said he believed Dr. Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. “They figured he was the weakest link,” Dr. Byrne said. “If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?”



More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/washington/05anthrax.html?hp

[Hippo_Tron]

15. Wait wait, you're telling me the antrhax guy happened to be horny for sorority girls?

OMFG this is hugh!!

:eyes:

[EFerrari]

16. Yeah -- as late as twenty seven years ago!

He must be our man!

[ck4829]

18. Wait a minute

If he was obsessed with a sorority, why didn't he send the anthrax to the sorority, instead of by the sorority?