We are meant to think, apparently, that Bruce Ivins, the civilian US Army scientist who committed suicide after becoming the FBI’s main suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, was guilty. He was an insider, he had access to anthrax, he was brilliant but troubled, he had a long history of making homicidal threats, he exhibited unusual behavior, he was emotionally unstable, he had stalked a woman, he was sociopathic.
All of which may be true. But . . . remember all the things they said about the man British police shot dead in a London subway station back in 2005? An early Washington Post article summed up the known facts: he was South Asian or Asian, he may have been Muslim, he was wearing a thick coat, he was linked to the subway bombings that had occured the day before, he had emerged from a residence that was under surveillance, he had spotted the policemen following him and fled into the tube station, he had vaulted over barriers. Lots of specifics, all of them damning.
But then a funny thing happened . . . the known facts changed, as this follow-on Washington Post article points out: the man was Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian. He wasn’t Muslim. He wasn’t wearing a thick coat. The link to the previous day’s subway bombings turned out to be an unfortunate coincidence: Menezes had emerged from an apartment complex that was under surveillance because a suspect in the subway bombings lived there. He was unaware of the policemen following him. He didn’t flee into the tube station, he entered it like anyone else planning to catch the subway. He didn’t vault over any barriers.
Have we found the anthrax assassin? I think I’ll wait until the facts settle down before I pass judgment.