did I just hear what I think I heard?
So I’m starting to prepare dinner and have All Things Considered on in the background. As I’m mixing the tomatoes and fresh mozzarella I’m listening to a report on the FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins, the government scientist who committed suicide a week ago when he was about to be charged with sending letters containing a deadly strain of anthrax to news media office and two Senators.
Recent speculation has centered on Ivins’s possible motives, and that was the topic of today’s report, which you can read a print version of here. This story suggests that Ivins may have been trying to murder people because of their support for legal abortion. If you read or listen to the story, you’ll see that there are three key pieces of evidence that, according to NPR, support this view. First, Ivins may have read an article critical of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Second, Ivins’s wife is active in the Frederick, Maryland right-to-life movement. And third, Ivins and his wife sent their children to Catholic schools.
The NPR reporter was careful to note that these facts did not amount to a “slam dunk,” but insisted — or rather, took it for granted — that they amount to “circumstantial evidence.”
So, in the minds of NPR reporters and unnamed “sources close to the [FBI] investigation,” a person who is overtly Catholic, who openly believes his or her church’s teaching on abortion and prefers Catholic education, is on those very grounds suspect. This grossly open Catholicism is, then, evidence of murderous intent — not “slam dunk” evidence, but evidence all the same. Wow.
Yeah, I heard it, too. I shudder to think when Greenwald will shift from “It was an Bush inside job” to “it was the pro-lifers!”
— Klug · Aug 7, 11:05 PM · #
Politically, judging from his Letters to the Editors, Ivins appears to have been a liberal to moderate of slightly eclectic but pretty normal views: anti-racist, pro-Israel, pro-gay, pro-life, anti-Religious Right views. The FBI documents, upon closely reading, are lacking in evidence for the NPR theory.
A much simpler explanation is that he wanted to alert America to the dangers of anthrax attacks, and getting funding and praise for the anthrax vaccine he developed — all of which happened.
— Steve Sailer · Aug 7, 11:59 PM · #
Why do you listen to NPR?
— mattc · Aug 8, 01:20 AM · #
I admit to understanding where this odd theory might come from: the need to explain “why Daschle and Leahy?”
— Klug · Aug 8, 04:44 AM · #
In NPR’s defense, the story does also say it’s not just its own theory: “Officials close to the case said that they believe Ivins’ right-to-life fervor was at least part of the reason he would target Daschle and Leahy.”
Against NPR, people who listen to it tend to write about how they were just working with “fresh” mozzarella.
— tom · Aug 8, 02:22 PM · #
You guys should check out my blog:
www.culturalcapitol.com
Tell me what you think, and add me to your blogroll!
— Will Kenton · Aug 8, 03:06 PM · #
tom, if you look again at my post you’ll see that I mention the “sources close to the investigation.” As for the “fresh mozzarella,” see, I thought it would be funny to present myself as listening to NPR while doing a stereotypical NPR-listener kind of thing. . . . Ah, forget it. I need to stop making jokes in my posts. Blogging is for serious people.
— Alan Jacobs · Aug 8, 03:15 PM · #
Sorry about missing your reference to the sources.
I’ll try to recover by pointing out that the story doesn’t say he tried to “murder” them because of their pro-choice beliefs. The letters he included made it extremely unlikely he would kill the targets. He was trying to harass them.
And the issue isn’t why he sent anthrax out, it’s how he chose which people to send it to AFTER he decided to send it.
And I’ll drop the “fresh mozzarella” point, as long as you were not actually mixing tomatoes and mozzarella.
— tom · Aug 8, 09:31 PM · #
Hey, what I do with my tomatoes in the privacy of my NPR-listening kitchen is my own damn business.
— Alan Jacobs · Aug 9, 01:35 AM · #
That’s my daily ritual: making dinner while listening to NPR and associating right-to-lifers with murderous intentions. Here I thought it was going to be another of Alan’s jealousy-provoking posts about fantastic food. You know what tastes great with tomatoes? Olive oil, dill, avocados and garlic n’ herb goat cheese.
— Joules · Aug 10, 05:10 AM · #