Hey Ed, if I were you I would strongly consider postponing the writing of your second anthrax whodunit book, lest you be eternally embarrassed.
Just saying.
I'm not worried. First of all, it's not a "whodunit book." We know who did it. So, it's a "what happened" book. It explains everything in layman's terms.
Plus, it's going to take me months to write the book. The NAS review will certainly be done long before I finish. The chances of the NAS finding anything seriously wrong with the FBI's scientific investigation is about nil. The FBI used the top scientists in every concerned field. Since the top scientists worked on the investigation, the NAS has to use lower-level scientists. They're still good scientists, of course, but they're not likely to uncover any serious mistakes.
And the GAO will probably be using even lower level scientists.
The GAO's review won't even begin until the NAS review is done. So, the first question in the GAO's review will very likely be answered by the NAS:
The first GAO question: What microbial and technical forensic methods did the FBI use to conclude that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attack; how reliable and reproducible were those methods; and were the methods validated?
Those are the EXACT questions the NAS will address.
It's anyone's guess what the GAO will find about question #2, since there should be lots of concerns about mentally unstable American scientists secretly creating their own anthrax powders in government labs.
The second GAO question: What scientific concerns and uncertainties, if any, remain?
And question #3 doesn't have anything to do with the NAS review or with the anthrax attacks of 2001. It appears to be a balm to soothe Rep. Holt's anxieties that some evil foreigners may actually have been behind the attacks.
The third GAO question: What agencies, including intelligence agencies, are responsible for monitoring high containment laboratories in the U.S. and abroad; how do they monitor these laboratories; and how effective is their monitoring?
The GAO isn't even certain they can answer the third question, since it involves some very high-level security matters.