I didn't expect Hatfill to be fired at the end of his one month's paid leave -- I thought that would be disposed of by now -- so that didn't go as I expected. OTOH, he hasn't been arrested, his accusers have largely fallen silent, and the FBI and DOJ have been lambasted by almost every important newspaper in the country for persecuting this man.
The other unexpected development in the last month has been the FBI's surprise return to AMI, supposedly to look for the letter which killed Bob Stevens. That search is almost done: the search warrant expires tomorrow, 9/11/02. But, it is not clear yet whether that is going to be the pretext for an "uncloaking" timed to coincide with the Iraq buildup, or whether it simply represents a last desperate attempt by a stalled FBI investigation to come up with something before the anniversary of 9-11.
Here's Cheney from MTP, last Sunday:
VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s also important not to focus just on the nuclear threat. I mean, that sort of grabs everybody’s attention, and that’s what we’re used to dealing with. But come back to 9/11 again, and one of the real concerns about Saddam Hussein, as well, is his biological weapons capability; the fact that he may, at some point, try to use smallpox, anthrax, plague, some other kind of biological agent against other nations, possibly including even the United States. So this is not just a one-dimensional threat. This just isn’t a guy who’s now back trying once again to build nuclear weapons. It’s the fact that we’ve also seen him in these other areas, in chemicals, but also especially in biological weapons, increase his capacity to produce and deliver these weapons upon his enemies.So, Cheney "doesn't know" if Saddam was behind the anthrax, i.e. if Saddam has sleeper cells in the US equipped with highly weaponized anthrax. That would seem like a rather important thing to know before we go to war with him, wouldn't it? That is rather hard to square with the shambolic public face of Amerithrax. What's going on?MR. RUSSERT: But if he ever did that, would we not wipe him off the face of the Earth?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who did the anthrax attack last fall, Tim? We don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: Could it have been Saddam?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I’m not here today to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it’s the nature of terrorist attacks of these unconventional warfare methods, that it’s very hard sometimes to identify who’s responsible. Who’s the source? We were able to come fairly quickly to the conclusion after 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was, in fact, the individual behind the 9/11 attacks. But, like I say, I point out the anthrax example just to remind everybody that it is very hard sometimes, especially when we’re dealing with something like a biological weapon that could conceivably be misconstrued, at least for some period, as a naturally occurring event, that we may not know who launches the next attack. And that’s what makes it doubly difficult. And that’s why it’s so important for us when we do identify the kind of threat that we see emerging now in Iraq, when we do see the capabilities of that regime and the way Saddam Hussein has operated over the years that we have to give serious consideration to how we’re going to address it before he can launch an attack, not wait until after he’s launched an attack.
My old view was that Saddam had Bush cornered, that there would be no attack on Iraq until we could protect against the threat presented in those letters, so Bush would continue to stall indefinitely, perhaps for years, then take Saddam on militarily or just let the matter drop. More recently, I've seen signs that he plans to gamble by taking Saddam on, by pointing the finger at him and taking a quasi-legal approach, calling for the Iraqis to cough him up, and applying every kind of pressure short of a frontal attack to get him out. I'm still inclined to think Bush is going to try to get him out sooner rather than later, but it's going to be a bit more drawn out than I thought a month ago. I don't think Bush is in any hurry, nor should he be. Up to a point, drawing this out eases the psychological adjustment of the American people to the realization that Saddam has us in a tight spot, while simultaneously increasing the psychological stress on Saddam and the Iraqi people, and buying time for us to build our defenses. But, the bottom line is, we still don't know what Bush plans to do about Iraq -- he's still holding his cards close to the chest. The chips have yet to fall.
I still don't believe the anthrax attack was coordinated and executed by Iraq. Frankly, it wasn't very effective. Surely they were hoping to kill more than 5 people.
I believe Iraq supplied the anthrax to Al Qaeda, and those half-morons did the best they could with it. In addition, they had no concerns about safe-handling.
I'm pretty sure the administration is sitting on plenty of incriminating information on Iraq. But I believe most of it is tangential (supporting terrorists) rather than direct (planning and execution of the attacks). Doesn't really matter though, either way they're guilty.
The release of the information will most likely come a week or two before we begin the attack. We'll present it to congress (who will come on board), the UN (who will not, but we don't care) and the media (who will hem and haw and see what the polls say.)
Either way, we're going to retaliate against Iraq. And it will be thorough.
One question I have still though is this - Are the intelligence agencies still confused about Hatfill? Or are they knowingly screwing up his life? Or (most likely to me) is Hatfill willingly allowing himself to be used by the intelligence agencies as a decoy, pretending to be "hurt" by the experience, while actually being an agent. There is evidence in his personal history that would suggest he is a likely candidate to be working covertly for one intelligence agency or another.