From his crumby caravan of connivance and collusion, Rave’s resident conspiracy crank, DEADMAN, continues to uncover the fantastic foibles of popular paranoia…

Hi again, readers. Well the treachery that’s on the tips of most conspiracy cranks’ lips at the moment is the FBI’s dogged attempt to cover up the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Remember them? Hot on the heels of 9/11 came a series of creepy envelopes, addressed in kiddie’s handwriting, containing some nasty letters and some even nastier weapons-grade anthrax powder. Five people died and 17 others got very sick. It was the first bioweapon attack on American soil, and as if 9/11 hadn’t shaken us up enough, seven days later the anthrax attacks plunged THE WORLD into a petrified state of petri dish paranoia. It was like an unnecessary left jab delivered after a knock-out right cross.

From the beginning, it stank like an inside job. It reeked like an excuse to, say, invade Iraq. And within a month of the attacks, John McCain claimed (on the Letterman show) that “the second phase [after Afghanistan] is Iraq … there is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may – and I emphasise may – have come from Iraq.”

Hmmm. That’s not a very nice thing to say about another country, is it? Did McCain have any actual evidence to support this “indication?” No, he didn’t. None. Just pure, unbridled lust for another war in Iraq. Which he, and his buddies, obviously got.

Problem is, it quickly became obvious to the FBI that the anthrax attacks were an inside job. This is tantamount to a horror movie where the babysitter discovers the calls are coming from inside the house. Having said that, it’s exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to happen when a rogue state gets its hands on biological weapons. You just know something’s going to go very wrong – it’s only a question of when.

The FBI’s beleaguered investigation into the anthrax attacks has played out like the Keystone Cops, only without the chuckles. In June this year, they were forced to pay out $5.8 million to Scott Hatfill, who they’d ruthlessly pursued for years as a “key suspect” in the case. Turns out he had nothing to do with it. Huh.

Then they turned their attention to Bruce Ivins, who worked on anthrax vaccines at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where it’s believed the anthrax was made. Bruce, a quiet family man, had achieved the status of Chief Suspect in the anthrax case. But Bruce O.D.’d on Tylenol and codeine at the end of July, just as the FBI were about to bring him in.

Since his death, the subservient Western media, reprinting the selective circumstantial evidence gradually released by the FBI, have begun to paint a picture of Ivins as an obsessive, homicidal and unhinged loner. Which is a pretty standard technique of lumping all the blame for an obvious conspiracy on just one guy. I mean, Lee Harvey Oswald would be LOLing in his grave so damn hard right now.

Still, despite the character attacks launched against a guy who isn’t even alive to defend himself, there are more unanswered questions in this case than a misprinted box of Trivial Pursuit cards. Such as “why was an allegedly obsessive, unhinged, homicidal loner allowed regular access to weapons-grade anthrax?” That’s a pretty good one, but there are plenty more…

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