Ivins, Anthrax, and Guarding Tess

Everybody remembers the resourceful Secret Service agent Doug Chesnic shooting the weasly chauffeur in Guarding Tess, thereby forcing him to reveal the location where Tess was being held? It all worked out fine, but remember what the chauffeur had said a few minutes earlier? I don't remember the exact words, but the gist was, "I know how this works. You people have to pin this on somebody and that person doesn't have to be guilty."

In the movie, of course, it worked out marvelously because he was guilty. But if he hadn't been? Then agent Chesnic of the federal government would have left him unable to walk without a limp for the rest of his life. He was already in a hospital, so I'm assuming he wouldn't have died.

The real FBI is much more cautious. I doubt that any agent would risk his career to go outside policy in the defense of a third party. But it's reason to wonder, as you think about the suicide of Dr. Bruce Ivins in connection with the anthrax letters case. Not having found the guilty party in such a high profile crime was obviously a stain on the agency's reputation. Six years on and they didn't have an indictment. This guy looked like their best hope.

So they searched his place twice, his computer once, and kept him constantly under surveillance by obvious agents for a year. Let's suppose for a minute that he was everything he said he was. A faithful government employee, a church-going Christian, active in his community, devoted to science. And the FBI spends half a decade putting his existence under an unrelenting microscope. Some of us might crack.

Years ago, I had a much higher opinion of government and this line of reasoning would have seemed outrageous, but after six years, if you haven't got an indictment you have a weak case. Nevertheless, the FBI has its desired outcome. They can reveal that they were close to an indictment, which is a couple of steps from a conviction but sufficient for the popular imagination. They wanted him dead. He's dead. They didn't actually have to shoot him. Pretty neat.