Thursday, August 7, 2008

G-Men bag Anthrax guy faster than they netted Unabomber

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been patting itself on the back so vigorously over the past few days that I wouldn't be surprised if the statue in front of the Hoover building has both of its arms supported by slings made out of one of J.Edgar's old formal gowns.

The Feebies haven't been so excited and so visible in the papers and on the telly since they dragnetted the Unabomber after he carried out only sixteen bombings. The G-Men were very proud when they caught Ted Kaczynski by dint of seventeen painstaking years of unrelenting detective work by hundreds of Special Agents. . . and a slight assist from a fellow who banged on the door of the Hoover Building until somebody put down their danish and let him in so he could tell them that his brother was the guy they were looking for.

In the very unlikely event you haven't heard of this latest coup, the Special Agent men have once again proven that they always get their man by bagging the fellow who sent all those anthrax letters back in 2001. They put the long arm of the law on Bruce Ivins despite the fact that he had cleverly disguised himself as an anthrax research scientist thus making it practically impossible for the FBI to suspect him. It's true they didn't catch him very fast. And it's true he was right under their noses for all the seven years that the hundreds of G-Men were task-forcing and sleuthing and analyzing and profiling and investigating in the finest tradition of Inspector Clouseau. But let's not quibble, they did catch him.

Well. . . actually, they didn't really catch him exactly. I may be a little unclear on this and some of my sources may be exaggerating a bit, but what I understand they did was drive him about one quarter nuts by sort of letting him know they kind of thought they had the goods on him. Then they drove him about three quarters around the bend by letting him know that they maybe were going to arrest him. Then they put him under round the clock surveillance until he was barking like a dog and staying pretty much in the walk-in closet in his apartment except when he came out each morning to sniff and paw at the newspaper before carrying it inside in his mouth. It was a few weeks after this behavior was observed that they got the break that cracked the case wide open. The suspect was observed to have allowed six copies of his daily newspaper to pile up on his doorstep in direct violation of Section B, Paragraph 17 Line 43 of Federal Law JR6-917, and he was also very quiet in there, suspiciously quiet.

So the surveillance team finally had probable cause to get a search warrant and call in the swat team. When all was ready and the swat team guys were locked and loaded they very cleverly sent a body-armored fellow dressed like a slightly bulky UPS driver up to the door with a bouquet of flowers that was really a big honking sledgehammer. . .

Well. . . to make a long story short, the flower guy broke down the door so the whole team of other fellows could enter and secure the premises and then very efficiently subdue and handcuff the suspect. All this was done before anybody noticed that the suspect's arms and legs were kind of floppy, and he was smelling a bit ripe, and they couldn't get him breathing even after a lot of mouth to mouth and a quite a bit of pounding on his chest. So they didn't catch him, they bagged him.

So anyway, the guy they suspected committed suicide back in July a bit before they found him, so they really kind of became sure that they had got their man this time, unlike the last time when the guy they kind of thought was the guilty party sued their butts off after they gave his name to the Attorney General and he gave it to the press. He got $5 Million.

But all's well that ends well. The Anthrax Guy is in the bag in only 7 years, which is less than half the time it took the G-Men to net the Unabomber. And the FBI has now swung into action with a force of its most impressive Special Agents, the ones who stage pictures for the newspapers and magazines and the ones who speak on camera for the television stations. You know, the ones who's job it is to make us all think that the folks who eat donuts and danishes in the J. Edgar Hoover Building have a clue as to what they're doing.

If you want to read a fussy, fact oriented version of this story with prissy British language in it you can go to this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7536890.stm

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