Just a glance at the amazing evidence against Bruce Ivins collected by the FBI raises two big questions: How come this guy was working for the government so long? And, why didn't someone dime him out, say a family member like David Kaczynski?
Ivins was what we used to call a "whack job" when I started working in newspapers 30 years ago–and when we tried to dignify our judgment in print, a "paranoid schizophrenic." Now we say, He was in a lot of pain. And we can only guess what his poor family went through. But putting my news vulture hat back on, the most electrifying thing about the story is his obsession with Kappa Kappa Gamma, the elite sorority, about which he engaged in edit wars on Wikipedia.
Oh when a Kappa girl goes down the street,
She feels a hundred per from head to feet!
My mother-in-law, a Kappa Kappa Gamma, taught me that song (had to drop that; I have social issues of my own).
Ivins seems to have driven many hours to deliver a "gift" to the KKG house in Princeton. And here is some doggerel that the mad scientist wrote:
Hickory dickory Doc– Doc Bruce ran up the clock
But something then happened in a very strange rhythm
His other self went and exchanged places with him
So now please guess who
Is conversing with you?
Good question. I return to my first two questions. The family obviously knew that Ivins was deeply troubled. So did co-workers. I'm betting they were in denial. I guess David Kaczynski must be regarded as the noble exception, and even he experienced a couple years denial, as I recall. As for Ivins's persistence in the government, there were surely murmurs. Back in 2001 someone referred to him as a "basket case." It is further evidence of the lethal dangers of bureaucracy, the same bureaucracy that suffocated the intelligence about Arabs who were going to flight school prior to 9/11. Why not a war on bureaucracy?
P.S. Steve Sailer gets at a similar point here, sharperly.
