Â鶹´«Ã½

IT has been three-and-a-half years since someone mailed anthrax around the US, killing five innocent people, and the criminal still hasn’t been caught. But that has not stopped an intrepid band of obsessives from tirelessly chewing over the case on the internet. Now the dean of the bunch, a retired computer guy in Wisconsin, has laboriously self-published his take on the story.

Ed Lake is clearly an amateur. People, places and events are introduced without explanation. You almost have to be a fellow anthrax fanatic to follow this account of the events, but perhaps this is precisely the audience he is writing for.

Some facts and arguments aren’t here, or aren’t clear. He doesn’t understand some of the science. He gives an early misunderstanding about alleged coatings on the anthrax spores more importance than I suspect it deserves, and he is a bit extreme in dismissing some material that he disagrees with.

That said, Lake neatly marshals a lot of the obscure detail in this odd affair, and he gets a few things right that experts at the time got wrong. He has a wonderfully clear take on conspiracy theorists. And like it or not, internet warriors like Lake are now important players in the public discourse. Who knows? This one may yet be right.