Government scientist Bruce Ivins killed himself last week, amidst reports federal officials were going to arrest him as a suspect in the anthrax-in-envelopes scares following 9/11. Ivins, who worked with scary molecules like Cholera before turning his attention to anthrax full time, basically went off the deep end as he was closed in on, and even his shrink was scared of him. With Ivins' death, though, comes new questions about Sept. 11's aftermath and the anthrax scare — namely, how ABC News might have contributed to government-planted misinformation about the situation. What type of misinformation? Say, for instance, that Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program was behind the anthrax scare. You remember Mr. Hussein, don't you? He's the late former Iraqi leader who was so evil the United States spent billions of dollars on a casualty-laden war, all based on various pieces of wrong information, like non-existent WMDs and now, perhaps, a non-existent link between Hussein and the anthrax.

After the anthrax envelopes began popping up in the aftermath of 9/11 — including at NBC News — ABC News' Brian Ross reported that four separate and "well-placed" sources told him, under the promise of anonymity, that government tests of the anthrax showed traces of bentonite, a chemical we won't bother explaining, but notable because it was linked to Hussein's bio-weapons. Ross reported said this was no coincidence, and that the link was enough to show that Hussein might be behind the anthrax attacks.

Except there never was any bentonite in the anthrax sent around the U.S.

All of this leaves Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who takes time off from slamming the Bush administration to go after his media colleagues, calling for ABC News to out its confidential sources who obviously lied to Ross. And once a source lies to a reporter, he loses any warranty to having his identity protected. (Greenwald has long been on Ross' case.)

And with Ivins death comes the possibility that he was one of Ross' government sources. After all, the government tests that supposedly found bentonite in the anthrax were performed at Ft. Detrick, where Ivins worked.

As Kevin Drums notes, finding the answer to this question is especially pertinent given today's LAT report that Ivins held patents on anthrax vaccine, and stood to richly profit from an anthrax scare that would've drummed up orders for anything that protected us from it.

So is it time for Ross to out his lying sources? Absolutely. These sources did nothing to serve the public interest. In all likelihood, these sources knowingly produced false information for Ross, named last year by USA Today as the "most visible serious investigative journalist."

If Ivins was a source, not only did he stand to profit financially, but he and whoever else fed Ross the misinformation generated new platforms of support for the Iraq war. It's on Ross to now finger who was responsible for helping mislead America into battle.