I understand the supposed conundrum here, but just for the record "the government" has not yet been populated by entirely by Cylons (that is robots that appear identical to humans). In other words, it seems a bit Sisyphean to attempt to keep all those ducks in a row (especially if you are only going to knock off one guy with Anthrax) and for them to somehow stay in a row for years afterward. The same thing, after all, could be said of many other kinds of social data--labor market, unemployment figures, census data, etc. It is much more useful to think of the US state apparatus as it is: very powerful, quite functional in certain specific tasks (rather then sweeping conspiracies) but full of holes and often weak on the follow through (though surprisingly detailed in its documentation). The execution of the two wars that were supposedly the two prizes* of this endeavor seems to illustrate that, if this is such an omnipotent, omni-competent institution, it is incredibly ignorant of war and state craft in all other forms.
I'm sure there could be some fudging of the data--and there are likely details that we'll only really know decades from now--and I think questioning aspects of the "official story" is perfectly legitimate. The FOI request seems to yield a lot of answers after the fact and I'm sure there is a very interesting electronic archive that it will someday be possible to mine. And, in any case, questioning details is very different than questioning the story itself. It's effectively the same as claiming that, since the theory of evolution has a gap here and there, the only possible explanation is a completely different one (i.e. creationism.)
*and I was surprised to see Shane include Pakistan on this list of prize wars the US wanted to get for it's 9/11 masquerade. This just seems unhinged since the most forceful proponent of the Pak front of the Af/Pak endeavor is the current president, i.e. a different one than the one who supposedly planned and executed the events. So now Bush/Cheney also wanted to go into Pakistan from the very beginning but, in their genius, have made it so that they didn't have to go in themselves, they would just slavishly bungle the war in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade until the next president was effectively forced to head over the border into Pakistan. That is some long range thinking. They must be excellent chess players.
s