(updated below - Update II)

For today's edition of Salon Radio, I spoke with GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa who, to his credit, has been the leading critic in the Senate of the FBI's anthrax investigation. Sen. Grassley wrote an August 7 letter to Attorney General Mukasey and FBI Director Mueller complaining about the FBI's secrecy and botched investigation and demanding answers to multiple key questions.

In the interview, Sen. Grassley reveals that the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Pat Leahy (of which Grassley is a member), will now hold hearings to investigate the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins. Grassley demands that the FBI send officials who are able and willing to answer all questions, and also calls for full and complete public disclosure of all of the evidence in the FBI's possession regarding its investigation. I also discuss with Grassley whether the environment created by Congress over the last seven years (first under GOP control and now under Democratic control) -- whereby the Executive has virtually unlimited power and Congress has meekly relinquished its prerogatives -- is to blame for the FBI's stonewalling and refusal to account thus far to Congress for what it has done in the anthrax case.

The interview is roughly 15 minutes, and a transcript will be posted shortly.

UPDATE: Nature, the preeminent journal of science, has an Editorial today (headlined: "Case Not Closed") echoing Sen. Grassley's demand for "a full congressional or independent enquiry into this case"; arguing that "the absence of such a full disclosure can only feed suspicions that the FBI has again targeted an innocent man in this case"; and pointing out -- regarding the FBI's partial, one-sided disclosure of scientific claims earlier this week -- that "neither the conclusions drawn from the scientific analysis, nor such crucial legal elements as the veracity of the provenance and handling of samples, have been tested in court. So far only one side of the story has been heard: that of the prosecution."

UPDATE II: The transcript is here.