Olbermann on Coulter's Anthrax boy [VIDEO in Two Parts]

Olbermann covered the story we featured on PEEK yesterday concerning the right wing ties of the faux anthrax mailer. Briefly, Chad "Katherine Harris is a remarkable lady!" Castagana is accused of sending white powder to Jon Stewart (the wrong one...), David Letterman, Nancy Pelosi, Keith Olbermann himself, and others.

They appear to be politically motivated, as he's a serial poster on right wing blogs. The question: how much responsibility do right wing talkers claim for their bombast and violent sentiments? Comic book bonehead or not, Ann Coulter talk the talk of violent action.

Watch the video in two parts... transcript below:

OLBERMANN: Federal authorities still expect the preliminary hearing for Chad Conrad Castagana to continue day after tomorrow. He was arrested over the weekend, accused of mailing at least 13 threatening letters, maybe 17, filled with white powder to the likes of Senator Chuck Schumer, Speaker presumptive Nancy Pelosi, Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, David Letterman, Jon Stewart and me.

Our third story in the COUNTDOWN, more details tonight, some from an FBI affidavit obtained by "Radar Online" magazine about the suspect. According to that affidavit, on the same day Castagana was picking up the envelopes and stamps at the post office for some of his terroristic threats, he purchased a $15 money order and had it made out to Friends of Katherine Harris. The money order, in fact, may have provided some of the trail that agents needed to trace the threatening letters back to Castagana. The affidavit also describes him as a 39-year-old white man who lives with his parents in Woodland Hills in Southern California. It includes details of some of the notes Castagana sent with the white powder. One message, intended for Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, but sent to the wrong Jon Stewart read, quote, "Do you know Alan Berg? You should. Death to demagogues."

That reference is unmistakable, as the FBI affidavit notes. Alan Berg was the talk radio host murdered by white supremacists in 1984.

There are also references to poison and demagogues. Quote, "all of you are poisoning the well." One to David Letterman that read, quote, "Your kind are the real poison." The messages intended to Viacom Chair Redstone and Congresswoman Pelosi cannot be repeated on this broadcast.

Castagana has also been identified as a gushing online admirer of Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham. And the Web site RawStory reports that many bloggers believe he is also a contributor, under a different name, to the conservative Web site FreeRepublic. In fact, the name used is supposed to be Marc Costanzo.

Joining me now, John Cook, senior writer for "Radar Online" who has been covering all this since the news of the arrest broke on Sunday. Thanks for your time tonight, John.

JOHN COOK, "RADAR ONLINE": Good to be here, Keith.

OLBERMANN: The details of the letters I think we pretty much got.

Explain, if you can, what the link is to the right-wing blogs and what the relevance of that link is.

Full transcript after the jump...COOK: Well, we should point out the evidence is not conclusive, but--it's circumstantial, but it's good evidence. It appears that Mr. Castagana was a poster to the FreeRepublic, which, as you know, is an online library of some of the most thoughtful right-wing thinkers out there. And his--the Marc Costanzo alias that he used, his profile said, "Ann Coulter is a goddess and I idolize Malkin and Ingraham." And there are a lot of posts that suggest that he's a big fan of Malkin and Coulter.

OLBERMANN: For the record, as I understand it, the connection is that the fellow identifying himself as Costanzo posted something about science fiction, which he said was a rewrite of something he'd previously posted on a sci-fi site, which was written by and identified by Castagana. But the Ann Coulter-Laura Ingraham-Michelle Malkin connection is--how is that best described? Is that hero worship? Or crushes of some kind, or do we know what that is?