Suspect In 2001 Anthrax Attacks Kills Himself. Options

[Sanders]

Gerald Ford passed a directive which forbade the CIA to carry out assassinations, interfere with the political processess of other nations, or topple governments...blablabla.

Yeah, that was funny. Like Nixon's forbidding the US from experimenting with chemical or biological weapons. They went right on doing it, just renamed the Army's bio-weapons program the "National Cancer Institute". (Not kidding btw)

Actually though, things have changed - I counted once, and from the 1947 passage of the National Security Act up until the Ford administration the US (mainly the CIA) was involved in about one coup d'etat (or intervention of some kind) a year - give or take, on the average. Now we are not so covert about it - we just go in and bomb.

And maybe no one puts much faith in the CIA anymore, not since the failed Venesuella coup of 2002. I hear Dick Cheney hates them. Besides, the CIA accounts for only 15% of the basket of US intelligence agencies. (NSA is far bigger). And who needs the CIA when you can farm that work out to a private company, maybe even one you and your friends have stock in?

The NYT neglected to mention that CIFA [Counterintelligence Field Activity (DoD)] is the government's most heavily outsourced intelligence agency. Over 30 corporations provide 90% of CIFA's staff--that's a blue green ratio of 1:9. CIFA's prime contractors are the usual suspects such as SAIC.

http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/

Anyway, somebody is still sneaking around out there - in places like Georgia.

[André]

This is as good as it gets for left gatekeeper "Alternet"

If I Were a Betting Man, I'd Wager that Cheney Was Behind the Anthrax Attacks

You'd have to be a terribly cautious and willfully blind person not to think that the Bush Administration was capable of orchestrating the anthrax attacks. You'd almost have to be a fool.

Years after the anthrax attacks were aimed at Democratic senators who were necessary to pass the "spy on Americans," cynically named "Patriot Act," suddenly the latest "prime suspect" commits suicide without leaving a note or anything, but then the FBI makes claims about how they "got their man" after how many seasons of incompetence in their investigation had passed?

Anyone who doesn't believe that an administration that had the CIA (or perhaps Douglas Feith's "manufactured evidence" Defense Department office) forge and backdate a letter to link Saddam to Osama to help justify the war with Iraq is not capable of using army-produced weapons grade anthrax, out of a Defense Department facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland … anyone who doesn't believe that an administration that forged Niger uranium documents to falsely link Saddam to a purchase that could facilitate a nuclear program that had been shuttered … anyone who doesn't believe that an administration that lied about knowing where WMDs were hidden in Iraq (as Rumsfeld and Cheney claimed), when those weapons didn't exist … well anyone who doesn't believe that such people who believe that they are "masters of the universe" and above the Constitution and the law would be concerned about "collateral damage" in a domestic anthrax attack is naive and incapable of understanding the heart of darkness that lurks within Cheney and his puppet in the White House. (George W. Bush ever in need of finding ways to prove his manhood through being indifferent to the deaths of others.)

more... http://www.alternet.org

[KP50]

I found this Salon article posted at another forum - copied and pasted here as it is a subscription site. Apologies if this has already been posted and also a lot of the links have been lost in the copy and paste process.

_____

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...hrax/index.html

A top U.S. government scientist, suspected of the anthrax attacks, commits suicide. ABC News knows who is responsible for false reports blaming those attacks on Iraq, but refuses to say.



Glenn Greenwald




Aug. 01, 2008 | (Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)




The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets -- that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks. This was the letter sent to Brokaw:

(IMG:http://bp2.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/SJLfMP7mkrI/AAAAAAAAA94/irML20mNYDA/s400/anthrax.jpg)

The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:

We have anthrax.
You die now.

Are you afraid?

Death to America.

Death to Israel.

Allah is great.

By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks alone could have accomplished.

Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in this matter.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:

The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.

Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.



It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).

Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country. As but one example: after Ross' lead report on the October 26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said into the camera:

This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.

That's exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report -- insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:

On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare.

The Weekly Standard published a much lengthier and more dogmatic article in April, 2002 again pushing the ABC "bentonite" claims and arguing: "There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax terrorism." The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001 that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").



And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this claim:

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq.



There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks -- accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically. As but one very illustrative example, The Washington Post's columnist, Richard Cohen, supported the invasion of Iraq, came to regret that support, and then explained what led him to do so, in a 2004 Post column entitled "Our Forgotten Panic":

I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.

Cohen -- in a March 18, 2008 Slate article in which he explains why he wrongfully supported the attack on Iraq -- disclosed this:

Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid.


The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.

For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same. Already, my impulse had been to strike back, an overwhelming urge that had, in fact, taken me by surprise on Sept. 11 itself when the first of the Twin Towers had collapsed. . . .

In the following days, as the horror started to be airbrushed -- no more bodies plummeting to the sidewalk -- the anthrax letters started to come, some to people I knew. And I thought, No, I'm not going to sit here passively and wait for it to happen. I wanted to go to "them," whoever "they" were, grab them by the neck, and get them before they could get us. One of "them" was Saddam Hussein. He had messed around with anthrax . . . He was a nasty little fascist, and he needed to be dealt with.

That, more or less, is how I made my decision to support the war in Iraq.

Cohen's mental process that led him to link anthrax to Iraq and then to support an attack on Iraq, warped as it is, was extremely common. Having heard ABC News in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack flamboyantly and repeatedly link Saddam to the anthrax attacks, followed by George Bush's making the same linkage (albeit more subtly) in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech, much of the public had implanted into their minds that Saddam Hussein was not just evil, but a severe threat to the U.S., likely the primary culprit behind the anthrax attacks. All along, though, the anthrax came from a U.S. Government/Army research lab.

Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks -- persisted.

We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government -- from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far.

UPDATE: One other fact to note here is how bizarrely inept the effort by the Bush DOJ to find the real attacker has been. Extremely suspicious behavior from Ivins -- including his having found and completely cleaned anthrax traces on a co-worker's desk at the Ft. Detrick lab without telling anyone that he did so and then offering extremely strange explanations for why -- was publicly reported as early as 2004 by The LA Times (Ivins "detected an apparent anthrax leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach").

In October 2004, USA Today reported that Ivins was involved in another similar incident, in April of 2002, when Ivins performed unauthorized tests to detect the origins of more anthrax residue found at Ft. Detrick. Yet rather than having that repeated, strange behavior lead the FBI to discover that he was involved in the attacks, there was a very public effort -- as Atrios notes here -- to blame the attacks on Iraq and then, ultimately, to blame Stephen Hatfill. Amazingly, as Atrios notes here, very few people other than "a few crazy bloggers are even interested" in finding out what happened here and why -- at least to demand that ABC News report the vital information that it already has that will shed very significant light on much of this.

UPDATE II: Ivins' local paper, Frederick News in Maryland, has printed several Letters to the Editor written by Ivins over the years. Though the underlying ideology is a bit difficult to discern, he seems clearly driven by a belief in the need for Christian doctrine to govern our laws and political institutions, with a particular interest in Catholic dogma. He wrote things like this:

Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious, moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.
Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we should gratefully consider some of our country's most courageous, historical figures who refused to do so.

And then there's this rather cryptic message, published in 2006:

Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."
By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."

It should be noted that the lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins' innocence and attributes his suicide to "the relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."



On a note related to the main topic of the post, macgupta in comments notes the numerous prominent people in addition to those mentioned here -- including The Wall St. Jorunal Editors and former CIA Director James Woosely -- who insisted rather emphatically from the beginning of the anthrax attacks that Saddam was likely to blame. Indeed, the WSJ Editorial Page -- along with others on the Right such as Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report and Fox News -- continued even into 2007 to insist that the FBI was erring by focusing on domestic suspects rather than Middle Easterners.

The Nation's Michael Massing noted at the time (in November, 2001) that as a direct result of the anthrax attacks, and the numerous claims insinuating that Iraq was behind them, "the political and journalistic establishment suddenly seems united in wanting to attack Iraq." There has long been an intense desire on the neoconservative Right to falsely link anthrax to Saddam specifically and Muslims generally. ABC News was, and (as a result of its inexcusable silence) continues to be, their best friend.

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios writes: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?"

That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack? Then again, the most basic journalistic instincts would have lead ABC News to reveal who concocted and fed them the false "Saddam/anthrax" reports in the first place, and yet we still are forced to guess at those questions because ABC News continues to cover up the identity of the perpetrators.

UPDATE IV: John McCain, on the David Letterman Show, October 18, 2001 (days before ABC News first broadcast their bentonite report):

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine . . . I think we'll do fine. The second phase -- if I could just make one, very quickly -- the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.

ThinkProgress has the video. Someone ought to ask McCain what "indication" he was referencing that the anthrax "may have come from Iraq."

After all, three days later, McCain and Joe Lieberman went on Meet the Press (on October 21, 2001) and both strongly suggested that we would have to attack Iraq. Lieberman said that the anthrax was so complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program."

As I said, it is not possible to overstate the importance of anthrax in putting the country into the state of fear that led to the attack on Iraq and so many of the other abuses of the Bush era. There are few news stories more significant, if there are any, than unveiling who the culprits were behind this deliberate propaganda. The fact that the current GOP presidential nominee claimed back then on national television to have some "indication" linking Saddam to the anthrax attacks makes it a bigger story still.

UPDATE V: I tried to be careful here to avoid accepting as True the matter of Ivins' guilt. Very early on in the article, I framed the analysis this way: "If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab," and I then noted in Update II that Ivins' lawyer vehemently maintains his innocence. My whole point here is that the U.S. Government now claims the anthrax attacks came from a Government scientist at a U.S. Army lab, and my conclusions follow from that premise, accepted as true only for purposes of this analysis.

It's worth underscoring that it is far from clear that Ivins had anything to do with the anthrax attacks, and someone in comments claiming (anonymously though credibly) that he knew Ivins personally asserts that Ivins was innocent and makes the case as to why the Government's accusations are suspect. As I see it, the more doubt there is about who was responsible for the anthrax attacks, the greater is the need for ABC News to reveal who fabricated their reports linking the attacks to Iraq.

UPDATE VI: I'll be on Rachel Maddow's radio show tonight at 8:30 p.m. EST to discuss this story. Local listings and live audio feed are here.

Numerous people have advised me in comments and via email that ABC News is deleting any mention of my piece today in the comment section to their article on the Ivins suicide (though many such comments now seem to be posted there). Last year, ABC was in full denial mode when responding to the stories I wrote about this issue. The key here, I think, will be to try to devise the right strategy to induce the right Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the false ABC News stories and the anthrax issue generally. I hope to have more details on that effort shortly.

[dMz]

Ivins' suicide is waaay too "convenient."

Why don't we ever hear about this?
"CAUGHT ON TAPE

An investigation was launched that exposed the shockingly lax security measures at the lab, and raised the possibility that some specimens may never have been entered in lab records. Also uncovered was a tape from a surveillance camera showing the entry of an unauthorized person into the lab, at 8:40, on January 23, 1992, let in by Dr. Marian Rippy, lab pathologist. The night visitor was Lt. Col. Philip Zack, a former employee who had left as a result of a dispute with the lab over his alleged harassment of Dr. Assaad. The Courant reports:

"Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy, [lab technician Charles] Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j022202.html
----------------------

More info on 2001 Anthrax attacks "Amerithrax":

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum//index....showtopic=14789

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum//index....showtopic=15088

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/...raxsuspect.html

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/aug/1...-finest-moment/

LIBRARY- Anthrax Attacks
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum//index.php?showtopic=1162

[dMz]

It looks like Rivero's research, but it is also posted at what looks to be an excellent page in its own right:

http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-925-0-14-14--.html

The Hidden Anthrax Letters Suspect
Published on 03-08-2008

EDIT: This is an excellent website BTW:
http://www.blacklistednews.com

EDIT2: Thanks paranoia. My "Mysterious Deaths" thread was split here to make room for Anthrax/Amerithrax specific posts here.

Mysterious Deaths and "Suicides", Split from Ivins/Amerithrax thread
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum//index....showtopic=15650

Reason for edit: Split threads

[paranoia]

great work on compiling those links Dmole. you rock!
(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)



***


regarding the OP, i have a bunch of anthrax-related info i compiled from months ago and i want to post it, even if all the fervor about ivins' death has died down now and he has become yesterday's news to some extent.


some specific history about the anthrax case and where it started:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/pal...0,2952886.story

Anthrax claims life of South Floridian (October 6, 2001)
By Stacey Singer and Nancy McVicar | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 6, 2001

Anthrax victim Robert Stevens of Lantana lost his battle against the rare disease on Friday even as more than 50 public health and law enforcement officials searched for the cause.

Stevens, 63, a photo editor for a Boca Raton-based supermarket tabloid, was removed from a respirator and pronounced dead at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis at 4 p.m. Dr. Larry Bush, infectious disease specialist, said Stevens suffered cardiac arrest and could not be resuscitated. His was the nation's first case of fatal respiratory anthrax since 1976.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067576/

Anthrax Alarm
What had been a public-health probe in Florida is now a criminal investigation
By Joseph Contreras, Michael Isikoff and Howard Fineman
Newsweek Web Exclusive
updated 10:44 a.m. ET, Mon., Oct. 8, 2001

Oct. 8 - The possibility that a photo editor for the weekly tabloid The Sun was killed in a bioterrorism attack took on a new sense of urgency today after Florida public-health officials disclosed that a nose swab taken from a 73-year-old hospitalized co-worker contained the rare bacteria spore that induces Anthrax, an often-fatal illness.

PUBLIC-HEALTH OFFICIALS confirmed that Ernesto Blanco, a 73-year-old Cuban-American who works in the mailroom of American Media office building in Boca Raton tested as having been exposed to Anthrax. Blanco was admitted to a Miami hospital last week with symptoms of pneumonia. On Friday, Bob Stevens, a photo editor at The Sun, died from disease.

this (below) was probably an intentional diversion, but it was alleged Stevens and/or American Media (by way of The Enquirer) had something to do with publishing stories/photos which put the Bushes in a bad light (hence stevens may have been targetted by bush directly and thus received anthrax):


(IMG:http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/e29db4dc09.jpg)




but the real connection, and possible motive for targetting American Media:

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:3_uAk...;cd=8&gl=us

2001 Early June—AL-SHEHHI and Saeed ALGHAMDI arrive at the Pelican Properties office of real estate agent Gloria Irish (whose husband Michael Irish is an editor at The Sun, a tabloid published by American Media) in Delray Beach, FL. They say that they need two apartments. “AL-SHEHHI, she said, did all the talking, and ALGHAMDI glared at her, making her uncomfortable.” AL-SHEHHI tells Mrs. Irish he was visiting the U.S. for pilot training. He and his friend were looking for three-month rentals “near a gym.” Within a couple of days, she finds the two visitors apartments in separate Delray Beach country-club communities. The men secure the properties with $6,000 in cash and even walk Mrs. Irish to the bank to deposit it. “The hijackers often operated in complementary pairs: the jarring brusqueness of one canceled out by the affability of his partner..” notes a reporter. While apartment hunting, a glowering Alghamdi never speaks to Mrs. Irish, who concluded he was "a creep." The genial AL-SHEHHI apologizes that his friend doesn't speak English. "He was just the friendliest guy," Mrs. Irish says. He would greet her, she remembers, with a big smile and a warm, "Good morning, Gloria." (WP, 10/15/01)...


Around June 8, 2001—As arranged by Gloria Irish, Ahmed ALNAMI and Saeed ALGHAMDI rent Apartment 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club condominiums, 755 Dotterel Road, Delray Beach, FL. One neighbor recalled that the men often went swimming between 10 and 11 p.m., wearing swimsuits and carrying their briefcases to the pool. Hamza ALGHAMDImoves into a $900-a-month fifth-floor apartment in the same complex.

“It could not be determined whether Irish ever told the two men that her husband was editor of the Sun…there is no indication whether Irish or [future anthrax fatality] Stevens ever crossed paths with ATTA.” (WP, 10/15/01) At one apartment complex in Delray Beach, Fla., two neighbors said they regularly heard odd, late-night "banging noises" coming from one of the suspects' apartments. "Like a hammer hitting metal," Randy Ferris recalled, "but you can't very well call the police for that. Believe me, I wish I had." Chicago Tribune, 9/17/01

link (dead): http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/683...en&ie=UTF8”

unfortunately the above is not sourced/cited with any working links, so i found some others (below).




http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:S2l_e...;cd=1&gl=us

The West at War: World reacts: DISNEYLAND IS A TARGET; New anthrax
Sunday Mirror, Oct 14, 2001 by LUCY ROCK

And in another disturbing development, the wife of the British- born editor of The Sun newspaper in Florida - the centre of the main outbreak - was revealed to have had business links with the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center.

Gloria Irish, wife of editor-in-chief Mike Irish, runs Pelican Properties, which supplied the flat where three of the hijackers lived.

Mrs Irish even drove Hamza Algahmdi, who hijacked United Flight 175, and two other hijackers around the Florida resort of Delray Beach looking at flats. Meanwhile, security has been stepped up at Disney World, Disneyland and the Mall of America in Minnesota - another target on the terrorists' hit-list. A senior aide to President Bush said investigators had found sketches and reports describing the five targets among the possessions of the suicide hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:zaeYt...cd=19&gl=us

FBI: Hijacker-anthrax link coincidental
October 15, 2001 Posted: 11:42 AM EDT (1542 GMT)

BOCA RATON, Florida (CNN) -- In what the FBI calls a strange coincidence, two apartments used by suspected hijackers named in the September 11 terrorist attacks were rented to them by a real estate agent married to the editor of the tabloid newspaper where an employee died from anthrax.

The FBI said there is nothing, however, to link the apartments to the anthrax outbreak.

FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela told CNN, "We consider this to be a strange coincidence. We have nothing more to go on. We cannot tie this apartment to the anthrax."

The Miami Herald identified the real estate agent as Gloria Irish, wife of Michael Irish, who is editor of The Sun. Sun photo editor Bob Stevens died from inhalation anthrax. At least two other people in the American Media Inc. headquarters building were exposed to anthrax, and others are being tested.

The Herald said the suspected hijackers who rented the apartments this summer were Marwan al-Shehhi and Hamza Alghamdi, both aboard the second plane to hit the World Trade Center.

The two apartments were in Delray Beach, Florida, about five miles from the newspaper building in Boca Raton. The Herald said Alghamdi rented a unit at the Delray Racquet Club, and Al-Shehhi rented an apartment at the Hamlet Country Club complex.

An FBI suspect list has linked several other hijackers to these and other locations in Delray Beach in the months leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The anthrax scare began October 4 in Florida when it was confirmed that The Sun photo editor had contracted the inhaled form of the bacteria. His death was the first such death in the United States since 1976.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:8PIiB...;cd=1&gl=us

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 15, 2001

Confirming a clear link between the terrorists targeting America and the South Florida company hit by anthrax cases, the FBI said Sunday that the Sun tabloid editor's wife rented a Delray Beach apartment to two of the hijackers.

The Sun is part of the American Media Inc. tabloid chain, and it employed photo editor Bob Stevens, who died this month from inhalation anthrax. Two other AMI employees were exposed, and five more are being retested to confirm positive blood test results.

Sun editor Michael Irish's wife, Gloria, rented unit 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club to Marwan Alshehhi and Saeed Alghamdi this summer, said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.

Alshehhi was aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second jet to strike the World Trade Center. Alghamdi was on United Flight 93, which crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh when passengers apparently thwarted an attempt to target another building.

"There is now a link between the editor's wife and the terrorists," Orihuela said.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:auPOj...;cd=8&gl=us

OCTOBER 16, 2001
WASHINGTON (AP) — A piece of mail sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle tested positive for anthrax on Monday as the bioterrorism scare that has raised anxiety across the country reached the halls of Congress.

The letter, which contained a powdery substance, was dispatched to an Army medical research facility at Fort Detrick, Md., for further examination after a pair of preliminary tests in Daschle's office came back positive, said Capitol Police Lt. Dan Nichols.

The Fort Detrick findings wouldn't be available until Tuesday, officials said.

President Bush, disclosing the letter to Daschle's office, told reporters “there may be some possible link” between the spate of anthrax incidents across the country and Osama bin Laden, whom administration officials say was behind the Sept. 11 airline hijack attacks.

conclusion: whoever was behind the planning and execution of the anthrax attacks, had initimate knowledge of (some of) the key players in the hijackings. very early on the FBI called the above links a "coincedence", but then as the "attacks" continued, the link between the anthrax victim (bob stevens) and the hijackers, was dropped from the investigative radar, and NOT addressed in the press. in fact finding articles about it is rather difficult since it seems to have become a rather obscure detail. when addressing the past incidents of the anthrax attacks, all of the news agencies currently avoid addressing who STEVENS was. there is NO mention of the hijackers and their connections to Mrs.Irish.

so if IVINS, was really the man who was behind (executing) the attacks, he could not have been acting alone. unless he had contacts within the FBI who led him to American Media, he would not have known where the FBI investigations had led. so it would be a HUGE coincedence for him (IVINS) acting alone, to target American Media (and possibly Stevens) directly. of all the places and people in america to send anthrax to, how would some (allegedly) deranged man in maryland know or think of sending anthrax to persons so closely connected to the (alleged) arab hijackers?




***

i have alot more info to post, but i dont want to overwhelm and drown it out by posting too much at once.
i will hopefully get the time to add some more to this thread in the days ahead.

This post has been edited by paranoia: Nov 26 2008, 05:28 PM

[Ricochet]

Here is the Court documents for the Steven Hatfield case.

http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/Anthrax-Case-Info.html

This post has been edited by Ricochet: Nov 26 2008, 06:50 PM

[dMz]

this (below) was probably an intentional diversion, but it was alleged Stevens and/or American Media (by way of The Enquirer) had something to do with publishing stories/photos which put the Bushes in a bad light (hence stevens may have been targetted by bush directly and thus received anthrax):

[Ed: photo of 2 grinding-drunk Texas sluts and a young ol' boy with his drinkin' jar (IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ]

I've recommended it here before, but here's a great book on the Commander in Thief by the late James H. Hatfield.

Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President (Paperback) by James Hatfield

http://www.amazon.com/Fortunate-Son-George...t/dp/1887128840

The book was heavily suppressed- look at the strange Amazon prices. I also recommend the DVD "Horns and Halos" on that same page (about the publishing of this book and the author's life/death). Brig. Gen. Russell Bowen's book the Immaculate Deception about GHWB is even better IMHO.

Do a search on the late Gary Webb while you're at it.

[mrodway]

Anthrax investigation still yielding findings
Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask.
25 February 2009, Nature News

The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called RMR-1029, which Ivins could access in his laboratory at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

At a biodefence meeting on 24 February, Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of three letters sent to the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin, says Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements...

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090225/ful...s.2009.120.html

[nitatutt]

Dr. Ivins was never formally charged with any crime, for the post 911 anthrax "attacks"; yet his reputation has been completely demolished - so much for innocent until proven guilty.

From The Smoking Gun: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years...1101ivins1.html

The Strange World Of Dr. Anthrax
Ivins was bondage- and sorority-obsessed cross-dressing Yankee hater


Coincidentally, in today's news (Ogden, UT) http://www.standard.net/topics/business/20...ed-irs-building : Haz mat crews called to IRS building


This post has been edited by nitatutt: Mar 1 2010, 05:43 PM

[nitatutt]

Good article -

link: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices...on-microbiologi

fair use

The Peoples Voice @ thepeoplesvoice.org
Federal Bureau of Invention? Microbiologist Meryl Nass Responds to FBI Closing Anthrax Case
02/25/10
12:52:00 pm

The FBI's report, documents and accompanying information (only pertaining to Ivins, not to the rest of the investigation) were released on Friday afternoon. which means the FBI anticipated doubt and ridicule. The National Academies of Science (NAS) is several months away from issuing its $879,550 report on the microbial forensics, suggesting a) asking NAS to investigate the FBI's science was just a charade to placate Congress, and/or B) NAS' investigation might be uncovering things the FBI would prefer to bury, so FBI decided to preempt the NAS panel's report.

Here are today's reports from the Justice Department, AP, Washington Post and NY Times. The WaPo article ends,

The FBI's handling of the investigation has been criticized by Ivins's colleagues and by independent analysts who have pointed out multiple gaps, including a lack of hair, fiber other physical evidence directly linking Ivins to the anthrax letters. But despite long delays and false leads, Justice officials Friday expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

The evidence "established that Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters," the Justice summary stated.

Actually, the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a "lone nut." The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins' RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were "ruled out" as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy, however.

That is only the first of many holes in FBI's case. Here is a sampling of some more.

1. The report assumes Ivins manufactured, purified and dried the spore prep in the anthrax hot room at US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). His colleagues say the equipment available was insufficient to do so on the scale required.

2. But even more important, the letter spores contained a Bacillus subtilis contaminant, and silicon to enhance dispersal. FBI has never found the Bacillus subtilis strain at USAMRIID, and it has never acknowledged finding silicon there, either. If the letters anthrax was made at USAMRIID, at least small amounts of both would be there.

3. Drs. Perry Mikesell, Ayaad Assaad and Stephen Hatfill were 3 earlier suspects. All had circumstantial evidence linking them to the case. In Hatfill's case, especially, are hints he could have been "set up." Greendale, the return address on the letters, was a suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe where Hatfill attended medical school. Hatfill wrote an unpublished book about a biowarfare attack that bears some resemblance to the anthrax case. So the fact that abundant circumstantial evidence links Ivins to the case might be a reflection that he too was "set up" as a potential suspect, before the letters were sent.

4. FBI fails to provide any discussion of why no autopsy was performed, nor why, with Ivins under 24/7 surveillance from the house next door, with even his garbage being combed through, the FBI failed to notice that he overdosed and went into a coma. Nor is there any discussion of why the FBI didn't immediately identify tylenol as the overdose substance, and notify the hospital, so that a well-known antidote for tylenol toxicity could be given (N-acetyl cysteine, or alternatively glutathione). These omissions support the suggestion that Ivins' suicide was a convenience for the FBI. It enabled them to conclude the anthrax case, in the absence of evidence that would satisfy the courts.

5. The FBI's alleged motive is bogus. In 2001, Bioport's anthrax vaccine could not be (legally) relicensed due to potency failures, and its impending demise provided room for Ivins' newer anthrax vaccines to fill the gap. Ivins had nothing to do with developing Bioport's vaccine, although in addition to his duties working on newer vaccines, he was charged with assisting Bioport to get through licensure.

6. FBI's report claims, "Those who worked for him knew that Nass was one of those topics to avoid discussing around Dr. Ivins" (page 41). The truth is we had friendly meetings at the Annapolis, Maryland international anthrax conference in June 2001, and several phone conversations after that. Bruce occasionally assisted me in my study of the safety and efficacy of Bioport's licensed anthrax vaccine, giving me advice and papers he and others had written. I wonder if I was mentioned negatively to discourage Ivins' other friends and associates from communicating with me, since they have been prohibited from speaking freely? Clever.

7. The FBI's Summary states that "only a limited number of individuals ever had access to this specific spore preparation" and that the flask was under Ivins' sole and exclusive control. Yet the body of the report acknowledges hundreds of people who had access to the spores, and questions remain about the location of the spore prep during the period in question. FBI wordsmiths around this, claiming that no one at USAMRIID "legitimately" used spores from RMR1029 without the "authorization and knowledge" of Bruce Ivins. Of course, stealing spores to terrorize and kill is not a legitimate activity.

8. FBI says that only a small number of labs had Ames anthrax, including only 3 foreign labs. Yet a quick Pub Med search of papers published between 1999 and 2004 revealed Ames anthrax was studied in at least Italy, France, the UK, Israel and South Korea as well as the US. By failing to identify all labs with access to Ames, the FBI managed to exclude potential domestic and foreign perpetrators.

9. FBI claims that "drying anthrax is expressly forbidden by various treaties," therefore it would have to be performed clandestinely. Actually, the US government sponsored several programs that dried anthrax spores. Drying spores is not explicitly prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention, though many would like it to be.

10. The FBI report claims the anthrax letters envelopes were sold in Frederick, Md. Later it admits that millions of indistinguishable envelopes were made, with sales in Maryland and Virginia.

11. FBI emphasizes Ivins' access to a photocopy machine, but fails to mention it was not the machine from which the notes that accompanied the spores were printed.

12. FBI claims Ivins was able to make a spore prep of equivalent purity as the letter spores. However, Ivins had clumping in his spores, while the spores in the Daschle/Leahy letters had no clumps. Whether Ivins could make a pure dried prep is unknown, but there is no evidence he had ever done so.

13. FBI asserts that Bioport and USAMRIID were nearly out of anthrax vaccine, to the point researchers might not have enough to vaccinate themselves. FBI further asserts this would end all anthrax research, derailing Ivins' career. In fact, USAMRIID has developed many dozens of vaccines (including those for anthrax) that were never licensed, but have been used by researchers to vaccinate themselves. There would be no vaccine shortage for researchers.

14. Ivins certainly had mental problems. But that does not explain why the FBI accompanied Ivins' therapist, Ms. Duley (herself under charges for multiple DUIs) and assisted her to apply for a peace order against him. Nor does it explain why Duley then went into hiding, never to be heard from again.

15. FBI obtained a voluntary collection of anthrax samples. Is that the way to conduct a multiple murder investigation: ask the scientists to supply you with the evidence to convict them? There is no report that spores were seized from anyone but Ivins, about 6 years after the attacks. This is a huge hole in the FBI's "scientific" methodology.

16. FBI claims it investigated Bioport and others who had a financial motive for the letters attack, and ruled them out. However, FBI provides not a shred of evidence from such an investigation.

FBI gave this report its best shot. The report sounds good. It includes some new evidence. It certainly makes Ivins out to be a crazed, scary and pathetic figure. If you haven't followed this story intently, you may be convinced of his guilt.

On the other hand, there are reasons why a conspiracy makes better sense. If the FBI really had the goods, they would not be overreaching to pin the crime on a lone nut.

JFK, RFK, George Wallace, Martin Luther King, all felled by lone nuts. Even Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin was a lone nut. Now Bruce Ivins. The American public is supposed to believe that all these crimes required no assistance and no funds.

Does the FBI stand for the Federal Bureau of Invention?