Top US scientist commits suicide?

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Nate tell what concrete effects that were part of the Bush administrations agenda the Anthrax attacks made possible that 9/11 wasn‘t enough to justify and present evidence it was consistently tied by them or the media to Arab or Islamic groups.

-----

Will get on it Len: but first a quick question before you and Craig are named Cochairs of the FCC:

What percent of the US population would you estimate read about and discussed (with at least 1 fellow citizen) the AL Q. attacks of the Cole or others on

Sptember 10th 2001?

Same question for that Anthrax letters following September 11th? A rough estimate would suffice. I know you are in one the fairer corners of Brazil, but you seem to keep up with US public opinion.

-----------

FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK

DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM

WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."jmeek@nydailynews.com

Any port in a storm eh Nate? You last claim was that "they" needed this to be Saddam so it would appear the attacks were from a second source. And now you tell us "they" wanted to pin it on AQ.

Maybe they still were thinking about the Cole......

Consistencey not your forte?

--------

It was the government that was trying to conflate Al Q with the Iraq Regime, Craig. My point was about the government efforts to give Anthrax an Al Q. Connection. If they were also tyring to give the Iraq (CIA installed) regime an Al Q. connection, where is the contradication?

Craig, do try to keep up with the lies of the government you so passionately defend. Niacin.

[William Kelly]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...83&pos=list

...Even as Justice Department officials declared the worst act of bioterrorism in U.S. history all but solved, scientists and legal experts noted that the evidence is far from foolproof. Investigators were unable to place Ivins in Princeton, N.J., on the days when the letters were dropped into a Nassau Street mailbox. They did not try to match his crabbed handwriting with the distinctive block print on the 2001 letters....

Ted Gup (Who knows what he is talking about):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=topnews

...Against this background, who could be blamed for imagining that an innocent Ivins was hounded to his death? Can we discount the accounts that suggest the government repeatedly harassed Ivins's family, offering his son a reward and sports car if he would turn his father in?

The antidote to our skepticism is not a de facto conviction -- especially one that is posthumous and undefended. If Ivins was indeed responsible for those harrowing attacks, it is good that he no longer poses a threat. But how will we know?

In some sense, his guilt or innocence is beside the point. Today, the process itself is on trial. This week, it was cheated of yet another opportunity to assert itself, prove its merit and restore its standing. Trials are about more than just individual accountability -- they are a public demonstration and reaffirmation of a commitment to principles, more than a few of which have been sullied since Sept. 11. The anthrax case was emblematic of so many, with its rush to judgment, its caving in to political pressures, its aversion to transparency.

To their credit, in reporting the Ivins's case, the media now appear somewhat chastened and more inquisitive than inquisitorial. It may well be that, absent a trial, it will fall to reporters to aggressively test the solidity of the case against Ivins. Perhaps they can restore a measure of credibility to their profession and to the government.

PLUS:

AP CHRONOLOGY, SO FAR

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j7AqcW8...8JlDggD92D58B00

Key dates leading up to the 2001 anthrax attacks and the investigation that followed:

___

2001:

Mid-August: Microbiologist Bruce Ivins begins to spend more evenings in his lab at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick, Md. His normal shift was 7:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Sept. 14-16: Ivins spends three consecutive evening shifts at the lab.

Sept. 17-24: Ivins does not enter the lab.

Sept. 18: The date of postmarks on letters containing anthrax to members of the news media in New York and Florida.

Sept. 26: In an e-mail, Ivins discusses his therapy group and how all of the other people in it are battling depression, sadness and stress. But he's different, he says. "I'm really the only scary one in the group."

Sept. 28-Oct. 5: Ivins works eight consecutive nights in the lab. The total time ranges from 20 minutes to three hours and 42 minutes.

Oct. 5: Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid published by American Media Inc., dies after inhaling anthrax mailed to AMI's headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla.

Oct. 9: The date of postmarks on letters containing anthrax to Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy in Washington.

Oct. 16: A co-worker of Ivins tells a friend in an e-mail that "Bruce has been an absolute manic basket case the last few days."

Oct. 21: Thomas L. Morris Jr., 55, a postal worker in Washington, dies.

Oct. 22: Joseph P. Curseen Jr., 47, a postal worker in Washington, dies.

Oct. 31: Kathy T. Nguyen, 61, a hospital employee in New York City, dies.

Nov. 21: Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Conn., dies. She apparently inhaled anthrax from her mail.

October to November: At least 22 people contracted anthrax as a result of the mailings. Thirty-one others tested positive for exposure.

___

2002:

January: Senate office building where anthrax-tainted letters were sent reopens after three months and fumigation. FBI doubles the reward for helping solve the case to $2.5 million.

February: Ivins does not follow protocol in anthrax samples he submits to the FBI, rendering them unusable.

April: Ivins provides a second set of samples for genetic testing. Both samples were found to have no presence of the anthrax used in the attacks.

June: FBI is scrutinizing 20 to 30 scientists who might have had the knowledge and opportunity to send the anthrax letters, a U.S. official says.

August: Law enforcement officials and Attorney General John Ashcroft call biowarfare expert Steven J. Hatfill a "person of interest" in the investigation.

___

2003:

June: FBI drains pond in Frederick, Md., in search of anthrax-related evidence. Nothing suspicious is found.

August: Hatfill sues Ashcroft and other government officials, accusing them of using him as a scapegoat and demanding that they clear his name.

December: Postal workers begin moving back into Washington's main mail center, almost two years after anthrax-laced letters killed two employees.

Dec. 12: An FBI special agent accompanies Ivins to the lab and identifies samples that had not been submitted.

___

2004:

February: A white powder determined to be the deadly poison ricin is found in an office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. No one is hurt and no arrests are made.

April 7: An FBI special agent seizes additional samples from Ivins' lab.

August: FBI searches homes of Dr. Kenneth M. Berry, who founded a group to train medical staff to respond to biological disasters, as part of anthrax investigation. No charges are filed.

June 17: One of the samples taken from the Fort Detrick lab tests positive for the four genetic markers common to the anthrax in the attacks.

July 12: Following fumigation, testing determines American Media Inc.'s former headquarters is free of anthrax.

July 13: Hatfill sues The New York Times for defamation, claiming the newspaper ruined his reputation after it published a series of columns pointing to him as the culprit.

___

2005:

March 10: Sensor at Pentagon mailroom indicates possible presence of anthrax.

March 14: Alarm at second Pentagon mail facility also sounds possible anthrax presence. Post office in Hamilton, N.J., that handled anthrax-laced letters in 2001 reopens. Further testing determines no anthrax in Pentagon mailrooms.

March 31: Investigators ask Ivins about his access to the Fort Detrick lab in 2001. He tells them he went there "to escape" his home life. A review determines that Ivins' role in experiments does not justify the time he spent in the lab in 2001. Investigators ask Ivins to explain the differences in samples he submitted to the FBI in 2002 and those an investigator seized in April 2004.

___

2006:

March 27: The Supreme Court declines to block Hatfill's suit against the Times.

Oct. 23: A federal judge orders the Times to disclose a columnist's confidential sources as part of a libel lawsuit filed over the newspaper's coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Dec. 2: The Times asks a federal judge to dismiss Hatfill's lawsuit.

___

2007:

Jan. 12: A federal judge dismisses libel lawsuit filed against the Times by Hatfill.

May 7: Ivins tells investigators that, within three months after the attacks, he had been told by co-workers that anthrax samples in his lab were similiar to the anthrax used in the attacks. Investigators interviewed the co-workers, who deny disclosing such information to Ivins.

Aug. 13: A federal judge says five journalists must identify the government officials who leaked them details about Hatfill.

Nov. 2. Authorities search Ivins' home, taking 22 swabs of vacuum filters and radiators and seizing dozens of items.

___

2008:

March 7: Federal judge holds a former USA Today reporter in contempt and orders her to pay up to $5,000 a day if she refuses to identify her sources for stories about Hatfill.

March 11: Federal appeals court blocks the fines.

June 27: Federal government awards Hatfill $5.8 million to settle his violation of privacy lawsuit against the Justice Department.

July 29: Ivins, 62, dies of an apparent suicide after being informed by the FBI that charges likely were being brought against him in connection with the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Aug. 6: FBI briefs families of victims

Edited August 7, 2008 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...,0,369268.story

http://grassley.senate.gov/public/index.cf...8&Year=2008

18 QUESTIONS FOR THE FBI.

GRASSLEY SEEKS ANSWERS TO FBI’S AMERITHRAX INVESTIGATION WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today began asking tough questions of the Department of Justice and the FBI following the release of documents implicating Dr. Bruce Ivins as the only suspect in the Amerithrax investigation. “This has been a long investigation full of missteps and mistakes. There’s been too much secrecy up to this point and it deserves a full and thorough vetting,” Grassley said. “There are clearly a lot of unanswered questions and it’s time to start a dialogue so we can get answers.” Here is a copy of the text of Grassley’s letter. The Honorable Michael B. MukaseyU.S. Department of Justice950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.,Washington, DC 20530 The Honorable Robert S. Mueller, DirectorFederal Bureau of Investigation935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.Washington, DC 20535 Dear Attorney General Mukasey and Director Mueller: Thank you for ensuring that Congressional staff received an advanced briefing yesterday of the information released to the public in the Amerithrax investigation. The three affidavits provided represent an important, but small first step toward providing Congress and the public a full accounting of the evidence gathered by the FBI. At yesterday's briefing, Justice Department and FBI officials invited follow-up questions after there had been time to read the affidavits. Indeed, there are many important questions to be answered about the FBI's seven-year investigation, the basis for its conclusion that Dr. Bruce Ivins conducted the attacks alone, and the events leading to his suicide. To begin this inquiry, please provide complete and detailed answers to the following questions:

1. What is the date (month and year) that the FBI determined that the anthrax came from a specified flask in Ivins’s lab ("RMR-1029")?
   
2. When (month and year) did the FBI determine that Dr. Hatfill never had access to the anthrax used in the killings?
   
3. How did the FBI determine that Dr. Hatfill did not have access to the anthrax used in the killings? Was that because the FBI determined that Dr. Hatfill no longer worked at USAMRIID when the powder was made?
   
4. Was Dr. Hatfill or his counsel informed that Dr. Hatfill had been cleared of any involvement in the anthrax killings before the Department of Justice offered a settlement to him? Was he informed before signing the settlement agreement with him? If not, please explain why not.
   
5. Was Judge Walton (the judge overseeing the Privacy Act litigation) ever informed that Dr. Hatfill had been eliminated as a suspect in the anthrax killings? If so, when. If not, please explain why not.
   
6. Was Dr. Ivins ever polygraphed in the course of the investigation? If so, please provide the dates and results of the exam(s). If not, please explain why not.
   
7. Of the more than 100 people who had access to RMR 1029, how many were provided custody of samples sent outside Ft. Detrick? Of those, how many samples were provided to foreign laboratories?
   
8. If those with access to samples of RMR 1029 in places other than Ft. Detrick had used the sample to produce additional quantities of anthrax, would that anthrax appear distinguishable from RMR 1029?
   
9. How can the FBI be sure that none of the samples sent to other labs were used to create additional quantities of anthrax that would appear distinguishable from RMR 1029?
   
10. Please describe the methodology and results of any oxygen isotope measurements taken to determine the source of water used to grow the spores used in the anthrax attacks.
    
11. Was there video equipment which would record the activities of Dr. Ivins at Ft. Detrick on the late nights he was there on the dates surrounding the mailings? If so, please describe what examination of the video revealed.
    
12. When did the FBI first learn of Dr. Ivins’ late-night activity in the lab around the time of the attacks? If this is powerful circumstantial evidence of his guilt, then why did this information not lead the FBI to focus attention on him, rather than Dr. Hatfill, much sooner in the investigation?
    
13. When did the FBI first learn that Dr. Ivins was prescribed medications for various symptoms of mental illness? If this is circumstantial evidence of his guilt, then why did this information not lead the FBI to focus attention on him, rather than Dr. Hatfill, much sooner in the investigation? Of the 100 individuals who had access to RMR 1029, were any others found to suffer from mental illness, be under the care of a mental health professional, or prescribed anti-depressant/anti-psychotic medications? If so, how many?
    
14. What role did the FBI play in conducting and updating the background examination of Dr. Ivins in order for him to have clearance and work with deadly pathogens at Ft. Detrick?
    
15. After the FBI identified Dr. Ivins as the sole suspect, why was he not detained? Did the U.S. Attorney’s Office object to seeking an arrest or material witness warrant? If not, did anyone at FBI order a slower approach to arresting Ivins?
    
16. Had an indictment of Dr. Ivins been drafted before his death? If so, what additional information did it contain beyond the affidavits already released to the public? If not, then when, if ever, had a decision been made to seek an indictment from the grand jury?
    
17. According to family members, FBI agents publicly confronted and accused Dr. Ivins of the attacks, showed pictures of the victims to his daughter, and offered the $2.5 million reward to his son in the months leading up to his suicide. These aggressive, overt surveillance techniques appear similar to those used on Dr. Hatfill with the apparent purpose of intimidation rather than legitimate investigation. Please describe whether and to what degree there is any truth to these claims.
    
18. What additional documents will be released, if any, and when will they be released?
    

Please provide your responses in electronic format. Please have your staff contact (202) 224-4515 with any questions related to this request. Sincerely,

[Pamela Brown]

Where is Ivins' family in all this? They are also collateral damage in this tragic situation. Hopefully, they will speak up.

[John Simkin]

Where is Ivins' family in all this? They are also collateral damage in this tragic situation. Hopefully, they will speak up.

I imagine that his wife has been threatened that she will lose her husband's pension if she says anything that questions the official story.

[Mark Stapleton]

I imagine that his wife has been threatened that she will lose her husband's pension if she says anything that questions the official story.

Estimated degree of probability: 99.99%

[Pamela Brown]

I imagine that his wife has been threatened that she will lose her husband's pension if she says anything that questions the official story.

[/quote]

Unfortunately, you may be correct. What a terrible burden to place on his family. I hope eventually the truth comes out.

[William Kelly]

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip.../13/&prd=th&

Reading like an interesting thriller, though not always fast-paced, the story of the 2001 mailings of anthrax-laden letters began just a few days after the attacks in the U.S. termed “9/11.” The deadly mailer targeted some media organisations and a couple of Democratic U.S. senators and ended up killing five people and injuring many more. The story that has unfolded over the years contains many juicy ingredients: defence scientists unable to reverse engineer the killer bacterial spores using basic laboratory methods, scientists’ statements that often contradicted the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) line, government intrigue, finger-pointing by politicians at Al-Qaeda terrorists which contributed to the national frenzy for a war with Iraq and provided the rationale for a burgeoning of national spending on biological weapons research, an FBI witch-hunt that led to a multimillion dollar payout by the department for harassment of the wrong man, some clues, plenty of circumstantial evidence, and last, but not least, the mental instability and suicide of the person who was finally accused with no unequivocal proof tying the accused to the anthrax letters. The FBI accuses Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland (USAMRIID), of acting alone in the mailings, a story that many do not believe. Sadly, Ivins committed suicide a day before he was to be arrested.

Bioweapons research

The anthrax spores that started to appear in the mail from 18 September 2001 were used to justify a massive increase in U.S. national biodefence spending which rose (between 2001 and 2007) to $36 billion. It also led to funds for the construction of at least 20 new high containment research facilities across the country, capable of working with the most dangerous agents. The spending spree led to mounting concerns among biologists and a letter signed by over 750 U.S. microbiologists was sent to the Director, National Institutes of Health and complained that while budgets for working on weapons agents that were dubious threats to humans were booming, boring everyday bacteria that cause a number of diseases were being ignored to the peril of public health and safety. Other scientists such as Richard Ebright of Rutgers have long contended that the increase in the number of biological weapons labs, with a concurrent rise in the number of people trained to work with such agents, eventually makes us less, rather than more, safe. It would increase the number of laboratory accidents and in a climate of poor oversight and a history of cover-ups the public had more to fear from lab accidents than from terrorists.

Sixteen biodefence experts and scientists published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002 stating that the anthrax used in the mailings, with its high spore concentration, uniform particle size and electrostatic charge that reduced clumping and made it a ready aerosol, was “weapon’s grade.” Other experiments also confirmed that this anthrax was not easy to produce and required an additive such as silica. It was certainly something that had to come from a very sophisticated weapons lab.

Scapegoat or deadly killer

Early in the FBI’s investigation, Steven J. Hatfill, from USAMRIID was the prime suspect. But later, the case against him was dropped and the government agreed to pay him $4.6 million for damages. The FBI’s winding and tortuous investigation focussed at times on various people who appeared to have all succumbed to the pressures. A couple of Pakistani nationals who were suspects for a while had to leave the country, one doctor had his marriage fall apart and his practice suffered, a microbioloist began drinking heavily and eventually died. Few appeared to be able to survive the intense scrutiny of the FBI investigation and the public defamation that went with it. Thus it is possible that Ivins too crumbled under the pressure, which especially makes sense if he was mentally unstable.

Colleagues, friends and other scientists who have been following the details of this seven-year mystery are suspicious because using Ivins communications and strange behaviour to show that he was pathologically unstable is not sufficient evidence against him even while the investigation is filled with holes. The FBI claims that the anthrax used in the mailings can be tied genetically to a flask in Ivins’ lab. Without complete and detailed information on the methods used to link Ivins to the anthrax mailings, there can be no proof. Besides, we don’t know how the DNA fingerprint from anthrax in other labs — outside that of Dr. Ivins — compares with the mailed anthrax spores. What is even more disquieting is that Ivins was working with the FBI before he became a suspect. He had analysed the deadly envelopes and found the anthrax to be highly refined, a kind never seen in the premier weapon’s lab in Fort Detrick. It is therefore possible that the mailed anthrax could have contaminated some of his own samples thus leading to the identified genetic link between some of the anthrax in his lab and that found in the envelopes. Scientists routinely share samples of bacteria with colleagues. Others could therefore have received a sample or obtained it surreptitiously, particularly because Fort Detrick was known for missing lab specimens. Samples of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from this army biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, and by one estimate over a hundred people are likely to have had access to the anthrax used in the mailings.

More unanswered questions

An intriguing, perhaps unrelated, context of 2001 is that earlier that year the U.S. Administration derailed efforts to create an international protocol, as part of the Biological Weapons Convention, for enforcement and verification of biological weapons. Following that The New York Times published a report on secret and highly provocative U.S. biological weapons related activities, including the construction of an anthrax production plant in Nevada, the genetic engineering of anthrax for with no protection from existing vaccines, and the manufacture of biological bomblet prototypes.

Politicians including John McCain, the presumptive nominee of the Republican party for the November elections, have claimed in the past that Iraq may have been responsible for the anthrax mailings. Any discussion of the additive that weaponised the original anthrax, which pointed to a sophisticated operation from a weapon’s lab, instead of a one-man operation, has now disappeared. In the end, the U.S. administration got what it wanted — a war in Iraq, a thwarted biological weapons convention, an increase in biological weapons spending and an accused who was unstable and then conveniently killed himself. We will never know if all we were told was true or if this mystery was simply a massive cover-up by a fox guarding the chicken coop.

(Sujatha Byravan is based in Chennai and is former president of the Council for Responsible Genetics, Cambridge, MA.

© Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu

Edited August 14, 2008 by William Kelly

[John Simkin]

Even Time Magazine is raising doubts about the FBI case against Ivins:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,...1832646,00.html

The FBI says the government biodefense researcher acted alone in the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened 17. But as anthrax experts begin seeking hard data behind the eerie and suggestive details of the case, they are left with nothing but questions. For one thing, the FBI says its anthrax evidence is based on "new and sophisticated scientific tools" — i.e., new DNA technology that the agency says is more accurate than older methods — which investigators have used to trace the anthrax from the deadly mailings back to Ivins. The FBI began with 1,000 distinct samples of the Ames strain of anthrax, the type used in the attacks, from 16 laboratories that handled the bacterium. From there, investigators whittled their way down to a match: a single spore batch taken from a beaker in Ivins' laboratory. No scientist has ever been able to accomplish a feat of such precision before, not even those familiar with the subtle variations of the anthrax genome — but the FBI won't reveal its methods.

Now, scientists and some members of Congress are calling for the FBI to release details about the new DNA technology, so that its validity can be confirmed. "It's a general rule," says Donald Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity, who heads the federal Office of Public Health Preparedness. "When you develop a new test for something, it usually has to go through a fairly rigorous examination: Does it really do what it claims to do?"

Anthrax experts interviewed by TIME point to the peculiarities of anthrax research that underscore why it is critical that the FBI's methodology be evaluated. Most important is that anthrax has historically been shuttled freely around the world — a fact that the FBI has not explicitly accounted for. Until the security crackdown that followed the 2001 attacks, most labs readily sold anthrax strains — including the type linked to Ivins — to scientists doing research in other parts of the world. "Bruce, like most people in the lab, derived most of his strains from outside sources," says Jeffrey Adamovicz, a former bacteriology chief who worked with Ivins at Fort Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) for 12 years. If the FBI has not investigated every one of those possible sources, in other words, it can't be certain that the path to Ivins is solid. No one but the FBI knows for sure.

[William Kelly]

After Congressional Breifing fails to convince Congressman and scientists, FBI to present the real evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/washingt...tml?ref=science

Edited August 16, 2008 by William Kelly

[Bob Goodman]

In the United States on September 11, even though we endured the attacks and even though we all found that our cell phones weren't working, and we all had to somehow, in the chaotic first few hours after the planes hit, get through the traffic jams and pick up our kids who were dismissed early from school, assemble our families, all without cell phones. Even at that, the level of Fear wasn't that high. Anger was high. Grief was never higher, but not fear. The Anthrax attacks however, made us all potential victims, this was not some far away singular event in New York City that we watched on TV. Every home that had a mailbox was now a target. The junk mail in my mailbox could have just brushed against one of those poisoned letters or it could have been run through a machine that was contaminated and processed thousands of letters contaminating them all. A lot of scenarios came to mind an in discussions people had at work or with friends. It was after the attacks that "Homeland Security" really took off. Make an escape plan in case of emergency, colored graphs telling you how much danger we were in every day, etc, etc. There was a run on antibiotics used for Anthrax poisoning (the rich got theirs first, of course). The Anthrax attacks made us realize how truly vulnerable our systems were to attack. The postal system, transportation system, our financial and political system were now in stark danger. Why, multiple, stragetically placed attacks like this could paralyze our whole country. The clean-up required was augean, incredibly expensive and took years. Released in a busy airport or transit hub, (God forbid) an oil refinery, the New York Stock exchange, it could shut down normal operations for years. I recall discussing a lot of senarios with people. The Anthrax Attacks made us feel weak, made us feel Fear. The Anthrax Attacks forced each individual American to fear, to think, to respond unlike 911. 911 was a passive event. All we did was watch it on TV. But this was an Active event. It required a response from each of us. We were all potential targets now. My wife wanted me to buy plastic sheeting for the windows, stock up on water, now that's personal, and I better respond or spend some time explaining and arguing. My family wasn't alone, the same thing went on in homes all across America. Every family discussed it, was aware of it and feared. That what makes it an active event. 911 didn't cause anywhere near the same level of fear as the Anthrax Attacks. For all it's horror, 911 was a television event. Which by the nature doesn't convey the same level of personal fear as Anthrax in the mail, in MY mail. That's not TV, that's My mailbox! 911 caused revulsion, anger, incredible sadness and a form of unity that was purer then what came after the Anthrax attacks. 911 didn't make anyone stock up on water and put plastic sheeting over their windows. The Anthrax attacks did. We didn't know who did it. Logic pointed to Al Qaeda (at the time...wink!). After that we were waiting for yet another shoe to drop. What was coming next? Fear across the U.S.was now palpable. After the Anthrax attacks, all bets were off as were the gloves. It was after the Anthrax Attacks that the American People gave their government card blanche. "Defend me and my family!" cried the American people. Do whatever you have too. Make war, torture, take away some of my unused rights for a while. We made a deal with the devil to protect us and the price was our constitutional soul. Hopefully, in time, we can heal ourselves and get our rabid dogs back on their leashes. But if we get hit again, as hard or harder, all bets are off. And as for Mr. Ivins, looks like somebody's tying up some loose ends. All cleaned up now...Back to your homes...The shows over..Nothing to see here...Move along...

[Len Colby]

Bob,

I have not lived in the US since 1993, was in Brazil on 9/11 and my friends and relatives are almost entirely in major cities (NY, Chicago, Miami, Boston, DC, SF, LA) but my impression was very different from yours. I remember news reports or paranoia breaking out in small towns were the appearance of anybody looking even vaguely Middle Eastern prompted worried calls to 911. A Brazilian friend of mine’s cousin who has light brown skin and black hair had a hard time in the small town in Virginia where she was an exchange student at the time.

You seem to think the attacks furthered the agenda of the Bush regime. I agree they did, but only to a very limited extent. What concrete results can you point to that 9/11 alone would have been insufficient to justify? You hint at some things but I have had problems in the past when I made posts based on the assumption another member actually meant what I thought they were driving at.

Len

Edited August 16, 2008 by Len Colby

[Michael Hogan]

"I don't think we're ever going to be able to put the suspicions to bed. There's always going to be a spore on the grassy knoll."

Vahid Majidi of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

FBI Elaborates on Anthrax Case

The Washington Post

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...d=moreheadlines

[Bob Goodman]

I know I am setting myself up for a scolding, not to mention a whupping by responding to you, Len, but look, you don't have to believe me that everything wasn't rosey anymore in the ole US of A after the Anthrax attacks. Here's something from the August 15, 2008 article in The American Conservtive in which I will embolden the specfic clues...err....points! Yeah, points. This well-written article gives a little more insight into the details of the operation, or whatever ((they ask some good questions (if you take my meaning...read carefully)...Take the time to read...Wink!)) as they stand now. The embolds are mine, enjoy:

August 15, 2008

The Anthrax Files

The FBI claims to have caught the killer. But so much evidence has been neglected or mishandled that many experts still have doubts.

Christopher Ketcham

Seven years after the anthrax attacks shut down Congress, sowed panic nationwide, killed five, sickened 17, and allowed neocon propagandists to variously blame al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the FBI claims to have gotten its man.

( (you see the sowed part? Just read a little, my man, and you can find plenty more ...especially in the older stuff...From here on, I enboldened some of the parts of the puzzle. Where do they go? You tell me...please...(bg))

But the official story doesn’t fully accord with the facts. Any reasonable assessment of the evidence suggests that the same powerful interests that might have been served by prolonging the investigation would have had a stake in finally bringing it to a tidy conclusion. That doesn’t mean that the killer was caught.

The acknowledged certainty is that the anthrax letters weren’t the work of Islamists or Iraqis. The attacks were perpetrated by someone with high-level access to U.S. government supplies of the deadly bacteria. Ground zero of the investigation has long been the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. But the lab had dropped from the headlines until recently, much as the FBI had seemingly allowed its investigation to languish.

The first week of August, the popular press got back in the game, reporting the apparent suicide of USAMRIID scientist Bruce E. Ivins, alleged to be the sole operator behind the anthrax letters. The Associated Press reported that Ivins, who is said to have killed himself on July 29 with an overdose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, was “one of the government’s leading scientists researching vaccines and cures for anthrax exposure.” According to the AP, he was “brilliant but troubled.” His lawyer, Paul Kemp, says that Ivins..... passed a pair of polygraph tests....... and that the grand jury investigating the case was weeks from returning an indictment. Yet within days of his death, the bureau announced that it was beginning the ...shutdown.... of its “Amerithrax” investigation. “Anthrax Case a Wrap,” blared the Daily News on Aug. 4.

In April, it was reported that the FBI had been focusing on as many as four suspects. Fox News identified them as a “former deputy commander,” presumably in the U.S. Army, a “leading anthrax scientist,” and “a microbiologist.” .....The fourth suspect was given no description...... Now the bureau is “confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks,” according to the assurances of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

The Ivins news came close on the heels of a far quieter announcement on June 27 that the FBI’s investigation of the previous top anthrax suspect, Steven Hatfill, also a USAMRIID bioresearcher, ended not with a trial and conviction but with a $5.8 million settlement effectively admitting that the bureau had the wrong guy. Hatfill had been hounded by investigators for three years, his career and reputation ruined.

Ivins was subjected to similar treatment. According to the AP, he complained to friends that agents had “stalked” him and his family. They offered his son $2.5 million and “a sports car of his choice” to rat out his father. They approached his hospitalized daughter to turn evidence on him, plying her at bedside with pictures of the murdered anthrax victims and telling her, “This is what your father did.” W. Russell Byrne, Ivins’s supervisor at USAMRIID, told the AP that Ivins, 62, was emotionally broken by the FBI’s behavior: “One person said he’d sit at his desk and weep.”

Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois who drafted the 1989 Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act signed by President George H.W. Bush, advised the FBI in its initial investigation of the anthrax letters. Along with several other American bioweapons experts—among them Jonathan King, professor of molecular biology at MIT, and Barbara Rosenberg, who studied biowarfare with the Federation of American Scientists—Boyle warned early on that the spores issued from inside a U.S. research operation, possibly one that was classified. He provided the FBI with lists of scientists, contractors, and laboratories that had worked on anthrax projects, but he is skeptical of Ivins as the lone killer: “The Feds pursued the same strategy against Ivins as they did against Hatfill—persecute him until he broke, which Ivins did and Hatfill did not. Dead men tell no tales.”

Ivins, says Boyle, just doesn’t fit the bill. “It does not appear that he had the technological sophistication to manufacture this super weapons-grade anthrax, which would have included aerosolization, silicon coating, and an electrostatic charge.” Jeffrey Adamovicz, who directed the bacteriology division at Fort Detrick in 2003 and 2004, told McClatchy that the anthrax mailed to Sen. Tom Daschle was “so concentrated and so consistent and so clean that I would assert that Bruce could not have done that part.”

Following the release of the FBI’s public case against Ivins, the New York Times editorialized that “there is no direct evidence of his guilt” and decried the “lack of hard, incontrovertible proof.” The Washington Post called the case “admittedly circumstantial.” Investigators failed to place Ivins in New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when the letters were reportedly mailed from a Princeton location. They swabbed his residence, locker, several cars, the tools in his laboratory, and his office space, but found no trace of anthrax that genetically matched the bacteria in the letters. Indeed, some of the evidence—all circumstantial, none forensic—was downright laughable. Ivins at one time maintained a mailbox under an assumed name where he received pornographic magazines. He had once been “obsessed” with a Princeton sorority because of a failed college romance, and the Princeton mailbox where one of the letters originated was located within 100 yards of a storage facility used by the sorority—in a location Ivins apparently last visited 27 years ago. He drank. He made homicidal statements to a mental-health support group. He wrote rambling letters to the editor of his local paper. How any of this motivated Bruce Ivins to kill fellow Americans with a bioweapon is not established.

Moreover, his former colleagues have repeatedly told the media that, as far as they are aware, ....Ivins didn’t know how to weaponize anthrax........... He was a vaccine specialist, not a weaponizer. The assumption is that Ivins kept his weaponizing skills secret from his coworkers. But how did he learn those skills? Perhaps colleagues at Ft. Detrick provided the help in casual conversation. Yet there’s not the slightest indication that during his years at Ft. Detrick Ivins even once asked fellow scientists about weaponizing techniques.

Nor is it clear why Ivins—a registered Democrat—would single out Sens. Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle to receive lethal letters. Interestingly, both had been critical impediments to passage of the Patriot Act. The first wave of anthrax mail, sent Sept. 18, 2001, targeted major media; the second round, posted Oct. 9, went to Congress. On Oct. 25, amid widespread panic, the act passed. Yet it is improbable that a mad scientist would specialize in such targeted political activity—or that he personally benefited from the repercussions. Many others did, however.

“In the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event,” Salon’s Glenn Greenwald writes. “It was really the anthrax letters that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years … that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.”

By Oct. 28, ABC was reporting, “four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have........ detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica”.........—bentonite being a hallmark of the Iraqi weapons program. (In 2007, ABC admitted that no bentonite was ever detected but refused to unmask its sources.) “Some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun,” Peter Jennings said at the time.

The administration’s acolytes did not disappoint. William Kristol and Robert Kagan complained, “What will it take for the FBI and the CIA to start connecting the dots here? A signed confession from Saddam?” “The leading supplier suspect has to be Iraq,” the Wall Street Journal opined, “The government has to do everything possible to destroy the anthrax threat at its state-sponsored source.” Added Laurie Mylroie in National Review, “Iraqi intelligence was intimately involved in the 9/11 attacks and [the] military grade anthrax sent to Senators Leahy and Daschle almost certainly came from an Iraqi lab.” As late as 2007, long after it became apparent that the anthrax was homegrown, outlets like Fox News continued to insist on a Middle Eastern link.

Those making the case for war in Iraq and seeking to advance the administration’s domestic security agenda had good reason to resist a swift resolution to the case—especially one involving an American perpetrator. Whether by suggestion or as a result of its own incompetence, the FBI obliged.

As early as November 2001, the New York Times was reporting that the bureau’s “missteps” were “hampering the inquiry.” Indeed, from the beginning, the FBI has been in possession of a key piece of evidence that it apparently ignored.

Among the first suspects to come into the FBI’s sights was an Egyptian-born ex-USAMRIID biologist named Ayaad Assaad. He appeared on the radar because of an anonymous letter sent to the bureau identifying him as part of a terrorist cell possibly linked to the anthrax attacks. Yet, according to the Hartford Courant, the FBI did not attempt to track down the author of the letter, “despite its curious timing, coming a matter of days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known.”

Assaad was quickly exonerated by FBI investigators, and the matter swiftly dropped—though the letter may have provided the best piece of evidence in the case. It was sent prior to the arrival of the anthrax letters, suggesting foreknowledge of the attacks, and its language was similar to that of the deadly mail. Moreover, it displayed an intimate knowledge of USAMRIID operations, suggesting that it came from within the limited ranks of Fort Detrick researchers —a relatively small group with access to and expertise in weaponized anthrax.

The FBI has refused to make a copy of the letter publicly available—or even to give one to Assaad himself. It did, however, share the contents with a Vassar College professor and language forensics expert named Don Foster, who famously fingered Joe Klein as the anonymous author behind Primary Colors and helped to catch the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber. After reading news reports, he requested a copy of the letter, and, following his review of documents written by “some 40 USAMRIID employees,” Foster “found writings by a female officer that looked like a perfect match,” according to an article he authored in the October 2003 Vanity Fair. When he brought this seemingly crucial clue to the attention of the FBI’s anthrax task force, however, the bureau declined to follow up. According to Foster, the senior FBI agent on the case had never even heard of the Assaad letter. (For the record, Foster isn’t an unimpeachable source. He strayed from his area of professional expertise and published unrelated circumstantial evidence in his Vanity Fair piece that wrongly fingered Hatfill, who sued the magazine, which settled on undisclosed terms.)

..................“The letter-writer clearly knew my entire background, my training in both chemical and biological agents, my security clearance, what floor I work on, that I have two sons, what train I take to work, and where I live,” .............Assaad told reporter Laura Rozen. Since he was almost immediately cleared, attempting to frame him served no purpose, except to indulge a personal enmity. To that end, Assaad suggested that the FBI question the pair of USAMRIID colleagues most likely to carry a grudge against him, Marian Rippy and Philip Zack, who years earlier had been reprimanded for sending Assad a racist poem. Though the Courant reported video evidence of Zack making after-hours trips to labs where pathogens were stored, there is no record of the FBI ever investigating him or Rippy, a colleague with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

The FBI’s failures don’t end there. The anthrax used in the terror attacks has been identified as similar to strains held at laboratories in Ames, Iowa. The Ames database, maintained and overseen by Iowa State University, was a comprehensive culture collection of some 100 vials gathered since 1928. It listed all parties, agencies, and labs that acquired its anthrax strains. When researchers, fearful of terrorists breaching the lab, offered to destroy the anthrax cultures, the FBI did not object. “This was an astonishing thing to do,” Francis Boyle tells me. “It should have been preserved as evidence. This was a roadmap of everybody and anybody that had gotten access to develop the super-strain that hit Leahy and Daschle.”

Questions about the Ames database point to a bigger concern: where was the weapons-grade anthrax in the letters produced? If the FBI had an airtight case that the anthrax killer worked at Ft. Detrick—thanks to new DNA techniques supposedly linking the spores to that lab—surely the Assaad letter would be a key piece of evidence in the case against Ivins. At the very least it would have to be explained away rather than ignored.

Another possibility is that the attacks didn’t originate at USAMRIID at all, and the FBI has once again accused an innocent man. Ironically, it was Ivins who, among other investigators, was initially tasked by the FBI with analyzing the anthrax in the letters. Dr. Gerry Andrews, a professor of microbiology at the University of Wyoming and former colleague of Ivins at Ft. Detrick, wrote in the New York Times, “When [ivins’s] team analyzed the powder, they found it to be a startlingly refined weapons-grade anthrax spore preparation, the likes of which had never been seen before by personnel at Fort Detrick.” Granted, Andrews has an interest in exonerating his former lab, but he goes on to make an astonishing allegation: “It is extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade and quality found in that envelope.”

If the scientists at Fort Detrick did not have the capacity to produce this kind of anthrax, who did? Boyle suggests an answer in his book, Biowarfare and Terrorism. He alleges that the evidence in the anthrax spores, if properly pursued, would have “led directly back to a secret but officially sponsored U.S. government biowarfare program that was illegal and criminal, in violation of [the] Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.” This might be easily dismissed as conspiracy theory except that a source no less reputable than the New York Times published a similar charge on Sept. 4, 2001: “the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons. … earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax.”

Boyle suggests possible perps: the Pentagon, the CIA, or perhaps private sector scientists acting under covert contract with the government. According to a 2002 BBC report, the CIA may indeed have been investigating “methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control.” “The shocking assertion,” offered the BBC, “is that a key member of the covert operation may have removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax.” Boyle theorizes that the FBI’s investigation was purposely bungled as part of a cover-up. He argues that the legal process ensuing from a thorough investigation “would, in a court of law, directly implicate the United States government, its agencies, its officials, and its agents, in conducting illegal and criminal biowarfare research.”

But if such a program exists, why would anyone associated with it risk exposure by sending crude anthrax letters? Perhaps for the oldest motive in the world: money. In the wake of the postal terror, biowarfare funding under the rubric of “biodefense” received a major shot in the arm. By a vote of 99-0, the Senate passed the BioShield Act of 2004, which, on top of $22 billion for civilian biowarfare-related “defense work” funded between 2001 and 2005, allocates $5.6 billion through 2014 “to purchase and stockpile vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox, and other potential agents of bioterror.” Critics claim that BioShield is a form of covert offensive biowarfare planning.

Such research could come at a high price—beyond the billions Congress readily rubber-stamped. “The bioterror programs are far more likely to generate new risks to public health, rather than to provide additional protections,” MIT microbiologist Jonathan King says. Programs such as BioShield are “also generating a network of small and large companies planning to profit.”

Hillel W. Cohen, associate professor of epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, offers a similar assessment. “Before 2001, some of us in public health described bioterrorism as an exaggerated threat,” Cohen says. “No one had ever died from bioterrorism, and we warned that the proliferation of laboratories studying anthrax and other biological weapons agents was a terrible mistake, diverting money from real health needs and dangerously multiplying the number of people with access. After the 2001 anthrax letters, our warnings were buried in an avalanche of fear-mongering.” Today, Cohen says, “billions are being spent to support many more such labs.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley is calling for a Congressional investigation, but.......................................... we may never know the identity of the anthrax killer. ...........................................................................Was it the uninvestigated Ft. Detrick letter-writer with compelling foreknowledge? The dead scientist the FBI initially asked to investigate the attacks then later turned against? .............Or some other individual or group, with access to high-grade strains, ......

(((Or.......who apparently were willing to ...(omg, can you believe it)....take the risk of being locked up on a Burglary charge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...Always worked before.. (B.G. here.. sorry, jumped into the article and added that which you see within these parantheses here) Oh well, back to the article)))...

....who stood to benefit from a bioterror scare? We know who didn’t put anthrax in the mail: Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. Beyond that, all we know is that the FBI’s conduct—whether by bureaucratic bungling or some kind of cover-up—makes it unlikely this case will ever be definitively closed.

THE END

ok..this is me now...You see. In .........MY AMERICA ....MY AMERICA....(ahhh..Patriotism, the last refuge, don't you know)...well, in My America, we had families. We loved someone. We had those who loved us, for real. We worried about every danger to those we loved. We took into our Calculus any possiblity of danger to them. That's what normal people do, you know. Again, this was and ACTIVE event. Not a passive event. Kind of like everybody collecting cans and scrap metal to benefit the war effort in WW2. It engaged the public and galvinized the war effort. Oh, not the Anthrax Attacks, silly! The cans and stuff, if you know what I mean. Incredible psychological power those Active events, don't you know. No? Well, look into it a little, won't take much time. You have a good day now. Always remember that an idle mind is the Devil's workshop, not to mention sometimes it's also stealing from the Public Treasury. I kinda lost count on the paranthesis, sorry. Alright boys, back to work now.

[Len Colby]

Bob,

Ivins might be guilty he might not, there is a lot of evidence pointing both ways and I haven`t looked into it enough. What interests me more is the theory that the attacks were some sort of government plot. My main problem with that theory is that they don`t seem to have SIGNIFICANTLY advanced the Busho-con agenda.

Len