Obama's Close Friend & Appointee Proposed Government Infiltration of Forums

[Jack White]

At a quick glance it appears that the article is simply an academic outline on how to combat conspiracy theories, in general, without a specific proposal to combat JFK conspiracy theories. For the most part, I found it harmless. It has several disturbing and short-sighted parts, however. At one point, Sunstein says "as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined." Well, first of all, who is to decide which accounts are true and, second of all, who decides when it is permissible to counter accounts that ARE true, and which accounts are undermined?

I'd like to have a debate with this guy. Any way we can get him to join the Forum?

HARMLESS? We are beginning to get a good read on Speer's mission.

Jack

Jack--what part of "for the most part" don't you understand? As far as 'mission", from my perspective there is no one on this forum whose "mission" is as questionable as your own.

Consider:

1. I recently posted a slide comparing the various back of the head photos, in which I pointed out what I believe to have been the bullet hole discovered at autopsy.

2. Dr. Fetzer actually looked at this slide, and, to my surprise, agreed with me that this was a bullet hole, and that this showed that the HSCA pathology panel had incorrectly ignored important evidence. On my webpage, I show both how the Ida Dox drawing of the back of the head misrepresented the appearance of this dark spot, and how the close up photo of the white material in the hair just below this dark spot was cropped to exclude this dark spot from the photo, thereby concealing from the autopsy doctors the possibility the entrance they observed at autopsy was just above the white material shown to them. This, in turn, suggests that Dr. Baden at the very least conspired to keep this dark spot hidden. Perhaps this was done to protect the reputation of his close colleague Dr. Fisher, the first to claim the photos failed to show a bullet hole in this location. In any event, my "discovery" of this bullet hole in the back of the head photo, if acknowledged by the bulk of the research community, would have to be considered a major find, and a major step forward for the research community.

3. Nevertheless, you, only days after announcing all the photos are fake and are of no value beyond that they are fake, decided to intervene and convince Fetzer that the back of the head photo in fact showed no hole. Hmm...while perhaps you really did not see this hole, it certainly seems possible you were concerned that my "discovery" of this hole would lead to further inspection of the evidence, and undermine your position that the only thing worth looking at are anomalies. (FWIW, Robert Groden, who rescued the color back of the head photo from the dungeon of the archives, has long held that the intact back of the head in this photo is a matte. The matte he sees, however, is above the hole I see. In November, while I was talking to someone on the grassy knoll, Robert Groden ran over and told me he really respects my research, and asked me to sign his copy of my DVD. I was quite flattered to do so. On this DVD, I point out the bullet hole in the back of the head photo. As a result, I suspect Groden also sees this hole, and is now of the opinion it was the bullet hole mentioned in the autopsy report.)

4. After your telling Fetzer there was no hole visible in the photo, I pointed out that you had acknowledged years ago that you saw a bullet hole on the cranium in the location directly underlying the hole I see in the back of the head photo. You then tried to deny ever having said you shared my assessment of F8, the photo showing the hole on the cranium. When you posted your assessment of F8, however, it showed that we do, in fact share assessments of the photo. Except that, for some strange reason, the area of the photo in your exhibit showing the bullet hole was extremely dark, and supposedly on the left side of the skull. As the close up of this area you provided acknowledged that the bullet hole was to the right of the EOP--which is in the middle of the back of the head, however, it was clear you were either somewhat confused when you created this exhibit, or were trying to confuse Fetzer so that he wouldn't realize you were basically confirming what I'd claimed.

5. So what am I to believe? That you are sincere but frequently mistaken? Or that you are so antagonistic to anyone's studying the evidence for any purpose other than to "prove" it is fake, that you will deliberately mislead others?

I choose to suspect the former. But if you were in my shoes, you would undoubtedly suspect the latter.

I have seldom seen so many errors in one posting. What is that crapola about me telling Fetzer there

was "no hole" in the gaping skull wound photo. What a load of nonsense. Recently I posted here

the correct analysis of the autopsy photo and am attaching it again for Speer's edification. I did this

first about 20 years ago. He has the photo turned sideways. Here is the correct view:

[Pat Speer]

At a quick glance it appears that the article is simply an academic outline on how to combat conspiracy theories, in general, without a specific proposal to combat JFK conspiracy theories. For the most part, I found it harmless. It has several disturbing and short-sighted parts, however. At one point, Sunstein says "as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined." Well, first of all, who is to decide which accounts are true and, second of all, who decides when it is permissible to counter accounts that ARE true, and which accounts are undermined?

I'd like to have a debate with this guy. Any way we can get him to join the Forum?

HARMLESS? We are beginning to get a good read on Speer's mission.

Jack

Jack--what part of "for the most part" don't you understand? As far as 'mission", from my perspective there is no one on this forum whose "mission" is as questionable as your own.

Consider:

1. I recently posted a slide comparing the various back of the head photos, in which I pointed out what I believe to have been the bullet hole discovered at autopsy.

2. Dr. Fetzer actually looked at this slide, and, to my surprise, agreed with me that this was a bullet hole, and that this showed that the HSCA pathology panel had incorrectly ignored important evidence. On my webpage, I show both how the Ida Dox drawing of the back of the head misrepresented the appearance of this dark spot, and how the close up photo of the white material in the hair just below this dark spot was cropped to exclude this dark spot from the photo, thereby concealing from the autopsy doctors the possibility the entrance they observed at autopsy was just above the white material shown to them. This, in turn, suggests that Dr. Baden at the very least conspired to keep this dark spot hidden. Perhaps this was done to protect the reputation of his close colleague Dr. Fisher, the first to claim the photos failed to show a bullet hole in this location. In any event, my "discovery" of this bullet hole in the back of the head photo, if acknowledged by the bulk of the research community, would have to be considered a major find, and a major step forward for the research community.

3. Nevertheless, you, only days after announcing all the photos are fake and are of no value beyond that they are fake, decided to intervene and convince Fetzer that the back of the head photo in fact showed no hole. Hmm...while perhaps you really did not see this hole, it certainly seems possible you were concerned that my "discovery" of this hole would lead to further inspection of the evidence, and undermine your position that the only thing worth looking at are anomalies. (FWIW, Robert Groden, who rescued the color back of the head photo from the dungeon of the archives, has long held that the intact back of the head in this photo is a matte. The matte he sees, however, is above the hole I see. In November, while I was talking to someone on the grassy knoll, Robert Groden ran over and told me he really respects my research, and asked me to sign his copy of my DVD. I was quite flattered to do so. On this DVD, I point out the bullet hole in the back of the head photo. As a result, I suspect Groden also sees this hole, and is now of the opinion it was the bullet hole mentioned in the autopsy report.)

4. After your telling Fetzer there was no hole visible in the photo, I pointed out that you had acknowledged years ago that you saw a bullet hole on the cranium in the location directly underlying the hole I see in the back of the head photo. You then tried to deny ever having said you shared my assessment of F8, the photo showing the hole on the cranium. When you posted your assessment of F8, however, it showed that we do, in fact share assessments of the photo. Except that, for some strange reason, the area of the photo in your exhibit showing the bullet hole was extremely dark, and supposedly on the left side of the skull. As the close up of this area you provided acknowledged that the bullet hole was to the right of the EOP--which is in the middle of the back of the head, however, it was clear you were either somewhat confused when you created this exhibit, or were trying to confuse Fetzer so that he wouldn't realize you were basically confirming what I'd claimed.

5. So what am I to believe? That you are sincere but frequently mistaken? Or that you are so antagonistic to anyone's studying the evidence for any purpose other than to "prove" it is fake, that you will deliberately mislead others?

I choose to suspect the former. But if you were in my shoes, you would undoubtedly suspect the latter.

I have seldom seen so many errors in one posting. What is that crapola about me telling Fetzer there

was "no hole" in the gaping skull wound photo. What a load of nonsense. Recently I posted here

the correct analysis of the autopsy photo and am attaching it again for Speer's edification. I did this

first about 20 years ago. He has the photo turned sideways. Here is the correct view:

Thank you, Jack. I was thinking of posting the image myself. Is it not true, Jack, that in your view, the "dark area" is on the left side of the head? Is it also not true that in your caption in which you describe this area, you acknowledge that the bullet hole in this dark area is to the right of the EOP? Is it also not true that it would be impossible for a bullet hole to the right of the EOP to be on the left side of the head?

Or are you gonna pull a McAdams and refuse to admit your mistake?

And I didn't say you refused to acknowledge the bullet hole in the gaping skull wound photo. You may have been the first to do so. When I first came forward claiming that was a bullet hole, you said you agreed, and that you'd long felt that to be the case. No, what I said was that you claimed there was no bullet hole in the back of the head photos, as depicted in the Eye of the Beholder slide above... even though the bullet hole I, and apparently Fetzer, see, directly overlays the bullet hole on the skull in F8, and this proves the HSCA pathology panel to have been full of beans.

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

OpEdNews

Original with links at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Birds-of-...100121-980.html

January 22, 2010

Birds of a Feather: Subverting the Constitution at Harvard Law

By Jim Fetzer

Madison, WI (OpEdNews) --As someone who has promoted the investigation of political events that appear to have involved "pulling the wool" over the eyes of the public, I must say that I have never read a more corrosive approach toward the Constitution than "Conspiracy Theories" by Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule of the Harvard School of Law. The massive blunder at the core of their conception is to take for granted that virtually all "conspiracy theories" -- and certainly the most historic, such as JFK and 9/11 -- are obviously false! That is about as gratuitous a begging of the question as I have ever encountered -- and I taught logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning for 35 years. No one can know which theories are true or false without investigating them. That this is coming from faculty at Harvard Law is simply stunning.

Conspiracies only require two or more persons collaborating together to bring about an illegal end. An obvious point apparently escaped their attention, since the official account of 9/11 posits that 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial airliners and outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world under the control of a guy in a cave off in Afghanistan. So the official account of 9/11 posits a conspiracy! If we follow their advice, we cannot even discuss 9/11 -- the pivotal event that changed the world, according to "W" -- since, whether the official account is true or false (because more was going on behind the scenes), it involved a conspiracy, which shows the absurdity of their position.

As a student of conspiracy theories ("Thinking about "Conspiracy Theories': 9/11 and JFK", http://assassinationscience.com, http://assassinationresearch,com, and http://911scholars.org ), the misconception at the heart of their position is to suppose that conspiracy theories-- virtually without exception -- are incapable of empirical investigation and hence beyond the scope of rational evaluation. This contention acquires a certain degree of plausibility by trading upon an equivocation between "theories" as mere rumors, guesses, or speculations and "theories" as empirically testable explanatory hypotheses. To appreciate the difference, consider the use of that term in relation to the atomic theory of matter, the theory of evolution, or the theory of relativity. Perhaps news of the existence of "scientific theories" hasn't made its way to Harvard Law!

They contend that conspiracy theories are "self-sealing" and products of (what they call) a "crippled epistemology". But while there may be some conspiracy theories that satisfy that description, it is certainly not true of all. My purpose in creating a JFK research group in 1992 was to take rumor and speculation out of the case and place its study on an objective and scientific foundation. Even Vincent Bugliosi, who has written a massive work, RECLAIMING HISTORY (2007) defending THE WARREN REPORT (1964), has described them as "the only exclusively scientific books ever published on the assassination", which he has exactly right, but I am still dismayed that he disregards our objective and scientific findings, which contradict the "official account" of the assassination.

The members of this group included a world authority on the human brain who was also an expert on wound ballistics, a Ph.D. in physics who is also an M.D. and board-certified in radiation oncology, a physician who participated in the treatment of JFK at Parkland Hospital and, two days later, was responsible for the care of his alleged assassin, a legendary photo-analyst who testified before the HSCA during its reinvestigation of the case in 1977-78 and later advised Oliver Stone in the making of "JFK", and another Ph.D. in physics, this time with a specialization in electromagnetism. We have discovered that the autopsy X-rays had been altered, that someone else's brain had been substituted for that of JFK, and that the Zapruder film was extensively altered to mislead the American people.

Those who may not have time to read the books I have edited, ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003), might benefit from the overview presented in my chapter, "Dealey Plaza Revisited", which appears in JOHN F. KENNEDY: HISORY, MEMORY, LEGACY (2009), which can be downloaded here. Our research has been corroborated by the five-volume study, INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), by Douglas Horne, who was the senior analysis for military affairs for the Assassination Records Review Board, which was created by an act of Congress with the authority to declassify documents, records, and studies held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other governmental entities, where its work has made an enormous important contribution of information about the assassination.

Insofar as THE WARREN REPORT (1964), THE HSCA FINAL REPORT (1979), and Gerald Posner, CASE CLOSED (1963), are all predicated upon the "magic bullet" theory -- of a single bullet entering the back of JFK's neck, traversing it without hitting any bony structures, and exiting at the throat to enter the back of Governor John Connally -- if that hypothesis is false, then, as Michael Baden, M.D., the chair of the medical panel for the HSCA has observed, there had to have been at least six shots from three different directions -- it may be even simpler to understand how we know the "magic bullet" theory is a fantasy.Try "Reasoning about Assassinations",a paper I presented at Cambridge, which was published in an international peer-reviewed journal, if you want to see scientific in practice.

More studies of the assassination are found at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com. In relation to "Conspiracy Theories", however, Paul Craig Roberts has observed that the rule of law-- perhaps humanity's greatest achievement -- has been lost. Sunstein,who is now Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, even recommends "that the U.S. government create a cadre of covert agents to infiltrate anti-war groups and groups opposed to U.S. government policies in order to provoke them into actions or statements for which they can be discredited and even arrested", as Roberts observes. "That this proposal comes from a Harvard Law School professor demonstrates the collapse of respect for law among American law professors themselves, ranging from John Yoo at Berkeley, the advocate of torture, to Sunstein at Harvard, a totalitarian who advocates war on the First Amendment."

Joseph Lawler has observed the profound irony of attacking conspiracy theories by proposing a conspiracy to defeat them! That Cass Sunstein is a member of the Obama administration in a regulatory capacity and has even been mentioned as a possible nominee for the Supreme Court reflects an astounding example of cognitive dissonance. Like other officials of the government, that would entail an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Given his position on the First Amendment, not only could he not swear such an oath without committing perjury but his role in subverting the principles upon which this country was founded make him one of those who qualifies as an enemy of the document he was swearing to uphold.

Add public comments http://www.opednews.com/articles/Birds-of-...100121-980.html

Obama Confident's Spine-Chilling Proposal

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr.../01/15/sunstein

Roger Bruce Feinman, J.D.

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/obama-staffer-...ion-911-groups/

This week, my attention was called to an article published in 2008 by the Journal of Political Philosophy,

co-authored by Professor Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School, and entitled "Conspiracy

Theories: Causes and Cures," Obama appointed Sunstein to head his Office of Information and Regulatory

Affairs.

Reformulated in terms that are immediately relevant to our interests, Sunstein's thesis is that it is a

proper function of the United States Government to actively undermine the efficacy of those who propagate

the belief that President Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy within the government itself

(specifically the CIA, but presumably allowing for one or more conspiracies among other participants),

even by using covert means to disrupt their communications. There is nothing novel about this idea.

During 1966, the United States Information Agency secretly employed the English barrister, Arthur

Goodhart to rail against Mark Lane, and this propaganda effort "came home to roost" when Goodhart

lectured on the assassination controversy at the headquarters of The Association of the Bar of the City of

New York. In 1967, the CIA itself circulated a memo instructing its overseas attaches on arguments and

tactics that might be used to undermine critics of the Warren Commission. There is, in short, a long

history of official government initiatives to counteract the critics.

I need not underscore that Sunstein is one of the self-styled elite of the law profession who have

made it their mission to defend the integrity of the Warren Commission and it's lone assassin thesis.

What is new is that Sunstein, himself now an official of the Obama Administration, having been a close

friend of the President before his election, has openly and unashamedly endorsed the use of subversive

tactics against American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly, and

petitioning for the redress of a longstanding grievance: the government's refusal to disclose the truth

about the assassination.

Because Sunstein employs familiar socio-psychological babble to characterize those who believe one or more

conspiracy theories, I shall not deign to his mode of "analysis". His scheme of argument is simply abominable.

Of more particular concern is Sunstein's suggestion, using the Oklahoma City bombing as his prime example,

that if left unchecked, conspiracy theories inherently threaten the stability of government by posing the nascent

threat of violent action, either by individuals, small groups, or an aroused populace.

Sunstein admits that he can offer no evidence to support this theory. For him, the inchoate harm of conspiracy

theories in itself provides sufficient evidence of their danger, and the impetus to act accordingly. His

recommendations include that "government enlist independent groups" to rebut theories and employ "cognitive

inflitration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups." He speaks of "disabling"

the purveyors of conspiracy theories and "attempting to immunize third-party audiences from the theory's effects."

As I see it, Sunstein stops all too short of favoring physical coercion to eradicate the threat he perceives, albeit

that seems to be the logical extension of his views. Regardless, it is his open endorsement of active government involvement in suppressing communicative activities that should arouse the alarm and outrage of all who believe in democracy and self-determination.

We can all understand why this article has not attracted the attention of the mainstream press since it was published, nevertheless, I believe that Sunstein has given us adequate warrant to demand his resignation from the Obama administration and, in the absence of same, a congressional inquiry into whether, how, and to what extent he has

sought to implement his stated beliefs in his official capacity. Both Obama and Sunstein must be called to account

and made to defend this assault against civil liberties.

Roger Bruce Feinman, J.D.

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/obama-staffer-...ion-911-groups/

Edited January 24, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

This paper can be downloaded free of charge from the

Social Science Research Network at:

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084585

From pages 21 to 23, "Conspiracy Theories", which they clearly intend to be

applicable to groups like those investigating JFK on "The Education Forum".

It would be my opinion that cognitive infiltration is already taking place here.

3. Cognitive infiltration

Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and

addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake

(legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments

and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn. One promising

tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean 1960s-style

infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in

future prosecutions. Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in

weakening or even breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that

constitute these networks and groups.

How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups,

including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of

crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior,

their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts.

Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest

that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or

reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government

efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies)

might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to

undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises,

causal logic or implications for political action.

In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no

effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that

Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in

dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not

usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success.68 In

another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false

identities. Each approach has distinct costs and benefits; the second is riskier but

potentially brings higher returns. In the former case, where government officials

participate openly as such, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities and

conspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say, right from

the beginning. The risk with tactics of anonymous participation, conversely, is that if the

tactic becomes known, any true member of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be

suspected of government connections. Despite these difficulties, the two forms of

cognitive infiltration offer different risk-reward mixes and are both potentially useful

instruments.

There is a similar tradeoff along another dimension: whether the infiltration

should occur in the real world, through physical penetration of conspiracist groups by

undercover agents, or instead should occur strictly in cyberspace. The latter is safer, but

potentially less productive. The former will sometimes be indispensable, where the

groups that purvey conspiracy theories (and perhaps themselves formulate conspiracies)

formulate their views through real-space informational networks rather than virtual

networks. Infiltration of any kind poses well-known risks: perhaps agents will be asked

to perform criminal acts to prove their bona fides, or (less plausibly) will themselves

become persuaded by the conspiratorial views they are supposed to be undermining;

perhaps agents will be unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group. But the risks are

generally greater for real-world infiltration, where the agent is exposed to more serious

harms.

All these risk-reward tradeoffs deserve careful consideration. Particular tactics

may or may not be cost-justified under particular circumstances. Our main suggestion is

just that, whatever the tactical details, there would seem to be ample reason for

government efforts to introduce some cognitive diversity into the groups that generate

conspiracy theories. Social cascades are sometimes quite fragile, precisely because they

are based on small slivers of information. Once corrective information is introduced,

large numbers of people can be shifted to different views. If government is able to have

credibility, or to act through credible agents, it might well be successful in dislodging

beliefs that are held only because no one contradicts them. Likewise, polarization tends

to decrease when divergent views are voiced within the group.69 Introducing a measure

of cognitive diversity can break up the epistemological networks and clusters that supply

conspiracy theories.

68

Neil MacFarquhar, At State Dept., Blog Team Joins Muslim Debate, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 22, 2007, at A1.

At a quick glance it appears that the article is simply an academic outline on how to combat conspiracy theories, in general, without a specific proposal to combat JFK conspiracy theories. For the most part, I found it harmless. It has several disturbing and short-sighted parts, however. At one point, Sunstein says "as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined." Well, first of all, who is to decide which accounts are true and, second of all, who decides when it is permissible to counter accounts that ARE true, and which accounts are undermined?

I'd like to have a debate with this guy. Any way we can get him to join the Forum?

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This message was sent to me for posting by Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vols. I-V (2009):

Date Sent: 01/23/2010

Subject: The "Beginning of the End" of the First Amendment?

Message:

I find the position taken by Cass Sunstein in his 2008 paper on the danger he perceives from those who espouse conspiracy theories not only reprehensible, but quite alarming.

His proposals that the U.S. government should not only infiltrate groups that allege conspiracies as the explanations for various historical events, but actively disrupt their communications---and that the U.S. government should also counter their claims through the use of third-party surrogates---are particularly alarming, when they come from a Harvard liberal who is described as a friend of Barack Obama. When one considers that he was subsequently appointed as the Head of Information in President Obama's administration, the positions he expressed in his 2008 paper are downright alarming.

I would have expected such attitudes from the previous administration---from Dick Cheney or George W. Bush---but to hear these proposals made by a liberal law scholar, who is now a member of the Obama administration, is downright alarming.

What Mr. Sunstein is advocating is a return to the situation prevalent in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which Army intelligence had penetrated virtually every anti-war group that opposed the conflict in Vietnam. Civil liberties meant nothing to the establishment during the Vietnam conflict, and apparently, if Mr. Sunstein has his way, we will soon return to that climate of active government surveillance and infiltration. (Perhaps we are already there now, and this is the first open acknowledgment of it.)

If the courses of action proposed by Mr. Sunstein in his 29-page paper were to be implemented, it would constitute a crushing blow to First Amendment rights, and could usher in the beginning of a police state in the nation that for years has prided itself as "the world's leading democracy."

I will speak here only of the JFK assassination, with which I am familiar, as a former government official, historian, and author. Sunstein apparently has the arrogance to assume that any and all conspiracy allegations about the JFK assassination that posit any government involvement (in either the murder or in a coverup)are incorrect; from this breathtaking and unproven assumption, he proceeds to advocate disruption and suppression of any such views. I know, from my former role as a government official on the staff of the ARRB (from 1995-1998), that there is overwhelming evidence of a government-directed medical coverup in the death of JFK, and of wholesale destruction of autopsy photographs, autopsy x-rays, early versions of the autopsy report, and biological materials associated with the autopsy. Furthermore, dishonest autopsy photographs were created; skull x-rays were altered; the contents of the autopsy report changed over time as different versions were produced; and the brain photographs in the National Archives cannot be photographs of President Kennedy's brain---they are fraudulent, substitute images of someone else's brain.

I would like to pose a question for Mr. Sunstein: if a medical coverup of JFK's assassination were proven---and I believe I have done so in my 2009 book "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board"---do you believe those facts should be made public, or do you believe those conclusions should be supressed and/or discredited in the interests of "institutional integrity?"

What is at stake here really is trust in the government, but not in the way that Mr. Sunstein sees it. If, for example, the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's assassination was altered immediately following his assassination to hide certain facts about the shooting (i.e., evidence of shots from the front), does Mr. Sunstein (and the administration he serves) believe that evidence related to the film's alteration (while in the hands of the government) should be released 46 years later, or suppressed? This is no mere hypothetical question. My FOIA request for CIA records pertaining to the Zapruder film's apparent alteration remains unanswered---indeed, unacknowledged---over four months after I submitted it in September of 2009. President Obama came into office promising to show a new respect the Freedom of Information Act and all FOIA requests. Now that I have learned about Mr. Sunstein's attitude about those who allege conspiracies, I am wondering anew why I have not yet received a response to my FOIA request.

Sunstein's 2008 article amounts to an assault on First Amendment rights, and in fact has created a cloud over the White House. The mere fact that this man holds the position of Chief of Information in the Executive Branch casts doubt upon the credibility of the U.S. government, and threatens to make President Obama's professed respect for the FOIA process ring hollow.

Cass Sunstein should resign immediately, and President Obama should publicly renounce the positions taken in Sunstein's 2008 paper. I do not want to live in a United States of America where the government infiltrates groups who criticize past government actions, and uses third-party surrogates to attempt to discredit their views. President Kennedy was not afraid of the free marketplace of ideas, and in 1962 said: "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." I hope that the Obama administration is not afraid of the American people, or of our right to know, or of our ability to discern truth from falsehood. Retaining Cass Sunstein in his current position sends the wrong message.

Cass Sunstein, I say: "RESIGN NOW."

Doug Horne

Former Chief Analyst for Military Records,

Assassination Records Review Board

This paper can be downloaded free of charge from the

Social Science Research Network at:

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084585

From pages 21 to 23, "Conspiracy Theories", which they clearly intend to be

applicable to groups like those investigating JFK on "The Education Forum".

It would be my opinion that cognitive infiltration is already taking place here.

3. Cognitive infiltration

Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, and

addressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government might undertake

(legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories, arguments

and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforce it in turn. One promising

tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. By this we do not mean 1960s-style

infiltration with a view to surveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in

future prosecutions. Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in

weakening or even breaking up the ideological and epistemological complexes that

constitute these networks and groups.

How might this tactic work? Recall that extremist networks and groups,

including the groups that purvey conspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of

crippled epistemology. Hearing only conspiratorial accounts of government behavior,

their members become ever more prone to believe and generate such accounts.

Informational and reputational cascades, group polarization, and selection effects suggest

that the generation of ever-more-extreme views within these groups can be dampened or

reversed by the introduction of cognitive diversity. We suggest a role for government

efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity. Government agents (and their allies)

might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to

undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises,

causal logic or implications for political action.

In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no

effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper story recounts that

Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department have participated in

dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order to ventilate arguments not

usually heard among the groups that cluster around those sites, with some success.68 In

another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false

identities. Each approach has distinct costs and benefits; the second is riskier but

potentially brings higher returns. In the former case, where government officials

participate openly as such, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities and

conspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say, right from

the beginning. The risk with tactics of anonymous participation, conversely, is that if the

tactic becomes known, any true member of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be

suspected of government connections. Despite these difficulties, the two forms of

cognitive infiltration offer different risk-reward mixes and are both potentially useful

instruments.

There is a similar tradeoff along another dimension: whether the infiltration

should occur in the real world, through physical penetration of conspiracist groups by

undercover agents, or instead should occur strictly in cyberspace. The latter is safer, but

potentially less productive. The former will sometimes be indispensable, where the

groups that purvey conspiracy theories (and perhaps themselves formulate conspiracies)

formulate their views through real-space informational networks rather than virtual

networks. Infiltration of any kind poses well-known risks: perhaps agents will be asked

to perform criminal acts to prove their bona fides, or (less plausibly) will themselves

become persuaded by the conspiratorial views they are supposed to be undermining;

perhaps agents will be unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group. But the risks are

generally greater for real-world infiltration, where the agent is exposed to more serious

harms.

All these risk-reward tradeoffs deserve careful consideration. Particular tactics

may or may not be cost-justified under particular circumstances. Our main suggestion is

just that, whatever the tactical details, there would seem to be ample reason for

government efforts to introduce some cognitive diversity into the groups that generate

conspiracy theories. Social cascades are sometimes quite fragile, precisely because they

are based on small slivers of information. Once corrective information is introduced,

large numbers of people can be shifted to different views. If government is able to have

credibility, or to act through credible agents, it might well be successful in dislodging

beliefs that are held only because no one contradicts them. Likewise, polarization tends

to decrease when divergent views are voiced within the group.69 Introducing a measure

of cognitive diversity can break up the epistemological networks and clusters that supply

conspiracy theories.

68

Neil MacFarquhar, At State Dept., Blog Team Joins Muslim Debate, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 22, 2007, at A1.

At a quick glance it appears that the article is simply an academic outline on how to combat conspiracy theories, in general, without a specific proposal to combat JFK conspiracy theories. For the most part, I found it harmless. It has several disturbing and short-sighted parts, however. At one point, Sunstein says "as a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined." Well, first of all, who is to decide which accounts are true and, second of all, who decides when it is permissible to counter accounts that ARE true, and which accounts are undermined?

I'd like to have a debate with this guy. Any way we can get him to join the Forum?

[Jack White]

Fantastic response by Doug Horne!

Jack

[Guest Tom Scully]

DOJ Final Anthrax Report, does it support its own conclusions?

This is how the FBI addressess the skepticism in the 2008 critique of the FBI's "operation" against Dr. Bruce Ivins. 18 months later, observe how they defend against the holes in their own conclusions.:

(Why isn't "the FBI's failure to provide a reasonable explanation, i.e. the evidence that Ivins acted alone and mailed the enevelopes after 5:00 pm on Sept. 17, yet another indication of its lack of justification for its conclusions?)

http://www.justice.gov/amerithrax/docs/amx...ive-summary.pdf

.pdf pg 90 DOJ Report pg 86

....Finally, Dr. Ivins failed, at nearly every turn, to provide reasonable or consistent explanations for his suspicious behavior. As set forth in great detail throughout this section, Dr. Ivins did many things, and said many things, that demonstrated his guilt. However, throughout the course of the Task Force’s interviews with him, when investigators confronted him with a piece of evidence, and asked him to explain why he did what he did or said what he said, he was unable to provide an answer that made any sense. There were numerous instances of his failure to provide a reasonable explanation, yet another indication of his guilt.

I. Dr. Ivins had a Habit of Using False Identities, Especially When Mailing Packages from Distant Post Offices.

Dr. Ivins had a number of odd habits, interests, fascinations, and obsessions, some of which were relevant to the Task Force investigation: (1) his self-professed habit of taking long drives through the night – “I go for drives like other people go for walks”; (2) his admitted use of pseudonyms when mailing letters and packages, among other contexts; and (3) his letter writing to members of Congress and the media.

1. Long drives through the night for mysterious reasons

The anthrax letters were mailed from a mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey – approximately three hours and 15 minutes by car from Dr. Ivins’s house in Frederick, Maryland, making the round-trip approximately six hours and 30 minutes. While this might seem like quite an undertaking to the average person, Dr. Ivins had a penchant for taking drives precisely like this, for mysterious, and even at times criminal, purposes. The sources of this information were myriad and include Dr. Ivins himself.

There were many examples of this behavior coming from Dr. Ivins’s own statements. First, as described in other sections of this Memorandum, Dr. Ivins took a number of drives of similar length (three hours each way) to KKG chapter houses in Morgantown, West Virginia, and Charlottesville, Virginia, to facilitate his obsession with that sorority. Perhaps most similar was his trip to the University of Virginia, where he drove to the sorority house, looked at the building but did not enter, and then drove home. Investigators also learned from his statements that he wanted to do the same thing, drive to and surveil, the KKG chapter at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, but he learned that the chapter had closed down.

Second, in September, 2002, Dr. Ivins drove from his house in Frederick to a home where Former Colleague #1 was staying – a roundtrip total of 600 miles and probably 11 hours – in the middle of the night, simply to drop off an anonymous package for Former Colleague #1. He initially denied that he had left the package, but eventually he admitted to her, and subsequently to investigators, that he had. He added that he actually did a reconnaissance dry-...

.pdf pg 94 DOJ Report pg 90

J. The Letters were Mailed from a Mailbox in Front of KKG in Princeton.

One of the initial investigative steps the Task Force undertook was to determine the location from which the letters were mailed. As noted, the letters were mailed from a single blue collection box located at 10 Nassau Street, Princeton, New Jersey, directly across the street from Princeton University. Notwithstanding exhaustive efforts, no direct links to Dr. Ivins – or anyone else with access to RMR-1029 – to this mailbox were discovered. However, in the course of the close scrutiny of Dr. Ivins, strong circumstantial links between Dr. Ivins and the mailbox in question were established.

The mailbox at 10 Nassau Street was approximately 175 feet from the front door of 20 Nassau Street, an office building which houses, among other things, the offices of the Princeton chapter of the KKG sorority. As set forth above, Dr. Ivins had a long-standing obsession with this sorority, dating back 40 years. Investigators learned about this obsession from (1) his statements to other people, including Former Colleague #1 and Former Colleague #2; (2) his actions, including, for example, sending a donation in the name of a KKG member killed in the Virginia Tech massacre to a fund for those victims, and posting all sorts of information regarding KKG on various websites, including Wikipedia; and (3) his own admissions in various interviews with him, in which he described in detail the origins of his self-described obsession and the steps he took over the past 40 years to nurture that obsession.

In addition, Dr. Ivins discussed with investigators research he had done into KKG. For example, in the late 1970s, while working at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, he began to compile a list of KKG chapters throughout the eastern United States. To do so, he first

53 This witness emphasized that the witness’s opinion was based solely on the witness’s experience with receiving mailed items from Dr. Ivins.

90

Two things.:

1.) Our elected officials have granted vast new powers to themselves and to the clowns who generated the crap,

they pass off as "evidence", displayed above. Powers removed from former checks and balances our sociery once

insisted on to protect its residents from illegal surveillance and prosecution via innuendo and propaganda.

2.) Obama's friend Cass Sunstein who he appointed to an important regulatory "reform" position, is on record wanting to fine people who post opinions like this one, and pay governnent goons to infiltrate forums just like this one!

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6270

...As the story unraveled, coverage almost invariably not only failed to address questions that would be obvious to fictional adolescent sleuths Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys but also showcased a breathless zeal to help the Department of Justice prosecute Ivins through unfiltered and uncorroborated leaks --- from accusations of "therapist" Jean Duley (Ivins was a homicidal killer who threatened her life and planned to kill all of his colleagues in a final "blaze of glory"), a woman known to have a fairly lengthy police record (news that failed to reach national mainstream outlets until the day the FBI/DOJ publicly aired their case, before disappearing again; plus, to my knowledge, Duley's police record has yet to receive network airtime), whose depth of experience appeared at least suspect (she was still attending Hood College as of last year and, while various media reports called her a "psychiatrist," "psychologist," or "social worker," it turns out Duley is actually an "addictions counselor") whose affidavit, including the misspelling "theripist" and manic, haphazard penmanship, appears as if it were written by either a second grader or an unstable adult (investigative journalist Larisa Alexandrovna has more on Duley); to a leak last Monday courtesy of the Associated Press --- quickly largely debunked by an update of the same article and then further dispelled by a New York Times piece Tuesday --- which claimed, around the time of the anthrax attacks, Ivins had been visiting and harassing members of a Princeton University sorority located near one of the mailboxes used to send the envelopes; to another leak portraying him as both a porn-obsessed sicko because he received adult videos to a P.O. box and a raging alcoholic who, nonetheless, managed to retain his security clearance to work with some of the most lethal substances on the planet....

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...hrax/index.html

Sunday, Aug 10, 2008 04:12 EDT

What's the answer to this?

By Glenn Greenwald

A commenter here on Friday noted what appears to be a rather glaring contradiction in the case against Bruce Ivins. In response to criticisms that the FBI's case contains no evidence placing Ivins in New Jersey, where the anthrax letters were sent, The Washington Post published an article -- headlined "New Details Show Anthrax Suspect Away On Key Day" -- which, based on leaks from "government sources briefed on the case," purported to describe evidence about Bruce Ivins' whereabouts on September 17 -- the day the FBI says the first batch of anthrax letters were mailed from a Princeton, New Jersey mailbox. The Post reported:

A partial log of Ivins's work hours shows that he worked late in the lab on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 16, signing out at 9:52 p.m. after two hours and 15 minutes. The next morning, the sources said, he showed up as usual but stayed only briefly before taking leave hours. Authorities assume that he drove to Princeton immediately after that, dropping the letters in a mailbox on a well-traveled street across from the university campus. Ivins would have had to have left quickly to return for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m.

The fastest one can drive from Frederick, Maryland to Princeton, New Jersey is 3 hours, which would mean that Ivins would have had to have dropped the anthrax letters in the New Jersey mailbox on September 17 by 1 p.m. or -- at the latest -- 2 p.m. in order to be able to attend a 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. meeting back at Ft. Detrick. But had he dropped the letters in the mailbox before 5:00 p.m. on September 17, the letters would have borne a September 17 postmark, rather than the September 18 postmark they bore (letters picked up from that Princeton mailbox before 5 p.m. bear the postmark from that day; letters picked up after 5 p.m. bear the postmark of the next day). That's why the Search Warrant Affidavit (.pdf) released by the FBI on Friday said this (page 8):

If the Post's reporting about Ivins' September 17 activities is accurate -- that he "return[ed to Fort Detrick] for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m." -- then that would constitute an alibi, not, as the Post breathlessly described it, "a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime," since any letter he mailed that way would have a September 17 -- not a September 18 -- postmark. Just compare the FBI's own definition of "window of opportunity" to its September 17 timeline for Ivins to see how glaring that contradiction is.

In theory (and there is no evidence for this at all), Ivins could have left Fort Detrick that night after work and driven to New Jersey, but then the leaked information reported by the Post about Ivins' September 17 morning "administrative leave" would be completely irrelevant, and according to the Post, that isn't what the FBI believes occurred ("Authorities assume that he drove to Princeton immediately after" he took administrative leave in the morning). The FBI's theory as to how and when Ivins traveled to New Jersey on September 17 and mailed the letters is simply impossible, given the statement in their own Probable Cause Affidavit as to "the window of opportunity" the anthrax attacker had to mail the letters in order to have them bear a September 18 postmark. Marcy Wheeler and Larisa Alexandrovna have now noted the same discrepancy. That is a pretty enormous contradiction in the FBI's case.

* * * * *

The FBI's total failure to point to a shred of evidence placing Ivins in New Jersey on either of the two days the anthrax letters were sent is a very conspicuous deficiency in its case. It's possible that Ivins was able to travel to Princeton on two occasions in three weeks without leaving the slightest trace of having done so (not a credit card purchase, ATM withdrawal, unusual gas purchases, nothing), but that relies on a depiction of Ivins as a cunning and extremely foresightful criminal, an image squarely at odds with most of the FBI's circumstantial evidence that suggests Ivins was actually quite careless, even reckless, in how he perpetrated this crime (spending unusual amounts of time in his lab before the attacks despite knowing that there would be a paper trail; taking an "administrative leave" from work to go mail the anthrax letters rather than just doing it on the weekend when no paper trail of his absence would be created; using his own anthrax strain rather than any of the other strains to which he had access at Fort Detrick; keeping that strain in its same molecular form for years rather than altering it, etc.).

The FBI dumped a large number of uncorroborated conclusions at once on Wednesday, carefully assembled to create the most compelling case they could make, and many people -- as intended -- jumped to proclaim that it was convincing. But the more that case is digested and assessed, the more questions and the more skepticism seem to arise among virtually everyone.

The Washington Post Editorial page -- the ultimate establishment organ -- published its second Editorial yesterday calling for an independent investigation of the FBI's case against Ivins and pointed out just some of the numerous, critical holes in that case:

The case is admittedly circumstantial, and questions have been raised about the reliability of the FBI's scientific evidence, the inability to tie Mr. Ivins to the handwritten notes included with the mailed anthrax, the process by which the FBI excluded as suspects others who had access to the anthrax, and more.

The NYT today has an excellent Op-Ed from a microbiologist (the former Chief of Fort Detrick's bacteriology division) pointing out the numerous deficiencies in the FBI's scientific assertions. Critically, that Op-Ed describes the properties of the high-grade anthrax sent to Sen. Daschle and then notes: "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." ...

Edited February 21, 2010 by Tom Scully

[Jack White]

2.) Obama's friend Cass Sunstein who he appointed to an important regulatory "reform" position, is on record wanting to fine people who post opinions like this one, and pay governnent goons to infiltrate forums just like this one!

He didn't know it has been going on for years. I have been on the internet at least 15 years,

and the first I encountered was McAdams, and several of his cohorts. It is nothing new.

Jack

[Evan Burton]

Threads on same topic merged.

[William Kelly]

Fantastic response by Doug Horne!

Jack

Jack,

What was the response by Doug Horne? I can't find it on this thread.

Thanks,

BK

[Jack White]

Fantastic response by Doug Horne!

Jack

Jack,

What was the response by Doug Horne? I can't find it on this thread.

Thanks,

BK

Post #22 above, posted by Fetzer.

[John Dolva]

This is one I agree with Jack on (without the vitriol) I disagree with Pats orientation. regarding the photo orientation. imo It becomes easier to see when resizing according to ruler width and dropping the notion of any neck image but rather recognising it as a feature in a number of the autopsy features.

[Ian Kingsbury]

So important a reply, it needs repeating IMO. First posted by Jim Fetzer and mirrored here by me...

posting by Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vols. I-V (2009):

Date Sent: 01/23/2010

Subject: The "Beginning of the End" of the First Amendment?

Message:

I find the position taken by Cass Sunstein in his 2008 paper on the danger he perceives from those who espouse conspiracy theories not only reprehensible, but quite alarming.

His proposals that the U.S. government should not only infiltrate groups that allege conspiracies as the explanations for various historical events, but actively disrupt their communications---and that the U.S. government should also counter their claims through the use of third-party surrogates---are particularly alarming, when they come from a Harvard liberal who is described as a friend of Barack Obama. When one considers that he was subsequently appointed as the Head of Information in President Obama's administration, the positions he expressed in his 2008 paper are downright alarming.

I would have expected such attitudes from the previous administration---from Dick Cheney or George W. Bush---but to hear these proposals made by a liberal law scholar, who is now a member of the Obama administration, is downright alarming.

What Mr. Sunstein is advocating is a return to the situation prevalent in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which Army intelligence had penetrated virtually every anti-war group that opposed the conflict in Vietnam. Civil liberties meant nothing to the establishment during the Vietnam conflict, and apparently, if Mr. Sunstein has his way, we will soon return to that climate of active government surveillance and infiltration. (Perhaps we are already there now, and this is the first open acknowledgment of it.)

If the courses of action proposed by Mr. Sunstein in his 29-page paper were to be implemented, it would constitute a crushing blow to First Amendment rights, and could usher in the beginning of a police state in the nation that for years has prided itself as "the world's leading democracy."

I will speak here only of the JFK assassination, with which I am familiar, as a former government official, historian, and author. Sunstein apparently has the arrogance to assume that any and all conspiracy allegations about the JFK assassination that posit any government involvement (in either the murder or in a coverup)are incorrect; from this breathtaking and unproven assumption, he proceeds to advocate disruption and suppression of any such views. I know, from my former role as a government official on the staff of the ARRB (from 1995-1998), that there is overwhelming evidence of a government-directed medical coverup in the death of JFK, and of wholesale destruction of autopsy photographs, autopsy x-rays, early versions of the autopsy report, and biological materials associated with the autopsy. Furthermore, dishonest autopsy photographs were created; skull x-rays were altered; the contents of the autopsy report changed over time as different versions were produced; and the brain photographs in the National Archives cannot be photographs of President Kennedy's brain---they are fraudulent, substitute images of someone else's brain.

I would like to pose a question for Mr. Sunstein: if a medical coverup of JFK's assassination were proven---and I believe I have done so in my 2009 book "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board"---do you believe those facts should be made public, or do you believe those conclusions should be supressed and/or discredited in the interests of "institutional integrity?"

What is at stake here really is trust in the government, but not in the way that Mr. Sunstein sees it. If, for example, the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's assassination was altered immediately following his assassination to hide certain facts about the shooting (i.e., evidence of shots from the front), does Mr. Sunstein (and the administration he serves) believe that evidence related to the film's alteration (while in the hands of the government) should be released 46 years later, or suppressed? This is no mere hypothetical question. My FOIA request for CIA records pertaining to the Zapruder film's apparent alteration remains unanswered---indeed, unacknowledged---over four months after I submitted it in September of 2009. President Obama came into office promising to show a new respect the Freedom of Information Act and all FOIA requests. Now that I have learned about Mr. Sunstein's attitude about those who allege conspiracies, I am wondering anew why I have not yet received a response to my FOIA request.

Sunstein's 2008 article amounts to an assault on First Amendment rights, and in fact has created a cloud over the White House. The mere fact that this man holds the position of Chief of Information in the Executive Branch casts doubt upon the credibility of the U.S. government, and threatens to make President Obama's professed respect for the FOIA process ring hollow.

Cass Sunstein should resign immediately, and President Obama should publicly renounce the positions taken in Sunstein's 2008 paper. I do not want to live in a United States of America where the government infiltrates groups who criticize past government actions, and uses third-party surrogates to attempt to discredit their views. President Kennedy was not afraid of the free marketplace of ideas, and in 1962 said: "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." I hope that the Obama administration is not afraid of the American people, or of our right to know, or of our ability to discern truth from falsehood. Retaining Cass Sunstein in his current position sends the wrong message.

Cass Sunstein, I say: "RESIGN NOW."

Doug Horne

Former Chief Analyst for Military Records,

Assassination Records Review Board

Obama has the man for the job of selling this to the public .........Sen.Arlen Specter

[Guest Tom Scully]

http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2010/02...ins-did-it.html

Anthrax Vaccine -- posts by Meryl Nass, M.D.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Federal Bureau of Invention: CASE CLOSED (and Ivins did it)

But 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. And 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 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?

Older information on this blog, germane to analysis of the FBI's case, includes the following:

Posts of mine that go into detail about these and other problems with the FBI's claims are here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Science magazine had additional questions. Vanity Fair published a fascinating article by Donald Foster that brings up more material the FBI ignored, here. Here I speculated on the emotional strain Bruce might have faced as a result of his knowledge of problems with the safety and effectiveness of currently used anthrax vaccines.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 7:38 PM

Edited February 22, 2010 by Tom Scully

[Guest Tom Scully]

http://my.firedoglake.com/jimwhite/2010/12/10/rush-holt-blasts-fbi-for-withholding-documents-from-outside-review-of-scientific-work-in-anthrax-investigation/

Rush Holt Blasts FBI for Withholding Documents from Outside Review of Scientific Work in Anthrax Investigation

By: Jim White Friday December 10, 2010 5:07 am

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/09/105060/fbi-seeks-delay-in-outside-review.html

Holt, a scientist and the chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said the academy recently shared with the bureau its draft report on the “Amerithrax” investigation, a narrow scientific review that the FBI requested in 2008 in an effort to quell controversy over its findings that a disgruntled government scientist was behind the attacks.

“This week I was informed by the NAS that the FBI would be releasing an additional 500 pages of previously undisclosed investigative material from the Amerithrax investigation to the NAS,” he wrote. Holt said he understands that the “document dump . . . is intended to contest and challenge the independent NAS panel’s draft findings.”

“If these new documents were relevant to the NAS’ review, why were they previously undisclosed and withheld?” Holt wrote. He requested a meeting with the FBI director.

In the Times, Scott Shane reports that the National Academy has agreed to extend its study:...

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/12/10/hatfill-and-wen-ho-lee-and-plame-and-al-awlaki-and-assange/

Hatfill and Wen Ho Lee and Plame and al-Awlaki and Assange

By: emptywheel Friday December 10, 2010 8:08 am

http://pressthink.org/2010/12/from-judith-miller-to-julian-assange/

Rosen argues that the NYT was not only on the wrong side of the facts with that story, but also on the wrong side of secrecy.

But it has never been recognized that secrecy was itself a bad actor in the events that led to the collapse, that it did a lot of damage, and that parts of it might have to go. Our press has never come to terms with the ways in which it got itself on the wrong side of secrecy as the national security state swelled in size after September 11th. (I develop this point in a fuller way in my 14-min video, here.)

The failures of skepticism back then, Rosen argues, creates the need or opportunity for Julian Assange today.

Radical doubt, which is basic to understanding ( http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/# ) what drives Julian Assange, was impermissible then. One of the consequences of that is the appeal of radical transparency today..

The internet has to go...its content and potential for unfettered distribution of information is directly interfering with the well ordered and financed, government/media/high-net-worth domination of traditional "news"

presentation. Currently the internet is wreaking havoc on contemporary official lone nut patsy offerings, the Bruce Ivins and Saddam Husseins, the LHO, James Earl Ray, Sirhan, of our decade.