I don’t know whether the Lindbergh or O.J. Simpson trial was the Trial of the 20th Century, but the biggest mystery of the 21st is who stole anthrax out of the Ft. Detrick, Maryland bioweapons lab and mailed it to Pat Leahy, Tom Daschle, Tom Brokaw and others. Apparently, the FBI is still investigating, and if they ever figure it out, it could be one of the most explosive trials in our nation’s history. It all depends on who that person is connected to and whether they were part of a larger conspiracy. This part is interesting.
In December 2001, an Army commander tried to dispel the possibility of a connection to Fort Detrick by taking the media on a rare tour of the base. The commander said the Army used only liquid anthrax, not powder, for its experiments.
“I would say that it does not come from our stocks, because we do not use that dry material,” Maj. Gen. John Parker said. The letters that were mailed to the media and Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy all contained powdered anthrax.
But in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared … to duplicate the letter material,” the e-mail reads. “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!'”
I truly how that someday soon we will be able to find out who “named redacted” is and then we will be on the path to solving a lot of what has happened in our land. I would not be surprised if it was not someone this administration had lined up to do this terrible thing just to place mroe fear in ppls minds…Plus they have killed and that is murder…so let the truth be told.
Your quoting Faux Noise? Empty Wheel has been doing some great blogging on this.
I believe Hatfill was being set up. This guy is my suspect
Zack has been a prime suspect for years – the Hartford Courant wrote a piece about missing anthrax in January 2002, and Salon pursued its own investigation later that year. Suspicion arose from an allegation against Egyptian microbiologist Ayaad Assaad, a former coworker of Zack’s. Assaad was fingered anonymously as a potential bioterrorist in the aftermath of September 11 but before victims were identified. Though cleared of all charges by the FBI, the fact that Assaad’s accuser knew so much about his life raised suspicions that said accusations were personally motivated. That dozens of lethal samples of anthrax, ebola and hantavirus disappeared during Zack and Assaad’s watch in the 1990s only compounded misgivings that Zack was responsible.
http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01241_philip_zack_steals_anthrax.html
Thanks for this, BooMan. This is one of the stories that has bothered me from Day 1. It was obvious the Anthrax attacks had nothing to do with 9/11 other than to shut up the official critics of the rush to war, Daschle being the foremost in the Senate.
I saved the news articles showing the Anthrax appeared to be of domestic origin. But wow, I had no idea the FBI was still on the trail, and that they were close.
These are the kind of stories that really matter. Thanks for staying on top of this.
they are still trying to figure out who killed rfk
ill bet there are amazing secrets out there
Glenn Greenwald, writing in April 2007 on his blog, discussed the anthrax/Saddam Hussein link that was widely disseminated in the media by sources that remain secret to this day.
“Someone clearly invented false stories about the anthrax investigation and fed them to Brian Ross, knowing he would run all over ABC News programs heaping blame on Saddam for those attacks. In fact, Ross said that there were at least four highly-placed, separate sources who told him that.”
Ross has refused to divulge his sources. I assume they were highly placed officials in the Bush administration, possibly close to the Vice-President’s office.
It is amazing that such an important case remains unsolved, when the power and expertise of the FBI has presumably been thrown behind finding the culprit or culprits. Hopefully, there will be answers soon.
Dug through the archives and can’t find the one I want, but this is close:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/03/gonzales_knows_.html
The one I wanted referenced the facts that Bentonite is used to weaponize anthrax (make it more lethal by causing the spores to move freely), that Cheney used to sling 100-pound bags of the stuff as an employee (as recounted by his wife), that a Halliburton subsidiary is the world’s largest supplier of Bentonite, and that Cheney certainly knew of the uses for his product.
He also knew that the anthrax sent to the victims was not COATED, since he has all documents and reports sent blind-copied to him. yet continuously made the claim that it was a weaponized chemical made by Saddam. (Now how this super-duper vaporized form would get from Iraq to America without leaving a trail of death along the way was unasked by any intrepid reporter.)
Moreover, since he almost certainly was behind the anthrax scare, he wasn’t worried about any of it coming to his office, so the paranoid man who keeps a hazmat suit and a doctor next to him could afford to give a do-nothing contract to a newbie for checking his mail. If he didn’t know the real source behind the anthrax attacks, someone so universally loathed would give the screening contract to a real screener.
Also, if real terrorists had sent it, he couldn’t claim that there hadn’t been a terrorist attack since 9/11 and the crackdown on our liberties.
A good article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/09/abc_anthrax/index.html
It’s well past time that someone with authority to impeach added the anthrax blowup to Cheney’s account.
My guess based on everything that has happened since
911 : Solve the attack on the towers and you solve the Anthrax .
Give one good reason why its not the same folk behind it .
There were two completely different lines of attack. The Florida attacks were probably a bored Mohammed Atta, waiting for word. (He was renting an apartment from the wife of the victim.) No DNA match
Then “government” anthrax attacks “liberal” politicians and media. The government deliberately delays and botches the investigation.
There were two completely different lines of attack.
In the sense that they were different operations, and that different technicians had to be used.
But the planners of the crimes?
If serial crimes have a signature, these crimes have a John Hancock. Who has the power to stall, stymie, and block the expected, routine investigation of these multiple murders? Who has the power is who is doing it.
Crime solving through evidence and deduction does not get easier than this.
The DNA “fingerprint” was totally different. One may have inspired the other, but the sources were from opposite ends of the world. DNA doesn’t lie, despite what the OJ trial suggested.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JC28Ak06.html
Okay, I’ll give one good reason: There is nothing about 9/11 per se that would lead one to attribute it tp Saddam Hussein and Iraq. If the original purpose of it was to lead to attacking Iraq, they would have strewn it with “obvious” (= fictitious) “clues.” There are none.
This had to be manufactured ex post facto. True, efforts to skew it that way began virtually on day one, but even so, the first result of 9/11 was to attack Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden.
The plot of 9/11, whoever was really behind it, had to be in the works for several years before it actually happened. It looks to me like 9/11 originally had a somewhat different scenario and that the “attack Iraq” people swooped in and commandeered it. It took them a few years.
The anthrax stuff belongs primarily to the “attack Iraq” plot, its connection with 9/11, like so many other things, is opportunistic.
No doubt there are figures connecting the two plots, that is, knowing about the first and developing ways to feed it into the second. Cheney would seem a likely candidate.
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My take on the anthrax attack, a coordinated program from a high level at the Pentagon to scare Congress and the American people into accepting the Patriot Act and forfeiting civil liberties. These programs are available to be implemented in any emergency, like the 911 attacks.
The atmosphere of terror in Congress was expressed by Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio: “. . . a state of siege trap[s] us in a state of fear, ill equipped to deal with the patriot games, the mind games, the war games. . .” He lamented the physical and psychological disruption and disorientation of lawmakers at a time when calm objectivity was required for wise decisions. No doubt, the terrorized senators accepted an anti-terrorism bill more threatening to the rights and wellbeing of citizens than they otherwise would have. They granted more power to the President than they otherwise would have.
New York Times commentator William Safire wrote under the heading, “Seizing Dictatorial Power,” that “Bush admits to dismissing the principles of law and the rules of evidence that undergird America’s system of justice.”
The anthrax letters to the media can be considered peripheral to political targets. They guaranteed publicity and heightened general hysteria. Janette Rainwater, Ph.D., wrote that anthrax threats are useful “in creating panic and, in this case, providing a climate wherein legislation curtailing civil liberties can be passed.”
The anthrax scare at the Supreme Court likewise put a chill on their mission to defend civil liberties. Whether the anthrax is believed to have come from foreigners or Americans, the threats resulted in the granting of more power to the Executive Branch by the Legislative and Judicial Branches, seriously damaging “checks and balances.”
November 2001 – Three top anthrax experts with knowledge of the U.S. bioweapons program died under suspicious circumstances within a ten day period.
Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This has been known for a long time, but MSM hid it at the behest of the White House, because it was in their interest to allow Faux and others to imply it was Iraq