Vacationing as I am, with little internet access, I can’t really delve into the anthrax attacks. The government’s prime suspect apparently killed himself on Tuesday with an overdose of Tylenol with codeine. Turns out the guy was a scientist at the U.S. Army bioweapons laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Turns out that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it, despite Brian Ross and ABC’s repeated claims in the fall of 2001. A scientist in charge of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) lab in Maryland is the prime suspect in mailing lethal anthrax to the Senate Majority Leader and the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as Tom Brokow and other media luminaries. For some reason, at a very early stage in the investigation, Brian Ross was being told by a lot of people that the anthrax had Iraqi-specific additives.
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele (sic) contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”
ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein.
Now, seven years later, on the eve of an indictment, Bruce E. Ivins joined British scientist David Kelly in committing suicide. Dead men don’t talk. And it would have been fascinating to know how Ivins came to his decision to send anthrax in the U.S. mail to some of the most powerful and famous people in the country. That’s a normal reaction to the trauma of 9/11. And it is only made more suspicious by the fact that the terror attacks were immediately seized on by numerous unnamed officials that gave false information to the press that pointed the blame not to a United States WMD facility, but to a fictional Iraqi one.
Who points fingers without evidence? Who coordinates something like that? Why didn’t any Republicans get anthrax in the mail? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to ask these questions. Even the government says that it was the government that made and delivered the anthrax attacks. But the prime suspect is dead now. Maybe he was depressed. Maybe he knew too much. Maybe both.
Senator Arlen Specter:
“When the government asks you to comply with something, you do it. You don’t ask questions or say no….
Hmmm……..Maybe Bruce Ivins was just being a “good soldier”. He might have even thought he was being a patriot.
Cause when the government asks you to do something……..
Yeah, Arlen Specter… and the Magic Bullet. To the winners go the spoils.
Too bad Barry Bonds lied about taking steroids, Michael Vick ran a dog-fighting ring and Spitzer tried to hide the money he spent on his whore. Otherwise, the FBI might not have taken seven years to figure out which of the two dozen people in the Fort Detrick anthrax lab tried to kill two Senators and did kill postal workers.
And tried to implicate a Muslim.
http://thecamelclub.blogspot.com/2005/03/frame-up-attempt.html
If only it were that nicey nicey. That this man would give his life for some governmentally induced ideal. No, he was murdered. He would have spilled, he would have spoke the truth.
The intended sarcasm in my comment must have slipped through the cracks in the blogosphere. I agree. Even his brother, who was estranged from him for 20 years and told CNN that he could “go to hell” as far as he was concerned, said as much.
For all of the “Clinton Death List” blatherings over the years by the right, nothing is going to compare to what has occurred around the world during this last nearly eight years. We have left a trail of death almost everywhere we have touched.
The Greenwald piece Booman links to above (under “repeated claims”) is a must-read. As Greenwald notes:
ABC News can plead some variation on the shield law for not giving up their four sources (from the description probably within Fort Detrick) who told Brian Ross (falsely) that the anthrax was from Iraq. But what’s McCain’s excuse for not letting us know who within the investigation lied us into a war?
Larissa Alexandrovna has a very, very good piece on the anthrax.
Got a link, Bob? I didn’t see any such piece on her blog.
Oh, nevermind. I found it.
All Spin Zone notes that the record shows that Ivins was against suicide and quiote the christian. Certainly not a friend of radical islam.
This guy didn’t kill himself: I’m certain of it. Besides, who offs him or herself with Tylenol-3s?
ASZ raises other questions, including “is it common for grand juries to tell people in advance they’re going to be indicted?”
This doesn’t pass the smell test. Just like Palfrey’s suicide, Ken Lay’s heart attack, and david kelly’s curious suicide…
Yeah, I worked at a VA Hospital thirty years ago and the bigger worry with T3s wasn’t overdose but screwing up your liver from too much tylenol.
The reason they spike codeine with Tylenol is precisely to discourage people who are into opioids from abusing it. The idea is that the addict will think of his liver, and not pop the T3. Personally, I think that prescribing T3s violates the Hippocratic Oath.
That’s why I switched to heroin. (/snark off)
And that woman in Florida recently who “committed suicide” before her trial on prostitution charges? I can’t recall her name, but she has a place in my heart because she was killed by the killers in the White House/Pentagon.
I thought of her, too — and David Kelly of Downing St. memo fame. I guess there’s still a part of me (growing smaller by the minute) that wants to believe these folks weren’t blatantly knocked off. However, terrorizing and manipulating them to drive them to suicide as the only way out doesn’t seem hard to believe at all. After all, this is the bunch that thinks torture is a good thing.
.
Pete Velis, the author who identifies himself as “just an American,” uses the available evidence and obvious logic to show that the anthrax attack was almost certainly carried out by perpetrators in an off-budget military program, most likely at SAIC — men who have protection against FBI investigations and whose motive, without a doubt, was to create panic and ease the passage of draconian security and war measures.
The evidence has been in the public domain for months. The attacks were carried out exactly in the manner and using the same size of supermilitarized spore specified in an earlier secret military report on “how to carry out anthrax attacks.” They coincided with the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, and stopped once the policy objectives were accomplished — i.e., once the police state was cemented with the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act and big appropriations for biowarfare, war and new covert operations. What kind of lone nut terrorist would show the discipline to stop after just 8 letters?
THE EVIDENCE
…
As if all that weren’t enough, the ABC report of Brian Ross told us that since the list of lab scientists whom the FBI had thoroughly investigated and found to be totally clean, the FBI received unofficial recommendations that if they wanted to find other scientists who had access to the anthrax, they would have to go to the “off-budget” – secret – US biolabs to find others who may have stolen it. This door was slammed shut to the FBI.
SAIC report “How Best to Mail Anthrax”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."So, you don’t think Ivins did it. It is true that a convenient patsy is a dead patsy. Here’s what Greenwald has to say about this:
I’m not sure if the alleged suicide is suspicious, however. If spooks killed Ivins, wouldn’t they have made it look like a heart attack, the way it’s done in the movies? Or is that why they poisoned him with Tylenol 3 — because they thought that we wouldn’t think that that’s how spooks would do it?
This deadman is a scapegoat or a participant/witness. The main guy is dear Dr. Hatfill, who participated in covert operations in pre-Revolution Zimbabwe, apparently he or people he supplied mailed anthrax to rhodesian opposition members, etc. I’m sure he was just trying to pre-empt the Mugabe era at all costs, rather than just testing our weapons on African ‘collateral’.
AKA, Rhodesia, pre-revolution. There was also evidence that South African irregulars at the time (during the white Apartheid govt.) had attempted to use anthrax in the Rhodesian countryside as a biowar tool, but it was ineffective. There was a story in Covert Action Information Bulletin fifteen, twenty years ago on this.
The anthrax in Fort Detrick was several generations better than the stuff used in Zimbabwe.
There are a lot of dead cows that would feel that the anthrax was indeed effective. Also, the average Rhodesian was a ‘farmer’, keeping their ‘wealth’ in the form of cattle. Anthrax was extremely effective in destroying what wealth opposition supporters had.
I thought Hatfill was being unjustly picked on until Oliver North defended him.
After this weeks blip from Seymour Hirsch about the talk within the WH of building 3 Iranian looking boats and stocking them with Seals dressed ‘as Iranians’ and letting them exchange fire with our guys patrolling the waters I can’t help but think that the Anthrax Hoax was the big brother, the big successful brother, in that line of demented reasoning.
After all, who of the uninformed American public would have even understood Bush’s State of the Union speech months afterward when he tossed out the Axis of Evil if we hadn’t had our minds ABC’d with talk of Iraq’s tie to the Anthrax.
If indeed any of this is true, which sadly I believe it is, then this reflects the actions of treasonous traitors worse than the cold war spy Hanson ever imagined.
Damn, I just found out Bruce Ivins was born in raised in my hometown here and he still has family here. His parents home was just a few miles from my house. I remember his mom and dad. There is a short interview with his brother in one of the local papers today.
Weird.
It is also entirely possible that he was innocent.
The details I know are incomplete but apparently the evidence against him is mostly that he conducted tests for anthrax within the facility. His defense was that he wasn’t sure that samples returned from the attacks had benn handled properly.
It is entirely possible in my mind with the info I have that he knew he would become the scapegoat and at his age didn’t want to end his life in prison
However, I remember reading years ago that the anthrax was somehow traced back to this lab.
Lots of unanswered questions
And don’t forget the DC Sniper. As the anthrax scare was wearing off, someone was going around DC ‘randomly’ shooting people. Our legislators lived in a perpetual state of fear and uncertainty, and were more pliant than they might have been otherwise re rejecting our rights in trade for perceived security offerings.
Remember how they CAUGHT the DC snipers? The police were told to read a certain message on TV – word for word. Once that exact (trigger?) phrase was read, miraculously, the snipers were found sleeping in a car.
But there’s nothing of interest here, of course. Move along.
So if we take the FBI at its word they couldn’t figure out who the guy was for seven years? In one lab? If Ivins was sending out threatening letters, wouldn’t that tell them something?
Another question: Handwriting analysis?
Another question: Has the FBI investigated the “four sources”? After all, if they came from Fort Detrick, and if there were four separate sources, and if one was Ivins then wouldn’t that suggest the possibility of accomplices? Even if one wasn’t Ivins, wouldn’t you investigate, you know, just to find out?
It’s amazing how transparently phony this story is and yet the MSM is reporting this with a straight face.
bob, they needed a scapegoat…someone with the credible background and the knowledge, access as well as the method, means, and opportunity to pull it off story line…what’s missing is the motive.
according to the lat his brother, who’s credentials and real life relationship to the deceased mr. irvin, we know nothing about, and who “sang like a canary to the fbi” had this to say: “He had in his mind that he was omnipotent.”
closure…end of story…nothing more to be done or see here folks…move along.
And if he was omnipotent, why’d he do something in 2001 and then nothing for seven years?
I agree, dada. The problem with the story is that they used the hyper-refined military grade anthrax, and the only place where this stuff came from is Fort Detrick. Once the BS about the bentonium trace (or whatever) from Iraq was gone, and once the stuff was traced back to Detrick they had to find the patsy. At first they went for Hatfill (whatever) but he had wisely covered his butt. Then it was a question of who in the lab was going to take the fall. And not only take the fall but buy the farm without benefit of a jury trial.
My guess is that there were a few folks involved, people within the lab and people on the operational side. Whoever was involved on the operational side knew how carefully the anthrax had to be handled. And they also didn’t give a damn about postal workers’ lives.
Hold on a sec. It may really be that this guy WAS the technical expert in the anthrax scare. I just find it difficult to believe he was “the lone nut,” working all on his own. He knew at least to some extent who he was working with. But he took that secret with him to the grave. How convenient.
convenient…isn’t it though.
“dead men tell no tales”.
case solved…justice served…just like on your teevee.
priscianus, a lot of ugly things have happened around our military’s work in biowarfare research. Litton Bionetics spent millions on research in the early 1970s, a lot of it shoveled to Robert Gallo, to recombine animal retroviruses (cancers, leukemias, immunosuppressives). In 1970 the DOD under Nixon requested ten million to start looking for a cure to an immunosuppressive disease that didn’t exist, you know, just in case the Russians invented one. Then, voila, ten years later AIDS blooms in Central Africa and it the gay community in the U.S. And then Gallo “discovers” it. Quite a coincidence, eh?
To your point: Ivins may have actually been part of a conspiracy. The cover story by the FBI doesn’t pass the smell test.
But don’t worry. America will forget about it by Monday. What’s the latest with Brett Favre?
Let the confusion of excuses begin..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080801/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/anthrax_scientist
really just a misguided patriot who wanted to cure Anthrax. Didn’t innocent postal workers die too.
You’re damned right.
Note also, that this story is a Friday News Dump…when was the guy suicided? Tuesday?? And it gets dumped today…as usual, nothing to see here folks, mystery solved. In other news. . .
Sick to death of being lied to.
He took the pills Sunday but died two days later, on Tuesday, as is typical for acetaminophen poisoning.
How many cases do you know of deliberate suicide by Tylenol #3? Have you heard that a post was done? This sounds dicey to me for a PHD in what I assume was microbiology. I’m also very suspicious about the “therapist” who was supposed to be treating him and the cover her story provides for the government. Her behavior is highly questionable for a professional who is treating someone who is supposedly “homicidal and suicidal.”
Suicide by Tylenol is often not deliberate. People take the stuff to make a suicidal gesture, not realizing that once it’s inside your system, you can’t be saved, unlike the case with aspirin or opioids. I’ve heard many a sad tale from emergency room doctors. But I digress.
No, Tylenol #3 is not a means of suicide that I think any sensible person would select. But given that, why would a killer wanting to fake suicide use Tylenol #3 to kill his victim? Since it’s reasonable to suppose that a professional killer would be more in command of his senses than someone who has lost his job and is being stalked by the FBI, I think that Tylenol #3 being the cause of death makes murder less likely than suicide. (Of course, you can always suppose that the killer anticipated this chain of reasoning, and that’s why he used Tylenol #3, to trick us.)
I bought the story about Ivins being the man behind the anthrax attacks this afternoon, but now I just read something that makes me doubt that, in the New York Times, of all places. According to the Times,
So it seems unlikely that Ivins was behind the attacks after all, simply because he would not have had the know how to aerosolize anthrax. Is the corporate media going to respond to this point raised by its flagship?
I”m well aware of the “accidental” Tylenol OD’s or when they’re taken in a suicide “attempt.” I’m also not convinced about the cause of death. This certainly is a coroner’s case but, at least thus far, have seen no evidence that there was a post. Tox screen would be particularly important. Instead,
link
OTOH, the guy could literally have been hounded to death. He’s been under surveillance for two years, has had his house searched and FBI agents hanging out at his house. And after all of that, they have no direct evidence. Apparently the case is based on “circumstantial evidence.” His life history, in so far as we know it, isn’t consistent with this kind of crime. Also, for all the noise about his “mental problems,” they could be a result of pressure and harassment rather than the cause of crime. And his “treatment” was apparently “group therapy” (and possibly medication since he had a psychiatrist), which makes no sense if he was as disturbed as reported by his social worker who sounds more than a bit hysterical. You don’t treat “homicidal and suicidal” patients in groups and let them out of the hospital. You clap them in and keep them there.
The more I learn, the more disturbed I become about this case. Greenwald is also worth a read if you haven’t seen it already.
Questions?
No questions. You aren’t going to worry about murdering a few and sundry problem children for a multi-trillion dollar hegemony that might disturb Cheney’s paranoid view of the world.
The “they” murdered the Kennedy’s, MLK, and numerous others. What do you think the CIA is for? They are enforcers for the military industrial pharmaceutical complex!
I see the CIA (generally as shorthand for the intelligence community) as the Pinkertons of international corporatism. Factory owners would hire the Pinkertons to spy on union organizers, bust heads on picket lines and occasionally murder the most troublesome. The CIA does the same thing on a much grander scale. What are Latin American death squads but the Pinkertons on a grand scale?
There used to be plenty of dividing lines between the various agencies. For ex, J. Edgar Hoover tried to protect the FBI from the CIA’s influence, but the CIA allegedly had the same photos the Mob had, so he ultimately had to bow to them. There was a competition between the CIA and the military. But all of those distinctions have been lost over time. I still think that there are various elements within the permanent government, and one of them, the faction that’s been leaking stuff to Sy Hersh, has been preventing BushCo from bombing Iran.
.
at-Largely by Larisa Alexandrovna:
…
Now it is likely the case that someone working at Ft. Detrick was directly involved and it is possible that this person was Bruce E. Ivens. But he did not and could not have acted alone. He could not have informed the White House to start taking Cirpro. He could not have had a private interest to start a war with Iraq and somehow insert the talking points into the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology report. He could not have told Iowa University to destroy the spores. He had no reason to target the National Inquirer. He had no reason to blame the attacks on Muslims. Even if he was the most extreme Christian fundamentalist, why would he have an interst in blaming the attacks on Iraq and then someone manage to insert that connection into the Dick Cheney talkings points on Prague?
(AP) – Bennet Bolton, a friend of the first anthrax victim — Robert Stevens — was suspicious about Ivins’ suicide and whether the government will disclose what happened.
“I don’t think this guy was involved,” Bolton said, questioning what led investigators from his dead friend — a tabloid photo editor in southern Florida — to the scientist at the Army’s biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md.
“What is the connection?” Bolton asked. “What did he do or not do?”
(Huffington Post) – On a related note, John McCain was among the first politicians to link the anthrax letters to Iraq, as a clip from the October 18, 2001 Late Show with David Letterman, where McCain appeared as a guest, reveals. ThinkProgress has the story.
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Anthrax Attacks ‘Solved’ ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."