Anthrax Terror [CIA Building Case 2001 Anthrax Attacks were Terrorism]

The Washington Times ^ | 12-26-03 | Gertz/Scarborough

[cgk]

The CIA has been quietly building a case that the anthrax attacks of 2001 were in fact the result of an international terrorist plot.

U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports tell us the information showing a terrorist link to the anthrax-filled letters sent by mail in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks is not conclusive. But it is persuasive.

[cgk]

ping........

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

This has been my contention all along. Financial devestation from the WTC attacks and the Post Office attacks, and Political decapitation from the hits on Washington.

[KantianBurke]

When were the letters intially mailed? Right after or before 9-11?

[lasereye]

A report last month to the U.N. Security Council by its Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission concluded that traces of anthrax recovered from a bomb in early 2003 were of the same strain Iraq declared in 1991 it had weaponized.

What bomb????

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

I used to be able to spell Devastation

[cgk]

The first letters that are considered by the media to be a part of the attacks were postmarked Sept. 18th.

[DannyTN]

So when do they apologize to the Prof?

[cgk]

Very thorough (and interesting) timeline can be found here: all documented information.

Excerpts:

September 4, 2001 (approx.):

On approximately this date, a "weird love letter to Jennifer Lopez" is sent to The Sun, a tabloid with offices in Florida. "But inside the oddly-worded letter was what was described as a 'soapy, powdery substance' and in the pile of that a cheap Star of David charm." The letter was handled both by Ernesto Blanco, who contacted anthrax, and Bob Stevens, who died of anthrax. The letter was thrown away, so it's not known if it contained anthrax. [Newsweek, 10/8/01] Could the letter have been part of a pre-9/11 series of anthrax attacks reported by the New York Post (see before September 11, 2001)? The only specific target mentioned by the Post was Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. [New York Post, 11/1/01] Bob Stevens was admitted to a hospital on October 2; the period between anthrax exposure and symptoms can be up to eight weeks. The anthrax attacks targeted media outlets, sending both real and hoax letters. Could this have been part of that series? Newsweek also reports a Middle Eastern intern working at the Sun that summer left a curious farewell e-mail. [Newsweek, 10/8/01]

before September 11, 2001:

In a story seemingly unreported anywhere else, the New York Post later claims that a series of hoax anthrax letters is sent out from Indianapolis, Indiana, at some point not long before 9/11. The FBI allowed the Post to see copies of these letters, which had handwriting and other features remarkably similar to the later letters containing real anthrax. [New York Post, 11/1/01]

[cgk]

I assume that if and when they do apologize to Hatfill, it will be as insignificant as clearing Richard Jewel.

[Nick Danger]

I think we all know that Gertz gets some of the best leaks from spooks who want things to leak. The question is, why this? And why now?

There is a strong whiff of pre-emptive CYA here, as if they suspect there is more coming soon and they want to be on record as not agreeing with the FBI theory. Gulp.

[riri]

as if they suspect there is more coming soon and they want to be on record as not agreeing with the FBI theory. Gulp

I was thinking the exact same thing. Gulp is right.

[Calpernia]

Ping

[jpl]

Of course the letters were from Islamic terrorists, and they were almost certainly from a foreign country. The letters themselves spell it out about as plainly as humanly possible. Anyone who would believe otherwise is either an idiot or a virulent America-hating liberal.

[cynicalman]

NO NO NO NO NO

The first man to die when fishing, no no , he went hunting, no no, he drank from a pond, Yea thats it. He drank from a pond. And all this time I thought it was terrorists, how silly of me .

[Dog]

Thanks for the ping Cal..

[The Duke]

It seems probable that "an organization" must have been behind the anthrax mailings - because anyone who would be capable of formulating the substance would be incapable of misspelling "Penacilin".

Additionally, the fact that it's taking a government agency years to conclude that a terrorist was behind an act that, by its very nature, constituted "terrorism", is no great source of confidence in the future.

[cgk]

This might be it?:

From this article, published Dec. 3, 2003:

On another issue, UNMOVIC said advanced testing and analysis indicated a strain of anthrax found on R400 bombs Iraq declared it had unilaterally destroyed was the same strain it had earlier declared to have weaponized.

[Allan]

ping

[Allan]

ping

[riri]

Additionally, the fact that it's taking a government agency years to conclude that a terrorist was behind an act that, by its very nature, constituted "terrorism", is no great source of confidence in the future

Well, then you have to ask yourself a question, a couple of them. First, do you believe they ever thought otherwise? And secondly, if you answer no to question number one waht would be the motivation for coming out now with this information/leak? What could be the motivation.

Only two that I can think of. One they are concerned that another attack may take place in the not too distant future. Or maybe two, they are fixing to "find" some WMD in Iraq and finger Saddam as the source of the first anthrax attacks.

[riri]

Do you have the url to Great Satan's blog?

[eno_]

This is well into "Well, duh!" territory. Iraq ADMITTED to having lots of anthrax. Nobody has verified it was destroyed. The odds they kept a stash are almost 100%. Would Iraq, or a "rogue" intelligence officer in Iraq be rash (no pun intended) to hand this stuff over to terrorists? Very possible.

OTOH, the odds it was random and coincidental?

[Peach]

There's little doubt this was international terrorism, IMO.

In recent week, there seems to be more discussion of the anthrax topic on the news shows, and most of the "experts" I've heard talk about how our government cannot duplicate the airborne quality of the anthrax. If we can't do it, it's highly unlikely a lone scientist could do it; it would take the 20 year dedicated efforts of the Iraqi government to do it.

[riri]

This is well into "Well, duh!" territory

You'd think wouldn't you? But, I bet if you stood in Manhattan Monday morning and did a man on the street survey. 8 out of ten would tell you it came from our labs via a rogue maerican scientist. Well, 8 out of the 10 that actually had any clue what you were refering to.

[cgk]

I was also wondering about that and if it has anything to do with those 8 Iraqi Scientists we're still holding:

From USA Today, Dec. 9:

Several members of the organization, known as NMD, are among the eight Iraqi scientists held, according to al-Saeed.

Half of the detained group were on the U.S. "Most Wanted" list. Six were heavily involved with former biological weapons programs and two were experts on delivery systems. All continue to claim there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to U.S. officers involved in the hunt.

The CIA would not comment on individuals and David Kay, who leads the weapons hunt on behalf of the CIA, turned down a request for an interview. The names of those held were provided by al-Saeed and his staff.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

I had this argument with a co-worker again the other day. Coincidently his first name is Osama (not kidding).

To me, it's obvious that the Anthrax and 9-11 are part of the same attack. No way it's coincidence. And It's equally obvious that the source of the Anthrax was most likely Saddam.

We had for 50 years a policy of responding to WMD attacks with a WMD attack in kind. We only have Nukes to retaliate with.

What would be our options if we announced Saddam hit us or supplied the anthrax to the folks who hit us? Nuke or not to Nuke.

If you Nuke Iraq you're a pariah to the world. If you don't you establish that your policy is BS and N.K., China, and any other tinhorn who can get his hands on the stuff knows they can try it an maybe get away with it.

So we blame someone like Hatfill for awhile, stomp Saddam for other reasons and then the truth may or may not come out.

[DBrow]

Help refresh my memory- wasn't one of the first anthrax victims, in Florida, Mohammad Atta's landlord?

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Care to chime in here? (wait, lemme guess... Gertz is a hack and whitey still did it)

[Lael]

So we blame someone like Hatfill for awhile, stomp Saddam for other reasons and then the truth may or may not come out.

BINGO!!!

[cgk]

True, besides, we haven't even seen ALL of the letters according to Vanity Fair and this site:The Message in the Anthrax, which says this:

---

On the phone that day, S.S.A. Fitzgerald told me that Erin O'Connor (case 2), an NBC aide, had been diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax 17 days after opening a powder-filled letter addressed to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. The letter, postmarked on September 20 in St. Petersburg, Florida, began:

"THE UNTHINKABEL" (the Ns are reversed as Cyrillic characters in the published Vanity Fair article)

SAMPLE OF HOW IT WILL LOOK

Brief but ominous, the handwritten note threatened bioterror attacks on New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

I found the text curious for a number of reasons. First, the quotation marks were done Russian-style, with the opening quotes below the line, and the document's backward N's resembled the letter I in Russia's Cyrillic alphabet. But a bilingual Russian would be unlikely to confuse English and Cyrillic characters. This appeared to be someone's attempt to make his writing look Russian, or at least foreign. The same went for the block letters, which Russian adults don't use.

The Brokaw letter matched two other biothreat letters, also from St. Petersburg, mailed 15 days later -- same writing, same backward N's and Russian quotes, same threats of imminent bioterror. One was sent to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a co-author of Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, and the other to Howard Troxler, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times. Troxler opened his powder-packed letter on Tuesday, October 9. Miller opened hers at her office on Friday the 12th"the same day the NBC infection was diagnosed.

"THE UNTHINKABEL" looked like a deliberate misspelling, but why had it been placed in quotation marks" Turning to the Internet, I found announcements for a disaster-management conference to be held in Orlando called "It Could Happen to You -- Preparing for the Unthinkable" and featuring talks on bioterror readiness. The St. Petersburg letters, with their arrows and lists and dashes, vaguely resembled a slide from a Power-Point presentation, a common feature at scientific conferences. Then, too, Howard Troxler's surname -- in the letter proper, though not on the envelope -- was spelled "TOXLER." Could the error have been in-advertent, I wondered, a reflexive misspelling by someone used to writing such words as "toxic," "toxicity," "toxins," "toxicology," "toxoid?"

---

I don't know about anyone else but can't remember ever seeing the BROKAW ANTHRAX LETTER with "unthinkabel" or Russian quotes?

[cgk]

The Brokaw Letter:

[Cicero]

Exactly. I don't remember the exact details at this point, but there was a direct connection through a landlord between the Florida anthrax case and the 9/11 terrorists.

The FBI has a horrible habit of getting a theory into their heads and refusing to consider any evidence that might contradict that theory. Very similar to Chief Moose and his White Van.

I suspect, too, that there were standing orders in the FBI during the clinton years that they must never permit any public recognition of Islamic terrorism, because it would be politically unproductive. The TWA 800 case is the most prominent example of such standing orders at the highest level. A lot of this kind of nonsense carried over from the Reno years to the Bush years. Concentrate on right-wing, white male terrorists, pro-lifers, militias, and the like, and ignore Muslim suspects. That still seems to be an embedded part of the FBI culture, partly because the folks that clinton promoted are still all in place.

[FairOpinion]

"The question is, why this? And why now?"

===

Because we have Saddam finally safely locked up???

[Allan]

http://hatfill.blogspot.com

[cgk]

The wife of the editor of the Sun was the landlord, renting an apartment to 2 of the hijackers, who were either Atta & al-Shehhi or Ahaznawi & Jarrahi. Those 4 are known to have lived in FL...

[FairOpinion]

"I suspect, too, that there were standing orders in the FBI during the clinton years that they must never permit any public recognition of Islamic terrorism, because it would be politically unproductive. The TWA 800 case is the most prominent example of such standing orders at the highest level. A lot of this kind of nonsense carried over from the Reno years to the Bush years. Concentrate on right-wing, white male terrorists, pro-lifers, militias, and the like, and ignore Muslim suspects. That still seems to be an embedded part of the FBI culture, partly because the folks that clinton promoted are still all in place."

===

I think you nailed it!

[Tribune7]

I was watching a woman on C-Span's earlier this week -- I think it was Washington Journal -- who was ripping into the Clinton administration for its failure concerning the War on Terrorism.

She said she believed that the anthrax was from Hussein.

She also implied she believed the crash of TWA Flight 800 was caused by Iraq noting that it occured on a major Hussein holiday.

I forget her name. She was plugging a book and did not appear to be a nut.

[cgk]

Laurie Mylroie most probably.

[cgk]

Thanks...

[cgk]

Laurie Mylroie to be on C-SPAN Shortly (9:00-10:00 AM, EDT) .. was this the day?

[Tribune7]

Yup. That was her.

[tutstar]

bttt

[Mitchell]

I don't know about anyone else but can't remember ever seeing the BROKAW ANTHRAX LETTER with "unthinkabel" or Russian quotes?

The letter with "unthinkabel" in it is supposed to have been a dummy or hoax letter sent to the same recipient as the real anthrax letter.

[MediaMole]

Late last night I started thinking that we may be looking at a bio attack. Airlines, malls and stadiums seem to be the three areas the FBI is looking at closely. All three are perfect spots for the release of disease or spores.

[ladyinred]

Ah, DUH!!

[Shermy]

I don't think this article is particluarly informative...except to signal a contrary article will soon appear in Newsweek, WashPost or NYTimes attributing the idea to "neo-cons". Maybe we'll bet some vague, recycled damnations about a Prague meeting too...

[Shermy]

Latest National Enquirer...for what it's worth...

"...Saddam's favorite movie star was Jennifer Lopez. He had sick fantasies of J.Lo and constantly talked about her and what he would like to do with her, says a source. He measure his women's backsides by how they comparted to J.Lo's. Thoughout his palaces were J.Lo videos, CDs, and movies. But one of the most bizarre things we found in those palaces were pictures of J.Lo ripped straight out of magazines and framed. IN on palace, a life-sized cutout of the singer was found in one of his bedrooms..."

[Age of Reason]

Of course the letters were from Islamic terrorists, and they were almost certainly from a foreign country. The letters themselves spell it out about as plainly as humanly possible. Anyone who would believe otherwise is either an idiot or a virulent America-hating

If those letters were sent by Islamic terrorists, why did they send them--what did they expect those letters to accomplish?

[Mitchell]

I don't think this article is particluarly informative...except to signal a contrary article will soon appear in Newsweek, WashPost or NYTimes attributing the idea to "neo-cons".

Well, there must be a reason that somebody connected with the CIA is choosing to leak this now.