Posted on 11/20/2004 11:46:06 AM PST by TrebleRebel
A federal judge ruled yesterday that U.S. Postal Service officials had no special responsibility to alert workers at the Brentwood postal facility to deadly anthrax contamination in the building and cannot be sued by the employees.
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U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said she found ample reason to believe that the officials showed deliberate indifference to worker safety by keeping the plant operating for four days after they privately confirmed the toxic spores had spread through the facility.
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Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said, "We can't imagine that in the end that courts will sanction government supervisors lying to workers about biological toxins infecting their workplace. Let's be clear about the consequences here: People are sick to this day and some are dead, and the courts are saying 'Tough luck.' "
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Thank u. Wherever people feel comfortable is good. I prefer the motto, << There's safety in numbers! >>
Same for the clearing of the Murrah building site.
Is this related? I do not know.
Clarifying here...
I do not suggest that the 10 kilogrammes of anthrax were real. The possibility - and it is only that - is that the anthrax mailers were ratchetingup the level of worry so as to increase the reaction to the few grammes they really had.
I think the anthrax murders were a wildly successful act of terrorism,but am not sure whether they were carried out by a "foreign-oriented" group,or a domestic group willing to destabilize the US- at a time it was under attack - to forward its own agenda.(I have begun to suspect the latter possibility.)
If the group was domestic,it might not have realized its "little bit of guerrilla theater" would cause the deaths of the "workers" it claimed to protect.Having the project blow up in their faces might have discouraged any claims of "responsibility".
This sort of thing happened during the 60's and 70's.Some of the anti-war crowd bombed recruiting stations,places where draft records were kept,etc. If casualties resulted,most of these "noble" protestors got very modest about "taking credit".
One the other hand,one could argue persuasively Muslim extremists do NOT always take "credit" for their acts. Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda crowd denied responsibility for 9/11 ....until they realized it would boost their stature in the Arab world-after which,you couldn't shut them up !
What a fine idea for a thread...
How about the meaning of the return address on the anthrax-laced letters to Sens. Daschle & Leahy? People talked a lot about the Greendale School part and the city, but the ZIP code is key. Was the ZIP code selected first, for a hidden meaning, with the remainder of the address then chosen to flesh it out?
The ZIP code on the anthrax envelopes to the two Senators was 08852.
08-8-52. This is August 8, 1952 - or 8 August 1952, it doesn't matter which style you use, month-day-year as in the USA or day-month-year as in Europe.
What does "August 8, 1952" commemorate? I am told that it is the birthday of the CIA branch for covert activities, the date of the merger of OPC and OSO into the Directorate of Plans, under DDP Frank Wisner. William Leary's authoritative The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents places the creation of the Directorate in August, 1952, but doesn't spell out the August 8 date. http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/17240/art-2.html#ft2. BTW, the Directorate of Plans was later renamed the Directorate of Operations.
Is this ZIP code a numerical coincidence?
Or is the return address of the anthrax the signature or calling-card of the covert activities group of the old CIA, before it was gutted??? Or maybe a wistful harkening back to those days of glory???
"... Twist your minds with fear, I'm the man with the power.
... Damnation is the price he'll pay, for an evil man's desire."
The 9 October letters were mailed after Bob Stevens' death. They knew they were playing with fire.
Heh-heh
John,I think it more likely they selected a zip code that would be somewhat in line with those in the general area of the make-believe school.
I also think using the school as a return address was something only an American (or person very,very familiar with Americans) would do.They would know,in our culture,children are important,and that a mail clerk would be likely to open a letter which appeared to come from school children.
In "nomadic" cultures-such as those which founded the Wahabbi (?) sect of Islam, elders are MUCH more important than children.If resources are scarce,they are more likely to be allocated to an elder than to a child.By extension,a letter received from what appeared to be children would probably be discarded-unopened,as it would likely contain a request for help or some sort.
The 9 October letters were mailed after Bob Stevens' death. They knew they were playing with fire.
I agree. Furthermore, this claim that the perp/s really only wanted to scare people and not actually kill anyone has always struck me as being completely absurd. The anthrax in those letters was the deadliest stuff the top experts had ever seen before. Whoever prepared this stuff absolutely HAD to know that it would almost certainly kill anyone who got into close enough proximity of it.
There is no doubt that they knew that they had killed Bob Stevens before mailing the 9 October letters. A reference to Stevens' death dated 5 October: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3BBE2232.89CC8E1F%40sympatico.ca&output=gplain. This is a reply to an earlier article which, curiosely, was posted anonymously - by "R." - and marked with the x-no-archive tag to request that it be not saved by search engines. Why the superanonymity? Who was this "R."? May-be one of the mailers, just possibly? Doesn't really matter.
The earliest the letters postmarked 9 October could have been mailed was late in the day on 6 October. By the time of mailing, the mailers had known for at least a day that Stevens had died.
I agree with Battle Axe that the envelopes were probably addressed before being filled. Common-sense says that people don't take chances with anthrax-filled envelopes. There is no way to tell how long before mailing were they filled. It doesn't matter for the conclusion tho - they proceeded with the Daschle-Leahy mailing even after they knew that Stevens had died.
I agree. I've always personally believed that at least part of the goal of the anthrax was to try to deter or delay our retaliatory military response to 9/11. A mass anthrax attack killing a large number of people right on the heels of 9/11 would have put American support for an immediate, overwhelming military response at around 90-95% instead of just the 70-80% percent that it was.
I think they probably wanted to try to demonstrate the capability and means with which to kill number of people if they wanted to without actually doing so, which would have been the ultimate provocation. They didn't particularly care who actually died as a result though.
As has been remarked-endlessly-no group ever stepped forward to claim "credit",and assorted AQ insiders have declined to do so.
I have a vague notion-which I can't begin to substantiate-of a small group,operating along the lines of the old Weather Underground: co-opting-let's say-an intern at one of our own labs into smuggling out a small vial of weapons-grade material and leaving a substitute vial in its place.
The group need not have been Muslim-or even have known which direction Mecca lies in.
Looks like they were waiting for media reports of the Florida attack before mailing the letters to the Senators. The letters to Leahy & Daschle were mailed as soon as practical after the 5 October news reports of Stevens' death.
Whosoever did them, the anthrax mailings were a two-phase covert op. Phase One: AMI, also New York Post, NBC, CBS, ABC. Phase Two: Leahy and Daschle.
Phase One in a 2-stage op is a set-up phase, and AMI was crucial in that set-up. It put people in a certain frame-of-mind desired by the mailers.
The mailers waited for that frame-of-mind to be established before launching Phase Two. Their aim: the weaponised anthrax of Phase Two was to be interpreted in the context construited by Phase One.
*Some possible motives: Punishment of the administration for refusal to sign a BW limitation agreement;destabilization of the administration for political reasons,etc.,etc.
I propose that the ZIP code was chosen first, to represent the date of founding of the Directorate of Plans, and then the city was chosen, probably from a map, as being in about the right area.
The alternative hypothesis is that the city was chosen first, but then one has to ask two questions: Why Franklin Park? And why the incorrect ZIP code? It's a lot harder to see how they would have gotten an incorrect ZIP code for a city than to see how they might have gotten an incorrect city near a ZIP code.
Why would they have picked Leahy and Daschle as recipients?
Why would they have tried to blame Islamics?
I can't put together any plausible scenario for this.
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