Workers Can't Sue Postal Officials Over Anthrax, Judge Rules

Washington Post ^ | 11/20/04 | Carol D. Leonnig

[genefromjersey]

And, as you've probably heard, the US District Court ruled out a lawsuit by Hatfill v the NY Times : noting the Times did not report anything on Hatfill until he came forward and identified himself as the "person of interest" the FBI was investigating.

[Khan Noonian Singh]

genefromjersey, replying to John Faust: << And, as you've probably heard, the US District Court ruled out a lawsuit by Hatfill v the NY Times : noting the Times did not report anything on Hatfill until he came forward and identified himself as the "person of interest" the FBI was investigating. >>

Faust, when you said that leaks had spilled out to the New York Times, you didn't really mean Kristof falling for the Hatfill bait, did you? I was thinking of something else when I read your post.

[Khan Noonian Singh]

<< If you are going to consider this option, why not consider that AQ might have been tricked into doing it as part of a false-flag operation? >>

Here is a post that caught my eye in a search, read final paragraf with emphassis added.....


To: CyberAnt; Wordsmith; The Great Satan

Missile delivery systems are irrelvant, with the exception of perhaps attacks on Israel - but even then unlikley since Israel will follow the trajectory of the missile to its origin and reply with a nuclear bomb.

Ballistic missiles went out with hijacking planes and taking them to Cuba.

This is the new world of plausible deniability - and Saddam was the person who brought us into this new world.

False flag operations carried out by willing suicidal jihadists (where even the jihadist grunts themselves are unaware who's really sponsoring them) are what we have to deal with - and when these guys have anthrax in their hands it's the most frightening thing the world has ever faced. There is no deterrent.

21 posted on 01/30/2003 4:19 PM EST by Badabing Badaboom
Cached from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/832842/posts

[John Faust]

You're right, Khan, I was not thinking of Hatfill's belabored appearance in the Times.

The New York Times article that came to mind was the Sep-4-2001 report by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and Wm J Broad, U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits.

A thought-provoking article which has received just scant attention.

If you haven't seen it, here's a link. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/strategy/germs.htm

[genefromjersey]

There is another report Ms Miller did not mention: an experiment in mail contamination performed in Canada under the auspices of both governments. Simulant was placed in test letters,and it was found the simulant would leak through the pores of the envelopes-no matter how carefully they were taped.The projected result was extremely serious-just as the real thing turned out to be.

One of the contractors employed on the project was Hatfill-and-as memory serves, he hired Bill Patrick (a retired BW expert) as a consultant. (This places the FBI's interest in Hatfill in a different context.)

[Khan Noonian Singh]

<< I gather those who believe in a false-flag operation in getting AQ to do 911 think Sadam was behind it all. Is that it? >>

Ay, there's the rub - ye just wouldn't know. That's why it's named a false-flag.

Btw, the poster whose post caught my eye in No. 84 didnt say he thought Saddam was the sponsor. Just that Saddam had << brought us into this new world >>. What-ever that means.

[muawiyah]

All the letters were mailed in Florida before the 9/11 attack. They got "lost in the mail". I've explained that many times before.

The postmark dates mean nothing all that important. The pieces carried addresses that would take them through several major airports and important postal facilities ~ Brokaw, Daschle and Leahy would suffice for that purpose.

The terrorists managed to shut down the main postal facility serving the national capital.

The recent discovery of a field handbook in Iraq concerning manufacturing weaponized anthrax should pretty much resolve all the questions about who was really involved in the attack.

[Khan Noonian Singh]

<< You're right, Khan, I was not thinking of Hatfill's belabored appearance in the Times.

The New York Times article that came to mind was the Sep-4-2001 report by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and Wm J Broad, U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits.

A thought-provoking article which has received just scant attention.

If you haven't seen it, here's a link. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/strategy/germs.htm >>

**

That is the report I was thinking of too. Thought provoking. In-deed.

The New York Times article is long, may-be a summary would be utile:

1. The US is engaged in a secret biowarfare research program, claimed to be for defence. Only defensive biowarfare research is compatible with US treaty obliggations. Program begun under Clinton, continued under Bush.
    
2. In 2001, some time before 11 September, the Pentagon made plans to have Battelle create a superpotent anthrax, via genetic engineering.
    
3. The CIA built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb, said to lack some parts needed for a working bomb.
    
4. The Defense Dept built a biological weapons factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials.

This is not tinfoilhat conspiracy theory. All as stated directly in Judith Miller's New York Times article of 4 Sept 2001 linked to above.

[John Faust]

The Judith Miller article was published in the New York Times on Sep-4-2001.

Just one month later, on Oct-5-2001, a hoax anthrax letter was mailed to Judith Miller from St Petersburg, Florida. Strong indications are that this was connected to the real anthrax mailings.

What do you think was the reason Judith Miller received a letter? Could the reason be Miller's Sep-4-2001 article?

[genefromjersey]

John, what are the "strong indications" the hoax letter had any connection to the anthrax murders ?

I'm curious.

(Hoax letters were mailed by the hundreds prior to 9/11;by the thousands afterward.)

[genefromjersey]

Khan, are you aware the reason for experiments in "super-potency" was the revelations of Ken Alibek ? The Russians had done a LOT of work in breeding antibiotic-resistant diseases,chimeras,etc.

I can see where our research would alarm the FAS-though the Russian efforts never really seemed to.( The head of the FAS kept saying :"Nothing to see here ! Move along !" -even after it was disclosed there were TONS of bioweapons in their arsenal,and specially designed rockets to deliver them.)

By contrast, Alibek was stunned by our lack of a weapons program and our lack of a viable infrastructure.(He had assumed the US was lying,just as the Soviets had.) The source of that is Alibek himself.

[John Faust]

John, what are the "strong indications" the hoax letter had any connection to the anthrax murders ?
I'm curious.
(Hoax letters were mailed by the hundreds prior to 9/11;by the thousands afterward.)

Yes, there are very many hoax anthrax letters which have nothing to do with the 2001 mailings.

But the letter to Judith Miller was part of a small set of letters from St Petersburg, Florida, whose connection with the 2001 mailings is very probable.

Both Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and Don Foster have written about this set of hoax letters. While one may discount their conclusions regarding the case as a whole, their analysis of why these particular hoax letters are connected to the case is solid.

Rosenberg's paper is on-line. Foster wrote an article in Vanity Fair, but I don't think Vanity Fair has an archive on the web.

[Khan Noonian Singh]

Yes, the Saint Petersburg hoax letters were sent by someone with a connexion to the real 2001 anthrax mailings.

Thank you for drawing one's attention to Foster's article in Vanity Fair. You are right, Vanity Fair doesn't have an archive online, but I did a search and found a posting of it at the UCLA anthrax website - http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/messageanthrax.html.

I recommend this article greatly for the info on the 3 hoax letters sent by the mailers.

Here is an outline. Read the article for more info.

	Postmark Date	Addressee	Text
Hoax Letter #1	20 Sep 2001	Tom Brokaw; opened by aide Erin O'Connor Same people received a real anthrax letter postmked 18 Sep 2001!	Started: "THE UNTHINKABEL" SAMPLE OF HOW IT WILL LOOK In the 1st line above, you should see one quotemark below the line, and also the 2 underlined Ns in the word UNTHINKABEL should be Ns reversed left-right as mirror-image. Included bio-terror threats against New York, Chi, LA, and Wash DC. If Newsweek is correct, also contained the text: SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. But this may be a paraphrase of SAMPLE OF HOW IT WILL LOOK rather than a quotacion.
Hoax Letter #2	5 Oct 2001	Howard Troxler	HOWARD TOXLER...1ST CASE OF DISEASE NOW BLOW AWAY THIS DUST SO YOU CAN SEE HOW THE REAL THING FLYS. OKLAHOMA-RYDER TRUCK! SKYWAY BRIDGE-18 WHEELS. According to Foster, same hand-writing and same simbolic oddities. Exact details have not been made public.
Hoax Letter #3	5 Oct 2001	Judith Miller	Bio-terror threats, same hand-writing and simbolic oddities. Text has not been publicised.

Question: What do the 3 letters have in common?

Answer:

• Commonality A: All 3 contained powder, but some inert material, not anthrax.
• Commonality B: All 3 were mailed from Saint Petersburg.
• Commonality C: All 3 contained threats of bio-terror.
• Commonality D: All 3 were written in the same hand-writing and with fake Russian script: Cyrillic-looking backward Ns and opening quotacion marks below the line a la Russe.

Question: How do we know that the 3 letters are connected to one another?

Answer: Primarily because of Commonality D. Secondarily because of Commonality B. Tertiarily because two were postmarked on the same date, 5 Oct 2001.

Question: How do we know that these letters are connected to the 2001 anthrax mailings?

Answer: There was an 18 Sep 2001 mailing of real anthrax to Tom Brokaw, also opened by his aide Erin O'Connor. Here we have a 20 Sep 2001 hoax mailing to the same person. At the time, no one knew:

• that there was an anthrax attack in progress,
• much less that such an attack would take place via the US mails accompanying letters,
• and even less that Tom Brokaw would be the recipient of such a letter.

This is very further-fetched to be a co-incidence.

And the Brokaw hoax letter is quite explicit: "The unthinkabel" and, even more pointedly, "Sample of how it will look".

The other two letters were postmarkened 5 October 2001. Bob Stevens had just died from anthrax. That was in the news. But... it was not being widely attributed to bio-terrorism, and I believe there was no suggestion of delivery via letter. And... no one knew that AMI was merely the first media target to be noticed, of several real anthrax letters already mailed but still unknown. So again on 5 Oct we have what would be an amazing co-incidence if it were a co-incidence... Two more hoax letters containing powder, threatening bio-attacks, sent to news media outlets. Just like the real letters that were unknown at the time to all but the mailers.

[Khan Noonian Singh]

<< Somehow I don't see the exact same person sending the real letter, then sending a hoax afterward. I know there are similarities... >>

The similarities are not the point.

Look... Someone sends anthrax in the mail. Someone sends a warning letter to the same person at virtually the same time, before anyone else knew that the original letter had been sent. Actually before anyone else knew that any anthrax letters had been sent.

How could anyone else have known who to send the warning letter to?

Why wait a couple of days after the real letter before mailing the warning letter? Be-cause of the incubation period. That's exactly what one would expect.

[genefromjersey]

To all of you contributing to this thread: This has been a VERY interesting and informative exchange,with plenty of new material thrown in,and I appreciate the spirit and cooperativeness of all !

There were much earlier threads about the exact nature of the materials used.Someone-quite a while ago-suggested the materials were made with a very up-to-date technology.

Cabosil (silocaine) was mentioned.This stuff is available "over the counter" for about $ 5.95 pound,and is used in fireworks and (prepared a bit differently) in pharmaceutical products,electronics,and certain paints.

When made "perfectly" in a proper spray dryer (a recent and notable Swiss upgrade of the Russo-Iraqi method),it was actually unsuitable for mailing,because you couldn't get it to hold still long enough to put it into an envelope.

The Russians (and their "clients") used to use a spray dryer to prepare their bioweapons.Instead of using cabosil,they used diatomaceous earth and Bentonite (a water resistant clay)-plus a third,undisclosed material which helped eliminate clumping.It was almost exactly the way we used to make it,before we stopped production in 1972: no surprise,because the Russians had penetrated our program so thoroughly,they were reading copies of our internal reports before the ink was dry on the originals.