Posted on 12/10/2004 1:15:38 PM PST by genefromjersey
The Boca Raton post office had this stuff all over the place, as did West Palm Beach post office and a third facility in that area.
The folks who mailed the anthrax letters knew how long a taped over embossed postal envelope would take to begin leaking anthrax. That one fact narrows the attackers down to the KGB, the Bulgarian or Romanian secret police, or Arab terrorists working for Saddam Hussein.
Why are you so sure these letters didn't come from Hamilton?
They did not get processed in the devices that separate letters from flats and sprs. That is, they were not subjected to facing.
This means the letters were taken from a tray already prepared by someone, presumably a major mailer. This is typical of how mailer's handle their own limited outgoing direct business mail and correspondence, as well as stray letters picked up in letter and flat trays they get from the USPS to prepare their large commercial mailings.
What we have in New Jersey appears to be a mailer with a large stack of trays. The anthrax letters were simply in the bottom of more than one such tray. As the mailer worked off the stack, the letters would be found in the bottom of a tray, and then simply be tossed into the ordinary business mail tray which would be taken to the post office with the commercial mailings.
You get cancelations on different days because the mailer wasn't working his way through the stack of that particular size of tray very fast. That's why I think he had a letter shop and didn't didn't do flats (or, as you used to know them, circs. and magazines). He had a stack or two of flat trays for some sort of incidental jobs he does, but his biggest usage was of letter trays.
His letter trays had high velocity, but his flat trays had low velocity. BTW, this is not a terribly profound observation. People in the business know exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, many times I have seen them attend MTAC (Mailer's Technical Advisory Committee) meetings with similar "found in empty equipment" letters in hand complaining about what they perceive to be a "problem".
The FBI and Postal Inspectors should have been checking the staging areas in every major mailer in the area as soon as possible after the discovery of the anthrax attack.
>>>The reason I am so sure they did not originate in New Jersey is the simple fact that there's absolutely no contamination found in any part of the postal facility "upstream" of the 010 operation where they were taken from a tray and then moved through the canceling operation.
I don't know what 'upstream' means but the box the letters were dropped in was removed.
Hamilton mail facility only just reopened about 6 months ago.
Hamilton also was not the only facility decontaminated.
All the mail goes through an annex before processing.
So I really don't understand your points still.
>>>What we have in New Jersey appears to be a mailer with a large stack of trays.
I can't comment on the rest of your note.
The point I made is very simple ~ each anthrax letter entered into the Hamilton facility for cancelation via a letter tray, not through collections.
>>Nothing was found.
Where was that reported?
>>>each anthrax letter entered into the Hamilton facility for cancelation via a letter tray, not through collections.
I'm sorry. I don't understand enough about how the post office works to follow that.
If the letters didn't come from NJ; than why were the letters copied at Rutgers?
Here's how the letters were mailed at one time, but ended up appearing to be part of a series of different "attacks" undertaken on different days:
Depending on what time of day, and which day of the week, a half dozen otherwise identical letters mailed at the same time are going to end up with different kinds of service.
Working backwards from 9/11 we have 9/10, 9/9, 9/8 and 9/7. There are more days of course but let's stick to these particular days.
9/7 is Friday. As we meet up with our terrorist friends, they have the anthrax, but they have only one envelope. So, they fill that envelope with the requisite amount and resolve to stop by the post office and buy some more envelopes after last prayer of the day.
They then do so. While there, they drop the original, filled envelope, into a letter drop in the lobby. Tests for anthrax spores conducted in the Boca Raton, FL post office show positive results in that area, and in many others showing a trail of contamination from there to two other buildings. This is the envelope directed at AMI publications. (Note: there were no spores found at the letter drop because the tray that catches the mail customers drop had been taken away ~ something that happens many times a day).
The Washington Post actually ran a large diagram showing the anthrax test findings from all the facilities that ended up being contaminated.
The terrorists then fill the new envelopes they've just acquired, address them appropriately, and then tape them up with clear packaging tape. An FBI agent demonstrated that all of the tape found on all the envelopes came from the same roll!
Rather than run the envelopes back down to the post office to drop in the letter drop in the lobby, the terrorists simply drop them in collection boxes in the neighborhood. By spreading them around they improve the probability of delivery, and reduce the probability of discovery by the authorities.
So, there those envelopes are in the bottom of collection boxes on a Friday night.
What happens next?
Well, collection occurs. A postal truck and driver come around, open the boxes, pull out the large tray in the bottom (which is where your letters fall) and put a new tray in. The door is locked. The driver returns to his vehicle and places a virtually empty tray in the back of his truck ~ probably nesting it inside yet another virtually empty tray.
He does his whole route, collects all the boxes, and ends up with a stack of nearly empty trays, several of which contain an anthrax letter.
Upon return to the Boca Raton post office on this late night collection run, he pulls out the trays, sets them on the back dock, parks his truck for the evening, and goes home.
It's going to be Saturday morning before anybody does anything with those trays with those letters.
Remember again ~ it's very important ~ very little mailing is done late Friday evening, and no businesses do any mailings of consequence on Saturday morning. For mail collection operations this is a very dead time, nearly as dead as Saturday evening and Sunday morning!
The stack of nearly empty trays is mistaken for a stack of "empty trays", or empty MTE (Mail Transport Equipment).
Down in South Florida equipment piles up since they don't send as much mail out as they receive in from the rest of the country. There, a stack of empty trays will ordinarily be wrapped in plastic, placed on a pallet with other stacks of empty trays, and as soon as possible, placed on a truck for a trip North to someplace with a lot of major mailers.
MTE from this area (West Palm Beach) is taken to Philadelphia, PA to the BMC (Bulk Mail Center). From there MTE is distributed to, among other places, Franklin Twp. New Jersey!
So, our stack of supposedly empty trays with a handful of anthrax filled envelopes gets sent to a mailer in Central New Jersey.
The mailer's people receive the trays, set them aside, and then, as time and circumstances, and mail volumes dictate, begin pulling trays off the top to be filled with mail.
As the trays are pulled, the letters will be found, one at a time, and then be dispatched to the local post office along with the company's own business related mail. This mail will enter the post office over the back dock. It will not go through a collection box. It will not be subject to culling and facing. Instead, it will be placed directly on the canceling machine.
That's how the anthrax letters got their postmarks.
Since different letters were in different trays in that single stack of trays, they were pulled on different days and ended up with cancelations that are different.
So, a single mailing, half a dozen letters, and ordinary handling of single-piece rate First-Class Mail under normal conditions pertaining to mail service on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday ends up giving you something that looks like two different attacks ~ one in Florida and one in New Jersey, undertaken at different times.
I rather think everything happened normally for all of this mail, and there were no strange events. None of this is strange.
The FBI pursued the idea that someone dropped the mail in their very own curbside letter box (usually called by everyone a "mail box").
They were unable to find such a box although they dug up thousands of them for testing elsewhere.
They never bothered to check the records regarding empty MTE shipments originating in Florida and ending in New Jersey, although the USPS maintains an elaborate data base that should have been able to pinpoint the exact pallet-load of trays, and where they went.
For all anyone knows, there's still a couple of these letters sitting there in the remainder of a stack of MTE in some NJ mailer's shop.
This sort of negligence on the part of the FBI kills innocent people every single time. Unfortunately it's what we have all come to expect.
>>>>Let me deal with the Rutgers thing immediately. The FBI has never announced authoritatively where the letters were copied. The whole business at that school, or near that school, was just another in a series of false leads.
The *FBI* hasn't announced authoritatively on *any* part of this investigation. It is an active investigation.
But they did do tests on all the copiers at Waksman Institute of Microbiology, part of Rutgers.
What I don't understand is based on what you think it is a false lead?
Even your insight into how the letters were processed at the post office, what are you citing? Where are the reports of what trays? And based on what is your information about the box drops testing negative?
Where was the information about the tape coming from the same roll? And since all the letters weren't recovered, what do you base that on?
What is an MTE?
>>> From there MTE is distributed to, among other places, Franklin Twp. New Jersey!
The anthrax letters were bar coded to Hamilton. That is a different county then Franklin.
MTE = Mail Transportation Equipment = Trays, Sacks, etc. You or your neighbor probably have one or more USPS trays in your garage. They are very popular for all sorts of things. Please return them as soon as possible.
>>> From there MTE is distributed to, among other places, Franklin Twp. New Jersey!
The anthrax letters were bar coded to Hamilton. That is a different county then Franklin.
Florida receives much more mail than it sends. Accordingly, almost any empty mail transport equipment (MTE) is sent back North without delay.
All the major mailers are in the North and East in the United States.
As a result, empty MTE in the West Palm Beach FL area usually ends up in Eastern Pennsylvania or New Jersey a few days later.
Any "lost in the mail" letters that might be trapped in such equipment will re-enter the postal system in those places!
This is normal. There are no mysteries.
As a remarkable coincidence, all of the equipment being sent North from Boca Raton, FL could have ended up at Greensboro, NC, the college hometown of a couple of the hijackers. However, the dispatch was direct to Philadelphia BMC because September is the peak mail preparation time for the Christmas advertisers. They manufacture the mail. Put it in MTE, and store it until it's time for delivery to the post office in November. That's the catalogs and the like you receive just in time for your Christmas shopping.
They knew how long a letter had to be in the postal system before the anthrax spores would filter through the envelope paper. They knew how much of the paper to wrap with plastic packaging tape to limit the amount of filtering paper exposed to the outside world.
Their idea was to design an envelope such that in 3 or 4 days time all or most of the anthrax spores inside would filter to the outside and be distributed with the maximum effect on airport operations. After all, by being mailed in Florida the terrorists guaranteed the letters would FLY. The envelopes would have been inside Washington National or Dulles International, and/or John F Kennedy airports at the time they began leaking copious quantities of anthrax powder. Thousands of passengers would have been exposed and the powder would have been carried all over the world as well as the United States.
(NOTE: The terrorists made a mistake in this judgment since the three targeted airports have separate mail terminal handling facilities and the letters would never have gotten into the same ventilation system as that serving the passenger terminals, but in most of the world it is commonly the case that mail goes right through the baggage and express operations. In the US mail volumes are far, far higher so they are segregated.)
In addition, the letters would have passed through the main postal facilities in New York City and Washington DC thereby, the terrorists hoped, bringing down those facilities, their normal mail flow, and consequently the economy and government of the United States.
They knew normal mail routings, they knew paper characteristics, and they understood weaponized anthrax spore flow rates. They also had a very devastating plan which would have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and worldwide panic!
They didn't, however, count on the USPS providing poor service to single-piece rate hand addressed First-Class letter mail entered in city mail collection boxes on Friday evenings after the last prayers.
And that, BTW, proves, positively, that no one in USPS management or top level technical or administrative jobs were in on the attack. If they had been, they'd made sure the letters were entered in a 3-digit working tray of FCM letters brought to the post office by a major mailer.
That also demonstrates that no one working for a private sector letter shop helped organize the plan.
This leads me to conclude that the plan was drawn up in a foreign country where they have a substantial mail service, e.g. France, UK, Germany, Russia, Italy, Australia ~
Instead of looking for the guys who made the anthrax, the FBI would have been better served looking for the postal operations analyst who drew up the plan. There couldn't be more than 100 people in the countries I've named who would know how to do it.
Gene, you still following this thread?
Thank you muawiyah. I hope you don't mind if I come back with more pestering questions
interesting thread ping
Yep. Still here.
After giving the individual the answer, I thought it might be useful to post it here:
The President was in South Florida near enough the date in question to give Mr. Atta an opportunity to scout out the hotel where he was going to stay.
There is absolutely no doubt the terrorists had a Presidential assassination in mind. That's why they didn't target the White House with an airplane. Notice, though, that it's Atta doing this too, as well as the hijackings, and certainly the anthrax attack! This is called "multitasking".
The intended routing for the anthrax letters was from Boca Raton to West Palm Beach mail processing facility to the West Palm airport, to Washington National, and from there through the Brentwood Facility, and then to Capitol Hill. The alternate routing took letter(s) through FDR station in New York.
This would have taken 3 or 4 days (the terrorists thought), and about the time we'd started digging out the rubble at the Pentagon (to be hit with TWO airplanes since it is such a very large building), people around the world would have started falling ill with respiratory anthrax picked up at Washington National and JFK terminals!.
Both Washington DC and New York would be in total panic with refugees fleeing the cities, and further spreading anthrax spores.
The plan didn't work. Instead, ordinary procedures served to sidetrack it. That took all the letters but one to New Jersey.
BTW, the FBI initially hypothesized a "letter" for each and every instance of disease. It didn't take long to disprove that hypothesis. Since the early days of the investigation they've accepted the cross-contamination hypothesis. That's where a contaminated letter went through the mail processing equipment and left behind spores that got affixed to other mail. That mail, in turn, served as a carrier for the spores.
All of that means that the only letters we can claim are those which were found, plus one at Boca Raton. It left a trail! BTW, that letter had been so freshly packaged with anthrax that very little of it leaked out, and then only through the wings (at the corners). The other letters were literally "gushing" anthrax spores right through the paper.
The spores have been found to be small enough to penetrate the paper used by USPS to produce embossed postage paid envelopes.
The spores also readily contaminated whatever trays (MTE) they came into contact with. Some disease incidents are clearly cases of cross contamination where the spores were carried by a letter or flat tray right into the place of business.
Again, that's an ordinary practice you might wish to reconsider. I warned you about keeping those trays around with your stuff in them. Everybody is better off getting them back to USPS as soon as possible where they may end up irradiated, or at least treated with powerful Ultraviolet light which kills any residual spores.
I'm familiar with the attempted assasination in Florida.
Even though I'm intrigued with the mail routing perspective; I'm still not doubting it due to other information I have (not saying I'm right or you are...still pondering).
What about the trip to Maine? Isn't that where Atta attained the anthrax? And his stop off in NJ? I thought that is where he dead dropped some? Remember, the anthrax that went to Washington DC was a different mix. Weren't there two processings? The anthrax that was mailed from NJ and the anthrax that was mailed from FL?
I still think there were two different mixing processes and two different mailings.
And where did you get the information about the letter boxes testing negative? And the packing tape?
Also, I believe some contamination was discovered in the post office serving her.
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