Posted on 07/08/2005 8:08:52 AM PDT by Gene Vidocq
PHILADELPHIA - Clayton Lee Waagner, a self-proclaimed terrorist who mailed phony anthrax letters to abortion clinics in 24 states, was sentenced to 19 years in prison Thursday.
Waagner sent many threatening letters from a FedEx facility in Philadelphia in October and November 2001 during the height of the anthrax scares that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
"He wanted to exploit the moment," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard P. Barrett said, "to use the anxiety and panic caused by those other terrorist acts to fuel his own brand of terror."
The frightening letters signed by the "Army of God" contained a mysterious powder, sometimes "Bacillus thuringiensis, an otherwise harmless insecticide that triggers false-positive results in field tests for anthrax.....
At the time, Waagner, 48, a former computer programmer, was a fugitive, having escaped from prison in Illinois by picking a lock with a comb and wriggling through a roof drain....
In one threat against abortion clinics, Waagner said: "We cannot defend the pre-born child in the Senate, nor in the courts. You've won those battles. ... We will fight you on the streets of America."....
,,, officials said, Waagner sent hundreds of letters with fake anthrax to clinics. Waagner was already serving a 49-year sentence for firearms and escape convictions in Illinois and Ohio.,,,,"
(Excerpt) Read more at duluthsuperior.com ...
'contained a mysterious powder, sometimes "Bacillus thuringiensis, an otherwise harmless insecticide that triggers false-positive results in field tests for anthrax.'
No pocket combs this time around.
lock him up.
What kind of country are we living in when you can't even mail Bacillus thuringiensis to abortion clinics any more. Geez ... the Patriot Act has stolen from us all our liberties.
Nothin' like flying under the radar, eh, buddy?
It seems the abortionist are living in their own hell as they recieve no respect from the greater medical community. Leave them alone - they will die a pathetic dead.
Justice will eventually be served.
Big mistkae, he should have molested 19 kids. He'd get a few months probation.
"a self-proclaimed terrorist"
Wait, that's a wrong use of English. He's "a self-proclaimed militant", or "a self-proclaimed insurgent".
'Nothin' like flying under the radar, eh, buddy?'
I'll bet it's addicting, eh what?
No, he's just a terrorist.
Pretty amazing the speed with this they found this lowlife, yet the first real biological weapons attack in the history of our country has resulted in absolutely nothing. I wonder why that could be?
'Big mistkae, he should have molested 19 kids. He'd get a few months probation.'
You wish:)
People rarely get 19 years for murder anymore.
And abortionists go free. Somethings wrong with this picture. What he did was certainly criminal but what they do is murder.
' the first real biological weapons attack in the history of our country has resulted in absolutely nothing. I wonder why that could be?'
Well, maybe not THE first - but the second -
and ten years later?
THE MENA ANTHRAX POISONING CASE
On the weekend of September 21, 1991, Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch met with IRS Investigator Bill Duncan to write a report on their investigation of Mena drug smuggling and money laundering and send it to Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Investigator Welch had been ordered by Major Doug Stephens to meet with Duncan over the weekend in Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant's office. Welch had just opened a case concerning the theft of sexually explicit photographs which could have been used to blackmail state officials. On Friday, September 20, Welch went to one of the prisons near Pine Bluff and interviewed the person who had actually taken the photographs, a person whose best friend was very close to Barry Seal. The next morning, Saturday, he and his wife, Debbie Welch, made the three-hour drive to Little Rock.
Returning to Mena on Sunday, Welch told his wife that he didn't feel too well. He thought he had gotten the flu. Monday the symptoms were worse. By Tuesday Welch was certain that he had a serious case of pneumonia. He had had pneumonia before and recognized the symptoms. Tuesday night he could hardly walk and his wife took him to the local hospital. The doctor gave him some over-the-counter cold tablets and sent him home.
But, Welch's condition deteriorated further to the point where his wife took him to another doctor in Mena the next day. Dr. Calleton, a Vietnam vet, immediately called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and told Welch's wife to get him to Fort Smith immediately. The doctor told her that he should go by ambulance but she might be able to get there faster if she left right then. He called the CDC one more time before they left.
In Fort Smith a team of doctors were waiting. Dr. Calleton had called them twice while Welch was in transport and they had been in contact with the CDC. Later the doctor would tell Welch's wife that he was on the edge of death. He would not have made it through the night had he not been in the hospital. He was having fever seizures by now.
A couple of days after Welch had been admitted to St. Edwards Mercy Hospital, his doctor was wheeling him to one of the labs for testing when she asked him if he was doing anything at work that was particularly dangerous. He told her that he had been a cop for about 15 years and that danger was probably inherent with the job description. She told Welch that they believed he had anthrax. She said the anthrax was the military kind that is used as an agent of biological warfare and that it was induced. Somebody had deliberately infected him. She added that they had many more test to run but they had already started treating him for anthrax.
It took Welch a while to digest what the doctor had told him. Welch knew that in his business if you couldn't document something and/or corroborate it somehow, then it never happened. The next day, in the hospital room, the doctor told Debbie Welch, that they believed her husband had military anthrax and they were going to treat him for it. The doctor also told Debbie that Russell was very sick now and it was going to get worse before it was over, because the disease was going to have to run its course. She was right. The following day Arkansas State Police Investigator Andy Wiley was in Welch's room and heard the doctor repeat the diagnosis. This time Welch told the doctor that he read about an outbreak of anthrax in some cattle in southeastern Arkansas a couple of weeks earlier. The doctor told Welch and his visitors that the warfare biological agent is not the same as the cow disease. She shook her finger in Welch's face and said emphatically, "No, somebody did this to you. Somebody sprayed you in the face." She described how the infectious agent is carried in canisters. She said, "This is the same stuff that Saddam Hussein was going to use on our troops." Investigator Wiley wrote down the names of Welch's medication and later confirmed that he was, in fact, being treated for anthrax. Other state police officers went to the hospital room, periodically, to help Debbie Welch, who stayed in the private room with her husband day and night for the entire 14 days that Welch was hospitalized. Investigator Charles Lambert and Investigator Bobby Walker were among those that heard the doctor discuss Welch's circumstances and the anthrax.
The treatment was very effective against the anthrax but had severe side effects. Welch suffered a partial kidney failure. The doctor said it was a calculated risk that she had to take when she decided to treat him for anthrax. Welch was a weight lifter and stayed in good shape. The doctor told him that if it hadn't been for that the chances are that he still might not have survived the disease. The doctor also credited his physical conditioning when he gained back most of the 40 percent of his renal functions which had been lost due to the anthrax treatment.
After this incident, Welch spent time trying to figure out how he could have gotten the anthrax. One possibility, he finally concluded, was through envelopes carrying padding material in which the infectious agent, Bacillus anthracis, can be transmitted. The Arkansas State Police used these for a while to mail microcassette tapes containing investigator's dictation. Welch's padded envelopes were returned to him with the tops torn off. When he complained to the secretary, Kim McBride, in Hope, Arkansas, she told him that the padded envelopes were not torn when she mailed them. Welch told his supervisor, Lt. Finis Duvall. Rather than do an investigation to find out who was tampering with official state police mail, some of which was sensitive, Lt. Duvall just said, "Well, I'll be damn... wonder who's doing that."
Last fall a news team from a British television program called "The Big Story" traveled through Mena. The anchor for the show told Welch that he had worked for three years in South Africa. He said that sending biological warfare agents through the mail was a commonly-used weapon during a particular ongoing war in that part of the world. After Welch got out of the hospital he never again received any torn envelopes.
Welch was discharged from the hospital on October 8, 1991. From there on, Welch's career in the State Police never was the same. He suffered harassment, transfers, unwarranted criticism, and public hearings of his performance. His superiors in the state police were concerned that he was answering questions from the press now that Bill Clinton was seeking the presidency. At one point he was interrogated about whether or not he was writing a book. After nineteen years of honorable service, solving difficult cases, being requested by victims and their families in other parts of the state to be assigned to their investigations, Welch was being humiliated like an enlistee in military bootcamp. All of this was being done at the hands of men appointed by Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker. An honest cop just trying to do his job, Welch finally left the State Police on January 16, 1996. After 20 years on the force, he left a poor and disillusioned man.
Even though Welch and Duncan sent boxes of evidence to Lawrence Walsh in Washington, Walsh never showed any interest in Mena at all.
[Excerpt from the book "Mena - a tale of drugs and politics" scheduled for publication this summer.]
[Published in the April 1, 1996 issue of the Washington Weekly]
6) This may not be the first time anthrax has been used to silence critics. Russell Welch, an investigator for the Arkansas State Police who had been trying to blow the whistle a dozen years ago on the massive Russell Welch was exposed to weaponized anthrax over a decade ago when he opened a letter, and his life was saved only after prompt diagnosis by his doctor. Later his doctor's office was burglarized, and test results and correspondence with Center for Disease Control officials in Atlanta were stolen.
Ping.
What do you know about:
THE MENA ANTHRAX POISONING CASE
I think we're only days away from an arrest now. The investigation is at a hyper-critical stage. And my name is Ed Puddle.
Nineteen years for a fake threat? Under our system of justice he'd have gotten six months if he raped and killed a little boy.
If a liberal was convicted of making false threats against conservatives, he'd get off with a slap on the wrist. The operative word here is "abortion clinics." Anyone who threatens the abortion industry will get the book thrown at him by liberal judges. Since Roe v. Wade there's been one law for abortion protesters and another for everyone else.
Sure he did wrong. But 19 years?
Out of curiosity, did you read the whole article? This guy wasn't some first-time offending weirdo. He was a fugitive who escaped prison in the middle of an already long prison sentence.
Firearms and escape convictions? That's rather vague. This guy sounds like a nut case, but there's really not enough information to tell if he is actually violent.
Indeed, if they gave him 19 years for fake anthrax letters, you wonder what earned him his 41 years. Owning a gun? Being labeled a right wing fanatic?
I grant you there may be more there than I know about, but this article really doesn't persuade me from the few facts given.
Was that Texas ? I seem to recall anthrax crossed genes with a closely related "harmless species" and infected 2 painters,or some such.
"People rarely get 19 years for murder anymore."
Then we must up the sentence for murder, rather than going easy on this terrorist.
'Was that Texas?'
Please see post 16.
I don't disagree with this sentiment, but still the irony exists.
There is a serious anthrax epidemic
at the moment
in the province of Bingol
Turkey.
It seems people are getting it
from eating contaminated meat.
I wasn`t aware
you could get anthrax this way.
Oh, I'll admit it's ironic. Ironic and sad.
I just hate terrorists, domestic or foreign.
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