Posted on 10/13/2006 3:46:10 PM PDT by Shermy
Nobody has been arrested for the anthrax mailings of 2001, but many people have paid for the crime.
Five died and at least 17 others got sick.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been frustrated. Careers have crumbled. Taxpayers have gotten socked for billions of dollars to shore up bioterror defenses that some experts say still fall short.
Now, an analysis from the FBI itself, buried in a microbiology journal, is raising more questions about the investigation.
In the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI scientist Douglas Beecher sought to set the record straight. Anthrax spores mailed to politicians and journalists in September and October 2001, Beecher wrote, were not prepared using advanced techniques and additives to make them more lethal, contrary to "a widely circulated misconception."
The notion the anthrax spores were "weaponized" had fueled conjecture that only a government insider could have carried out the operation.
Beecher's article suggested a much wider universe of potential suspects -- who showed they could kill without highly refined spores.
"A clever high school student" could make such a preparation, according to Ronald Atlas, former president of the American Society for Microbiology and co-director of the Center for Health Hazards Preparedness at the University of Louisville.
The Beecher paper has left Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wondering if the killings, which further shook a nation already reeling from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, will ever be solved. He blames the FBI for "botching" the case.
Agents spun their wheels chasing a small circle of weapons experts, Holt said.
In the anthrax attacks, Steven Hatfill, a virologist who had worked for the government, landed in the cross-hairs. Labeled a "person of interest" by officials but never charged, the scientist claims the public probe has made him unemployable. He is suing the government and media outlets.
Kenneth Berry's career also unraveled after the FBI searched a Dover Township, N.J., summer home he was visiting in 2004. Berry was a doctor from upstate New York who started an organization for training emergency workers to deal with biochemical attacks. He never was charged, either.
Holt also chides authorities for taking nearly a year to discover anthrax traces in a mailbox near Princeton University. That mailbox, where letters laced with anthrax bacteria may have begun their journey in 2001, is on a route that feeds the Hamilton Township postal center where anthrax letters were processed.
In a letter to Holt, FBI Assistant Director Eleni Kalisch declined to give a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. Kalisch claimed sensitive information was leaked from classified briefings more than three years ago, and described the anthrax case as a criminal matter not subject to the committee's oversight.
Some cases take time to crack, Kalisch wrote. Seventeen FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors remain on the "Amerithrax" beat. The FBI said the anthrax investigation has spanned six continents and generated more than 9,100 interviews, 67 searches and 6,000 subpoenas.
Early on, the FBI hoped that analysis of the spores would point to the lab that prepared them. But Beecher's article underscores difficulties of such microscopic sleuthing. Particle sizes, for instance, may not yield as many clues as some expected.
Over time, after being handled and exposed to different conditions, particles "may not resemble the initial product," Beecher wrote.
Yet the FBI is confident, and has forged scientific ties and advances to help prevent future biological attacks, said Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, on the FBI's Web site.
Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist, still thinks the anthrax attacks were an inside job because they used a virulent form of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis, which only a few biodefense- or intelligence-related labs were thought to possess.
"Whoever did it is an insider," said Ayaad Assaad, a toxicologist with the Environmental Protection Agency, who formerly worked at an Army biodefense center at Fort Detrick, Md. "It started with anthrax. Now it's ricin, and God knows what's coming."
Ed Lake has tracked the case closely, self-publishing a book, "Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks, The First Three Years" and moderating a Web site. Lake is convinced the FBI knows the perpetrator but lacks evidence to prosecute. He believes the killer is a scientist from central New Jersey who wanted America to gird for an al-Qaida bioterror attack in the wake of Sept. 11.
"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake, referring to hand-printed letters, bearing New Jersey postmarks, sent to NBC and the New York Post.
Leon Harris retired last year from the Hamilton Township postal center. He too suspects the bad guys are home-grown and will be caught.
"I don't care if it takes 10 years," the Air Force veteran said. "They're going to find them."
Ernesto Blanco agreed. He survived inhalational anthrax that killed his friend Bob Stevens, a colleague at a tabloid in Florida, five years ago this month. Blanco, now 79, returned to his mailroom job at American Media Inc. in 2002.
"I am positive they will catch them," Blanco said. "I have faith in what they are doing."
TIMELINE
Key dates in the 5-year-old investigation of the anthrax attacks:
2001:
Sept. 18: Postal facility in Hamilton Township, N.J., processes anthrax-laced letters to NBC News in New York and the New York Post.
Oct. 5: Bob Stevens, photo editor at Florida tabloid the Sun dies from inhalational anthrax.
Oct. 9: Hamilton Township facility processes anthrax letters to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy. Both letters have return address of fictitious "Greendale School" in Franklin Park, N.J.
Oct. 16: U.S. Senate closes; employees are tested for exposure to anthrax microbes.
Oct. 17: The House shuts down.
Oct. 18: Hamilton Township facility is closed.
Oct. 21: Washington postal worker Thomas Morris Jr. dies from anthrax.
Oct. 22: Washington postal worker Joseph Curseen dies from anthrax.
Oct. 31: Kathy Nguyen, who worked in a New York City hospital supply room, dies from anthrax.
Nov. 21: Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Conn., dies from anthrax. Authorities suspect her mail was contaminated by other mail.
[snip - more at link]
Its a muslim, therefore they will never pursue. It was supposed to be a white crazy male remember?
Ping.
Say, what?
Was it just a coincidence that there appear to have been connections between known Muslim terrorists, the Florida anthrax attack, and the New Jersey mailings?
""A clever high school student" could make such a preparation""
Coated or not, I don't think that's correct. It's still high-grade stuff.
You're quoted:
"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake..."
I also believe the mailer/s had a familiarity with Central New Jersey. Because the return addresses on the second batch nearly match a name of a school there and the town didn't match the zip code, town was adjacent or so to the zip code area - only someone from local familiarity would know enough to make that kind of mistake. If the mailer was from elsewhere but wanted to make a phoney return address they would look up the town's name on the internet or such and have the correct zipcode - no reason to dummy the zip code.
As far as the silica in the mix, that blew in on the day, September 8, 2001, the terrorists filled the envelopes in a public park in Boca Raton, FL.
""A clever high school student" could make such a preparation""
And s/he probably would have attended a really good private school
in a town with a good university library.
Or was a strong early-adapter of using the Internet for looking up
terror devices/concoctions.
And the kid would probably get a free ride at Yale U., in the manner of
the Taliban admit.
Who is "they"?
"I missed this part of the story."
The Berry episode was very bizzare.
shhhh...our government. The FBI has its marching orders or continues to show its bungling incompetence.
Let's see: our clever HS student would need anthrax cultures, a supply of suitable medium,a freezer,a centrifuge,and,perhaps,a flash dryer or some form of bead mill.A glove box would be helpful,as would protective gear,air filtration.
What are we up to now ? $30-40,000 ?
You do realize that the Justice Department, FBI ... are under the control of President Bush.
Is he part of they?
"What are we up to now ? $30-40,000 ?"
I don't know. But the FBI expressed they were surprised how "pure" it was and such so I got the impression it was special.
ssshhh...yes.
Two points: 1) If all earlier reports of weapons grade anthrax were false, please identify those who made those false claims and then fire them. 2) In their tireless search for the criminal responsible for those anthrax attacks, has the FBI at last ruled out their favorite frame-up target, Richard Jewel?
In theory. In reality, President Bush abdicated responsibility for the executive bureaucracy and stopped caring some time ago. Remember, this is the guy who told "Brownie" he was doing a heck of a job and gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the incompetent, pink-tie wearing George Tenet.
If they filled the envelopes in a public park, then down wind, or in the soil, there would be left over spores. Someone would eventually get an infection.
Are there any infections???
More likely the envelopes were filled overseas, or in an apartment or beach house along the ocean side of Florida, maybe along the beach, that was subsequently burned. I've tried to get fire records of all the places that were torched about that time....mid Aug to Sept. 2001. So far have not.
Not a High School student.
Graduate college student from same place as the last meeting between Jose Padilla and KSM.
Nobody has been arrested for the anthrax mailings of 2001.
So this is the new mantra. I seem to recall that we (the US government) were unable to aerolicize (sp?) anthrax, but maybe my memory is faulty. I also have several articles saved that Iraq WAS able to do what our own scientists couldn't do.
When you add in the logic of "pure" into this entire search...then you start talking of a "expert"...not a teenage kid named Carl working in his home-made lab over the garage. If you look at all of these scientists....who work on government projects...all make in excess of $80k per year. Most will make more than $100k a year...so they can afford to build a lab in the back of their garage that would easily handle this kind of situation. Don't forget...there are college labs that are selling or dumping their old hardware all the time...so a smart guy could walk in and buy a $50k item for less than $6k...and just build onto his lab piece by piece. These guys are like mechanics...they know their profession and their tools.
Behind all of this PR work of the FBI...they have to know that this is a inside job...that their list of possible performers is down to probably 15 guys...and they just can't get much further. Whoever did it...was very smart...and covered every obvious trail. They will have to slip up...and a third party realize their connection (like a ex-wife) before this will happen. In fact...they probably already know that the guy is single...because a curious wife would have called the cops already.
Looks like Hold,(D, NJ) is fed up with Gommint attempts to solve the puzzle.
Don't think the article mentions the Postal Inspectors either.
Interesting, huh?
Did you read post 17?
"He [bin Laden] was a busy person and had hundreds of people working for him," said one El Hage family member. "You didn't get to see him unless he invited you." El Hage's mother-in-law received letters from El Hage that contained seed samples from the Sudanese farms. El Hage frequently took international trips to Europe and elsewhere on business for bin Laden, family members say. -"A Portrait of Wadih El Hage, Accused Terrorist," by Oriana Zill, Frontline, PBS.org, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/upclose/elhage.html.(Oriana Zill was Associate Producer of FRONTLINE's "Hunting Bin Laden")
OCTOBER 25, 2001 : (COLUMBIA : IRA TERRORISTS REPORTEDLY TRIED TO BUY COCAINE; PLANNED TO MIX ANTHRAX WITH COCAINE) <4?On October 25,2001, Univision’s Spanish T.V., "Primer Impacto' and in the late nightly international news, it was reported from Colombia that the IRA terrorists arrested this month in Colombia had their headquarters in Cuba and tried to buy 1,500 kilograms of cocaine in order to be mixed with anthrax for further distribution in the U.S. Although the Spanish TV channel interviewed the DEA agent who exposed the operation, the American media censored this important news that brings forward Castro’s involvement in bio-terrorism. - "CASTRO AND THE INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM, A CHRONOLOGY," by Eugene Pons with a foreword by Jaime Suchlicki , Institute for Cuban &Cuban-American Studies, Occasional Paper Series, September 2001
Why fill the envelopes "overseas" when all that's going to happen is they will start leaking before they can be mailed. Remember, anthrax spores are so small they migrate right out through the spaces in the paper used in USPS envelopes and the attackers knew that as evidenced by the fact they placed wide mailing tape all around the envelopes.
These envelopes were mailed within hours of being filled.
It's much more convenient to do the work down in the basement.
It's actually not "rocket science" ~ find a dead cow in Texas and it will most likely have exactly the same strain of anthrax used in the attack.
Bring home your sample.
The trick is to get the living bacterial mass/mat to "spore". I don't happen to know how that happens, but that's the only "secret". All the rest of the deal has to do with cleaning the debris out of the spores, and it's not like these things don't drift on the wind anyway.
Clearly, Karl Rove was involved, and should be frog-marched out of the White House for immediate execution by the more progressive members of the media...
Our country trains hundreds of thousands of foreign students and has for some time.
Please define "inside job".
One of us trying to warn people??? or one of them on the inside of one of our institutions?
sic.
There are lots of dead cows in Texas on any given day.
Misquoting X-Files, "The Strain Is Out There".
There's a large Pakistani community in SE Texas. They are there for the climate AND chemical industry. There are enough of them they support a decent goat/sheep slaughtering business (as they do here in the DC area). You becha' Paks know about anthrax.
No, I wasn't assuming the letters were mailed abroad ~ that's clearly not the case. However, once the envelopes were filled with anthrax, the anthrax spores would begin filtering through the paper. That started immediately, not later. Because the guys doing the attack knew that this was going to happen they TAPED the envelopes. This involved wrapping the envelope end to end, on both sides, with a piece of clear packaging tape ~ the wide stuff!
Grand Central Station must have some areas where the wind or fan or HVAC system creates a good breeze. What would happen if this envelope were sprinkled in front of this breeze?
"appear to have been connections"? What may appear to be a "connection" may not actually be a connection if the facts are examined.
There is NO proven connection between the anthrax attacks and Muslim terrorists. "The Florida anthrax attack" was from "the New Jersey mailings". One of the letters sent from the Trenton, NJ, area was sent to Florida.
Ed
Here's a link to all the details about Dr. Berry: www.anthraxinvestigation.com/DrBerry.html
Ed
Just write up a list of the 50 anthrax experts within the US government (contractors included too of course)...and thats the inside group you have to look at.
"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake..."
Yes, I know. This article is taken from a news service. The actual article was printed in the Newark New Jersey Star-Ledger on October 9.
Ed
This topic brings back a freeper post durring the anthrax incident after 9-11. I can't remember the freeper's name, but I won't forget this "theory" on the topic.
His(or her)post came up with this possible answer:
What if the anthrax letters were actually a not-so-subtle threat by Saddam after 9-11??
The reasons for the "mini" anthrax attack, was to threaten the Bush administration if we were going to invade Iraq, because of the tie-ins with Al-Queda and Saddam's BIG role in training them and letting them use Iraq as a "terrorist basic training site" to attack the US.
Saddam was playing the Oil-For-Food (OFF) thing, and had no way to retaliate against the US in any open attack that could be traced back to him.
Therefore, the Anthrax was the way to go. The US was still smarting from 9-11, had the "Gorelick Wall" still in place,Homeland Security was in BARELY underway, and we didn't have ANY idea if a large scale attack was already set to go here with nothing but a "GO" signal to set it off.
If you were the Bush administration at that time, how would you respond to a threat like that?? The airlines were all going broke because of so many people afraid to fly after the 9-11 attacks. Can you imagine a country wide coordinated anthrax attack, with the USPS as the main vehicle, and major ventalation systems in some of the larger buildings, and then in say the major public transportation systems ALL AT THE SAME TIME??
The Bush administration could have been "blackmailed" very easily by Saddam and Al-Queda, by saying they would do a full blown attack if Bush tried to pin the first attack on him. The attack would have been very hard to prove and connect it on Saddam and Al-Queda in the UN arena, due to the state of our intellegence apparatus at that time, and all the UN member countries involved in it, who could have also been "blackmailed" by Saddam and Al-Queda by threatening to expose them in the scandal if they didn't keep obstructing the US from gathering international support for the US and coalition almost certain retaliatory invasion because of the 9-11 and anthrax attacks.
The Bush adminisration could also NOT GO PUBLIC with this information. It would have devestated the US economy, not to mention the mass panic and fear. No US mail delivery for an extended period of time,due to the leaking of information like that is almost unimagionable. The incubation period alone is such an effective weapon, that by the time we realized that a wide spread attack had taken place,.....well let's just say it would be a major "problem".
And what if this "theory" really was true???
I would have to consider a major anthrax attack on the US in the WMD catagory. Why haven't we found out who did it yet?? IIRC, the "type" of anthrax used was only available to approximately four different locations in the world, with one of the four being in Iraq.
Can you imagine being President Bush, knowing what he knew, but not being able to go public with it?? Knowing for the VERY SURVIVAL OF THE US, HE HAD TO RETALIATE, or the "mudlums" would know they were on their way to our total destruction because we DID NOT RESPOND.
And worse yet, having to take all the crap he's taking since then, because the WMD reason given for our invasion of Iraq, didn't find ANY "Weapon's of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, according to the MSM, and the Dems, and all the Bush haters.
And one more thing before I close...can you imagine if some of the major Dem political anti-Bush bunch DO know about the situation Bush is in because of his not being able to expose it as yet, and are using it AGAINST HIM by painting Bush as a liar with this NO-WMD's in Iraq, so Bush is a liar mantra??.....
Sorry for the "rant", but IMHO, I considered that freeper's post kinda interesting.....
I don't recall the FBI ever expressing surprise about the purity. But a lot of other people were surprised by the purity because they were expecting something from some biological weapons program.
The attack anthrax didn't come from any biological weapons program. Such programs concentrate on quantity not quality/purity. They use industrialized processes where purity is a waste of time and money. Dropping a pound of powder that's only 10 percent spores on a soldier will kill him just as dead as an ounce of 100% pure spores, and the production costs are much less.
"PURE" spores come from a lab. Concentrations of pure anthrax spores are created every day suspended in liquids like distilled water so that they won't float around. It's less common to dry the spores into a powder, because dry spores will float around and are truly dangerous.
Ed
The false claims were mostly made by the MEDIA and by scientists who were just speculating about what the MEDIA told them.
The details of how all the bad information about coatings and additives got spread around are in Chapter 15 of my book. That chapter is titled "To Err Is Human" and can be read by clicking HERE.
Ed
They are excellent in providing protection for the Clinton agenda.
That was The Great Satan. Ironically, that is what Saddam called Bush.
It is an interesting theory.
That was The Great Satan. Ironically, that is what Saddam called Bush.
It is an interesting theory.
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