Posted on 11/16/2001 1:19:44 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
This is one I was thinking of:
Thirteen years ago, in Washington state, Stella Nickell was convicted of killing her husband Bruce, and Sue Snow, a bank manager, by putting cyanide in Excedrin capsules. The crime was chillingly similar to the Chicago Tylenol murders four years earlier. Seven people died in that case, which was never solved.
That case moved Congress to enact tough tampering laws. Nickell was the first to be convicted. Now, 13 years later, private detective Al Farr and his partner Paul Ciolino are on a mission to prove what they both firmly believe: Nickell is innocent. Farr says that there is no credible evidence against her.
If you want to consider non-Middle-Eastern possibilities, think about China.
English is not his primary language and neither is Arabic. Note the dates on the xeroxed letters in the *anthrax letterbomb*
I don't know Arabic. Why do the dates indicate that the writer is not Arabic?
I agree that the sender does not appear to be an American. The date is written 09-11-01. All the Americans I know would have written 9/11/01, without the leading 0, and with slashes instead of dashes.
Much has been made of the fact that the date is written in the American order of month-day-year, but most foreigners would be aware of that and, in fact, would have become accustomed to that order after a few years here -- they'd be repeatedly told by Americans that they were writing dates incorrectly if they used the day-month-year order. But nobody misunderstands a date written with dashes instead of slashes; nobody even comments on such a thing, so a foreigner could easily not realize that it looks foreign.
See also *this article*
Thanks for the link on the Zimbabwe anthrax outbreak; I had never heard of it.
Something very remarkable about that message. It has a single entry under "replies". If you click it, you see a reply consisting of the original message quoted with carets, and no new text.
I kept this up for a dozen or so replies -- each a different poster, with "mustafa's" original message quoted, but no new content.
I then found one that had the same message "mustafa" entered, but this time not quoted (no carets, it appeared to be original content), and signed by "Bharathi Kumar". (BTW almost all the names seemed to be middle-eastern types.)
The next message -- a reply to "Bharathi Kumar" -- (this one by a poster named "bluess") quoted the original message, again attributing it to "mustafa".
The next message after that one again had the text in quoted format, but attributed it to ">ASHISH BHARDWAJ" -- which happens to be the same name shown as the author of the post, although the Author: field showed it in lowercase.
The reply to that message had "mustafa's" message, but this time once again formatted as caretless original text, and, missing the linebreaks that the previous messages had. It was signed by "Venkat", and the Author: field showed VENKAT in uppercase.
Each of the author names that I checked (they are underlined hotlinks) had a mailto: with what look like valid email addresses.
I stopped clicking at that point, something like 15 or so plies into the thread. I have no idea how much longer it goes, but I'm flabbergasted. I've never seen anything like it.
Conjecture, anyone?
I'll toss in the first possible scenario or two to get the ball rolling. :)
1. It could be a series of coded messages, with the "message" part being the email address, or the author name, or perhaps there's some subtle changes in the body of the text (an extra space here or there, etc.)
2. It could be a "recruiting station", with volunteers directed to post a followup message to that thread, so that they could be contacted via email. Why do something like that? So that the "recruiter" could see who "applies" without disclosing his own identity. I've heard that "no footprint" communications like that happen on Usenet; in fact I think there's a newsgroup dedicated to such comms. There is no way for an observer to know who the recipient is, because the message is readable to the entire world, even though only the intended recipient will know how to decipher it.
FWIW, the forum software logs the posters' IP address, and appears to do reverse DNS when possible. Here are a few examples I grabbed at random from that thread:
Author Host/IP: bay-67.pppmad.vsnl.net.in / 203.197.133.162
Author Host/IP: NoHost / 61.11.238.229
Author Host/IP: proxy.sjc.netsetter.com / 216.34.56.12
Author Host/IP: cf1-adapter1.isu.net.sa / 212.26.19.155
I did not do any analysis of the addresses, but it did seem like some of the same B blocks kept showing up.
All in all, it's strange, very strange.
Must be proven first? Define "first". It certainly needn't be proven to file the suit. I'm living proof of that.
"BTW, when is truth NOT a defense to a charge of libel?"
When you can't afford a lawyer, and can't interest a public interest outfit to represent you because they already have enough "Does" on the case, and can't afford to travel halfway across the country for hearing after hearing after hearing to try to represent yourself.
A profile like yours is a decent basis for follow-on observations. That doesn't mean it's right, or that it's perfect, it's just an attempt to model the known reports and facts in a consistent narrative so as to suggest where further investigations may be more fruitful. It doesn't deny "something completely different" as a possibly.
I have two points related to the profile. One is a hunch is that the terrorist cell had one and only one vial of the anthrax and they were rushed to use it for some reason -- panic maybe. Why then would the letters contain different granularities? As another freeper suggested it could be because the very fine stuff settles to the bottom of the vial. As the powder was carefully spooned out of the vial early letters got a coarse grain, later letters a fine grain. If so, no connection to a biological lab is needed to be infered.
The second is the 'G' and '6' as handwritten on the letters and envelopes are peculiar and perhaps indicate a arabic cursive normal usage.
Great work as usual!
I hope Atta wasn't handling plutonium, though...
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