Posted on 09/05/2002 1:32:45 PM PDT by Shermy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost a year after the nation's worst biological weapon attack, the FBI has yet to figure out who sent anthrax-laced letters that killed five people, prompting criticism that its investigation is moving too slowly.
Federal law enforcement sources acknowledged they are not close to making an arrest in the investigation, which began less than a month after the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
FBI officials said they believe the person who mailed the letters to two U.S. senators and to the news media last autumn took advantage of the confusion after Sept. 11, but they do not believe the attacks were related to the hijacking plot.
Critics said the FBI waited too long to reach out to the scientific community, that it failed to follow up on some obvious leads and it may have unfairly focused attention on Dr. Steven Hatfill, a germ warfare expert who says he's innocent.
Hatfill is one of about 30 U.S.-based scientists the FBI considers a "person of interest" in its investigation, meaning they have the expertise, ability and wherewithal to produce the deadly bacteria.
Hatfill, whose apartment was searched twice by the FBI and was fired by Louisiana State University, said investigators singled him out because they were under pressure to show progress in the case.
"The assassination of my character appears to be part of a government effort to show the American people that it's proceeding vigorously with the investigation," he told a news conference on Aug. 25 outside his lawyer's office in Virginia.
One FBI critic has been Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York at Purchase and the chairwoman of a biological weapons panel at the Federation of American Scientists. She said rapid resolution of the case was critical.
"The significance of the anthrax attacks and our response to it cannot be overstated," she said in an analysis posted on the Internet in June.
FUTURE THREAT COULD DWARF 9/11
"By breaking the taboo on the use of bioweapons, this event has engendered a future threat that could dwarf 9/11," Rosenberg said, adding that the FBI seemed to be "marking time on the off-chance that an unknown informer will turn up with a smoking gun."
Rosenberg said she has sent a new commentary about the anthrax attacks to the FBI, but would not make it available to others. She said she did not want to interfere with the proceeding investigation by making public statements.
Jonathan Tucker, a biological and chemical weapons specialist at the Washington-based Monterey Institute, questioned how the investigation has been handled.
"A lot of people are baffled by the way the investigation is going," he said. "There is growing bewilderment in Congress and among the public about where the investigation is headed."
Tucker questioned why the FBI appeared to focus attention on Hatfill, a former U.S. Army scientist, when it apparently did not have the evidence to indict him.
FBI officials said they want to avoid a repeat of the case of Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was initially identified as a suspect in the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta, but who later was cleared of any involvement.
Tucker also questioned whether the FBI had been overly hasty early in the investigation in excluding the possibility of foreign involvement in the anthrax attacks.
FBI officials said they have no evidence linking the Sept. 11 hijackers with the anthrax attacks. (--are they looking for any??)
They dismissed the story of a Florida doctor who treated one of the hijacking suspects, Ahmed Alhaznawi, in June last year. The doctor said Alhaznawi had a lesion on his leg that was consistent with the skin version of anthrax.
The law enforcement sources said the investigation has been especially difficult because the pool of potential suspects is the same group of scientists upon whom the FBI has had to rely for expertise in identifying the bacteria used in the attacks.
They said scientific protocols had to be developed for testing the anthrax found in one of the letters.
The sources said there was a lack of physical evidence, such as fingerprints on the letters, or apparent eyewitnesses.
"It's not the movies or television. People expect the case to be solved in an hour or two hours. It doesn't always happen that way," one official said.
"Sometimes, it just takes months and months and months of searching and digging," one official said. "You are obviously dealing with someone who is very smart. Smart crooks are harder to catch than dumb crooks."
"Shaibah said that Atta called him on August 29 and told him a riddle to set the date of the attacks," he said.Source: Aides Say Bin Laden Planned Sept Attacks - Reporter"He was imitating Atta's Egyptian accent who asked his help to solve a riddle that a friend told him: 'what do you make of two sticks (eleven) a slash and a round (donut-shaped) cookie with a stick hanging from it (a nine)?'," he said.
I don't know whether Algahmdi spoke Spanish, or English for that matter. Atta and some of the other hijackers did fly to Spain to rendezvous with some of their cohorts.
Maybe he did know Spanish. We know that there are al-Qaeda connections in Spain, and Atta traveled there in 2001.
BTW, on America's most wanted last Sat., they showed the mailbox at Princeton which allegedly is the box letters, or some of them were sent. Right across from the university, right across from some beautiful dorms of you alma mater. Right off I thought, "Well, aren't they going to check people at the dorms or connected to the university?" It's not to hard to imagine that someone connected with the university might have needed skills or contacts.
I've said this before, but the video really gave me a jolt. Also, the addresses on the letter. If, say, the mailer was from out of state, would he put a false return address of "Franklin Park" and not mail it from near there? Assume Hatfill did this - wouldn't he put a Princeton address? I still think it is someone connected to the university or business in that area, who has some familiarity with the Franklin Park area of central Jersey and nearby zip codes.
Of course, there's no reason somebody connected with the mosque might not also have some association with Princeton University.
TGS,the "three wave" theory seems to constitute a good working hypothesis. Muawiyah, can it be reconciled with your "single mailing" theory? Or does it strike you as "equally likely" or might it supplant "single mailing"?
And, Sacajaweau, within the past week, you remarked on another thread that the J-Lo letter was "left in the lobby" of the AMI building -- i.e., hand-delivered. What is your source for this info, which has powerful implications in support of the "single mailing" theory?
Which is to say, inasmuch as Boca Raton was one of the infected post offices, how did it get infected if the J-Lo envelope was hand-delivered?
However, if you check the names of the folks in the micro biology department you find some very interesting names.
In fact, if all the letters were prepared and mailed at the same time, then "lost in the mail" as I have described before, the last letters "found" would have had plenty of time for the anthrax spores to filter through the paper.
For those new to this idea (single mailing) it rests on an analysis of normal postal handling.
Friday evenings and Saturdays see very little mail dropped in street collection boxes - maybe a letter or two per box.
Standard postal procedure is to open up the collection box, extract the large tray in the bottom (called a "flat tray" in postal parlance). An empty tray is then placed in the collection box and the door closed and locked.
The tray, which may or may not contain any mail, is then placed in the back of the collection route vehicle. Trays with one or two pieces in them may well be handled as if they are empty.
When the collection route driver returns to the post office he takes those trays out of his truck and places them on the platform (which may range from 23 inches to 48 inches height.)
If the trays are perceived to be empty, they are stacked with other trays. These may in turn be placed on pallets, shrink film wrapped, and shipped North to Philadelphia (from South Florida) in the normal course of events.
The trays will then be distributed by the Philadelphia BMC to various SCFs (such as Trenton), and then sent out to major mailers to be reused.
As the mailer's people work the mail and use up trays, the pile will get smaller and smaller. Eventually the misplaced single-piece rate First-Class Mail letters with anthrax would be discovered and dispatched separately to the Hamilton Twp. facility for processing.
If we may assume all of the letters were lost in flat trays in the same stack, it is readily apparant why all of the letters got cancelled in New Jersey.
I know all you folks out there wished that postal handling was better, but these are pieces mailed one at a time, and addressed to destinations other than a utility or credit card. They simply got misplaced in the same stack of supposedly empty trays. They were discovered on different days (a week apart, the day the mailer usually used flat trays), cancelled, and sent on to their destination.
This is the only hypothesis that explains both Florida and New Jersey mailings. It explains the sequence of events (the Florida letter was delivered first because it was mailed at the letter drop in the Boca Raton main post office). It also explains why everything about New Jersey was accidental!
It's good to see the FBI return to the place where this all started. They wasted too much time, too many lives and millions of dollars chasing phantoms in New Jersey. Even that collection box in Princeton is readily explained as having itself been contaminated by a flat tray "venting" anthrax. The lady letter carrier up there was undoubtedly infected by a different flat tray "venting" anthrax. There is an inherent flaw in the flat tray design that makes it work just like an aerosol.
We can go into every single aspect of this case and the single-mailing theory which relies on an analysis of normal postal operations is the only one which can account for every event.
In short, the "three wave" theory rests entirely on a misapprehension about how the post office really works.
I suspect that letter carrier made a long drive down to Florida to see Mr. Atta. He is a good candidate for the knowledge of how to mail the letters so they would not be seen as unusual.
YPSL was the last violence prone organization to attack the USPS! I don't think they did this since most of them have bailed out to loot the world through personal capitalism, or, alternatively, have burned out their brains with bad dope purchased from dishonest strangers.
ABC News, New York, NY
CBS News, New York, NY
The New York Post, New York, NY
The Sun, Boca Rotan, FL
You asked which looked like the "odd man out". How about PUBLIC BROADCASTING? How about CABLE TV? How about New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, .....? You have three FREE broadcast networks.
You have two of the most widely circulated TABLOID style periodicals in America. These guys are Arabs. They read tabloid style periodicals "back home" and in Europe. They also don't purchase cable TV, and are not entranced by Public TV.
In their minds, the three broadcast networks and the two major tabloids (AMI is "several" tabloids) were the only news broadcast media that counted.
Their selection of media targets is completely understandable and is what you would expect.
If this were done by a disgruntled right wing middle aged male scientist I don't think he'd have picked these guys.
Daschle and Leahy are a bit more difficult. However, if you go to www.jewsforlife.org and check out a news story about he Jeffords betrayal of the Senate (check June), you will find an article that discusses both of these guys in terms of their relationship to RTL issues. They also mention the major broadcast media. They do not presently display the addresses of these folks.
This business of linking their anthrax attack to a Jewish organization (RTL to boot!) is consistent with the propaganda story which appeared shortly after 9/11 throughout the Middle East to the effect that "Jews did it".
No, taking out Iraq doesn't neccessarily mean that we get control of 100% of what Iraq has now or produced in the past. During and after the Gulf War, Iraqi agents carried out conventional terrorist attacks in a desperate atempt to hurt the US. Hussein's defeat did not change that. And if Iraq passed out samples to agents already, or has agents in place already, then these will remain a potential threat until they are rounded up and all samples accounted for- something which would be virtually impossible to do.
And there is always the possibility that Iraq is not the sole source of anthrax out there to worry about. Cuba, Iran and North Korea have biowarfare programs and Cuba and Iran have worked closely together in bioresearch . Russian supplies may be compromised. And there may be a domestic source.
We're not going after Iraq just because of anthrax. We're going after Iraq because it is one of the steps we have to take to deal with terrorism. Terrorists may or may not use WMD; but who wants to put up with the sort fo thing that is commonplace in Israel? I don't. I don't want to get up and see that the convention center, pollice station, post office, school, gas station or bus was blown up. I don't want to be like Israel where its own people cry over tearing down a terrorist's house. It's time to address the problem- terrorism and the ideology behind it.
IF the AMI piece wasn't mailed, but hand-delivered (as contended by Sacajaweau, though not as yet confirmed), that would tend to strengthen the "single-mailing" theory even further.
You don't suppose they knew something about what was coming - e.g. that the letters were all addressed to individuals identified in an article appearing on www.jewsforlife.org in June 2001?
Tuesday, 9-11: Four planes crash between the hours of 9 & 11 (approx).
Tuesday, 9-18: Two letters are postmarked in New Jersey.(Mailer drove from Florida to New Jersey and back to Florida).
Tuesday, 9-25: "Something" is delivered to AMI (Hand-delivered possibly because of Anthrax found in Lobby and not necessarily a letter) Stevens leaves for vacation next day. (Contact to death is 10 days for inhalation anthrax)
Two week break to second wave & time for mailer to move from Florida.
Tuesday, 10-9: Two letters are postmarked in New Jersey (with a return address which is a message)) and which would differentiate any copycat of the first letters).
Please note that up until this point, everything has been occurring on Tuesday.
Monday, November 12: Flight 587 crashes in NY. Had this flight got off on time, it would have crashed at 8:43 A.M., the same approx. time as the first tower was hit. Mailer exposes Lundgren by deliberate single hit as mailer goes to proposed crash site the weekend before, traveling from Massachusetts.
NOTES: There is a Greendale School in Massachusetts, the phone lead-in numbers are 508 852. The return address on the second mailings is 08852. The 4th Grade...the total number of letters sent??, the dose???, likely a date..the 4th???,. There is a Franklin Park outside of Boston and a Franklin train station so we're back to a point of beginning....Boston.
All hits were on the east coast for purposes of "time" coordination.
Sac
a. They believe they found the mailbox where it was mailed...just outside of Princeton University.
b. Previous to this, they tested the copiers at Princeton for match characteristics to the letters (which were copies only). We were given absolutely no information of any results.
I'm surmising that there was some kind of match which lead to the recent find of the contaminated mailbox in front of Princeton U.
So what "drove" them back to Florida and back to AMI?? (the one facility which underwent the most scrutiny and testing originally.)They now know they missed something??? and it was not a letter?? Maybe the worker at AMI who "lived" through inhalation anthrax finally remembered something. Did Stevens tell them something before he died which went unconnected till now??
It certainly looks like they're on some kind of genuine trail.
Sac
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