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."
I really would like to know what was in that letter. Too bad the FBI told the folks at AMI to keep their mouths shut about it--even though it's not connected with the anthrax attack in any way, of course.
This is the basis of your claim that the AMI letter was hand-delivered? If anthrax was indeed found in the lobby, I suppose one might logically deduce it may have been hand-delivered.
Not quibbling. Just confirming...
There is another more practical reason for the detergent carton.
In this case the terrorists probably wanted to kill people.
The detergent box was added to mislead the recipients
as to the real nature of the powder enclosed.
The person who came up with the idea is the former Freeper "Right to Defend"
who has a Ph.D. in Physics,
and used to contribute a lot of extremely useful information
to the Free Republic anthrax threads
which are by far the best on the Web.
"Right to Defend" was banned and no reasons for this ever were given to him.
IMHO, much is already known about the anthrax attacks - but little can be made public at this time. I look for new disclosures just before we oust Saddam.
Before the intriguing "All" idea, and motivated by Atta's 9/11 rebus, I had suggested that perhaps the included items were arranged to form a "911" rebus - just like "two sticks, a dash, and a cake with a stick down". The circular tin and the cigar would form the 9, and I suggested that maybe the detergent box chosen had a prominent 11 on it. Then somebody pointed out that the "All" logo has the double-l that looks like an 11.
It would be of interest to ask someone who saw the detergent box whether it was a box of All and, if so, whether the "a" of "all" was cut out or crossed out. This explanation, although obviously very speculative, explains all the objects in the letter (except the Star of David, which needs no further explanation).
At first I was sceptical about the JLo = MAL letter
but it's beginning to make a certain peculiar sense.
What evidence is there that the description of events on this tape is real?
I think all the information on this tape (names of hijackers, their places of birth, etc.) was pieced together from FBI reports and from what has appeared in the media. Is there anything new, or is there any respect in which the facts as given differ from those which we have been believing? (For instance, the FBI could have gotten a place of birth wrong. Or al-Qaeda could have gotten one wrong. In any case, there would have been some differences, if they weren't relying on the FBI and the Western media as their source.)
There is strong evidence that there were other hijackings planned for 9/11 which were thwarted due to the grounding of all aviation. This isn't mentioned on the tape -- in fact the very opposite is implied (with bin Laden holding up a finger for each hijacking, only going up to four). There is strong evidence that many of the hijackers were traveling on false identities; the false identities were used on the tape, even though the individuals involved are dead and need no further protection.
Moreover, I think that the individuals who are listed without a place of birth are the same ones as those for whom no place of birth is listed in the media accounts after 9/11. I haven't gone through the names in detail, so there might be some exceptions here, but a casual perusal does indicate this.
In short, I think this description of bin Laden and his cohorts on 9/11 is probably pure propaganda. And there's no great surprise in that.
It was described in the media as a can of chewing tobacco, but I'm told that chewing tobacco doesn't come in cans, that it must have been either snuff or smokeless tobacco.
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