In order to believe it is "just as easy," you have to believe it is EASY to have a MASSIVE conspiracy where many FBI agents, many scientists from many agencies and non-government areas, and many people from the Bush Administration are ALL deliberately conspiring together to cover up the MURDER of five innocent Americans. And after six years, not one of them has gone to the media with the truth.
Is it really "just as easy" to believe that as to look at the facts which say that some people made some simple mistakes and false assumptions in the extremely intense days right after the discovery of the anthrax letters?
Wouldn't you be doing as Francis Boyle is doing: Assuming that there are so many evil people in America that a criminal mastermind can just pick an choose who he wants to help him with his evil plan, and everyone will gladly join up and keep silent about it?
I have no reason to believe that is true. While there have been conspiracies, I don't believe it's that easy to get people to cover up the murder of innocent Americans. And anyone who tries will just have to talk with one person who cannot go along, and that person will forever have the information needed to blow the conspiracy apart and put all the conspirators in jail -- unless you assume, of course, that everyone in the media and in the legal system will also gladly join the conspiracy.
jpl,
Aren’t there bound to be important national security reasons to keep things secret? Also, isn’t likely that some of the story did not unfold until later upon the capture of documents and interrogation of detainees?
For example, it was not until much later that it was learned that Albany imam’s January 1999 diary entry read:
“Today I met (Brother Abu Sadiq) he is from Libya. He came with a Palestinian brother to my house. They seemed to be clever and MUJAHID, may Allah protect them. We talked about the following points:
1 Paying attention and programming and not independent work.
2 Strive to move the war to America and Israel, make the explosions there.
3 Attacking western targets so we can get the people’s attention toward us...”
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nyn/NewsReleases/Releases/Release-454.htm
AREF’s JANUARY 1999 DIARY
With respect to the diary entry above, Albany imam says he was just writing down what someone else who came to his house said.
But the reality may be more complicated and established some other documents and witness statements.
By way of background, a man named Aso Hawleri, a longtime member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan ( IMK) along with several Arabs, formed Central Islamic Faction.
http://www.meib.org/articles/0112_ir1.htm
The US Attorney in announcing Albany Imam Aref’s conviction, said:
“A cooperating individual (”CI”) had reported that in October 2001 this number [for IMF] was given to the CI so that the CI could report back to al Qaeda. In addition, a document on the letterhead of Islamic Cintral, Irbil, Iraq dated October 1999 introduced Aref as a representative, and Aref was associated with John Earl Johnson a/k/a Yaya, and with Ali Yaghi, two individuals with known terrorist sympathies.”
Thus, the Albany imam allegedly was a representative of the Central Islamic Faction Aso Hawleri had formed.
( In 1999, longtime Albany resident Ali Yagli was deported in May 2002 after investigation into an allegation (of unknown reliability or basis) that he knew hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi.)
Now, as explained in Alan Cullison’s Atlantic Monthly article (”Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive”), a scanned image of the identity card of a military leader of Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK) identity was found on a computer abandoned by al-Qaeda as it fled Kabul in late 2001. A looter had grabbed the computer after a bombing and sold it to a dealer. WSJ journalist Cullison picked up the computer when his laptop was wrecked in a car accident. The card lists the fellow as a member of the Military Office of the IMK, an important position in the group. A number of Ansar al-Islam members are known to have trained at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan through the 1990s. Ansar al-Islam was formed upon a $300,000 grant by Bin Laden — it was an amalgation of a number of splintered factions in late 2001. As confirmed by the documents, several Arab leaders sent from Afghanistan by Ayman Zawahiri helped join the factions.
http://www.pwhce.org/asohawleri.html
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm
I’m not sure if the picture is of Krekar or Ansar’s #3 or Aso Hawleri. But it is a nice little documentary entry showing Ayman’s connection to Ansar. Other documentary evidence dates to 2001 and the meeting at which Ansar was formed with various folks from Afghanistan overseeing the merger. Compare “From Sting to Frame-Up: The Case of Yassin Aref,” August 19, 2007 (Aref’s former attorney mistakenly suggesting Ansar was not formed until 2003).
http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2007/08/19/from-sting-to-frame-up-the-case-of-yassin-aref/
http://kurdo.blogspot.com/2005/04/rare-photos-of-terrorist-mullah-krekar.html
This top Ansar al-Islam military leader, Aso Hawleri, this guy who formed the group that introduced Aref and other Albany residents as its representatives, was captured in October 2003.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3192352.stm
The sting operation directed at Albany imam Aref was put into play in 2003. By that time, in addition to the CI’s report, they had found Aref’s phone number in Kursdistan, for example, in June 2003.
Wasn’t the cooperating individual Aso Hawleri, longtime IMF member?
The Albany imam was charged with falsely denying he knew Mullah Krekar, one-time head of IMK military office.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:NzZzo1zPcEQJ:timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp%3FStoryID%3D618763+IMK+Krekar&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us
There’s a great post-2001 interview of Mullah Krekar on YouTube in which a relaxed and bemused Mullah Krekar is explaining, with his mom at his side on the couch, that he’s not a terrorist. That is also the position of Imam Aref and his supporters.
Separately, the United States government alleges in a sentencing memo that Alo Al-Timimi’s friend, Rafil Dhafir, would give money each year to a group renamed Ansar Al-Islam. As explained in the links above, the reality is more complicated — with splinter groups (including the IMK) being brought together under the new name.
The CI (that the US Attorney calls him a “cooperating individual” rather than “confidential informant”) says that Bin Laden sent a message to Albany Imam Aref shortly after 9/11 asking how close he could get to [redacted] aircraft. The CI used the number for the IMF in Syria to report to Al Qaeda. Albany imam Aref called the IMF number 14 times during the 1999-2001 period. This, the government, says, is additionally part of the reason they launched the elaborate stinger sting operation. It would seem that as soon as they got the information from the CI in 2003, they quickly set up the missile sting. If they had the info about the October 2001 message, they would not have waited. Who was the CI? Wasn’t it the Ansar #3 Aso Hawleri? Rather than, for example, Mullah Krekar himself or Egyptian Rafa Taha, captured in Syria in Fall 2001.
Rafa Taha, a former leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group, who resigned after the public relations debacle of Luxor, had participated in putting together Ansar-al-Islam at Zawahiri’s request. Zawahiri was originator of the project to weaponize anthrax for use against targets in the US. Taha adamantly opposed the Egyptian Islamic Group cease-fire and in Fall 2000, drafted a fatwa with Brooklyn US post office employee Sattar urging the murder of jews wherever they could be found.
Meanwhile, back in EdWorld — with fewer unfamiliar names to learn and the next 9/11 not potentially at stake — Ed’s Wisconsin’s bowler January 1999 diary entry stated:
“Law and Order” is on tonight. I liked the other DA more than the new one.
Stop using the straw-man argument. Francis Boyle is loopy. To come on here and claim that myself or others hold Boyle-type viewpoints is absurd. But it’s obvious that there is information about the nature of the antharx that the FBI does NOT want Congress to know. This has been admitted by their chief scientist, Dwight Adams, under oath no less.
This would NOT involve a massive conspiracy (another one of your strawman arguments).
We do not know how many FBI scientists have actually seen the lab analysis of the powders. Interestingly, Doug Beeecher (who has been described by the media as being “at the center of the Amerithrax investigation”) has NOT seen the lab analysis.
FYI- Dwight Adams’s testimony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
In late 2002 Senators Daschle and Leahy called in the FBI to explain the Washington Post story “FBI’s Theory On Anthrax Is Doubted”, Washington Post, October 28, 2002. This was later on reported in “Anthrax Powder — State of the Art?”[28] . The latter article described how Dwight Adams, chief FBI scientist, told Senators Daschle and Leahy that there were no special additives in the senate anthrax and that the silica was “naturally occurring”. However, Adams admitted that there was scientific information concerning the nature of the anthrax organism that was deemed by his superiors too sensitive to share with Senators Daschle and Leahy:
Connolly: Earlier you testified that regarding the scientific aspect of the investigation there was information that was simply in your view too sensitive to share to the public about the particular characteristics of the organism sent in the mail. Is that correct?
Adams: In so many words, yes, sir.
Connolly: I don’t want to mischaracterize it. If you think I’ve mischaracterized it in any way then, please, put your own words on it.
Adams: No, that’s fine.
Connolly: Did you feel like you had the same restrictions in informing the senate, congress, or their staff in terms of what it is you would reveal to them about the particular characteristics of the organism that was sent?
Adams: As I’ve already stated there was specific information that I did not feel appropriate to share with either the media or to the Hill because it was too sensitive of the information to do so.[29]