Posted on 03/26/2002 2:08:27 AM PST by snopercod
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:46:23 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Just when most people felt safe again wielding a letter opener, anthrax is suddenly back in the news.
Several recent reports offer worrying reminders that the attacks that left five Americans dead last fall are far from solved. Most troubling, they suggest that the FBI's theory that this anthrax was the work of a domestic loner may be off the mark; or, even if it isn't, the more relevant reality may be that Saddam or al Qaeda is planning to cook up another biological attack. Months later, about the only thing we still know for sure is that there is nothing elementary about the cases of Americans killed by anthrax.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Miami Herald, October 15, 2001
Originally found at http://www.miami.com/herald/special/news/terrorism/digdocs/078725.htm, but the page has expired.
(My boldface in the first sentence.)
BY ALFONSO CHARDY, WANDA J. DeMARZO AND RONNIE GREENE
achardy@herald.com
Confirming a clear link between the terrorists targeting America and the South Florida company hit by anthrax cases, the FBI said Sunday that the wife of The Sun tabloid editor rented two Delray Beach apartments to two hijack suspects killed in the Sept. 11 suicide missions.
The Sun is part of the American Media Inc. tabloid chain, and it employed photo editor Bob Stevens, who died this month from inhalation anthrax. Two other AMI employees were exposed, and five more are being retested to confirm positive blood test results.
Sun editor Michael Irish's wife, Gloria, a real estate agent, rented unit 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club, 755 Dotterel Rd., to Hamza Alghamdi and unit 260 at the Hamlet Country Club, 401 Greensward Lane, to Marwan al-Shehhi this summer, said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.
Al-Shehhi and Alghamdi were on United Airlines Flight 175, the second jet to strike the World Trade Center.
``There is now a link between the editor's wife and the terrorists,'' Orihuela said.
But just as quickly, she said the FBI wasn't drawing immediate conclusions.
``Right now, it looks like a coincidence,'' Orihuela said from outside the tabloid's Boca Raton headquarters. ``We are not searching the apartments at this time. We are focusing on this building.''
In other developments Sunday, three more anthrax exposures were reported from a letter received at NBC in New York, and four Microsoft workers who came in contact with a contaminated letter in Nevada tested negative for anthrax. The exposures in New York were to a police officer who handled the letter, and to two lab technicians.
In South Florida, the apartment connection marks the most direct link to date between the hijack suspects and the AMI anthrax cases. It was first reported in The Mail newspaper in Great Britain.
The Delray Racquet Club apartment in question is central to a massive federal investigation into the terrorist attacks. Investigators trying to piece the puzzle together created a diagram that includes photos of the 19 hijack suspects.
At the center of the diagram, which was obtained by The Herald: an image of a house with the address 755 Dotterel Rd. Arrows link nine of the suspects to the icon.
Hamza Alghamdi rented the apartment in Delray Beach just north of Boca Raton, the FBI said. The other seven, including suspected ringleader Mohamed Atta, are connected because they visited the apartment or otherwise had a direct tie to the inhabitants, said a federal official familiar with the investigation.
Previously, only Saeed Alghamdi and another terrorism suspect, Ahmed Alnami, both aboard United Flight 93, which crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, were the only terror suspects connected to the Delray Racquet Club apartment.
MEETING GROUND
It is clear that the apartment was a meeting ground for terrorists, authorities say. Now they must determine whether unit 1504 was also a hatching ground for the anthrax attacks.
Gloria Irish, the wife of tabloid editor Michael Irish, was approached by reporters Sunday afternoon outside her Delray Beach home.
``I can't believe you people,'' said Irish, who works for the Pelican Properties real estate company. ``We are not making any comments.''
Irish told the FBI she had several conversations with al-Shehhi and Hamza Alghamdi when they came to her asking to rent two apartments, Orihuela said.
At the AMI building Sunday, a Palm Beach County special operations fire truck dropped off two hazardous materials containers as the investigation continued.
In addition to Stevens and the two other workers who were exposed to the bacteria, AMI general counsel Michael Kahane said, five people tested positive for anthrax antibodies, which indicates that at some point in their lives they were exposed. But officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the findings are preliminary and that more tests are necessary. Authorities said that none displayed symptoms, and all were being treated with antibiotics.
One AMI employee who asked not to be identified said three of the five work for the National Enquirer, another of the company's publications housed in the same building.
Other employees continue to be tested for the presence of anthrax bacteria and to be interviewed by the FBI.
``They asked where I sat in the building, how close I was to where Stevens worked, how often I dealt with the mailroom, if I knew of any employee who might have been a target, or of any animosities among employees,'' said National Enquirer reporter Kevin Lynch.
Among other areas of inquiry: if he knew of any disgruntled employees or whether he had any scientists among his relatives or friends. Other AMI workers say they are being asked similar questions, which indicates that the FBI is casting a wide net to trace the source of the anthrax.
As a search for clues continued in South Florida, and the number of anthrax exposures grew across the country, investigators are grappling with whether the cases are the work of the Sept. 11 terrorists.
When the anthrax reports first surfaced, federal officials were quick to say they saw no connection. But the authorities' tone has changed slightly: They now say they can't rule out a link.
One of the nation's leading biological warfare researchers said Sunday that the appearance of multiple anthrax infections suggests the possibility of a bioterrorist attack.
``The level of suspicion is high for me, though it's still open for me whether it's a bioterrorist attack,'' said C.J. Peters, former chief of special pathogens at the CDC.
Peters, now a professor of microbiology and coauthor of the 1997 book Virus Hunter, said his suspicion may turn to certainty if strains of the bacteria found in Florida, New York and Nevada are the same.
``If so, then there is one bad guy or one bad organization out there doing this,'' he said.
A federal official familiar with the investigation said that prior to the New York exposures, investigators were treating the Boca Raton incident as an ``isolated criminal case .''
But with the New York and Nevada cases, the same official shifted gears: ``Maybe there is a concerted conspiracy connected to the Sept. 11 attacks.''
Frederick Southwick, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said investigators seeking to link the Florida and New York anthrax events must find the same bacteria strain to make the link.
``The key is whether the DNA fingerprint of the strain in New York matches the DNA fingerprint of the one in Florida,'' he said. ``If it matches, then one person or one organization is perpetrating this thing. If it doesn't match, then New York could be a copycat incident.''
Without one of those apartments involved, there's no real connection with Gloria Irish, the real estate agent. Maybe that really is just coincidence. It's hard to imagine a chain of events that would actually link her into it, even if the apartment was used for anthrax storage and envelope filling.
For instance, one might hypothesize that she got some anthrax spores on her clothing or on a briefcase or the like during some visit there. (She presumably visited the apartments she managed on occasion even after they were rented, just to check up on them.) But that doesn't really make sense -- she and her husband would have been exposed to much larger doses than the people who did contract anthrax in the AMI Building.
Or would could hypothesize that AMI represents a test that was conducted before the larger attack, and that somebody they knew was picked as a target so that they could follow the response. But then she would have been infected, rather than the anthrax infecting her husband's coworkers.
One could say that perhaps the terrorists became aware of AMI by talking to the real estate agent and that one thing led to another, but that's pretty flimsy. (The whole attack seems better planned than that anyway.)
So can anybody think of a plausible connection between the Sun editor's wife and the anthrax attack? (Even ignoring whether there's any evidence for it, what theoretical or speculative connection could there be? It's awfully hard to think of a possibility.)
What if the terrorists found out about AMI through the lady and decided to send anthrax there also to hedge their bets because the big media and senators might kill the story in the interest of national security, i.e. tabloids will print anything and the object is fear.
It's anybody's guess, although I bet the FBI has a clearer picture. Maybe it's out there and I've just missed it, but I have yet to see a proper post-mortem on the American Media affair. In the end, did they ever find out how the anthrax got in the building? Was it the weird J-Lo fan letter with the "waxy star of David"? What about the intern, first implicated, then exonerated, later reported to have contracted pneumonia?
As far as the connection between the hijackers and Sun editor's wife, I bet it's something really stupid and unimportant. Maybe they were slow with the rent or messed the place up and they got into a row with her or her husband. Maybe she likes to gab and got to yakking about her husband being the big cheese at American Media when they signed the lease. Maybe she leaves copies of The Sun lying around her rental office. Could be anything. I don't think everything has to have a deep meaning.
Doing searches using Rakha (I've been using Rakah, which turns up the ABC News reports), I've found that the mumia.org piece is actually lifted from a WSJ article of last November, so I would treat it as credible. I found a few articles using that name that I hadn't seen before -- or not since the story was originally reported at least. The WSJ piece is the only one which says anything about the feds absolving Rakah over the anthrax; some of the others reference the usual meaningless "no connection established" type quotes from the FBI. There are no stories indicating he has ever been released from custody. The stories generally rehash the same info...this one here has a few more details than most.
By Wall Street Journal staff reporters Ann Davis in College Park, Md., Maureen Tkacik in Trenton, New Jersey, and Andrea Petersen in New York
11/21/2001
The Wall Street Journal
Page A1
(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
Maybe it was something, maybe it was nothing, thought Himanshu "Bobby" Shah, manager of the Best Western Maryland Inn in College Park, Md.
On the very day that terrorists staged attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Mr. Shah noticed that a hotel guest had abandoned his folding suitcase and backpack outside Room 157 on the ground floor. The man, who had paid $77 cash for his room and shown an Egyptian passport as I.D., had checked out a few hours earlier.
Mr. Shah walked past the bags, sitting in a covered outdoor walkway, several times. "You don't just leave your luggage outside half a day," he thought to himself. After a maid and a groundskeeper also mentioned the bags, the 28-year-old native of Gujarat, India, began to worry: What if his employees doubted his patriotism? "I want them to understand that I care for their safety. They might be thinking, `Bobby's a foreigner. Why isn't he taking the right step?' "
Taking the right step has become a lot more complicated in the weeks since Attorney General John Ashcroft asked Americans to report any suspicious activity that might involve terrorism. Law-enforcement authorities have fielded 435,000 tips as of Nov. 6, and detained more than 1,100 people. The Justice Department recently drew up a list of 5,000 Middle Eastern men it wants to question further.
Sometimes the tips net tantalizing leads, such as the case of the community-college English professor in California who noticed that a student had written the first names of two of the hijackers in his exam booklet. The FBI was called, helping connect some dots: The student's phone number also showed up on a scrap of paper in the glove compartment of a hijacker's abandoned car at Dulles International Airport. The student has since admitted meeting one of the hijackers and was indicted for lying to a grand jury about not knowing the other. An FBI spokesman calls the tip program "helpful," and says the agency "still appreciates any information that the public wishes to provide."
But often, the leads have resulted in the detention of men who aren't terrorists at all, but minor immigration violators. The rampant informing is a reminder that when people are looking for something suspicious, almost anything can start to look fishy.
Questions have emerged in some cases about the motives of the tipsters themselves. La-Tennia Abdelkhalek, an American-born cook at a Rafferty's restaurant in Evansville, Ind., called the FBI on Oct. 11 with a startling story: Her husband Fathy, an Egyptian waiter at the Olive Garden, seemed despondent and had told her he was "going to crash." The FBI moved swiftly, arresting not only Mr. Abdelkhalek, but eight of his friends, all of whom were former members of the Egyptian national rowing team who had relocated to Evansville.
All were arrested as material witnesses and locked up in a federal detention center in Chicago. Lawyers for the nine men say they were suspected of being members of an "Evansville cell" plotting to blow up the Sears Tower. But eight of the nine were released after eight days; one was still held on immigration charges.
Mr. Abdelkhalek's friends think his wife blew the story out of proportion because she was angry that Mr. Abdelkhalek hadn't been forthright about his immigration problems and another family he had in Egypt before he married her. "She screwed all of us, because she was mad Fathy had children and was sending them all his money," says Hashem Salem, a waiter at the Texas Roadhouse, an Evansville steakhouse, who was among the nine detained. Mrs. Abdelkhalek calls Mr. Salem's assertion "ridiculous" and says she'll take her husband back if he wants. (His friends say he has since landed in detention again because INS officials deemed his marriage a sham.)
Ross Rice, a spokesman for the Chicago FBI, says that once Mrs. Abdelkhalek passed a polygraph test, investigators didn't care about her motives for coming forward. "There are more men in jail right now because an ex-wife or an ex-girlfriend decided to rat them out," Mr. Rice said. "It doesn't mean they don't deserve to be there."
The FBI's call for help in cracking the anthrax case has led to a raft of unusual tips.
After the agency announced a $1 million reward for useful information in that case -- since raised to $1.25 million -- Stan Kiszka, a 58-year-old brick mason in North Trenton, N.J., got to thinking about the Middle Eastern-looking man who lived down the street. More than six weeks after the attacks, he called 911.
"Right before the bombings, he had four guys visit him in a white car, a compact thing like a Neon or a Previa or something, and it had Florida tags," Mr. Kiszka says he told the dispatcher. "Then, right around the bombings, this guy disappears for a couple of days."
He added: "Before that, the afternoon of Sept. 7, I saw this guy carrying a small plastic sandwich bag with an envelope inside of it out to his car, place it real gently on the passenger seat like it was a baby or something, then look around, lock the car and go upstairs."
By 8:30 that morning, two Trenton city detectives were at Mr. Kiszka's front stoop. Ten minutes after they left, they called to tell him not to go to work yet, that the FBI wanted to hear his story. Two FBI agents soon showed up.
Neighbors say the two agents staked out the predominantly Polish block for the next four days. On Nov. 3, about 10 police officers and five federal agents surrounded a small apartment building up the block and presented a search warrant at the second-floor unit of Allah Rakha , a 43-year-old gas-station attendant from Pakistan. They searched and questioned Mr. Rakha and his brother, Ilyas Chaudhry, who have shared the $750 unit with two cousins for nearly six years.
A hazardous-materials crew took swabs of the apartment and its mailbox for anthrax testing. They confiscated some prescription cold medicine from the bathroom. And Mr. Rakha , who was in the process of getting his expired work visa renewed, was handcuffed and taken into Immigration and Naturalization Service detention at Hudson County Jail in Kearny, N.J.
By Nov. 6, an FBI spokeswoman said, the FBI had cleared Mr. Rakha of any connection to anthrax or Sept. 11, although he remains in jail pending an immigration hearing. Mr. Rakha couldn't be reached for comment.
Mr. Kiszka doesn't feel bad about his handiwork. If Mr. Rakha is an "illegal alien," he says, he can't do anything about that.
Sometimes, jumpy neighbors end up telling on people with odd habits. People in the community of South Ozone Park, in Queens, N.Y., whispered for more than a year about the big group of men in the little house, the ones who kept the blinds drawn, who never said "hello" to the neighbors, who kept weird hours and didn't cut the grass. Last summer, a police officer who lived across the street ran a check on the license plate of one of the cars in the driveway just to see if it was stolen. It wasn't.
"They were very strange," says Nick Libramonte, a 63-year-old wedding-gown designer who lives across the street from the little house and, since he works from home, keeps an eye on the comings and goings on his street from his big bay window. "They hang their laundry -- even their underwear -- on the fence. Who does that?"
Then Sept. 11 happened. Some neighbors say suddenly more men showed up at the little house. People definitely got suspicious. A day or two later, Father James Mueller, the priest of one of the neighborhood Catholic churches, St. Anthony of Padua, called the FBI. "I told them, `This is weird, and people are frightened and here's the address," ' Father Mueller said.
Father Mueller said he wasn't just acting on his own suspicions. A confluence of events prompted his call to the FBI. First, one of his parishioners -- he won't say who -- came to him with concerns about the men. Father Mueller shrugged it off. Then more parishioners came to him. Father Mueller did his own reconnaissance. "There was all this coming and going. The lights were turned off," he says. "The house just didn't look right." He didn't try to talk to any of the men. He didn't know their names or even how many people lived in the house.
Father Mueller was worried about the kids. St. Anthony's nursery school and its 80 children are just a few doors down from the house. People were shaken and mourning -- St. Anthony lost two members in the disaster. "We have 6,000 people dead, and these people could be involved," said Father Mueller, adding that he prayed about what to do. "I don't want these guys running around and blowing up other things."
The FBI won't confirm that it acted on Father Mueller's tip. But one of the house's residents, Muhammad Rafiq Butt, a 55-year-old native of Jehlum, Pakistan, was taken into custody on Sept. 19 and interviewed by the FBI. After the FBI decided it wasn't interested in Mr. Butt, he was held on an immigration violation at the Hudson County Jail.
Mr. Butt had entered the U.S. on Sept. 24 of last year and had overstayed his six-month visa. On Sept. 20, the INS filed a notice requiring Mr. Butt to appear before an immigration judge. Mr. Butt initialed an INS document admitting that he was in the U.S. illegally and stating his desire to return home. But on Oct. 23, Mr. Butt died in prison of an apparent heart attack.
Father Mueller, a big barrel of a man, says he feels sorry for Mr. Butt and has prayed for him and his family. But even knowing the outcome, he says he would do it all over again. "This is very sad for the family, sad for him, but he could have dropped dead in the street," Father Mueller says. "I don't think these people meant any harm, but when you act suspicious constantly in times of crisis you bring it on yourselves. They could have been making anthrax by the ton in there."
At the Maryland Best Western, Mr. Shah, a trim, neat man with wire glasses and preppy olive pants, felt a tug of conflicting emotions over his Egyptian guest. He himself has suffered slights based on his slightly dark skin and Arabic-sounding name. Once or twice, he says, guests have dropped off comment cards complaining that the hotel "is being run by foreigners and isn't as good." Like most Indians, he is Hindu, not Muslim, and bristles when people assume he is an Arab. Since the bombings, he says, Indians "are getting pretty bad stares ourselves."
The day after he spotted the luggage, Sept. 12, Mr. Shah made his decision. Two FBI agents and a police detective came by the Best Western during a sweep of Washington-area hotels for the names of about 16 terrorists on recent guest registries. Mr. Shah found none of the names in his computer, but told the agents he had a tip for them.
The Egyptian man who stayed at the Best Western, Ahmed Abouelkheir, had flown into New York Sept. 7 on a tourist visa that allowed him to remain in the U.S. for six months at a time. In an interview, Mr. Abouelkheir says he wanted to find an employer willing to sponsor him for permanent residence. The same age as Mr. Shah, 28, he himself has a degree in hotel management from a Cairo institute, he says.
Upon arriving in the U.S., Mr. Abouelkheir says he went to Maryland to look for a former roommate from a prior visit, only to find that strangers were living there and had no space for him. After spending one night wandering the parking lot of a shopping center to save money, he says he took a room at the Best Western. When he left two days later, he was bound for Washington, D.C., to look for fellow Egyptians who might have a room to rent.
He says he left his luggage outside his room only temporarily to grab lunch at a Burger King across the street, assuming the maids would watch it. Before he set out for Washington, he says, the staff had already put his luggage behind the front desk. He says he was only vaguely aware of a problem in New York because he hadn't been watching TV, or he wouldn't have acted so "freely."
Mr. Shah, the hotel manager, says he knew none of this when he spotted the luggage. He was slightly comforted when the Egyptian returned and checked into the hotel again on Sept. 14. By then the police had the luggage. Alerted to Mr. Abouelkheir's return, the FBI found the hotel guest the next day buying pizza and hot chocolate at a convenience store across the street. They questioned him and let him go, both Mr. Shah and his former guest say. An FBI spokesman in Maryland declined comment on his case. Mr. Shah told his staff, "If he is a threat, the FBI wouldn't have let him go. You have to trust your government."
Still, employees didn't feel comfortable with the Egyptian back on the premises. Mr. Shah says the man continually walked around the grounds. On Sept. 16, a maid knocked on his door and told him it was checkout time, according to both Mr. Shah and Mr. Abouelkheir. What happens next is in dispute: Mr. Abouelkheir says the maid became agitated and "waved scissors in my face" and said, "You have to leave." Mr. Shah says that couldn't have happened because the hotel doesn't put scissors on the maid's cart.
"Of course they are going to say no," it didn't happen, Mr. Abouelkheir retorts. But he adds: "I was just washing my face, preparing to leave. I'm a customer. She shouldn't treat me like that."
The hotel called the police that day, and officers told Mr. Abouelkheir to leave. But over the next few days, says Mr. Shah, the Egyptian kept coming back on the property. "By that time my employees were freaked out," he says.
Mr. Abouelkheir's explanation: He was trying to locate the authorities who had his suitcase, which contained his passport, plane ticket and about $50. He had been given a number to page the FBI agent, but says he couldn't do it from the pay phone at the convenience store because it didn't appear to be accepting incoming calls. He couldn't afford another night at the hotel and so he asked a hotel bartender if he could borrow a phone, he adds.
Finally, on Sept. 18, a week after the hijackings, Mr. Shah called the FBI again. "He's here again," he told them.
The Prince George's County Police Department arrested Mr. Abouelkheir during another foray to the convenience store. They charged him with trespassing and held him in a detention center in Upper Marlboro, Md., for about six days. He was repeatedly questioned by the FBI about his multiple trips to the U.S. and about everyone he had ever known in the U.S.
Six days later, the county dropped the charges. But soon, he says, federal agents escorted him to a small commuter plane in handcuffs and shackles, and flew him to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where he was held on a material-witness warrant in the terrorism case.
Mr. Abouelkheir says the FBI spent days showing him photographs and asking him about an acquaintance, Mohamed Moustafa, an Egyptian bank clerk who had helped him find a roommate the prior year in College Park. Mr. Abouelkheir says they told him Mr. Moustafa was actually Ziad Jarrah, one of the men who hijacked the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania Sept. 11. "I told them no, he is a very good man," says Mr. Abouelkheir.
Then, just as suddenly, the government dropped the warrant. Mr. Abouelkheir's attorney, Martin Stolar, says the FBI found Mr. Moustafa alive in the Midwest. Mr. Moustafa couldn't be reached for comment.
Still, Mr. Abouelkheir's ordeal wasn't over. The day the warrant was dropped, he was transferred to Bronx County Criminal Court in New York City because authorities discovered he hadn't paid a $250 fine for a disorderly conduct violation three years earlier. The judge issued a conditional discharge, but by that time, the INS had issued a detainer forbidding Mr. Abouelkheir's release. The INS filed documents alleging that Mr. Abouelkheir had worked "without authorization" from the INS on a prior visit to the U.S., and that "therefore he is deportable."
Mr. Abouelkheir acknowledges he worked briefly in a pizzeria and at an Indian restaurant as a dishwasher. While the INS processed his transfer to Passaic County Jail in Paterson, N.J., he spent the weekend on Rikers Island.
When Mr. Shah, the Best Western manager, heard about the Egyptian's ordeal, he was surprised. "They told me he was released," he says. But Mr. Shah says he has no regrets. "Actually, no, I don't feel bad about it. I was just told to report anything suspicious. So I did," he says.
As for Mr. Abouelkheir, he's now in a cell with about 40 other detainees. "I have to be quiet and patient," he says, "because if I'm going to think too much I'm going to be sad."
I have to go to work, now, but someone might want to e-mail the WSJ reporters who wrote this article and ask them if Rakha is still a detainee.
The e-mail syntax used by the WSJ is firstname.lastname@wsj.com
There's been nothing on any of this. The letter was never found, so it's not known if that was really the anthrax vehicle. It's not even known for sure that the anthrax was delivered by mail. It's true that the mail room was contaminated, but apparently the whole building was quite contaminated; this is something that didn't happen in the other anthrax cases and that hasn't been explained.
The intern with pneumonia was officially exonerated.
The focus then turned to New Jersey and, as far as I can tell, Florida has been virtually ignored since the early days of the investigation.
As far as the connection between the hijackers and Sun editor's wife, I bet it's something really stupid and unimportant. Maybe they were slow with the rent or messed the place up and they got into a row with her or her husband. Maybe she likes to gab and got to yakking about her husband being the big cheese at American Media when they signed the lease. Maybe she leaves copies of The Sun lying around her rental office. Could be anything. I don't think everything has to have a deep meaning.
If it were something personal, they would have targeted her or, conceivably, her husband. Maybe it has, as you suggest, no real meaning. But the operation was well-planned. And they went through a lot of trouble to get the anthrax (trips to Prague and the UAE perhaps?). They wouldn't waste it without purpose. So what were they trying to achieve through this? Was it just a test, to see how it worked? Was it intended to demonstrate that it wasn't only well-known figures who were in danger, but that the public at large was at risk? Or was it the first in the series of the media attacks?
There are some related questions. Were there letters to CBS and ABC to account for the anthrax cases in those places? Did those letters contain similar wording to the NBC and NY Post letters? (It's hard to imagine a mail reader missing that in the heightened anxiety of those days.)
Also, what about the early, supposedly similar letters to Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly?
For what it's worth, recall that Mohammed Butt, who is also mentioned in this article, was the person who died in custody after showing symptoms of gum disease. There was speculation that he was a mule who had transported radioactive materials. (But there is no proof; in addition to being a symptom of radiation poisoning, gum disease has also been anecdotally associated with heart problems, so this could have been a natural death.)
Pointless to speculate about such things.
Nogbad's law: Reality is infinitely more complicated than any of us can imagine.
Yes, that makes sense as a possibility.
Wasn't it the National Enquirer that had a cover story claiming that the anthrax was from Iraq, complete with a photograph of an envelope supposedly from Baghdad?
I think it was one of those large front-page National Enquirer photos. I can't find it now, but I recall thinking at the time that it was just a fake tabloid thing. I'd like to see it again though; maybe there's something interesting there. (The National Enquirer is published by AMI, after all.)
I vaguely remember that one; that was a different article.
I'm thinking of one that had a photo on the front page of an envelope postmarked "Baghdad" and claiming that that's where the anthrax was from. I really don't remember which tabloid it was; I think someone had posted a link on FR (since I probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise). But, last I checked, the search facilities on FR only go back to November (and they don't work all that well anyway).
It's not worth a lot of trouble to find since it was probably made up anyway, like so much of the stuff the tabloids print.
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