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WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appealed anew Wednesday for widespread inoculation against a surging swine flu threat, calling the vaccine "safe and secure." Sebelius unconditionally vouched for the safety of the vaccine, saying it "has been made exactly the same way seasonal vaccine has been made, year in and year out." Appearing on morning news shows to step up the Obama administration's campaign for vaccinations, Sebelius said that "the adverse effects are minimal. ... We know it's safe and secure. ... This is definitely is a safe vaccine for people to get."

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, allegedly went too far in frightening Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, engineer of the September 2001 massacres. Yet, it seems now indisputable that those CIA interrogators, with their rough methods, got vital intelligence that saved American lives, as Dick Cheney has consistently contended. According to The Washington Times, which reviewed the newly...

WASHINGTON -- A panel of experts convened for a second day on Friday to probe the scientific process used by the FBI to identify used to identify the anthrax used in the deadly, 2001 mailings. The meeting featured presentations from three experts who worked on the case. Scientific methods were explained, and the 15-member panel was asked to use the study as a means to prepare for future attacks. A lawmaker also addressed the group, criticizing the FBI's handling of the country's first, widespread bioterrorism event. "If the technical and scientific procedures are as flawed as the non-technical procedures, they...

Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick's infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn't know whether dangerous toxins were missing. After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn't been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute's deputy commander. The vials...

In this deeply disturbing interview, the trailer trash torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking 'souvenir' photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 MORE torture photos that could rock the White House Normally, not much happens in Keyser, West Virginia, but today the folks in this quaint little railroad town, nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, are spoilt for choice. Either they can whoop and holler along to fiddle music at the annual Strawberry Festival or head down to the bookshop, where a local 'celebrity' - as her agent-cum-lawyer describes her - is signing...

Rob Rossi loved baseball. Exiting the trolley near Petco Park, he admired all the new residential development around the stadium. Rob and his son Charlie took their seats and joined 42,000 happy San Diegans singing "Take me out to the ball game." Charlie cheered when the Padres scored their first run of the evening. Rob hardly noticed the small plane circling slowly overhead. On Saturday, Rob woke up with a splitting headache. His chest felt like it was on fire. Why is it so hard to breathe? And today is Charlie's Little League game! "Daddy," his son gasped from the...

In case you haven't heard, we're all going to die. You, me, everyone we know, and possibly all our pets are all doomed to die from the latest in a long line of fatal pandemics, the swine flu. The experts are on TV every day relaying pant-soiling fact after pant-soiling fact about the upcoming apocalypse. I, for one, look forward to dying from swine flu, just like I died from bird flu in 2006 and SARS in 2003. Fortunately for me, I'm prepared for the upcoming viruspalooza. You see, I've watched dozens of virus-related disaster films, and I am as...

If you live in L.A. and didn't die in a terrorist attack, you may owe it to the CIA's use of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are currently under fire from the Obama administration and the left-wing fringe. In a compelling Op-Ed in Tuesday's Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen disproves Barack Obama's hollow claim that such techniques "did not make us safer." Rather than following the MSM lead and merely parroting the Obamatons' talking points after the release of previously-classified memos this week, Thiessen actually examined the documents. Thiessen concludes that Obama's contention is "patently false. The proof is in...

A video every US citizen should see. The video at this link is 8 minutes long and very scary. http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0861ff3eabea1ceb73e4&sp=2

More than seven years after the first bio-terror attack on the United States, Congress is considering creating a commission to probe the government's response to the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people. Representative Rush Holt, a Democrat, has submitted a bill that would create a bipartisan commission to investigate the government's handling of the 2001 attacks, which also exposed 17 people to the powdery anthrax spores. "Myriad questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government?s bungled response to the attacks," Holt said in a statement. Holt said in a statement that the commission would review an investigation conducted by...

Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask. The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called...

A professor from Kuwait, the country liberated from Saddam Hussein's attack squads by the United States in the first Gulf War, has outlined on Arab television a potential terror attack that would involve smuggling anthrax from Mexico into the U.S. and killing 330,000 people in 60 minutes.

Army officials have suspended most research involving dangerous germs at the biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., which the F.B.I. has linked to the anthrax attacks of 2001, after discovering that some pathogens stored there were not listed in a laboratory database. The suspension, which began Friday and could last three months, is intended to allow a complete inventory of hazardous bacteria, viruses and toxins stored in refrigerators, freezers and cabinets in the facility, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. The inventory was ordered by the institute’s commander, Col. John P. Skvorak, after officials found that the database...

!3 envelopes, some distributed within the building, most at mail room

No food, no drink, no bathroom. For 10 hours, Eric Witt, the Governor's head of media industries development, a receptionist and a New Mexico State Police officer were locked in the Roundhouse's reception area after an envelope containing a suspicious white powder was opened. "I was walking by the front desk when she opened the thing. She goes 'Uh oh. White powder,'" Witt said. "I go, 'Don't move.'" Everybody froze. Well, everybody except the officer who came in to find out what was happening. He tried to escape, he said, "I tried to walk out, and they said, uh uh,...

Yazid Sufaat helped Zacharias Moussaoui obtain the visa he used to enter the United States and funded him, housed two 9/11 hijackers while they were en route to the U.S., acquired tons of ammonium nitrate for the Singapore bombing plot, and, in 2001, attempted to obtain Anthrax for al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Now, he is walking around Malaysia a free man. Reuters, December 10, 2008: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuters) — Malaysia has released five men held on suspicion of terrorism, including one who has been linked to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, the country’s home minister said...

"WASHINGTON — The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists. "Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," states the report, obtained by The Associated Press. It is scheduled to be publicly released Wednesday. Click here for the report. The commission is also encouraging the new White House to appoint one official on the National Security Council to exclusively coordinate...

Authorities probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks fixed on now-cleared scientist Steven J. Hatfill primarily because confidential informants said they had talked with him about his purported involvement in Rhodesian bioweapons initiatives, according to court documents released yesterday. The documents cover searches of Hatfill's residence, his car, a rental storage facility in Florida and property owned by his then-girlfriend. But they are perhaps most notable for the sparseness of their details and for the lack of a direct connection between the scientist and the notorious crime.

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Washington, D.C., office was shuttered in 2001 after anthrax spores were found, so he’s “very sensitive” to the investigation into the crime, he said. Now, Cummings said he supports a review of the investigation. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., proposed legislation in September to create a congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response. “Whatever we have to do to get to the bottom of this anthrax issue, we need to do it,” Cummings said. Holt’s bipartisan commission would mirror the 9/11 commission and make recommendations on how to prevent such attacks and...

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Washington, D.C., office was shuttered in 2001 after anthrax spores were found, so he’s “very sensitive” to the investigation into the crime, he said. Now, Cummings said he supports a review of the investigation. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., proposed legislation in September to create a congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response. “Whatever we have to do to get to the bottom of this anthrax issue, we need to do it,” Cummings said. Holt’s bipartisan commission would mirror the 9/11 commission and make recommendations on how to prevent such attacks and...

A federal judge today ordered the Justice Department to release documents that explain why investigators suspected Steven J. Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill has since been exonerated.

Scientific impossibility: Did FBI get their man in Bruce Ivins? By Deborah Rudacille Examiner Correspondent 11/16/08 Bruce Ivins was a cold-blooded murderer, a deranged psycho-killer, who in the fall of 2001, cooked up a virulent batch of powdered anthrax, drove to Princeton, N.J., and mailed letters loaded with the lethal mix to five news organizations and two U.S. senators. At least, that’s what the FBI says. The letters infected 22 people, killing five, including two Maryland postal workers. The sixth victim of the madness was Ivins himself, a 62-year-old biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious...

The White House wanted to know: How much safer are Americans today than they were on October 4, 2001? That was the day when a photo editor in Florida became the first reported case of inhalation anthrax in America in decades. In what became biology’s 9/11, five letters containing less than a quarter-ounce of anthrax total—the equivalent of two pats of butter—killed five people, infected 17, put more than 20,000 on antibiotics, and traumatized thousands more. Decontamination alone, including at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, took over three years and cost some $200 million. With these disturbing facts...

It was an open-and-shut case, the FBI said. But three months after agents pinned the post-9/11 anthrax mailings on Army scientist Bruce Ivins - who committed suicide as the FBI closed in on him - his former colleagues have approached a lawyer to sue the feds for fingering the wrong man...

The FBI has posted a $100,000 reward for help in finding who sent identical letters containing what turned out to be a harmless white powder to banking offices across the country. All 50 letters, which were sent between Oct. 17 and 18, were postmarked Amarillo, Texas. FBI today released the text of the letters on its Web site: "STEAL TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE'S MONEY AND NOT EXPECT REPERCUSSIONS. IT'S PAYBACK TIME. WHAT YOU JUST BREATHED IN WILL KILL YOU WITHIN 10 DAYS. THANK (Redacted) AND THE FDIC FOR YOUR DEMISE."

IMPORTANT planning for responding to a future anthrax attack has quietly been under way since the last attacks seven years ago. A key part of this effort has been figuring out how best to deliver prophylactic antibiotics quickly to the people living in the city that is attacked. This is at least as difficult and complicated as it might seem. First, an attack must be detected, either by one of the BioWatch air monitors that have been placed in many cities or by finding symptoms of anthrax poisoning in a victim. Either way, this can take at least 12 to...

The FBI is declining to release at least 15,000 pages of documents related to the now deceased prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks despite lingering suspicions that the bureau has accused the wrong man. In August, the FBI and Justice Department identified Bruce Ivins, a former microbiologist at the U.S. Army's biological weapons research center at Fort Detrick, Md., as the "only person involved" in the attacks that killed five people and terrorized the nation. But David M. Hardy, the section chief of the FBI's records management division, notified McClatchy that his office could not immediately release the records...

Nearly two months after the suicide of scientist Bruce Ivins — whom the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claims was solely responsible for mailing a series of letters laced with anthrax in 2001 — questions still remain over whether he was actually able to produce those anthrax spores.....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of carrying out the 2001 anthrax attacks, e-mailed himself last year saying he knew who the killer was, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. "Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!! I finally know who mailed the anthrax letters in the fall of 2001. I've pieced it together!" Ivins wrote in the e-mail dated Sept. 7, 2007, according to an FBI affidavit. "I'm not looking forward to everybody getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will all be over," Ivins allegedly wrote. "Finally! I should have it TOTALLY nailed down within the month....

Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist the FBI says is the sole culprit behind the 2001 anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five people, apparently was barred from all government labs in March after spilling anthrax on himself and going home to wash his clothes before telling his bosses....

A substance that prompted a possible anthrax scare at the Strategic Fulfillment Group in Upshur County was not dangerous, Big Sandy Police Chief Tim Scott said Monday. The report about an unknown substance came around 11 a.m. Sunday from the mail service business on Texas 155, Scott said. "A worker found a very small amount of some kind of white powder in the mail," Scott said. The hazardous materials team from the Longview Fire Department responded with "most of my guys," Scott said. An Upshur County emergency management coordinator and a federal U.S. Postal Service investigator also responded. During the...

Former USA Today reporter Toni Locy urged the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington on Thursday not to throw out her case seeking a reporter’s privilege to keep her sources confidential. Locy became embroiled in the legal battle after reporting about Steven Hatfill, the former Army scientist who was investigated in the 2001 anthrax attacks but whose name has since been cleared. When Locy refused to give up her confidential sources in Hatfill's ensuing Privacy Act suit against the government, the U.S. District Court in D.C. held her in contempt. She appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals.

"I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact," Mr. Leahy said. "I believe there are others who can be charged with murder." Mr. Leahy's skepticism was echoed by GOP Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa)...

"... the two ranking members of the Committee have both told Mueller that, in essence, they do not accept or believe the FBI's accusations against Bruce Ivins. The Democratic Chairman of the Committee, Pat Leahy (who was a target of the anthrax attacks) told Mueller categorically that he simply does not believe that Ivins was the prime culprit if he was a participant at all, and said he is absolutely convinced that there were others involved in the preparation and mailing of the anthrax. Leahy began the hearing by identifying the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground and the private CIA...

WASHINGTON - The FBI is asking the National Academy of Sciences to review its investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Director Robert S. Mueller III told lawmakers this morning. The review is intended to address doubts about the guilt of Bruce E. Ivins, the Fort Detrick scientist who killed himself in July. The FBI says Ivins, who worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, was the sole suspect in the attacks

FBI Director Robert Mueller is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today, currently live-streamed on C-SPAN. An article this morning in The Washington Post dramatically touted the hearing as one in which, as the headline put it, "Lawmakers Are Seeking Answers in Anthrax Case -- FBI's Mueller to Be Queried by House Panel About Evidence Against Researcher." The article itself claimed that "the strength of the government's evidence against Bruce E. Ivins . . . will be tested anew today when FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III appears before the House Judiciary Committee" .....Mueller won't provide the Committee with even...

In a will he wrote last year......

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is ridiculing part of the FBI's explanation for the 2001 anthrax attacks. And the Maryland Republican says he's skeptical about the agency's conclusion that biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins grew the anthrax in his laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick and then mailed it to unsuspecting victims, five of whom died......

ORLANDO - On Tuesday morning, the University of Central Florida Research Facility was evacuated after a white powder was found inside a package addressed to Oviedo resident Rep. Tom Feeney. "All 300 or so employees in the Research Facility and Pavilion were evacuated," said Grant Heston, spokesman for UCF. This is the second time this week that a suspicious package has been delivered to Rep. Tom Feeney. Heston said the problem is bigger than UCF......

The Port Orange Police Department got a call this afternoon from the office of U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, in Port Orange City Hall, saying secretarial staff had opened an envelope that contained what appeared to be a white powder substance. Capt. Wayne M. Miller said the city's fire department and Haz-Mat team responded and the building was evacuated. No word on any injuries -- or who might have sent the envelope.

In a letter to Mueller sent ahead of a Sept. 16 hearing on "troubling issues" about the FBI, panel chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asked Mueller to answer several questions about the bureau's anthrax investigation. Conyers asked for the identities of White House officials who wanted the agency to link the anthrax attacks to al Qaeda or Iraq, why army scientist Bruce Ivins retained his security clearance at Fort Detrick despite being a suspect in the probe, and why another Fort Detrick scientist, Steven Hatfill, was the focus of the investigation despite evidence pointing elsewhere...

The FBI's Investigation of Bruce Ivins and Its Conclusions Marilyn W. Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning Investigative Reporter and Editor for The Washington Post She talks of the "big remaining holes" in the case against Ivins. The scientific analysis led to a flask which was the parent of isolates accessible to a 100 plus known people. The press has filed a motion seeking to unseal the evidence filed in the case from the start. The first caller perhaps is Professor Frances Boyle (perhaps not but I strongly suspect it is), a local law professor there with definite political views and his own...

Federal and local law enforcement agencies today issued a $20,000 reward for information about a 2005 anthrax hoax at Savannah River Site. The Atlanta Field Office of the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office jointly issued the reward to aid their investigation into discovering the identity and location of the person initiating the hoax against officials at SRS and the federal Department of Energy, according to an FBI press release.

Investigators were at an impasse when a lucky discovery narrowed the hunt for the culprit who mailed the deadly spores.

The affirmative statements in the following profile are meant to convey that the majority view on the threads are thus and so. The conditional words, such as may be or in the alternative ... are used to convey alternative views where there is not an overwhelming consensus from prior posts. At the end are the significant competing theories presented so far. This is not meant to obtain an indictment or plead a case before a jury ... it is to show the consensus additional profile information based on research done by many contributing Freepers. Consensus Profile of the Anthrax ...

On Wednesday, August 8, 2008, the Department of Justice held a news conference announcing that Bruce E. Ivins, a former anthrax researcher for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), was the sole person responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks. Headed by U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor and FBI Assistant Director Joseph Persichini, the presentation was noteworthy for often not answering relevant questions, but instead referring reporters to several dozen court documents they had just been provided. After hurriedly reading one of these documents I decided to hedge my strong conclusion in an essay that the FBI had...

When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it. Covert's piece this week in thetentacle.com establishes what many in our community, including scientists and support staff at USAMRIID, past and present, know: Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters. --

They have worked for almost seven years in secret. Most people did not know that the work in Ray Goehner’s materials characterization department at Sandia National Laboratories was contributing important information to the FBI’s investigation of letters containing bacillus anthracis, the spores that cause the disease anthrax. The spores were mailed in the fall of 2001 to several news media offices and to two U.S. senators. Five people were killed. in those letters was not a weaponized form, a form of the bacteria prepared to disperse more readily.

HOW QUICKLY we forget. In the aftermath of 9/11, after the memorials, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and the transit bombings in London and Madrid, the anthrax scare slipped from public consciousness. Now, long articles detail the results of a troubled investigation into the anonymous anthrax-tainted letters of the fall of 2001. With the cruel elegance of a Greek tragedy, Bruce Ivins, the scientific adviser on the matter, became the prime suspect in the case, and its final victim as well, when he killed himself on July 29. Suddenly anthrax is back in the news, and we remember those...