Free Republic

William Beecher, who as a reporter for The New York Times revealed President Richard M. Nixon’s secret bombing campaign over Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and who later won a Pulitzer Prize at The Boston Globe, died on Feb. 9 at his home in Wilmington, N.C. He was 90. His daughter, Lori Beecher, and son-in-law, Marc Burstein, confirmed the death. President Nixon ordered the bombings, code-named Operation Menu, in March 1969 in response to stepped-up attacks by the North Vietnamese Army and South Vietnamese guerrillas based in Cambodia, a neutral country. The campaign was so secret that even William P....

An avalanche of media scrutiny and an uneven debate performance have done little to drag down Herman Cain's momentum in the GOP race for president, a new poll shows. A CBS/New York Times survey of Republicans nationally finds the former pizza chain executive leading the field with 25% of the vote, 4 percentage points ahead of Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich places third at 10%, followed by Ron Paul at 8% and Rick Perry at 6%. Cain and Romney were tied at 17% each in the previous survey; Perry had placed at 12%. One reason for Cain's continued strength: he now...

Anthrax: some new findings Clarice Feldman Dr. Laurie Mylroie has given me permission to share with American Thinker readers her important analysis of a recent article on the source of the U.S. anthrax attacks by the Shoham/Jacobsen and the extensive comment on the piece by Richard Spertzel, a highly regarded, highly qualified Biological Warfare expert. She writes: Last week, TNR's Marty Peretz drew attention to an article on the 2001 anthrax letters by Dr. Dany Shoham and Dr. Stuart Jacobsen: The article underscores the very sophisticated nature of the anthrax in the letters sent to the two US senators and...

Nobody has been arrested for the anthrax mailings of 2001, but many people have paid for the crime. Five died and at least 17 others got sick. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been frustrated. Careers have crumbled. Taxpayers have gotten socked for billions of dollars to shore up bioterror defenses that some experts say still fall short. Now, an analysis from the FBI itself, buried in a microbiology journal, is raising more questions about the investigation. In the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI scientist Douglas Beecher sought to set the record straight. Anthrax spores mailed to...

WASHINGTON - The FBI denied Thursday that it ever overestimated the potency of the anthrax spores used in mailings that killed five people in 2001. The bureau also rejected a request for a classified briefing on the case from Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. Citing media reports, Holt said Wednesday that the FBI should have determined in days, not years, that the anthrax was less sophisticated than initially believed. Shortly after the attacks, media reports said the spores contained additives and had been subjected to sophisticated milling — both techniques used in anthrax-based weapons — to make them more lethal. Earlier...