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The Institute for Public Accuracy was founded by Norman Solomon, who got involved with the civil rights and Vietnam antiwar movements in the 1960s and visited the Soviet Union in the 1980s while working as a journalist for Pacific News Service, whose cofounder Franz Schurmann had links to WWII-era Soviet agents Thomas Mann and Bertholt Brecht.

For Nass, in my anthrax files, I have her quoted in the NYT on September 16, 2002: "Dr. Meryl J. Nass, anthrax expert and advisor to one of the survivors – 'It’s very peculiar to me that these people haven’t had the million-dollar work-up that they deserve. Nobody has made an attempt to gather them together and test them all for the same things and compare the results. That’s how you make a determination of what’s wrong with them.'". Then on October 5, 2002 I have her quoted in connection with the Hatfill investigation as stating that the anthtrax toll may have been higher than reported: "Dr. Meryl Nass, on the possibility that the anthrax toll may have been higher than officially reported – 'One of my patient’s sisters treated a case, and one of my cousins treated another with the classic rash, both postal workers in the New York metropolitan area. And several New York City postal workers died of unknown causes at the same time, which seems suspicious.'" As you mention, she's also been a Congressional witness on Gulf War illness. Here's her current bio. Meryl Nass, MD, ABIM, is an internist with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illness, fibromyalgia, and toxicology. As a biological warfare epidemiologist, she investigated world's largest anthrax epizootic, in Zimbabwe, and developed a model for analyzing epidemics to assess whether they are natural or man-made. An anthrax expert, Nass has reviewed government-sponsored anthrax research in the context of the Biological Weapons Convention, used anthrax as a model for discussion of how to prevent biological warfare, reviewed anthrax vaccines and their role in biological warfare prophylaxis, and played a central role in educating service members, Congress, and the public about anthrax and the science underlying anthrax vaccine use, as well as other methods of responding to the anthrax threat. She has played a major role in creation of a coalition that has fought the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program. Nass is active in assisting legal teams defending anthrax vaccine refusers and ill service members in the U.S. and Canada.