Showing posts sorted by relevance for query leahy. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query leahy. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, May 20, 2011

Anthrax "Conviction" Falls Apart


Silicon and Tin Added to Weaponize Anthrax

McClatchy noted yesterday:

Buried in FBI laboratory reports about the anthrax mail attacks that killed five people in 2001 is data suggesting that a chemical may have been added to try to heighten the powder's potency, a move that some experts say exceeded the expertise of the presumed killer.

The lab data, contained in more than 9,000 pages of files that emerged a year after the Justice Department closed its inquiry and condemned the late Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator, shows unusual levels of silicon and tin in anthrax powder from two of the five letters.

Those elements are found in compounds that could be used to weaponize the anthrax, enabling the lethal spores to float easily so they could be readily inhaled by the intended victims, scientists say.

The existence of the silicon-tin chemical signature offered investigators the possibility of tracing purchases of the more than 100 such chemical products available before the attacks, which might have produced hard evidence against Ivins or led the agency to the real culprit.

But the FBI lab reports released in late February give no hint that bureau agents tried to find the buyers of additives such as tin-catalyzed silicone polymers.

The apparent failure of the FBI to pursue this avenue of investigation raises the ominous possibility that the killer is still on the loose.

A McClatchy analysis of the records also shows that other key scientific questions were left unresolved and conflicting data wasn't sorted out when the FBI declared Ivins the killer shortly after his July 29, 2008, suicide.

One chemist at a national laboratory told McClatchy that the tin-silicone findings and the contradictory data should prompt a new round of testing on the anthrax powder.

A senior federal law enforcement official, who was made available only on the condition of anonymity, said the FBI had ordered exhaustive tests on the possible sources of silicon in the anthrax and concluded that it wasn't added. Instead, the lab found that it's common for anthrax spores to incorporate environmental silicon and oxygen into their coatings as a "natural phenomenon" that doesn't affect the spores' behavior, the official said.

To arrive at that position, however, the FBI had to discount its own bulk testing results showing that silicon composed an extraordinary 10.8 percent of a sample from a mailing to the New York Post and as much as 1.8 percent of the anthrax from a letter sent to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, far more than the occasional trace contamination. Tin — not usually seen in anthrax powder at all — was measured at 0.65 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, in those letters.

***

Several scientists and former colleagues of Ivins argue that he was a career biologist who probably lacked the chemistry knowledge and skills to concoct a silicon-based additive.

"There's no way that an individual scientist can invent a new way of making anthrax using silicon and tin," said Stuart Jacobsen, a Texas-based analytical chemist for an electronics company who's closely studied the FBI lab results. "It requires an institutional effort to do this, such as at a military lab."

Martin Hugh-Jones, a world-renowned anthrax expert who teaches veterinary medicine at Louisiana State University, called it "just bizarre" that the labs found both tin — which can be toxic to bacteria such as anthrax during lab culturing — and silicon.

"You have two elements at abnormally high levels," Hugh-Jones said. "That reduces your probability to a very small number that it's an accident."

***

The FBI guarded its laboratory's finding of 10.8 percent silicon in the Post letter for years. New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler asked FBI Director Robert Mueller how much silicon was in the Post and Leahy letters at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in September 2008. The Justice Department responded seven months later that silicon made up 1.4 percent of the Leahy powder (without disclosing the 1.8 percent reading) and that "a reliable quantitative measurement was not possible" for the Post letter.

***

During the FBI's seven-year hunt, the Department of Homeland Security commissioned a team of chemists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to grow anthrax-like spores under varying conditions to see how much silicon would end up naturally in the final product.

They found little, if any, silicon in most cases, far less than was in the New York Post letter, said Stephan Velsko, one of the two researchers. He called the tin readings from the FBI's anthrax data "baffling."

Peter Weber, Velsko's co-researcher, said the academy panel's focus on the conflicting data "raises a big question," and "it'd be really helpful for closure of this case if that was resolved."

***

In a chapter in a recently updated book, "Microbial Forensics," Velsko wrote that the anthrax "must have indeed been produced under an unusual set of conditions" to create such high silicon counts. That scenario, he cautioned, might not be "consistent with the prosecution narrative in this case."

***

Mike Wilson, a chemist for another silicone products maker, SiVance, in Gainesville, Fla., said that numerous silicon products could be used to make spores or other particles water-repellent. He also said that the ratios of silicon to tin found in the Post and Leahy samples would be "about right" if a tin-catalyzed silicone had been added to the spores.

Jacobsen, a Scottish-born and -educated chemist who once experimented with silicon coatings on dust particles, said he got interested in the spore chemistry after hearing rumors in late 2001 that a U.S. military facility had made the killer potions. He called it "outrageous" that the scientific issues haven't been addressed.

"America, the most advanced country in the world, and the FBI have every resource available to them," he said. "And yet they have no compelling explanation for not properly analyzing the biggest forensic clue in the most important investigation the FBI labs had ever gotten in their history."

As a result of Ivins' death and the unanswered scientific issues, Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, is investigating the FBI's handling of the anthrax inquiry.

By way of background, I pointed out in 2008 that some of the top anthrax experts in the world say that the killer anthrax was weaponized.

I reported the same year:

McClatchy notes:

"Some of Ivins' former colleagues also dispute the FBI's assertion that he had the capability to mill tiny anthrax spores and then bind them to silicon particles, the form of anthrax that was mailed to the office of then-senator Tom Daschle, D-S.D."
And as New Scientist writes, FBI agents "mention a 'silicon signature' for the anthrax in the envelopes with no further comment. Silica may be used to weaponise spore powders."

Evidence for the theory that the anthrax used in the attacks was coated with anti-clumping agents also comes from a a 2001 CBS article:
"When technicians at the Army biodefense lab in Fort Detrick, Md., tried to examine a sample from the Daschle letter under a microscope, it floated off the glass slide and was lost. "
Anthrax would normally clump, so the fact that it "floated off the glass slide" points to the anthrax being treated with anti-clumping and anti-static agents.

Why is this important?

It takes very sophisticated equipment and processes to coat something as small as an anthrax spore with anti-clumping agents:
"Only a sophisticated lab could have produced the material used in the Senate attack. This was the consensus among biodefense specialists working for the government and the military. In May 2002, 16 of these scientists and physicians published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, describing the Senate anthrax powder as “weapons-grade” and exceptional: “high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping” (JAMA, 1 May 2002, p. 2237)."

***

But Dr. Ivins was a vaccine researcher, not a weapons maker. Moreover, Ivins was working in a lab where - according to his co-workers and supervisors - people went in and out all night checking on experiments (so they presumably would have seen suspicious activity by Ivins, had there been any), and Ivins did not have access to the extremely high-tech equipment which would have been necessary to produce the weaponized anthrax. He wasn't one of the count-on-one-hand group of people who knew how to coat anthrax spores with anti-clumping agents

I wrote in 2009:

The publisher of the prestigious scientific journal Nature writes:

At a biodefence meeting on 24 February, Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of three letters sent to the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Spores from two of those show a distinct chemical signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the third letter had silicon, oxygen, iron and possibly also tin, says Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of those four elements.

Two cultures of the same anthrax strain grown using similar processes — one from Ivins' lab, the other from a US Army facility in Utah — showed the silicon-oxygen signature but did not contain tin or iron. Michael presented the analyses at the American Society for Microbiology's Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

I noted last year:

Edward Epstein writes in a must-read article in Wall Street Journal's Opinion section:

Silicon was used in the 1960s to weaponize anthrax. Through an elaborate process, anthrax spores were coated with the substance to prevent them from clinging together so as to create a lethal aerosol. But since weaponization was banned by international treaties, research anthrax no longer contains silicon, and the flask at Fort Detrick contained none.

***

Yet the anthrax grown from it had silicon, according to the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. This silicon explained why, when the letters to Sens. Leahy and Daschle were opened, the anthrax vaporized into an aerosol. If so, then somehow silicon was added to the anthrax. But Ivins, no matter how weird he may have been, had neither the set of skills nor the means to attach silicon to anthrax spores.

At a minimum, such a process would require highly specialized equipment that did not exist in Ivins's lab—or, for that matter, anywhere at the Fort Detrick facility. As Richard Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins, explained in a private briefing on Jan. 7, 2009, the lab didn't even deal with anthrax in powdered form, adding, "I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it." So while Ivins's death provided a convenient fall guy, the silicon content still needed to be explained.

The FBI's answer was that the anthrax contained only traces of silicon, and those, it theorized, could have been accidently absorbed by the spores from the water and nutrient in which they were grown. No such nutrients were ever found in Ivins's lab, nor, for that matter, did anyone ever see Ivins attempt to produce any unauthorized anthrax (a process which would have involved him using scores of flasks.) But since no one knew what nutrients had been used to grow the attack anthrax, it was at least possible that they had traces of silicon in them that accidently contaminated the anthrax.

Natural contamination was an elegant theory that ran into problems after Congressman Jerry Nadler pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller in September 2008 to provide the House Judiciary Committee with a missing piece of data: the precise percentage of silicon contained in the anthrax used in the attacks.

The answer came seven months later on April 17, 2009. According to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon. "This is a shockingly high proportion," explained Stuart Jacobson, an expert in small particle chemistry. "It is a number one would expect from the deliberate weaponization of anthrax, but not from any conceivable accidental contamination."

Nevertheless, in an attempt to back up its theory, the FBI contracted scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California to conduct experiments in which anthrax is accidently absorbed from a media heavily laced with silicon. When the results were revealed to the National Academy Of Science in September 2009, they effectively blew the FBI's theory out of the water.

The Livermore scientists had tried 56 times to replicate the high silicon content without any success. Even though they added increasingly high amounts of silicon to the media, they never even came close to the 1.4% in the attack anthrax. Most results were an order of magnitude lower, with some as low as .001%.

What these tests inadvertently demonstrated is that the anthrax spores could not have been accidently contaminated by the nutrients in the media. "If there is that much silicon, it had to have been added," Jeffrey Adamovicz, who supervised Ivins's work at Fort Detrick, wrote to me last month. He added that the silicon in the attack anthrax could have been added via a large fermentor—which Battelle and other labs use" but "we did not use a fermentor to grow anthrax at USAMRIID . . . [and] We did not have the capability to add silicon compounds to anthrax spores"...

When I asked a FBI spokesman this month about the Livermore findings, he said the FBI was not commenting on any specifics of the case, other than those discussed in the 2008 briefing (which was about a year before Livermore disclosed its results). He stated: "The Justice Department and the FBI continue working to conclude the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks. We anticipate closing the case in the near future."

So, even though the public may be under the impression that the anthrax case had been closed in 2008, the FBI investigation is still open—and, unless it can refute the Livermore findings on the silicon, it is back to square one.

***

A manufacturer of specialized anthrax equipment said:

"You would need [a] chemist who is familiar with colloidal [fumed] silica, and a material science person to put it all together, and then some mechanical engineers to make this work . . . probably some containment people, if you don't want to kill anybody. You need half a dozen, I think, really smart people."

The U.N. biologist mentioned above also said that the equipment to make such high-tech anthrax does not exist at Fort Detrick, where Ivins worked. People who work at Fort Detrick have confirmed this. In other words, a lone scientist couldn't have done it without the support of a whole government laboratory. And Fort Detrick was not one such potential laboratory.

Vaccine expert Dr. Meryl Nass has also criticized the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins:

The letter spores contained a Bacillus subtilis contaminant, and silicon to enhance dispersal. FBI has never found the Bacillus subtilis strain at USAMRIID, and it has never acknowledged finding silicon there, either. If the letters anthrax was made at USAMRIID, at least small amounts of both would be there.

***

Does the FBI stand for the Federal Bureau of Invention?
Yesterday's McClatchy post also points out:

The silicon-tin connection wasn't the only lead left open in one of the biggest investigations in FBI history, an inquiry that took the bureau to the cutting edge of laboratory science. In April, McClatchy reported that after locking in on Ivins in 2007, the bureau stopped searching for a match to a unique genetic bacterial strain scientists had found in the anthrax that was mailed to the Post and to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, although a senior bureau official had characterized it as the hottest clue to date.

Ivins' Bosses Say Under Oath that He Couldn't Have Done It

And as AP notes, two of Bruce Ivins' bosses testified - under oath - that Ivins couldn't have done it:

The widow of a Florida tabloid photo editor who died in the 2001 anthrax mailings is casting fresh doubt on the FBI's conclusion that a lone federal scientist staged the attacks, according to new documents filed in her lawsuit against the government.

***

Sworn statements made by two of the scientist's superiors who said they don't believe Bruce Ivins was solely to blame for the attacks ...

The statements raising questions about the FBI's conclusions were made in depositions earlier this year by W. Russell Byrne and Gerard Andrews, who oversaw Ivins' work at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. Byrne was chief of bacteriology at the biodefense lab from 1998 to early 2000 and Andrews held the post from 2000 to 2003.

According to court documents, Byrne told Stevens' attorneys that Ivins "did not have the lab skills to make the fine powdered anthrax used in the letters" and that it would have been difficult for Ivins to do the work at night undetected. Byrne said others would have noticed the unusual use of equipment and supplies because of the hazardous microbes involved in their work.

"They pay attention to things because your lack of observation could cost you your life," Byrne said, according to the documents.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Byrne said he knew Ivins for 15 years and remains unconvinced he was capable of such crimes.

"It just wasn't the Bruce Ivins that I knew," said Byrne, who retired in 2003 and still lives in Frederick.

Andrews, the other superior, told lawyers it would have taken Ivins six months to a year to refine the anthrax spores used in the deadly mailings, instead of the roughly 20 hours the FBI found he spent at night in the lab. [One of the handful of people who actually can produce the kind of high-tech weaponized anthrax used in the attacks previously said, "Even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."]

Andrews also said Ivins did not have the expertise to do the work and some of the necessary equipment wasn't available at Fort Detrick at the time.

Andrews added that in the 16 years he knew Ivins, there was no indication "that he understood the weaponization technology of anthrax spores, nor did any of his colleagues ever talk to me about his interest or understanding" of the processes required.

"Dr. Andrews stated in his opinion, it would take more than one person to achieve this attack because of the unusual physical characteristics of the powders," the court document said.

He's Guilty Because He Was Odd

So what evidence does the FBI have against Ivins?

As Anthrax expert Dr. Nass notes, all of the FBI's "circumstantial" evidence falls apart the minute it is looked at closely.

At the end of the day, the FBI literally hinges its case on the fact that Ivins was "odd". Based on that criteria, the FBI could convict anyone it chose based on mere character assassination.

So Who Did Do It?

When Congress was originally asked to pass the Patriot Act in late 2001, the anthrax attacks which occurred only weeks earlier were falsely blamed on spooky Arabs as a way to scare Congress members into approving the bill. Specifically:

Indeed, many people have questioned whether or not the anthrax was intentionally sent to scare people. For example:

  • Senator Patrick Leahy said:
And I think there are people within our government -- certainly from the source of it -- who know where it came from. [Taps the table to let that settle in] And these people may not have had anything to do with it, but they certainly know where it came from.
  • The American bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), who holds a doctorate of law magna cum laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard University, and teaches international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-92) and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court, and who "advised the FBI in its initial investigation of the anthrax letters", is convinced that the anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the Patriot Act and the later Military Commissions Act. He has said:

    Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were holding it up because they realized what this would lead to. The first draft of the PATRIOT Act would have suspended the writ of habeas corpus [which protects citizens from unlawful imprisonment and guarantees due process of law]. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, come these anthrax attacks.

Whether or not the anthrax was actually mailed as a false flag attack, it is clear that it was used to drum up fear.

The bottom line is that fear of terrorism makes people stupid, and so we should at least question whether the government is selling fear for political purposes.

4 comments

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

World’s Top Anthrax Experts Say The Killer Anthrax was Weaponized

Some of the top anthrax experts in the world say that the killer anthrax was weaponized:

  • William C. Patrick III, top U.S. bioweapons expert, who holds numerous patents on the weaponization of anthrax, and former chief of the Product Development Division of the Agent Development and Engineering Directorate for the Army's Biological Warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick and consultant to the C.I.A., stated of the anthrax in the Leahy and Daschle letters:
    "It’s high-grade. It’s free flowing. It’s electrostatic free. And it’s in high concentration. It appears to have an additive that keeps the spores from clumping."
  • Dr. Byron Weeks, a former Air Force doctor and retired colonel who has studied infectious diseases and bio warfare for decades, stated:
    "Yes, of course it was weaponized anthrax. There's no question."
  • Dr. John Ezzell, a top expert who has published some 60 articles on anthrax, tested the letter and concluded that, in his many years of researching anthrax, he had never seen anthrax spores so potent.Dr. Ezzell characterized the anthrax in the Daschle letter as being "weaponized."Indeed, the anthrax spores were so potent that, when Dr. Ezzell opened the Daschle letter to test it, some of its contents aerosolized instantly.
  • The Chief of Biological Planning and Operations at the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Dr. Kay Mereish, reported that the letter anthrax had in fact been prepared with a charge, according to a 2006 lecture at a CBRN meeting by D. Small, who had worked with the anthrax
  • Dr. Richard Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins at the Fort Detrick lab, stated to CNN that there was "no way" a lyophilizer could have created the fine anthrax spores used in the attack letters. Spertzel stated:
    "Apparently, the spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. That's what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time.

    Another FBI leak indicated that each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs.

    In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as 'according to the Russian recipes' -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.

    ***

    The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying 'to reverse engineer' (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases. So why should federal investigators or the news media or the American public believe that a lone scientist would be able to do so?”
Spertzel also wrote: "In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them. And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good.”
Many other scientists say the same thing, including a leading expert on infectious diseases who notes that anthrax usually only causes skin infections, while the letters to Leahy and Daschle caused inhalation infections, due to the small particle size and special properties. He also noted the presence on high levels of silica (or "Si") in the killer anthrax, and who wrote:
"The FBI has failed to reproduce the Si levels, which would have been trivial had the Si appeared because of Si in the nutrients or water. The failure to replicate the levels, coupled with the frequency of inhalational cases in the DC mailings [as opposed to the less serious cutaneous infections], strongly support weaponization"
See also this statement by a PhD in physiology.
0 comments

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Senate Launches Truth Commission

According to Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Senate is launching a "truth commission" to investigate Bush-era torture. See this, this and this.

Given that torture is ineffective and harms national security, and given that it is illegal and a war crime under international laws which the U.S. is a party to, many argue that there should be prosecutions, and not more investigations.

Indeed, government investigations are almost all whitewashes.

However, Leahy previously suggested a “truth commission” could be modeled after a panel that probed apartheid in South Africa. The commission should have “subpoena power and witnesses would not face charges except if they commit perjury," Leahy told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.

I have previously suggested such an approach with regards to 9/11 (I am obviously open to prosecutions as an alternative).

Indeed, there is no reason that 9/11 should not be added to the subjects of the commission since - at the very least - Bush officials were criminally negligent in allowing 9/11 to happen and covering up the facts.

See also this and this.

3 comments

Monday, September 22, 2008

The Shock Doctrine and the Economy

As we all know, the powers-that-be have used the "Shock Doctrine" to pass anti-American, fascist legislation while the public was in a state of shock.

This applies to economic shocks, as well as physical attacks like 9/11.

Indeed, right now, Paulson and Bernanke are using the shock doctrine to try to ram through legislation that would help out the fat cats at the expense of taxpayers, and give the government control over the free market.

But there is some resistance. For example, Senator Leahy and the New York Times are questioning Paulson's use of shock and awe:

  • Senator Leahy said "If we learned anything from 9/11, the biggest mistake is to pass anything they ask for just because it's an emergency"
  • The New York Times wrote:
    "The rescue is being sold as a must-have emergency measure by an administration with a controversial record when it comes to asking Congress for special authority in time of duress."

    ***

    Mr. Paulson has argued that the powers he seeks are necessary to chase away the wolf howling at the door: a potentially swift shredding of the American financial system. That would be catastrophic for everyone, he argues, not only banks, but also ordinary Americans who depend on their finances to buy homes and cars, and to pay for college.

    Some are suspicious of Mr. Paulson’s characterizations, finding in his warnings and demands for extraordinary powers a parallel with the way the Bush administration gained authority for the war in Iraq. Then, the White House suggested that mushroom clouds could accompany Congress’s failure to act. This time, it is financial Armageddon supposedly on the doorstep.

    “This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in the private but not the public interest,” said Allan Meltzer, a former economic adviser to President Reagan, and an expert on monetary policy at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. “It’s terrible.”

Is there any chance that the lure of the shock doctrine might be wearing off? Or is this just political posturing?

As Naomi Klein writes:
The only hope of preventing another dose of shock politics is loud, organized grassroots pressure on all political parties: they have to know right now that after seven years of Bush, Americans are becoming shock resistant.
0 comments

Saturday, September 13, 2008

The FBI's Mail-Sorting Theory Doesn't Add Up

The FBI claims that mail-sorting equipment crushed the killer anthrax in the letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy down to a fine powder.

Is that possible?

Well, the anthrax spores in the Daschle letter were 1.5 to 3 microns, according to the Washington Post (and see this).

There are 25,400 microns in an inch.

Mail-sorting equipment is generally built to handle letters at least 1/4 inch thick. Correspondingly, U.S. Postal Service guidelines allow letters to be up to 1/4 of an inch thick.

The following U.S. Postal Service chart shows the standard size and thickness of letters that can be handled by mail-sorting machines:

Letter-Size Mailpiece Dimensions

Dimension Minimum Maximum
Height 3-1/2 inches 6-1/8 inches
Length 5 inches 11-1/2 inches
Thickness 0.007 inch 1/4 inch

Here is one of the U.S. Postal Service's mail sorting machines which actually processed an anthrax letter in 2001 (although not the one which processed the Leahy and Daschle letters):


What does this all mean?

1/4 of an inch equals 6,350 microns. So the FBI is trying to say that a mail-sorting machine which is designed to process letters 6,350 microns thick crushed something down to 3 microns . . . 2,116 to 4,232 times smaller than the type of envelope sorting machines are designed to handle (the smaller number is compared to 3 micron thick anthrax powder and the larger is compared to 1.5 micron powder) .

I don't know about you, but my mail isn't crushed into oblivion when I get it.

On the other hand, the LA Times hints at a more likely explanation:

"Since the early 1990s, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the bioterrorist attacks that have killed five people, government sources say."

"Dugway’s production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969. Scientists familiar with the anthrax program at Dugway described it to the Baltimore Sun on the condition that they not be named."

"Dugway’s weapons-grade anthrax has been milled to achieve a concentration similar to that sent in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, according to a source. The strain found in those letters is indistinguishable from that used most often by Dugway."

0 comments

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee: The Temptation to Abuse Powers in a Crisis Is Bipartisan


Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy told the New York Times:

The temptation to abuse powers in a crisis is bipartisan and the [proposed truth] commission’s review should include the role of Democrats in Congress in approving the Bush policies.

As I have previously written, Nancy Pelosi was secretly briefed on torture many, many years ago, and yet did nothing to stop those unlawful programs. Indeed, she egged the torturers on. Pelosi was also secretly tipped off about warrantless spying on Americans. And Pelosi hid from the 9/11 Commission and the American people the fact that the interrogations of 9/11 suspects were videotaped, and that the alleged "confessions" of those held at Gitmo were wholly unreliable. She could have stopped the whole farce cold -- but chose to go along with it.

Leading democrats Harman, Rockefeller and others in Congress were also war criminals, accessories after the fact, and co-conspirators.

So Leahy is correct that the temptations to abuse powers in a crisis - real or imagined - is bipartisan.

1 comments

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Debt Crisis Being Used as Shock Doctrine to Steal More Money from the American People to Give to the Richest 1%

Link

I noted in 2008:

The powers-that-be have used the "Shock Doctrine" to pass anti-American, fascist legislation while the public was in a state of shock.

This applies to economic shocks, as well as physical attacks like 9/11.

Indeed, right now, Paulson and Bernanke are using the shock doctrine to try to ram through legislation that would help out the fat cats at the expense of taxpayers, and give the government control over the free market.

But there is some resistance. For example, Senator Leahy and the New York Times are questioning Paulson's use of shock and awe:

  • Senator Leahy said "If we learned anything from 9/11, the biggest mistake is to pass anything they ask for just because it's an emergency"
  • The New York Times wrote:
    "The rescue is being sold as a must-have emergency measure by an administration with a controversial record when it comes to asking Congress for special authority in time of duress."

    ***

    Mr. Paulson has argued that the powers he seeks are necessary to chase away the wolf howling at the door: a potentially swift shredding of the American financial system. That would be catastrophic for everyone, he argues, not only banks, but also ordinary Americans who depend on their finances to buy homes and cars, and to pay for college.

    Some are suspicious of Mr. Paulson’s characterizations, finding in his warnings and demands for extraordinary powers a parallel with the way the Bush administration gained authority for the war in Iraq. Then, the White House suggested that mushroom clouds could accompany Congress’s failure to act. This time, it is financial Armageddon supposedly on the doorstep.

    “This is scare tactics to try to do something that’s in the private but not the public interest,” said Allan Meltzer, a former economic adviser to President Reagan, and an expert on monetary policy at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. “It’s terrible.”

The Tarp bailouts were passed using apocalyptic - and false - threats. For example, as I've previously reported:

The New York Times wrote last year:
In retrospect, Congress felt bullied by Mr. Paulson last year. Many of them fervently believed they should not prop up the banks that had led us to this crisis — yet they were pushed by Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke into passing the $700 billion TARP, which was then used to bail out those very banks.
Indeed, Congressmen Brad Sherman and Paul Kanjorski and Senator James Inhofe all say that the government warned of martial law if Tarp wasn't passed:







That is especially interesting given that the financial crisis had actually been going on for a long time, but - instead of dealing with it - Paulson and the rest of the crew tried to cover it up and pretend it was "contained", and that it was obvious to world leaders months earlier that it was not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency crisis (and see this).

Bait And Switch

The Tarp Inspector General has said that Paulson misrepresented the big banks' health in the run-up to passage of TARP. This is no small matter, as the American public would have not been very excited about giving money to insolvent institutions.

And Paulson himself has said:
During the two weeks that Congress considered the [Tarp] legislation, market conditions worsened considerably. It was clear to me by the time the bill was signed on October 3rd that we needed to act quickly and forcefully, and that purchasing troubled assets—our initial focus—would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem. In consultation with the Federal Reserve, I determined that the most timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks.
So Paulson knew "by the time the bill was signed" that it wouldn't be used for its advertised purpose - disposing of toxic assets - and would instead be used to give money directly to the big banks?

Senator McCain also says that Paulson pulled a bait-and-switch:

Sen. John McCain of Arizona ... says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.

"Obviously, that didn't happen," McCain said in a meeting Thursday with The Republic's Editorial Board, recounting his decision-making during the critical initial days of the fiscal crisis. "They decided to stabilize the Wall Street institutions, bail out (insurance giant) AIG, bail out Chrysler, bail out General Motors. . . . What they figured was that if they stabilized Wall Street - I guess it was trickle-down economics - that therefore Main Street would be fine."
Even the New York Times called Paulson a liar in 2008:
“First [Paulson’s Department of Treasury] says it has to have $700 billion to buy back toxic mortgage-backed securities. Then, as Mr. Paulson divulged to The Times this week, it turns out that even before the bill passed the House, he told his staff to start drawing up a plan for capital injections. Fearing Congress’s reaction, he didn’t tell the Hill about his change of heart.

Now, he’s shifted gears again, and is directing Treasury to use the money to force bank acquisitions. Sneaking in the tax break isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring, either.”
What tax breaks is the Times talking about? The article explains:
A new tax break [pushed by Treasury], worth billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax expert, Robert Willens, put it: “It couldn’t be clearer if they had taken out an ad.”
Indeed, all of the other "emergency" economic and monetary measures - like quantitative easing - didn't help the American people, but just helped the richest 1%. And most of the bailout and "easy" money went to foreign banks (and see this, this and this).

The Same Thing Is Happening With the Debt Ceiling

The same thing is now happening with the debt ceiling.

We know that the productive actions which would reduce the debt and fix the economy are not being discussed. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

What is being discussed would just steal more money from the American people and give it to the richest 1%. For example, Congress is planning on selling off "unused federal property". Selling off and privatizing public assets and resources is a core tactic in shock doctrine schemes.

As Matt Taibbi shows, another tax holiday for big corporations is one of the main focuses of discussion in D.C.

MSN Money reports:

The plan proposes three [tax brackets] (we now have six) and would lower the top rate -- and the corporate tax rate -- from 35% to a range of 23% to 29%. That would be great news for rich folks. "That could provide a windfall for wealthy taxpayers because the 35% tax bracket currently applies to taxable income above $379,150," said The Associated Press.

There are numerous other giveaways to the biggest fatcats, which will be paid for by slashing social security and otherwise fleecing the elderly.

Robert Borsage notes that the proposed debt agreement:
Would add to unemployment in the short term, increase Gilded Age inequality, leave seniors more vulnerable, and shackle any possibility of rebuilding America. It puts the burden of deficit reduction on the elderly, the poor and the vulnerable, endangers jobs and growth, and lards even more tax breaks on the rich.
The Nation writes:
The [proposed debt ceiling agreement] proposal shafts those who have already borne so much of the burden of the financial crisis and its fallout—lost pensions, lost homes, lost wealth—while the very people who brought the economy to its knees through their recklessness make out like banksters and bandits. In fact, at a time of inequality akin to that of the Gilded Age, the top marginal tax rate would be lowered—lowered!—to 23 to 29 percent, while there would be massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), notes that JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein would save approximately $2 million to $3 million on their tax bills. But in twenty years, a 90-year-old living on a Social Security income of $15,000 would lose more than $1,200 a year in benefits.

How’s that a “bargain” for this nation and who exactly finds it “grand”?

All along, the alternatives that reflect the popular idea of shared sacrifice have been marginalized—by the political establishment (and, tragically, the Democratic leadership) and the corporate media.

***

This is not about left and right. This is about right and wrong. And that’s something the political and media establishment just don’t seem to get.

And Senator Sanders points out today that there is no shared sacrifice by the top 1%, but that the government may take from the poor and middle class in numerous ways for years to come:

There will be major cuts in Social Security ... Medicare ... Medicaid and other health care programs ... education ... nutrition program[s] ... environmental protection.

***

There are very, very clear provisions making sure that we are going to make massive cuts in programs for working families, for the elderly, for the children. Those cuts are written in black and white. What about the revenue? Well, it's kind of vague. The projection is that we would rise over a 10-year period $100 billion in revenue. Where is that going to come? Is it necessarily going to come from the wealthiest people in this economy? Is it going to come from large corporations who are enjoying huge tax breaks? That is not clear at all. I want middle-class families to understand that when we talk about increased revenues, do you know where that comes from? It may come from cutbacks in the home mortgage interest deduction program, which is so very important to millions and millions of families. It may mean that if you have a health care program today, that health care program may be taxed. That's a way to raise revenue. It may be that there will be increased taxes on your retirement programs, your I.R.A.'s, your 401(k)'s.

Note: As usual, it's not liberal-versus-conservative, but the top 1% versus the rest of the country, and you versus the giant corporations. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

And - no - the top 1% are not using the money to create more jobs. It's being used for prostitutes and other hanky panky.
3 comments

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Top Anthrax Expert: "Maybe There's Two Groups" of Anthrax Killers


William Patrick is the leading U.S. expert on weaponizing anthrax, and has multiple patents in anthrax weaponization.

Patrick made an interesting point in a November 2001 article in USA Today:

Further complicating things, the spores contained in the first attack, on a Florida media company, have been described by investigators as a clumpy powder, which would make a poor aerosol. Only two weeks later, the finely prepared Daschle-letter spores appeared. Those spores were ground so fine that they apparently drifted across offices and contaminated other letters in the mail. The same strain of anthrax was used in all the attacks, suggesting a common source.

The bioterrorists "must have had a hell of a short learning curve," says Patrick, who headed U.S. bioweapons work until the program's halt in 1969. "Or maybe there's two groups."

In other words, either a single killer or group of killers went from a crude anthrax preparation to an extremely advanced weaponized form of anthrax in 2 weeks, or there were two groups of killers.

The anthrax sent in the first letters was coarse, brown, "sandlike", and clumpy. The anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy was white and very fine. As the Washington Post noted, it was:
1.5 to 3 microns in size and processed to a grade of 1 trillion spores per gram -- 50 times finer than anything produced by the now-defunct U.S. bioweapons program and 10 times finer than the finest known grade of Soviet anthrax spores.
In addition, the anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy was so advanced that no one at Fort Detrick had ever seen anything like it before. As described in a 2001 CBS article:
"When technicians at the Army biodefense lab in Fort Detrick, Md., tried to examine a sample from the Daschle letter under a microscope, it floated off the glass slide and was lost. "
Scientists concluded that it used a high-tech coating of nanoparticles of polymerized glass to ensure dispersion.

In other words, if a single killer sent out all of the anthrax letters, he started out with a very crude, raw anthrax sample, but ended up with the most highly-advanced weaponized anthrax in the world, one which many leading experts say would have required expensive high-tech equipment, a team of people, and many months to prepare.

Indeed, why would someone send a crude anthrax sample if they were going to end up sending a highly-advanced preparation very soon thereafter? Why not just wait 2 weeks until the weaponization was complete, and then send both? That doesn't make sense.

Two (or more) separate groups of killers is much more likely. The first just sent anthrax samples as is, with no real processing. The second used methods so advanced that only a handful of people in the whole world know how to do it.
0 comments

Friday, September 12, 2008

Congressman and Scientist: FBI Theory that Mail-Sorting Machines Crushed Anthrax to a Fine Powder "Patently Ridiculous"... Anthrax was Weaponized


The anthrax in the letters to Leahy and Daschle was ground into an extremely fine powder. As USA Today noted:

The finely prepared Daschle-letter spores ... were ground so fine that they apparently drifted across offices and contaminated other letters in the mail.
As the Washington Post noted, the anthrax was:
1.5 to 3 microns in size and processed to a grade of 1 trillion spores per gram -- 50 times finer than anything produced by the now-defunct U.S. bioweapons program and 10 times finer than the finest known grade of Soviet anthrax spores.
In addition, the anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy was so advanced that no one at Fort Detrick had ever seen anything like it before. As described in a 2001 CBS article:
"When technicians at the Army biodefense lab in Fort Detrick, Md., tried to examine a sample from the Daschle letter under a microscope, it floated off the glass slide and was lost. "
(Grinding the anthrax into a fine powder makes it disperse more widely, and ensures that it will get straight into victim's lungs, so as to be lethal).

So how does the FBI explain how a lone vaccine scientist, Bruce Ivins, could have produced something that most of the top anthrax bioweapons experts with their own labs couldn't produce?

An accident.

Specifically, the official FBI explanation for how the anthrax was milled so finely is that:
"Post Office sorting machines crushed the dried anthrax in mailing envelopes, making them very powdery."
Uh-huh.

Maryland Congressman and PhD physiologist Roscoe Bartlett hit the nail on the head:
The FBI's theory that the anthrax was crushed to a fine powder by U.S. Postal Service mail-sorting machines is "patently ridiculous."

He says he's convinced the anthrax was deliberately "weaponized," and that Ivins lacked the equipment to make it.
0 comments

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Is the Government Exaggerating the Threat of Terror for Political Purposes?


The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security - Janet Napolitano - just told congress that the U.S. might be facing the greatest threat of terrorist attacks since 9/11:

And in some ways, the threat today may be at its most heightened state since the attacks nearly 10 years ago.

We should be afraid ... right?

Well, as I've repeatedly noted, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials "were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power".

Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security - Tom Ridge - admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.

Given that so many have said that terror warnings have been used for political purposes, is it possible that the current warnings about heightened threats are also politically motivated?

Well, Congress is currently voting on whether or not to renew the Patriot Act.

There is a lot of opposition to renewing the Patriot Act (and see this) and so - if people were going to use terrorism fearmongering for a political purpose - this would be a logical time to use it.

Indeed, fearmongering has been connected with Patriot Act extensions before.

Specifically, in 2006 - only hours after sensors in a U.S. Senate office building detected a nerve agent - key Senators suddenly reversed direction and announced a capitulation to the White House's demands on the renewal and expansion of the Patriot Act.

And when Congress was originally asked to pass the Patriot Act in late 2001, the anthrax attacks which occurred only weeks earlier were falsely blamed on spooky Arabs as a way to scare Congress members into approving the bill. Specifically:
Indeed, many people have questioned whether or not the anthrax was intentionally sent to scare people. For example:
  • Senator Patrick Leahy said:
And I think there are people within our government -- certainly from the source of it -- who know where it came from. [Taps the table to let that settle in] And these people may not have had anything to do with it, but they certainly know where it came from.
  • The American bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), who holds a doctorate of law magna cum laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard University, and teaches international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, served on
    the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-92) and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court, and who "advised the FBI in its initial investigation of the anthrax letters", is convinced that the anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the Patriot Act and the later Military Commissions Act. He has said:

    Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were holding it up because they realized what this would lead to. The first draft of the PATRIOT Act would have suspended the writ of habeas corpus [which protects citizens from unlawful imprisonment and guarantees due process of law]. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, come these anthrax attacks.

Remember, the government now admits that the anthrax was made in a government lab by government personnel (although the government's theory about who did it doesn't match the facts).

Whether or not the anthrax was actually mailed as a false flag attack, it is clear that it was used to drum up fear.

The bottom line is that fear of terrorism makes people stupid, and so we should at least question whether the government is selling fear for political purposes.
3 comments

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Congressman Holt Introduces Anthrax Commission Legislation - Modeled After 9/11 Commission

Congressman Holt wants an anthrax investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission.

Senators Leahy and White house want a torture investigation modeled on the 9/11 Commission.

But - according to the 9/11 Commission itself - the whole thing was a joke:

  • The co-chairs also said that the CIA (and likely the White House) "obstructed our investigation"

And see this and this.

Are we going to fall for yet another whitewash?

1 comments

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

National Academies of Sciences: FBI Failed to Prove Anthrax Claims


As I pointed out last year:

Vaccine expert Dr. Meryl Nass shreds the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins:

Federal Bureau of Invention: CASE CLOSED (and Ivins did it)

But FBI's report, documents and accompanying information (only pertaining to Ivins, not to the rest of the investigation) were released on Friday afternoon... which means the FBI anticipated doubt and ridicule. And the National Academies of Science (NAS) is several months away from issuing its $879,550 report on the microbial forensics, suggesting a) asking NAS to investigate the FBI's science was just a charade to placate Congress, and/or b) NAS' investigation might be uncovering things the FBI would prefer to bury, so FBI decided to preempt the NAS panel's report.
Indeed, both Lawrence Livermore National Labs and Sandia National Labs have already discredited the FBI's claims.

Back to Nass's article:
Here are today's reports from the Justice Department, AP, Washington Post and NY Times. The WaPo article ends,

The FBI's handling of the investigation has been criticized by Ivins's colleagues and by independent analysts who have pointed out multiple gaps, including a lack of hair, fiber other physical evidence directly linking Ivins to the anthrax letters. [Note by Washington's Blog: Indeed, handwriting analysis failed to link Ivins to the anthrax letters.] But despite long delays and false leads, Justice officials Friday expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

The evidence "established that Dr. Ivins, alone, mailed the anthrax letters," the Justice summary stated.

Actually, the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a "lone nut." The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins' RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were "ruled out" as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy, however.

That is only the first of many holes in FBI's case. Here is a sampling of some more.

***

The letter spores contained a Bacillus subtilis contaminant, and silicon to enhance dispersal. FBI has never found the Bacillus subtilis strain at USAMRIID, and it has never acknowledged finding silicon there, either. If the letters anthrax was made at USAMRIID, at least small amounts of both would be there.

***

FBI says that only a small number of labs had Ames anthrax, including only 3 foreign labs. Yet a quick Pub Med search of papers published between 1999 and 2004 revealed Ames anthrax was studied in at least Italy, France, the UK, Israel and South Korea as well as the US. By failing to identify all labs with access to Ames, the FBI managed to exclude potential domestic and foreign perpetrators.

***

FBI claims that "drying anthrax is expressly forbidden by various treaties," therefore it would have to be performed clandestinely. Actually, the US government sponsored several programs that dried anthrax spores [Note by Washington's Blog: government labs in Utah and Ohio worked with dried anthrax]. Drying spores is not explicitly prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention, though many would like it to be.

***

Does the FBI stand for the Federal Bureau of Invention?
Indeed, a minute's reflection will show how silly the FBI's claims are.

As I wrote in 2008:

The chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998 - who describes himself as one of the "four or five people in the whole country" who could make the type of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks - noted in testimony to Congress:

"I have maintained from the first descriptions of the material contained in the Daschle letter that the quality appeared to be such that it could be produced only by some group that was involved with a current or former state program in recent years. The level of knowledge, expertise, and experience required and the types of special equipment required to make such quality product takes time and experimentation to develop. Further, the nature of the finished dried product is such that safety equipment and facilities must be used to protect the individuals involved and to shield their clandestine activity from discovery."
Similarly, a manufacturer of specialized anthrax equipment said:
"You would need [a] chemist who is familiar with colloidal [fumed] silica, and a material science person to put it all together, and then some mechanical engineers to make this work . . . probably some containment people, if you don't want to kill anybody. You need half a dozen, I think, really smart people."
The U.N. biologist mentioned above also said that the equipment to make such high-tech anthrax does not exist at Fort Detrick, where Ivins worked. People who work at Fort Detrick have confirmed this. In other words, a lone scientist couldn't have done it without the support of a whole government laboratory. And Fort Detrick was not one such potential laboratory.
A former director of the bacteriology division at Ft. Detrick said the anthrax sent to Daschle was "so concentrated and so consistent and so clean that I would assert that Bruce could not have done that part".

I also noted in 2008:

According to the FBI, Ivins made the killer anthrax in his lab at Fort Detrick all by himself in something like 12 hours ...

Is that plausible?

Well, one of the handful of people who actually can produce the kind of high-tech weaponized anthrax used in the attacks said:

"In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them," said Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998. "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."
In addition, scientists at Ft. Detrick say that no one there had the equipment or knowledge to make weaponized anthrax of the type used in the letters ....

If it would take one of the handful of people who have the know-how and a good lab with staff a year, and if no one at Ivins’ lab knew how to do it, how could Ivins have made it all by himself in 12 hours without the proper equipment?
National Academies of Sciences Slams the FBI

In December, the FBI tried to get the National Academies of Science to delay their anthrax report, because it was not flattering to the Bureau.

But the final National Academies of Sciences report has just been released, and confirms much of what Nass and I have been saying for years: the FBI's case against Ivins doesn't hold up.

As Raw Story reports today:

An independent panel of scientists has determined that the FBI did not have enough scientific evidence to produce a conviction in the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people.

The National Academies of Sciences released a review Tuesday of the science used in the investigation. The $1.1 million report, which was commissioned by the FBI, concluded that the man accused in the case, Bruce Ivins, could have carried out the attacks, but the science alone did not prove it.

***

The report released Tuesday questioned the link between a flask of anthrax found in Ivins' office and the letters.

"The scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR-1029 is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary," the report said.

The panel added that another explanation for the link "was not rigorously explored" by the FBI.

"This shows what we've been saying all along: that it was all supposition based on conjecture based on guesswork, without any proof whatsoever," Paul Kemp, a lawyer who represented Ivins, told The Washington Post.

"The FBI has long maintained that while science played a significant role, it was the totality of the investigative process that determined the outcome of the anthrax case," the Justice Department and the FBI said in a joint statement. "Although there have been great strides in forensic science over the years, rarely does science alone solve an investigation."

The Rest of the Case Is Not So Hot, Either

Congressman Holt has previously pointed out that the FBI's entire case was based upon flimsy, circumstantial evidence. Today, Holt said:
It would take a credulous person to believe the circumstantial evidence that the FBI used to draw its conclusions with such certainty. The FBI has not proven to me that this is an open and shut case.
The FBI has made a number of ridiculous claims (and see this), and when it was pointed out that the FBI's timeline made no sense, the Bureau simply changed it without explanation.

As Dr. Nass has previously pointed out:

Drs. Perry Mikesell, Ayaad Assaad and Stephen Hatfill were 3 earlier suspects. All had circumstantial evidence linking them to the case. In Hatfill's case, especially, are hints he could have been "set up." Greendale, the return address on the letters, was a suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe where Hatfill attended medical school. Hatfill wrote an unpublished book about a biowarfare attack that bears some resemblance to the anthrax case. So the fact that abundant circumstantial evidence links Ivins to the case might be a reflection that he too was "set up" as a potential suspect, before the letters were sent.

***

FBI fails to provide any discussion of why no autopsy was performed, nor why, with Ivins under 24/7 surveillance from the house next door, with even his garbage being combed through, the FBI failed to notice that he overdosed and went into a coma. Nor is there any discussion of why the FBI didn't immediately identify tylenol as the overdose substance, and notify the hospital, so that a well-known antidote for tylenol toxicity could be given (N-acetyl cysteine, or alternatively glutathione). These omissions support the suggestion that Ivins' suicide was a convenience for the FBI. It enabled them to conclude the anthrax case, in the absence of evidence that would satisfy the courts.

***

The FBI's alleged motive is bogus. In 2001, Bioport's anthrax vaccine could not be (legally) relicensed due to potency failures, and its impending demise provided room for Ivins' newer anthrax vaccines to fill the gap. Ivins had nothing to do with developing Bioport's vaccine, although in addition to his duties working on newer vaccines, he was charged with assisting Bioport to get through licensure.

***

The FBI report claims the anthrax letters envelopes were sold in Frederick, Md. Later it admits that millions of indistinguishable envelopes were made, with sales in Maryland and Virginia.

***

FBI emphasizes Ivins' access to a photocopy machine, but fails to mention it was not the machine from which the notes that accompanied the spores were printed.

***

FBI asserts that Bioport and USAMRIID were nearly out of anthrax vaccine, to the point researchers might not have enough to vaccinate themselves. FBI further asserts this would end all anthrax research, derailing Ivins' career. In fact, USAMRIID has developed many dozens of vaccines (including those for anthrax) that were never licensed, but have been used by researchers to vaccinate themselves. There would be no vaccine shortage for researchers.

***

Ivins certainly had mental problems. But that does not explain why the FBI accompanied Ivins' therapist, Ms. Duley (herself under charges for multiple DUIs) and assisted her to apply for a peace order against him. Nor does it explain why Duley then went into hiding, never to be heard from again.

***

FBI obtained a voluntary collection of anthrax samples. Is that the way to conduct a multiple murder investigation: ask the scientists to supply you with the evidence to convict them? There is no report that spores were seized from anyone but Ivins, about 6 years after the attacks. This is a huge hole in the FBI's "scientific" methodology.

***

FBI claims it investigated Bioport and others who had a financial motive for the letters attack, and ruled them out. However, FBI provides not a shred of evidence from such an investigation.FBI gave this report its best shot. The report sounds good. It includes some new evidence. It certainly makes Ivins out to be a crazed, scary and pathetic figure. If you haven't followed this story intently, you may be convinced of his guilt.

In fact, the "totality of the investigative process" proves that the case against Ivins is incredibly weak. As Dr. Nass writes today:
There is no getting away from the NAS report conclusions, as reported worldwide: the science does not support FBI's claims that Ivins was the anthrax perpetrator.

See articles from the AFP, NPR, AP, Science, and a later WP article.

The FBI responded that their case was based on a totality of the evidence, not just the science. But when the rest of the FBI's evidence is examined, one finds only smoke. There has been no physical evidence tying Ivins to the case. The totality of the FBI case against Ivins rests on colorful and sometimes exaggerated personal quirks and odd habits. The FBI has presented no convincing evidence that Ivins had the means, a motive, or the oppportunity to commit the letters crime.
Nass was also quoted today by the Washington Post:
"This report entirely undercuts the conclusion that RMR-1029 was the source and that Ivins was the perpetrator,'' said Meryl Nass, an anthrax expert and physician at Mount Desert Island Hospital in Maine. "That evidence was totally critical to their case,'' said Nass, who added that hundreds of people had access to the flasks in Ivins's lab.
And yet - in a bizarre, Soviet-style move - the White House threatened to veto the intelligence budget unless everyone accepted the FBI frame up of Ivins.

Why?

Why would the government be so adamant about pushing the FBI version of events?

I don't know. But remember that - when Congress was originally asked to pass the Patriot Act in late 2001 - the anthrax attacks which occurred only weeks earlier were falsely blamed on Arabs as a way to scare Congress members into approving the bill. Specifically:
Indeed, many people have questioned whether or not the anthrax was intentionally sent to scare people. For example:
  • Senator Patrick Leahy said:
And I think there are people within our government -- certainly from the source of it -- who know where it came from. [Taps the table to let that settle in] And these people may not have had anything to do with it, but they certainly know where it came from.
  • The American bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), who holds a doctorate of law magna cum laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard University, and teaches international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-92) and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court, and who "advised the FBI in its initial investigation of the anthrax letters", is convinced that the anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the Patriot Act and the later Military Commissions Act. He has said:

    Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were holding it up because they realized what this would lead to. The first draft of the PATRIOT Act would have suspended the writ of habeas corpus [which protects citizens from unlawful imprisonment and guarantees due process of law]. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, come these anthrax attacks.

Whether or not the anthrax was actually mailed as a false flag attack, it is clear that it was conveniently used to drum up fear when fear was needed to sell certain political agendas.
4 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)