Government Tries to Bury Anthrax Story
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/08/anthrax-attacks-were-not-entirely.html
The government is trying to bury the 2001 anthrax attack scandal (the anthrax came from a U.S. military base) by claiming that one of the key suspects - Bruce E. Ivins - was a "lone nut" who committed suicide. Case closed.
There are just a couple of loose ends:
- "The attacks were not entirely unexpected", according to a journalist, who was urged soon after 9/11 to take cipro by a high-level government official (confirmation that government employees started taking Cipro before the Anthrax attacks here). As Michael Fury put it, "So even if Ivins was involved, how would "a high government official" know that a rogue bioweapons scientist was going to "go postal" with anthrax if that "high government official" was not himself involved?" (and see this comment by Atrios)
- Why did the anthrax letters attempt to link 9/11 and the anthrax attack and pretend to be from radical Muslims and be anti-America and anti-Israel, if they really came from a disgruntled American?
- Why did the U.S. government - including, apparently, the people responsible for sending the anthrax letters - falsely claim that the materials in the anthrax prove that it was manufactured in Iraq? Would a disgruntled "lone nut" be motivated to concoct a false justification for invading Iraq?
- "The FBI has completely shut Congress out of its now five-year investigation into anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill and around the nation". In other words, Congress -- which legally has every right to know what really happened, and which was the main victim of the attack -- is being kept in the dark. Why is that?
- An entirely different guy was actually caught on tape entering the storage area where the anthrax used in the letters was stored, without proper authorization and after being fired from his job over a racially motivated attack on an Egyptian co-worker. But instead of investigating him, or Ivins, the FBI spent years wasting time and falsely accusing an innocent guy
- The lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins' innocence
But its only crackpots who think that these loose ends point towards anything sinister, right? Well, the bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), says he 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 USA PATRIOT Act and the later Military Commissions Act.
Is he right?
Maybe, but he clearly forgot one motive: to justify war against Iraq.
Note: Even if Ivins was the killer, and even if he did act alone, it was still a false flag attack.
Why?
Because Ivins was solidly in the Judeo-Christian, not Muslim, camp, and yet the anthrax letters were made to frame Muslims for the attack. For example, Ivins wrote:
"By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen."
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Updated version of story
HERE.
loose ends a sign of desperation?
It's a great job pointing out the obvious contradictions.
"Note: Even if Ivins was the killer, and even if he did act alone, it was still a false flag attack. Why?
Because Ivins was solidly in the Judeo-Christian, not Muslim, camp, and yet the anthrax letters were made to frame Muslims for the attack. For example, Ivins was a parishioner and musician at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church. And he wrote:
"By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen"
One thing is clear: he wasn't a Muslim."
It represents a desperate effort to possibly kill two birds with one stone? You close a case and get rid of one more microbiologist with too much inside--dirty--knowledge?
Ivins suicide....
...don't believe it!
Crazy
This article suggests that Ivin's motive may actually have been to try to find a "cure" for mixed anthrax strains. I guess that explains why he specifically targeted members of Congress.
Scientist may have sent anthrax in 2001 to test cure, officials say
http://www.yahoo.com/?fr=fptb-hptb8
Crazier...from AP Story
"However, several U.S. officials said prosecutors were focusing on the 62-year-old Ivins and planned to seek a murder indictment and the death penalty. Authorities were investigating whether Ivins, who had complained about the limits of testing anthrax drugs on animals, had released the toxin to test the treatment on humans.
The officials all discussed the continuing investigation on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media."
Crazy
This article suggests that Ivin's motive may actually have been to try to find a "cure" for mixed anthrax strains. I guess that explains why he specifically targeted members of Congress.
Scientist may have sent anthrax in 2001 to test cure, officials say
http://www.yahoo.com/?fr=fptb-hptb8
(Don't know why but my comment double-posted. Could the moderators please delete one? Thanks.)
It's always
the lone nut. It's the same old song and dance. Will the American people buy it? Are you kidding? Of course they will.
Become a liability and die
Straight out of a James Bond flick. When the arch criminal decides one of his tools becomes more of a liability than an asset, the tool is eliminated. Hmm....wasnt that what the "pure evil" Joker character did in the "Dark Knight"? Sounds like some script writer is trying to say something....
Suicided
Why? He had everything to live for........a wonderful relationship with criminal elements who were probably directing him. What's in it for those who cooperate with the neo-cons? A miserable anxiety filled existence unless they're higher up and protected from prosecution, and even then the "suicide rate" is very high. A dangerous game even for scoundrals, who are all expendable. Better to have been a professor researching a mundane subject. Also, suicide makes the person sound weird - violence against the self - a better sell to Americans to believe the story.
GW, check this out. What do
GW, check this out. What do you make of it?
Anthrax Suspect "Homicidal, Sociopathic"
Counselor sought restraining order against biodefense researcher
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0801081anthrax1.html
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JFK on secrecy and the press
Interesting,
they sent him to a psych hospital???! So either it is true he was nuts, or they Soviet Unioned him into a psych ward?
Yet another twist in the
Yet another twist in the story. I am not so sure about this case, but it is always good to remember that when people go nuts, they may really be nuts, they may have been Soviet Unioned, OR they may have been driven nuts by someone else. Think MKULTRA, but in uncertain hands. The tough part about the third option is it is so hard for others to tell; the person just starts getting weird and people move away. Is that what happened to Ivins? I have no idea. A lot of people go crazy. How many of them are really crazy? It's an important question to keep in mind.
________________
JFK on secrecy and the press
Frederick Neighbors Express Shock at Ivins's Death
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR200808...
Frederick Neighbors Express Shock at Ivins's Death
By Aaron C. Davis, Nelson Hernandez and Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 1, 2008; 3:40 PM
In the quiet and eclectic Frederick neighborhood of modest 1950s-era homes where Bruce E. Ivins lived, residents weren't surprised that someone at nearby Fort Detrick was tied to anthrax-laced letters mailed out shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
They just didn't think it would be Ivins.
Ivins, a 62-year-old bioweapons expert who died Tuesday of a suicide as federal prosecutors prepared to file charges against him, was sociable. He was a loving father of 24-year-old twins, Andy and Amanda, and husband to Diane, his wife of 33 years. He was a parishioner and musician at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, as well as a member of Frederick's American Red Cross chapter.
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Ivins also was a neighbor so friendly than when someone asked to borrow a chainsaw he would come over with his hard hat and ear goggles and do the work himself.
"He was a great neighbor, always quick to help out if you needed anything," said Bonnie Duggan, who has lived down the street from Ivins in the neighborhood of young families, retirees and immigrants just across the razor wire fence from the Army post. "He was not one of those people who was reclusive and stuck to himself. He wasn't that kind of person."
"That he would be implicated in any kind of way with the anthrax letters and so forth is a tremendous shock," she added.
Her daughter, Natalie, 16, said, "We all thought he was really safe."
"It's such a shock that he's dead," she said. "He was really nice. . . . Always riding his bike and they came to a few of our block parties. They weren't anti-social or anything. It wasn't like we were ever wondering, 'Oh, what's going on in the house down the street.' "
Still, Natalie Duggan said, some neighbors started to suspect that Ivins was under surveillance by the FBI. Outside Ivins' home -- a two-story white house with dark red shutters across the street from Fort Detrick and flanked by large maple and oak trees -- FBI agents in distinctive cruisers and sports utility vehicles with tinted windows would stand watch. The cruisers were such a common appearance on Military Road that neighbors knew the agents' shift change: 4 p.m.
"One car would pull up and the other would pull away," said Duggan, adding that she would often have to ask the agents to move because they would block the family's driveway.
Another neighbor even installed a camera and trained it toward the roadway to keep an eye on the agents. "They'd be around all the time and then disappear for days so we'd try to keep track of who was gone or on vacation then," Duggan said. "We know Bruce worked in the big anthrax lab, so we started think, 'Maybe this has something to with him.' "
It wasn't the first time the community had been touched by the investigation into the anthrax letters: FBI agents and the national media descended on Frederick when Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill was named a "person of interest" and when the FBI drained a nearby spring-fed pond in search of clues.
Chris Clark, 23, Ivins' next-door neighbor, said that he was driving home after 11 p.m. last Friday or Saturday night and saw an ambulance and a fire truck parked in front of Ivins' house.
"At first I thought it was in front of my house," he said. "The [truck's] lights were off and there were no sirens," he said. Frederick police say they were called to Ivins's home early Sunday morning and found him unconscious on his bathroom floor. They took him to Frederick Memorial Hospital where he died two days later.
Reporters were not allowed on the base early today, but in a telephone interview an employee at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, who spoke on the condition on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said the FBI had been "hounding him mercilessly."
The employee said the FBI had visited Ivins' lab on "numerous" occasions during the past several years, seizing lab samples, records and equipment. The constant scrutiny "really pushed this poor guy to the edge," the employee said, and noted that his colleagues were upset at the way he'd been treated.
Employees at the lab "are very concerned about the way things have transpired and several employees are considering asking for a review" of the investigation, the employee said.
Ivins was still alive when they found him?
and he lived for two more days after they took him to the hospital?
If he had ingested Tylenol mixed with codeine, no matter how much he took, pumping his stomach should have been enough to save him.
So cause of death is no longer suicide, cause of death is whatever went wrong in the hospital.
Has anyone bothered to do an autopsy? They better hurry up, since they're suppose to bury him this weekend.
just the facts
Has anybody, journalist or not, gone to Frederick and done the leg work to find the basic facts of a three-day-old story: Get a police report on the incident, talk with family, friends, neighbors and medical people? inquire why no public announcement on this most prominent story was made until the LA Times got a leak? This is all very strange.
" After suicide, feds consider closing anthrax case"
Title of AP Story at
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080802/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/anthrax_scientist
Looks like it's now time to close the case. What a bunch of nonsense from AP.