American Anthrax: A Media Roots Film Production

Media Roots presents American Anthrax, a documentary comprised of news footage that establishes, by history’s own narration, how everything you’ve been told about the Anthrax Attacks is a lie. Conceptualized, edited and produced by Robbie Martin, co-host of Media Roots Radio.

September 11, 2001, shook the United States to the core, a country that had been nearly untouchable since its democratic inception. However, immediately following this horrific tragedy, another equally as impactful ‘terrorist attack’ occurred when weaponized anthrax was sent to multiple Congressman and journalists through the U.S. Postal Service. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were both one-time events that happened in two prominent cities. Unlike 9/11, the Anthrax Attacks localized terrorism and spread fear to every corner of American life, where the simple act of getting your mail could prove to be fatal. Five people died as a result of breathing in the deadly anthrax spores, including postal workers and one NY Post reporter. Countless others were infected.

The Bush administration initially tried to link this ‘second wave of terrorism’ to al-Qaeda with zero proof. Once that talking point out-lived its usefulness, the official narrative began leaning towards Saddam Hussein and his mythological biological weapons program. Establishment propagandists like John McCain and ABC news reporters intentionally spread disinformation to plant the seed in the public mind that the anthrax came from Iraq, which eventually lead to Colin Powell’s infamous 2003 WMD speech at the UN. All the while, the U.S. government was fully aware that the anthrax did not come from an external source, because the strain showed tell-tale signs of being a specific anthrax strain that was weaponized and manufactured by the U.S. military.

Regardless, the idea of the Anthrax Attacks being executed by an external terrorist organization remained conventional wisdom the public was conditioned into believing in the aftermath of 9/11. Eventually, two men were accused of being the perpetrators behind the attacks, yet no charges were ever brought to either of them. The first accused individual, Steven Hatfill, ended up being rewarded a multimillion dollar settlement from the government for being wrongly accused before any evidence was presented against him. The subsequent accused individual, Bruce Ivins, allegedly committed suicide while the FBI was trying to break him into confessing.

Ultimately, the FBI asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to verify its evidence pointing to Ivins as the main suspect. Instead, the NAS concluded that the DNA in the anthrax sent in the mail was in fact not a match to the anthrax Ivins worked with. Before the National Academy of Sciences finished their independent investigation, the FBI rushed its pre-established conclusions about Ivins’s guilt to the press, and the case was closed. To this day, the FBI has never commented on the many glaring contradictions in the official government narrative about the Anthrax Attacks.

Follow Robbie on twitter at @fluorescentgrey

http://www.mediaroots.org/mr-documentary-american-anthrax/

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More on the mailings

The text at the beginning says that the anthrax letters were 'delivered' on September 18. To be precise, they were postmarked the 18th, not actually delivered until days later. Time also passed between their being delivered and actually opened, and from there to the appearance of the symptoms of infection, and finally to their being diagnosed as anthrax infection. And the resultant panic.

There were also some hoax anthrax letters (enclosed with powder that turned out be harmless) around this time, postmarked in St. Petersburg, Florida--after the actual anthrax-contaminated letters had been mailed, but before they had made news headlines. Why is this significant? Since the actual attack letters--postmarked in New Jersey--weren't yet news, the hoax mailings could not be attributed to a 'copycat' crime. And while the FBI would ultimately try to pin everything on Bruce Ivins--allegedly doing everything on his own, including dropping them off at the New Jersey mailbox--how could he have carried out these near simultaneous hoax mailings from Florida? In other words, even if one were to accept the claim of Ivins' guilt (which I do not), how big a coincidence theorist does one have to be not to see a conspiracy here, rather than the work of a 'lone nut' (or a 'spore loser,' as the NY Post dubbed him)?

Of course, many other considerations lead to that same rhetorical question. And of course, when they thought the finger of guilt pointed towards Iraq or Al Qaeda, the media didn't hesitate to spin theories of conspiracy. Only when it's known to be a non-Muslim U.S. source do they fall back on the lone-nut-and-everything-else-is-a-coincidence theory.

Something puzzling: While journalist Robert Stevens--of the tabloid The Sun, in Florida--was the first fatality of the anthrax attacks; and while his workplace was found to be contaminated; there is some reason to doubt whether his infection was actually by means of a contaminated letter, though this is often assumed to be so.

Here's just a bit of the info to supplement that in the Media Roots film.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=bob_stevens_1

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=anthraxattacks&anthraxattacks_other=anthraxattacks_anthrax_letters___h...

rm

Good points. The anthrax attacks got a lot better reporting by the corporate media. Graeme MacQueen makes the point that the anthrax attacks are a very effective way to engage skeptics in a discussion of 9/11. Even Senator Leahy didn't buy the FBI story. Obama threatened a veto if more investigative funds were allocated. Dangerous territory. Incredulity is the 'safe ground'.

'American Anthrax' Exposes Attacks as Inside Job

Interview with Robbie Martin:

http://youtu.be/MzcUE2Cqlbc

Abby Martin speaks with journalist and co-host of Media Roots Radio, Robbie Martin, about his new documentary 'American Anthrax' which attempts to piece together the unresolved aspects of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks that localized terror and placed fear in nearly every corner of American life.

other films made by the same person ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGRvggcLF8
(film in a similar lineage all about Obama's war on terror)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1-EAnV6-58
(full film 'American Bisque' spanning american war crimes since Nixon and ending with the false narrative of the war on terror during Obama)

I posted the youtube links above as well.
especially after the first 40 minutes of the whole American Bisque should be a 'greatest hits' for classic 9/11 truthers who've been around here since the beginning. It goes through the propaganda of United 93, Zacarias Moussaoui, the agit-prop of the dancing Palestinian footage aired at 12pm on 9/11, etc, etc.

note: I am not a TV fakery guy, the name is incidental

Anthrax perps will likely point us towards the 9/11 planners.

Coming in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the American public, in a state of psychological "shock and awe", were individually and collectively in a mentally fragile, highly susceptible state. Not only was it easy to instantly associate "anthrax with al Qaeda, but that is what they knew we wanted to believe.

The two agents, one chemical and the other biological, that played a major part in the 9/11 and anthrax attacks respectively, have several characteristics in common:

* Both substances originated from secure US government/military run laboratories. The nano-thermite likely used (in part) to destroy the Twin Towers and WTC7 of the World Trade Center was developed by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, while the anthrax originated from the Ft. Detrick, MD, biological weapons facility.

* Both substances are manufactured by state of the art industrial procedures, in laboratories equipped with the latest, most modern equipment, which is (presumably) expensive to manufacture and only obtainable by organizations with specific permits.

* Both materials were manufactured in facilities with the tightest security, on account of the potential danger and military applications.

* Both attacks were initially blamed on Muslims and Arabs, prior to any investigation taking place, and the US corporate media were on it like wasps around the proverbial jam jar. Significantly, news and discussion of anthrax attacks went from an intense "all anthrax, all the time" degree of coverage to a "roaring silence" when it was discovered that "Muslims, or "al Qaeda" had nothing to do with it. (!)

* One can very safely assume that both materials were not accessible to non-credentialed people with middle eastern names, most especially especially anyone "residing in a cave in Afghanistan".

If we can find the real perps of the anthrax attacks via a full, no-holds barred investigation with full subpoena power, THAT will likely lead us to the real 9/11 terrorists. It's hardly a wonder that Obama and the powers-that-be scrambled desperately to put a lid on this.

Dr. Ivins was clearly railroaded. http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/08/06/the-anthrax-cover-up

FBI director Mueller was clearly complicit as well http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/11/01/fbis-robert-mueller-still-engaging-in-an-anthrax-cover-up/

Throw the lot of them under the train if you ask me.

Ivins's DNA doesn't match

At 34:25 of American Anthrax documentary:

"The National Academy of Sciences determined that the DNA connecting the anthrax letters to Bruce Ivins was not a match.... The FBI never publicly commented on this contradiction."

I agree with Professor Graeme MacQueen (as mentioned above) that the anthrax attacks are a good topic for engaging people in a 9/11 conversation. 9/11 is huge and often labyrinthine, whereas the claims made by the FBI about Ivins and the anthrax are simpler and can be seen to fall apart very fast. The quote in my previous paragraph, from the documentary, exemplifies this.

The Army Did It?

"The National Academy of Sciences determined that the DNA connecting the anthrax letters to Bruce Ivins was not a match.... The FBI never publicly commented on this contradiction."

Since it has been determined that the Anthrax attacks came from within the United States, obviating any foreign actors, we hold up the mirror of accountability and as the visages of Hatfill and Ivins fade from this reflective portal all we are left with is the reflection of the corpus of the Army itself, in sum or in total, in clear and focused propinquity because it is their stuff.

the National Academy of

the National Academy of Sciences also spoke of the 'fast mutating' characteristics of the weaponized Anthrax spores they examined. If the spores were intentionally designed to mutate, so as to be un-matchable for a DNA test (so it couldn't be traced back truly to the source) the FBI decided to go ahead with the false evidence anyways. Clearly they rushed their press conference before the NAS had a chance to announce their own (factual) conclusions about the DNA evidence. It's also said that some of the subsequent letters after the initial few contained different grades of anthrax. Whoever launched the attack initially was trying to cover their tracks by muddying the waters of identifying one particular anthrax strain, possibly even down to choosing a strain which mutated enough to fail a DNA match in any scenario.
For me Richard Perle remains one of the ones most closely linked to the attacks, since he was heavily advising the Bush administration when he made the prediction on September 16th, 2001 that the next attack could be 'biological'. Of course Bush himself is cleverly wording his assertions linking Al-Qaeda to the attacks, and is probably guilty of some kind of crime for simply withholding the 'take Cipro' warning to the american public, hell even Richard Cohen (washington post) was told to get on Cipro and he's not even in the government.
I think overall one of the biggest stumbling blocks for the average person to get into 9/11 truth is the magnitude and multi-faceted nature of it. With Anthrax you don't have this issue, for someone high up in the government to be able to pull off such a feat would have been far easier than 9/11.

Henry S. Heine

Here's more about Ivins. I'm uncertain about what Heine says about the DNA, but he, as a fellow worker of Ivins's, "considered it impossible that Ivins could have produced the anthrax used in the attacks without detection."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Edwards_Ivins#Statement_by_Henry_S._Heine