Questions Surround WMD Hunt

CNN ^ | 6-18-03 | David Ensor

[cgk]

Bush was asked during a recent White House meeting whether American credibility was on the line in the search for illicit weapons.

CNN's David Ensor examines claims that the Bush administration overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (part 1).

[cgk]

Pinging the group (both sides of the camp) who may or may not have info on this:

"There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained over the declared destruction date," chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said January 27.

In 1998, Clinton gave a more dire assessment: "Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use that arsenal."

The Brokaw letter:

The NY Post letter:

Notes: The Brokaw and Post letters appear to be a exactly the same... perhaps a photocopy - one of the other. The Date: "09-11-01". The "0" in "09" closes in the middle with a slight dip, no over-crossing, in both letters. The first "1" in "11" does not appear to be connected to its base in either letter. The "0" in "01" does not connect to make a complete circle, identical in both letters. Line 1: "THIS IS NEXT". The extra top line on the letter "T" in "This" appears in both letters. Line 2: "TAKE PENACILIN NOW". Same extra top line on the "T" in "Take". The "A" in "Penacilin" has also been double traced in both letters. The "N" in "Now" dips below the line in both letters on the second line. The "O" in "Now" has the same leftside loop cross-overthrow in both letters. Line 3: "DEATH TO AMERICA". The "E" in "Death" has a longer bottom line in both letters, extending left. The "A" and "H" in "Death" are both double traced, identically. Note the extra dip in the middle of the "A" below the cross-line resembling a "v" mark. The "T" and "O" in "To" are both double-traced in each letter, identically. The "E" in "America" has a repeat of the longer bottom line, extending left. The "R" in "America" in both letters shows a circle-loop forming the top of the letter, tracing over portions already written. The final "A" in "America" has a double-traced middle line. Line 4: "DEATH TO ISRAEL". The "E" in "Death" has a top line that is shorter, and tilted downwards in both letters, identically. The "T" in "Death" was written with an incomplete top line, shorter on the right side. Double-tracing on the word "To" on both letters, including an extra loop on the letter "O". The "R" in "Israel" has a repeat of writing the letter with a loop on the top. The "E" in "Israel" has a small loop on the bottom line, leftside, identical in both letters. Line 5: "ALLAH IS GREAT". The first "A" in "Allah" appears to have been double, perhaps triple-traced, resulting in an extra line on the right side. The "R" in "Great" written with the same loop. The "E" in "Great" is double-traced on the bottom left vertical line, and the middle line has a "tail" dropping away on both letters. The "T" in "Great" has a loop directly below the topline and on the left side, identical in both letters.

Question: Where is a picture of the Leahy letter? Is the missing Leahy letter significant in why the Brokaw and Post letters are identical, and appear to be photocopies of the same letter?

The Deadly Daschle letter

Question: We have been told the Leahy letter's anthrax is identical to the Daschle letter - same high quality. Where is the Leahy letter, discovered and quarantined on Nov. 16, that was opened on Dec. 5, 2001 in Ft. Detrick? Has it also been lost, like the AMI letters in Florida?

[My2Cents]

The credibility of this CNN report is in question, citing Sen. Robert Byrd near the top as a reliable source.

[My2Cents]

BTW, this is one of the best examples I've seen in awhile of truly biased reporting.

[cgk]

Fun isn't it?

It was based on documents later exposed by U.N. weapons inspectors as sloppy forgeries -- with the wrong letterhead and wrong names

Where have we seen THIS before?

[cgk]

The credibility of this CNN report is in question, citing Sen. Robert Byrd near the top as a reliable source.

And their own favorite: Clinton near the bottom, perhaps beyond the range that people with "normal, short" attention spans won't pass.

[the Real fifi]

If recent history is any guide, as soon as Daschle and Johnny Apple of the NYT declare definitively that there are not and never were any WMD in Iraq, we will find them.:).

[Shermy]

There's a picture of the Leahy letter at the FBI site. Being pulled out in a "glove box." It looks like a photocopy of the Daschle one (different from the first ones by their more controlled, determined handwriting.)

What I want to know is besides the letter and anthrax, was there anything else inside the Leahy letter...say, a religious charm???

[Mark17]

The credibility of this CNN report is in question, citing Sen. Robert Byrd near the top as a reliable source.

In October of 2002, Senator KKK Byrd knew of Saddam's desire for nuclear weapons. I think the Israelis knew about it in 1981 also.

[Shermy]

http://www.fbi.gov/anthrax/vanharp/introleahy.htm

Pics of the Leahy letter.

[cgk]

Thank you for the link... I had found it right after you told me about it the first time. It does look identical to the Daschle letter in terms of the print, but of course there's no close-up to compare the two.

Also - seeing how Leahy claimed he was told his letter contained enough anthrax to "kill 100,000 people", wouldn't we have seen some whiff of powder or dust in that picture by picture story of the opening of the envelope?

[cgk]

...we will find them

Or just tell everyone we've had them all along... :)

[The Great Satan]

I was musing on Steven Hatfill's famous forged PhD certificate today and it struck that it would actually be easier to gin up the fake-of-a-fake than the supposed "straight" fake served up to us by the Baltomore Sun's Scott Shane.

If you look at the copy released to Scott Shane and Alan J. Weberman (interesting juxtaposition of players), you'll recognize just how little work it would take to put together, provided you had access to other certified documents from which to copy the notaries' stamp and signature. All you have to do is scan those documents, cut-and-paste them into Photoshop, and composite them with a Rhodes coat of arms lifted off the web, the phony signatures and the lettering. Print it out, run it through a copier a few times to obscure any imperfections, and -- voila! -- instant forged PhD certificate à la Weberman, conveniently pre-dated to 1995. I wouldn't be at all surprised if those notarized documents were from Hatfill's time in Oxford. I wonder if the solicitors keep copies of the documents they notarize?

Mind you, if Hatfill really forged and notarized those documents back in 1995, all by his lonesome, then it wasn't no Photoshop job. You can't walk into a Oxford solicitors' office and ask them to notarize some crappy-looking black-and-white copy of a diploma. That thing would have to look real, with fancy parchment, embossed lettering, coat of arms, etc. Certainly not impossible to do, but, even with the color lasers and the like available today, not a piece of cake. I could do the Shane-Weberman-Photoshop version myself in a couple of hours max, but a real-looking original would be another story. This whole Hatfill scam is looking easier every day. Like 9/11, it uses the minimum number of people and resources to create the maximum psychological effect. Neat, huh?

[cgk]

"Also - seeing how Leahy claimed he was told his letter contained enough anthrax to "kill 100,000 people", wouldn't we have seen some whiff of powder or dust in that picture by picture story of the opening of the envelope?"

There is a picture showing that.

These are the 4 pictures from the FBI website of the "Opening the Leahy letter", in order.

They are also in order as to the file names - photo1, photo2, photo3, photo4... It seems to me there is a photo missing at least between 3 and 4. Where is the picture you saw with the powder or dust showing, whether it's a cloud of it or some sprinkles on the desk?

[Range Rover]

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it before but the printing looks similar to the letters the serial killer dubbed "The Zodiac" sent to the SF Chronicle back in the late 60's/Early 70's.

Interesting.

[cgk]

I googled Alan J. Weberman because I don't know anything about him and he's showing up in "Covert Action Information Bulletin"/CIA sheets and is referenced quite a bit in the "Steamshovel Press".

His "social network" diagram is much larger than Hatfill's, which only seems to cover 2002:

Clawson, 1991-2002:

[cgk]

At times, yes... he definitely went back and forth. Other times the Zodiac practically scrawled his letters. His ciphers were always printed neatly...

[cgk]

The rest of the info on Weberman I found is that he has written extensively on the conspiracy of the JFK assassination, and he once stole Dylan's garbage.

[cgk]

It looks like a reflection, as in the other pictures - reflecting the foil in the box... It matters because we've heard stories about plastic "Star of David"s being included in at least some of the envelopes.

Can you direct me to Ezell's description? I'd like to read it, and can't find it on the FBI site.

[jpl]

He's also affiliated with the JDO and Moderchai Levy and is so out there that New York Magazine once ranked him #12 on their list of "New York City's 15 Loopiest Residents".

I think the guy probably fried most of his brain back during his Dylan obsession days.

[cgk]

Thank you... I only know what the JDO is because their links aren't allowed on FR. I saw a post removed and the AM said "we don't want their trash here", so I looked it up to see what it was. ;)

[cgk]

Nevertheless, USAMRIID scientist John Ezzell spent three weeks going to meetings, visiting companies and consulting various experts before opening the spore-laden envelope sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy -- and even then he accidentally spilled some of the contents.

I guess that picture is missing!

[cgk]

Also, note the 100,000 figure is silly in that it relates to number of spores without taking into account means of their dispersion. As it was, even the Leahy product had some clumping of the product in the range of 40-100 microns

I heard the opposite about the Leahy letter, that actually it was similar, even higher quality than the Daschle letter. That the anthrax was more powerful with every letter discovered Anthrax:

4) But last fall's anthrax was milled mechanically, so it can't have come from Iraq, right?

We don't know that it was milled, really. Published reports conflict on this point, and those news accounts that do suggest the anthrax was milled invariably attribute the intelligence to federal investigators impressed by the super-granulated quality of the Leahy sample. In fact, evidently concerned that the Leahy letter might thus tend to confirm the Barbara Hatch Rosenberg conspiracy theory at its most rococo (i.e., that someone walked the anthrax straight out of a CIA lab), certain "government sources" have lately begun putting out word that the stuff was actually too good to be American. Two weeks ago, an item in Newsweek described a "secret new analysis" said to be circulating through high-level Washington, according to which analysis the Leahy letter's powder was "ground to a microscopic fineness not achieved by U.S. biological weapons experts." Researchers have found evidence of "intense milling," Newsweek explained: individual, free-floating anthracis spores, something our own government's scientists have "never seen" before.

But that's absurd. Individual, free-floating anthracis spores are what those scientists look at every day. And it's hardly a secret. During a December 15 Centers for Disease Control-sponsored conference on post-exposure prevention of inhalation anthrax--you can find the transcript on CDC's website--Dr. Louise Pitt of USAMRIID discussed in considerable detail how her colleagues at Ft. Detrick do their anthracis research. The spores, she said,

"are diluted to the desired concentration in sterile distilled water, water for injection. Our aerosols are extremely well characterized and defined. The particle size of the aerosol has a mass-meeting-aerosol diameter between .8 and 1.4 microns. That means that the aerosols that we are generating are basically single-spore aerosols. There's very, very little clumping of two spores. They are single-spore aerosols."

And remember, Ft. Detrick does not employ a mechanical milling process. Because, as it happens, people like Dr. Pitt have discovered much easier ways to make what our experts persist in calling the Leahy letter's "weapons-grade" anthrax: If they want it in a mist, they dilute the spores in water, as USAMRIID does. And if they want their anthrax dry, in a powder, they run it through what is essentially a very fancy flour sifter, a device commercially available throughout the world. This practice, too, has been specified in the open literature. A "Risk Assessment of Anthrax Threat Letters" published last year by Canada's Defence Research Establishment Suffield (DRES), for instance, was based on a bacterial specimen prepared in the "routine manner." Agar-grown cultures were dried into a "clumpy, undistinguished mess." And the mess was then filtered with a sifter, separating the largest chunks and leaving behind a final powder containing "a high proportion of singular spores."

Under a microscope, of course, singular spores, both milled and unmilled, look exactly the same.

Apparently it can also be explained following this theory:

Particle Size, it's a PDF file, page 3 includes pictures.

[Wright is right!]

This story has been repeated virtually verbatim every day for the past 2 weeks. How many more days are they planning to do so under the guise of "news?" And also note the passive voice in the headline -- "questions were raised." And once again, the critics have the field to themselves.

Michael