Posted on 07/20/2004 1:43:56 PM PDT by maquiladora
/table>
Some Fort Detrick Labs Closed 10:25 AM
Jul 20, 2004 10:25 am US/Eastern
Frederick, MD (WJZ)
Federal agents are combing a number of laboratory suites at Fort Detrick in Frederick for evidence of the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Fort Detrick spokesman Charles Dasey says the labs have been closed since Friday at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, home to the Army's biological warfare defense program.
A law enforcement source tells The Associated Press that the activity is related to the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 in October of 2001.
FBI agents have frequently visited Fort Detrick since the
unsolved attacks amid speculation that the deadly spores or the person who sent them may have come from Fort Detrick.
(© 2004 CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. )
Some people make a case that they are obstinate fools, based on examples like the Atlanta Olympics bombing, blaming Richard Jewell.
My take is that this is wrong, that the FBI do have a very good reason for the domestic focus in the anthrax case.
Purely speculatively now, what sort of evidence could they have?
It is possible that the mailers themselves revealed enough of the truth for understanding, and that the government are being black-mailed into inaction by the mailers.
What other evidence could they have that would be so persuasive that they would virtually abandon any foreign theory, yet would not enable them to procede with a prosecution?
The perps loved that little pond-draining exercize. Especially having led the FBI into it. What a fantastic plot. Think thru the FBI's options- No matter what the FBI did, they would come out looking like fools. It even provides never-ending grist for the make-fun-of-the-FBI contingent.
The FBI learned that it was outclassed in strategy and outmanoeuvred, and they are afraid that if they don't watch their step, it will happen again. The FBI do not wish to be made to look like fools in the anthrax case once more.
Hmm. What kind of genetic engineering were people doing on corn in 1990? Or maybe I should really ask, "What was the recipient's roommate working on?"
"The perps loved that little pond-draining exercize. Especially having led the FBI into it."
If they ain't pond drainin' they're Berry pickin'-and in between, nose pickin' it seems.
Why say you "perps" and not perp?
And Who's puttin' the bugs in their ears?
Was there a Berry bug do you think?
Seems too broad a job for one person, whether a foreign intelligence plot or a domestic job. Required rôles - Organiser-manager, Biologist, Materials Scientist, Courier. Minimum 2 people, since skills in bio and materials engineering would not be located in the same person. Probably more than 2. Some of the other rôles might or might not be combinated into one person.
<< And Who's puttin' the bugs in their ears? >>
News reports said that Bedlington gave them the pond bug and he got it from Hatfill himself. I do not think news reports said from where the Berry info came.
It is with utmost clarity that the effect of the pond draining was to expose the FBI to ridicule. This would discourage further consideration of the domestic theory, since the lesson is that it leads one into ridicule. This effect was totally predictible so one can judge that it was planned for that effect.
"Seems too broad a job for one person"
Some folks can walk and chew gum at the same time:
"Bioengineering is the discipline of engineering that applies principles and methods from engineering, the life sciences, and the medical sciences to understand, define, and solve problems in medicine, physiology, and biology."
I'd wager there are a few that can walk, chew gum,plan a meal and mail a few letters - at the same time.
"The pond draining was terribly stupid. So your theory holds water because they invited the media. If they would have done it under cover of darkness, as they had in their investigation of Berry, prior to the Berry's having a big knock down drag out fight, then no one would have known."
Aug 5
Doctor's Homes Are Searched in the Anthrax Investigation
New York Times, NY - Aug 5, 2004
Aug 7
Doctor in anthrax probe arrested: Charged with domestic violence ...
The Trentonian, NJ - Aug 7, 2004
In this affair
there are three names that stand out
like very sore thumbs:
Leaky Leahy, Kathy Nguyen and Judith Miller.
I would hazard a hunch that the solution to the mystery revolves
around the nexus of these three names.
Well, it's a new theory, anyway.
It's been getting rather tiresome going over and over the old ones for the past 3 years.
It's not even a new theory. It's been around for quite some time on what one might call the less reputable websites (along with charges of Skull-and-Bones Satanism and sometimes even extraterrestrial infiltrators).
If Kitty Kelley's new book really does feature this sort of thing, it can only help Pres. Bush's re-election prospects. In addition to making the Democrats look both weird and desperate, it will take the wind out of the sails of those who criticize the Swift Boat veterans for supposedly making unproven accusations.
Think about it. The idea here is that the anthrax conspirators were a completely separate group to the 9/11 conspirators, but that they wanted their work to be perceived as of a piece with 9/11. In other words, after a shadowy terrorist group had just killed thousands of people very publicly and gruesomely, the anthrax conspirators immediately set out to create the impression that the same group also had access to a weapon of mass destruction. It's an action which seems more likely to flat out deter war against the terrorists, than to channel the war in a particular direction, which is the intent usually ascribed by the 'insider' theories.
How do the anthrax letters frame Iraq anyway? They don't mention Iraq, they don't allude to Iraq.
Just three years before, the USA had intensively bombed Iraqi WMD facilities, and had adopted an official policy of regime change in Iraq, out of fear that weapons like anthrax might be passed to terrorists. The Secretary of Defense went on TV and specifically said that a small bag of anthrax could kill half of Washington DC. The Iraqi biological weapons program was the greatest source of concern for UNSCOM. Iraq admitted that it had managed to weaponize anthrax, albeit in liquid form.
So it's the mere presence of weaponized anthrax in the letters which was guaranteed to make people think of Iraq. As you say, the text in the letters ("DEATH TO AMERICA") is more reminiscent of Iranian sloganeering.
The question of Iran, Iraq, and al Qaeda sponsorship reminds me of one of those logic puzzles, where you have (say) two giants at a fork in the road, one of whom always lies and one of whom always tells the truth, and you have to figure out which road leads to your destination by asking just one question.
You could be right. And maybe a Bruce Lee could really defeat 50 trained attackers all by himself, with 50 wellplaced Kung-Fu kicks. It could happen.
How-ever: Your theory requires not just high-level competence in microbiology and true expertise in materials science and engineering. It also needs a mastermind - a plotting, planning, strategic risktaker. That is an unusual psycological makeup, and one not very often found in engineers and scientists.
My guess - 3 true insiders, maybe a few more at the periphery. I could be wrong.
This assumes that the mailers had the weaponisation secret and that they weaponised the anthrax themselves.
Another option: May-be the weaponised anthrax was stolen and mailed, after having been made by somebody else in some clandestine govt project. This does not require so many people now. Arguments against this: 1. That was a lot of weaponised anthrax to have stolen. 2. Whoever stole it, knowing they had a limited amount, probably would have chosen a better distribution method, or perhaps a multi-forked distribution with several vehicles.
In real life, both giants mislead to the best of their proficiency, so asking questions to find out which is the road to Country A, your destination, is useless.
Instead you say, "Did you hear that they're giving away free beer and WMD in Country A?" It doesn't matter what they answer, neither giant will take a chance on the other getting to Country A first. They'll both be headed in search of the free beer and WMD as soon as possible. Discreetly follow them.
But now I want to tackle the Iranian question more directly. While the appearance of anthrax is suggestive of Iraq (post #175), as Mitchell points out (post #147), the rhetoric in the letters is characteristic of Iran. "Death to America, death to Israel" - those are Hezbollah slogans.
A week after 9/11, janes.com floated the theory, attributed to Israeli military intelligence, that it was the work of Iraq, acting through Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh and al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri. (The report prompted a response in the Jerusalem Post a few days later - "IDF: Iraq Not Involved in Attacks, Iran Maybe".) Curiously, there is a document out there, purporting to be a memo from Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei to the senior official Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, saying that Iran should expand its secret cooperation with Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, in preparation for attacks on the USA. The document was apparently supplied by Hamid Reza Zakeri, an Iranian defector.
In the letters, then, we have something suggestive of Iraq, and something suggestive of Iran; and we even have two theories which agree that 9/11 was the work of Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, but disagree on whether the state sponsor was Iraq or Iran.
So once again we have several possibilities. It could be Iraq trying to make it look like Iran, or Iran trying to make it look like Iraq. It could be Iraq or Iran acting without the intention to frame the other. It could be both Iran and Iraq. It could be neither Iran nor Iraq.
Luigi Warren pointed out to me that Iraq would appear to have a much stronger motive than Iran. Iraq was engaged in a ten-year hot and cold war with the USA which involved punishing sanctions and regular bombardment. The US campaign against Iran during that period, if such a thing existed at all, was tepid by comparison. However, this lack of pragmatic motivation has to be weighed against Iran's anti-American ideology ("death to America", remember).
Somewhere in Bob Woodward's Bush at War, George Tenet says he thinks that investigators will discover that Iranian and Iraqi "mood music" surrounded the 9/11 plot. J.K. Idema, the former Green Beret who was recently arrested in Afghanistan for his counterterrorist freelancing, said as much in his interviews.
According to Laurie Mylroie's Study of Revenge, Wafiq al-Samarrai, Iraq's former chief of military intelligence, said that Saddam hoped to attack the USA and make it look like the work of Iran. Meanwhile, former intelligence officials Patrick Lang and Larry Johnson have promoted the idea that INC leader Ahmed Chalabi is an Iranian agent fabricating evidence about Iraq's WMD programs and terrorist connections. Both Iraq and Iran were active in Sudan while al Qaeda was hosted there...
So, at least superficially, you can make a case for any of the possibilities I listed. How does this relate to the anthrax letters? Well, I am assuming that they were part of the 9/11 plot, and these possibilities all correspond to different theories of the mechanisms and intentions behind 9/11. If the anthrax letters are part of the plot as well, we have to find room for them in the story of 9/11's genesis, planning, and execution. Or rather, 9/11 itself becomes a subplot in a larger, as yet untold story, "9/11 + Anthrax".
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