"But why would AMI be targeted? The New York Post is almost as peculiar a target. ... By the way, what happened to CBS?"
Anthrax was found in Dan Rather's office. They're only "peculiar" given the assumption that the sender (not necessarily the mastermind) fits one's different expectation. I posed the question, Ross's page adopted it, why weren't targets like the New York Times, Washington Post selected? Wouldn't "great powers" target them instead of AMI?
Put it this way - what kind of person would select CBS, NBC, CBS, New York Post and AMI tabloid? Someone who is exposed to them, someone who watches the networks, familiar with New York Post and tabloids, rather than cable new, New York Times and other higher brow stuff.
And if the letter(s) were to J.Lo., the tabloid being the conduit, isn't J.Lo. the target? Often it is assumed that "AMI" was the target. But if so, why wouldn't the "editor" (like the NYPost letter address) or major personality on the masthead be targeted, mail delivered to them, and spores be prominently found in their office? Think about the networks - not much anthrax around except the offices of the targets. Take AMI - anthrax all around. Could this dispersal be indicative of kook mail opened up by, say, the mail room staff because it wasn't addressed to an AMI personality? Then this mail was carted around and shown to others for humor's sake? Stevens reportedly was an afficiondo of this kind of mail. In other words, what does the dispersal pattern in AMI tell us about the addressee of the letter?
If sick letters to J.Lo., what kind of man would that be? Hatfill? Agent for drug companies? Or a man or men in their 20's confused about women and female sexuality - which J.Lo represented?
If not a "J.Lo." letter, a tabloid was anyway targeted - would a conniving government agent select that? And again, just what kind of letter would seemingly have been opened before delivery to a putative AMI addressee?
But there are other possibilities. The idea that AMI was targeted as a representative of "America" I find not worthwhile, however someone who was told to target the "media in America" might have done a simple google search, and AMI popped up, giving the sender an idea.
And as for the New York Post, it is well known for being pro-Israeli. That why it was selected?
Here's another thing I've commented on but see no experts mentioning - the difference in the first and second wave of letters. The first are "crazy looking" in their script. The second are better written, more determined. The first only mentions "penacilin", the second explicitly says "anthrax." My conclusion - the sender was frustrated the first wave didn't have the desired effect, even the known AMI attack wasn't fixed to a message. So the sender became more determined, more careful in writing, and mentioned "anthrax" to make sure the message was gotten. (This logic does not preclude a government agent or such did the mailings).
The sender might also have decided that attacking media targets did not get the result desired, so he chose politicians.
Now the politicians selected are interesting, assuming only Daschle and Leahy were selected. Recall that Bush was not seen as pro-Israel or anti-Arab, quite the opposite. And note KSM, supposedly, said that the last plane targeted the capitol, not the White House, because the White House was not seen as a pro-Israel particularly (or something like that). Indeed, Democrats were seen as the "pro-Israel" faction in the U.S. Maybe that's why Democrats were targeted. And I know that Osama really doesn't care much about Israel and has a global view, but if KSM selected targets - he's a Palestinian.
So many possibilities - including that there were other letters. Daschle might have been selected because prominence on television, Leahy because talking about the Patriot Act, the perp has a Vermont connection - you name it.
There's some of my thoughts - posted elsewhere up to two years ago, probably now deleted - no fault of my own. :)
I looked it up, and you're right. I'd forgotten all about that. One of Rather's aides got cutaneous anthrax.
CBS, NBC, and ABC make sense as the three major networks. I think their selection points to somebody middle-aged or older, since young people think of those as just three channels out of the hundreds available on cable, nothing all that special.
The Post and AMI are different. I think there must have been specific reasons for targeting those. I don't know what those reasons were, though.
Give me a break.