South Carolina : FBI increases amount of reward for information in Upstate ricin case
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2432655&nav=0RaPS15a
(Columbia-AP) Oct. 14, 2004 - The FBI has increased a reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone responsible for leaving a package containing the deadly poison ricin at an Upstate postal facility a year ago.
The reward has been increased $20,000 to $120,000.
The increase was announced Thursday, a day before the one-year anniversary of the discovery of the package at a facility serving Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. The package also contained a letter. The author claimed to be the owner of a tanker fleet company with access to large amounts of pulp from castor plants, which are the source of the poison ricin.
The letter was one of two intercepted last year signed "Fallen Angel." The second letter was addressed to the White House and bore a postmark from Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was discovered by the Secret Service at a Washington offsite mail processing facility.
In both letters, the author complained about new regulations that mandate more rest periods for long-haul truckers.
A Nuclear 9/11 Could Shut Us Down
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/rneuwirth_20041015.html
...excerpt...
In our war on terror, the enemy is now positioning to strike America from yet another direction and with a potentially fatal blow, with many thanks to France. The 9/11 Commission pointed out that our biggest failure was ''a failure of imagination.'' That is, our thinking lagged the evolving reality and our key leaders failed to grasp the possibility of such a daring attack and hence we were caught unprepared. We not only failed to imagine such a scenario but we also underestimated the enemy’s intent and its capabilities even as we also ignored those people who tried to warn us about our exposure.
Americans already anticipate a variety of possible internal terror threats and we hope and assume that our government is on the job. But now another ominous warning comes from Professor Howard Bloom. He is a visiting scholar at the Graduate Psychology Department at New York University, an author of two books and articles. If he is right, then there is an urgent need to understand this emerging threat and to respond in time.
After 9/11, President Bush asserted that Islam is a religion of peace and that we need to fight only that small minority of Moslems who are extremists. By now the term ''war on terror'' is gradually being replaced by terms like Islamism, Islamo-Fascism, Islamic extremism, etc. The actions of Moslems around the world, and even inside America, are raising disturbing questions about the mindset of large numbers of people within the greater Moslem community.
King Abdullah of Jordan, after the bombing of the train in Madrid, Spain, made a brief but significant comment. He said that the real conflict was going on within the Moslem world and it was between the moderates and the extremists. He did not say who is winning. This is part of the big picture that the west does not fully understand and hence it is not providing a sufficiently effective response.
Professor Bloom, on his web site addresses Islamic intent and also the rapidly emerging Islamic military capability. This article will summarize both issues from his web site and also include remarks from his lengthy radio interview on the Art Bell show of August 21, 2004.