Here is the topic:
Many of us must have noticed isolated interesting factinos in relation to the anthrax mailings that we have yet not found occasion to remark on. This thread is for these little facts, which together may add to more than the summation of the parts.
So what observations have *you* noticed that you have not posted or that may not be known widely? Never found the right thread to post it on? This is it.
Discussion on the facts posted by others? Post them too, naturaly.
Book-mark this thread and come back a few times to see what nuggets other FReepers will have posted.
I have addressed this to a large list of previous anthrax-thread participants, in hopes of pulling in many little facts. I will not do any other mass-ping on this thread. My apologies if I missed you.
Let's start things off with............
Background: The postmarking date of the anthrax letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy was Tuesday, 9 October 2001. There is no mail pickup on Sunday, nor on that Monday because of Columbus Day that year. So the letters were mailed some time between 6 October, late in the day after last pickup, and 9 October.
Observacions: Two unusual Internet postings were made at the same time. Read them. Were these posted by the anthrax mailers?
Assunto: ANTRAX EM LOS ANGELES Data: 7 Oct 2001 15:44:16 -0300 De: <.@..> Grupo: uol.politica.internacional Comecou a ser espalhado em Los Angeles 10 Kg de antrax. Estima-se 80 mil mortes nas proximas semanasTranslating from portuguese to english:
Subject: ANTHRAX IN LOS ANGELES Date: 7 Oct 2001 15:44:16 -0300 From: <.@..> Group: uol.politica.internacional 10 kilograms of anthrax have started to be spread in Los Angeles. One estimates 80,000 deaths in the coming weeks.The chatroom posting has disappeared into the ether, but it was documented on 8 October 2001: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Muslim-terrorism-1900.20011007%40news.mantra.com
From: intheknowcia@aol.com (Intheknowcia) Newsgroups: alt.prophecies.nostradamus Date: 09 Oct 2001 05:12:54 GMT Subject: USA to use Nukes against Iraq Message-ID: <20011009011254.21640.00000886@mb-bj.aol.com> Just a little inside info to let you all know that the USA plans to use Nuclear missiles against Iraq to totally destroy and burn up their supplies of Biological weapons, otherwise they fear these germs spreading across the region. InsideSource url is http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20011009011254.21640.00000886%40mb-bj.aol.com&output=gplain.
Someone might argue that I have just fished 2 posts out of many, selecting those that happened to be around the right date. It is true that if postings like these were a common-place, I could have looked for two from around the right date, and those 2 would then mean Zilch. Howsoever, postings like these are not a dime a dozzen. I know of nothing similar. These are the only postings of this type of which I know, and, as such, the timing of them is remarkable, as is the very early referral to a war by the U.S. on Iraq over WMD.
I'm in !
In addition,if space gets crowded here,I have a bulletin board website ( no fees,no ads,just register)where parts of this discussion could be moved:
http://listeningpost.mywowbb.com
It's not intended to divert anything from FR,but might offer a more "private" discussion forum for anyone who is skittish.
I still visit The Great Satan's Blog to see what he has to say. I still, to this day, think he is pretty close with his theories.
"I'm the walking dude. I can see all the world."--Anthrax
What a fine idea for a thread...
How about the meaning of the return address on the anthrax-laced letters to Sens. Daschle & Leahy? People talked a lot about the Greendale School part and the city, but the ZIP code is key. Was the ZIP code selected first, for a hidden meaning, with the remainder of the address then chosen to flesh it out?
The ZIP code on the anthrax envelopes to the two Senators was 08852.
08-8-52. This is August 8, 1952 - or 8 August 1952, it doesn't matter which style you use, month-day-year as in the USA or day-month-year as in Europe.
What does "August 8, 1952" commemorate? I am told that it is the birthday of the CIA branch for covert activities, the date of the merger of OPC and OSO into the Directorate of Plans, under DDP Frank Wisner. William Leary's authoritative The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents places the creation of the Directorate in August, 1952, but doesn't spell out the August 8 date. http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/17240/art-2.html#ft2. BTW, the Directorate of Plans was later renamed the Directorate of Operations.
Is this ZIP code a numerical coincidence?
Or is the return address of the anthrax the signature or calling-card of the covert activities group of the old CIA, before it was gutted??? Or maybe a wistful harkening back to those days of glory???
Here's something I noticed.
Khan, in a posting of yours in July, 2004, you made the claim that there was an "ineffective anthrax attack at end of February of 2003." You then elaborated, as follows:
"Has been dubbed weaponised or semiweaponised.
Was thought to have encompassed both a letter campaign with threatening messages and an outdoor delivery trial.
Best estimate of date is 24 Feb 2003." [Boldface added.]
Links: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1165194/posts?page=112#112 and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1165194/posts?page=145#145
What I noticed was that the same date (Feb. 24, 2003) had occurred in an earlier FR discussion about the possible connection between the anthrax mailings and Internet worms/viruses. [I have placed all the instances of the date Feb. 24, 2003, in this posting in boldface, to make it easy to spot them.]
Before proceeding, a bit on the Nimda worm: It is known that the destructive Nimda worm was released on Sept. 18, 2001, exactly one week after the 9/11 attack (one week to the minute, as closely as one can tell). The destructiveness of this worm on the heels of 9/11 was sufficient that John Ashcroft made a televised statement on Sept. 18 that the worm was not known to be terrorist-related. Something no one knew on that date was that Sept. 18, 2001, was also the postmark date of the anthrax mailings to NBC News and the NY Post. In addition, a variant called Nimda.B was released some time between Oct. 5 and 9, 2001, matching the mailing date of the second set of anthrax letters. (Neither Nimda.B nor the second set of anthrax letters can be dated precisely.) This was observed in early November, 2001, but to this date it is not known whether Nimda and the anthrax mailings were really connected or whether it was a coincidence. (It's perhaps worthy of comment that both the Nimda and anthrax attacks involved putting a destructive payload in mail, whether e-mail or postal mail.)
Fast-forward two years, to late Dec., 2003. Frequent FR reincarnatee Van der Waals, who had expressed interest in the Nimda theory, noted that the Swen computer worm had been released on Sept. 18, 2003, and that a variant of Swen had been released on Oct. 9, 2003. These are the anniversaries of the two known anthrax mailings. The HTML used by the worm makes use of the code word "bacillus". Here's the link to this posting of Van der Waals: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1042297/posts?page=37#37.
I replied to Van der Waals, in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1042297/posts?page=40#40. Here's part of what I wrote at the time (Dec. 20, 2003):
... note that the worm called Swen is apparently the latest incarnation of the earlier Gibe worm, so 9/18/2003 and 10/9/2003 are just the latest two dates in a longer series of release dates.As you can see, the Feb. 24, 2003, release date of Gibe coincides with Khan Noonian Singh's purported "ineffective anthrax attack." Possibility 3(b) specifically pointed out the date Feb. 24, 2003, as a date of interest.So, here are three possibilities regarding Swen:
My guess is that it's just a coincidence - Possibility 1.
- Possibility 1. The dates are just a coincidence. If you look, you can find many things that happened on Sept. 18, and some that happened on both Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 in some year.
- Possibility 2. Someone who had nothing to do with the anthrax mailings intentionally picked the anniversary dates, just because he thought it would be a cool thing to do.
- Possibility 3. Someone who had something to do with the anthrax mailings picked those dates on purpose. But why would he do that? Two possible reasons:
- Possibility 3(a). Disinformation. This presupposes that the Nimda theory is false; the purpose of Swen would then be to divert resources into investigation of a (false) Nimda connection to the anthrax mailings.
- Possibility 3(b). To draw attention to the earlier release dates of Gibe/Swen:
Why draw attention to these earlier dates? I don't know, but that attention to the earlier Gibe-worm release dates is a predictable consequence of the later Swen releases on the anthrax anniversary dates. In this theory 3(b), it's as if someone is saying: "Look at the release dates!"
- Mar. 4, 2002
- Feb. 24, 2003
(There were also minor follow-up variants released on Mar. 16, 2003, and Mar. 24, 2003.)
The postmark dates mean nothing all that important. The pieces carried addresses that would take them through several major airports and important postal facilities ~ Brokaw, Daschle and Leahy would suffice for that purpose.
The terrorists managed to shut down the main postal facility serving the national capital.
The recent discovery of a field handbook in Iraq concerning manufacturing weaponized anthrax should pretty much resolve all the questions about who was really involved in the attack.