Posted on 04/13/2008 8:20:52 AM PDT by ZacandPook
Here are some quotes from WILLFUL BLINDNESS (2008) by a key prosecutor of WTC 1993, Andrew McCarthy. They bear on possible lessons learned in WTC 1993 prosecution bearing on the AMERITHRAX investigation.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=WILLFUL+BLINDNESS&x=10&y=20
—”[L]aw enforcement is a very effective propaganda tool in the hands of policy makers who don’t see the need, or who lack the will, to adopt more controversial, preemptive approaches to national security challenges. The criminal justice process presents limitless opportunities to choreograph the ‘illusion of progress.’”
—”To make the case that cried out to be made, to ensure that we were neutralizing the ringleaders, we had to abandon any pretext that time had begun a few minutes after noon on February 26, 1993. We would have to go back. We would have to lay bare the history, the radicals’ ideological bond, and the years of methodical planning... Necessarily, that would mean also laying bare the gory details of government awareness, timidity and incompetence in the face of a gathering threat.”
—”When, moreover, there is any dispute about whether a sensitive piece of information needs to be disclosed, the decision ends up being made by a judge on the basis of what a fair trial requires rather than by the executive branch on the basis of what public safety demands.
—”For agents schooled to regard their very thoughts, never mind their reports, as “top secret” information, it had to be unnerving suddenly to be saddled with prosecutors — attorneys depicted by even the criminal investigators who liked them as defense lawyers in training — entirely too ready, under the rubric of ‘due process,’ to reveal extensive information to the bad guys.”
—”Much of the CIA’s knowledge, particularly that drawn from its covert operations, is top-secret intelligence. When an Agency analyst gives the kind of briefing I needed on Afghanistan, it is certain to be based on at least some classified information, including intelligence from deep-cover operatives, from foreign countries, and from electronic surveillance the CIA was lucky enough to set up on just the right telephone or meeting place. Such intelligence is sometimes confined to a circle so tight its revelation would blow its source.
—”The ‘rule of law’ was our trust. But the very phrase implies that everyone being ruled by the same law. That’s not true outside our country where the CIA operates.”
—”There are — hard as this may be to believe — things more important than legal cases. That kind of information is collected to anticipate the next moves of dangerous actors who mean us harm and can’t be reached by law. It must be accessible only to those who need to know it in order protect the United States.”
—”In Peshawar, both in 1985 and several times thereafter, Abdel Rahman would enjoy the august company of his former student Mohammed Shawky al-Islambouli, a fixture there. A rising jihadist star in his own right, Shawky’s prominence owed much to his mythogenic brother...”
—”Bottom-line: the woeful tale of Abdel-Rahman’s breathtakingly unrestricted travel in and out of the United States, even as he urged Muslim radicals to attack and destroy our country, it is not sinister. It is, instead, a story of inefficiency, political correctness, and incompetence.”
—”[A] consequence of treating the World Trade Center bombing solely as a crime rather than an act of war was the tunnel-vision self-imposed on our intelligence by reliance on the usual process.”
—”[I]n small compass, [Ali Mohammed] is the story of American intelligence and radical islam in the eighties and nineties: the left hand oblivious not only to the right but to its own fingers ... while jihadists played the system from within, with impunity, scheming to kill us all.”
—”There is no way to sugar coat it: Ali Mohamed is a window on breathtaking government incompetence.”
—”In the war against radical Islam, the great calling of our generation, what was true when the enemy declared war fifteen years ago remains true today. If we are too obsessed with law and liability, we are shrinking from our highest duty: to protect lives.”
—”I raised holy hell ... that I strongly suspected Mohamed was a terrorist, that the FBI should be investigating him rather than allowing him to infiltrate as a source ... Because, you know what they say “IMAGINE THE LIABILITY.”
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/05/12/0512cornyn.html
“As written, the federal shield law doesn’t provide protection for all bloggers, Goldberg said, nor should it.
‘It favors mainstream journalists — folks who work for papers, TV stations and radio stations,’ Goldberg said. ‘It needs to apply to certain folks who are only operating on the Web. The question is, who?’
***
They say the House and Senate versions of the shield law would encourage leaks of classified information and make it difficult to prosecute bureaucrats and officials who break the law by disclosing top-secret information.”
Is it classified the method used to weaponize the anthrax was “encapsulation”? Is it classified that “siliconized solution” was used? Is it classified that anthrax lab techs Barq and Wahdan were captured? Is it classified that Ibn Khattab was killed by a poison letter from the Russian intelligence service? Is the motive of the looters who killed Bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa in Madagascar classified? Is it classified what Al-Timimi did for the Navy in the late 1990s while at SRA International? Is some of the work Dr Alibek did under the DARPA grants under a contract with USAMRIID involving the Ames strain classified? Should it have been classified that Al-Timimi was suspected of being an “anthrax weapons suspect”? Are the whereabouts and fate of Aafia Siddiqui classified? Mohammed Abdel-Rahman? Is it classified whether the American Type Culture Collection, to which Al-Timimi had access (ATCC jointly sponsored his bioinformatics program), had virulent Ames strain?
I don’t know. But as author Andrew McCarthy urges, “imagine the liability!”
With greater government secrecy, certainly we need to have to have a greater confidence in government.
“Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions: As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made,”
Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice12-2008may12,0,4309444.story
“’These are the only tracks in the snow left by terrorism investigations, if there are no more counter-terrorism prosecutions,’ Richman said. ‘This is why, more than ever, there is a pressing need for congressional oversight, for accountability at the top of the [Justice] department, and for public confidence in the department.’”
Government in the sunshine has brought us 100 hours of audio recordings of North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command (NORAD-USNORTHCOM) on 9/11.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/NORAD-USNORTHCOM_9-11_Tapes.pdf
With bloggers like Ed, however, dramatically exposing Dugway’s use of silica in making simulants as “horse and buggy,” we have to concern ourselves with the risk that he undermine national security by revealing the government’s work on gas masks for horses.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/Horse_Gas_Mask_reports.pdf
It seems that at some point, though, the public interest favors history being written, precisely so that confidence in government (and especially the DOJ) can be maintained.
Here is an internal FBI memo on the use of pretexts and covers (deception) in interrogation and gaining information.
http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/FBI_Pretexts_and_Cover_Techniques_May-1956.pdf
Deception seems not to have gone out of style.
There is a real risk that in Amerithrax that the deception and secrecy has not been for an appropriate governmental purpose.
Dr. Rebel.
You need to stop needlessly tilting at windmills (especially after you built them).
Corinne M. Verzoni wrote a 2007 PhD thesis titled “An Assessment of Exploitable Weakness in Universities” which discusses Al-Timimi and GMU Center for Biodefense/Discovery Hall at considerable length.
She quotes me on what was found on KSM’s computer. Now aside from not relying on a more citable source like Susan Schmidt or Barton Gellman at the Washington Post on such an issue, she does beautifully. She discusses Al-Timimi, the nature of the research at Discovery Hall, the vulnerability to theft, the consequences to the University if such a theft were discovered and revealed, equipment that has gone missing (examples are from 2006), evidence of covert research being conducted, the failure to inventory equipment costing less than $2,000, and numerous details providing “I am here” flavor” — such as when and how equipment can easily be walked out the loading dock on weekends. She explains that students have access to lab equipment even for their own work or studies — with such work being totally unmonitored. She also talks about computer security (or rather access to computers). For example, she notes that a researcher can and typically will enter research results in a lab computer that then can be accessed by someone else, and the experiments repeated. The most fascinating aspect of the thesis concerns how a strain of anthrax (such as Pasteur), which is not particularly pathogenic, is nonetheless of concern (and listed now as a select agent) because it can be genetically modified. (You’ll recall the issue of the mailed anthrax having an inverted strain). The building is presently BL-2, BL-2+ with a BL-3 contemplated. But note that the Ames strain (in liquid form) was a BL-2 agent. I would have Zack send you the thesis when he gets back but I know how opposed you are to developments in scientific learning. But if the Hartford Courant were to take this thesis — which was supervised by someone whose day job is at the DOD (hint, hint) — and do the thorough job the paper did on the 1992 research at Ft. Detrick — I’d say there is a Pulitzer in the works.
While Ed and TrebleRebel are looking back to yesteryear, Professor Meseson’s wife is looking to the future in Patrick Tucker’s “Germ Warfare Under the Microscope”
Washington:May/Jun 2008 issue of The Futurist.
In an interview, MIT bioweapons expert Jeanne Guillemin talked about biowarfare. She says that technology by itself is not the driving force behind the threat of biological weapons. That force continues to be political. But for the sake of discussion, they can say that the technology for biological weapons is characterized by two levels of threat. One is residual, emanating from the old program, in which the weapons potential of anthrax, tularemia, plague, and other infectious diseases was developed. The other threat concerns innovations in human genetics and neurology. In the last six years, the US has invested some $44 billion in biodefense research and development, but whether this use of resources has deterred bioterrorism is unclear.
“Guillemin: To feel empowered against the threat of biological weapons, individual citizens should insist on two policies: One is an effective, equitable health-care system that guarantees general protection from a range of medical threats. The other is government accountability regarding military or other programs potentially in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.”
Jeanne Guillemin is a professor of sociology at Boston College and a senior fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program. She is the author of several books on biological warfare, including Biological Weapons: The History of State Sponsored Programs and the Problem of Bioterrorism (Columbia University Press, 2004). Her e-mail address is guillemin@mit. edu.
This interview was conducted by Patrick Tucker, senior editor of THE FUTURIST.
Ed may be interested in “Outrage Factors and Explanations in News Coverage of the Anthrax Attacks in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Columbia:Summer 2007. The content analysis examined risk communication factors in news coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks appearing in 833 stories from 272 newspapers, AP, NPR, and four national television networks (CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC). Conflicting reports, speculation, use of unnamed sources, and coverage of vague advice and hoaxes/false alarms-frequently contained outrage rhetoric.
And for legal interpretations on the BWCC combined with characterization of the sophistication of the mailed anthrax, there is American Journal of International Law, April 1, 2007 — containing the article “The shortcomings of indeterminacy in arms control regimes: the case of the Biological Weapons Convention.”
Excerpt:
“Although the BWC purports to out law the development and possession of all biological weapons, deadlier and more sophisticated biological weapons than were imaginable in 1972 can now be and have been produced, as evidenced in October 2001 by two letters sent to the Capitol Hill offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. (2) These letters reportedly contained threatening notes and a dangerous and sophisticated form of “weapons-grade” anthrax spores. (3) Even though both the sender of these letters and the source of the anthrax remain unknown, the technical sophistication of the spores led some experts to suggest that the attacker was supported by aU.S. “biodefense” laboratory or an advanced foreign-state-run biological weapons (BW) facility because the spores could not have been produced by an amateur working in his basement. (4)
In addition to the empirical evidence of new “super” biological weapons, the failings of the BWC are further mani-fested by the growing significance that countries like the United States attach to the BW threat, (5) allegations by senior U.S. government officials that terrorists and rogue states possess biological weapons, (6) and contentious review conferences of BWC states parties that have been unable to resolve cheating and compliance concerns.”
The cited authority will be familiar to you both except, perhaps, this one which I can forward if you haven’t seen it:
Reynolds M. Salerno et al., A BW Risk Assessment: Historical and Technical Perspectives, NONPROLIFERATION REV., Fall/Winter 2004, at25, 53 n.50.
The author in the post above cites these publications in his footnotes in support. It would avoid repetition if only the Salerno publication is discussed.
“(3) A diverse group of sixteen biodefense scientists published a paper describing the Senate anthrax powder as an exceptionally deadly “weapons-grade” version of the bacterium with “high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping.”ThomasV. Inglesby et al., Anthrax as a Biological Weapon,2002: Updated Recommendations for Management, 287 J. AM.MED. ASS’N 2236, 2237 (2002); see also Dan Eggen & Guy Gugliotta, FBI Secretly Trying to Re-create Anthrax from Mail Attacks, WASH. POST, Nov. 2, 2002, at A9 (describing the particles as “astonishingly pure”); Gary Matsumoto, Anthrax Powder: State of the Art? 302 SCIENCE 1492, 1492-94 (2003); Reynolds M. Salerno et al., A BW Risk Assessment: Historical and Technical Perspectives, NONPROLIFERATION REV., Fall/Winter 2004, at25, 53 n.50.
(4) Although the FBI originally suggested that the anthrax powder could have been produced by a lone amateur working in a basement laboratory, this theory soon came to be regarded as unlikely and was abandoned. Guy Gugliotta & Gary Matsumoto, FBI’s Theory on Anthrax Is Doubted; Attacks Not Likely Work of 1 Person, Experts Say, WASH. POST, Oct. 28, 2002, at A1. The spores were also reportedly identified as belonging to a highly virulent strain of an-thrax used in U.S. biodefense research programs. Eileen Choffnes, Bioweapons: New Labs, More Terror? BULL. ATOM. SCI., Sept./Oct. 2002, at 28. After more than five years without an arrest, however, some FBI officials have reportedly questioned the sophistication of the anthrax powder used in the attacks. Allan Lengel & Joby Warrick, FBI Is Casting a Wider Net in Anthrax Attacks, WASH. POST, Sept. 25, 2006, at A1.”
Thanks. I'll try to get a copy of "Outrage Factors and Explanations in News Coverage of the Anthrax Attacks". It appears to have never been downloaded. The subject seems interesting, though.
I've got a regular visitor to my site who lives in Kansas. Maybe it's the author of the article.
The authors of the September 2004 article in the Nonproliferation Review include a Principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories and two biosecurity analysts at Sandia National Laboratories.
The authors state:
“The Bacillus anthracis in this attack had additionally been coated with a substance to eliminate the electrostatic charge so that the spores would not be attracted to one another and clump together, thus increasing their ability to remain aerosolized.”
For background reading on Al Qaeda and anthrax, you might request through interlibrary loan
“The challenge of biological terrorism”
by Cordesman, Anthony H.
Published by CSIS Press, xiii, 208 p.; 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface ix
1. WHEN TO CRY ‘WOLF’, p. 1
1. Problem of Risk Assessments, p. 3
Little Transparency and Uncertain Pattern Analysis, p. 5
Failure of U.S. Department of State Reports, p. 6
Reform of Reporting Needed, p. 9
Threat Analysis Based on History, p. 11
Cases from the Sixth Century B.C. to A.D. 2000, p. 12
2001: Amerithrax Odyssey, p. 17
Incidents after September 11, 2001, p. 22
The Islamist Extremist Threat as a Case Study, p. 24
Words and Actions of Islamic Extremism, p. 24
CIA View of the Al Qaeda Threat, p. 31
Presidential Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of
the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 35
Other Views, p. 36
Capability-Based Threat Analysis, p. 38
Key Challenges for Action: Improve Incident and Scenario
Analysis and the Tracking of Terrorists, p. 40
2. WHAT TO CRY, p. 47
2. Problem of Intelligence, p. 49
Critical Problems Even in Superpower Intelligence, p. 49
Key Challenges for Action: Improving Intelligence, p. 52
3. Problem of Low-Level Biological Attack, p. 55
Low-Level Attacks Most Likely, p. 56
Challenges Nonstate Actors Face, p. 57
Prospects for Bioterrorism in Near Future, p. 60
Key Challenges for Action: Improve Response to Low-
Level Attack, p. 62
4. Uncertainties of High-Level Biological Attack, p. 69
Lethality and Medical Impact, p. 70
Anthrax, p. 71
Smallpox, p. 74
Plague, p. 76
Other Human Lethality Issues, p. 78
Beyond Single-Disease Lethality and Medical Effects, p. 81
Impacts Other than Direct Medical Effects, p. 82
Threats to Livestock and Agriculture, p. 83
Manufacture, Weaponization, and Dissemination, p. 85
Soviet Manufacture, Weaponization, and Lethality, p. 86
Dissemination of Necessary Equipment and Technology, p. 89
Dual-Use Technology, p. 91
Dual-Use Research, p. 94
Options for Control of Dual-Use Technology
United States as a Case Study, p. 96
Controlling the Flow of Scientific Expertise, p. 99
Other Issues of Technology and Weaponization, p. 100
Technological Change and the ô12 Monkeyö Problem, p. 102
Key Challenges for Action: Improving the Response to
High-Level Attack, p. 108
3. HOW TO CRY ‘WOLF’, p. 119
5. Resources and Levels of Effort, p. 121
The Prudent Minimum, p. 121
Prudent Minimalism or Inglorious Excess: United States as
a Case Study, p. 124
Estimates of the U.S. Effort, p. 124
Administrative Reorganization, p. 130
Programs of Detection, p. 132
Key Challenges for Action: Finding the Golden Mean, p. 137
6. Threat from Man vs. Threat from Nature, p. 141
Threat from Man, Seen by Scientists, p. 141
Threat from Nature, Seen by the National Intelligence Council 144
Threat from Nature, Seen by the WHO, p. 148
Key Challenges for Action: Integrating Bioterrorism and
Public Health Initiatives, p. 150
4. WHEN TO CRY ‘WOLF,’ WHAT TO CRY, AND HOW TO CRY, p. 153
7. Challenge of International Cooperation, p. 155
Transparency in the Real World, p. 155
Current International Initiatives: Reality or Rhetoric?, p. 156
Key Challenges for Action: Strengthening International
Cooperation, p. 164
Appendix A: Planning Scenarios, p. 173
Scenario 2: Biological Attack - Aerosol Anthrax, p. 173
Scenario 4: Biological Attack - Plague, p. 176
Scenario 13: Biological Attack - Food Contamination, p. 179
Appendix B: Biodefense for the 21st Century, p. 183
Appendix C: Pandemic Influenza, p. 195
Appendix D: Supporting Material Attached to Scientists’ Letter to
Director of NIH, p. 199
About the Author, p. 207
“The Bacillus anthracis in this attack had additionally been coated with a substance to eliminate the electrostatic charge so that the spores would not be attracted to one another and clump together, thus increasing their ability to remain aerosolized.”
And if questioned, they'd undoubtedly tell you that they never actually had any access to the attack anthrax and only got their information from the media (which includes Science Magazine).
There appear to be COUNTLESS articles in respected journals where the authors just mindlessly repeat totally BUGUS information about the attack anthrax that they read somewhere in the media.
I just hope they aren’t reading TOTAL BULLSHIT information from Beecher’s article. The difference between the media and a peer-reviewed science article, of course, is that the journal will correct itself by publishing future papers pointing out the abusrdities that slip through.
Occassionally even the editor of a journal will publicly state that a paper should never have been published in the first place - although that only happens in extreme cases such as Beecher’s paper.
By the way Ed, what’s BUGUS information?
Is that what you continually post around here? The same old fiction - just to “bug us” all?
You know stuff like - “there’s no principle to coatings”.
I was just passing it on to show the stitch of confusion that Dr. Rebel has sewn across the landscape.
The stink of his BS has wafted even into the renown biodefense laboratories.
Where will it end?
What is Ed going to do with all these turd$ floating in his pool?
He’s going to have to remove them all one by one. It’s a tough job, but Ed is well equipped to do it. With impecable sources like Beecher’s paper he should have no trouble convincing the BW community that he’s right :))))
BOGUS information is information that the attack anthrax was COATED -- specifically COATED with silica. That is simply NOT true. It is false. It is nonsense. It is bogus. It is crap.
You know stuff like - “there’s no principle to coatings”.
You're changing the subject. What Ken Alibek said in no way changes the FACT that the attack anthrax was NOT COATED.
If you are going to understand where you screwed up, you need to focus on one thing at a time and stop changing the subject every time you are confronted with something you can't answer without showing that your beliefs about van der Waals forces are total crap.
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