The anthrax was mailed from New Jersey.
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Posted on 09/15/2003 11:19:53 AM PDT by Shermy
Ask Steven Hatfill’s lawyer about the new October issue of Vanity Fair magazine, and you’ll hear a little chuckle.
It’s not that Thomas Connolly dislikes George Clooney, who graces the cover. What really irks him is the small headline next to Clooney’s arm, the one about missed anthrax clues.
The story is about Connolly’s client, Hatfill, who was named the lead "person of interest" in the deadly anthrax outbreak in 2001.
Within the story’s 11 glossy pages in Vanity Fair, the author tells a compelling tale about Hatfill. One that implicates the virologist in an evil plot to gain recognition for his passion -- biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction -- by any means, including launching a home-grown attack in the U.S. so people realize how important his work is.
The author, Don Foster, is considered a linguistics expert by many people. In addition to teaching at Vassar College, he’s credited with pioneering the field of textual analysis, which involves studying written works to determine their author.
Even before the anthrax outbreak in 2001, Foster had worked on high-profile cases that involved a literary angle, such as the Unibomber and the JonBenet Ramsey murder.
And after the terrorist attacks, he was sought after to study the anthrax-laced letters that killed a handful of Americans and crippled the U.S. Postal Service. According to his Vanity Fair article, the government hoped Foster would be able to determine who sent the letters.
It’s this notion of Foster as a super-sleuth that makes Connolly laugh, especially after reading the Vanity Fair piece.
"It’s impossible for me to comment," Connolly told The Trentonian. "The article is ripe with so many errors. The real story is what a fraud (Foster) actually is."
The lawyer said he could not squeeze his rebuttal to the magazine piece into a short enough format for print. Though he did say the team working forHatfill would respond to the article somehow.
And, he added, he was "absolutely" upset that Vanity Fair ran the piece as it did.
"I don’t care to offer an opinion on it, we’ll deal with Mr. Foster when we have to," Connolly explained. "I’m going to take action. You’ve got a guy who claims he’s got this incredible skill, textual analysis, but when you read the article you think, where is the evidence that Steven (Hatfill) authored these letters. There’s nothing there."
What is in the article is a frightening take on the anthrax fiasco. Foster talks about the anthrax letters and discusses his interpretation of their meaning.
For example, Foster says the misspellings "penacilin" and "unthinkabel," (written with backwards N’s) in the letters were deliberate and used to throw off investigators.
"That ‘penacilin’ was the offender’s way of saying, ‘Look, I don’t know much about antibiotics. I don’t even know how to spell penicillin. So don’t start thinking that I’m an American scientist. I’m just a semi-literate foreign fanatic,’" Foster says in the article.
The literary expert goes on to discuss the geography of the letters -- where they were sent and what their return addresses mean. The "Franklin Park, NJ 08852," tag was another hoax, he said, to lead authorities in the wrong direction.
In reality, the 08852 zip code is from Monmouth Junction, not Franklin Park. So, Foster reasons, whoever sent the letters must be familiar with the area, and he probably wanted police to go to those towns.
Hatfill doesn’t become a major player in the Vanity Fair piece until Foster links the government scientist to the Zimbabwe anthrax outbreak in the late 1970’s, in which more than 10,000 people died.
Foster says Hatfill was in Zimbabwe studying for his M.D. at the time and that the virologist bragged in writings about supporting a zealous militia group in the country.
"When I lined up Hatfill’s known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud," Foster wrote in Vanity Fair.
In his article, Foster writes that the government became increasingly less helpful as it became more apparent Hatfill might be dangerous. At one point, when Foster mentioned Hatfill as a potential suspect, the literary expert says officials told him he was "spending too much time on this" and that Hatfill had a good alibi.
The Vanity Fair piece also links Hatfill to the Maryland Pond that was drained and searched for bioweapons and Foster charges the manfabricated his resume and literally created his Ph.D. on the computer.
"It is not my job to indict or to try my own suspect for the anthrax murders," Foster says in Vanity Fair. "And even if the FBI should find hard evidence linking Hatfill to a crime, he will remain innocent until proved guilty. But all Americans have a right to know more about the system that allowed Steven Hatfill to become one of the nation’s leading bioterror experts."
Hatfill and his lawyers seem to think they can just sue the pants off everyone and intimidate them. But the noose is closing on them.
And what did they find?....... Does the VF article mention the findings of the pond draining?
They're going into full cya mode, maybe to show enough doubt that the public prosecution of Hatfill had some ground that would save them from liability. Also, the "get-Hatfill faction might be playing to the Senate victims via the press to validate their efforts.
I haven't closely read the Wash Post article, but things first struck me - again, the melodramatic style. The implied shock that their suspect was involved with biowar activities - when that was his job. The "handwriting expert" who could tell by the handwriting on the Antrhrax letters that the writer was a government employee. And the "impatient Rosenberg" story again, retiterating, IMO, the unbelievable assertion that she never mentioned Hatfill's name.
All BS in my opinion.
BTW, we had some excitement the other day with the Vanity Fair "article". FR got some poster-visits from some celebrities attached directly and tangentially to the case. Unfortuneately they were less than demure and the thread was pulled.
LOL. The article implied that the "box" was a professional set-up, the "dogs" were "FBI" and "top", in my opinion a web of innuendo and supposition embraced in a psuedo-scientific mass hysteria.
The FBI profile appeals to me as correct in its assertion that the perp had a familiarity with the central Jersey area.
The first set of known letters had no return address. The second did, Greendale School in Franklin Park, the zip code off by a mile or two.
I speculated about a year ago, maybe others here too, that the perp was upset that his first letters didn't didn't seem to get the attention, and provoke the fear, and get across it's message. They were a failure. Therefore he/she/they aimed at the Senators, and added the return address as an enticement to open the letter. It's a point I think obvious yet never discussed anywhere outside FR, until, interestingly enough, Mr. Don Foster in his Vanity Fair article.
Also note that the handwriting is clearer, more determined in the second letters, commensurate with an increased care to make the second set of letters "work." I doubt a jaded CIA agent, etc. supposedly behind the letters would exhibit such emotional changes reflected in handwriting. Also, , the second set makes sure that the receiver knows anthrax is in the letters, again a reflection of frustration from the failure of the first set (such fact doesn't preclude the domestic scientist-who-really-cares-about-us theory, or the Cipro people doing some backhanded sales promotion theory).
I think it unlikely that a person not from the area made up the return address. If Hatfill came to the town of Princeton to mail the items as part of a subterfuge, why not just use the local zipcode and city name? Instead, I think it was a local of sorts. Greendale School was intended to have the Senate office open it up, make it look undangerous, maybe even perversely humorous to the sender in light of the message inside. The sender probably wanted to confuse things just a little, possibly changing the name of the local Greenbrook school to Greendale. As for the zip code, this might be purposeful small obfuscation, or the sender was just mistaken about the local zip code. I think it perhaps likely that the sender resided in the zip code area given and mistakenly attributed the code to the school and town just a few miles from him.
The perp might also commute to work at Princeton Universtity or environs, and mailed it there. The mailbox was directly across the street from some Princeton U. dorms and buildings.
So the zip code alone is meaningless, IMO. Like the FBI profile, which doesn't fit Hatfill in more than one regard, I think the person likely to be locally connected. The liberals is interesting, why pick the New York Post rather than the New York Times? Perhaps because the Post was well known as the most "pro-Zionist" of papers. If Hatfill, or someone else The zip code is
Sorry about this fragment from the post above. It's point, if not messed up, is that the "right wing guy" assumption because Leahy and Daschle (as far as we know) were targeted, and they're "liberals", is worthy of considerration but not obvious to me. For one, the letters attacked prominent personalities. Putting AMI aside, the one that didn't targeted the New York Post, a generally conservative paper known and disparaged for prominent pro-Israel sentiments. Seems to me that the NYTimes would fit better into the "RWG" theory.
The anthrax was mailed from New Jersey.
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Can you name the other 29 persons of interest? No? Why is that?
Isn't anyone curious?
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