Posted on 10/13/2001 9:03:35 PM PDT by OKCSubmariner
EXCERPTED:
A broadening national bioterrorism investigation turned toward St. Petersburg late Friday after NBC officials disclosed that a New York employee has contracted anthrax.
A woman who opens the mail for news anchor Tom Brokaw was diagnosed with a skin form of anthrax several days after she opened a letter that contained white powder and was postmarked from St. Petersburg.
The New York Times on Friday received a letter with a white powder and the St. Petersburg Times received one earlier in the week. All three letters were postmarked in St. Petersburg.
Federal law enforcement officials said late Friday that all three letters postmarked St. Petersburg tested negatively for anthrax.
[However, the test for the letter sent from St. Petersburg to the Brokaw aide must have been unsuccessful (too small a sample size?) because the aide in fact did contract Anthrax. This point was made by Ted Kopel on ABC Nightline last night. This calls into question the negative test results for the other two letters since they were also sent from St. Petersburg and may not have had inadequate sample size].
• An assistant to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw contracted the skin-based form of anthrax after opening a "threatening" letter to her boss.
Officials quickly said there was no known link to either the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the more serious inhaled form of anthrax that killed a supermarket tabloid editor in Florida last week. The 38-year-old NBC employee was being treated with antibiotics and is expected to recover. The letter was postmarked in St. Petersburg on Sept. 20 and opened Sept. 25, authorities said.
St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler opened his letter at his desk Tuesday. As he did so, a white powdery substance, resembling sugar or salt, spilled out.
Troxler stopped opening the letter. Authorities were called to the newspaper's offices in downtown St. Petersburg. Police put the envelope in an airtight container and drove it to a state health lab in Tampa for analysis. Firefighters covered Troxler's desk with a plastic sheet and yellow emergency-scene tape reading "caution."
Health officials found no signs of anthrax or bacteria in the powder. The envelope and a letter inside also tested negative.
The letter had no return address and was postmarked St. Petersburg. It bears a code 337, then a space, then 1.
Anything that is mailed in Seminole, Largo, Bay Pines, Gulfport, Pinellas Park or any St. Petersburg neighborhood goes through the main post office on First Avenue N and is stamped with a 337. [Actual envelop shown in article and the zip code is visible as 33701 and the postmark can be made out as early (“0?”) October 2001 for St. Petersburg]
The cryptic letter misspelled Troxler's name and had little punctuation. It said:
"Howard Toxler ... 1st case of disease now blow away this dust so you see how the real thing flys. OKLAHOMA-RYDER TRUCK! Skyway bridge-18 wheels." [Oklahoma-Ryder Truck capitalized for emphasis by FR poster, original version did not use capital letters]
He was not.The first person reported killed over the radio was a civilian. My uncle did have the same name but he was on the USS California. Played the trumpet for the Navy band. Thought he had the best gig in the world. That day, he swam for his life and many of his crew members did not make it.
As a kid, I asked him often about that day and the rest of the war. Bobby would never say a word. I got the impression it was so horrible, whatever he went through, that I should never ask again.
In 1992, Bobby, my uncle, found me in Arizona. I was way out in the desert and it was a long trip from our home IN Connecticut.
He was all smiles, finally he could tell me the truth. The Navy had discovered that band members were good at cryptography. After his swim at Pearl, he spent the war cracking codes. And was told never to speak of what he did.
Until 1992.
Bobby died the next year.
You have to wonder, though, if target selection will be a last-minute kind of thing. I figure they're casing lots of locations, and ruling out those that carry a high risk of getting caught, or a low probability of success in killing people or causing structural damage.
It's not nearly as hard, in my estimation, to carry out a truck bomb attack, once one has the explosives, as it is to pull off the hijackings. If these guys have Ryder trucks loaded with explosives and ready to go, it's just a matter of 'can they get the trucks to the target without being stopped and searched'. They might have a decoy truck for each real truck. The driver of the decoy truck would be obviously Middle Eastern (perhaps complete with turban and beard), and would make a grand show of acting suspicious, furtively darting his eyes around. He'd park the truck somewhere ominous and run like hell. If apprehended, he'd swallow a cyanide pill. Meanwhile, as the authorities descend on this decoy truck, the driver of the 'real' truck quietly places it at the target and pushes a button (or lever, or however they set these things off). He'd stay in the driver's seat, ready to enter paradise.
You've gotta figure the FBI has guys sitting in a room coming up with all sorts of scenarios like this. I would not be surprised in the least if they've called Tom Clancy to see what he thinks is a possible attack scenario.
A qualifier on my post #37. I in no way think that the "money" motives of quelling this is sinister. I am positive that anyone making that call is doing so out of their view of "what is best" .
Maybe the use of 'high' winds to attack military 'family' housing??
Have you ever seen an older person's handwriting? My father died at 89. His handwriting -- other than while he was recovering from his TIAs -- was far better than mine. Older people were taught penmanship in school, and their handwriting -- at least in my experience -- tends to flow, and be quite graceful when compared to "younger people's" handwriting.
That said, the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw that picture is that whoever addressed it was using block letters in an attempt to foil handwriting analysis.
The second thing that popped into my mind was that perhaps whoever filled out the address used block characters so as to not foil the OCR scanners at the post offices mail sorting machines?
I researched the archives and found this (but the link doesn't work):
McVeigh's Lawyer Hints Foreign Help in Bombing
Fox News
06/16/97 Reuters
People with links in Germany and the Middle East also wanted to blow up the Oklahoma City building for which Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death last week, his attorney, Stephen Jones, said on the CBS program "60 Minutes.''
Web Posted: 06/16/97 00:34:13 PDT
However, while we must just speculate, for the time being, the authorities must know when the letter was postmarked.
Maybe the use of 'high' winds to attack military 'family' housing??
Skyway Bridge, Canada
Skyway Bridge, Niagra Falls area
And of course the Tampa/St. Pete Skyway Bridge.
There may be others but these are the ones I found.
And at the risk of sounding repetitious, I'll don my tinfoil and say the following proudly and without reservation - one more time!
Oklahoma City was a job pulled off by Iraqi terrorists from Saddam's Republican Guard, currenly in operation in Kansas City and elsewhere. They are in league with American neo-nazis. Further, Clinton and the FBI knew about it all along and did nothing, preferring instead to cover it up (and TWA 800) for political purposes. What, exactly, is the relation between these people and the government is anyone's guess, but it isn't good news.
And - just for the record - the neo-nazis are behind this anthrax business. The anthrax comes from the same group of Iraqi terrorists who are still in operation. The FBI, of course, knows this, but is perhaps unwilling to do much about it, having been corrupted by The Traitor, Clinton.
America needs to buy a clue and the government needs to come clean on this whole sordid business before it's too late. We may never be told the whole story, of course, but it will only get worse until someone, somewhere starts making some noise. And as much as I can appreciate the relucance on the part of the government to go into this kind of breathtaking corruption, it needs to be done now before more Americans end up dead.
Anyone up for some knitting at CIA headquarters?
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