Posted on 10/16/2001 7:50:26 AM PDT by Alas
Abortion Rights Group Gets Suspicious Letters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading U.S. abortion rights group said on Monday that 90 of its clinics and offices in at least 13 states had received envelopes containing threatening letters and an unidentified powdery substance.
Planned Parenthood (news - web sites) Federation of America said some of the letters included messages from a group called the Army of God, a militant anti-abortion group that has advocated violence against medical personnel who perform abortions.
A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, who asked not to be quoted by name, said the letters were delivered to the organization's national offices and numerous local offices and medical facilities those offices operate. Abortions are performed at many of those facilities, as well as various health services for women.
The group said there have been no reported injuries and that law enforcement officials, including FBI (news - web sites) investigators, were conducting tests on the powdery substance to determine whether it was anthrax bacterium spores.
The news comes amid a nationwide scare involving the potentially deadly bacteria that could be used as a biological warfare agent. The spokesman for the group said initial field test on the substance in letters received at two locations had come back as negative for anthrax. One of the letters had been sent to offices in Greensboro, North Carolina. The spokesman said he did not know the location that received the second letter that tested negative.
Planned Parenthood said the envelopes were mailed to Planned Parenthood offices bearing postmarks from four cities: Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; and Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee. The spokesman said he believed all the letters were received on Monday. The offices and clinics receiving the letters are located in the East Coast and Midwest, the group said. ``All of them are in the hands of various authorities around the country. As far as we can tell, they all came today in regular mail,'' the spokesman said.
Planned Parenthood said the letters had pre-printed return addresses from the U.S. Marshall's Office and the Secret Service. Some had a message stating, ``Time Sensitive -- Urgent Security Notice -- Open Immediately.'' The spokesman said he could not provide a copy of any of the letters.
``With this many incidents and with the similarity of all of the letters, this is clearly a coordinated effort that was designed to terrorize our staff and affiliates. And people have the right to know about it,'' the spokesman said. In a statement, Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt said: ``It is perverse that these individuals here at home, who are themselves terrorists by virtue of their actions, would seek to capitalize on the events of the last days and weeks to further their own extremist agenda. But this will not deter us from our mission of providing essential health services to women in this nation.''
``Whether a hoax or not, these are intolerable acts of terror, and every effort must be made to apprehend the perpetrators,'' Feldt added. Eric Robert Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the fatal bombings at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics and at a Birmingham, Alabama in 1998, among other bombings, has been linked to the Army of God. A spokeswoman for the FBI national office had no comment on the investigation and referred calls to the agency's field office that handles Washington. Calls to that office were not returned.
that 90 of its clinics and offices in at least 13 states had received envelopes containing threatening letters and an unidentified powdery substance.
But,
...could not provide a copy of any of the letters.
Right
Perhaps the reason they cannot provide a copy of any of the letters was because the FBI was performing tests on them, as stated in the article?
This is entirely plausible. Terrorists--including this execrable "Army of God," akin to the Taliban in many ways--work exactly this way. Probably the powder is nothing, but it seems perfectly reasonable that fanatics jerk-offs like the "Army of God" would do something like this.
Just because they're "your fanatics" doesn't mean they're "okay."
Just because they're "your fanatics" doesn't mean they're "okay."
I agree wholeheartedly with your post. That said, it seems "convenient" that the offenders put their name right there in the enevelope.
To trust them with the only copy is dumber than claiming that it happened in the first place.
But, if you want to trust the fbi and take the word of the baby killers down at planned parenthood, well I guess that's your right.
But, what is human life to them? When they kill millions a year, do you think for even a moment that lying to get a little free publicity for their slaughter houses would stop them?
What's 6,000 more or less dead to a group that kills millions of innocent babies each year, babies trapped in the womb.
I hate abortion and think it should be illegal, but this is over the top. People who pull this kind of stunt, even if the letters contain no anthrax, are taking up the haz-mat teams' time and resources. They are just as much terrorists as Al-Qaeda, and should be treated as saboteurs in time of war.
For a hoax, these people are pretty shook up.
To trust them with the only copy is dumber than claiming that it happened in the first place.
When you open a letter and it contains something suspicious, the best thing to do is put it down, get away, and call law enforcement, not go to the copy room before the police show up.
There is also the possibility that law enforcement does not want the details of the letter disclosed to the press because it might compromise an open investigation.
Look, if you think this is a hoax by Planned Parenthood, call the FBI for confirmation. If PPFA is behind this, I can't see them actually turning over the letters. But until you provide some actual evidence that they did this, you just sound like those crackpots in the Middle East who go on about how there were no Jews in the WTC on Sept. 11.
Of course, there is no proof of this, I am just saying that I wouldn't put it past them.
I am not saying that it is or is not a hoax. If it is, however, not everybody would be in on it. It would be the work of a couple of hairy feminazis. I am not saying that this is what happened, but their is ample precedent to suggest that it is possible.
Er, how do you know that the "Army of God" is not al-Qaeda?
Perhaps it really was an anti-abortionist group. But it could just as easily be a terrorist group, masquerading as something else, in an attempt to set Americans against each other.
If there were a chance the suspect letters contained Anthrax I wouldn't touch them to make copies nor would I want them in my possesion. And if I were a reporter I damned sure wouldn't want to touch an original.
Your comments are very irrational!
The Lebanese "Army of God" (Hezbollah) claims responsibility for terrorist attacks all of the time...it's part of the mystique. Occam's Razor is useful here. There are religious fanatics with means, motive, and opportunity to carry out these attacks. Eric Rudolf, ``Atomic Dog'', and that scumbag that runs the Nuremburg Project all come to mind.
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