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.
Oh and my thoughts go out to the people at Planned Parenthood who must be extremely upset that the baby in New York who contracted anthrax looks like he's going to make it. It must have been a terrible disappointment.
How long was the clinic shut down by the Hazmat crews?
Get real. The "Army of God" (gotta love the names these religious right-wing wackos come up with) has been around for a while and has been terrorizing women and reproductive health care providers for some time now.
They and other groups like them have used the anthrax threats in the past. They are a sick bunch:
From the Army of God web site:
Quote of the week:
I'm an abortionist-bomber, that's what I do.
Nice euphemism for "people who dismember babies for a living, and make a nice piece of change selling the parts on the side".
The letter got there early afternoon, and things seemed to be shut down the rest of the day. I don't know how long the building was shut down, but they did intend on opening again this morning. I'll drive by it on the way back to work and see, if it is that important to you.
She also said that area of the newsroom was still closed down. Who determines that, I wonder?
The other reason is the radical fringe left (I'm not talking about liberals in general, but the far left fringe) have a history of faking incidents making them appear as victims. False campus rapes, false reports of racial slurs written on doors, false reports of gay bashing, you can do an search engine search and find a pretty big list.
Of course, it is possible that someone on the fringe right (again, I'm not talking about conservatives in general, but the fringe that both sides have to deal with) may be sending these also.
I think it is most likely someone on one of the two fringe groups (left or right) is sending these.
Nice euphemism for people who bomb buildings and kill doctors.
It not the first time "crazy right-wing extremists" have used anthrax threats:
February 25, 1999
"(New York, NY) At the request of attorneys for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, federal district judge Robert E. Jones issued a permanent injunction today enjoining and restraining the American Coalition of Life Activists, Advocates for Life Ministries and 12 individual defendants...
Today's injunction follows the February 2nd jury assessment of $107 million in damages against the defendants for illegal threats against the plaintiffs.
In his order, Judge Jones described the Wanted Posters and Nuremberg Files Web site, each as a "true threat to bodily harm, assault or kill one or more of the defendants." Judge Jones then went further, stating that from his own independent review of the evidence produced at trial, "the plaintiffs have proven by clear and convincing evidence" that each defendant acted "with specific intent and malice in a blatant and illegal communication of true threats to kill assault to do bodily harm to each of the plaintiffs and with the specific intent to interfere with or intimidate the plaintiffs from engaging in legal practices and procedures."
Wrote Judge Jones, "I totally reject the defendants' attempts to justify their actions as an expression of opinion or as a legitimate and lawful exercise of free speech in order to dissuade the plaintiffs from engaging in providing abortion services."
...The injunction from U.S. District Court in Oregon came in the wake of a rash of anthrax threats sent by mail to abortion providers and other organizations all over the country. "These anthrax letters, like the Wanted Posters and the Web site, pose a real threat to the peaceful functioning of our public democratic institutions," said Feldt. "These folks think that violence is the light and the way. It is time for everyone to stand together against anti-choice terrorism."
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pressreleases/22599-injunction.html
This is what I have been thinking. These guys probably know the points of conflict in our society, they would certainly want to exploit them.
I think it is most likely someone on one of the two fringe groups (left or right) is sending these.
It is possible that a leftist sympathizer would do this, but in the absence of information supporting this I generally take the direct approach. There are people who kill abortion providers. Therefore it is even more likely that there are lone individuals who are willing to scare them without doing any actual killing. Some guy living in his mother's basement probably got the idea from watching television.
We can also probably rule out PP itself, since a number of their places have been hit, not just a single target. I fear that a lot of people on both sides are going to try to take advantage of the current situation to terrorize others and to get their voices heard.
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