 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
Guess what, no more mail delivery of Anthrax. I fear this is just the goosechase that's been set up for our feds to follow.
Dan
Richard W.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/10/23/national1808EDT0757.DTL
(10-23) 15:08 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
Three letters contaminated with anthrax all were dated the same day as the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington and contained anti-American and anti-Israel messages, officials said Tuesday.
The Justice Department released copies of the letters as it sought help from the public in identifying those responsible for the mail attacks that have killed three people and poisoned up to a dozen others.
Letters sent to NBC's Tom Brokaw and The New York Post appeared identical. Both warned recipients to "Take penacilin now," an apparent misspelling, and also said, "Death to America," "Death to Israel" and "Allah is Great."
The envelope that contained the New York Post letter was written in the same sort of block letters, slanted to the right, as two envelopes addressed to Brokaw and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, released earlier.
The letter to Daschle contained seven lines written in block letters similar to the other two. "You can not stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."
Attorney General John Ashcroft said investigators hope to garner new leads by releasing photographs of the letters and to warn Americans of mail to wary of.
"All of these ... we hope will alert citizens and others to the kind of thing to look for," said Ashcroft.
Despite the dates on the letters, Ashcroft said authorities can't prove a link to the men who carried out the airliner attacks last month.
Meanwhile, Ashcroft said a terrorist cell operating in Hamburg, Germany, and the United States since at least 1999 included three of the hijackers and three accomplices who are being sought in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ashcroft said the three fugitives, Said Bahaji, Ramsi Binalshibh and Zakariya Essabar, are sought for helping to plan the attacks. German authorities previously issued international arrest warrants for the three.
"Their connections to the hijackers are extensive," said Ashcroft, appearing at a news conference with German Interior Minister Otto Schily. He identified the three hijackers as Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, the suspected pilots of the hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and Ziad Jarrah, suspected of flying the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.
Ashcroft said the three hijackers were roommates in Hamburg while attending school there in the 1990s. He said Binalshibh and Atta started a Muslim prayer group in Hamburg and Essabar went to Florida in February at a time when both Atta and al-Shehhi were known to be there. And Essabar, Jarrah and al-Shehhi all appeared in a video of Bahaji's wedding, he said.
"It is clear that Hamburg served as a central base of operations for these six individuals and their part in the planning of the Sept. 11 attack," Ashcroft said.
Bahaji, Binalshibh and Essabar "are all wanted for membership in a terrorist organization that has existed since at least 1999 in both Germany and the United States," said Ashcroft.
Schily declined to provide information about evidence developed in Germany that the three fugitives planned the attacks, citing the investigation. Ashcroft said others probably also helped in the plot.
Asked why there have been no charges brought in the United States when German authorities have pinpointed three fugitives responsible for planning the attacks, Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said, "When we feel it's appropriate to bring charges against individuals, we will do so."
Ashcroft said 12 FBI agents have been assigned to Germany to assist in the investigation.
"We must say we failed to see it" beforehand, Schily, the German minister, said of the attacks on New York and Washington. "We have to re-examine our security system."
In Alexandria, Va., a federal grand jury indicted Mohamed Abdi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, on 12 counts of forging his landlord's name on housing subsidy checks.
Abdi's name and phone number were found in a car registered to Nawaf Alhazmi, one of the 19 suspected hijackers. The car was found Sept. 12 at Dulles International Airport, where the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 departed.
U.S. authorities have arrested or detained over 900 people in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, but so far no one has been charged directly with plotting or participating.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/10/23/national1815EDT0761.DTL
(10-23) 15:15 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
The nation's anthrax scare hit the White House on Tuesday with the discovery of a small concentration of spores at an offsite mail processing center. "We're working hard at finding out who's doing this," President Bush said as bioterrorism claimed fresh victims along the East Coast.
Bush said the executive mansion was safe -- and twice said "I don't have anthrax"_ despite the discovery of spores on a machine at the mail site a few miles from the White House. Spokesman Ari Fleischer said all employees at the site as well as mailroom workers in the White House itself were being "swabbed and tested" for the disease.
The startling disclosure capped a rapidly unfolding series of events in which officials announced additional confirmed and suspected cases of inhalation anthrax, Congress returned to work, and the administration pledged a more aggressive testing and treatment program if additional tainted letters are discovered.
Before the current outbreak, "We had no cases of inhalation anthrax in a mail sorting facility," said Jeffrey Koplan, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For his part, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson pushed Bayer Corp. to lower its price for Cipro, a front-line anti-anthrax drug.
Outside the White House, House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt said "weapons-grade material" was responsible for spreading infections.
Six weeks after terrorists killed thousands in Washington and New York, administration officials drew a rhetorical connection to the outbreak of anthrax. The FBI released the text of three anthrax-tainted letters -- each of them dated Sept. 11, the date that hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Bush believes the spread of anthrax "is another example of how this is a two-front war: that there are people who would seek to do evil to this country; that there are people who mean us harm," Fleischer said. "And they have mailed letters, obviously, to high impact places -- the news media, to Majority Leader (Tom) Daschle, perhaps, in this case, to the White House."
The administration has been buffeted by criticism for waiting several days after the discovery of the letter addressed to Daschle before ordering testing at the central postal facility for the nation's capital. Without acknowledging any shortcomings, several officials pointed to changes in their outlook.
"We're going to err on the side of caution in making sure people are protected," said Thompson.
"When a case of anthrax does emerge we will immediately move in at any and all postal facilities that might have handled that piece of mail," he said.
Koplan, appearing before a separate panel, said, "the public health system of the United States is severely challenged at this moment."
The latest evidence of that was in Washington and New Jersey, at postal facilities known to have processed one or more anthrax-tainted letters in the past few weeks. Both were closed after the presence of anthrax was detected.
Postal Service Vice President Deborah Willhite said of the Washington facility: "It's a crime scene because someone has been murdered."
There, officials confirmed two postal worker deaths due to anthrax, and said the disease had sent more to the hospital. Thousands more mail employees were undoing tests and taking antibiotics.
District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams said final laboratory results confirmed inhalation anthrax as the cause of death of two men who worked at the city's main Brentwood postal facility. Other officials said two more employees remain hospitalized with the disease, and said anthrax was suspected in an additional four cases. Anthrax-laced mail delivered last week to Daschle's office was postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and went through the Brentwood facility.
"We do not need further testing," said Dr. Ivan Walks, the city's top health official. "But we need to treat. And we need to treat quickly." He urged anyone who visited the back area of the central mail facility to come in for antibiotics.
Earlier, New Jersey officials announced that a woman had been hospitalized in the Trenton area and was presumed to be suffering from the inhalation form of the disease. "She's holding her own," said Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, the state epidemiologist.
The woman, whose name was not released, works at a Trenton-area postal facility believed to have processed at least three anthrax-laced letters -- one to Daschle, the second to NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw and the third to the New York Post.
Still later, officials in Montgomery County, Md., said they suspected anthrax in the case of two postal workers from Brentwood, both of whom were being treated at a local hospital. and state officials in Towson, Md., said one patient at a separate hospital is suspected to have the disease.
The FBI released copies of the spiked letters mailed to Daschle, Brokaw and the New York Post. All three contained anti-American and anti-Israeli messages.
"You can not stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great," said the letter to Daschle.
The discovery of that letter last week touched off the anthrax scare on Capitol Hill that has yet to abate.
The House and Senate reopened for business Tuesday, but the office buildings that house lawmakers and their aides were shut, some of them possibly for days.
"I think we have to assume there is a possibility that other mail could be contaminated," said Daschle, D-S.D. He said some of the mail that has been piling up since last Monday may have to be destroyed.
They were smart enough to have a calendar advertising the 911 atrocity in advance,
and smart enough to get the US Post Office to adopt their "DIE" stamp
just before killing Post Office workers with anthrax using dated 911 letters.
They are smart enough to own the American media,
and they control the State Dept. enough to get the State Dept. to REWARD them for the atrocity.
"11-09-01".
FP
It looks like the same handwriting for the letters and the envelopes, but the letters don't seem to have the problem of the writing running downhill like the envelopes do. Do right handed people have that problem or only left handed people?
Also, I agree that it is unusual that the writer misspelled "penacilin" but spelled "Israel" correctly. So many Americans spell it "ISREAL" and don't think twice about it.
