Posted on 10/25/2001 2:14:28 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:01:49 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Ultra-right-wing organizations - including a particular West Coast group - have become a key focus of the massive federal investigation into the murderous Anthrax attacks, The Post has learned.
Investigators have been zeroing in on members of several anti-government hate groups that they believe have obtained or attempted to get the deadly bacteria from several U.S.-based laboratories before it surfaced in Florida, Washington and New York this month.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Given the diversity and seeming lack of pattern in the targets, I think it's impossible to say that they were chosen for any reason except that they were prominent and attacks on them would get a lot of publicity. Attacking the communications media (with the significant omission of Arab-friendly CNN) is another indication of the fact that the intention was to spread this scare as fast as possible. Perhaps even choosing a scandal rag such as the Enquirer was a failed attempt - by someone who doesn't understand the US well enough to know that most of us look at the paper at the supermarket check-out and believe not a word it says - to spread this fear as rapidly as possible and halt communications within the US.
Right.
I wouldn't put it past Atta to have written the letters prior to 9/11 and to have left them with someone else to mail.
Since inhalation seems to be the least common of of the possible anthrax infections can we not infer that the anthrax spores were manipulated in some way so that we are now faced with such a high percentage of inhalation anthrax? (yes I realize it is exactly the same microbe and only particle size is different).
May we not reasonably conclude that there would be rather extensive contamination at the site where the letters were prepared for mailing unless at least some relatively sophicticated measures including a negative air pressure containment system were used for loading the letters.
I do realize that anthrax is naturally occurring and has been freely shipped (at least until 1998) for research purposes but does it not take some relatively sophisticated equipment to overcome the clumping of spores into particle sizes greater than 5 microns?
Might we presume that the combined problems of creating an anthrax weapon that had a majority of the particles under 5 microns which is inferred from the number of inhalation anthrax cases proven and suspected indicate at least a very heavy knowledge of microbiology and several other disciplines including chemistry, phyiscs, and some engineering?
I discount the una-bomber theory on the basis that the multi-disciplinary knowledge and the difficulties this would pose for a single individual make this a beyond the capability of one nut case. As to a homegrown hate group all of the above problems apply to such a group but there are added problems of operational security within that group, probable prior FBI penetration of that group, a lack of demands from such a group, and the much higher probability of decfections from within that group after 09/11/01.
This article is a hatchet job and obvious disinformation. The larger questions are who is behind this article and why.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
HMMM since my guess is that the culprits are domestic Islamic student/scientist type(s), I would lump them into Left-Wing-Whak-O. There are many parallells to Islamic terrorist thinking and LWWO thinking.
All bets are off, sir!
The bet is in the (unlikely in my mind) event that it does turn out to be a domestic group.
Are there still anthrax-laced letters going through the mail?
When were the last known postmarks?
This was written by a "moderate" American Muslim on a popular Muslim American website in 1998. How could anyone conclude that a militant Muslim would not target the left, the media? The Muslim world abhors the spread of American "corrupt" culture and the influence they say it has on their communities.
A "Moderate" American Muslim Parent's View
Whether Right or Left, a lunatic fringe is a lunatic fringe capable of doing horrific things in furtherance of their agenda. Although I wish it were otherwise, domestic based evil cannot be excluded.
FoxNews now saying that Clinton received two vials of salmonella. I'd check his biotech connections first before considering the "right-wing." The most divisive man in the country would do anything for power and fame.
Scariest statement in the quotes....
THE MENA ANTHRAX POISONING CASE
On the weekend of September 21, 1991, Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch met with IRS Investigator Bill Duncan to write a report on their Investigation of Mena drug smuggling and money laundering and send it to Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Investigator Welch had been ordered by Major Doug Stephens to meet with Duncan over the weekend in Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant's office. Welch had just opened a case concerning the theft of sexually explicit photographs which could have been used to blackmail state officials. On Friday, September 20, Welch went to one of the prisons near Pine Bluff and interviewed the person who had actually taken the photographs. A person whose best friend was very close to Barry Seal. The next morning, Saturday, he and his wife, Debbie Welch, made the three hour drive to Little Rock.
Returning to Mena on Sunday, Welch told his wife that he didn't feel too well. He thought he had gotten the flu. Monday the symptoms were worse. By Tuesday Welch was certain that he had a serious case of pneumonia. He had had pneumonia before and recognized the symptoms. Tuesday night he could hardly walk and his wife took him to the local hospital. The doctor gave him some over-the-counter cold tablets and sent him home.
But, Welch's condition deteriorated further to the point where his wife took him to another doctor in Mena the next day. Dr. Calleton, a Vietnam vet, immediately called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and told Welch's wife to get him to Fort Smith immediately. The doctor told her that he should go by ambulance but she might be able to get there faster if she left right then. He called the CDC one more time before they left.
In Fort Smith a team of doctors were waiting. Dr. Calleton had called them twice while Welch was in transport and they had been in contact with the CDC. Later the doctor would tell Welch's wife that he was on the edge of death. He would not have made it through the night had he not been in the hospital. He was having fever seizures by now.
A couple of days after Welch had been admitted to St. Edwards Mercy Hospital, his doctor was wheeling him to one of the labs for testing when she asked him if he was doing anything at work that was particularly dangerous. He told her that he had been a cop for about 15 years and that danger was probably inherent with the job description. She told Welch that they believed he had anthrax. She said the anthrax was the military kind that is used as an agent of biological warfare and that it was induced. Somebody had deliberately infected him. She added that they had many more test to run but they had already started treating him for anthrax.
It took Welch a while to digest what the doctor had told him. Welch knew that in his business if you couldn't document something and/or corroborate it somehow, then it never happened. The next day, in the hospital room, the doctor told Debbie Welch, that they believed her husband had military anthrax and they were going to treat him for it. The doctor also told Debbie that Russell was very sick now and it was going to get worse before it was over, because the disease was going to have to run its course. She was right. The following day Arkansas State Police Investigator Andy Wiley was in Welch's room and heard the doctor repeat the diagnosis. This time Welch told the doctor that he read about an outbreak of anthrax in some cattle in southeastern Arkansas a couple of weeks earlier. The doctor told Welch and his visitors that the warfare biological agent is not the same as the cow disease. She shook her finger in Welch's face and said emphatically, "No, somebody did this to you. Somebody sprayed you in the face." She described how the infectious agent is carried in canisters. She said, "This is the same stuff that Saddam Hussein was going to use on our troops." Investigator Wiley wrote down the names of Welch's medication and later confirmed that he was, in fact, being treated for anthrax. Other state police officers went to the hospital room, periodically, to help Debbie Welch, who stayed in the private room with her husband day and night for the entire 14 days that Welch was hospitalized. Investigator Charles Lambert and Investigator Bobby Walker were among those that heard the doctor discuss Welch's circumstances and the anthrax.
The treatment was very effective against the anthrax but had severe side effects. Welch suffered a partial kidney failure. The doctor said it was a calculated risk that she had to take when she decided to treat him for anthrax. Welch was a weight lifter and stayed in good shape. The doctor told him that if it hadn't been for that the chances are that he still might not have survived the disease. The doctor also credited his physical conditioning when he gained back most of the 40 percent of his renal functions which had been lost due to the anthrax treatment.
After this incident, Welch spent time trying to figure out how he could have gotten the anthrax. One possibility, he finally concluded, was through envelopes carrying padding material in which the infectious agent, Bacillus anthracis, can be transmitted. The Arkansas State Police used these for a while to mail microcassette tapes containing investigator's dictation. Welch's padded envelopes were returned to him with the tops torn off. When he complained to the secretary, Kim McBride, in Hope, Arkansas, she told him that the padded envelopes were not torn when she mailed them. Welch told his supervisor, Lt. Finis Duvall. Rather than do an investigation to find out who was tampering with official state police mail, some of which was sensitive, Lt. Duvall just said, "Well, I'll be damn... wonder who's doing that."
Last Fall a news team from a British television program called "The Big Story" traveled through Mena. The anchor for the show told Welch that he had worked for three years in South Africa. He said that sending biological warfare agents through the mail was a commonly used weapon during a particular ongoing war in that part of the world. After Welch got out of the hospital he never again received any torn envelopes.
Welch was discharged from the hospital on October 8, 1991. From there on, Welch's career in the State Police never was the same. He suffered harassment, transfers, unwarranted criticism, and public hearings of his performance. His superiors in the state police were concerned that he was answering questions from the press now that Bill Clinton was seeking the presidency. At one point he was interrogated about whether or not he was writing a book. After nineteen years of honorable service, solving difficult cases, being requested by victims and their families in other parts of the state to be assigned to their investigations, Welch was being humiliated like an enlistee in military bootcamp. All of this was being done at the hands of men appointed by Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker. An honest cop just trying to do his job, Welch finally left the State Police on January 16, 1996. After 20 years on the force, he left a poor and disillusioned man.
Even though Welch and Duncan sent boxes of evidence to Lawrence Walsh in Washington, Walsh never showed any interest in Mena at all.
[Excerpt from the book "Mena - a tale of drugs and politics" scheduled for publication this summer.]
[Published in the April 1, 1996 issue of the Washington Weekly]
Copyright (c) 1996 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
[Fortunate I found this. The Washington Weekly archive will be erased in a few days.]
Freegards....
The domestic versus foreign thing just plain pi***s me off but we should be used to the media coming up with 'right wing' as their modifier of choice.
If internal ideology is involved it is far more useful to the left that this side show takes up 98% of the media attention - and that it might cause legislation to be passed durig another "right wing" scare.
Why is is so far impossible to suggest that there is a domestic, not "ethnically muslim" (easily profiled) support group for the islamic terrorists that we know pirated the aircraft?
Why have we so far avoided discussing possible involvement by an American (converted) islamic group - black or white?
(Is profiling so totally "bad" that even FR won't discuss it?)
There were internal (home grown) groups avidly supporting North Vietnam while we fought them, there were home grown allies working against the US for Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union when that was appropriate.
OK, they are probably still there but this is a different war.
It would not take many otherwise invisible individuals to pull this stunt but the stunt itself is more out of the islamist play book than any militia or even racially based group that I've seen advertising.
I think that the offered six-pack will be moot when the source is found to be (a) domestic, (b) neither demonstrably right or left, but (c) somewhat aligned with the pox-on-all-their-houses enviro/anachist/'because that's what they do' wackos we saw in Seattle and elsewhere.
(anyone remember Al Capp's 'SWINE'?)
Final comment: an earlier thread discussed a book called "The True Believer" (Eric Hoffer - in the fifties)
I read that book in a college course that also addressed mass hysteria - consider how much of this srory is just that; hysteria, absent anthrax spores or baking powder, sustained by a media that is not yet ready to condemn Americn bombing of 'poor', 'starving', etc. foreigners. And, therefore, just what the Taliban or any other likely bad guy would dream of!
Any takers?
I totally agree with you that this entire article is B.S. Personally, considering that the New York Post is hardly the most liberal newspaper in the world, I would tend to think of it more as "disinformation" than anything else.
To be completely fair though, I don't believe that these letters are the work of left-wing kooks any more than they're the work of right-wing kooks. It is definitely possible that there may be one or two "copycat letters" that were sent by Americans, but the inhaled anthrax letters that have killed three people so far are almost unquestionably linked to Middle Eastern terrorists.
I agree.
So targeting the so called "homegrown hate groups" is acceptable? I don't think so. I think the FBI is trying to justify a massive attack on our liberty. They just can't be trusted.
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