The official line from the Whitehouse is that silica was found. You can twist Ari Fleischer’s words in any perverse way you choose - but to any reasonable person this is what he states in his book. And he was the official Whitehouse spokesman. And he has NEVER retracted that.
Beecher’s article was highly likely altered by Meselson, to fir Meselson’s agenda.
Do I need to remind you YET AGAIN about Meselson’s track record? Or do you just like discussing his track record in public so much that you continually bring up his contribution to the 2001 anthrax attacks?
We discussed this back in messages #285, #286 and #290. You are distorting facts again. That is NOT what he states in his book. What Ari Fleischer says on page 203 in his book "Taking The Heat" is this:
ABC's evening news was implying to millions of people that I would falsify information because the White House did not want to go after Saddam Hussein. I thought we were the administration that wanted to attack Iraq. If my statements were driven by the administration's alleged objectives in Iraq, I would have loved the ABC story. I wouldn't have denied it. I'd have let ABC blame Saddam for us.
My obligation was to tell the truth, and I provided it to ABC.
Later that night, I spoke to Jennings. I told him the story was wrong at its core. Our researchers, I said, had found no bentonite in the anthrax. He couldn't have been more polite and promised me he would look into it, and if ABC was wrong, they would correct it.
Over the next several days, I dug deep into the story. I spoke not only to officials at the NSC but to researchers themselves at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology [AFIP]. They told me the Daschle anthrax contained silicon and oxygen but not aluminum. Since bentonite contains aluminum, if there's no aluminum, they said, there's no bentonite. They also informed me that when U.N. inspectors had analyzed Iraqi's anthrax stocks in the nineties, the the bentonite in the Iraqi anthrax contained aluminum.
No aluminum, they concluded, no bentonite. No bentonite, it's not Iraq.
I contined to badger a variety of people at ABC to see if they were going to correct the story. Finally, on October 31, six days after the story aired, ABC backtracked.
At the end of a story about the anthrax attacks, Jennings asked Brian Ross one of those scripted questions which had a scripted answer. "Brian, what's the latest we know about the additive called bentonite in the anthrax which made it allegedly dangerous?"
"Well, Peter, today the White House said that despite initial test results which we reported suggesting the presence of a chemical called bentonite, a trademark of the Iraqi weapons program, a further chemical analysis has ruled that out," Ross said. "The White House says there are chemical additives in that anthrax, including one called silica. Now, that's not a trademark of any country's weapons program, but it is known to be used, Peter, by Iraq, Russia and the U.S. in making a
So, Ari Fleischer said the anthrax contained silicon and oxygen. Brian Ross said the White House said the anthrax contained silica.
Why is it so difficult for you to get that correct? Is it because you cannot help but distort the facts because it's the only way you can justify your conspiracy theory?