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Anthrax: A Botched Investigation?
The Wall Street Journal ^ | 09 May 2002 | Albert R. Hunt

Posted on 05/13/2002 3:56:26 PM PDT by Nogbad

Edited on 04/22/2004 11:46:30 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

Albert R. Hunt is executive Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. His responsibilities include helping to set direction and priorities for the Journal's Washington news coverage, writing the weekly editorial page column, "Politics & People," and directing the paper's political polls. He has worked for the Journal since 1965 in New York, Boston and Washington.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Anthrax Scare; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: anthrax; fbi
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I am behind in my reading so this got posted late,
but I think it is significant.

The man in the white wig is unhappy with the FBI-Rosenberg Theory.

By the way, the links don't work so don't try them.

1 posted on 05/13/2002 3:56:26 PM PDT by Nogbad
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To: keri; The Great Satan; Mitchell; tymesup; Alamo-Girl; Shermy; aristeides; nimdoc; Fabozz...
ping
2 posted on 05/13/2002 3:57:49 PM PDT by Nogbad
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To: Nogbad
The same FBI that this rant-writer is tearing up, singularly because it is under a Bush (GOP) Administration, is most likely the same FBI that it had no problem with under Janet Reno.

Huge Black Helicopter Alert!!!

3 posted on 05/13/2002 3:59:20 PM PDT by ICE-FLYER
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To: Nogbad
Seems I remember the mainstream media pushing the idea that this was domestic terrorism (right wing kind?).
4 posted on 05/13/2002 4:09:28 PM PDT by Retired Chemist
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To: Nogbad
I wonder who's been peddling to Hunt the line that the stories about the meeting in Prague are probably false.
5 posted on 05/13/2002 4:15:18 PM PDT by aristeides
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To: aristeides
Perhaps Hunt didn't have to check out the Prague business since it came from Newsweek.

Someone had questioned on another thread whether Atta would be involved in both the hijackings and the anthrax. If al-Haznawi and someone else doing the mailings after 9/11 were both involved, then Atta could be the link.

6 posted on 05/13/2002 4:32:13 PM PDT by Tymesup
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To: Tymesup
That it was the 9/11 hijackers, supplied by Iraq, is easily the cleanest theory. The lesion on one of the hijackers is just a big honking neon sign over this already very likely thoery.

The ONLY reason this isn't the "official" thoery is that it means Iraq (or maybe Iran) reached out and touched us with a WMD and we did not erase their sorry asses from the face of the Earth.

"Trident kills anthrax dead."

7 posted on 05/13/2002 4:37:54 PM PDT by eno_
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To: Nogbad
...such as an alleged meeting between hijacker Muhammad Atta and a top Iraqi intelligence official in Prague last year; recently Newsweek magazine reported convincingly that story almost surely was a hoax.

As I recall, Newsweek didn't claim it was a hoax, just a mistake. (I didn't find the Newsweek article convincing, but that's another matter.)

8 posted on 05/13/2002 4:42:00 PM PDT by Mitchell
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To: Nogbad
What is Al Hunt's angle here? He's focusing on Iraq as the probable source, but denying the Prague meeting. Is that just to avoid the appearance of tin foil?
9 posted on 05/13/2002 4:43:40 PM PDT by Mitchell
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To: Mitchell
What is Al Hunt's angle here?

In spite of a senior position at the WSJ, Hunt leans to the left.
He's busting the chops of law enforcement and Bush.
If he can do that by spinning something close to the truth, all the better.
10 posted on 05/13/2002 4:55:45 PM PDT by My Identity
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To: Mitchell
On consideration, I suspect that Hunt is trying to be tactful to those who, like Isikoff, foolishly bought the government line that the Prague meeting did not take place.
11 posted on 05/13/2002 6:48:22 PM PDT by aristeides
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To: Nogbad
Al Hunt and the FBI share a delusion - that is that the anthrax attacks had to take place AFTER 9/11.

Let's work backwards from 9/11.

9/11 A Tuesday. A letter mailed today would arrive 9/13, or Thursday, in the local area, or maybe as late as 9/17 anywhere in the country.

9/10 A Monday. A letter mailed today would arrive 9/12, or Wednesday, in the local area, or maybe as late as 9/17 anywhere else in the country.

9/09 A Sunday. A letter mailed today wouldn't even be picked up from a street collection box until 9/10, or Monday.

9/08 A Saturday. A letter mailed today probably wouldn't go beyond the local head-out office of the carrier or city collections route. This would be pretty much the same as mailing it on 9/10.

9/07 A Friday. The mail processing centers (MPCs) are working full steam Friday evening. A letter mailed on Friday would get processed and dispatched. The probability is high that it could get delivered as early as Tuesday, much the same as if it had been mailed Saturday, Sunday or Monday!

Unfortunately, all of that applies to First-Class Mail entered at presort and automation mail rates. Single piece rate First-Class Mail will probably not get that level of service. In fact, to get delivery by 9/11, such pieces might well need to have been mailed in August!

The Daschle letter provides us a clock to determine how long that letter had been in the mail (and it's long before the postmark date of October 18). It took several days for the anthrax spores to penetrate the envelope paper. Dugway Labs must certainly have performed an equivalent experiment to see how many days it takes for anthrax spores to penetrate a standard postage affixed postal envelope to the degree observed with the Daschle letter.

That date can be in August!

AlQeada and their associates had the advice and counsel of a letter carrier who was arrested two and a half weeks ago at Staten Island post office. He would have understood that these pieces, to provide any sort of threat, would need to be mailed long before 9/11!

This presumes the attackers were the terrorists we already know about, 19 of whom are dead, and that they wished to coordiante their different attacks, e.g. hit the Pentagon, hit the WTC, hit Congress, hit the Senate, hit the tablids, hit broadcast networks (who do not charge like cable does), etc.

12 posted on 05/13/2002 6:53:17 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Tymesup
See my post at 12 regarding "anthrax attack AFTER 9/11".
13 posted on 05/13/2002 6:55:52 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: aristeides; Mitchell; Nogbad; Shermy; The Great Satan
If Al Hunt is suddenly interested in anthrax, it can only mean that his contacts in the DNC want to examine the subject for its "political content".

I.e., if Enron didn't stick to the Bush administration, maybe anthrax will.

I can conceive of no other motivation for Al Hunt, the most political of journalistic animals, to interest himself in the provenance of anthrax.

The following paragraph strikes me as particularly illuminating:

But the Iraq theory has its own problems. Bush administration hawks who want to topple Saddam know it's much more palatable if they can link the Iraqis to Sept. 11 or the anthrax attacks. They have been willing to peddle stories that now appear false, such as an alleged meeting between hijacker Muhammad Atta and a top Iraqi intelligence official in Prague last year; recently Newsweek magazine reported convincingly that story almost surely was a hoax. If there's anything damning here on Iraq's involvement with the anthrax threat, it would have been leaked.

Thus is the Bush administration set up as a.) not only incompetent, but a liar and b.) cynically attempting to employ a hoax as a pretext for an Iraq attack, now incisively discredited by the mainstream media.

This column is a trial balloon. It sets the stage for a partisan attack on the Bush administration's competency and credibility. Anthrax is about to "go political".

The Democrats also intend to fight any notion of an attack on Iraq, making it a political issue. If they can...

14 posted on 05/13/2002 7:29:53 PM PDT by okie01
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To: okie01
Interesting speculations.
Hunt is the most crooked 'journalist' on the scene.
There must be something up his sleeve.
15 posted on 05/13/2002 7:35:05 PM PDT by Nogbad
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To: muawiyah
We've got al-Haznawi with a lesion in June. (These guys are pretty good if they didn't panic and get rid of it all then.) We've got deaths in October and November. It seems to me some of this got mailed after 9/11.

If they were trying for simultaneous action, they would have known the mail wasn't the way to go.

16 posted on 05/13/2002 7:40:44 PM PDT by Tymesup
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To: Nogbad
The roommate of al-Hazawi, the terrorist who was allegedly treated for cutaneous anthrax in June 2001, was Ziad Samir Jarrah, a member of Atta's Hamburg cell. The FBI has discounted al-Hazawi's cutaneous anthrax on the premise that no anthrax spores were found anywhere the terrorists had been. This is also true of several of the victims. Atta may or may not have traveled to Prague in April 2001, but he appears to have been there on two earlier occasions. Similar details can be found in the post "Anthrax Investigation".
17 posted on 05/13/2002 8:52:24 PM PDT by Ordinary_American
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To: Nogbad
There must be something up his sleeve.

I don't know. This reads to me like a not-very-bright reporter putting two and two together and realizing he's been had.

18 posted on 05/13/2002 9:58:01 PM PDT by The Great Satan
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To: Tymesup
It didn't get mailed after 9/11. It got "found in empty equipment" after that time and then tossed into operation 010!

You can find my other detailed posts on how this would normally happen and why it would travel from South Florida to New Jersey and not other places.

19 posted on 05/14/2002 4:54:15 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Ordinary_American
The terrorists were in South Florida. Three of them actually lived there, and had personal contact with a rental agent whose husband sat near the first victim at AMI.

There is a relatively large university adjacent to the AMI campus. Almost all of its students are Jewish. Many of those students do part time jobs or undertake journalistic internships at AMI.

The motive in this attack was clear - hit a major tabloid publisher AND Jewish young people. Note that the only other newspaper attacked was likewise a tabloid!

20 posted on 05/14/2002 4:57:14 AM PDT by muawiyah
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