A03795
Articles : "War on Terror"The Anthrax Cover-up
Bruce Edwards Ivins, a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government’s biological weapons research laboratories, died of an apparent suicide last Tuesday, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the September 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people in the United States. Glenn Greenwald has written an important piece for Salon.com in which he demonstrates, with copious evidence, that a major government scandal lurks behind the anthrax story.
Ivins may have acted alone in carrying out the anthrax attacks. (I don’t want to presume his guilt or anything else about this case until we see further details about the government’s evidence against him.) However, Ivins most certainly did not act alone in falsifying information so the attacks could be used as a pretext for war.
“If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks,” Greenwald writes, “then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks.”
Greenwald continues: “Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent — indispensably aided by ABC News — to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.”
ABC claimed it had been told by “four well-placed and separate sources” that the anthrax used in the September attack contained bentonite, which therefore suggested it was produced in Iraq. As Greenwald points out, “That means that ABC News’ ‘four well-placed and separate sources’ fed them information that was completely false.” In all likelihood, “the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq. ... Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade.”
Greenwald goes on to provide details about the psychological impact that the anthrax fabrications played in influencing journalists and propagandizing the American public to support the invasion of Iraq. He also notes that John McCain and Joe Lieberman were among the first people to claim publicly, during an appearance on the David Letterman Show, that the anthrax came from Iraq. (Interestingly, the Bush White House repeatedly denied this claim, despite its overall tendency to exaggerate and fabricate evidence linking Iraq to weapons of mass destruction.)
Of course, ABC News knows the identity of the “well-placed sources” who fed this false information to them and, through them, to the American public. I’ll leave it to Greenwald to explain the implications:
And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They’re allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.
They’re not protecting “sources.” The people who fed them the bentonite story aren’t “sources.” They’re fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far.
If indeed Ivins was the person who carried out the anthrax attack, there is one possible scenario that Greenwald does not seem to have fully considered. Perhaps Ivins himself was the person who fabricated the claim that the anthrax contained bentonite. ABC’s sources might have been merely repeating what he told them. If so, however, that is an important story in itself and needs to be reported. Just as the FBI has a responsibility to share publicly its evidence linking Ivins to this crime, ABC has some explaining to do about the disinformation that it helped disseminate to the American people.
The anthrax attack of September 2001 was an act of terrorism that killed five innocent people. At the time, and for years thereafter, many people were led to believe that the perpetrators were Islamic extremists in service to a hostile foreign power. The FBI is now claiming that the perpetrator was a Roman Catholic and an employee of the U.S. army who held a position of trust that gave him access to biological weapons — even though he was, according to his counselor, “homicidal, sociopathic.” This is a major scandal by any measure. The public deserves to know how American institutions — including the U.S. Department of Defense as well as the news media — could have failed them this badly.
Sheldon Rampton is research director at the Center for Media and Democracy, where this article is republished from with permission.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
RELATED ITEMS
- Anthrax mystery
Posted by anthony on Friday, August 1st 2008 - Pentagon Halts Forced Anthrax Vaccinations
Posted by anthony on Wednesday, October 27th 2004 - Troops Sue to Avoid Anthrax Vaccines
Posted by bodo on Thursday, December 14th 2006 - Poisoning U.S. Troops: Anthrax, Lies and Vaccines
Posted by anthony on Wednesday, October 18th 2006 - Who was playing with Mil-grade Anthrax?
Posted by alexander on Thursday, April 7th 2005
Quite an opening!
This article needs to be reedited and reposted, there are many typos and other errors, such as this incomplete sentence:
The letter sent to Tom Brokaw by the anthrax attacker
No wonder GNN is fading into obscurity.
FBI Anthrax Case: Paid Witnesses?
In a stunning development, it is being reported by several news organizations that Dr. Ivins told a friend that at some point during the investigation the FBI offered $2.5 million and “a sports car of his choosing” to his son for info that could be used to implicate his father in the anthrax killings. Was he the only witness offered money to come forward?
The original article is easier to read. Labels for graphics were copypasted into this version of the article.
fixed, sorry about that
holy fucking passive voice
this thread is disappointing. there’s no name dropping in the commentary section yet.
Fucking A. I need to pack me some cheese before I get into all this whine…
the press has glorified jean duley way more than she deserves, first by calling her a “therapist”. she’s actually a social worker, and according to smoking gun she’s barely literate, recently fired from her job and is on probation for her latest DUI, or which she’s had several. she claims that ivins has been “forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer”. hmmm. if so, who are these top psychiatrists, why aren’t they speaking up, and why didn’t they put him away, if he was so dangerous? i’d say someone made her a deal to clean up her record if she made up some drama about this scientist that the FBI was trying to frame (again). what’s sad is that the press has no incentive to report the truth any more. they have more incentive to report lies and defend their lying sources, just to get a story. even sadder, the american public takes everything said in the mainstream media as gospel.
There appears to be a mountain of (albeit circumstantial) evidence linking the guy to the attacks. But just because it’s circumstantial doesn’t mean it’s not relevant, or legit. The bigger question, as Greenwald notes, is who were the sources that tried to link the attacks to Iraq.
this thread is disappointing. there’s no name dropping in the commentary section yet.
Mmmm… bait. Tastes like parlor poon.
But just because it’s circumstantial doesn’t mean it’s not relevant, or legit.
I had to read that twice. If we ever have our epic 9/11 debate, I will be sure to remind you of this statement.
The bigger question, as Greenwald notes, is who were the sources that tried to link the attacks to Iraq.
The same folks that sold US weapons-grade anthrax to Saddam? Oh, if only there could appear to be a mountain of (albeit circumstantial) evidence…
If we ever have our epic 9/11 debate, I will be sure to remind you of this statement.
no offense to either you or ArtB, but I don’t think anthony could take either of you in a debate.
he talks like a self-deluded msm’er the more i listen to what he has to say. can i get banned for saying that?
The bigger question, as Greenwald notes, is who were the sources that tried to link the attacks to Iraq.
suskind probably has an idea. i myself would suggest most roads lead to the vp’s office, regardless. at least up until 2006. at that point he was pushed to the sidelines where every vp belongs to begin with.
if congress doesn’t hold some serious hearings on this, and suskind’s claims against the cia, i’m done being anything but cynical.
Perhaps Ivins himself was the person who fabricated the claim that the anthrax contained bentonite.
That would imply that Ivins had a grudge against Saddam Hussein.
Meryl Nass, M.D. tears up “evidence” at anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com.
Let’s cut to the chase . . .Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?
Wednesday, August 6, 2008. . .
14. . . . Here are the effects that resulted, at least in part, from the letters:
A. The Patriot Act
B. War against Iraq
C. A new bioterrorism industry, worth over $50 Billion so far, was created
D. The moribund Anthrax Vaccine Program was resurrected
Who benefited? Ivins was no beneficiary. (Had the Bioport vaccine been killed, as planned, maybe Ivins’ vaccine would have taken its place.)
You know who benefited:
Emergent Biosolutions dropped 23% today
Thursday, August 7, 2008Guess El-Hibry knew what he was doing when he sold $200 million in shares of the anthrax vaccine manufacturer last week, since the vaccine company Emergent Biosolutions reported poor net earnings despite sales being up 88% this quarter. On sales of nearly 16,000 shares last week, he would have lost about $50 million, had he sold today instead.
What is the legal definition of insider trading?
Note that some of the documents released by the FBI yesterday detail many past problems at this vaccine factory.
the better of the two motives the fbi put forward is that ivans was an anti-abortion catholic was targeting two catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights.
nevermind the positions they held in the senate opposing the patriot act and could have blocked it from an up or down vote..
What is the legal definition of insider trading?
Null… So long as your role in the institutionalized treason is protected under National Security.
Good find by Raw Story
Also, if you have an old copy of GNN’s book, True Lies, pick up and read our investigation to the anthrax vaccine.
The theory put forward by Mr Glenn Greenwald, Attorney at Law, is that the Great Anthrax Hoax of 2001(™) was used as a
‘smokescreen/casus belli’ in the run up to the Rape and Sado-Masochistic Ritual Abuse of Iraq (™) and the Rape and Sado-Masochistic Ritual Abuse of The US Constitution(™) (Formerly known as the US PATRIOT Act)
If so,
then the question should be asked:
‘ What is happening right now that needs to be hidden by distracting our attention once again by re-hashing the Great Anthrax Hoax of 2001(™)’
Exactly the same type of finger-pointing and character assassination
that happened to Stephen Hatfill is happening now to Bruce Ivins.
Meanwhile exactly the same names of OTHER suspects are being once
again ignored by the media. Strange that, no?
So I think of lil’ ol’ Glenn as being analogous to Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg in this new version of the Great Anthrax Hoax of 2001(™)
Anthrax Powder: State of the Art?
By Gary Matsumoto, Science magazine, November 28, 2003The Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Columbus, Ohio, is possibly the only corporation in the world known to possess both the Ames strain as well as a “national security division” offering the services of a team of “engineers, chemists, microbiologists, and aerosol scientists supported by state-of-theart laboratories to conduct research in the fields of bioaerosol science and technology.” On its Web site, Battelle calls this research group “one-of-a-kind.”
As subcontractors, Battelle scientists have made anthrax powders for use by the Army and U.S. intelligence agencies, but rarely by Fort Detrick, which specializes in vaccine development. Charles Dasey, spokesperson for the parent agency, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, says that as far as he is aware, the only dried anthrax spores made at Fort Detrick since it stopped making weapons were made by Battelle scientists working there for DARPA. This material, made in a biosafety level 3 suite in the Diagnostic Systems Division, contained killed Ames strain at a concentration of 326 million spores per gram—several orders of magnitude less concentrated than the Senate powder and crude by current standards.
Battelle is capable of more sophisticated work, as it also makes one of the world’s most advanced medicinal powders. Battelle’s pharmaceutical division, BattellePharma, also in Columbus, is one of the few companies anywhere developing electrostatically charged aerosols for inhalation. BattellePharma’s Web site boasts that the company’s new “electrohydrodynamic” aerosol “reliably delivers more than 80% of the drug to the lungs in a soft (isokinetic) cloud of uniformly sized particles.” Other powders, boasts the Web site, only achieve 20% or less.
None of this argues that Battelle or any of its employees made the Senate anthrax powder. But it is evidence that Battelle was a logical place to start looking for clues. Officials from Battelle and the Army declined to comment on any aspect of anthrax powder manufacture.
Senator, Target of Anthrax Letter, Challenges F.B.I. Finding
By SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, September 17, 2008[some excerpts]
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a target of the anthrax letters of 2001, said Wednesday that he did not believe the F.B.I.’s contention that an Army scientist conducted the attacks alone.
At a hearing of his committee, Mr. Leahy told the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, that even if the bureau was right about the involvement of the scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, who killed himself in July before ever being charged, he thought there were accomplices.
“If he is the one who sent the letter, I do not believe in any way, shape or manner that he is the only person involved in this attack on Congress and the American people,” said Mr. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
“I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact,” he added. “I believe there are others who can be charged with murder.”
...
On Tuesday, Mr. Mueller said he had asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene an expert panel to review the bureau’s scientific work on the case.
But Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said Wednesday that he did not think that was adequate. Mr. Grassley said the academy “would only be reviewing the science and not the detective work,” and added, “I believe we need an independent review of both.”
The hearing underscored the challenge the bureau faces in persuading Congress and the public that the case is resolved. In the audience was Steven J. Hatfill, . . . source