Whatever happened to ... the anthrax attacks?

[TRUTH]

The media is slowly cranking into gear for the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, but the anthrax scares that followed soon afterwards have largely been forgotten. Five years later, the crime still remains unsolved.

While the strikes on the twin towers turned modern aeronautical technology into weapons, the anthrax attacks used the more old-fashioned nexus of "snail mail". Four letters, all containing the same Ames strain of anthrax, were sent to the New York Post, the TV channel NBC and two democratic senators.

Dated 9.11.01, but posted sporadically over the next few weeks, the letters - predictable denunciations of Israel and America - were written in childish capitals. The two letters to the media also advised them to "take Penacilin [sic] now". Identical messages to the senators contained a fictitious return address, the fourth grade of Greendale School in New Jersey. "You die now," stated the letter. "Are you afraid?"

Both senators survived, but five people did die, including two postal workers. Mass hysteria ensued when 17 more people were hospitalised. In Montana, specks of flour on hotdog buns were reported to the police as evidence of anthrax. Sales of the antibiotic Cipro went through the roof. Capitol Hill was closed for weeks, forcing staffers to set up offices in the back of their cars. The Washington Post branded them "wimps" for abandoning their desks.

The rest of the world endured a huge escalation in anthrax hoaxes. Clean-up costs in the US came to over $1bn. The FBI launched a huge investigation, called Amerithrax. After ruling out a possible al-Qaida link, it focused on domestic terrorists and then the US biodefence programme. To date, no one has been arrested and only Steven J Hatfill, a physician and bioterrorism expert, has been publicly identified as a "person of interest". After losing his job in the fallout, Hatfill issued a legal writs against the government and media organisations.

An FBI spokesperson now confirms that "two dedicated squads" are still working full-time on the case. Their profiling, however, appears worryingly vague. The suspect is apparently a "non-confrontational person, at least in his public life". He is likely to "prefer being by himself more often than not. If he is involved in a personal relationship, it will likely be of a self-serving nature." Members of the public are helpfully warned not to "open, smell or taste" suspicious packages, especially if "mailed from a foreign country" or containing "protruding wires".

In the absence of anything more concrete, it is not surprising that conspiracy theories abound. One of the more convincing explanations for the lack of progress on the scaled-down Amerithrax operation is that the suspect is privy to embarrassing government secrets. A Newsnight programme in 2002 featured one expert who believed it was a botched CIA project attempting to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail. It has even been suggested that the killer was a misguided patriotic individual wanting to demonstrate the US's lack of preparedness for such an attack.

If so, he has certainly achieved his aim. In the wake of the attacks, George Bush announced a threefold increase in funding for research against biochemical threats. Last March, more than 700 US scientists signed a letter protesting that public health research was suffering as a result.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,1868444,00.html

[Mark Gobell]

Erm nothing apparently.

Anthrax Investigation A 'Cold Case?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/18/eveningnews/main2019769.shtm l

5 Years, 53,000 Leads, 5,000 Subpoenas Later, FBI Is Empty-Handed

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2006
---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
Investigators look for evidence in the anthrax case. (CBS)

Quote

"There are times that we may know a lot about a crime or an event that occurred, but we may not have the admissible evidence that we need to prove it in court."

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

Secretary Chertoff


(CBS) Three years ago, FBI agents slogged through the woods to a fishing pond in suburban Maryland, where they hoped to find the hidden lab equipment used in the 2001 anthrax attacks. But, as CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart reports, they pumped the pond dry and even sifted through the mud at the bottom ... and found nothing

Five years, 53,000 leads, and 6,000 subpoenas after those attacks, they still have no arrests.

Things are so cold, law enforcement officials tell CBS News, that barring the discovery of new evidence, the anthrax investigation could be declared a "Cold Case" and put in the inactive files.

So who did it? Former Attorney General John Ashcroft once singled out Dr. Steven Hatfill, a bioweapons specialist, as a "person of interest." But there have been no charges.

Former FBI counter-terrorism executive and now CBS News consultant Mike Rolince says no case has frustrated the FBI more.

"We now know that someone, or ones, can conduct an attack like this and for least the first five years, get away with it," Rolince says.

The FBI says it remains committed to solving the crime. In a written statement, Joseph Persichini, Jr., acting assistant director of the FBI’s Washington field office said: "Today, the FBI’s commitment to solving this case is undiminished ... While no arrests have been made, the dedicated investigators who have worked tirelessly on this case, day-in and day-out, continue to go the extra mile in pursuit of every lead."

The bureau never had more than scant physical evidence, like the envelopes the anthrax was mailed in, and the terse letters inside - "Death to America" read one - and the spores themselves. But they were never able to trace the anthrax back to the attacker.

"It's true that a vast majority of the investigation early on was figuring out the science," Rolince says.

Nor did the administration ever entirely figure out what to do in case of another such attack. Despite a $5.6 billion effort to stockpile vaccines, just a small amount is available. Only the Pentagon has enough on hand for the troops.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff hints no one may ever be indicted.

"There are times that we may know a lot about a crime or an event that occurred, but we may not have the admissible evidence that we need to prove it in court," Chertoff says.

But the thinking among investigators is more stark: If we can't agree among ourselves who did it, they reason, how could we ever convince a jury?

[chek]

Two Democratic senators and the liberal NY press objecting to the Patriot Act, that is until military grade anthrax was delivered to them (taking out a handful of poor schmuck mail handling workers in the process)?

Who benefitted indeed.

http://www.gwu.edu/~cih/anthraxinfo/public/publicthreat_attacks.htm

[brian]

Philip Zack Steals Anthrax


By Matt Hutaff, Sep 26, 2006It's been five years since anthrax killed innocents and fueled America's paranoia. Can we finally incarcerate the obvious suspect?

It was five years ago this month that the United States descended into the chaos of September 11. Sadly, even now it's hard to imagine a time when our nation was neither afraid nor vengeful; for better or worse, those events continue to shape and mold our world, and they are still on the forefront of many American minds.

Strange, however, that the anthrax scare that piggybacked on 9/11 has all but disappeared from earnest debate and discussion. Where is the flowery prose commemorating the victims of that tragedy? Where is media coverage highlighting half a decade of biowarfare fears? After all, never have four small envelopes wreaked so much havoc on a country; Capitol Hill underwent voluntary castration when spineless representatives refused to return to their offices, clean-up costs for suspected contamination passed the billion-dollar mark and sales of Cipro were almost as spectacular as those for duct tape and plastic sheeting.

Anthrax remains a big story, one worthy of continued investigation. The tainted letters were addressed to senators, members of the media and average citizens, killed five, injured 17 and turned an already inefficient postal system into a large-scale security nightmare. They also childishly implicated Arabs ("Death to Israel, Allah is Great?" Please.) precisely at a time when American rage towards the Middle East was reaching a boiling point. That alone served as a deciding factor for many Americans to take war abroad, yet despite being an attack on American soil, the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly drags its feet on the issue.

Why? Because they know who stole the anthrax and choose to protect the culprit.

Simply put, the man most likely responsible for stealing the anthrax is Dr. Philip Zack. Zack is a prominent microbiologist who worked at the U.S. Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland while weapons-grade Ames anthrax - the same genetic strain used to terrorize the populace - was stored there. A bigot who taunted his Arab colleagues during his tenure at the facility, Zack was also monitored breaking in and conducting experiments during off hours... while no longer employed at the lab.

Zack has been a prime suspect for years - the Hartford Courant wrote a piece about missing anthrax in January 2002, and Salon pursued its own investigation later that year. Suspicion arose from an allegation against Egyptian microbiologist Ayaad Assaad, a former coworker of Zack's. Assaad was fingered anonymously as a potential bioterrorist in the aftermath of September 11 but before victims were identified. Though cleared of all charges by the FBI, the fact that Assaad's accuser knew so much about his life raised suspicions that said accusations were personally motivated. That dozens of lethal samples of anthrax, ebola and hantavirus disappeared during Zack and Assaad's watch in the 1990s only compounded misgivings that Zack was responsible.

Remember, all of this was widely reported in 2002, less than four months after anthrax filled the country with panic. You would think a man with a grudge against Arabs who was seen breaking into a facility where at least two dozen samples of lethal pathogens later went unaccounted would push Zack ahead of Dr. Stephen Hatfill on the "person of interest" list. As we all know, however, that was not the case.

So now we sit, five years later, unfulfilled and perplexed as to how our own government failed to follow up on the obvious. What's even more frustrating is that the FBI and its friends in the press are currently misleading the public about the investigation, insisting now the anthrax was not weapons grade at all! This article from last week states that the anthrax could have been a homebrew mixture capable of being made anywhere; meanwhile, this piece from yesterday obfuscates the issue and contradicts years of prior reporting. As Mike Rivero of the news source What Really Happened said in response, "what pointed the finger at Fort Detrick as the source of the Anthrax spores used in the letters was not just the high degree of 'weaponization' of the spores, but DNA tests which showed the anthrax in the letters to be the exact same strain used at Fort Detrich.

"Even if one buys this pathetic attempt to blur the issue, and believes in a kitchen-sink bioweapons lab, the fact remains that the original source spores still had to come from Fort Detrick." Again making Philip Zack a likely suspect.

The only reason the investigation is (by MSNBC's account) "frustratingly slow" is because no one wants a resolution to this caper. It was easy enough to devastate Hatfill's life as the conclusion would be an indifferent populace. Bringing an end to this, however, would remove an avenue of terror for the Administration to manipulate.

I'm reticent to mention that correlation as I'd like to think some things are sacred. President Bush thinks otherwise, however; like a white, powdery Osama bin Laden, anthrax has again become a hot topic leading into the midterm elections. And hey, isn't it handy that the now-downgraded anthrax could conceivably be made in an Al Qaeda kitchen? Never mind that five years down the road, the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax scare serve as stark reminders of the president's impotence at bringing terrorists to justice, Bush "stopped this al Qaeda cell from developing anthrax for attacks against the United States." 'Nuff said.

I do not know what Philip Zack has done to deserve such special treatment from the FBI, nor do I know where the missing anthrax samples disappeared to for the better part of a decade. Maybe it's because he's not the Arab demon policymakers need to fuel animosity against "Islamofascism." Maybe he has friends in high places. Honestly, the reason isn't relevant. The fact remains that Philip Zack stole weapons-grade anthrax and the FBI refuses to pursue him.

Next week marks the five-year anniversary of Bob Stevens' death. Stevens, a photo editor for Boca Raton-based tabloid The Sun, was the first casualty from exposure to anthrax. Let's honor his memory not with empty words and meaningless pontification, but by putting the man responsible away for life.

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01241_philip_za ck_steals_anthrax.html

[iro]

last i heard (cant find the source sorry!) it was discovered by investigators that it was American military research stock anthrax ... er... oops!

so i assume they buried it as the cat was out of the bag

[Mark Gobell]

From the PNAC call to arms blueprint, Rebuilding America's Defenses, page 72.

And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

[sr4470]

[scubadiver]

Apologies for no source, but I did read somewhere that the Anthrax was of good enough quality only to have come from a US source. The building in which the laboratory to which the anthrax was traced was subsequently demolished ... by Controlled Demolition Inc of all companies!

[Mark Gobell]

Keith Olbermann sent "white powder" - now taking Cipro.

Keith Olbermann Terrorized and Gov Tries to Hide it

Rob Kall for OpEdNews.com

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rob_kall_060928_rob_kall_3a_ke ith_olbe.htm

Keith Olbermann is hitting home run after home run, taking on the Bush Cheney led right wing, immoral lie machine, pummelling them unmercifully with truth after truth. He is the strongest voice the left has in the mainstream media. Unlike Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, other strong voices, he does not couch his hard hitting messages in comedy. Last night, he did it again, presenting a chronology of Bush administration failures to do much of anything to respond to the clear warnings he documents that the Clinton administration left for the Bush administration. Now, in spirit, we won't call Condi Rice a liar, but she has her facts wrong.

We have serious reason to worry about Olbermann's safety. Last night, he reported that he'd been threatened, apparently with some anthrax-like substance that required him to be subjected to 10 hours of detention in a hospital. He was discharged with a prescription for Cipro.

Worse, he and his network were told to keep this off the air. He discussed it last night in the context of the NY Post violating the government's request to keep this quiet, describing how MSNBC had respected the Murdock owned Fox News request that the media keep a low profile in covering the two kidnapped Journalists in Palestine, and how Murdock-owned NY Post had not respected the government request for a low profile on the investigation of the threat that endangered Olbermann.

Editor and Publisher, in an article 'NY Post' Makes Fun of Olbermann's Reaction to Getting Letter With White Powder , reported:

Several leading news organizations in recent years have summoned "HazMat" teams and sent employees to the hospital after receiving letters with white powder at their offices. The Post itself received a so-called "anthrax letter" in the fall of 2001, infecting three staffers, who all recovered.

Here is the Post item, which appeared under the headline, "Powder Puff Spooks Keith." On his MSNBC program Wednesday, Olbermann detailed the incident, pointing out numerous errors, including the fact that it took 14 hours for the substance to be cleared as absolutely safe. He spent 10 hours at the hospital, he said. Far from a lollipop, he noted, he was given a prescription for Cipro at the end, not a lollipop.

MSNBC loudmouth Keith Olbermann flipped out when he opened his home mail yesterday. The acerbic host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" was terrified when he opened a suspicious-looking letter with a California postmark and a batch of white powder poured out. A note inside warned Olbermann, who's a frequent critic of President Bush's policies, that it was payback for some of his on-air shtick.

The caustic commentator panicked and frantically called 911 at about 12:30 a.m., sources told The Post's Philip Messing. An NYPD HazMat unit rushed to Olbermann's pad on Central Park South, but preliminary tests indicated the substance was harmless soap powder. However, that wasn't enough to satisfy Olbermann, who insisted on a checkup. He asked to be taken to St. Luke's Hospital, where doctors looked him over and sent him home. Whether they gave him a lollipop on the way out isn't known. Olbermann had no comment.


Well, Olbermann commented last night. And he added that if Fox News has another situation, like the one where it's journalists were kidnapped, he and MSNBC would, in light of the way Murdoch's NY Post handled him... do exactly what the did the first time-- in spite of the way the Murdoch paper handled him.

We know the corrupt Bush appointees routinely use the power of their offices to take care of their own. It is not far fetched to speculate that Olbermann is being subjected to a horrendous abuse of power. The idea that he could be abused and placed in hospital detention for 10 hours, then told to keep quiet about it, for purposes of national security, possibly by the FBI, is outrageous and frightening.

Ever since his first of what are now many tough monologues attacking Bush and company, I have feared for the viability of his show. Now, with this latest development I fear for his safety and his life. The stakes are very high here.

Olbermann's message, if it gets out to the voters, could be devastating to the Republicans in November. They've already declared to their base that they are pulling out all the stops, going for broke. It is not unreasonable to assume that these politicians, who have already proved how low, how corrupt they can go, will pull out all the stops when it comes to corrupt, illegal moves as well as legal ones.

Olbermann's heroic-- and it is truly heroic reporting must be protected by the Democratic party and those on the left. I call upon Democratic legislators in congress to hold independent investigations into the terrorist threat upon Olbermann's life. Right wingers who think they can get away with intimidation of the press, the strongest voice standing up to the administration must see that they put themselves at risk, that they do not engage in their invidious acts with impunity.

We on the left must support MSNBC for the courage it is demonstrating by supporting the advertisers that are backing Olbermann's show.

This is a partial list of the advertisers whose commercials were on the show last night.

Cheerios
monster.com
PNC
commitlozenge.com
Aleve
sprint mobile broadband
senior lending network reverse mortgages
Honda Certified Used Cars
AT&T Dynamic Networking New ATT att.com
ReadyRegion.org red cross
Comcast digital voice
l'Oreal Pro Calcium Moisturizer
NBC NEws on I-Tunes
subaru outback sport utility wagon
Genworth Financial Retirement solutions
Vonage unlimited local and long distance calling
New York Stock Exchange
Clairol natural Instincts
Dell Power Edge Servers

I encourage you to contact them and thank them and let MSNBC know how much you love and support the show, and that you are supporting their advertisers. Even better, go out and spend money on their products. If you are already a customer, let them know that as a customer, you are strongly supportive of Olbermann having a continued voice and that if they support other shows like his, you will support them even more.

If you want to help others, dig up contact information on the advertisers and post it as a comment after the article.

Me, I'm going out today to buy me a box of Cheerios. It would be nice if people who believe Olbermann is serving democracy and truth cleared out the shelves of Cheerios today, as a gesture. Yep, today, make it three boxes of Cheerios. Let's send a message to General Mills that supporting tough, honest journalism is good for business.

And John Conyers, you're on the judiciary committee, please, get something started to protect Keith Olbermann, who has already been abused by our government enough.

Note that Olbermann did not complain about his treatment by the system. He complained about the NY Post reporting it. He complained that he was being held so long. This article speaks FOR Olbermann. WE should be complaining. This event should not be kept secret. It should be widely reported. An aggressive search for the sender of the white powder should be initiated and when the sender is found he should prosecuted as a terrorist. Threatening journalists, trying to silence them, should be considered a major, serious offense... and it would be in any country that is not a banana republic.

Sadly, outside of Editor and Publisher, the NY POst and one blog that merely reported on the NY Post article and compared this to O'Reilly's ludicrous, unsubstantiated claim that he is on Al Qaeda's death list, this terrorist threat against a major journalist was unreported in the media. Oh yes. That's right. The government asked the media to keep it quiet. Well, it's no secret any more. Murdoch media blew it wide open. So why aren't all the mainstream networks covering it now?