The Coverup

By Alllie

Think of O.J. Simpson. Think of Ken Lay. Think of Kobe Bryant. Think of other rich criminals, criminals with so much money they can evade justice. Rich criminals can hire lawyers and accountants and doctors and even forensic experts to prove they are innocent even when they are guilty. Think of Kobe Bryant's victim. His money against her lack of it. In the end guilt or innocence didn't matter, only his money mattered. Money wins so Kobe wins, so there isn't even a trial. Now multiply his money by a million. Now imagine a criminal with all the resources of the federal government to protect him.

Imagine you were the anthrax terrorist but too powerful for even the FBI to charge, too powerful to even investigate. Imagine your coconspirators were too secret and protected for law enforcement to even question. Imagine if, instead of hiring forensic experts to try to introduce doubt into any case against you, you could marshal all the scientists of the US germ warfare programs, all the agents of the FBI, and assign them to pin your crimes on someone else. Imagine that the FBI isn't allowed to consider what enemy the targets had in common, that they can't demand the CIA or the DOD tell them who might have produced the anthrax, that they can't even ask who had the authority to order it sent, and that they can't investigate the prime suspect. .

Imaging an anthrax terrorist so powerful he could order the assassination of the scientists who had been instructed to produce the anthrax and/or mail it. Imagine being an anthrax terrorist so powerful you can kill the people you swore to protect, so powerful you can get away with it. Imagine George Bush as the anthrax terrorist.

And around and around the FBI goes, looking again and again at labs that couldn't have made the anthrax, looking at scientists without the access, expertise or information necessary to produce it and all because the FBI is not allowed to look at the classified labs that could have produced it, because the FBI is not allowed to even know what or where these labs are or who works in them, just as they are not allowed to focus on George W. Bush, the one man in the world with the method, opportunity and motive to order weaponized anthrax from deep in the US bioweapons program sent to those 5 particular targets at that particular time.

"Frankly, I find it puzzling," says Elisa D. Harris, who served as director of nonproliferation issues at the National Security Council from 1993 until 2001, and is currently a resident scholar at the University of Maryland. "Given what's been reported about the nature and quality of the anthrax material in the Daschle and Leahy letters, that the material itself almost certainly originated in the U.S. biological weapons program, they ought to be able to narrow the investigation to a fairly limited number of facilities. That number is certainly less than 20."

"I think a number of us were surprised by some of the revelations" of secret bioweapons programs, says Elisa D. Harris, the former Clinton administration NSC official. Harris thinks it's possible the FBI itself is not aware of all of the biodefense work being contracted out by the U.S. government, because it is such a highly secretive and compartmentalized program.

Harris says she was shocked to read in the New York Times last September about biodefense research programs that she herself had not known about, although she had served for eight years in the White House as the point person for weapons of mass destruction nonproliferation issues.


"I was only aware of one of those three programs," Harris says. "I was never told by the Defense Department about the other two. I was also not aware that since the early 1990s, the U.S. Army has apparently been producing small quantities of dry, very potent Ames strain anthrax."
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2002/02/08/anthrax/print.html

This tells you what the source of the anthrax was: still secret bioweapons programs, programs and people under control of the president, programs and people that even a scientist who worked in the White House, who was on the National Security Council for 8 years, and who specialized in WMD, didn't know about. And still the FBI circles around, investigating thousands of other labs that could never have produced the weaponized anthrax used in the attacks because they are not allowed to investigate the few that could have.


If the FBI has a suspect there would be traces in the person's home, office or car and tell-tale antibodies in the blood.

A sweep of items belonging to Mohamed Atta -- a suspect in one of the Sept. 11 hijackings who flew planes near the site of the anthrax case -- and a screening of the other 18 suspected hijackers' possessions, cars and hotel rooms turned up no evidence that they came in contact with anthrax or other biochemical agents, officials said.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/koat/20011011/lo/925132_1.html

There we go. "If the FBI has a suspect there would be traces in the person's home, office or car and tell-tale antibodies in the blood." As much as the Bush White House wanted to pin the attacks on the hijackers, to implicate Iraq, as much as they later wanted to use Hatfill as a patsy, there were no traces in their homes, offices or cars.

Questions Linger a Year After Anthrax Mailings
Thompson, a former governor with no scientific or medical training, issued orders that all information to the public and media come from his office, barring government scientists and health experts from providing expert advice or information.

So Tommy Thompson stopped all new information about the anthrax attacks from being released. Once he took control the coverup hardened.

"We needed information," John Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Board of Health, said recently. "Every kind of government report that we needed was delayed. We were getting information from journalists, for God's sake, not the CDC. There simply wasn't a good, accurate, timely internal communication system."
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-usanthrax1007,0,5185410.story

"From the moment one saw that it was highly concentrated Ames strain anthrax, the first lead candidate should have been a U.S. laboratory with a military contract," says MIT's Jonathan King. "Instead, we heard no such public admission. Immediately they were talking about Iraq and al-Qaida, when the largest such facilities are in the U.S. That leads me to think two things: the U.S. government is covering up the fact that the most likely source of the anthrax was not al-Qaida, was not foreign terrorists, but was a home-grown individual. And secondly, it was turned into part of the anti-terrorist propaganda."
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2002/02/08/anthrax/print.html

So, it was US government anthrax and the Bush administration attempted to pin it on Iraq. But that was the main purpose of the attacks, to give a justification for invading Iraq.

U.S. Inquiry Tried, but Failed, to Link Iraq to Anthrax Attack
Shortly after the first anthrax victim died in October, the Bush administration began an intense effort to explore any possible link between Iraq and the attacks and continued to do so even after scientists determined that the lethal germ was an American strain, scientists and government officials said.

"We looked for any shred of evidence that would bear on this, or any foreign source," a senior intelligence official said of an Iraq connection. "It's just not there."
The focus on Iraq was based on its record of developing a germ arsenal and also on what some officials said was a desire on the part of the administration to find a reason to attack Iraq in the war on terrorism.

One discovery early in the inquiry seemed to undercut the foreign thesis. The anthrax used in the first attack, in Florida, and in subsequent attacks turned out to be the Ames strain, named after its place of origin in Iowa. While investigators found that this domestic variety of anthrax had been shipped to some laboratories overseas, none could be traced to Baghdad.

Nevertheless, government officials continued pushing the Iraq theory, scientists and officials involved in the inquiry said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/22/national/22INQU.html

They wanted to use the anthrax attack as a reason to attack Iraq. Can you say "Operation Northwoods"? And can you say "incubator babies"?

Even Israel got into the lying act. But no surprise there.

Forget unfounded conspiracy theories. The evidence is overwhelming that the FBI has consistently shied away from pursuing the anthrax investigation.

Alibek is President of Hadron Advanced Biosystems. On October 2, 2001, just two days before the first anthrax case was reported in Boca Raton, Florida and a week and a half before the first anthrax was sent through the mail to NBC News in New York, Advanced Biosystems received an $800,000 grant from NIH to focus on very specific defenses against anthrax. Hadron has long been linked with the CIA.

So they got their grant BEFORE the anthrax attack, just like they or the CIA knew it was coming.

Ross reported that U.S. military and intelligence agencies have refused to provide the FBI with a full listing of the secret facilities and employees working on anthrax projects. Because of this stonewalling, crucial evidence has been withheld. Professor Jeanne Guilleman of MIT's Biological Weapons Studies Center told ABC, "We're talking here about laboratories where, in fact, the material that we know was in the Daschle letter and in the Leahy letter could have been produced. And I think that's what the FBI is still trying to find out." But the FBI does not seem to want to pursue these important leads.

...the FBI does not seem to want to pursue these important leads....the FBI does not seem to want to pursue these important leads...the FBI does not seem to want to pursue these important leads...

William Capers Patrick III was part of the original Fort Detrick anthrax development program, which "officially" ended in 1972 when President Nixon signed, along with the Soviet Union and United Kingdom, the Biological Weapons Convention. Nixon had actually ordered the Pentagon to stop producing biological weapons in 1969. It now seems likely that the U.S. military and intelligence community failed to follow Nixon's orders and, in fact, have consistently violated a lawful treaty signed by the United States. Cuba certainly accused the United States of using biological war weapons against it during the 1970s. In his book, Biological Warfare in the 21st Century, Malcolm Dando refers to the U.S. bio-attacks against the Caribbean island nation. The American covert campaign targeted the tobacco crop using blue mold, the sugar cane crop using cane smut, livestock using African swine fever, and the Cuban population using a hemorrhagic strain of dengue fever.

The BBC reported that Battelle Memorial Institute (a favorite Pentagon and CIA contractor and for whom Alibek served as biological warfare program manager in 1998) conducted a secret biological warfare test in the Nevada desert using genetically-modified anthrax early last September, right before the terrorist attacks. The BBC reported that Patrick's paper on sending anthrax through the mail was also part of the classified contractor work on the deadly bacterial agent.

Steven Block of Stanford University, an expert on biological warfare, told The Dallas Morning News that, "The American process for preparing anthrax is secret in its details, but experts know that it produces an extremely pure powder. One gram (a mere 28th of an ounce) contains a trillion spores . . . A trillion spores per gram is basically solid spore . . . It appears from all reports so far that this was a powder made with the so-called optimal U.S. recipe . . . That means they either had to have information from the United States or maybe they were the United States.

"The one person who was in a position to know about the origin of the anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service met with a very suspicious demise just a month after the attacks first began. The reported "suicide" and then "accidental death" of noted Harvard biophysics scientist and anthrax, Ebola, AIDS, herpes, and influenza expert, Dr. Don C. Wiley, on the Interstate 55 Hernando De Soto Bridge that links Memphis to West Memphis, Arkansas, was probably a well-planned murder, according to local law enforcement officials in Tennessee and Arkansas.

On November 15, Wiley's abandoned 2001 Mitsubishi Galant rental car was strangely found in the wrong lane, west in the eastbound lane of the bridge. The keys were still in the ignition, the gas tank was full, the hub cap of the right front wheel was missing, and there were yellow scrape marks on the driver's side of the vehicle, indicating a possible sideswipe.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, Wiley may have been the victim of an intelligence agency hit. That jibes with local police comments that the FBI and "other" U.S. agencies stepped in to prevent the local Memphis police from taking a closer look into the case.

The South African media has been abuzz with details of that nation's former biological warfare program and its links to the CIA. The head of the South African program, Dr. Wouter Basson, was reportedly offered a job with the CIA in the United States after the fall of the apartheid regime. According to former South African National Intelligence Agency deputy director Michael Kennedy, when Basson refused the offer, the CIA allegedly threatened to kill him. One of the South African's secret projects involved sending anthrax through the mail. Among the techniques that fell into the hands of the Americans was a method by which anthrax spores were, with deadly effect, incorporated on to the gummed flaps of envelopes.

Many of Dr. Wiley's family and friends doubt he would have committed suicide. The fact that he was certainly in a position to know about the origination of various viruses and bacteria -- which could have led to the U.S. government -- would have made him a prime target for a government seeking to cover up its illegal work in biological warfare.

For those who disbelieve the possibility that the U.S. Government is the number one suspect in the anthrax attacks, they are directed to James Bamford's book on the National Security Agency, Body of Secrets. The book reveals that in 1962,Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer was planning, along with other member of the Joint Chiefs, a virtual coup d'etat against the administration of President Kennedy using acts of terrorism carried out by the military but to be blamed on the Castro government in Cuba. The secret pan, code-named Operation Northwoods, entailed having U.S. military personnel shoot innocent people on the streets of American cities, sink boats carrying Cuban refugees to Florida, and conduct terrorist bombings in Washington, DC, Miami and other cities. Innocent people were to be framed for committing bombings and hijacking planes.

So far, the Bush administration has refused to support a full and independent Congressional investigation into the events of September 11 [for all the good that did] and the later events involving anthrax. It seems it and the three-letter agencies the administration is so fond of praising, and funding, know more about the source of the anthrax attacks than they are admitting.
http://www.rense.com/general22/un.htm


Government By Anthrax by Richard J. Ochs (revised June 9, 2002)
Suspect : The CIA:
The CIA has cultures of the Ames strain.
The Agency has been conducting secret experiments with powdered germs since 1997 at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio.Battelle received the Ames strain from Fort Detrick in May of 2001. The CIA said it was trying to develop defenses against anthrax, but did not explain why it was doing what other defense labs were set up to do. As of December 16, 2001, one FBI investigator said that the CIA's anthrax project was the "best lead they have at this point."

Just as Oliver North ran an illegal and secret Iran-Contra scam out of the White House, with then President Reagan and CIA denying knowledge of it, so too could conspirators operate secretly and illegally to intimidate the congressional opposition now. Former President Nixon did this also with his Watergate break-in, enemies list and domestic surveillance. There is evidence that George H.W.Bush, former head of the CIA, made a secret pre-election deal in 1980 with the Iranian hostage holders, delaying their release until after the election to insure the victory of Ronald Reagan. After all these dirty tricks, is it too outrageous to think the President's men would stoop to intimidating Congress with anthrax?

The glaring coincidence of the anthrax attacks with the passage of the Patriot Act can only be ignored as an elephant is ignored at a tea party. It is believable that this coincidence was overlooked in the fall of 2001 due to all the confusion, including letters to other places. In historical hindsight, the connection is obvious. It can be ignored now only as Germans ignored the death camps - the brazenness of the crime was unbelievable. Moreover, to admit the crime's existence requires a courageous response.
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/gov_anthrax.html

Dr. Rosenberg, who is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, has argued repeatedly that states, not individuals, tend to have the wherewithal to make advanced biological weapons…Dr. Rosenberg contends that the Ames strain probably did not originate in 1980 or 1981, as is often asserted, but arose decades earlier and was used in the secret American program to make biological weapons.

"All the available information," she said, "is consistent with a U.S. government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the recipe for the U.S. weaponization process." Dr. Rosenberg contended that the anthrax used in the attacks either originated in the weapons program itself or was made by someone who had learned the recipe.

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxinquiryuslabs.html


There was only one week between Sept 11 and Sept 18, when the first two letters (and probably another letter, never found, to AMI) were postmarked. This suggests that the anthrax was already in hand, and the attack largely planned, before Sept 11.

...the anthrax was already in hand, and the attack largely planned, before Sept 11...the anthrax was already in hand, and the attack largely planned, before Sept 11...the anthrax was already in hand, and the attack largely planned, before Sept 11.

A classified report dated February, 1999 discusses responses to an anthrax attack through the mail. The report, precipitated by a series of false anthrax mailings, was written by William Patrick, inventor of the US weaponization process, under a CIA contract to SAIC. The report describes what the US military could do and what a terrorist might be able to achieve. According to the NY Times (12 Dec. 01) the report predicted about 2.5g of anthrax per envelope (the Daschle letter contained 2g) and assumed a poorer quality of anthrax than that found in the Daschle letter. If the perpetrator had access to the materials and information necessary for the attack, he must have had security clearance or other means for accessing classified information, and may therefore have seen the report and used it as a model for the attack.

The perpetrator was probably ready before Sept. 11 and simply took advantage of the likelihood that Sept. 11 would throw suspicion on Muslim terrorists. Was the perpetrator trying to push the US toward some retaliatory military action?

Like using the anthrax attack as a justification for the invasion of Iraq?

The perpetrator successfully covered every personal trace when he prepared and mailed the letters, which suggests that he had forensic training or experience.

Like maybe a CIA agent?

Even if the perpetrator did not make the anthrax himself, just filling the letters with it was a dangerous operation. The perpetrator therefore must have received the anthrax vaccine recently (it requires a yearly booster shot). The vaccine is in short supply and is not generally accessible, and vaccination records are undoubtedly available. The perpetrator also appears to have special expertise in evading contamination while handling weaponized anthrax.

Secret or questionable biodefense projects tend to be given to the CIA, DOE or other agencies and contractors instead of to DOD, in order to maintain deniability (for example, only DOD programs have been reported by the US in the annual information exchange about biodefense activities, under the Biological Weapons Convention). Many contractor scientists work in government labs. A CIA spokesman says that CIA scientists work with other government agencies and contractors on the biodefense program.
http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm


Anthrax And The Agency - Thinking The Unthinkable
…the FBI has never been keen to identify the perpetrator because that perpetrator may, in fact, be the U.S. Government itself. Evidence is mounting that the source of the anthrax was a top secret U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland and that the perpetrators involve high-level officials in the U.S. military and intelligence infrastructure.

Forget unfounded conspiracy theories. The evidence is overwhelming that the FBI has consistently shied away from pursuing the anthrax investigation.
http://www.rense.com/general22/un.htm


The Enemy Within?
"There are really only a few places weapons-grade anthrax could have come from, including Dugway [Army Proving Grounds in Utah], Fort Detrick, and other labs contracted by the military," said David Fidler, a University of Indiana law professor who has written about the legal implications of biological terrorism. "In a way, you have one arm of the executive branch investigating another. And the FBI doesn't have the built-in competencies to conduct an investigation alone which is based on public health principles and science."

But here the FBI has hit a particularly baffling roadblock. The bureau's investigators are not confident that other government agencies, such as the CIA and the Department of Defense, have let them in on the full range of bio-defense work they have commissioned. And this lack of full disclosure may not just be a matter of stonewalling, one former FBI investigator suggested. Rather, FBI investigators may not have the top level security clearances that would allow CIA or Pentagon officials to disclose all they know. The result is an almost comical impasse of mutual distrust and bureaucratic red tape. If the FBI can't investigate the U.S. bio-defense establishment, who can?
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/9/rozen-l.html

Who is stonewalling the US anthrax investigation?
Top Democratic Party leaders are aware that they were targeted for assassination by a former special forces operative with close ties to the military and intelligence apparatus, a man whose identity is known but who for some reason cannot be arrested. They are told that the FBI is deliberately stalling the probe, while the Bush administration pretends that it has no suspects and little information about the attacks. Yet the leaders of the official political opposition say nothing publicly about what amounts to an attempted political coup d'état, and a compliant media sustains the cover-up.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/anth-j20.shtml

 

The Daschle sample contains a special form of silica used in the US process. It does not contain bentonite (used by the Iraqis). A "coating" on the spores in the letter sample, indicative of the secret US process, has been observed. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC has studied the sample using an energy dispersive X-ray specroscope, which can detect the presence of extremely tiny quantities of chemicals; traces of several chemicals have been found (but not reported, presumably for security reasons).
http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm

Additive use could shift theory in anthrax case, FBI's interest in Hatfill seems to have dropped off
By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published November 28, 2003
Adding fuel to a debate that has simmered among scientists since the 2001 anthrax attacks, an article published today in Science magazine says that the deadly spores mailed to two U.S. senators contained sophisticated additives to make the powder float more freely in the air. If confirmed, such a technical innovation might be an important clue in the seemingly stalled FBI investigation, narrowing the field of potential suspects to people with access to such additives and expertise in using them.

The Science article, by free-lance writer Gary Matsumoto, addresses scientists' analysis of the tiny quantity of powder retrieved from letters addressed to Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.

Matsumoto suggests that the spores were treated with two additives: silica, commonly added to industrial products to prevent clumping; and polymerized glass, a more exotic substance used to bind the silica to the spores.

Oh, great! Now they are telling what the additives are? So real terrorists can make it??

Matsumoto writes that U.S. intelligence officials briefing experts from other NATO countries told them that the anthrax powder contained polymerized glass, which "leaves a thin glassy coating that helps bind the silica to particle surfaces."

But as the Science article notes, other scientists advising the FBI have concluded that the anthrax powder contained no additives. In a briefing on Capitol Hill late last year, Matsumoto writes, FBI scientist Dwight Adams suggested that the element silicon was naturally present in the spores and that no silica was added.

So now they are lying. They have to deny additives or it's clearly from DOD or the CIA.
A similar dispute continues over experiments at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground to try to reproduce the powder in the letters using various kinds of equipment. The goal was to "reverse-engineer" the mailed anthrax to try to figure out how it was made.

This is like hiring a coconspirator in a crime to prove perpetrator wasn't involved.

Government sources familiar with the work told The Sun in April that the Dugway researchers felt they had succeeded in reproducing the powder and concluded that it was made with relatively inexpensive equipment and limited expertise.Others familiar with the work, including former United Nations bioweapons inspector Richard O. Spertzel, said the powder made at Dugway did not float as freely as the powder mailed to the senators.

So Dugway is spending their time trying to prove it didn't come from them and could be made without an advanced lab. And all they proved is that it takes an advanced lab to figure it out.


FBI at crucial stage in finding source of anthrax attack
By Peter Franceschina
Staff Writer
Posted March 11 2004
"There is also the disturbing fact that British government sources have stated they had classified information indicating that American authorities had chosen to assassinate the anthrax attacker rather than bring him to trial," Schuler wrote.

Him? There were lots of scientists in this field that turned up dead after the anthrax attacks. Were they killed as part of a coverup? Or because they didn't provide their superiors with information on how flawed this plan was? Or killed to prevent them from implicating their superiors, from doing the "I was just following orders."

No one but the White House at the highest level could order the FBI to not pursue the real culprits and by doing so they prove they were involved. The very existence of a coverup proves there is something that needs covering up, proves that George Bush and the White House were involved and thus use the mechanisms of the federal government to conceal their crimes, the crimes of capital treason and murder.


© Alllie, 2004

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by Alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where, this credit is attached, as well as a link back to this page.


Reader Response
email alllie with any response

Home

Announcements
Chatters Page
Columns
Contact Us
Food 4 Thought
(Chatter Recipes)
The Garden Party
911: Looking Back
Media Links
Newsgarden Compost
Off Center
The Poet's Garden
Server List
Techie Tips
WackyWorld
What's new
Words of the Wise

Search the Site

Articles of Interest

Bush and the Assassination of JFK by Paul Kangas

ANNALS OF DEMOCRACY : COUNTING VOTES by Ronnie Dugger (Nov 7, 1988)

Computerized Systems for Voting Seen as Vulnerable to Tampering by David Burnham, The New York Times (July 29, 1985) plus emphasis, links and comments

A Real Protest (April 9, 2003)
Who's to Blame (Feb 20, 2003)
Listening to the Lies (Sept.12, 2002)
White Storm (August 2, 2003)
!!!Fight!!! (September 9, 2003)
Happy Endings: A Theory of (November 16, 2002)
It Just Isn't Fair
(December 11, 2003)
Every Picture Tells a Story (January 23, 2004)
Who Do You Trust? (April 17, 2004)
The Criminal - Fiction (May 8, 2004)
Why I Believe Bush is the Anthrax Terrorist (October 10, 2004)
 



Return to Top