The greatest political crime in the history of the United States of America

[seemslikeadream]

Just a reminder

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/national/article.aspx?storyid=45349

Congress demands answers on anthrax investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of Congress want answers on an anthrax investigation, including a fatal attack in South Florida.

Thirty-three members of Congress have written Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding that the FBI update lawmakers on the investigation into the anthrax attacks five years ago. The case remains unsolved.

The FBI has refused to tell lawmakers what it has learned, citing concerns about possible leaks.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the panel's top Democrat and its next chairman, was one of the targets of the attacks in fall of 2001. He got an anthrax-filled letter sent to his office.





http://grassley.senate.gov/releases/2006/12122006.pdf

Anthrax attack on US Congress made by scientists and covered up by FBI, expert says
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2901147

Leahy promises ‘real‘ oversight of FBI
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2651013

AP -Congress Demands Answers on Anthrax
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2649483

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_061222_anthrax_attacks_on_u.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15983.htm

[Warpy]

1. Well, we all know it was traced back to the CIA weapons lab

at Ft. Detrick. Some of us know how difficult weaponized anthrax is to produce and once produced, how difficult it is to handle. The only way to avoid extensive environmental contamination and a large cluster of deaths is to fill envelopes within a high level containment facility. I doubt that even doing it underwater would help, as disposal of the of the air filled container necessary to fill those envelopes would itself have spread those spores, as would opening it to remove the envelopes.

This has "inside job" written all over it. The FBI is sitting on a keg of dynamite that could blow the Bush family sky high.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Wow

I hope Leahy investigates and finds the truth.

[leveymg]

5. The Ames Strain was developed at an U.S. Army weapons lab, to be precise.

http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=419&issueID=39
June 2002

Study Confirms Ames Strain Used In Anthrax Attacks; Scientists Investigated -

WASHINGTON-Researchers last month confirmed earlier reports that the B. anthracis strain used in the recent Florida anthrax attacks was derived from the weapons grade Ames strain, though they could not pinpoint the exact origin of the Florida isolate. The Ames anthrax strain was initially developed by the U.S. Army but was later distributed to university researchers, who in turn provided samples to other facilities including a military laboratory in the United Kingdom.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acknowledged last month that investigators would administer polygraph tests to a number of current and former employees of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and other laboratories. Yet, a spokesperson for the FBI declined to specify the number of scientists who would receive the polygraph, though other news accounts said 200 individuals would be tested.

Officials from the FBI and Army said the tests were "completely voluntary," noting that no one could be compelled to take a lie detector test. The study that linked the Florida attacks to the Ames anthrax strain appeared in the May 9 online issue of Science Express. It compared isolates of the two strains and demonstrated that genome sequencing would soon allow scientists to more accurately trace the origin of individual bacterial strains, determine whether or not strains have been genetically modified, and assess the potential danger of the bacterium.

SNIP

[smoogatz]

10. Maybe.

And maybe it was a guy in a hazmat suit working in his garage, after dosing himself to the gills with cipro.

[mhatrw]

19. So where did he get the anthrax?

And why haven't we caught him?

And what was his motive?

[smoogatz]

27. See post #5

In answer (maybe) to question #1.

2.Because he/she is smarter than the FBI agents running the investigation. Who isn't?

3.To kill the persons to whom the letters were addressed: or at least to kill people who worked for them, and to shut down their offices and terrorize them.

[mhatrw]

30. Why? Why would someone with access to US Army anthrax

who is smarter than the entire FBI and DOJ want to terrorize Senators Leahy and Daschle in the wake of 9/11?

And why did the bigwigs in the White House start taking Cipro on 9/12?

[The Backlash Cometh]

38. The Iraq War was a go, as far as the White House was concerned,

so they tried to frighten anybody who wouldn't lamely vote to give Bush full powers in Congress to go after the terrorists. Keep in mind that the White House had their sights on Iraq, even this early. He didn't want the opposition asking too many questions. WE desperately need to find out who sent that anthrax because these evil doers are still operating within our shores.

[Stephanie]

35. The motive was to get Democrats and journalists to shut the fuck up

and tow the line. Only Democrats in Congress got anthrax letters, only journalists perceived as 'liberal' got them. The only journalist who died was at the tabloid that published photos of Jenna drunk.

[rambler_american]

34. Inside job

I have yet to hear an explanation of why the White House was taking Cipro a week BEFORE the anthrax attacks. I'm sure there is an innocent explanation. I just can't come up with one.

[malaise]

2. Go Patrick

Start the investigations

K & R!

[hfojvt]

4. Who is heading that investigation again?

Sgt. Schultz? Congress is likely to hear back "I know nothink".

[seemslikeadream]

6. makes ya think some one's being blackmailed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2990880

[me b zola]

7. k&r

[Peace Patriot]

8. Well, it has some big rivals for "greatest political crime in the U.S."

To name a few:

The Supreme Court appointing George Bush as president in 2000: Gore won.

9/11: LIHOP. (The crime of mass murder and destruction, but also very much a political crime--look at what 9/11 hath wrought!)

Diebold/ES&S: The two brethren electronic voting corporations that took over our election system between 2002 and 2004, using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code to "count" all the votes--in a coup that was engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by corporatist 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd); their vehicle: the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002, and its $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding that was trickled through the fingers of election officials and legislators, corrupting our entire election system as it was intended to, thence into the pockets of these two Bushite corporations, one of which was headed by a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (Diebold) and the other of which was initially funded by rightwing extremist billionaire Howard Ahmanson (ES&S).

Paul Wellstone's plane crash: How did the FBI get there so fast? What did they do with the evidence? Why was there no public hearing? Who put out the lie that the weather was bad? (--among other questions). (Wellstone, you may recall, was a charismatic U.S. Senator--a man who resembled Robert Kennedy in many ways--who was winning his re-election bid on the pledge to lead the fight against the Iraq War in the Senate, and was more than likely headed for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2004.)

Max Cleland: first use of no-paper-trail electronic voting (Diebold), to flip a 15% lead for the Georgia Senate seat into a loss; election theft, combined with Rovian pre-written narrative for the post-election "explanation" (in this case, that the ads that painted Cleland--a vet who had left three limbs in Vietnam--as a "friend of Osama bin Laden" were successful--which was utter bullshit.)

November 2, 2004: Kerry won.

Torture: You think they're torturing and "rendering" people to "keep America safe"? I don't. I think they're torturing and "rendering" and "disappearing" witnesses to their political and other crimes, to track down potential whistleblowers and evidence, to cover up money trails, etc.

The outing of Valerie Plame and the Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network: A political crime, on one level--perpetrated to frighten and silence dissent among the honest professionals in our government, AND to bring about the deaths or disablement of our entire network of covert agents/contacts around the world, who were tracking WMDs. Possibly also involving the murder of David Kelly in England (Brits' WMD expert who was whistleblowing to the BBC on the "sexed up" pre-war WMD intel, and who was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed; his office and computers were searched, and, four days later, the entire Brewster-Jennings network was ADDITIONALLY outed). A political crime that turned into a crime of treason and murder.

The Iraq War: 100,000 innocent people slaughtered, in the initial bombing alone--and many more since then. A political crime, in that the war was based on bald-faced lies and deception; also an economic crime, with the purpose of stealing Mideast oil, and massive theft by war profiteers; and a war crime: genocide.

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

I could go back in history, to the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, all in the space of five years--and all related, in my opinion, to the Vietnam War and the war profiteers who were behind it. But these more recent political crimes are of equal weight, are also related to war and war profiteers, and are more fresh in our minds.

I will admit, though, that the Anthrax mailings (along with the untimely death, and likely murder, of Paul Wellstone) set the context for the passage of the Iraq War Resolution, and also, at the same time, for passage of the "Help America Vote for War Act." We will also probably never know the extent to which pervasive domestic spying, blackmail and black ops, influenced members of Congress. Clearly, the Bush Junta was in a position to intimidate, ruin or kill anyone who got in their way. I think that, ultimately, the entire Bush Junta will be labeled "the greatest political crime in the history of the United States"--or should I say "crime wave."

[seemslikeadream]

9. yes Peace Patriot, Paul

Wellstone Was Murdered"American Assassination," two professors explain how
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2332485

[robertpaulsen]

17. Great list.

Regarding LIHOP, I would agree and say that the anthrax attacks were the second wave of the same black op. I find it a bit too coincidental that out of all the possible chemical or biological weapons we could have been attacked with, sarin gas, smallpox, ricin, botulinum, etc., Dick Cheney just happened to instruct his staff on the evening of September 11 to take Cipro in case there was an anthrax attack. How did he guess? I believe Cheney was in on both waves.

[AikidoSoul]

18. Add the genocidal use of Depleted Uranium weaponry--half-life 4.5 billion yrs

And which is destroying the DNA integrity of Iraq and surrounding territories.
A half life 4.5 billion years -- just imagine! Every time I think of this
I become deeply ashamed to be an American citizen.

Both of the Bushes did this. Clinton did too in the Balkans, but the usage was minuscule in comparison.

[MonkeyFunk]

25. a half-life of 4.5 billion years

means it's a pretty stable element. Radiation is not the problem with DU.

[followthemoney]

26. If those tons of DU found their way to a major city in the U.S. the story would be ...

quite different. Latte sippers would be fleeing for their lives screaming about dirty bombs.

[MonkeyFunk]

28. Do you understand

what half-life means?

a 4.5 billion half-life means the material in question has very little radioactivity. It's the shit with a short half-life you should worry about.

[rman]

36. Waste from nuclear reactors has a long half-life -

If long half-life means it isn't hazardous, then why is it put away far under ground? Because it's both vary radio active and has a long half-life. Contrary to what you seem to be suggesting, the two are not mutually exclusive.

DU dust in your body (ie lungs) is not good for your health. And there are many people running around in a desert laced with DU, most of them without protective gear.

[Ian_rd]

39. Correct. Just because it has a long half-life doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.

[In Truth We Trust]

21. Absoluetly spot on!

[truedelphi]

32. The National Transportion Department sent me their files

On Wellstone's crash.

Some of the things I know: The media suppressed the facts that stand out - not one but two pilots were at the controls.

The weather was not a factor - some rain and a bit of mild sleet are everyday occurrences in Minnesota at that time of year.

The Transportation Depts files show: The plane itself burned for far too long for such a small plane- crashed around 11Am and was still burning after 5Pm. What caused that to be the case?

People in the area experienced anomalies that could relate to some type of ElectroMagnetic Pulse occurring - garage doors that went up or down but not operated by the home owner.

[butterfly77]

11. Look back at the faces of the republiCONS..

when they were having a press conference about the anthrax at that time...

[electropop]

12. Refresh my memory?

Were they grinning smugly? Did Dr. Frist, owner of medical labs, have an especially big leer?

[butterfly77]

16. From what I can remember ...

my focus was mainly on Mitch McConnell, as it seems as though he is always in the background sneering like the Grinch who stole xmas...When the repugs have these press conferences he is always in the background and I believe he is the writer for Frist as well as his wife Elaine Cho who doesn't know what the hell she is doing,as well as Frist...

[Rex]

13. Yup, five years later and Cheney's FBI is running around like the

Keystone cops. I would blame Torture Boy, but honestly I don't think he has a clue as to what the paymasters have in mind.

[Zavulon]

14. I thought the greatest crime was the 2000 "election," but I digress.

We'll sooner find out who killed Kennedy than we'll learn jack shit about this.

[Rex]

15. Lone gunman

with a railgun, in lower orbit ftw.

[rman]

37. Lone gunmen

(plural)

[Mme. Defarge]

20. I want to know

why the President and his entourage all took Cipro on 9/11/01.

[libertarianseeker]

22. Speaking of anthrax....

our troops will now be required to take anthrax vaccinations that have caused illness and death in previous recipients. If you're wondering which BFEE members will profit, I'm not certain. An Internet search does indicate that Emergent Biosolutions, the sole manufacturer and patent holder, includes Joe M. Allbaugh, who was head of FEMA from 2001 to 2003, on its Board of Directors.

[raysr]

23. BFEE, w/o a doubt.

[Contrite]

24. Computer says

Philip Zack, Zionist scientist

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/01/26/assaad/index_np.html


or Kanatjan Alibekov, alias "Ken Alibek", Russian defector?

http://www.tetrahedron.org/news/NR020830.html

Anyone remember Frank Olson?

Arrows point to the CIA.

http://www.crimemagazine.com/olson.htm

Indeed, Frank Rudolph Olson had spent his entire professional career at Camp Detrick. Having received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1941, Frank enlisted in the Army 10 months later. Following completion of officers training in Texas at Fort Hood, 30 miles outside of Waco, Cap. Olson had been recruited to work on top-secret projects at Camp Detrick. After the war, he resigned from the Army but was asked to stay on as a civilian scientist.

"Pop, they told me that Frank died last night," Alice told her father after he took the phone from his stunned wife.

"How?" Charles Wicks asked. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure," Alice said. "They only told me that he either fell or jumped out of a hotel window."

Fell or jumped out of a window? Rev. Wicks wasn't sure that he had heard his daughter correctly.

"Where did this happen?" he asked.

"In New York City," Alice said in a strained voice, "at the Statler Hotel."

. . .

Before he left for New York, Frank Olson told his wife, "I've made a terrible mistake. I'll talk with you about it later."

[Higans]

29. The Anthrax Attack never happened. There hasn't been a Terrorist attack since 9-11 Remember?

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.

[Erika]

31. A son of a coworker was assigned for over 2 years

to the anthrax threat. Nothing ever came of it. It all circled into a dead end.

[illinoisprogressive]

33. Frank Rich has a great take on this in his book

It was so politicized and Bush ignored it. ashcroft ran around playing the big bad and it was a total keystone cops thing. They totally f'd it up. All posture no investigating.

[progressoid]

40. ruh roh. Somebody's toes are gonna get stepped on

:evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin:

[Tesha]

41. Nonsense. The greatest political crime took place December 12th, 2000.

Nonsense. The greatest political crime in the history of
the United States took place December 12th, 2000 when the
United States Supreme Court decided, by a 5-4 majority, that
our votes did not need to be accurately counted and that
they could, by virtue of this oblique decision, install a
President of their choosing, aligned with their political
allegiances.

Never forget it!

Tesha

[n2doc]

42. The American Chemistry Society has had some interesting articles on this case

Here's one:

FBI scientist says powders in 2001 attacks contain pure, but untreated spores

Lois Ember


In what is believed to be the most extensive public FBI statement to date on the 2001 anthrax attacks, an FBI scientist debunks much of the widely reported claims about the anthrax powders mailed to two U.S. senators and several news organizations. Those attacks killed five people and sickened 17 others. Typical of earlier assessments, scientists and physicians published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May 2002 describing the Senate anthrax powder as "weapons grade" and having "high spore concentration, uniform size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping." But FBI scientist Douglas J. Beecher refutes that description (Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2006, 72, 5304). He writes that "a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production." On the contrary, he writes, the anthrax powders in the letters "were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents." The FBI would not make Beecher available for interviews.

Harvard University molecular biologist Matthew S. Meselson is one of several scientists asked to examine electron micrographs of the powders and confirms Beecher's statement. Meselson tells C&EN that he "saw no evidence of anything except spores." Meselson also says that "on a small scale it is not difficult" to produce preparations of high purity—up to 1 trillion spores per gram in some of the anthrax-letter powders. A skilled scientist possessing the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis used in the 2001 attacks could have produced such material using "basic microbiological lab equipment and supplies," he says.

The highly virulent Ames strain, first isolated in the U.S. and engineered as a weapon by scientists in the U.S.'s former bioweapons program, is now so globally distributed that the FBI has had to cast its net for the perpetrator more widely. Although the five-year-old investigation appears to be mired, Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office, says the bureau's "commitment to solving this case is undiminished." He insists "the case will be solved."

I would post a link but you have to be a member of ACS to read it, and this is the entire article.

[n2doc]

43. Here's another one

Government Cancels Anthrax Vaccine Contract
Failure reflects problems with Project BioShield; legislative fix revamps program, boosts incentives
Glenn Hess
In a setback to the Bush Administration's efforts to counter bioterrorism, the government has terminated an $877.5 million contract for a new anthrax vaccine after the manufacturer missed a key deadline to begin human clinical trials. The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) informed Brisbane, Calif.-based VaxGen on Dec. 19 that it was canceling the company's contract to provide 75 million doses of a modern anthrax vaccine for civilian biodefense. "VaxGen's failure to perform is not excusable," HHS said in a letter to the company. "The government is terminating the contract for default." HHS based the decision on its determination that VaxGen failed to resolve problems with the vaccine's performance and missed a milestone that required the company to initiate human testing of the vaccine by Dec. 18.

The Food & Drug Administration had put the clinical trial on hold due to continuing concerns about the vaccine's stability. The agency refused to allow human testing, saying VaxGen had not demonstrated that the vaccine would maintain its potency. The contract was by far the largest component of Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion government program to build a national stockpile of modern vaccines and drugs to counter a chemical or biological attack. VaxGen's genetically engineered vaccine was expected to produce fewer side effects and be effective with fewer doses than the current anthrax vaccine, which was developed in the 1950s. Created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Project Bioshield has been marked by delays and operational problems. The major pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to join the venture, and the government has been slow to decide which disease it should defend against.

At a hearing held by the House Energy & Commerce Committee in April 2006, HHS officials acknowledged that the lack of a strategic plan had left pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies guessing about what kind of research to launch. In response, Congress passed a new law earlier this month reorganizing management of the program and increasing incentives for private-sector participation. Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-N.C.), who crafted the Senate version of the bill, said the measure should help prevent the kind of problems that led to the cancellation of the VaxGen contract. "This law takes important steps to increase our preparedness and response capabilities for public health emergencies, and it improves our ability to create new drugs and vaccines to fight against emergencies, be they chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear threats, as well as deliberate, accidental, or natural disasters," Burr said.

[Contrite]

48. Typical. Big Pharma creates bioterror in the first place (Merck)

and now they want big money to produce the vaccines?

FWIR,Project BioShield is a proposed "forced" vaccination program, anyway.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051020&articleId=1117

(snip)

"This proposed legislation, like the power and money grab by federal health officials and industry in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Project Bioshield Act of 2004, is an unconstitutional attempt by some in Congress to give a taxpayer- funded handout to pharmaceutical companies for drugs and vaccines the government can force all citizens to use while absolving everyone connected from any responsibility for injuries and deaths which occur.

It means that, if an American is injured by an experimental flu or anthrax vaccine he or she is mandated to take, that citizen will be banned from exercising the Constitutional right to a jury trial even if it is revealed that the vaccine maker engaged in criminal fraud and negligence in the manufacture of the vaccine."

(snip)

If the Burr bill passes, all economic incentives to insure mandated vaccines are safe will be removed and the American people are facing a future where government can force them to take poorly regulated experimental drugs and vaccines labeled as "countermeasures" or go to jail. The only recourse for citizens will be to strike down mandatory vaccination laws so vaccines will be subject to the law of supply and demand in the marketplace. The health care consumer's cry will be: No liability? No mandates."

[n2doc]

45. Anthrax timeline

Timeline

Chronology Of A Biocrime
Sept. 17 or 18, 2001: Five anthrax letters likely mailed from Trenton, N.J., and postmarked Sept. 8 arrive at news organizations in New York and Florida. Only the letters addressed to the New York Post and NBC News are recovered; the existence of the others is inferred from the pattern of infection.

Oct 4: A photo editor at the National Enquirer in Florida is confirmed to have inhalation anthrax, the first known case in the U.S. since 1976.

Oct. 5: The photo editor dies, the first of five fatalities in the anthrax attacks.

Oct. 6 to Oct. 9: Two more anthrax letters are mailed from Trenton, postmarked Oct. 9.

Oct. 15: Letter to former Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) is opened and tests positive for anthrax; the enclosed anthrax is described as a "fine, light tan powder."

Oct. 16 and 17: Senate and House offices are closed.

Oct. 19: Tom Ridge, then director of the White House Office of Homeland Security, tells the media that anthrax spores found in the letters to the Enquirer, NBC News, and Daschle are "indistinguishable," meaning they are from the same strain.

Oct. 21 and 22: Two Washington, D.C., postal workers who handled anthrax letters die.

Oct. 25: Ridge updates the scientific analysis of the anthrax samples, telling reporters that the anthrax from the Daschle letter was "highly concentrated" and "pure" and that a binding material was used. The Daschle spore clusters, he says, are smaller when compared with the anthrax found in the letter delivered to the New York Post. He describes the Post anthrax as coarser and less concentrated—"clumpy and rugged"—than the Daschle anthrax, which he says is "fine and floaty." Still, he says, the material from both samples is the same Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax.

Oct. 29: Maj. Gen. John S. Parker at a White House briefing says silica was found in the Daschle anthrax sample, and the anthrax spore concentration in the Daschle letter was 10 times that of the New York Post letter.

Oct. 31: A New York woman dies of anthrax. Maj. Gen. Parker testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation & Federal Services about the anthrax found in the Daschle letter.

Nov. 7: Ridge briefs the press and dismisses bentonite as an additive for the anthrax spores in the Daschle letter and says it is silicon. (Iraq supposedly used bentonite in weaponizing anthrax.)

Nov. 16: FBI finds anthrax letter addressed to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

Nov. 21: A Connecticut woman dies of anthax, the fifth and last person to die as a result of the anthrax mailings.

Dec. 5: The Leahy letter is opened at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a biodefense facility, at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Md.

Dec. 12: The Baltimore Sun reports that the anthrax spores used in the attacks match those produced in small amounts over the past 10 years by the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

Dec. 16: DNA testing of the anthrax spores in the Leahy letter shows them to be the Ames strain. The Washington Post reports that the spores in the Daschle and Leahy letters are identical to those produced at Dugway Proving Ground.

Aug. 6, 2002: Then-attorney general John Ashcroft, on CBS's "The Early Show," calls Steven Hatfill "a person of interest" in the FBI investigation. (Hatfill has never been charged with the crime, and he is suing the Justice Department, the New York Times, and others.)

August 2006: FBI scientist Douglas J. Beecher publishes a paper in Applied & Environmental Microbiology in which he strongly implies that the spores in the anthrax letters were not produced with additives and were not specially engineered (that is, weaponized).

[n2doc]

46. Here is part of a much longer article

Anthrax Sleuthing
Science aids a nettlesome FBI criminal probe
Lois R. Ember
It was a tense, unsettling time. A mere week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, anthrax-laced letters began coursing through the mails on their way to several news organs and two U.S. senators, delivering death to five and mayhem to a nation. This first major act of bioterrorism on U.S. soil triggered one of the largest, most complex, and costliest investigations ever undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and still the person who mailed the letters remains at large. This September, Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office, acknowledged the major, if unheralded, role science is playing in the probe. Yet the FBI has said little about what science has revealed, citing the criminal nature of the case as its reason. What scientific tidbits the public has been fed come from media reports, and most of these have been incorrect or incomplete.

Since finding an unopened anthrax letter addressed to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) in late 2001 and the letter's dramatic handover to scientists at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the FBI has clamped down on information on the probe. The embargo has been so tight that a former top military scientist who now works for a government contractor tells C&EN that he was consulted before the Leahy letter, but afterward, he could get no updates on progress being made even from friends in the FBI. Though massive resources have been devoted to solving the case, many FBI critics attribute FBI's silence to the fact that the probe initially was misdirected and is now stalled.
Inexplicably, that silence was broken this August. Then, Douglas J. Beecher, a microbiologist in the FBI's hazardous materials response unit, published a paper in Applied & Environmental Microbiology, a well-respected but not well-known journal. It took the media a month to publish accounts of Beecher's article, which they generally interpreted as indicating that the FBI initially had misunderstood the nature of the anthrax used in the attacks. After reading those news accounts, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote the FBI, requesting that it brief the committee on the status of the investigation. Assistant FBI Director Eleni P. Kalisch summarily rejected Holt's request.

Kalisch said that briefing the intelligence committee on a criminal investigation would be inappropriate. She also said the FBI and the Justice Department had decided long ago to stop briefing members of Congress after sensitive, classified information found its way into media accounts citing congressional sources. A Holt spokesman told C&EN the intelligence committee received "three limited briefings in 2002 and 2003, and no committee member has ever been implicated in leaks." Angered by the FBI's refusal to brief Congress, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), in late October, blasted the FBI's investigation for its "dead-ends" and "lack of progress." In a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Grassley listed a litany of questions he wanted the department and the FBI to answer. He is still awaiting answers. Beecher's peer-reviewed paper set off heated discussions not only in Congress but also in the arms control community and among government and academic scientists. The seven-page article chronicles the methodology the FBI used to uncover the Leahy letter, which, because it was unopened, contained the most unadulterated powder recovered from any letter.

What sparked debate was one paragraph in the discussion section that a military analyst, who asked not to be named because he still works with the FBI, says "clearly had nothing to do with the content of the article." The first anthrax-laced letter destined for the Senate reached the office of former Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and was opened by one of his aides on Oct. 15, 2001. That simple act unleashed a fluffy light tan powder that wafted through the office and traveled the air ducts to contaminate the entire Hart Senate Office Building. Offices in the Hart building were evacuated, and eventually, other Senate and House offices were shuttered as well. The work of Congress came nearly to a standstill.

In an Oct. 16 Washington Post OpEd, Daschle alludes to the Beecher article and writes that questions still "remain in the scientific community about the composition of the anthrax and the level of technological expertise required to manufacture it." Given how easily the powder in the Daschle letter aerosolized, government officials, military scientists, and academic anthrax experts were quoted in the media as claiming the anthrax spores in the letter had to have been "weaponized." That is, the spores had to have been specially treated or processed—milled and coated with an additive such as silica—to make them float in the air. But in his article, Beecher, almost as an aside, dismisses this possibility. In the paragraph that set the scientific and arms control communities abuzz, Beecher writes: A "widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production." This is the FBI's first public statement on the investigation since it began analyzing the material in the Leahy letter and the first time the bureau has described the anthrax powder. Beecher, however, provides no citation for the statement or any information in the article to back it up, and FBI spokeswomen have declined requests to interview him.

If you are an ACS member the rest of the article is here:

http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/84/i49/html/8449gov1.html

[Contrite]

47. The case will be solved

The highly virulent Ames strain, first isolated in the U.S. and engineered as a weapon by scientists in the U.S.'s former bioweapons program, is now so globally distributed that the FBI has had to cast its net for the perpetrator more widely. Although the five-year-old investigation appears to be mired, Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office, says the bureau's "commitment to solving this case is undiminished." He insists "the case will be solved."

Who will they pin it on?

[Beelzebud]

44. The Anthrax strain came from an Army Medical Research Lab. Gee I wonder...