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2006-09-25 Home Front: WoT
US attacks used 'common anthrax'
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Posted by Steve 2006-09-25 09:05|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Original Washington Post Article. The BBC article ignored the second page.

Apparently there is no dispute that the DNA evidence points to the Ames strain. However, investigators now admit that the Ames strain is distributed world-wide, including Russia.

There has been a lot of controversy concerning additives. The phrase 'widely-circulated misconception' implies public rumor. However, the confusion is at the expert level, and much conflicting testimony has been given.

For considerable detail and references to the testimony, refer to the Wikipedia article.
Posted by  KBK 2006-09-25 09:54||   2006-09-25 09:54|| Front Page Top

#2 US attacks used 'common anthrax'

This otherwise stunning un-news could have been revealed long ago except that in their zeal to score the Fumbling Bunch '0 Idiots and their Media Receptacles Spittoons ruined another US Citizen and heh lets face it what Careerist in the Gubmint or the Media will admit that they f*cked up.
Posted by RD 2006-09-25 13:01||   2006-09-25 13:01|| Front Page Top

#3  "There is no significant signature in the powder that points to a domestic source," an expert told the paper.

i.e. foreign?
Posted by Ptah">Ptah  2006-09-25 13:12|| http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]">[http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]  2006-09-25 13:12|| Front Page Top

#4 of course #2 was just my opinion, and we'll have to see; but credit due to FBI chemist Douglas J Beecher for producing a straight up report.

friend of mine...Chief chemist says many times they do good science and yet some yahoo in the agency will twist up the results so badly it doesn't resemble their reports one bit!!
Posted by RD 2006-09-25 13:13||   2006-09-25 13:13|| Front Page Top

#5 high probability anthrax attack was by a govt scientist who worked at or near Ft Dietrich,or on a subsontract to Dietrich 1. attack took place within days of 9/11.no evidence of coordination of attack so it was a target of opportunity.guy who wants attn to his cause reads 9-11 hdlines, rushes to mail in stuff he has been working. no chance to go and find anthrax,had to be instantly available tosomeone who knew how to handle it.2.Postmark on ltrs identified ,if memory serves as a local drop in N J.,within two hours of Dietrich.3. despite success of atack,no repeat.This was a home grown terrorist trying to attract attn. I think the FBI had the right guy but let him go for lack of evidence.
Posted by john e morrissey">john e morrissey  2006-09-25 13:31|| NEVERINDOUBT]">[NEVERINDOUBT]  2006-09-25 13:31|| Front Page Top

#6 Uh-huh. Pull the other one, it's infected.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford  2006-09-25 13:47|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/]  2006-09-25 13:47|| Front Page Top

#7 So they didn't add the "special sauce" that makes it "military anthrax" eh? Any chance that it is still made by another nation that doesn't use Betty Crocker's recipe and that's why it doesn't have all the fancy extras?

Whatever, this article tells other nations to just make stuff straight and frill free and the US will blame it on a wack job citizen. Nice.
Posted by Laurence of the Rats">Laurence of the Rats  2006-09-25 13:52||   2006-09-25 13:52|| Front Page Top

#8 Not at all, Mr. Morrisey.

Some evidence that M. Atta was treated for anthrax before 9/11, in South Florida.

If it is non-weaponized Ames, Iraq had it, as well as any number of other foreign nations.

There is some evidence that hoax messages from the same author existed prior to 9/11.

Zero evidence that Drs. Hatfill or Berry were involved though both have had their lives ruined by the FBI.
Posted by Chuck Simmins">Chuck Simmins  2006-09-25 15:19|| http://northshorejournal.org]">[http://northshorejournal.org]  2006-09-25 15:19|| Front Page Top

#9 It is still my belief that the anthrax attack was the work of Saddam in co-operation with bin Laden.

People forget that the first person killed worked for the publisher of the National Inquirer which is American Media. Saddam called up his operatives here and told them to send the antrax to the american media. They do a search for 'american media' using there favorite jihad search engine and up pops American Media. They dutifuly send it off to American Media and report back to Saddam that they have sent it. He asked them which media outlets they sent it to but Saddam gets upset when told it was sent to just one media outlet and it was one he had never heard of so he tells them to send to NBC, etc, and for good measure send some to the US Senate. That is my theory on the anthrax attach and I believe it is the most plausible.
Posted by Bob 2006-09-25 16:05||   2006-09-25 16:05|| Front Page Top

#10 mr simmins makes some good points,however I would argue that following: 1/ Mo attas skin lesions never positively identified as anthrax until after the anthrax attack when doctors looked at case and said "well, it could be".in any event since Mo and all his chums died 9/11 they certainly did not mail letters in Trenton on 9/18.2)the material used was originally developed at Ames and subsequently (prior to 2001) shipped to labs around the world including i believe Russian labs and was a strain worked on at Dietrich.3) the first five ltrs all went to media outlets(suggesting someone who wanted publicity more than someone who wanted to kill as many people as possible),to addresses shown in the NYC telephone directory from a post box near Trenton.Whoever mailed this ,mailed what he had on hand(so tha he was a researcher dealing with the anthrax) rather than taking the time to prepare a more lethal variety as was in the second round of the ltrs .The 9/18 ltrs all contained a coarse granular form of anthrax,considered among the least deadly form of the germ ., Assuming the killer did not want to be caught, i would guess he drove an hour or two away from his home to an urban area, possibly on his lunch.The Dietrich area is the only lab within a two hour area from Trenton.I may be wrong on this but I believe at one time the P O said that the stamped time and date on the letters was in the early afternoon of 9/18.My guess is that he took an early luch. I d love to see the security sign out sheet for 9/18 from Ft Dietrich to see who took a long lunch hour that day. 4) the 9/18 ltrs all contained a coarse granular form of anthrax,considered among the least deadly form of the germ.the second round of letters had a more finely dispersed powder,and the crude lettering on the envelopes looked to me that they were made by someone trying to make them stand out in the hope that they would be caught before delivery. As to Hatfill I followed the case years ago, but have lost track.I do know that Hatfill was known to be angry that he was not getting the research funds he tought the topic deserved and said so publicly in a number of papers delivered at symposiums.After the FBI dropped charges for lack of a good case, Htfill announced and infact filed a suit suing the FBI.We have heard no more about it so I suspect that he dropped the case learning from Alger Hisses lesson,that civil suits do not have the same high stds for evidence..best to let sleeping dogs lie.This is of copurse all pure conjecture and I may be wrong but as my website implies not always rightbut NEVERINDOUBT.best wished.
Posted by john e morrissey">john e morrissey  2006-09-25 16:24|| NEVERINDOUBT]">[NEVERINDOUBT]  2006-09-25 16:24|| Front Page Top

#11 Hatfill has lived in two different African countries formerly ruled by white minority regimes, and he appears in the past to have claimed a "military background" or "combat experience" in one of those countries, and "reserve" and "consultant" relationships with the army of the other. Hatfill "served in the armed forces of two white racist governments," as New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has put it. Documentary and testimonial corroboration of this "fact" (sometimes attached to vaguely sourced "suspicions" that Hatfill helped the racists kill black people with germs) is very hard to find, as it happens. And, oddly enough, what little, shaky evidence there is, insofar as anyone ever bothers to cite it, inevitably traces from -- or through, or back to -- an outfit called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

Possible connections with South African Medical Special Operations Battalion and Wouter Basson probably led to the rush to judgement by the FBI and labeling as "person of interest." Low hanging fruit as it were.
Posted by Besoeker 2006-09-25 17:03||   2006-09-25 17:03|| Front Page Top

#12 SO you're saying the fact that _you_ haven't heard any more of Hatfill's suit maintaining his innocence is really in fact an admission of guilt?
Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-09-25 17:43||   2006-09-25 17:43|| Front Page Top

#13 Wahahhaahhaha.... no, indeed I have not. Not been following Stephen much I must admit.
Posted by Besoeker 2006-09-25 17:47||   2006-09-25 17:47|| Front Page Top

#14 I was replying to the comment before yours; number 10, I think.
Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-09-25 18:04||   2006-09-25 18:04|| Front Page Top

#15 Right, sorry mate.
Posted by Besoeker 2006-09-25 18:05||   2006-09-25 18:05|| Front Page Top

#16 I am not claiming that this is dispositive, but Hatfill failure to follow thru certainly raises suspicions. at last sight he was highly indignant why not follow thru? .As i said we may nevr know who did it,but to say that circumstantial evidence points to him is certainly reasonable.mailing a deadly poison to get publicity is not easy to pin down..there are no eye witnesses, the perp ,unless he is truly an idiot ,goes out of his way not to leave clues ...as witness the mailing from trenton...there are no ballistics matches...so if you want to get to who did it ,you have to make reasonable inferences. remember, there was not enough evidence to charge alger hiss,and his friends in the media kept badgering him to file a libel lawsuit...once he did he was on the way to prison.what is Hatfill afraid of?
Posted by john e morrissey">john e morrissey  2006-09-25 18:16|| NEVERINDOUBT]">[NEVERINDOUBT]  2006-09-25 18:16|| Front Page Top

#17 You assume that since you haven't seen any news on it, that Hatfill must have dropped the lawsuit and that that constitutes an admission of guilt on his part.

Neither of these chains of reasoning, IMHO, hold up.

A quick web search showed that the government has tried delaying the lawsuit from going forward because it would allegedly interfere with their ability to proceed with the investigation and possibly compromise what they consider to be classified information. Also, two of Hatfill's four claims were dropped due to legal reasoning about a year ago: link. This indicates that about a year ago, the case was still ongoing. That's the most recent news item on it I could find.

Second, if he were to run out of money to fund the lawsuit, I am unsure as to whether that would actually prove anything about what really happened.
Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-09-25 18:52||   2006-09-25 18:52|| Front Page Top

#18 Note: dropped by the presiding judge, not by Hatfill.
Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-09-25 18:53||   2006-09-25 18:53|| Front Page Top

#19 This issue is confused by the fact that more than one grade of anthrax was used in the attacks. The stuff sent to the New York media outlets was crap, but that only gave people cutaneous cases. It was the Senate anthrax that gave people inhalational cases, and the first letter sent to American Media -- that stuff was the killer.

What's everyone's take on Dr. Tsonas' diagnosis of anthrax on the finger of one of the 9-11 hijackers, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi? And on what date did that letter arrive at American media, the letter that killed Stevens and severely sickened Blanco? It may have arrived before the eleventh.

The US gov't seems eager to bury any foreign connection to the anthrax, and equally eager to spread the impression that anyone could have made the stuff in a bathtub, instead of a team of experts working in a biosafety level 4 laboratory.

I suppose the USAMRIID scientists interviewed by Richard Preston were just making up stuff about the van der waals force-defeating coating on each individual spore in the Senate anthrax.

I think the anthrax trail ultimately leads to Iraq.
Posted by Rory B. Bellows 2006-09-25 19:10||   2006-09-25 19:10|| Front Page Top

#20 Rory: I believe you are correct, and I also believe this incident was at least part of the justification for the current conflict and for removing the Saddam regime. The gov't hesitation to point the source to an off-shore location may in fact be quite prudent. Why road-map it for others.
Posted by Besoeker 2006-09-25 19:16||   2006-09-25 19:16|| Front Page Top

#21 Before we dismiss the NYC anthrax, let's remember that 2 of the five deaths happened there. The deaths of Kathy T. Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren have never been explained, and alleging poor quality spores makes their deaths even more unusual.

I'm afraid the latest news suggests that we cannot rely on any former description of the quality of the spores as accurate. Indeed, I'd toss out all the info leaked to date as potentially worthless.

I agree with the reason for the American Media attack. The mook opened a phone book, saw "American Media" and sent the letter.
Posted by Chuck Simmins">Chuck Simmins  2006-09-25 19:23|| http://northshorejournal.org]">[http://northshorejournal.org]  2006-09-25 19:23|| Front Page Top

#22 crap - I'm listed under "Crusading Infidel" in our white pages
Posted by Frank G 2006-09-25 19:35||   2006-09-25 19:35|| Front Page Top

#23 the florida fatality of robert stephens was on 9/30.he had left his office at ami for vacation on 9/26.(http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/anthrax.html)the ltr was nevr found but reconstruction by AMI employees led to the belief that the original letter was addressed to a jennifer lopez and post dated 9/18.Stephens became ill on the 30 and died shortly after. for a review see http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/anthrax.html
Posted by john e morrissey">john e morrissey  2006-09-25 19:47|| NEVERINDOUBT]">[NEVERINDOUBT]  2006-09-25 19:47|| Front Page Top

#24 well, of course, because Jennifer Lopez works for that damn American Media....
Posted by Frank G 2006-09-25 19:58||   2006-09-25 19:58|| Front Page Top

#25 I believe the American Media building was visible from the highway in the area some of the hijackers lived.
Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford  2006-09-25 20:04|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/]  2006-09-25 20:04|| Front Page Top

#26 Ah, "common houshold anthrax"...

Well, never mind then.
Posted by Cravins Jerenter1327 2006-09-25 21:47||   2006-09-25 21:47|| Front Page Top

#27 American Media may seem obscure to those of us who read The New York Times or The Daily Star (to keep track of the shuttle guns!) but to people who do their research from supermarket tabloids they are very high profile.
Posted by Odysseus 2006-09-25 21:50||   2006-09-25 21:50|| Front Page Top

#28 how else would we keep track of Shelly Long, Oprah, and Bin Ladin!
Posted by Frank G 2006-09-25 22:05||   2006-09-25 22:05|| Front Page Top

#29 There may have been more than one J-Lo letter sent to American Media. (Link)Some of the data from Sverdlovsk indicates that the incubation period for inhalational anthrax can be lengthy -- the longest incubation period there for an inhalational case was 43 days.

Several are focusing on a letter that arrived at the company about a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. It was described by sources as a “weird love letter to Jennifer Lopez”—similar, outwardly, to the types of mail the tabloids often get. But inside the oddly-worded letter was what was described as a “soapy, powdery substance” and in the pile of that a cheap Star of David charm. The letter, per routine, was taken in by the joint mailroom of the company. Employees said the letter was handled both by Stevens and Blanco.

Chuck Simmins wrote: "I'm afraid the latest news suggests that we cannot rely on any former description of the quality of the spores as accurate. Indeed, I'd toss out all the info leaked to date as potentially worthless."

I disagree, or at least I would heavily qualify that statement. There is undoubtedly some truth in the information realeased to date, but there is also a tremendous amount of disinformation introduced by official or semi-official sources. So we must carefully parse each piece of data in this wilderness of mirrors. It's not a task that will yield quick and easy answers.

Chuck again: "I agree with the reason for the American Media attack. The mook opened a phone book, saw "American Media" and sent the letter."

Perhaps. But Gloria Irish, the wife of a Sun editor Micheal Irish, rented an apartment to Hamza Alghamdi and Marwan al-Shehhi.
(Link)This may be pure coincidence, but it does introduce an element of uncertainty here. The target may not have been totally random.

"Before we dismiss the NYC anthrax, let's remember that 2 of the five deaths happened there. The deaths of Kathy T. Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren have never been explained, and alleging poor quality spores makes their deaths even more unusual."

You're right -- these deaths are the most mysterious. Lungren lived in Connecticut if memory serves. And the fact that two apparently unconnected women many miles away from the fatal attacks perished makes the case for weaponized anthrax much stronger.

Besörker said: "Rory: I believe you are correct, and I also believe this incident was at least part of the justification for the current conflict and for removing the Saddam regime. The gov't hesitation to point the source to an off-shore location may in fact be quite prudent. Why road-map it for others."

Humble open source folks, paying close attention, can develop this idea and run with it. ,(Link) A hostile state with the resources of an intelligence agency can do even more. So I have to ask, who is the government hiding this from?
Posted by Rory B. Bellows 2006-09-25 22:05||   2006-09-25 22:05|| Front Page Top

#30 Rory...that's link-crazy!
Posted by Frank G 2006-09-25 22:07||   2006-09-25 22:07|| Front Page Top

#31 Ay! For some reason, all of my links show up in bold, and I forgot to close a tag. Sorry.
Posted by Rory B. Bellows 2006-09-25 22:07||   2006-09-25 22:07|| Front Page Top

#32 :-) no prob
Posted by Frank G 2006-09-25 22:11||   2006-09-25 22:11|| Front Page Top

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