It was 6 years ago, life had been changed by the vile followers of Osama Bin Laden, and a New York landmark was still a landmark, but for all the wrong reasons. Where two huge towers once stood, a still smoldering pile of rubble existed. Bodies were still being counted, yet the bodies no longer existed even in the smallest DNA sample. Maybe the high spot in this all time low in human morality was that it was becoming clear that the death toll was not going to be the 25,000 that had been imagined, but a lower number, something under 5,000. This was scant succor for those families involved, or the world in general, this had been a gross violation of everything that we hold dear.
But we were not done with the violation, then the Anthrax issue raised it’s ugly head. Suddenly this became the new weapon, an innocuous looking white powder turning up in the mail. The innocuous white powder however had a deadly punch.
The question on every-ones lips was ‘is this Al Qaeda again’? CNN provided their usual 24 hour a day of mind numbing coverage of the problem. They interviewed everyone from your local letter carrier, to international stamp collectors, and offered little useful in the way of information. Meanwhile the Government was spouting loud about a speedy resolution to this latest outrage.
Well here we are 6 years later, and there are no answers, some people such as Terry Turchie, author of Hunting The American Terrorist feels that it was another example of the ‘Lone Wolf’ homegrown terrorist, while others still remain certain that either Al Qaeda or the now dead Sadam Hussein was the perpetrator.
About the only thing that everyone can agree on is that the Government has gone very quiet about the whole episode.
I posed the following question to Terry Turchie, obviously 9/11 was not a ‘Lone Wolf’ endeavor but there was something that happened a little later that might be, the Anthrax packages. Do you have any thoughts?
Kathy and I immediately felt that the anthrax mailings sounded more like a domestic terrorist and that the timing was more coincidental than anything else. We had seen so many coincidences during Unabom that we were not convinced the mailings were related to international terrorism and certainly not to al-Qaeda. The trouble is that many politicians (and former CIA Director James Woolsey) started telling the public that the anthrax attacks looked like they were connected to Iraq. In hindsight, this seems to be the best proof that there were many in the U.S. government that were itching for the excuse to invade Iraq sooner rather than later. We referred Kathy’s study on the Lone Wolf to our colleagues in the Bureau at the time and the FBI stepped up to the plate and beat back the tide on this issue. Today, it appears that all the evidence supports the notion that the anthrax attacks were domestic in nature.
So what progress has been made in the past 6 years? I think the short answer is ‘depressingly little’. I find this a little disconcerting, it is not as if you can run down to your local Wal-Mart and a bag of the stuff for the rollback price of $4.99. Almost certainly the Anthrax had to have come from a bona fide research establishment. With todays high technology bio fingerprinting one would imagine that it would be relatively easy to figure out which one created this particular flavor.
I am not usually on the side of the conspiricists, whether it be JFK, Roswell, or any of the other fabulous stories that have become part of our urban mythology, however, based on the lack of official commentary one has to wonder just what they do and don’t know.
So was it a homegrown lone wolf terrorist, Al Qaeda, or some other organization?
Simon Barrett
5 users commented in " Whatever Happened To That Anthrax Mania Post 9/11? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThe FBI agent in charge of the Anthrax investigation
Tom Carey left the investigation in midstream
to take a job heading up the campus police at Bates
College in Lewiston Maine in 2002.
From 1990-2001 Bates College hosted an annual conference
investigating crimes committed by FBI agents.
After 2001 the conference was no longer held at Bates
College.
It was definately Iran-cue for another invasion. What do you mean “your just cynical” Am I?
The source of the anthrax was confirmed to come from a United States Military stockpile. The strains of anthrax can be identified very specifically by their DNA. The anthrax issue, in my opinion, is another element of the plot by those in the government that perpetrated 9-11. Everything that one investigates with an unbiased and evidence based perspective indicates that we have all been lied to, by the government and the large scale media.
The facts (and articles in the media) indicate that the FBI
was about to arrest the anthrax mailer in the fall of 2001,
but conspiracy theorists complicated the case by pointing
at Dr. Steven Hatfill. The FBI had already checked out
Dr. Hatfill, finding no reason to suspect him. But, for
six months the conspiracy theorists campaigned to have the
FBI investigate him PUBLICLY, since, in the mind of a
conspiracy theorist, if it isn’t a PUBLIC investigation, it
is a REAL investigaiton.
The news media (particularly The New York Times) joined
the campaign, as did some politicians, and eventually
the FBI caved in to the pressure and did PUBLICLY
investigate Dr. Hatfill, finding no reason to suspect him.
But, it was no longer a simple case. As a result of that
complication and the fact that the Ames strain of anthrax
had been distributed among scientists WITHOUT DOCUMENTATION,
it became more difficult for the FBI had to make a scientific
case against the anthrax mailer. They first had to
FORMALIZE the new science of Microbial Forensics
following steps defined by the Supreme Court.
Formalizing a new science takes YEARS. The process was
evidently completed somewhere in 2005. There are reports
which indicate that the FBI has built its case against the
anthrax mailer, but the Department Of Justice isn’t ready
to prosecute. When using a new science, the judge hearing
the case can decide against hearing such evidence if there
is no precedent. And you have to arrest the culprit and ‘
bring him before the judge before the judge can rule as
to whether he’ll accept the evidence or not.
Regarding your other points:
The idea that al Qaeda sent the anthrax letters is simply
not credible. Just look at the first lines of the first
letters after the heading:
09-11-01
THIS IS NEXT
TAKE PENACILIN NOW
Clearly, it’s a warning that an anthrax attack could follow
the 9/11 attacks. And the letter writer is advising that
people take penicillin to prevent infections. Penicillin
IS an effective antiobiotic for anthrax.
Would al Qaeda give MEDICAL ADVICE? Would Saddam Hussein
have given MEDICAL ADVICE? And why would neither of them
have followed up with a real attack?
And why would either al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein have targeted
two LIBERAL senators Leahy and Daschle with the second
mailing three weeks later?
Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle were fighting certain
aspects of the Patriot Act when they were targeted.
It seems very likely that the culprit is a scientist who
lives and works in Central New Jersey where there is a
large Muslim population. (Some of the 9/11 terrorists
stayed for awhile in Paterson.) He was probably terrified that
9/11 would be followed by a bioweapons attack from terrorists
living among the Muslims in Central New Jersey. That
prompted him to send out the first mail to the media.
When the first mailing was not only IGNORED by the media,
but those two senators were also fighting the Patriot Act to
protect CIVIL RIGHTS at a time when MILLIONS were expected
to die as a result of a bioweapons attack, the anthrax
mailer evidently targeted those two senators to get them
to change their minds. That’s called “domestic terrorism.”
Things are NOT as simple as they may seem if you haven’t
studied the situation
Ed
The anthrax hysteria started almost immediately after 911. The attack on congress and the hype kept going until a thoroughly paniced congress passed the “Patriot act”.
The congress never got a chance to read the patriot act (600+ pages) let alone debate it.
Strangely enough the Patriot act had already been written prior to 911 so no time was wasted in writing or reading it. Once the congress passed the patriot act all anthrax mailings and media hype went dead.
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