Editorial

NY Times Complicit in FBI Anthrax Coverup

Published in the March, 2009 Rock Creek Free Press

by Sheila Casey

Back in 2001, just months after the anthrax attacks that killed five people, several articles came out in mainstream newspapers that pointed clearly to the CIA and Army as the most likely sources of the weaponized anthrax. Articles in The Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Washington Post and New York Times laid out the facts that incriminated Battelle Memorial Labs in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army’s lab at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah as the only logical sources for the anthrax. These facts, as reported in 2001, include:

1. For over a decade, Army scientists at Dugway have been making weapons-grade anthrax that is “virtually identical” to the anthrax used in the attacks.

2. The anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was extremely concentrated, with a trillion spores per gram. The Dugway anthrax had a similar concentration.

3. The FBI was increasingly focused on US government bioweapons research programs as the source of the deadly anthrax.

4. Both the lab in Utah and the lab in Ohio received anthrax samples from the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, although USAMRIID deals only with wet anthrax and ships it wet.

5. The investigation was focused on the Dugway anthrax, and Dugway was described as the only facility that was known to be weaponizing anthrax.

6. One FBI official said that the CIA’s anthrax was “the best lead we have at this point.”

7. Army officials said that Fort Detrick did not have the equipment for weaponizing anthrax.

The FBI has never explained what became of this initial focus on the labs in Utah and Ohio. Instead, after the death of Fort Detrick anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins in July, 2008, the FBI attempted to make the case that Ivins was the murderer and all other suspects had been cleared of suspicion.

Since Ivins’ death, the media have, with very few exceptions, passively swallowed the line dispensed by the FBI, and have acted as little more than stenographers in parroting the hollow arguments presented by the FBI that Ivins is guilty.

The FBI is going to get away with pinning it on Ivins

The FBI (Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity, ha!) was tasked by our shadow government overlords with finding a semi-plausible fall guy for the anthrax attacks of 2001.  These overlords engineered both the attacks of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks that followed, to create a pretext for a police state in the USA, as well as a semi-plausible pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The FBI has pinned it on the late Dr. Bruce Ivins, but almost nobody believes it.  For the past two days FBI director Mueller, looking like the cat that ate the canary, has been appearing before the Senate and House to answer questions.

Glenn Greenwald wrote about both events in Salon.  Based on his account, I feel certain that the FBI is going to get away with it.

Greenwald paints a picture of a Congress that is so egotistical that the time in the limelight is divvied up so each Congressman or woman gets exactly five minutes.  What this insures is that no progress can be made, since five minutes is just about enough time to ask one or two long, grand-standing questions and one or two long-winded bureaucratic answers.   Every five minutes sees a new questioner, with a new agenda.

Worse, Mueller flat out refused to answer most of the questions.  Although he was given a list of 18 questions on August 8, Mueller did not come prepared to answer them and made no promises about ever answering them.  

This from Greenwald is particularly galling:

Nadler had various good questions about [the silica in the anthrax] -- including wanting to know the level of concentration of silica found in the anthrax (since, if it were higher than 1/2 of 1%, it would mean it was impossible for it to have been naturally absorbed). Mueller's response: I don't know the answers to those questions. I'll have to get back to you at some point.

Nadler than asked one of the most central questions in the anthrax case: he pointed out that the facilities that (unlike Ft. Detrick) actually have the equipment and personnel to prepare dry, silica-coated anthrax are the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground and the Battelle Corporation, the private CIA contractor that conducts substantial research into highly complex strains of anthrax. Nadler asked how the FBI had eliminated those institutions as the culprits behind the attack. After invoking generalities to assure Nadler that the FBI had traced the anthrax back to Ivins' vial (which doesn't answer the question), Mueller's response was this: I don't know the answers to those questions as to how we eliminated Dugway and Battelle. I'll have to get back to you at some point.

After those two fruitless lines of inquiry, Nadler's time was almost up, and he then pleaded: please try to get back to us with these answers quickly. Mueller said: "Oh, absolutely Congressman."

We might as well just disband Congress and admit that we now have a dictatorship that is wholly unanswerable to the people. 

Did PhD scientist, juggler and pianist Dr. Bruce Ivins write this?

That would be a no. What possible reason would Dr. Bruce Ivins have for pretending to be a fanatical Muslim terrorist?

They must be running out of tin foil hats

When sharp eyed Americans pointed out that Oswald could not possibly have been JFK's killer, a new epithet came into the English language:  conspiracy theorist.  Since then, virtually all sharp-eyed, sharp-witted people have been demonized by the MSM as tin-foil hatters: malodorous individuals livng on the margins of society and seething with anger about it. 

Meanwhile, the complacent and oblivious, who are convinced (because their TV set told them so) that their government would never lie to them, are praised as being perfect citizens and much too smart to fall for all that conspiracy crap. 

But now it seems that there may not be enough tin foil hats to go around.  As the FBI proudly holds up the corpse of Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins, proclaiming the anthrax case closed, brows are furrowing all across America. The story is just too ludicrous.  Only someone completely detached from reality could fall for such a patently obvious lie. 

Today, columnist Katherine Heerbrandt of the Frederick News Post (in Frederick, MD, where Ivins worked, lived and died) brought her doubts out into the open with a column that asks outright:

How do Americans even begin to confront the reality that the only bioattack in our history came from an American military/intelligence lab? An attack we were told made the massive expansion of biolabs at Detrick and across the country necessary.

And guess who's been hired for $750 million to manage and operate the first new biolab facilities at Detrick that are about to open?

Battelle Memorial Laboratories.

Her column is below.  Thank you Katherine for having the courage to express what so many Americans are thinking!

If not Ivins ...
by Katherine Heerbrandt
Originally published August 29, 2008

When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it.

Covert's piece this week in thetentacle.com establishes what many in our community, including scientists and support staff at USAMRIID, past and present, know: Bruce Ivins had nothing to do with preparing or sending the anthrax letters. --

In a recent letter to the FNP editor, Amanda Lane speaks for many who knew him:

"I want to shout from the mountain tops that Bruce was the kind of man we look up to ... He was a decorated scientist and the humblest of men who didn't use his title as a status symbol. He picked up a mop or emptied the trash without a moment's hesitation. If he thought you were having a bad day he would offer candy or a catchy tune to cheer you up. If someone had to stay late to accomplish a task, Bruce would work with you so that the task would get completed faster."

Covert echoes what is widely reported by reputable scientists. The anthrax in the mailings, he says, was "highly bred, weapons-grade ... with a silica coating and a slight electrical charge so that each particle repelled the other ... each particle no more than five microns." Ivins had neither the expertise nor the equipment to create such a sophisticated form of anthrax.

But if not Ivins, then who or what?

"It's the elephant in the room nobody's talking about," Kissin says.

Since Nixon terminated the offensive weapons program at Detrick in 1969, there has been only one corporation in our country that operates laboratories where anthrax is weaponized: Battelle Memorial Laboratories, the corporation that does the biolab work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.

In December 2001, FBI Director Mueller announced that the Battelle-operated labs in West Jefferson, Ohio and at Dugway had been "searched," and that there were NO suspects in those labs.

The FBI has not mentioned Battelle since.

read the rest

Audio clip of my interview on No Lies radio on August 25, 2008

Dr. Kevin Barrett, who hosts the Dynamic Duo radio show on No Lies radio on Mondays and Fridays, interviewed me about the anthrax cover-up, the railroading of Dr. Bruce Ivins, and other assorted evils of our criminal government on his August 25 show. 

It runs a little over 30 minutes. Enjoy!

You will need the free Quicktime player (for PC and Mac) to listen to these clips.  Get it here. 

Interview with Kevin Barrett on No Lies radio, 2nd hour

This is the second hour of the interview, but because I've removed all the ads, it runs only 30 minutes.

WTC 7 Solved: It Was Ivins!

from George Washington's Blog

Following is a leaked version of NIST's August 21st announcement as to the cause of the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on 9/11.

The government destroyed the steel from ground zero, because we believed it might not have been allowed as evidence at trial.

However, we did ship one steel beam to someone, who sold it to a junk yard in China for scrap metal, which melted it down to make Olympic trinkets, one of which was shipped back to us yesterday.

After testing that steel using very secret, super-advanced, but Incredibly Accurate new methods, we have determined that residue on the steel matches certain aspects of Ivins' desk in his lab at Fort Detrick (true, it also matches the desks from at least 16 different laboratories throughout the world, but our super-advanced testing has shown that we do not need to talk to anyone at those other labs).

While previously, experts said that no modern steel-frame high-rise had ever collapsed due to fire alone, that the fires in building 7 were not that hot or widespread, that building 7 collapsed at virtually free-fall speed, and that the building must have been brought down by controlled demolition, government scientists now say that isn't true....

read the rest

Glen Greenwald edges towards 9/11 truth

It's been interesting to watch the media reaction to the FBI-DOJ lies about Bruce Ivins being the anthrax attacker.  For some reason, it is acceptable to question the government story about anthrax, but not about 9/11.

This might be nothing more than timing:  the death of Ivins and the closing of the anthrax case come at a time when almost everyone with a pulse realizes that we've been swimming in a sea of lies for a long time now.  But these same people, even knowing that the government lies about anything and everything, still will affirm that to doubt the government's story on 9/11 is to be a tin-foil hatted conspiracy nut, living in your Mom's basement, unable to get laid, coping with life only with copious quantities of meds.

In today's post, Glen Greenwald sounds like a truther!  Finally he is beginning to understand the lunacy of labeling anyone who questions the government as a nutcase, since he is now that nutcase:

...here is an Associated Press article from last week, by AP's Matt Apuzzo, purporting to report on what it admits are many "meticulously researched" questions that have been raised (including by me) about the FBI's case, yet repeatedly demonizes such skepticism with these phrases, laced throughout the article: "the ingredients for a good conspiracy theory"; "skeptics and conspiracy theorists"; "armchair investigators, bloggers and scientists"; "one of the great conspiracy theories, like whether we landed on the moon or whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone"; "anti-Jewish writers blame the attack on a Zionist plot"; "You can't prove aliens didn't mail the letters."

As always, in Establishment Media World, nothing is more insane or radical than refusing to believe every word the Government says. Even after Iraqi mushroom clouds and the whole litany of Government falsehoods, the establishment hallmark of Seriousness and Sanity is accepting the Government's word. When it says Iraq was behind the attacks, then it was. When they said Hatfill was the culprit, he was. Now that they say that Ivins is, he is, and only "conspiracy theorists" -- comparable to those who disbelieve we landed on the moon -- would question that or demand to see the actual evidence. The FBI is relying, understandably so, on their mindless allies in the media to depict its case against Ivins as so airtight that no real investigation is necessary.

How much longer before it dawns on him that they do tell lies, and they told us the mother of all lies on 9/11?

Bruce Ivins the fall guy to cover secret anthrax weaponization program

By Sheila Casey

Published in the September, 2008 issue of The Rock Creek Free Press

US Attorney Jeff Taylor was sweating on August 6, as he laid out his case against the late Dr. Bruce Ivins at a news conference—and with good reason.  Anyone familiar with the case is well aware that Dr. Ivins was railroaded, and that the news conference was a flimsy web of lies.

Ivins had nothing to do with the 2001 anthrax attacks.  The attacks were almost certainly carried out by the only group that had the means to produce the highly weaponized anthrax in the letters:  the CIA, its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute of West Jefferson, Ohio., and the Army at Dugway in Utah.

The DOJ-FBI frame-up of Ivins rests heavily upon the claim of new advances in genetic testing which supposedly prove that the killer anthrax could have come only from Ivins’ flask.

Jeff Taylor stated: 

The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks.

This is an outright lie.  No special tests were required to assess the genetic heritage of the Ames strain in the envelopes.  The Washington Post reported on December 16, 2001 that “only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters.”

The distinguishing feature of the anthrax that killed five people in 2001 is not related to its genes.  What made that anthrax unique was that it was highly weaponized.  Anthrax is a common pathogen found in the soil in many places.  It doesn’t become lethal unless produced in such a way that it behaves like a gas, floating easily in the air and deep into a victim’s lungs. 

The anthrax used in the attacks was beyond cutting edge.  Donald A. Henderson, former assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Science magazine: "It just didn't have to be that good" to be lethal.

Why the killer anthrax was so deadly

1.    Precisely sized particles—1.5 to 5 microns.  Anything smaller is exhaled, anything larger tends to get caught either in the nose or in the cilia in the trachea.  

2.    Coated with silica.  The silica acted as a buffer, preventing spores from adhering to one another.  The silica on the attack anthrax rested on a thin layer of polymerized glass, which is a highly advanced technique for coating anthrax spores.  To do this required a “spray dryer,” the cheapest of which sells for $50,000.  The lyophilizer in Ivins’ lab is used to dry anthrax, but can NOT be used to coat the spores with silica.  Ivins did not have a spray dryer. 

3.    Highly concentrated.  The letter to Senator Daschle’s office contained two grams of anthrax, about the weight of a dime.  Each gram contained a trillion pure spores of anthrax, or enough to kill 200 million people. 

4.    Electro-statically charged.  The slight charge on each spore caused it to repel the other spores and spread out into the room after the envelope was opened. 

It is these attributes of the anthrax—not its genetic heritage—which made it so unique and so lethal. 

The source of the anthrax was clear in 2001

US Attorney Jeff Taylor characterized a flask in Dr. Ivin’s possession as “the murder weapon.”  But a Dec. 12, 2001 article in The Baltimore Sun stated:

For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people. 

The article refers to Dugway as “the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years,” and also includes this:

Dugway's production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.

The following day, The Washington Post echoed the Sun article:

An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992.

On Dec 16, 2001, The Washington Post corroborated the Sun report by stating that “Dugway is the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled,” also stating, “Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores.”

On September 4, 2001, The New York Times explained:

Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons . . . even the [Clinton] White House was unaware of their full scope. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed . . . have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.

These projects involve the CIA, Battelle Memorial Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army at Dugway in Utah.

[T]he need to keep such  projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush's recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, [the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,] which has been signed by 143 nations.

Had the treaty been strengthened, the Dugway and West Jefferson sites would have been subject to international inspections. It is important to note that Battelle not only operates its own labs in West Jefferson, but also is contracted by the Army to operate the labs at Dugway.

The DOJ-FBI news conference on August 6, 2008 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the secret anthrax weaponization projects by pinning the crimes on a dead man. So far the DOJ-FBI have succeeded in covering up the real perpetrators of the crime, concealing the illegal weapons program, and persuading many that it is time to close the investigation.

Anthrax made at Dugway identical to that used in anthrax attacks

Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2001 in the Baltimore Sun

Anthrax Matches Army Spores
Bioterror: Organisms made at a military laboratory in Utah are genetically identical to those mailed to members of Congress.

by Scott Shane

 

For nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the mail attacks that have killed five people, government sources say.

Until the anthrax attacks led to tighter security measures, anthrax grown at Dugway was regularly sent by Federal Express to the Army's biodefense center at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, where the bacteria were killed using gamma radiation before being returned to Dugway for experiments.

The anthrax was shipped in the form of a coarse paste, not in the far more dangerous finely milled form, according to one government official.

Most anthrax testing at Dugway, in a barren Utah desert 87 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, is done using the killed spores to reduce the chance of accidental exposure of workers there.

But some experiments require live anthrax, milled to the tiny particle size expected on a battlefield, to test both decontamination techniques and biological agent detection systems, the sources say.

Anthrax is also grown at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, where it is used chiefly to test the effectiveness of vaccines in animals.

But that medical program uses a wet aerosol fog of anthrax rather than the dry powder used in the attacks and at Dugway, according to interviews and medical journal articles based on the research.

The wet anthrax, while still capable of killing people, is safer for laboratory workers to handle, scientists say.

Dugway's production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.

5 Labs Can Trace Spores to Ft. Detrick

Published on Sunday, December 16, 2001 in the Washington Post

 

by Rick Weiss and Susan Schmidt

 

Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.

Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in this fall's bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, the scientists said. And all those labs can trace back their samples to a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.

"That means the original source [of the terrorist material] had to have been USAMRIID," said one of the scientists.

Those matching samples are at Fort Detrick; the Dugway Proving Ground military research facility in Utah; a British military lab called Porton Down; and microbial depositories at Louisiana State University (LSU) and Northern Arizona University. Northern Arizona University received its sample from LSU, which received its sample from Porton Down. Dugway and Porton Down got their samples directly from USAMRIID.