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
Timest 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.
Dr. Ivins was an immunologist; he
had neither the knowledge nor the equipment to produce the
silica-coated, electro-statically charged, 1.5 to 5 micron
sized, one trillion spore per gram anthrax that was mailed to
Senators Leahy and Daschle.
The DOJ has made much of the fact
that Ivins worked 45 extra hours in September and October of
2001. Yet when the FBI attempted to reverse engineer the
weaponized anthrax from the attacks, they admitted after a year
of trying that they were unable to come up with a product as
potent as that in the letters.
Scientists doubt FBI’s story
As far back as October 28, 2002,
The Washington Post reported that bio-weapons experts were
skeptical about the view that the anthrax in the letters could
have come from a lone nut:
“In my opinion, there are maybe
four or five people in the whole country who might be able to
make this stuff, and I’m one of them,” said Richard O. Spertzel,
former deputy commander of USAMRIID (the Army bio-defense
facility at Detrick). “And even with a good lab and staff to
help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product
as good.”
Writing in The New York Timest on
Aug. 9, 2008, Gerry Andrews, an assistant professor of
microbiology at the University of Wyoming, described the
envelopes’ contents as “a startlingly refined weapons-grade
anthrax spore preparation, the likes of which had never been
seen before by personnel at Fort Detrick.” He continued: “It is
extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever
have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade
and quality found in that envelope.”
Abundant evidence that Ivins is
innocent
Ivins passed two polygraph tests
and no link was made between his handwriting and that on the
anthrax letters. Investigators were so frustrated at Ivins
passing the polygraph tests that they searched his house for
books or articles on how to fool a polygraph, but found none.
US Attorney Jeff Taylor stated that
the investigators zeroed in on Ivins when they “conducted
additional investigative steps,” and thus were “able to narrow
the focus even further, exclude individuals, and that left us
looking at Dr. Ivins.”
Those “additional investigative
steps” were polygraph tests. Where passing a polygraph test was
enough to exclude certain people, it did not exclude Ivins.
Ivins’ car, work locker, safe
deposit box and house were thoroughly swabbed for anthrax spores
multiple times over the space of years; not a single spore was
found, although the killer anthrax was so highly weaponized that
it behaved like a gas and was very difficult to contain.
None of the materials in the
mailings were found at his house: not the tape, the envelopes,
nor the pen used to write the letters. There isn’t one piece of
evidence placing him in New Jersey at the time the letters were
mailed: not a credit card receipt, restaurant receipt, nor a
witness.
On August 3, 2008, Glen Greenwald
wrote in Salon:
It is so vital to emphasize that
not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the
now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks,
let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit.
Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media
(with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this
case as though the matter is resolved.”
Bruce Ivins: juggler, Red Cross
volunteer, pianist
Jeff Taylor’s case against Ivins
rests heavily on claims that Ivins was mentally ill. If Ivins
was truly so unhinged, why was he allowed to work with toxic
substances? His security clearance was never revoked.
Certainly a brilliant homicidal
serial killer who is determined to avoid detection would
immediately get rid of the Ames strain with the incriminating
genotype in his flask, if he had used it to make weaponized
powder and kill five people. Yet seven years later, the same
genotype was still in Ivins’ lab!
The DOJ and FBI ask us to believe
that Ivins launched the attacks because his vaccine research was
not going well and he feared he might lose his job. It’s just
not a plausible motivation.
In 2003, Ivins received the
Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service-the highest award
given to the Defense Department’s civilian employees. He had
been a respected scientist at USAMRIID for 35 years and had a
very secure job.
Ivins had been married for 33
years. He played keyboard at his local church, he was a member
of the American Red Cross, an avid juggler and founder of the
Frederick Jugglers. He also played keyboards in a Celtic band
and would often compose and play songs for coworkers who were
moving to new jobs.
The FBI focused on him as a
probable fall guy in 2006, and for two years was all over him,
repeatedly questioning him, searching his home, car and office,
and confronting him and his family in public with accusations
that he had “killed people.” His daughter was shown pictures of
dead anthrax victims and told “your father did this.” His son
was promised $2.5 million and a sports car of his choice if he
would implicate his father in the anthrax attacks. Who among us
would not resort to drink, or drugs, or fantasies of revenge
under those circumstances?
Who had the expertise to weaponize
anthrax?
William C. Patrick III, and Ken
Alibek.
William Patrick was the originator
of the first anthrax weaponization process. He has five patents
on anthrax weaponization and wrote a paper in 1999 setting out
exactly what an anthrax attack by mail would look like.
Patrick’s scenario is very similar
to what actually happened in 2001. For example, he suggests no
more than 2.5 grams of anthrax per envelope; the envelopes
contained two grams. One footnote in his paper reveals “we now
have the ability to purify to one trillion spores per gram.”
William Patrick was a consultant to the CIA, Battelle, the Army,
the DIA and the FBI on bio-weapons.
Ken Alibek headed up the Soviet
bio-weapon programs until defecting to the USA in 1992. He
brought with him the technology that was key in the anthrax
attacks: using polymerized glass to attach silica to the anthrax
spores. He worked for Battelle Memorial Institute in the late
90s.
These men had to have been
instrumental in developing the technology used in the 2001
anthrax attacks.
Who can control the FBI, DOJ and
the media?
The significance of the railroading
of the deceased Ivins cannot be overstated. This railroading is
not a matter of incompetence. In detail after detail, the joint
FBI-DOJ prosecution deliberately lies, evades and obfuscates in
a desperate attempt to pin blame somewhere and close the case.
(A transcript of the entire August 6 news conference is
available on npr.org, titled “DOJ News Conference On Bruce
Ivins.”)
US Attorney Jeff Taylor states at
the news conference that the envelopes used in the attacks were
“very likely sold at a post office in the Frederick, Md. area,”
and that Ivins had a post office box there. This is another
outright lie. Taylor’s own application for a search warrant
stated:
…envelopes with printing defects,
identical to printing defects identified on the envelopes
utilized in the anthrax attacks during the fall of 2001, were
collected from the Fairfax Main post office in Fairfax,
Virginia, and the Cumberland and Elkton post offices in
Maryland…
Taylor and his supervisors at DOJ
must be hoping that no one will notice or care that they are
blatantly lying about their evidence against Ivins.
Reading the transcript, it is
striking how often Jeff Taylor and Joseph Persichini refuse to
answer questions. They either refer reporters to the Department
of Defense (which is not holding a news conference) or to the
documents they have been given.
When asked when their all new,
ground-breaking DNA research would be published, Taylor replies
“I’m not going to comment on (that).” When asked a direct
question about how many others were investigated other than
Ivins, Taylor replies “I’m not going to get into the details.”
Not only does he not get into the details, he doesn’t even give
us the broad strokes. When asked how he can be so sure that
there wasn’t another person involved, Taylor replies:
The evidence I described in my
statement, and that I’ve described throughout this
question-and-answer period, as I said, led us to conclude that
Dr. Ivins is the person who committed this crime. We are
confident, based on the evidence we have, that we could prove
this case beyond a reasonable doubt.
In other words, he doesn’t answer.
Honest citizens must ask
themselves: who are the FBI and DOJ protecting? Who has the
ability to control and corrupt an investigation of this
importance? And why, after sitting through a news conference
that is obviously a hastily constructed web of lies, have so
many journalists dutifully reported the story just as instructed
by Jeff Taylor?
We no longer have a working
government in the United States. What we have are functionaries
in various departments-Congress, FBI, DOJ, CIA-who take their
orders from the corporations who make vast sums of money waging
war and selling vaccines. Their influence extends to the major
media outlets who control the flow of information to the
American people. We are increasingly enslaved, manipulated and
murdered by these corporations, and very few of us seem to
realize it.
Sheila Casey is a DC based
journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Buzz
Flash, Common Dreams and Dissident Voice.
She blogs at http://www.sheilacasey.com.
Barry Kissin is an attorney/peace activist based in Frederick,
MD, home of Fort Detrick.
http://www.911blogger.com
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