Untitled Document

8-5-08

Dirty Politics - Bad Guys' Have Anthrax Scientist Bruce Ivins Murdered to Blame McCain for 911 and the Anthrax Murders - Motive - Force McCain to Withdraw from US Presidential Race

The bad guys, the ones who own our banking system, Jacob "Holocaust" Rothschild, the Rockefellers, James Baker III, are responsible for the Holocaust, the AIDS epidemic,the Vietnam War, McCain's torture, 911, the anthrax murders, the DC snipers murders, the murder of Tim Russert, the Knoxville Shooter, school kid massacres, selected comrade Little George president and now they have selected Barack "Sunni al Queda" Obama president. Now the bad guys' had anthrax scientist, Bruce Ivins, the patsy, murdered, more dirty politics, to set up John McCain, a patsy, as a conspirator in on the anthrax murders and 911 in an effort to smear John McCain to force McCain to withdraw from the presidential race and elect Obama president. How do we know what I say is true? Logic.

It is as if Huffingtonpost.com, the Obama campaign's Karl Rove, has been in on and known for quite a while that the communi$t$' plan for making comrade Obama president consists of forcing McCain to withdraw from the presidential race. Certainly the communi$t$' forced Hillary out of the race, and the media lied to us for six months saying Obama had more delegates than Hillary when he did not, counting Fla. and WI. delegates. How brave of Obama to give Fla. and Mi delegates full voting rights now that Hillary has withdrawn from the race. So typically communi$tic.

Although it may take a while to fill in the dots, but it is obvious where the murder of the anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins is taking us. A John McCain smear to force McCain to withdraw from the race for president. Here is the probable path and logic behind forcing McCain to withdraw. The anthrax murders were planned within the US government. The same bad guys responsible for the anthrax murders were responsible for 911. McCain is part of the Conspiracy and in on the anthrax murders and 911. McCain is a bad guy. We can't let John McCain become president.

However we know this is BS, McCain is a patsy, and McCain had nothing to do with the anthrax murders or 911. How do we know this? If McCain, as an insider had anything to do with the anthrax murders, the last thing McCain would let happen is for Bruce Ivins to die right before the convention. Does McCain have a motive for making Obama president? Not in my book. Did McCain enjoy being tortured? Nope. Logic tells me the bad guys responsible for the anthrax murders, 911, Little George want Obama president and they murdered Bruce Ivins as part of their dirty politics to frame McCain as being in on the anthrax murders and 911 to get McCain out of the race and make Obama president. Actually the Bruce Ivins murder is just another of the bad guys' dirty politic tricks to hurt McCain and help Obama. US Supreme Court decisions, the murder of Tim Russert, and the Knoxville shooter are other political dirty tricks designed to help Obama.

It appears that racist Camel Club members Dr. Philip Zack, with "Pathogen X" and his "good friend" Dr. Marian Rippy are responsible for the anthrax murders. Others may be involved as well. The bad guys had Bruce Ivins murdered at this time to make the anthrax murders part of the 2008 presidential political race. The logic: Bruce Ivins knew too much and he was scheduled to die anyway, so kill him during the presidential race to bring up McCain's connect to anthrax and Little George, insinuate McCain was in on the anthrax and 911 conspiracies, in an effort to get McCain to drop out of the presidential race and make Obama president basically by default.

Will there be a connect established between Bruce Ivins and John McCain? Probably.

I noticed John McCain is in South Dakota.

Well Sen. Thune makes sense. No one likes my choice for VP, SC Gov. Mark Sanford. I have seen one writer mention Gov. Sanford's name as a possible McCain VP. Thune has never been a governor so I like governor on the resume more than freshman senator. McCain needs Gov. Sanford to nullify Bob Barr. North Carolina and Virginia will vote more for Sanford than Thune. Gov. Sanford will help McCain more in Florida than Sen. Thune. Of course John Randolph is a great name. Do you know why John Randolph of Roanoke added Roanoke to his name? To distinguish himself from a relative named John Randolph he did not like. Age perfect. Religion a drawback. Maybe. I guess I better shut up until someone comes out for my man Gov. Sanford. I am really pissed off at Wolf Blitzer for offing my candidate. We will have to extract some revenge on Blitzer. Blitzer, wife and or children have got to lose something they want a hundred times more than Gov. Sanford wants the VP.

John Thune
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John Thune

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Junior Senator
from South Dakota
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 3, 2005
Serving with Tim Johnson
Preceded by Tom Daschle

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Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from South Dakota's At-Large district
In office
January 7, 1997 – January 3, 2003
Preceded by Tim Johnson
Succeeded by Bill Janklow

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Born January 7, 1961 (1961-01-07) (age 47)
Murdo, South Dakota
Political party Republican
Spouse Kimberley Thune (née Weems)
Children Brittany and Larissa
Alma mater Biola University
University of South Dakota
Religion Evangelical Christian
John Randolph Thune (born January 7, 1961) is the Republican junior U.S. Senator from the state of South Dakota.

Born and raised in South Dakota, Thune attended college in La Mirada, California at Biola University before returning to his home state to obtain a graduate degree at the University of South Dakota. He worked as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator James Abdnor and served in the Reagan Administration in the Small Business Administration, before winning election to the House of Representatives in 1996. After three terms in the House, he unsuccessfully challenged Democrat Tim Johnson in the U.S. Senate race in 2002, losing by a mere 524 votes (0.15%). Thune was elected to the Senate two years later, defeating the incumbent Democrat and serving Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle, in a historic race that received national media attention.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life and family
2 Political career
2.1 House of Representatives
2.2 2004 Senate race
2.3 Senate service
3 Political views
4 Electoral history
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links
7.1 Official sites
7.2 Votes and news aggregators
7.3 Campaign contributions

[edit] Early life and family
John Randolph Thune was born in Murdo, South Dakota to Yvonne Patricia Bodine and Harold Richard Thune. Thune's paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Norway who partnered with his brother to start Thune Hardware stores in Mitchell and Murdo, South Dakota.[1] He was raised in the small-town of Murdo, South Dakota. An evangelical Christian, Thune graduated with a B.A. degree in Business from Biola University, an evangelical college in Los Angeles, California, in 1983.[2] Thune received an MBA from the University of South Dakota in 1984. He married the former Kimberley Weems of Doland, South Dakota, in 1984; they have two daughters, Brittany and Larissa.

[edit] Political career
A member of the Republican Party, Thune worked as a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator James Abdnor. Under President Reagan, Thune worked at the Small Business Administration.

Thune was appointed Railroad Director of South Dakota by Governor George S. Mickelson and served from 1991-1993.

[edit] House of Representatives
In 1996, Thune was elected to South Dakota's lone seat in the United States House of Representatives; he won reelection in 1998 and in 2000 was reelected with over 70% of the vote. Thune supported term limits and promised to serve no more than three terms in the House.

Keeping his pledge, Thune instead ran for the United States Senate, challenging Senator Tim Johnson in 2002, and losing by 524 votes (0.15%). Ultimately, Thune decided not to pursue a recount, although there were allegations of vote fraud by Democrats.[3]

Between 2002-2004 Thune worked as a lobbyist for the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad.[4]

[edit] 2004 Senate race
In 2004, he again ran for the Senate, this time challenging incumbent Tom Daschle, at the time the United States Senate Minority Leader and leader of the Senate Democrats.

The race was the most expensive Senate race in 2004, with $30 million spent,[5] and the most expensive in South Dakota history. It was widely followed in the national media. Thune — along with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, President of the United States George W. Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney — painted Daschle as the "chief obstructionist" of Bush's agenda: "Thune was able to criticize “Daschle for serving incompatible masters,” and portray him, as Frist did when he came to South Dakota to campaign for Thune, as a partisan obstructionist and political heir to liberal icon and former Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.[6]

Daschle's critics charged the Democrat with using filibusters to block confirmation of several of Bush's nominees to the federal judiciary, and being out of step with the views of South Dakota voters on other political and social issues: "The GOP had targeted Daschle, the Senate minority leader, claiming he had been the chief obstruction to President Bush on such issues as tax cuts, judicial nominees and the war in Iraq."[7] Thune emphasized social issues such as abortion and same sex marriage, and flag burning to highlight the differences between his views and Daschle's, stating, "Two-thirds of the people in South Dakota are in favor of protecting marriage through a Federal Marriage Amendment. You know, two-thirds of the people in South Dakota, probably higher than that, are in favor of an amendment to protect the American flag. You know, the Second Amendment, gun owners' rights, abortion -- those are not wedge issues in South Dakota."[8]

In addition, Thune drove home his strong support for the war: in a nationally televised debate on NBC's Meet the Press, Thune accused Daschle of "emboldening the enemy" by stating President Bush had "failed miserably" to avoid the Iraq war.[9]

When the race began in early 2004, Daschle led by 7 points in January and February. By May, his lead minimized to just 2 points and into the summer polls showed an effective tie. Throughout September, Daschle led Thune by margins of 2-5%; from October until the November 2 election, most polls showed Thune and Daschle tied 49-49 among likely voters.

On November 2, 2004, Thune defeated Daschle by 4,508 votes, winning 51% of the vote and became a well-known Republican figure in the U.S. Senate. Daschle's loss was the first ousting of a serving Senate Majority or Minority Leader since 1952, when Arizona Senator Ernest McFarland lost his seat to Barry Goldwater.

[edit] Senate service
Thune was chosen to be the GOP's Chief Deputy Whip. He also serves on the Senate's Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry; Commerce, Science & Transportation; Small Business & Entrepreneurship; and Armed Services Committees.[10] Senator Thune is also a ranking member on the Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support.[11]

Soon after arriving in the Senate, Thune wrote language into a transportation bill expanding the pot of federal loan money for small railroads, enabling his former client to apply for $2.5 billion in government financing for its project.[12]

As a U.S. Senator, Thune also took a leading role in formulating energy policy. He pushed for the final passage of a comprehensive energy bill, which finally overcame a series of Democratic filibusters and passed the Senate in 2005. Thune helped pass another energy bill in late 2007. Thune is a particular advocate of ethanol and wind energy, which are linked to South Dakota's high levels of corn production and its windy prairies. Thune's hometown of Murdo is considered one of the windiest towns in the nation.

Thune, along with South Dakota's senior Senator Tim Johnson, was also faced with the challenge of keeping Ellsworth Air Force Base in Box Elder, South Dakota (near Rapid City) open after the Department of Defense announced plans to close the base as part of its 2005 round of base closures. The Pentagon announced that it planned to move all of Ellsworth's B-1 bombers to Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. Ellsworth Air Force Base is one of South Dakota's largest employers, and a critical component of the state's economic well-being, making it necessary for the state's political leaders to fight for its continued existence. Senator Thune, along with Senator Tim Johnson (D), lobbied Washington, specifically the Defense Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission, to keep Ellsworth open. In their lobbying efforts, they argued that it made little sense to consolidate all of the nation's B-1s in a single location due to the risk of a single attack or tornado taking out the fleet. Also, it was discovered that the Pentagon may have overlooked a lawsuit that possibly prevented B-1 pilots at Dyess from engaging in adequate training. While the fate of Dyess was still in the air, Thune declared that he had strong doubts about issues such as John Bolton's nomination as United Nations ambassador, "I've said all along that I'm going to play whatever cards I have to get the best possible outcome I can for my base," he is reported as saying.[13] Ultimately, the BRAC Commission voted 8-1 to reverse the Pentagon's recommendation to close Ellsworth.[14]

[edit] Political views
Thune is a strong conservative, believing in free-markets, limited government, and family values.

The American Conservative Union gave Senator Thune a rating of "100" in 2006.[15]

Thune has described his religious faith as the most important aspect of his political career: "Having a Christian worldview shapes my decision-making with respect to all aspects of my life. I always respect people in public life who are principled, and those principles have to be connected to something. And my faith is what serves as the anchor and directs my actions."[16] In June 2006, Thune reaffirmed his strong support to amend the United States Constitution to ban same-sex marriage: "The Federal Marriage Amendment debate simply is an opportunity for us to affirm our support for marriage...It is an important debate to have in this country."[17]

Thune also believes in creationism.[18]

In a 2005 interview with Christianity Today, Thune supported invading Iraq, expressing a hope that this would result in greater religious freedom: "Liberating Iraq from decades of tyranny and dictatorship, bringing about political freedom, will create an atmosphere of where religious freedom will come to Iraq. And that opens the door, obviously, for the Christian faith there as well."[19]

[edit] Electoral history
South Dakota's At-large congressional district: Results 1996–2000[20] Year Democrat Votes Pct Republican Votes Pct 3rd Party Party Votes Pct 3rd Party Party Votes Pct
1996 Rick Weiland 119,547 37% John R. Thune 186,393 58% Stacey L. Nelson Independent 10,397 3% Kurt Evans Independent 6,866 2%
1998 Jeff Moser 64,433 25% John R. Thune 194,157 75%
2000 Curt Hohn 78,321 25% John R. Thune 231,083 73% Brian Lerohl Libertarian 5,357 2%
Senate elections in South Dakota: Results 2002–2004[20] Year Democrat Votes Pct Republican Votes Pct 3rd Party Party Votes Pct
2002 Tim Johnson 167,481 50% John R. Thune 166,949 49% Kurt Evans Libertarian 3,071 1%
2004 Tom Daschle 193,340 49% John R. Thune 197,848 51%

[edit] References

Below I am working on putting the pieces of the get rid of McCain bad guy puzzle. It may take a while so please bear with me.

All along, though, the anthrax came from a U.S. Government/Army research lab.

. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.
It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them.

The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001 that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").

to blame the attacks on Iraq and then, ultimately, to blame Stephen Hatfill.

And then there's this rather cryptic message, published in 2006:
Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."
By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."

On a note related to the main topic of the post, macgupta in comments notes the numerous prominent people in addition to those mentioned here -- including The Wall St. Jorunal Editors and former CIA Director James Woosely -- who insisted rather emphatically from the beginning of the anthrax attacks that Saddam was likely to blame.

See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro.

zzzzzzzzz

Justin Raimando

The FBI just continued to push his buttons.'"

another Ft. Detrick scientist, Dr. Ayaad Assaad.
Assaad, an American citizen born in Egypt,

In September 2001 – before the news of the anthrax letters broke, but after they had been postmarked – a letter addressed to the "Town of Quantico police" was received that accused Assaad of being a terrorist who was planning to wage biological warfare against the U.S.

the Camel Club was getting its revenge.
Whatever the motives of the Quantico letter's author, one fact seems fairly obvious: whoever wrote it very likely had foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks.

Don Foster, a professor of English was asked to analyze the anthrax letters, Quantico letter

What, I wondered, has the anthrax task force been doing.

female officer perfect match. detailed report on the evidence, anthrax task force declined

part of the 9/11 investigation." Dr. Philip Zack, with "Pathogen X" was videotaped assisted by his "good friend" Dr. Marian Rippy.

Another reason for McCain not to name his VP - If bad guys are successful in their attempt to force McCain to withdraw from thepresidential race, one less embarrassment and problem to deal if McCain has not named a VP

McCain Leads Obama in Rasmussen Pole for the First timeirMst time McCain leads yea

Tuesday, August 05, 2008
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows the race for the White House is tied once again-- Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
FRIDAY AUG. 1, 2008 05:36 EDT
Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News
(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)
The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).
The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets -- that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.
If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks. This was the letter sent to Brokaw:

The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:
We have anthrax.
You die now.
Are you afraid?
Death to America.
Death to Israel.
Allah is great.
By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks alone could have accomplished.
Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in this matter.
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."
ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:
And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.
Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:
The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.
Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.
It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).
Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country. As but one example: after Ross' lead report on the October 26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said into the camera:
This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.
That's exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report -- insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:
On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare.
The Weekly Standard published a much lengthier and more dogmatic article in April, 2002 again pushing the ABC "bentonite" claims and arguing: "There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax terrorism." The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001 that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").
And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this claim:
The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.
Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq.
There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks -- accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically. As but one very illustrative example, The Washington Post's columnist, Richard Cohen, supported the invasion of Iraq, came to regret that support, and then explained what led him to do so, in a 2004 Post column entitled "Our Forgotten Panic":
I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.
Cohen -- in a March 18, 2008 Slate article in which he explains why he wrongfully supported the attack on Iraq -- disclosed this:
Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to be afraid.
The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same. Already, my impulse had been to strike back, an overwhelming urge that had, in fact, taken me by surprise on Sept. 11 itself when the first of the Twin Towers had collapsed. . . .
In the following days, as the horror started to be airbrushed -- no more bodies plummeting to the sidewalk -- the anthrax letters started to come, some to people I knew. And I thought, No, I'm not going to sit here passively and wait for it to happen. I wanted to go to "them," whoever "they" were, grab them by the neck, and get them before they could get us. One of "them" was Saddam Hussein. He had messed around with anthrax . . . He was a nasty little fascist, and he needed to be dealt with.
That, more or less, is how I made my decision to support the war in Iraq.
Cohen's mental process that led him to link anthrax to Iraq and then to support an attack on Iraq, warped as it is, was extremely common. Having heard ABC News in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack flamboyantly and repeatedly link Saddam to the anthrax attacks, followed by George Bush's making the same linkage (albeit more subtly) in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech, much of the public had implanted into their minds that Saddam Hussein was not just evil, but a severe threat to the U.S., likely the primary culprit behind the anthrax attacks. All along, though, the anthrax came from a U.S. Government/Army research lab.
Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks -- persisted.
We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government -- from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.
Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.
ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.
They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate and attention than it has received thus far.

UPDATE: One other fact to note here is how bizarrely inept the effort by the Bush DOJ to find the real attacker has been. Extremely suspicious behavior from Ivins -- including his having found and completely cleaned anthrax traces on a co-worker's desk at the Ft. Detrick lab without telling anyone that he did so and then offering extremely strange explanations for why -- was publicly reported as early as 2004 by The LA Times (Ivins "detected an apparent anthrax leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach").
In October 2004, USA Today reported that Ivins was involved in another similar incident, in April of 2002, when Ivins performed unauthorized tests to detect the origins of more anthrax residue found at Ft. Detrick. Yet rather than having that repeated, strange behavior lead the FBI to discover that he was involved in the attacks, there was a very public effort -- as Atrios notes here -- to blame the attacks on Iraq and then, ultimately, to blame Stephen Hatfill. Amazingly, as Atrios notes here, very few people other than "a few crazy bloggers are even interested" in finding out what happened here and why -- at least to demand that ABC News report the vital information that it already has that will shed very significant light on much of this.

UPDATE II: Ivins' local paper, Frederick News in Maryland, has printed several Letters to the Editor written by Ivins over the years. Though the underlying ideology is a bit difficult to discern, he seems clearly driven by a belief in the need for Christian doctrine to govern our laws and political institutions, with a particular interest in Catholic dogma. He wrote things like this:
Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious, moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.
Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we should gratefully consider some of our country's most courageous, historical figures who refused to do so.
And then there's this rather cryptic message, published in 2006:
Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."
By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."
It should be noted that the lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins' innocence and attributes his suicide to "the relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo."
On a note related to the main topic of the post, macgupta in comments notes the numerous prominent people in addition to those mentioned here -- including The Wall St. Jorunal Editors and former CIA Director James Woosely -- who insisted rather emphatically from the beginning of the anthrax attacks that Saddam was likely to blame. Indeed, the WSJ Editorial Page -- along with others on the Right such as Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report and Fox News -- continued even into 2007 to insist that the FBI was erring by focusing on domestic suspects rather than Middle Easterners.
The Nation's Michael Massing noted at the time (in November, 2001) that as a direct result of the anthrax attacks, and the numerous claims insinuating that Iraq was behind them, "the political and journalistic establishment suddenly seems united in wanting to attack Iraq." There has long been an intense desire on the neoconservative Right to falsely link anthrax to Saddam specifically and Muslims generally. ABC News was, and (as a result of its inexcusable silence) continues to be, their best friend.

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios writes: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?"
That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about an anthrax attack? Then again, the most basic journalistic instincts would have led ABC News to reveal who concocted and fed them the false "Saddam/anthrax" reports in the first place, and yet we still are forced to guess at those questions because ABC News continues to cover up the identity of the perpetrators.

UPDATE IV: John McCain, on the David Letterman Show, October 18, 2001 (days before ABC News first broadcast their bentonite report):
LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?
MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine . . . I think we'll do fine. The second phase -- if I could just make one, very quickly -- the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq.
LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?
MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.
ThinkProgress has the video. Someone ought to ask McCain what "indication" he was referencing that the anthrax "may have come from Iraq."
After all, three days later, McCain and Joe Lieberman went on Meet the Press (on October 21, 2001) and both strongly suggested that we would have to attack Iraq. Lieberman said that the anthrax was so complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program."
As I said, it is not possible to overstate the importance of anthrax in putting the country into the state of fear that led to the attack on Iraq and so many of the other abuses of the Bush era. There are few news stories more significant, if there are any, than unveiling who the culprits were behind this deliberate propaganda. The fact that the current GOP presidential nominee claimed back then on national television to have some "indication" linking Saddam to the anthrax attacks makes it a bigger story still.

UPDATE V: I tried to be careful here to avoid accepting as True the matter of Ivins' guilt. Very early on in the article, I framed the analysis this way: "If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab," and I then noted in Update II that Ivins' lawyer vehemently maintains his innocence. My whole point here is that the U.S. Government now claims the anthrax attacks came from a Government scientist at a U.S. Army lab, and my conclusions follow from that premise, accepted as true only for purposes of this analysis.
It's worth underscoring that it is far from clear that Ivins had anything to do with the anthrax attacks, and someone in comments claiming (anonymously though credibly) that he knew Ivins personally asserts that Ivins was innocent and makes the case as to why the Government's accusations are suspect. As I see it, the more doubt there is about who was responsible for the anthrax attacks, the greater is the need for ABC News to reveal who fabricated their reports linking the attacks to Iraq.

UPDATE VI: I'll be on Rachel Maddow's radio show tonight at 8:30 p.m. EST to discuss this story. Local listings and live audio feed are here.
Numerous people have advised me in comments and via email that ABC News is deleting any mention of my piece today in the comment section to their article on the Ivins suicide (though many such comments now seem to be posted there). Last year, ABC was in full denial mode when responding to the stories I wrote about this issue. The key here, I think, will be to try to devise the right strategy to induce the right Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the false ABC News stories and the anthrax issue generally. I hope to have more details on that effort shortly.
-- Glenn Greenwald

~ Justin Raimondo

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13251
August 4, 2008
The Patsy
Was Bruce Ivins the anthrax killer?

The media narrative now being woven around the apparent suicide of U.S. government scientist Bruce E. Ivins – a prominent anthrax researcher who worked at Ft. Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases bio-weapons research lab (USAMRIID) – is that he was a lone nut, a "homicidal maniac" who poisoned the five people killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks and was determined to go on another killing spree at his workplace as the Feds closed in on him. The Times of London headline says it all: "Mad Anthrax Scientist in Threat to Kill Co-Workers."
However, as we sift through the reams of media coverage occasioned by this startling development in a 7-year-old case, we get quite a different story from the alleged objects of his rage: his colleagues on the job at Ft. Detrick. As the Washington Post reported:
"Colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.
"'I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, "Show me your evidence,"' said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. 'A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons.'"
Another one of his co-workers, Richard O. Spertzel, pointed out that "USAMRIID doesn't deal with powdered anthrax. I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it. You would need to have the opportunity, the capability, and the motivation, and he didn't possess any of those."
In what seems very similar to the coordinated series of "leaks" that pinned the blame on Steven J. Hatfill, a former bio-warfare scientist recently awarded nearly $6 million in recompense and effectively exonerated, the effort to posthumously demonize Ivins has blanketed the "mainstream" media. The main feature of this effort has been the testimony of one Jean Duley, a counselor, who claims Ivins not only threatened her but also came to a group therapy session with a detailed story about how he had bought a gun, a bulletproof vest, and was planning to "go out in a blaze of glory" and kill as many of his coworkers as possible as the FBI closed in on him.
It's passing strange, then, that these very same coworkers are springing to his defense. Two Ft. Detrick scientists, who presumably would have been mowed down by Ivins, the so-called "revenge killer" (as Duley describes him), told the Baltimore Sun they were "stunned and angry" at the posthumous targeting of Ivins. "Nobody thinks Bruce did it," said one of them.
Nobody, that is, but the FBI, Duley, and Ivins' estranged brother Tom, who hadn't spoken to Bruce since 1985, and who averred, "It makes sense, what the social worker said. He considered himself like a god." Giving credence to such crass bad-mouthing of the dead has got to be a new low, even for the agenda-driven "journalism" we've become so inured to.
As doubts arise about the government/media narrative, it is becoming all too clear that Ivins' suicide – likely brought about by the unrelenting pressure brought to bear on him over many months of constant harassment by the FBI, rather than actual guilt – is the occasion for the institutional whitewashing of the FBI's almost unbelievable incompetence, which seems more like a cover-up as events unfold. We are being treated to media reports burbling about how the suicide of Ivins means that the victims of the anthrax attack and their families will finally have "closure" – but what's all too clear is that it's the FBI seeking closure of a case that exposes its shameful (and, perhaps, criminal) conduct.
Move along, nothing to see here! Or is there?
No doubt the FBI will come out with its own version of the "scientific" evidence that supposedly led them to Ivins' doorstep. We are told that "new techniques," developed since the pursuit and eventual exoneration of Hatfill, conclusively prove Ivins was the lone culprit. This has long been the methodology favored by anti-biological weapons activist and scientist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, whose pronouncements in the early stages of this case were taken as gospel by the major media. It was Rosenberg's theory that the anthrax killer was an "insider" with detailed knowledge of the government's bio-weapons research – and that his motive was to draw attention to a supposedly overlooked and under-funded field of vitally important research – that led to the persecution of Hatfill. Today, the same theory is being trotted out to finger Ivins.
This concept of the anthrax killers' motive drops the entire context of the postal terrorism that put the nation in a post-9/11 panic and energized the march to war with Iraq. As Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out, the anthrax attacks were used by administration officials and neoconservative commentators to make the case for war: administration officials and their amen corner (including John McCain) used this "talking point" to promote the invasion of Iraq. The Rosenberg thesis also ignores the text of the anthrax letters, in which the author(s) clearly meant to indicate these horrific acts were being perpetrated by a Muslim who hated the U.S. and Israel.
It seems to me a stretch to divorce motive not only from context, but also from important physical evidence in this case, i.e., the letters themselves. Other equally important evidence has been completely ignored. Over the years, I've presented much of this neglected-albeit-fascinating aspect of the anthrax mystery in a series of columns – here, here, here, here, here, and here – in which I related the story of what happened to another Ft. Detrick scientist, Dr. Ayaad Assaad.
Assaad, an American citizen born in Egypt, worked for USAMRIID in the early 1990s and was involved in a conflict with a group of Ft. Detrick employees who dubbed themselves the "Camel Club." As detailed in a series of eye-popping pieces by Dave Altimari and Jack Dolan of the Hartford Courant, this cabal was engaged in systematic harassment of Assaad and other Arab-American employees at the facility, including putting obscene and racist poems on his desk and presenting him with a rubber camel adorned with a sex toy. The Camel Club's harassment of Assaad had a distinctively ideological edge, one that pre-dated the "invade their countries, bomb their cities, and convert them to Christianity" meme that later became so popular with post-9/11 neocons of a Coulterish stripe.
In September 2001 – before the news of the anthrax letters broke, but after they had been postmarked – a letter addressed to the "Town of Quantico police" was received that accused Assaad of being a terrorist who was planning to wage biological warfare against the U.S. on American soil. As the first anthrax letters were opened, Assaad got a call from the FBI. Agent Gregory Leylegian wanted to have a little talk with him.
The meeting, also attended by Assaad's lawyer, proved quite a shock to Assaad. As the agent read the accusing letter aloud, one thing became readily apparent: the Camel Club was getting its revenge.
Whatever the motives of the Quantico letter's author, one fact seems fairly obvious: whoever wrote it very likely had foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks. Yet all attempts to examine this vital piece of evidence have been deflected by the FBI. Don Foster, a professor of English at Vassar and an expert in the field of textual analysis – it was Foster who identified Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors – was asked to analyze the anthrax letters, and on the subject of the Quantico letter he had this to say in Vanity Fair:
"It was now December 2001, yet Dolan and Altimari's Hartford Courant story was the first I had heard of the Quantico letter. [Supervisory Special Agent James R]. Fitzgerald had not heard of it, either. In fact, there were quite a few critical documents that Fitzgerald had not yet seen. What, I wondered, has the anthrax task force been doing. Hoping that the Quantico letter might lead, if not to the killer, at least to a suspect, I offered to examine the document. My photocopy arrived by FedEx not from the task force but from FBI headquarters in Washington. Searching through documents by some 40 USAMRIID employees, I found writings by a female officer that looked like a perfect match. I wrote a detailed report on the evidence, but the anthrax task force declined to follow through: the Quantico letter had already been declared a hoax and zero-filed as part of the 9/11 investigation."
"The trail that leads us to the perpetrators of the anthrax letter terrorist attacks ends at Ft. Detrick" – I wrote those words in July, before the suicide of Ivins, yet we haven't quite yet reached the end of this particular road.
Foster refers to the yeoman's work done by the Hartford Courant's team of reporters in uncovering the chaotic and dangerous conditions that existed at Ft. Detrick for years, as well as the victimization of Assaad. One Courant story in particular, which detailed the wide variety of pathogens the facility lost track of over the years – including one developed by U.S. scientists known simply as "Pathogen X" – sent chills down my spine. In exposing this laxity, the Courant reported an incident in which a former employee, Dr. Philip Zack, was videotaped sneaking into the supposedly secured facility where pathogens were stored, assisted by his "good friend" Dr. Marian Rippy. They were both involved in conducting unauthorized experiments, according to Dolan and Altimari, and were charter members of the Camel Club. Indeed, the reason for Zack's departure reportedly had much to do with his constant harassment of Assaad.
I make no connection between Rippy and Foster's discovery of "writings by a female officer that looked like a perfect match" to the Quantico letter. It's just that inquiring minds want to know…

The suicide of one tortured soul doesn't put the anthrax mystery to rest. Instead, it raises more questions than it answers. According to the obituary in his hometown newspaper, Ivins worked at Ft. Detrick for his entire professional life: he was there for the Camel Club's antics and doubtless knew all the major participants, including Assaad. What he knew about the highly suspicious extracurricular activities of the Camel Club, and the true origins of the deadly anthrax letters, is not known, and may never be known as this point. And that's just how the real perpetrators of one of the scariest crimes in our history would have it.
You'll note I use the plural, perpetrators: it is almost inconceivable that a single person could have been responsible for the anthrax terror. Logistically, it's near to impossible to imagine that a single "lone nut" could have produced the anthrax, let alone distributed it, without being caught. Did he travel all the way to New Jersey, of all places, just to mail these deadly missives, after single-handedly whipping up a substance that required all sorts of advanced equipment (and safety precautions) to prepare? It hardly seems likely.
Which means that, even if Ivins was in on the plot, he wasn't alone – and the rest of the poisoners are still out there.
Did Ivins wind up a "suicide" because he knew too much and was about to reveal what he knew to investigators? We may never know the answer to this question, but that should hardly stop us from raising it.
This whole sorry episode exemplifies media complicity with U.S. government agencies in creating narratives that reflect well on official Washington. The wide dissemination of the Ivins-was-a-psychopathic-killer meme, which depicts the departed scientist as an "obsessed" nerd who was a danger to his therapist – actually, Duley wasn't his therapist, and her charge that Ivins was a "sociopath" is based on her version of what his actual psychiatrist, Dr. David Irwin, is reputed to have said – underscores the American media's evolving role as the handmaiden of the state, rather than the citizens' watchdog.
We've been covering this scary story at Antiwar.com ever since the anthrax attacks hit the headlines, and we've continued to cover it even while the rest of the media tried to bury it. I believe that practically every year since 2001 I've written about it in this space and noted many of the facts related above. The sudden reemergence of this case in this spectacular manner emphasizes the need for outlets like this one, which present the facts the "mainstream" media would rather not deal with – because they're too busy creating phony narratives to cover the asses of government officials, or worse.
~ Justin Raimondo

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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/01/mccain-anthrax-iraq/
One Month After 9/11, McCain Said Anthrax ‘May Have Come From Iraq,’ Warned Iraq Is ‘The Second Phase’»
Today, the LA Times reports that the individual who may have been responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others apparently committed suicide. As Atrios recalls, shortly after 9/11, conservatives were pinning the blame for the anthrax attacks on Iraq, laying the groundwork for a subsequent invasion. John McCain was part of this fearmongering effort.
On October 18, 2001, McCain appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. When asked how the war in Afghanistan was progressing, McCain volunteered that the invasion of Iraq would be the “second phase” of the War on Terror. He preyed on the public’s fear at the time by claiming that the anthrax “may have come from Iraq”:
LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?
MCCAIN: I think we’re doing fine …. I think we’ll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.
LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?
MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that’s when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.
Watch it:
In the interview McCain tastelessly joked, in reference to the House adjourning until the Capitol could be cleared of the anthrax threat, that Congress members should “bring out their dead!” Less than a week later, two US Postal Service employees working in a facility that sorted mail destined for the Capitol would be dead.
McCain opened the interview by asking Letterman, “What is Osama bin Laden going to be for Halloween?” “Dead!” McCain said, delivering the punchline to his joke. Nearly seven Halloweens later, Osama bin Laden remains alive and free.
Later in the interview, McCain explained his counterterrorism approach: “The more serious these people [terrorists] think we are and believe we are – and we are serious – then I think they might, you know, go back to selling camels or whatever enterprise that they might want to engage in.”
Concluding the interview, McCain warned once again that Iraq was next. “The crunch time will be if – and emphasize if – we have to go after Iraq, and then that coalition could be strained,” he said. “But nothing succeeds like success. … World power politics is very interesting. People are very friendly when they know you’re the most powerful kid on the block.”

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/08/02/2008-08-02_fbi_was_told_to_blame_anthrax_scare_on_a.html
FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 6:32 PM
WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.
After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.
"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.
On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."
But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."jmeek@nydailynews.com