02-Top Scientist Went Badly Off Rails-Secret CIA Project To Test Practicalities Of Mailing Anthrax

[kpete]

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/anthraxattacks.html

Interesting from BBC:
Source: Newsnight, BBC News, March 14, 2002.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm

Anthrax attacks

A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control.

The shocking assertion is that a key member of the covert operation may have removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax which killed five people.

In the wake of Sept 11th, the anthrax attacks caused panic throughout the States and around the world. But has the FBI found the whole case too hot to handle? Our science editor Susan Watts reported from Washington.

SUSAN WATTS:

America’s anthrax attack last autumn was second only to that on the Twin Towers in the degree of shock and anxiety it caused…Some even say the anthrax letters triggered sub-clinical hysteria in the American people…yet this, the first major act of biological terrorism the world has seen remains an unsolved crime…

Initially the investigation looked for a possible Al-Qaeda or Iraqi link, then to a domestic terrorist, then inwards to the US bio-defence programme itself. But in the last four or five weeks the investigation seems to have run into the sand…There have been several theories as to why …

Three weeks ago Dr Barbara Rosenberg — an acknowledged authority on US bio-defence — claimed the FBI is dragging its feet because an arrest would be embarrassing to the US authorities. Tonight on Newsnight, she goes further…suggesting there could have been a secret CIA field project to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail — whose top scientist went badly off the rails…

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bio.....tacks.html

[hedgehog]

1. Boy, that's a shocker!

[Muttocracy]

2. BBC transcript of the same and related programs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/archive/1873368.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/03_march/14/newsnightanthrax.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1722052.stm - focus on Utah

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2176554.stm - August 2002 - mentions former employees being considered suspects

[Parche]

3. CIAnthrax

:hi:

[crimsonblue]

4. Uh oh Barbara

Looks like you'll be the next one to go mentally unstable and off yourself....

[Sanity Claws]

5. Where's Barbara Rosenberg now?

I wonder if she's been suicided too.

[DCKit]

6. The government released a "harmless" bacteria in the parking lot of the Pentagon...

a few months back to study the dispersion pattern over VA, DC and MD. I often find myself wondering what their definition of "harmless" is.

But there's no way they'd try to do the same thing with the U.S. mail. It would be un-American. :sarcasm:

[unblock]

7. now THAT's the cheney we all know and loathe!