"FBI Implicated in Anthrax Mailings Cover-Up"

[AntiFascist]

A little dated, but incredibly relevent:

http://www.tetrahedron.org/news/NR020102.html

Health Science Communications for People Around the World

NEWS RELEASE

Release: No. DITA-909
Date Mailed: January 2, 2002
For Immediate Release
Contact: Elaine Zacky 208/265-2575; 800/336-9266

FBI Implicated in Anthrax Mailings Cover-up: Mueller Reports No Intention to Investigate Chief Suspect

Sandpoint, ID FBI officials may be implicated in a conspiracy to impede justice in the anthrax mailings case, if not treasonous dereliction of duty, according to a growing number of scientists and consumer advocates. After officials cited the likeliest origin of the powdered anthrax was the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, or its Ohio-based supplier and CIA-contractor, Battelle Memorial Instititue (BMI), FBI Director Robert Mueller announced the bureau has no intention of investigating anyone with, or formerly with, their chief suspect BMI.

Just weeks ago, major progress in the FBI's investigation seemed forthcoming. The New York Times and Washington Post revealed that BMI, Dugway's anthrax facility supplier and chief administrator had contracted with the CIA (in project "Clear Vision") to produce, albeit illegally, the 1 trillion spore-per-gram strain of anthrax under investigation. BMI, while heading the U.S. military's "Joint Vaccine Acquisitions Program" worth more than $1 billion in vaccine contracts, commissioned America's top anthrax expert, William C. Patrick, III, to deliver a report on the powdered anthrax's prospects for being spread through the mail.

...

The day before Christmas, an Op Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal additionally implicated BMI, and potentially the FBI, along with rogue elements within the CIA, in an international conspiracy to commit and cover-up the anthrax mailings crime. BMI and Bioport, a Michigan-based offshoot of Britain's leading biological weapons organization at Porton Down, were previously reported to be collaborating on the manufacture and supply of America's only anthrax vaccine. Dr. Robert C. Myers, Chief Operating Officer of BioPort, told a Senate Appropriations Committee in 1996 that he was part of a team of organizations, led by Battelle Memorial Institute . . . The Journal writer Edward Jay Epstein cited the testimony of U.S. Army bioweapons official David Franz concerning America's reliance on British intelligence provided by Porton Down officials regarding the development and use of the powdered Ames strain of anthrax. Thus, the FBI's disregard of foreign suspects, especially Porton Down, with direct links to Bioport and BMI's anthrax vaccine, vaccine contracts, and BMI's and Dugway's anthrax experiments, was criticized by Epstein as it was days earlier in the Washington Post.


More evidence of the FBI's intentional ineptitude came from the Columbus Dispatch. Though the Washington Post reported that the FBI was allegedly pursuing the possibility that financial gain was the motive behind the anthrax mailings, and that "two laboratories" were especially implicated, that is, BMI and Dugway, a contradictory announcement was relayed the same day (Dec. 21, 2001) by Ohio Senator Mike DeWine. Based on an ABC News report concerning a BMI employee who had been under FBI investigation for an anthrax threat, FBI Director Robert Mueller had, according to The Dispatch, assured Senator DeWine that the bureau was not investigating, nor intending to investigate, anyone with, or formerly with, BMI.

Much more at the link!

[Pooka Fey]

1. K&R

[deminks]

2. BBC link from March of 2002

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

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?

(snip)

Scary interview, really.

[elehhhhna]

3. The obligatory Bin Laden & Carlyle Group connection:

Bob Fitrakis

Battelle exposed in anthrax biochemical conspiracy
January 14, 2002

Mainstream news accounts have finally fingered Battelle Memorial Institute, the spooky Dr. Strangelove Institute in Columbus, as ground zero in our domestic military-industrial anthrax scare. With five people dead and eighteen ill, Battelle’s role in directing the Defense Department’s “joint vaccine acquisition program” is now coming under heavy scrutiny.

Battelle, in partnership with Michigan-based Bioport, has a virtual monopoly on military anthrax vaccine production in the U.S.. British and U.S. news accounts describe Bioport’s owner as a top secret British biowarfare consortium, Porton Down. Perhaps not ironically, the Chairman and CEO of the Porton Down company is Fuad El-Habri, a bin Laden family associate. Laura Rozen’s interesting article for the website Salon is must reading on the subject.

Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., a former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, is one of the four-person Board of Directors of Bioport and holds a 13% interest in the company. Some investigators link the multinational investment firm and defense contractor, the Carlyle Management Group -- that was involved in managing the bin Laden family fortune prior to Sept. 11 to Bioport. Former CIA Director Frank Carlucci, Bush the Elder’s Chief of Staff James Baker III and the former President himself are all associated with the Carlyle Group.


http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2002/31

[EFerrari]

4. Who else but DoJ was been working on this?

:crazy:

[AntiFascist]

5. Add South Africa and Project Coast to the international intrigue...

From a military website:

http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2007/Aug/burgessAug07.asp

The Goosen Case and South African Biological Weapons Supply Networks
Concerns about biological weapons proliferation originating from South Africa escalated with the publication of a series of articles in the Washington Post in April 2003. The articles revealed that in early 2002 Dr. Daan Goosen had offered an entire collection of pathogens, including genetically modified pathogens, to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in exchange for $5 million U.S. dollars and immigration permits for 19 associates and their families. While personal financial motives were the primary motive of these former Project Coast scientists, their spokesperson, Dr. Goosen, claimed that they had decided to approach the FBI after receiving overtures by several foreigners who were interested in purchasing biological pathogens. These foreigners included “a German treasure-hunter and a man claiming to be an Arab sheik’s agent.”<7>

and there's this:

http://cryptome.quintessenz.org/mirror/mandela-cbw.htm

My purely "speculative" hunch: The US letters' anthrax came from SA, but Steven Hatfill was the fall guy, not the perpetrator. Although SA-connected (giving the perpetrators the knowledge that he was an obvious fall guy), he would be viewed as having obtained the material at USAMRIID. The motive: Enhance the value of the Project Coast legacy stocks of anthrax and anthrax antitoxins which Daan Goosen (director of Project Coast's Roodeplaat Research Laboratory) tried to sell to Barbara Martinez (FBI WMD chief). However, there are other possibilities (e.g., the Islamist faction in the ANC).

[leveymg]

16. Fascinating, skeptical history of the use of biotoxins in warfare and terrorism here:

On the longish side, but really worth a read.

http://www.iissm.com/newsletter/aug-05/newsletter_article.html

[file83]

6. Doing what the FBI does best...

...covering up major crimes. 9/11. TWA 800. Etc., etc...

[stubtoe]

7. Holy Shit!

Recommending,and how!

This story just keeps unwinding in the most unexpected ways.

[MasonJar]

8. One more time the Bushistas hounded someone, this time to death.

I will not be surprised if this is a CIA or FBI or Bush/Cheney plan gone wrong; they of no conscience are going to now let Ivins be the fall guy, since Hatfill refused to fold. For all we know they suicided him. He would certainly not be the first.

[Supersedeas]

9. my guess is that you will not hear ANYTHING regarding Battelle Memorial Institute in

the GoP Controlled Media.

[leveymg]

10. Don't forget "the other Agency" and Project Jefferson's "replica" anthrax bomb program

Note Rummy, the "replica" bomb, and the date of the report, as well.

Pentagon to Develop Anthrax Strain

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
http://www.newhumanist.com/anthrax.html

Tuesday, September 04, 2001 9:48 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Defense Intelligence Agency plans to develop small amounts of a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes deadly anthrax, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

``We plan to proceed'' once internal legal reviews have been completed and Congress has been fully informed, said Victoria Clarke, spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The existence of the project was revealed in Tuesday's New York Times, which said it was part of a broader research effort to improve U.S. defenses against biological agents. Rumsfeld has identified biological weapons as one of the most worrisome national security threats.

Clarke said the purpose of developing a new strain of anthrax is strictly defensive: to ensure that an effective vaccine is available should a biological weapon be used against American troops. She said it was reported publicly in 1997 that Russia may have been developing the new strain. The U.S. government asked Russia for a sample so it could test vaccines, but no samples were provided.

``We have a vaccine that works against all the known anthrax strains,'' she told reporters at the Pentagon. ``What we want to do is make sure we are prepared for any surprises, we're prepared for anything that might happen that might be a threat. So in the early part of this year, the DIA started to look into ... how we could develop that modified anthrax strain so we could test our vaccines against it.'' So far, the DIA has not produced any samples of the new strain, she said.

``The legal reviews that have been done to date indicate that the work would be compliant'' with the Biological Weapons Convention, Clarke said, because it is defensive in nature and in small quantities. She said she did not know exactly how much of the new anthrax stain the DIA planned to develop. ``With all the appropriate legal reviews, with all the appropriate interagency coordination and congressional briefing, we plan to proceed,'' she added.

The project is part of a broader effort, named Project Jefferson, that was required by Congress in 1997 to guard against technological surprises with regard to the biological warfare threat to U.S. forces.

Separately, the Times report said the Central Intelligence Agency built a replica of a miniature bomb, or bomblet, developed by the former Soviet Union to deliver biological agents. The CIA's purpose was to study how well the bomblet could disperse the agents under different atmospheric conditions.The Times said the United States feared the bomblet was being sold on the international market.

CIA spokesman William Harlow said Tuesday he could not discuss specific work in this area. ``One of our missions is to learn about potential biological warfare threats to the United States,'' Harlow said. ``Occasionally, laboratory or experimental work is required to understand the significance of intelligence gathered about potential foreign threats. Everything we've done in this respect was entirely appropriate, necessary and consistent with U.S. treaty obligations and was briefed to U.S. National Security Council staff and appropriate congressional oversight committees.''
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the CIA has done laboratory tests of foreign munitions to determine how they work and to validate intelligence already collected.
________________________________________

[AntiFascist]

11. I just ran across an article that provides a context...

for these government programs. Posting about it now.

[leveymg]

13. Please, post a link on this thread.

Thnx

[AntiFascist]

15. Here is a link to the new thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3783961&mesg_id=3783961

[seemslikeadream]

12. Tuesday, September 04, 2001 9:48 PM

[EFerrari]

14. You might find this diary at OpEdNews interesting:

Dr Irvins-Anthrax-and why I don't believe the FBI

Diary Entry by jimd3100



Why the evidence does not support the latest victim of the FBI anthrax cover up

::::::::

The FBI has now after only 7 years and and 2 wars declared the Anthrax case solved. "See that dead scientist? Yea, he's the guy that did it. All by himself. To bad he's dead huh?" This just caps off what could be one of the most disastrous criminal investigations in U.S. History. And that says allot when you include 9/11. And you should as they are related, and on some level I think nearly everyone knows this.

The evidence the FBI says it has and that we will go through, they admit is all circumstantial but they said they have won cases just on circumstantial evidence alone, which I don't doubt, but they would not have won this case. Very convenient, and extremely creepy that he wound up dead and did them such a tremendous favor.

He died a slow death. Took to much Tylenol and died of Acetaminophen poisoning." Acetaminophen (Tylenol) Poisoning Symptoms......
after taking an overdose of acetaminophen, you may have no symptoms from taking a toxic amount. You may remain symptom free for up to 24 hours after taking a toxic overdose of acetaminophen.

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8590