Reply #216: What were they covering for?

[Marie26]

It's an interesting theory. I agree that the Plame leak has got to be a cover for "something else." Another story that has dropped off the radar is the anthrax scare in 2001. The FBI traced it to a specific strain (Ames) that only a few scientists had the ability to make. It looks like the investigation kept going till they targeted a US Defense microbiologist named Halfill, then stalled completely. Something weird about the "anthrax" story is that the same cast of characters keep springing up - Judith Miller recieved a hoax letter, David Kelly was a microbiologist & a source for Miller's book on bioweapons, Bush administration officials, etc.

What if these two stories are connected? One thing this administration does well is advertising - you can sometimes tell their future plans based on the propaganda they're pushing now. Right after the anthrax letters, US officials repeatedly suggested that Iraq was behind them. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1222-02.htm. The anthrax attacks helped the Bush ad. in 2 ways: it built support for the Patriot Act being considered at the same time, and it built support for a war against Iraq that they desperatly wanted.

In 2003, CIA & Pentagon officials began telling the Washington Times that they expected the Iraq Survey Group to find evidence that Iraq was behind the anthrax attack. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1222-02.htm. The article states that the Group had found traces of anthrax on a bomb in 2003 - it could say that the Iraqi strain was the same Ames strain as the attacks. This would be a neocon dream - steer suspicion away from Defense scientists, prove Iraq was actually attacking the US, & vindicate the war. Except the actual CIA experts in WMD were standing in the way.

In the summer of 2003, another CIA "covert agent" on "WMD counterproliferation" was forced out after he complained about being asked to fake intelligence about Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49647-2004Dec8.html. It sounds like he may have been a member of the same CIA front company as Valerie Plame. Kokal was also an expert in WMDs, as was Kelly - it seems like there was a sudden push to silence top CIA & State Dept. experts in WMD in late 2003. Could this have been about Iraq's anthrax stores? What if the neocon "plan" was to send anthrax to build public support for the war, then trace that anthrax to Iraq after the invasion? Americans will stand for a lot, but not an attack by elements of our own government. This could explain the Administration's desperate efforts to silence CIA agents, State Dept. agents, or microbiologists like Kelly who could have knowledge of the plan or disprove claims about Iraq's anthrax (This is all just wild speculation here, though!)