Just watched Frontline's: Anthrax Files

[Eddie Haskell]

Had I been on the jury I would have found Ivins not guilty. Did anyone else watch and what did you think of the FBI's case?

[Old and In the Way]

1. I missed it, but I do want to watch this.

Guess I'll stream it from the PBS/Frontline website.

[Eddie Haskell]

2. In the end, the whole case centers around Ivins' obsessions.

He was guilty of being a strange bird, but who doesn't have a few quirks?

[Old and In the Way]

5. That's been my impression as well.

Little direct evidence, but someone had to get fingered so they could close the case. I found it quite odd that a person who was known to be a devout Catholic would take his own life, knowing that such an act means eternal damnation. Does not compute.

[applegrove]

6. Becoming obsessed with a woman who rejected him and her sorority

is something psychopaths do. It is how they roll. My guess is that now that psychopaths cannot marry some woman who they can continuously abuse anymore, because of strong enforcement of domestic violence laws, they pick some woman who 'did them wrong' and torment them from afar.

[Eddie Haskell]

11. WTF!

That's your evidence ... his obsession with a woman? Most men I know have become obsessed with a woman at some time in their life ... that's why I got married. :)

[applegrove]

13. So you become obsessed with a woman who rejected to and stalk her and mess with

her possessions and gaslight her and ruin her reputation in diabolical ways? That is normal? I don't think so.

Why this crime. Why do you have special knowledge that this, out of all the crimes the police investigate, involves an innocent man rather than some other crime?

[Eddie Haskell]

14. I pray you don't ever serve on a jury.

Did you watch the show? Where's the evidence that Ivins committed THIS crime?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. the whole thing is fishy!

[nebenaube]

9. As far as I am concerned...

the 'Camel Club' manufactured the powder; ten to fifteen years before the public became aware it existed...

[deminks]

4. Watched it. I came away with the feeling that the FBI tried

to break at least two men into confession. At least one didn't break. They kept trying until one did.
Kinda like their torture program. It wasn't so much to get information from the victims as it was to get them to say what the government wanted them to say.

[Peachhead22]

7. Was that Chris Christie?

When Ashcroft held the news conferences. Where he railroaded those scientists without any solid evidence. Did anyone notice who was standing behind him? It looked like none other the N.J. Gov. Chris Christie (the guy who the GOP establishment were begging to run until he said "no" for the umpteenth time).

I wonder if Christie would have ran would that have opened the door for something unflattering about his conduct back then to come out? (i.e. was he one of the railroaders or incompetents in the investigation)

[deminks]

10. Yes, it was Chris Christie standing by Ashcroft at the Hatfill news conference.

Christie refused to testify to Congress later about possible favoritism toward Ashcroft's post AG firm. (no bid contracts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/washington/10justice.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2885902

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/02/20/19707/christie-ashcroft-refuse-to-testify/

[Linda Wood]

18. I don't think Ivins confessed either.

I think the Frontline report emphasized that fact.

[jdlaughead]

8. Anthrax Files

FBI & CIA COVER UP

Noah Shachtman writes: Did the Anthrax Attacks Kickstart the Iraq War? … Congressman Holt is quoted in Shachtman’s article saying: The anthrax attacks “made it possible to manufacture the argument that there was WMD in Iraq and links to Al-Qaeda” … LMW adds: Here are extracts from my novel CASE CLOSED regarding the potential linkage of “Saddam’s anthrax” to the invasion of Iraq

Posted by Lew Weinstein on March 29, 2011


******



Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN on Feb 5, 2003
******

Noah Shachtman writes for WIRED (3/29/11) …
•Did the Anthrax Attacks Kickstart the Iraq War?
•On February 5th, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations, to make the case for war in Iraq.
•A central plank of his presentation: the anthrax attacks that killed five people and helped send the country into a panic in the days after 9/11.
•“Less than a teaspoon-full of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope,” Powell said.
•“Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons..”
•By the end of the following month, the invasion of Iraq was underway.

The anthrax attacks “made it possible

to manufacture the argument that there was WMD in Iraq

and links to Al-Qaeda,” Rep. Rush Holt said.
•And long after any links between Iraq and the killer spores were disproven, the Bush administration used the mystery surrounding the anthrax mailer to press its case for war.
• a few government officials (most notably, Sen. John McCain) publicly suggested that the Saddam Hussein regime may have been behind the anthrax letters.

[2pooped2pop]

12. Who, if not Ivans?

1) The anthrax letter attacks occurred in September and October 2001

2) It has been suggested that Utah is one of the very few places where the quality of anthrax that was used could have come from.

3) Cheney was in Utah in Sept and Oct of 2001

4)Just sayin....

[AntiFascist]

16. A lot of info about the Utah connection (Dugway) here...

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/armyweaponsgradeanthrax.html

[AntiFascist]

19. Whoa, I just got around to watching the Frontline show...

did you notice the part where Frontline researchers had come across the original document that had been redacted from public view? It had to do with a (positive?) sample that Ivins had identified based on "Dugway Ames Spores". It's not clear to me the point being made in this section of the program, but they also mentioned 4 samples from the RMR-1029 flask being sent to the FBI and coming back negative. Interviewer: "How can this be?" Interviewee: "Exactly!".

It seems apparent that the government possibly wanted to keep USAMRID's relationship with Dugway secret and, perhaps, Ivins (when he was at first collaborating with the FBI investigation) may have discovered something incriminating?

[Fuzz]

15. The entire investigation appears to have been fucked up from the very start, either intentionally or

just from sheer incompetence. I thought the show was interesting, but after watching it I'm inclined to not believe half of what I heard and I'm not sure which half.

[Eddie Haskell]

17. Perhaps this will help.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/science/10anthrax.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

[AngkorWot]

20. I might not have found him guilty either.

But there are way different standards between a jury finding defendants guilty, and investigators closing a case.