OT: Editorial re: Hatfill
The same issue of Vanity Fair also features "The Message in the Anthrax," a riveting account by literary detective and Vassar professor Don Foster on the hunt for the anthrax killer. Our memories of the post-9/11 period are inevitably colored by the prolonged mass terror that accompanied the attacks on the World Center and the Pentagon, and Professor Foster does a great service in giving publicity to the case of Dr. Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian-born scientist who formerly worked for the USAMRIID biowar facility at Ft. Detrick, New Jersey.
Foster explains that Dr. Assaad was the victim of a virulently anti-Arab clique at Ft. Detrick, who called themselves "the Camel Club." Making use of the top-notch investigative reporting done by the Hartford Courant – which uncovered a weird series of events at Ft. Detrick, detailing how Assaad was effectively driven out of his job – Foster points to a key piece of evidence that has been completely overlooked in the "mainstream" media. In the period after the anthrax letters were mailed, but before they were discovered to contain anthrax, the Quantico military police headquarters received an anonymous letter accusing Dr. Assaad of plotting a campaign of biological warfare against the U.S. He was questioned by the FBI, and then released after the letter was determined to be a hoax.
The idea that this hoax letter may be a key piece of evidence – which is being totally ignored by the so-called "Amerithrax" task force – has been the theme of a series of past columns, written by me in the last year, but Foster puts the extent of the cover-up in a new light when he reveals:
"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. 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."
Readers of the Courant articles will recognize this female as likely to be the one female member of "the Camel club," whose members took such delight in harassing their colleagues of Arabic descent. They will also recall the following paragraph from a January 20, 2002 piece in the Courant, describing the results of an investigation into loose security practices at Ft. Detrick:
"Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab building at night was Langford's predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report filed by a security guard."
Why won't the "Amerithrax" clowns investigate the Quantico letter, and the implications surrounding it? Why are certain folks exempt, while others, such as the long-suffering Dr. Steven Hatfill, are subjected to relentless harassment and demonization by law enforcement officials who haven't got enough evidence to fill a thimble?
– Justin Raimondo
antiwar.com |
