ANTHRAX COVER-UP?
We know who the suspects are – so why no arrest?
antiwar.com
But the most dramatic loose end left conspicuously hanging in the aftermath of 9/11 is undoubtedly the anthrax story. For a few weeks in October, and into November, the anthrax letters sent to media outlets and prominent elected officials were the top story: but when the attacks stopped, and the media ran out of scare stories on the possibilities of bio-terrorism (after all, how many documentaries about smallpox and ebola can you run without sending the audience fleeing?) the coverage sputtered out rather quickly, and soon came to a complete dead end. The investigation, too, seemed to have reached a similar blind alley: the authorities were baffled, or so they said. But they were lying: indeed, as the investigation proceeded, usually voluble government officials, eager to be seen as "on the job," were laconic in their public pronouncements. On November 19, John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, averred that "We don't know…at the moment, in a way that we could make public, where the anthrax attacks came from."
Of course they can't make it public: because, at the very least, the truth points to their own incompetence and passive complicity. And, at worst …
WHY THE FOOT-DRAGGING?
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' chemical and biological weapons program, says the US government has "a strong hunch" about who is behind the anthrax letters, but is "dragging its feet" in the investigation because the chief suspect is a former government scientist with knowledge of "secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed." Rosenberg has written a very interesting analysis of the anthrax attacks that leads to one and only one ineluctable conclusion: that the chief culprit was not some Arab terrorist, associated with Al Qaeda or similar groups, but an American, a former US government employee – one who, furthermore, is a middle-aged "insider" in the biodefense field, with a doctoral degree, who probably worked in the USAMRID laboratory, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, still has access – and had some dispute with a government agency.
PLEASE TRY THIS AT HOME!
Furthermore, given the information compiled by Rosenberg, and with the aid of Google.com, anyone with computer access can identify by name the person or persons in possession of the key to unlocking the mystery of the anthrax attack.
POISON PEN
The strain of weaponised anthrax used in the attacks narrows the search for the perpetrator(s) down to a few US labs: but law enforcement agencies have yet to issue a single subpoena for employee records at the four labs with a history of working with this strain. We know about the anthrax letters, of course, and the several hoax letters, but a major clue in this investigation is an anonymous letter, sent before the anthrax hysteria, in late September, to the military police at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, accusing a US government bioengineer, Egyptian-born Dr. Ayaad Assaad, of being behind a bio-terrorist plot. The letter-writer revealed a detailed knowledge of Dr. Assaad's life and work at USAMRID, including details of his personal life that only someone who worked with him could have possibly known: indeed, the poison-pen author claimed to have formerly worked with Dr. Assaad.
FBI TAKES A PASS
While FBI spokesman Chris Murray confirmed that Assaad was not under suspicion, he also stated to reporters that the FBI is not trying to find out who sent the anonymous hate-letter – which the FBI won't show to Assaad. The odd timing of the letter – sent after the anthrax letters were mailed, but before their deadly contents were known – doesn't even have them mildly curious.
WHERE THE ANTHRAX TRAILS LEADS
Rosenberg believes that the poison-pen missive was written by the real perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, who sought to ride the wave of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim hysteria that swept the nation after 9/11. This also fits the pattern of masquerade that characterizes the anthrax letters to NBC, Daschle, Leahy, et al, with their anti-Israel, pro-Muslim slogans neatly printed in block letters. Indeed, the one thread that seems to run throughout this story is anti-Arab animus, as the astonishing – and truly frightening – story of what happened at Ft. Detrick in the early 1990s makes all too clear….
IT CAME FROM FT. DETRICK
Things were turning up missing at AMRIID, and Lt. Col. Michael Langford was baffled. He suspected that someone was tampering with records, perhaps in order to conduct unauthorized research. He told a lab technician to "make a list of everything that was missing," and "it turned out that there was quite a bit of stuff that was unaccounted for," 27 sets of specimens, including anthrax, hanta virus, simian AIDS virus "and two that were labeled 'unknown' – an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret," as this chilling Hartford Courant story by Jack Dolan and Dave Altimari puts it. One set of specimens has since been found: the rest are still missing….
CAUGHT ON TAPE
An investigation was launched that exposed the shockingly lax security measures at the lab, and raised the possibility that some specimens may never have been entered in lab records. Also uncovered was a tape from a surveillance camera showing the entry of an unauthorized person into the lab, at 8:40, on January 23, 1992, let in by Dr. Marian Rippy, lab pathologist. The night visitor was Lt. Col. Philip Zack, a former employee who had left as a result of a dispute with the lab over his alleged harassment of Dr. Assaad. The Courant reports:
"Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy, [lab technician Charles] Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination."
THE KAMEL KLUB KIDS
According to Assaad, in the week before Easter 1991, he found a poem in his mailbox, described in another Courant story:
"The poem, which became a court exhibit, has 235 lines, many of them lewd, mocking Assaad. The poem also refers to another creation of the scientists who wrote it — a rubber camel outfitted with sexually explicit appendages. The poem reads: 'In (Assaad's) honor we created this beast; it represents life lower than yeast.' The camel, it notes, each week will be given 'to who did the least.' The poem also doubles as an ode to each of the participants who adorned the camel, who number at least six and referred to themselves as 'the camel club.' Two — Dr. Philip Zack and Dr. Marian Rippy — voluntarily left Fort Detrick soon after Assaad brought the poem to the attention of supervisors."
Charming, eh? This kind of organized harassment has an ideological edge to it not completely attributable to personal antipathy, and seems politically inspired, a possibility that is intriguing given the political repercussions of the anthrax scare. |
