The Anthrax Attacks [View All]

[Tim Howells]

5. THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS

So ... whoever perpetrated September 11 obviously has tons of money
and a tight military organization. You would expect that this would
not be an isolated event, but the start of a coordinated campaign. If
this was the work of Islamic fundamentalists, then where is the Jihad?
Where are the Holy Warriors who should have been positioned and ready
to follow up on the opening shot of the war?

There was a second wave of attacks--the dissemination of anthrax
letters to both random and carefully selected targets. However,
everyone now acknowledges that this was an inside job--that the
weapons grade anthrax used would only be available to a very limited
number of scientists and military/intelligence officers working in the
United States on highly classified projects.

In fact, according to the leading expert on the anthrax attacks,
Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, the FBI has long known exactly who
was behind these attacks--attacks that have so far have killed at
least five American citizens--but the Bureau has decided to let the
perpetrator off the hook, just as the sponsor of the September 11
hijackings has been let off the hook. Professor Rosenberg is a
microbiologist and an expert on biological warfare who has served as a
Presidential Advisor and testified before congress on this subject.
She was selected by the Federation of American Scientists to
investigate the anthrax attacks. Over one year ago, in January 2002,
Professor Rosenberg stated:

The FBI has surely known for several months that the anthrax attack
was an inside job. A government estimate for the number of scientists
involved in the US anthrax program over the last five years is 200
people. According to a former defense scientist the number of defense
scientists with hands-on anthrax experience and the necessary access
is smaller, under 50. The FBI has received short lists of specific
suspects with credible motives from a number of knowledgeable inside
sources, and has found or been given clues ... that could lead to
incriminating evidence. By now the FBI must have a good idea of who
the perpetrator is.

{"Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks," Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Federation of American Scientists, January 17, 2002-September 22, 2002
http://www.inesap.org/bulletin19/bul19art02a.htm }

Another leading expert on biological warfare, Professor Francis Boyle
of Indiana University, concurs with Rosenberg's opinion. Professor
Boyle is a renowned expert on international law who has testified
before Congress on legal issues concerning biological warfare. He was
instrumental in drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of
1989. His analysis of the anthrax attacks has led him to the same
conclusion reached by Professor Rosenberg, which he states even more
bluntly:

I believe that the FBI knows exactly who was behind these attacks and
that they have concluded that the perpetrator was someone who was or
is involved in illegal and criminal biological warfare research
conducted by the US government (the Pentagon or the CIA) or by one of
the government's civilian contractors. For that reason, the FBI is not
going to apprehend and indict the perpetrator.

{"Bio-Warfare and Terrorism," Francis Boyle, Professor of
International Law, University of Illinois School of Law,
Synthesis/Regeneration 30, Winter 2003
http://web.greens.org/s-r/30/30-12.html }

As with the investigation of the funding channel for the September 11
hijackers, the anthrax investigation started off fast and made great
progress only to come to a screeching halt with the perpetrator in
easy reach.

The most obvious pieces of evidence were the notes that accompanied
the anthrax mailings. These contained crude misspellings and praised
Allah while calling for the downfall of the United States. These notes
were quickly recognized as a transparent hoax. As Professor Rosenberg
has stated:

Expert analysts for the FBI believe that the letters were written by a
Westerner, not a Middle Easterner or Muslim, although the text was
clearly intended to imply the latter.

{"Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks," Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Federation of American Scientists, January 17, 2002-September 22, 2002
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/fbi_drag_feet.html }

The anthrax strain used was consistent in all letters. A detailed
genetic analysis narrowed the search to a single laboratory: the U.S.
Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
at Fort Detrick, Maryland:

"Riddle of the spores--Why has the FBI investigation into the anthrax
attacks stalled? The evidence points one way," George Monbiot, The
Guardian, May 21, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/anthrax/story/0,,719367,00.html

Further, the sophisticated weaponization process used to treat the
spores, and the highly specialized expertise needed to store and
handle the spores, narrows the search even much further. This leaves
us with just a handful of suspects involved in the Fort Detrick
program:

"Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks," Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Federation of American Scientists, January 17, 2002-September 22, 2002
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/fbi_drag_feet.html

With the field narrowed down so drastically, Professor Rosenberg
points us to what I believe is the key piece of evidence in
identifying the perpetrator:

On Sept. 21, three days after the first anthrax mailing and before any
letters or anthrax cases were in the news, an anonymous typed letter
was mailed to Quantico accusing an Egyptian-American scientist,
formerly of USAMRIID, of plotting biological terrorism. The accused
scientist was quickly exonerated by the FBI. The letter's writer
displayed familiarity with work at USAMRIID and claimed to have
formerly worked with the accused scientist.

{"The Anthrax Case: What the FBI Knows," Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Ph.D., June 13, 2002
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/fas-01.html }

Obviously the anonymous accuser himself fits the profile of the actual
perpetrator. Furthermore he was able to correctly anticipate that
there would be an anthrax attack and that the strain of anthrax used
would lead to Fort Detrick. The conclusion seems inescapable that the
anonymous author of this false accusation was the author of the attack
itself.

The falsely accused was an Egyptian born scientist, Dr. Ayaad Assaad
who worked at USAMRIID during the 1990's. During his employment there
he was the target of racist attacks from a Jewish coworker, Lt. Col.
Philip Zack. In one incident Zack mailed Assaad a rubber camel with a
huge model sexual appendage attached, together with an eight page poem
that described Dr. Assaad among many other things as a "life form
lower than yeast."

"Arab scientists recount hostility and harassment at military anthrax
lab," Lynne Tuohy and Jack Dolan, The Hartford Courant, December 19,
2001
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=detrick19&date=20011219

As a result of this and a string of similar racist attacks by Lt. Col.
Zack, Assaad filed a harrassment suit and Zack was forced to resign
his position at USAMRIID. However, Zack continued to have access to
the lab illegally with the help of a personal friend there:

"Anthrax Easy To Get Out Of Lab--Security Was Based On Trust In
Scientists," Jack Dolan, Dave Altimari and Lynne Tuohy, The Hartford
Courant, December 20, 2001
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/hcourant.html

Certainly Lt. Col. Zack must be considered to be the prime candidate
as the author of the letter falsely accusing Dr. Assad. In my view
this also makes him the prime suspect in the attacks
themselves--especially when you take into account the fact that his
illegal comings and goings at Fort Detrick occurred at the time when
anthrax spores matching the genetic profile of those used in the
attacks went missing there.

"Deadly specimens disappeared from Army research lab in '90s," Jack
Dolan and Dave Altimari, The Hartford Courant, January 21, 2002
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/13439...

In any event, the suspects in this crucial investigation are certainly
NOT fanatical Islamic fundamentalists. Everyone close to the
investigation agrees that the perpetrator is a highly qualified
bio-warfare expert who has worked on highly classified projects for
the United States government. He has very specific and rare skills
that in themselves narrow the field to a mere handful people, without
even taking into account the evidence surrounding the mailings
themselves. The postmarks provide a series of time stamps associated
with specific locations. An investigation like this can stall when
there are thousands of possible suspects; it cannot stall when there
are a handful of suspects and abundant clues to resolve the
perpetrator's identity. Professors Rosenberg and Boyle are quite
correct: the FBI is deliberately shielding the perpetrator of these
terrible crimes, which have taken the lives of five innocent American
citizens and which attack the foundations of our free and open
society.

But not everyone is going unprotected. With exceptional foresight so
notably absent elsewhere in this case, Vice President Dick Cheney was
able to anticipate that anthrax would become a problem in the Capitol.
He and his staff started taking an anti-anthrax medication (Cipro) on
the night of September 11, before the letters containing anthrax
started to arrive:

"White House mail sorters anthrax-free," Sandra Sobieraj, Associated
Press, October 24, 2001
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/ap102401.html

"Judicial Watch Sues Bush Administration For Anthrax Documents--Group
Says Government Had Braced In Advance For Anthrax Attacks," Associated
Press, June 9, 2002
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/ap060902.html

Obtaining and preparing the anthrax will have been a difficult and
lengthy process. The attacks, beginning just seven days after
September 11, must have been prepared well in advance by a highly
sophisticated government insider. Like the hijackers themselves and
their sponsors in the ISI, the perpetrator clearly has powerful
protectors high inside the U.S. government. The two attacks seem to
have been perfectly coordinated to work towards the same objective.
The ever-incisive Professor Rosenberg observes:

The perpetrator was probably ready before Sept. 11 and simply took
advantage of the likelihood that Sept. 11 would throw suspicion on
Muslim terrorists. Was the perpetrator trying to push the US toward
some retaliatory military action?

{"Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks," Professor Barbara Hatch Rosenberg,
Federation of American Scientists, January 17, 2002-September 22, 2002
http://911review.org/Wget/www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm }