FBI Focusing on 'About Four' Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks

[OilemFirchen]

Source: Fox News (Bleccccch)

WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

A leading theory is that the anthrax was stolen from Fort Detrick and then sealed inside the letters. A law enforcement source said the FBI is essentially engaged in a process of elimination.

Much of the early public focus fell on a Fort Detrick scientist named Steven Hatfill, who is suing federal authorities for identifying him as a person of interest. Now the FBI is focusing on other scientists at the facility.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342852,00.html

[LakeSamish706]

1. I wonder if this will eventually track back to the Bush Administration? n/t

[frog92969]

12. Only if it's a real investigation.

I'm sure we'll just see more peons thrown under the bus.
Or maybe they have some opposition to deal with.

[tom_paine]

21. Exactly...it will be investiagted as the Gestapo would have investigated Nazi involvement

Which is to say, the Nazi Gestapo would have never implicated the Nazis and the Bushie FBI would never implicate the Bushies.

End of investigation.

I am fairly certain one of the reasons the "investigation" can proceed no further is because arrows pointing straight to the Bushie White House are automatically idsmissed and not followed up on.

So, if there are any honest FBI agents on the invetsigation, they can't ever find out because no trails to the actual perps can be investigated.

The whole thing is the kind of sham investigation of crimes by High Party Officials we have become accustomed to in Amerika, Russia and China.

[leveymg]

24. Whoever (or group) did this had to have three things: 1)agenda, 2)access, 3)expertise.

1) What agenda? Who would want to paralyze Congress and the media after 9/11? Why wasn't anthrax sent to the Executive Dept officials and the military? This suggests that the person or persons was thinking politically and had a concrete purpose that connected with the 9/11 attacks.

2) There had to be someone on the inside of that facility with high enough clearance and physical access to the material to smuggle it out. Only base commanders and senior scientists could obtain access, and come and go freely.

3) Whoever handled and packaged the material for shipment had to know exactly what he was doing. Suggests someone -- a senior scientist or expert -- at this stage with a very high level of technical expertise.

Bottom line: did any one person have all three characteristics? If not, we have to look at the probability that there's a network of senior officials and technologists behind this.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. Check their voter registration.

[kestrel91316]

11. Oh, they will. And they will try to pin it on a liberal. Just watch.

[TacticalPeek]

3. Hatfill and his lawyers have struck it rich.

Or so it would seem.

[pattmarty]

5. Well, if he's innocent, I don't blame him a bit. I hope he ends up owning Ft Knox.

[judasdisney]

6. New Suspects: Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee

Nobody connected to the Bush Administration will EVER be indicted, even if there are videotapes and confessions.

[BrotherBuzz]

20. Richard Jewell is the perfect patsy...He's dead

Richard Jewell died last summer

[leveymg]

26. Lack of evidence to indict doesn't necessarily mean innocent.

He's an obvious suspect, and his innocence hasn't really been established. If high officials, say the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, wanted to withhold necessary evidence, a sufficient case against Hatfill could not be established.

The FBI really doesn'y have any more access to highly compartmentalized DIA programs than DoD will allow.

[elehhhhna]

4. Their initials: GB, DC, DR, & KR

[leveymg]

27. Add SC to the list of obvious suspects

Here's his resume:

Affiliations

National Defense University, Institute for National Strategic Studies: Former Director of Research
Center for Strategic and International Studies: Senior Fellow for Political-Military Studies, 1993-1998
National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP): Former Study Participant
Project for the New American Century: Former Project Participant
Government Service

Department of Defense: Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, 2003-2006; Director for Program Analysis & Evaluation, 2002-2003; Principal Deputy Secretary for Policy, 2001-2002; Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary, 2001; Director of the Strategic Defense Policy Office, Bush Sr. Administration
Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization: Staff Director, 2000
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States: Staff Director, 1998
Los Alamos National Laboratory: Former Staffer (1982-1986)

Private Sector

QinetiQ North America: Vice President for Strategy, 2007-
SRS Technologies: Deputy Director of Strategic Analysis, 1986-1990
Education

Catholic University: B.A.
Claremont University Graduate School: M.A., Ph.D.

Also, SC appears to have been the source of Judy Miller's story reporting Cambone's (false) statement about the alleged Iraqi mobile weapons labs. See, http://list.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0305&L=science-for-the-people&D=0&T=0&P=10552 Small world.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E5DE163FF93BA35756C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
AFTEREFFECTS: ILLICIT ARMS; U.S. Aides Say Iraqi Truck Could Be a Germ-War Lab
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DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy JUDITH MILLER
Published: May 8, 2003
Senior Bush administration officials in Washington said today that a joint British-American team of experts had concluded that a tractor-trailer truck found in northern Iraq several weeks ago could be a mobile biological weapons lab.

The trailer's design closely fits that of a mobile biological weapons laboratory described by a defector, but the officials could not say whether it had ever produced biological agents for weapons.

''While some of the equipment on the trailer could have been used for purposes other than biological weapons agent production, U.S. and U.K. technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond what the defector said it was for, which was the production of biological agents,'' said Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence.

The van was seized on April 19 at a checkpoint controlled by Kurdish allies near Tallkayf in northern Iraq. It was hauled atop a heavy equipment transporter normally used for tanks, Dr. Cambone said.

The Kurdish troops who stopped the trailer said it might have been traveling in a convoy of military vehicles, perhaps with a decontamination truck.

When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the United Nations in February to describe intelligence on Iraq's biological and chemical weapons program, he cited a defector's report on mobile laboratories that could develop unconventional weapons and be moved around Iraq to avoid detection and attack.

In his address on Feb. 5, Mr. Powell described a configuration of two or three trucks parked alongside each other, which when they were producing biological agents, were attached to one another by hoses.

The defector said mobile laboratories had been used to produce anthrax, botulism and staphylococcus.

Dr. Cambone said the trailer, now on its way to Baghdad for further testing, had a number of ''common elements'' with those described by the defector, including ''the external superstructure and its dimensions; the equipment, such as the fermenter on board, the gas cylinders to supply clean air for production; and, significantly, a system to capture and compress exhaust gases to eliminate any signature of the production.''




Here's how Drogin reported Cambone's confirming statement on the subject: http://www.dailyiowan.com/news/2003/05/08/Nation/U.s-Cautiously.Says.Trailer.Is.Bioweapon-433777.shtml

U.S. cautiously says trailer is bioweapon
Bob Drogin - Los Angeles Times
Issue date: 5/8/03 Section: Nation
PrintEmail DoubleClick Any Word Page 1 of 2 next > WASHINGTON - An Iraqi military trailer now in U.S. hands may have been built as a mobile bio-warfare laboratory and is the most substantial evidence yet found of Saddam Hussein's suspected illegal weapons programs, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Stephen Cambone, the Defense undersecretary for intelligence, said the trailer appears "very similar" to the biological-agent production vehicles that Secretary of State Colin Powell described to the U.N. Security Council three months ago in a bid to win international support for an Iraq war.

"While some of the equipment on the trailer could have been used for purposes other than biological-weapons agent production," Cambone said, U.S. and British experts who have examined it "have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond ... the production of biological agents."

The experts "have not found another plausible use for it, based on the equipment on board, the configuration, what they can divine of the process by which it works," he added.

Cambone's cautious comments at a Pentagon news conference marked the first time the Defense Department has announced it may have found evidence of an illegal weapons programs in Iraq. The Los Angeles Times reported the seizure of the trailer and suspicions about its use April 29.


Here's Judy's earlier story on the trailers:

AFTEREFFECTS: THE HUNT FOR EVIDENCE; Trailer is a Mobile Lab Capable of Turning Out Bioweapons, a Team Says
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By JUDITH MILLER
Published: May 11, 2003
A team of experts searching for evidence of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq has concluded that a trailer found near Mosul in northern Iraq in April is a mobile biological weapons laboratory, the three team members said today.

Describing their four-day examination of the lab for the first time and on the condition of anonymity, the members of the Chemical Biological Intelligence Support Team-Charlie, or Team Charlie, said they had based their conclusion on a thorough examination of the gray-green trailer, with the help of British experts and a few American soldiers.

The members acknowledged that some experts were still uncertain whether the trailer was intended to produce biological agents. But they said they were persuaded that it was a mobile lab for biological production.

The team leader said that the lab contained equipment that could be used to make vaccines, drugs and other peaceful pathogens, as well as deadly germs for weapons, and that Iraq had therefore been obliged to disclose possession of such equipment to international inspectors before the war.

''The failure to disclose such equipment is a clear violation of United Nations sanctions and an indication of ill intent,'' said the team leader, a 20-year veteran of Special Operations forces and explosive ordnance work and a nuclear weapons expert.

He contended that this could be construed as the kind of ''smoking gun'' that his team was charged with finding to substantiate the Bush administration's allegations that Iraq was making biological and chemical weapons.

[mhatrw]

7. Seven years later and they still have nothing.

A law enforcement source said the FBI is essentially engaged in a process of elimination.

Is that active elimination, or are they just waiting for the suspects to die off?

[jpak]

8. but...but...no terrorist attacks after 9/11 - Bush and the GOP protected us

not

[blondie58]

9. I certainly hope that they catch the culprits

I am a postal worker and was not scared, as I figured my chances were slim, but many of my coworkers were scared to death. The P.O. provided us with paper masks and rubber gloves for protection, as that would have helped. :sarcasm:

[goforit]

10. The FBI works for Bush/Cheney only. Never to be trusted again!!!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. THE memory hole story in quite some time.

:kick:

[MasonJar]

14. Propaganda, pure and simple. With news sources like Faux Gnus

how could anyone doubt that the FBI is ready to scourge another innocent scientist?

[kdpeters]

15. "serious security deficiencies"? My ass!!

Over six years -- nothing and suddenly Fox News has the scoop. ~4 rogue researchers smuggling weapons grade anthrax out of this lab. What a joke. Poor Mr. Hatfill is just an expendable pawn.

[dkofos]

16. I would have Rove at the top of my list

[melody]

17. The real #1 suspect was just on CSPAN

They should know where to find Rove by now.

[Peace Patriot]

18. Weird, huh? Boy, does this smell bad!

We have reason to suspect the worst--that the guys they're going after know what really happened, and who ordered it, and are being targeted to intimidate and silence them. After the Seigelman affair--and so much else--we really cannot trust anything the FBI or the DoJ does or says. I even distrust them when they prosecute relatively lower-level Bushite scumbags, and I wonder what those scumbags might know about the key Bushite criminals in the upper reaches of this junta. I can't imagine any kind of scumbaggism that Bush, Cheney & co. would care a fuck about, unless it served their political purposes, or their need to cover up their own heinous crimes. I distrust all prosecutions and investigations by this government.

----

Just wanted to edit this to say that I think it's possible that a few honest FBI agents have been keeping their heads down, and biding their time, really are onto the real Anthrax perps, and are now feeling safe enough to proceed. Possible, not probable.

[MadMaddie]

19. Kinda ironic that the FBI chooses ....wait for it...an election

year to release this information.

Why not Mid year 2007? They have probably known this for awhile.

Honestly, it's gotten to the point where most if not all organizations under Homeland security are the "Federal Republican Mafia".

When a Democratic president is elected one of the first actions they MUST take is to go through every organization and gut them of unqualified employees. If they don't have the proper experience and education well adios.

[Sabriel]

22. Sounds like it's time for some convenient "heart attacks"

Or some accidental falling out of 10th-story windows.

[AlphaCentauri]

23. I almost forgot about this case, thanks for the reminder is election year. n/t

[sofa king]

25. Yeah: Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft.