(ABC News) EXCLUSIVE: Anthrax Suspect Under Scrutiny Since 2002 (assisted FBI anthrax investigation)

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

Suspected Scientist Aided the FBI's Investigation Into the 2001 Attacks

The US army bio-weapons scientist who killed himself this week, Bruce E. Ivins, had been under suspicion by some FBI agents since early 2002 when anthrax spores were found near his desk, but FBI supervisors were more focused then on another scientist, Steven Hatfill, and dismissed concerns about Ivins, federal law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

Instead, Ivins became deeply involved in the FBI anthrax investigation, helping to analyze the anthrax-laden letters sent to members of Congress and participating in strategy meetings about how to find the person responsible.

...

"If he in fact was the correct person, he was actually put in charge of analyzing the evidence of his own crime," said ABC News consultant Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent who worked on the anthrax case until his retirement from the bureau last year.

"All of the scientists there who worked with us were supposed to have been investigated and given polygraph tests," Garrett said.

...

Friends there say he was well known to be susceptible to deep depression and was concerned he would be falsely linked to the anthrax attacks.

"They took an innocent man, a distinguished scientist, and smeared his reputation, dishonored him, questioned his children and drove him to take his life," said one outraged colleague, who asked that his named not be used for fear "the FBI will come after me."



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5496693&page=1

[underpants]

1. Odd that they had never mentioned it before

or course that might have kept it in the news

I think the obvious point also has to be made-turns out a police/intelligence operation WORKED (according to them) as opposed to blasting his house with an Apache gunship.

[TwilightGardener]

2. ABC News claimed it had 3, and then 4, sources that told them that

Saddam Hussein was linked to the attacks back in October of 2001. Seems like THIS guy is going to be the big patsy, and now it's going to be laid to rest forever. Who were the other sources, where are they now? Only ABC knows.

[dysfunctional press]

12. i'm certainly not going to take abc's word on that...

sounds more like the drumbeats for the war.

[LeighAnn]

20. Bruce Ivins Was Murdered - Take Action Here

Please read my blog post about the murder of Bruce Ivins

http://www.leighannlittle.com

and use the email list at the bottom to make some noise and take action.

[global1]

3. Maybe Ivins Got To Close To The Truth And Was Ready To Blow The ......

whistle. Funny that this account would come out of ABC. I thought I read something in another thread that ABC helped spread a false story about bentonite lace anthrax?

[sabra]

4. Brian Ross - was pushing the Saddam connection in early reports

[AlphaCentauri]

6. Like Doctor David Kelly?

Five years ago, the former UN weapons inspector David Kelly was found dead in an Oxfordshire wood. He had cast doubt on the key '45-minute' claim in the Government's dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and became embroiled in the clash between the BBC and No 10. Lord Hutton's inquiry into Dr Kelly's death cast a harsh light on many institutions and individuals. How have they fared since?

The Winners


Tony Blair

Unscathed by the Hutton report, he left office at a time of his own choosing, give or take a little pressure from Gordon Brown. He has maintained a high profile as the Middle East peace envoy, which could lead to another big international job, such as EU president. His memoirs are expected to earn him £5m, on top of £2m a year from consultancies and six-figure sums on the lecture circuit, all of which help to offset his and Cherie's less-than-sure touch in the property market. Appearing before Hutton, he successfully conveyed the impression of being above the panic elsewhere in No 10. But the whole WMD saga cemented his image as a man who believes his sincerity and good intentions are what count, not the facts.

Alastair Campbell

When the BBC reported in May 2003 that the Government had "sexed up" its dossier on Iraq's alleged WMD the previous autumn, Tony Blair's director of communications went wild. Without his relentless pressure on the broadcaster, it is doubtful that Dr Kelly would have been exposed as reporter Andrew Gilligan's source. He left Downing Street before the inquiry ended, and became a surprise hit on the "Evening with..." circuit as well as a pundit and charity fundraiser. Last year he announced a £1m deal for his diaries – published, as promised, after Tony Blair left office.

Sir John Scarlett

An MI6 veteran, he was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Government's main intelligence clearing house, at the time of the Iraq war, and claimed authorship of the 2002 WMD dossier. But the Hutton inquiry revealed the torrent of emails between him and Campbell, who called him a "mate", as the language of the dossier was toughened up to make Saddam Hussein look more of a threat. Many spooks deplored this politicisation of intelligence, but Scarlett became head of MI6 in 2004, and a knighthood followed last year.

Andrew Gilligan

The fumbling performance, before Hutton, of the 'Today' programme's defence correspondent brought neither him nor the BBC much credit, especially when it emerged he had not done everything possible to preserve his source's anonymity. Internal BBC emails painted him as a loose cannon, but he was essentially right about the flimsiness of the WMD dossier. Gilligan and the BBC parted company after the inquiry, and he found a home for his adversarial style in the press. If the defeat of Ken Livingstone as London Mayor can be attributed to a single journalist, it is Gilligan, whose exposés in the 'Evening Standard' forced the resignation of Livingstone's key ally, Lee Jasper.

Geoff Hoon

Tony Blair's Secretary of State for Defence was reckoned the favourite by pundits to lose his job over the Kelly affair. Unpopular with the generals, in his evidence to the Hutton inquiry he seemed to be out of the loop and more solicitous of No 10's wishes than of his department's position. It required a senior aide to reveal that Mr Hoon had taken the decision that led to Dr Kelly's name becoming public as the source for Gilligan's story. But the pundits were wrong: uncondemned by Hutton, he remained in his post until Mr Blair left office, smoothly transferring his allegiance to Mr Brown, and is still in the Cabinet as Labour's Chief Whip.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/five-years-on-the-legacy-of-kelly-866498.html

[LeighAnn]

25. I think he was murdered or driven to suicide

not because he knew too much, but just so that they could conveniently close the case and no more questions would be asked. All of the bad things that are being said agaisnt him are coming from the one "counselor" and a brother he hadn't spoken to since 1985.

I blogged about the similarities between this death and the deaths of Cliff Baxter, David Kelly, etc

http://www.leighannlittle.com

There's a link on there where you can make some noise about your suspicions

[deminks]

5. "Is this going to be Hatfill-2?" asked former FBI agent.

Yup, only he can't defend himself.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Well, if not a mole, why would they allow a suspect to take control

of the process? Does that square with everybody?

[robertpaulsen]

8. ABC News?! What a Coincidence! :majorfuckingsarcasm:

Phoebe Loosinhouse (1000+ posts) Fri Aug-01-08 02:59 PM
Original message
Anthrax, Saddam and ABC News
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald /

Overlooked and incredible story by Glenn Greenwald in Salon

ABC is participating in a cover-up of grand proportions. I'd like to see Leahy hold hearings about the Anthrax investigation and these issues.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3714643

Please recommend Phoebe's thread. Or mine:

Focus Should be on Cheney in the Wake of the Anthrax Suspect "Suicide"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3715949

Now, ABC News, since you've been so "helpful" today, how about the identities of those other "well-placed sources"?

[burythehatchet]

9. beat me to it. ABC is in the same class as CNN/Faux in my view

More dangerous in fact, until people stop believing that they're a new outlet as opposed to a propaganda tool.

[bobd0]

23. Another very convenient "suicide"

The DC Madam.

Bruce E. Ivins.

Two huge scandals put to rest by two "suicides".

How convenient.

[tblue37]

10. I keep thinking about Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent turned traitor,

who was put in charge of the investigation of the leak that he himself was responsible for. (You might remember him from the 2007 movie Breach.)

There does seem to be a pattern of foxes guarding henhouses in our government.

If, of course, they have actual evidence against him.

The stuff in the article about his counselor's getting a protective order against him does make him seem a bit scary, though.

A DUer has posted an excellent analysis by Larisa Alexandrovna, suggesting that Ivens might have been part of an administration conspiracy to justify war with Iraq:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3716515

[David Zephyr]

11. Er....sort of like Allen Dulles "investigating" who killed JFK.

Or sort of like George W. Bush swearing he was going to look into "who" leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media and then "fire" them when he caught them.

Or sort of like George W. Bush swearing he was going to "smoke" Osama bin Laden "out of his hole" "dead or alive" even though both of their daddies had been in business together for nearly 50 years.

[olddad56]

13. suicide this guy, let him take the blame. and put the whole deal to rest.

[lonestarnot]

16. Sounds plausible, but they have screwed this investigation up so

badly, we will probably never get to the truth. Another success by the secret government.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

14. I am really hoping that he left a "In the Event of My Death " letter

with family or his lawyer.

Speaking of - was there a suicide letter? He doesn't seem like the type to bypass an opportunity for one last personal sermon. I base that on the fact that he liked to write Letters to the Editor - people like that like to see their thoughts crystallized in a concrete format.

[Kaleko]

15. Read Glenn Greenwald on the ABC News connection too!

This whole can of worms is going viral, folks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3714643#3716038

[JohnyCanuck]

17. Here's a snip from Greenwald's post on Salon.com

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:

The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.

SNIP

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html

[coalition_unwilling]

22. I highly recommend the Greenwald piece on Salon. Until ABC News

releases the names of its 4 sources for its report of Iraqi bentonite and silica in the anthrax spores, I will no longer view any programs on ABC, meaning I will not see advertisers' paid ads on ABC. I live in Southern California and I will also not be attending any Disney-owned theme park either until ABC News comes clean. I would email them to tell them but they clearly couldn't care less about the likes of me. So consider this a personal and private boycott.

I am already boycotting NBC and its parent GE. I guess that leaves Viacom-owned CBS, although CBS pretty much lost me in perpetuity over its treatment of Dan Rather, et. al., and the story of Bush being AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. Please note that while the documents CBS relied upon for its reportage were never fully authenticated, they were never definitively established as forgeries either. And the substance of the story Rather and CBS reported is supported by numerous independent, i.e., non-governmental, sources.

I guess I'll be sticking with print- and internet-based media only from here on. OK, I'll make an occasional exception for Frontline and Bill Moyers' Journal on the Pentagon Broadcasting Service.

The silver lining in this cloud is that I no longer need to buy a digital converter box for when network broadcasts go from analog to digital. Plus more time for reading.

[annabanana]

18. ABC?. . . really?

Let's get Brian Ross right on that, OK?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html

[Supersedeas]

19. maybe he had a legitimate concern

[Zorra]

21. Maybe he was going to blow the whistle on somebody like Karl Rove

and was "dispatched".

[coalition_unwilling]

24. More probably Cheney\Addington\Bybee, et. al. - n/t

Cheney's office was pimping for the war the Iraq from Jan 20, 2001. His office had the 'motive' to try to pin anthrax on Saddam, in order to supply a pretext for the PNAC goal of using the military to force regime change in Iraq as a stepping stone to a neo-colonial imperial pax americana in the middle East.

Poassibly also Wolfowitz and Laurie Mylroie, two other lunatic PNACers with an obvious 'new pearl harbor' agenda to force regime change in Iraq.

As evil a MF as Rove is (and he was investigated for dirty tricks as part of Donald Segretti's operation back in the Watergare era but investigation was dropped b/c Rove was considered too small potatoes), one must consider who had the strongest motive and commanded the resources to pull this off.

Cheney (through RummyDummy) and Wolfowitz would have had access to the Defense Intelligence Agency assets and other spook agency assets necessary to pull this off. Not so clear what claim on those same resources good 'ole Turdblossom would have had.

The three points of the investigative triad - motive, means and opportunity - thus point more in the direction of PNAC and Cheney and away from Turdblossom. Add to that the question of 'who benefits?' (the age-old 'cui bono?'), and you have a perfect rogue's gallery of possible alternates to TurdBlossom.

On edit: just copied this snip from another thread on DU:

Cheney & his staff took Cipro starting on the evening of 9/11

On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011023/...

[Imagevision]

26. Agreed, I believe the whole thing was orchestrated by Cheney, one last book to close...