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Anthrax Suspect 'Is U.S. Scientist'

 
 
Shortfatdyke
05:46 / 20.02.02
this from today's guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,653034,00.html
 
 
grant
12:11 / 20.02.02
quote:The FBI has a suspect for last year's anthrax attacks, but is "dragging its heels" because he is a former government scientist familiar with secret state-sponsored research, a leading American expert on biological warfare said yesterday.
The man also sent a hoax letter to the US Senate from Britain and may once have worked in the laboratory to which his letters were sent for testing, said Barbara Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' chemical and biological weapons working group. Quoted in the Trenton Times of New Jersey - based in the town to which most of the genuine anthrax mailings have been traced - Professor Rosenberg said that investigators had interrogated the suspect twice since October.


Fuckers.
Then again, they questioned ME twice, so...
nah.

Fuckers.

quote:The anthrax letters, sent to US senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, the New York Post newspaper, a television anchorman, Tom Brokaw, and others, killed five people. They infected 13 more and forced many senators to evacuate their offices for more than two months.


Yay! We're officially... others!!

[ 20-02-2002: Message edited by: grant ]
 
 
gentleman loser
22:50 / 27.02.02
Hoaxers don't scare me as they're most likely losers looking for attention. This little reported link that I posted on my weblog about a month ago frightens me a lot more:

Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army's biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there, documents from an internal Army inquiry show.

Anthrax doesn't scare me much, since it's not spread person to person. On the other hand, Ebola virus, which is often lethal and highly contagious, scares the shit out of me.

It's funny that the U.S. mainstream press anthrax panic mongers went silent so quickly. I guess the White House got them to shut up.

[ 28-02-2002: Message edited by: gentleman loser ]
 
 
grant
12:37 / 18.03.02
BBC News: linking anthrax to the CIA

As you might imagine, this "other" is a little concerned about the web of culpability here.

two excerpts:

quote:

DR MARY BETH DOWNS:
ST MATTHEW'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE:
FORMER FORT DETRICK EMPLOYEE:
I came in developed my negatives and here they said anthrax and I looked at this little counter that would have been putting the sequential numbers on the film and there weren't any films missing and yet I knew that Friday I had used it and it hadn't said anthrax.

WATTS:
What did that suggest to you had been happening over the weekend?

DOWNS:
That someone had been in there working on anthrax....Anyone who did have access to the labs was not monitored in what they did, either in what they did in the lab that is the amount of agent they were growing, or in what they did with that agent, that is if they put it in their pocket and took it home ...

WATTS:
Such is the FBI's determination to establish if Fort Detrick is at the heart of this that it has turned to genomic analysis of the powder itself...The Inst for Genomic Research was founded by Craig Venter - the man who sped up the decoding of the Human Genome... their anthrax team has created a DNA "fingerprint" of anthrax taken from the body of the first person to be killed - a Florida-based newspaper man. They're looking for differences between this so-called Florida "strain" and stored samples from a number of US military sites

This is the first time genomic analysis has been used for microbial forensics...Tim Read is one of the world's leading authorities on the genetic make-up of anthrax . He compared the fingerprint of the Florida strain with that of samples originating at Fort Detrick. The results are not yet published - so he's being careful what he says:


DR TIMOTHY READ:
THE INSTITUTE OF GENOMIC RESEARCH:
They're definitely related to each other ...closely related to each other


quote:
One of these secret projects, carried out in the Nevada desert, was part of a series of three In the first few days of September last year - immediately prior to the attacks of the 11th, the New York Times carried a major investigation which at any other time would have been a story of huge significance...It revealed three secret bio-defence projects at a time when the American people believed none was taking place. One - run by a contractor - Battelle - was to create genetically altered anthrax. The question now is - are there more such projects?
 
 
Rev. Wright
14:17 / 18.03.02
I remember reading several articles with regards the Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK, stating that;
a) the government had been in contact with timber yards, checking on supplies of wood for animal pyres.
b) Missing samples from Porterdown (spelling?), of Foot and Mouth.

my conspiracy for Foot and Mouth was an attack back at the fuel blockade farmers and a change in farming style in the UK

[Edited due to bad typing]

[ 18-03-2002: Message edited by: will it work wright? ]
 
 
seamonkey
15:58 / 18.03.02
Did anyone read this back in October?

Quote:

"All kidding aside, while the sending pf anthrax to U.S. citizens seems to be yet another bizarre aspect of the on-going terror attacks on America, there is a precedent, and it is connected to America's on-going woes with the Arab world.

The problem began in 1958, with the formation of the United Arab Republic by Egypt and Syria. To protect Israel, the CIA armed Iraq's Kurds and encouraged them to revolt and attack Syria, which was considered a Soviet pawn. In response, Colonel Abdul Karim el-Kassem overthrew Iraq's King Faisal and restored relations with the Soviets. The coup d'etat incited nationalists in Lebanon's Arab community and in May 1958, armed revolt errupted in Beirut. The U.S. Information Agency building was burned and sacked and the ARAMCO pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Tripoli was severed. To placate King Hussein, America began selling arms to Jordan and mounting covert operations against Iraq, including an MKULTRA operation in which the infamous CIA officer, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, sent from India a handkerchief laced with poion to Colonel Kassem.

According to CIAnik Seymour Hersh in his JFK-bashing book, "The Dark Side of Camelot" (page 194): "the (CIA's Technical Services Division) created a poioned handkerchief that was mailed with the approval of the agency's top management to the home of General Abdul Karim Kassem, the military strongman of Iraq. Kassem had seized power in a bloody coup and, to the dismay of the U.S., immediately restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and lifted a ban on the Communist Party in Iraq. Sidney Gottlieb came up with the idea of infecting a handkerchief and mailing it to Iraq via the CIA station in New Delhi, India. 'It was not an assasination', Gottlieb told (Hersh) in an interview. 'They [the CIA's Near East division] just wanted him to get sick for a long time. I went to (CIA Deputy Director of Plans, Richard) Bissell and he said go ahead.'

"Others in the agency saw it differently. One sneior officer, in an interview for this book, revealed that the men running the Near East division were interested in getting rid of General Kassem permanently."

(Incidentally, in a Frontline story aired on 25 January 2000, titled The Survival of Saddam, it was revealed that Saddam Hussein, then an up-and-coming CIA asset and dictator, and other memebers of the Ba'ath party worked with "the Americans" to overthrow General Kassem. According to Frontline, "With CIA help, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party seized power in 1963. General Kassem was killed in the coup. The CIA provided lists of suspected communists for Ba'ath Party hit squads, who liquidated at least 800 people. Saddam Hussein rushed home to join in as an interrogator, torturer and killer.")

So, if the FBI is lookin for a motive and method (meaning modus operandi), the CIA must rate as a prime suspect in the anthrax black valnetines that are currently being sent across the country. The motive, of course, is to keep the threat of terrorism alive and widespread, so more assaults can be made on our Civil Liberties, thus strengthening the National Security elite. The method of sending envelopes packed with poison, as we know, was developed and perfected by the CIA."

Fuckers indeed.
 
 
tSuibhne
14:01 / 20.03.02
quote:Originally posted by seamonkey:
The motive, of course, is to keep the threat of terrorism alive and widespread, so more assaults can be made on our Civil Liberties, thus strengthening the National Security elite. The method of sending envelopes packed with poison, as we know, was developed and perfected by the CIA."


Anyone else find this theory severly lacking in any kind of real logic? It's like saying, you once shot a gun, this person was killed by a gun, so you must have killed them. Doesn't add up.

Plus, it's an EXTREMLY simplistic view of the motives of the US Intellegence Community. If any Goverment agency is doing something of this nature, "so more assaults can be made on our Civil Liberties, thus strengthening the National Security elite." The CIA would probably be the least likely suspects. They have no jurisdiction over US citizens. The FBI and the NSA are the two intellegence groups that would gain from such a ploy. And if you think the CIA would risk its neck to help either group. You are severely over estimating how these different groups feel about each other.

Add in the fact that the NSA leads all US agencies in misappropriated funds, and the picture starts to look different.
 
 
seamonkey
15:15 / 20.03.02
I'm not saying I agree 100% with the author's theory per se, though I do agree that there is a precedent for this sort of activity. No one really knows of course who it was exactly who is behind the anthrax attacks, and it could just as easily be a rogue govt. agent as it could be a domestic terrorist group like someone with neo-nazi affiliations or whatever.

The facts remain, however, that biowarfare materials did vanish from Army labs at some point in the recent past, and why would someone go to the trouble of obtaining said materials except to use them? Also, the premise that the CIA have no jurisdiction over US citizens is an erroneous one. There are precedents for their having helped spy on US citizens during the Vietnam War era (in tandem with the FBI's COINTELPRO program) and also during the 80's protests against US involvement in Central America. They aren't technically supposed to be doing this, but it has happened in the past and one would assume that with the current debacle that it could just as easily be going on again.

After all, with the recent creation of a special anti-terrorist task force within the CIA that doesn't use the normal chain of command (I think they report directly to the NSC) and has an unlimited (ie. "black") budget, they probably operate without any congressional oversight, and that's where the real problems occur. If the war on terrorism is a global one, after all, then they must be looking at domestic groups/organizations as well as foreign ones, sources of funding, etc. that, in their view, could be connected to "terrorism" as such.

The creation of such special taskforces causes a real blurring of the definition of what agencies like the CIA are "supposed" to do, and their workings are especially murky. They become, in essence, a de facto secret police force. (Who's watching them?)
 
 
tSuibhne
17:56 / 20.03.02
quote:Originally posted by seamonkey:
Also, the premise that the CIA have no jurisdiction over US citizens is an erroneous one. There are precedents for their having helped spy on US citizens during the Vietnam War era (in tandem with the FBI's COINTELPRO program) and also during the 80's protests against US involvement in Central America.


The operative bit there being "in tandem with the FBI" The only way the CIA can spy on US citizens is if they are in a joint operation with another US agency. And even then the spying is traditionally done by the other agency. With the CIA providing information on non-citizens, who are not in the US (say foriegn groups that might be providing trouble makers, or foreign groups that might be providing support [say Canadians helping American draft dodgers]). The CIA can't even investigate it's own people. Suspected spies are investigated by the FBI, and security clearances are approved by the DoD.

quote:After all, with the recent creation of a special anti-terrorist task force within the CIA that doesn't use the normal chain of command (I think they report directly to the NSC) and has an unlimited (ie. "black") budget,

My understanding is that this group is not "within the CIA" but is in fact a joint operation of several goverment agencies. A new organization to help encourage information sharing between agencies. The fact of the matter is that the FBI, CIA, and NSA hate each other. They don't trust each other, and they will only work with each other when ordered to do so.

I'm not saying they don't do shit that they shouldn't do. But the days of blaming everything on some CIA plot, are gone. They are a shadow of the agency that they used to be. I'm much more worried about the actions of the FBI and the NSA, then those of the CIA.
 
 
Lionheart
19:24 / 20.03.02
I read an article a couple of years back (it's now in one of my shoeboxes)about how Clinton signed an executive order putting the CIA in charge of all the other law enforcement government agencies.
 
 
tSuibhne
12:29 / 21.03.02
quote:Originally posted by Lionheart:
I read an article a couple of years back (it's now in one of my shoeboxes)about how Clinton signed an executive order putting the CIA in charge of all the other law enforcement government agencies.


Um, news to me. Esspecially considering at the begining of Clinton's administration, in responce to the end of the Cold War, the CIA came very close to being shut down. There was a huge push by the NSA and other groups to close the CIA and give all their duties over to the NSA.

Combine this with the fact that the CIA has had trouble with getting full funding since the end of the Cold War, and the above seems very unlikely.
 
 
seamonkey
14:48 / 21.03.02
Errr...didn't Bush just increase the CIA's budget exponentially? Granted, the lion's share always goes to "No Such Agency" and their vast antenae farms (not to mention "Eschelon" and the like), but I always thought that the NSA's job was to monitor foreign (and of course, domestic) communications.

Perhaps its better in the long run if we do have seperate, even competing agencies instead of one vast monolith of state secrecy. At least that way, they're keeping tabs on one another...

Also,can someone clarify this for me:as far as precedents go, wasn't there some recent revelation about how in the early 60's, there were plans drawn up to "stage" terrorist attacks on US soil to help whip up support for an invasion of Cuba? Supposedly, it was shelved before the Bay of Pigs happened, as involvement in Vietnam was starting to overshadow everything else. I can't remember where I heard this. Anyone?
 
 
tSuibhne
15:07 / 21.03.02
quote:Originally posted by seamonkey:
Errr...didn't Bush just increase the CIA's budget exponentially? Granted, the lion's share always goes to "No Such Agency" and their vast antenae farms (not to mention "Eschelon" and the like), but I always thought that the NSA's job was to monitor foreign (and of course, domestic) communications.


I was waiting for someone to mention that. Question, was that pre or post 9/11? Plus, it doesn't really surprise me. With a CIA family history, he's sure to be more sympathetic to CIA needs, and consider them more important, then Clinton.

As far as what the NSA's jurisdiction is... To be honest, I'm not positive, but I do not beleave that has ever been clearly defined. The jurisdiction of other agencies have been defined as agencies clashed in the past. The NSA though has been running under people's radar for a long time. As I recall, it's something really vague, like national security. I'll ask around and see what I can dig up.
 
 
seamonkey
15:18 / 21.03.02
I've read FAR too many books on the CIA thus far, some of it good, some of it bad, some of it ludicrous and bordering on David Icke-style ranting...But as far as the NSA goes, I've only read "Puzzle Palace". Any other decent material on the NSA out there?
 
 
MJ-12
16:01 / 21.03.02
Off the top of my head, Bamford released a second book on them fairly recently, {i]Body of Secrets[/i]. In The Cuckoo's Egg Stoll recalls trying to get cooperation from them, only to be told something along the lines of, "we can't do anything in the US. We're talking jail time if we help you out." I'd imagine you could find a few things on a quick amazon search.
 
  
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