| Anthrax unthinkable { April 8 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) >http://www.counterpunch.org/>http://www.counterpunch.org/ > >April 8, 2002 > >Anthrax and the Agency >Thinking the Unthinkable >By Wayne Madsen > >Now that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially put the >anthrax investigation on a back burner, it is time for Americans to think the >unthinkable: that the FBI has never been keen to identify the perpetrator >because that perpetrator may, in fact, be the U.S. Government itself. Evidence >is mounting that the source of the anthrax was a top secret U.S. Army >laboratory >in Maryland and that the perpetrators involve high-level officials in the U.S. >military and intelligence infrastructure. > >FBI Debunks Anthrax-Hijacker Link > >Coming shortly after the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington, >the anthrax attacks on the U.S. Congress, major media outlets, and the U.S. >Postal System were, at first, blamed by the Bush administration on Al Qaeda or >Iraq. However, on March 23, the FBI officially announced that "exhaustive >testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had >been." This statement came after a rather weak story based on conjecture >appeared in The New York Times. The article reported that a Fort Lauderdale >emergency room doctor treated Saudi hijacker Ahmed Alhanzawi in June 2001 >for a >cutaneous anthrax lesion on his leg. Although the doctor, Christos Tsonas, did >not think the lesion was caused by anthrax at the time he cleansed and treated >the wound, he later changed his mind after realizing Alhanzawi was one of the >hijackers. > >Although Tsonas' theory was rejected by the FBI, it was supported by Johns >Hopkins University's Center for Biodefense Strategies. Johns Hopkins has >its own >peculiar link to anthrax. President Bush recently named as the Director of the >National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Elias Zerhouni, an Algerian-born >professor at Johns Hopkins University and notorious Pentagon yes-man on >anthrax >bio-defenses. As a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of >Medicine, Zerhouni and his colleagues, serving on a National Academy of >Sciences >Institute of Medicine special committee, gave a green light to the Pentagon's >use of a questionable anthrax vaccine on military personnel. According to Dr. >Meryl Nass, a member of the Federation of American Scientists who spent three >years studying the world's largest recorded anthrax epidemic in Zimbabwe from >1979 to 1980, the report generated by Zerhouni and his colleagues "relies on >ignoring many pieces of crucial information, and its recommendations give the >Department of Defense everything it could have wanted. The report appears >to be >'spun' to support a number of DOD initiatives, and it provides the needed >justification for restarting mandatory anthrax vaccinations over the >objections >of many in Congress." > >U.S. Link to Anthrax No Conspiracy Theory > >Forget unfounded conspiracy theories. The evidence is overwhelming that >the FBI >has consistently shied away from pursuing the anthrax investigation, in >much the >same way it avoided pursuing leads in the USS Cole, East Africa U.S. >embassies, >and Khobar Towers bombings. > >On April 4, ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross broadcast on ABC World >News Tonight that after six months the FBI still had hardly any clues and no >suspects in its anthrax investigation. A Soviet defector, the former First >Deputy Director of Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992 and anthrax expert, Ken >Alibek >(formerly Kanatjan Alibekov), now a U.S. government consultant, made the >astounding claim that the person who is behind the anthrax attacks may, in >fact, >been advising the U.S. government. After having passed a lie detector test, >Alibek was cleared of any suspicion. > >Interestingly, Alibek is President of Hadron Advanced Biosystems. On >October 2, >2001, just two days before the first anthrax case was reported in Boca Raton, >Florida and a week and a half before the first anthrax was sent through >the mail >to NBC News in New York, Advanced Biosystems received an $800,000 grant >from NIH >to focus on very specific defenses against anthrax. Hadron has long been >linked >with the CIA. The links include charges by many former government officials, >including the late former Attorney General Elliot Richardson, that the >company's >former President, Earl Brian, illegally procured a database system called >PROMIS >(Prosecutors' Management Information System) from Inslaw, Inc. and used his >connections to the CIA and Israeli intelligence to illegally distribute the >software to various foreign governments. > >Ross reported that U.S. military and intelligence agencies have refused to >provide the FBI with a full listing of the secret facilities and employees >working on anthrax projects. Because of this stonewalling, crucial >evidence has >been withheld. Professor Jeanne Guilleman of MIT's Biological Weapons Studies >Center told ABC, "We're talking here about laboratories where, in fact, the >material that we know was in the Daschle letter and in the Leahy letter could >have been produced. And I think that's what the FBI is still trying to >find out." > >But the FBI does not seem to want to pursue these important leads. > >CIA Testing Anthrax and the U.S. Mail > >The first major media outlet to accuse the FBI of foot dragging was the >BBC. On >March 14, the BBC's Newsnight program highlighted an interview with Dr. >Barbara >Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists. After claiming the CIA was >involved, through government contractors, in secret testing of sending anthrax >through the mail, Rosenberg, someone with close ties to the biological warfare >community, has been attacked by the White House, FBI, and, not >surprisingly, the >CIA. > >The BBC also interviewed Dr. Timothy Read of the Institute of Genomic Research >and a leading expert on the genetic characteristics of anthrax. Read said >of the >two strains, "They're definitely related to each other ... closely >related to >each other." However, Read would not go so far as to suggest the Florida >strain, >known as the Ames strain, and that developed at the U.S. Army's top >secret Fort >Detrick biological warfare laboratory - officially known as the U.S. Army >Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases -- were one and the same. > >William Capers Patrick III was part of the original Fort Detrick anthrax >development program, which "officially" ended in 1972 when President Nixon >signed, along with the Soviet Union and United Kingdom, the Biological Weapons >Convention. Nixon had actually ordered the Pentagon to stop producing >biological >weapons in 1969. It now seems likely that the U.S. military and intelligence >community failed to follow Nixon's orders and, in fact, have consistently >violated a lawful treaty signed by the United States. > >Cuba certainly accused the United States of using biological war weapons >against >it during the 1970s. In his book, Biological Warfare in the 21st Century, >Malcolm Dando refers to the U.S. bio-attacks against the Caribbean island >nation. The American covert campaign targeted the tobacco crop using blue >mold, >the sugar cane crop using cane smut, livestock using African swine fever, and >the Cuban population using a hemorrhagic strain of dengue fever. > >Last December, the New York Times claimed Patrick authored a secret paper >on the >effects of sending anthrax through the mail, a report he denies. However, >Patrick told the BBC that he was surprised that as an expert of anthrax >(he was >a member of the UN biological warfare inspection team in the 1990s), the >FBI did >not interview him right after the first anthrax attacks. > >The BBC reported that Battelle Memorial Institute (a favorite Pentagon and CIA >contractor and for whom Alibek served as biological warfare program manager in >1998) conducted a secret biological warfare test in the Nevada desert using >genetically-modified anthrax early last September, right before the terrorist >attacks. The BBC reported that Patrick's paper on sending anthrax through the >mail was also part of the classified contractor work on the deadly >bacterial agent. > >But would the U.S. Government knowingly subject its citizenry to a dangerous >test of biological weapons? The evidence from past tests suggests it has >already >done so. According to Dando, in the 1950s, the military released uninfected >female mosquitoes in a residential area of Savannah, Georgia. It then >checked on >how many entered houses and how many people were bitten. In 1956, 600,000 >mosquitoes were released from an airplane on a bombing range. Within one day, >the mosquitoes had traveled as far as two miles and had bitten a number of >people. In 1957, at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, the Q-Fever toxin >discharged by an airborne F-100A plane. If a more potent dose had been >used, the >Army concluded 99 per cent of the humans in the area would have been infected. >In the 1960s, conscientious objecting Seventh Day Adventists, serving in >non-combat positions in the Army, were exposed to airborne tularemia. In >addition to Dando's revelations, a retired high-ranking U.S. Army civilian >official reported that the Army used aerosol forms of influenza to infect the >subway systems of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia in the early 1960s. > > >From Fort Detrick With Love > >The Hartford Courant reported last January that 27 sets of biological toxin >specimens were reported missing from Fort Detrick after an inventory was >conducted in 1992. The paper reported that among the specimens missing was the >Ames strain on anthrax. A former Detrick laboratory technician named Eric >Oldenberg told The Courant that while at Detrick, he only handled the Ames >strain, the same strain sent to the Senate and the media. The Hartford Courant >also revealed that other specimens missing included Ebola, hanta virus, simian >AIDS, and two labeled "unknown," a cover term for classified research on >secret >biological agents. > >Steven Block of Stanford University, an expert on biological warfare, told The >Dallas Morning News that, "The American process for preparing anthrax is >secret >in its details, but experts know that it produces an extremely pure >powder. One >gram (a mere 28th of an ounce) contains a trillion spores . . . A trillion >spores per gram is basically solid spore . . . It appears from all reports so >far that this was a powder made with the so-called optimal U.S. recipe . . . >That means they either had to have information from the United States or maybe >they were the United States." (author's emphasis). > >Block also told the Dallas paper, "The FBI, after all these months, has still >not arrested anybody . . . It's possible, as has been suggested, that >they may >be standing back because the person that's involved with it may have secret >information that the United States government would not like to have >divulged." > >And what the government would not want divulged is the fact that the United >States has been in flagrant violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons >Convention. >Article 1 of the convention specifically states: "Each State Party to this >Convention undertakes never in any circumstance to develop, produce, stockpile >or otherwise acquire or retain: 1. Microbial or other biological agents, or >toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in >quantities >that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful >purposes. 2. Weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such >agents >or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict." > >The Death of Dr. Wiley: Murder They Wrote > >The one person who was in a position to know about the origin of the anthrax >sent through the U.S. Postal Service met with a very suspicious demise just a >month after the attacks first began. > >The reported "suicide" and then "accidental death" of noted Harvard >biophysics >scientist and anthrax, Ebola, AIDS, herpes, and influenza expert, Dr. Don C. >Wiley, on the Interstate 55 Hernando De Soto Bridge that links Memphis to West >Memphis, Arkansas, was probably a well-planned murder, according to local law >enforcement officials in Tennessee and Arkansas. > >On November 15, Wiley's abandoned 2001 Mitsubishi Galant rental car was >strangely found in the wrong lane, west in the eastbound lane of the >bridge. The >keys were still in the ignition, the gas tank was full, the hub cap of the >right >front wheel was missing, and there were yellow scrape marks on the >driver's side >of the vehicle, indicating a possible sideswipe. > >Wiley had last been seen four hours earlier, around midnight, before his >car was >found around 4:00 AM on the bridge. He was last seen in the lobby of Memphis' >Peabody Hotel, leaving a banquet of the St. Jude Children's Research >Hospital, >on whose advisory board he served. Police quickly "concluded" that Wiley >committed suicide by jumping off the bridge into the Mississippi River. It >appears the early police conclusion, decided without a full investigation, was >engineered by the FBI. On December 20, Wiley's body was recovered in the >river >in Vidalia, Louisiana, 320 miles south of Memphis. After Wiley's friends and >family discounted claims of suicide, the Memphis coroner concluded on January >14, 2002 that Wiley had "accidentially" fallen over the side of the >bridge after >a minor car accident. > >Not so, say seasoned local law enforcement officials who originally assigned >homicide detectives to the case. Memphis police claim there was only 15 >minutes >between the last time police had checked the bridge and the time they >discovered >Wiley's abandoned vehicle. They suspected Wiley was murdered. However, >the local >FBI office in Memphis stuck by its story that Wiley's death was not the >result >of "foul play." A Memphis police detective said, "the newspaper account of >Wiley's accident did not clear anything up for me," adding, "everything >attributed to the 'accident' could also be attributed to something else." > >However, according to U.S. intelligence sources, Wiley may have been the >victim >of an intelligence agency hit. That jibes with local police comments that the >FBI and "other" U.S. agencies stepped in to prevent the local Memphis police >from taking a closer look into the case. Employees of St. Jude's Childrens' >Hospital in Memphis, on whose board Wiley served, were suddenly deluged with >unsubstantiated rumors that Wiley was a heavy drinker and despondent. > >It is a classic intelligence agency ploy to spread disinformation about >"suicide" victims after their murders. The favorite rumors spread >include those >about purported alcoholism, depression, homosexuality, auto-erotic asphyxia, >drug addiction, and an obsession with pornography, especially child >pornography. > >According to the local police, it would have been easy to determine if >Wiley was >a heavy drinker and that would have shown up in his autopsy. The police also >reckon that if Wiley left the Peabody under the influence, four hours later he >should have been sober enough not to have fallen over the side of the bridge. >Also, the bridge railing is high enough that event the 6' 3" Wiley could not >have accidentally fallen over it without assistance. Add that to the fact that >no one in the history of the bridge had fallen over the side. > >Police also feel that even at 4:00 AM, there should have been someone else on >the bridge who would have called the police about a person who was driving >down >the interstate the wrong way. Due to the fact that access is restricted to the >bridge, one would have to have driven a long way on the wrong lane. Some >police >are of the opinion Wiley was stuck with a needle and that one reason he was >dumped into the fast-moving Mississippi is that with the length of his time in >the water (one month), the needle mark evidence would have largely >disappeared. > >And in yet another strange twist, on March 14, a bomb and two smaller >explosive >devices were found at the Shelby County Regional Forensic Center, which houses >the morgue and Medical Examiner's Office that conducted Wiley's autopsy. Dr. >O.C, Smith, the medical examiner, told Memphis' Commercial Appeal, "We >have done >several high-profile cases from Dr. Wiley to Katherine Smith (a Department of >Motor Vehicles employee mysteriously found burned to death in her car after >being charged in a federal probe with conspiracy to obtain fraudulent >drivers' >licenses for men of Middle East origin) but there has been no indication >that we >offended anyone . . . we just don't know if we were the attended target >or not." > >Knowledgeable U.S. and foreign intelligence sources have revealed that >Wiley may >have been silenced as a result of his discovery of U.S. government work on >biological warfare agents long after the U.S., along with the Soviet Union and >Britain, signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. > >A South African Connection > >The death of Wiley may be also linked to revelations recently uncovered in >South >Africa. His expertise on genetic fingerprints for various strains may have led >him to particular countries and their bio-warfare projects. > >The South African media has been abuzz with details of that nation's former >biological warfare program and its links to the CIA. The South African >bio-chemical war program was code-named Project Coast and was centered at the >Roodeplat Research Laboratories north of Pretoria. The lab maintained links to >the US biowarfare facility at Fort and Britain's Porton Down Laboratory. The >head of the South African program, Dr. Wouter Basson, was reportedly offered a >job with the CIA in the United States after the fall of the apartheid regime. >According to former South African National Intelligence Agency deputy director >Michael Kennedy, when Basson refused the offer, the CIA allegedly >threatened to >kill him. Nevertheless, the U.S. pressured the new President Nelson Mandela to >turn over the records and fruits of Basson's work. Much of this work was >reportedly transported to Fort Detrick. > >Basson also claimed to have been involved in a project called Operation >Banana, >which, using El Paso, Texas as a base with the CIA's blessing, was >designed to >transport cocaine to South Africa from Peru. The cocaine, hidden in >bananas, was >to be used in developing a new incapacitating drug. > >One of the South African's secret projects involved sending anthrax >through the >mail. Among the techniques that fell into the hands of the Americans was a >method by which anthrax spores were, with deadly effect, incorporated on >to the >gummed flaps of envelopes. > >Other South African bio-chemical weapons allegedly transferred to the CIA >included, in addition to anthrax, cholera, smallpox, salmonella, botulinum, >tularemia, thallium, E.coli, racin, organophosphates, necrotising fasciitis, >hepatitis A, HIV, paratyphoid, Sarin VX nerve gas, Ebola, Marburg, Rift Valley >hemorrhagic fever viruses, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, highly potent CR >tear >gas, hallucinogens Ecstasy, Mandrax, BZ, and cocaine, anti-coagulant >drugs, the >deadly lethal injection drugs Scoline and Tubarine, and cyanide. > >Many of Dr. Wiley's family and friends doubt he would have committed suicide. >The fact that he was certainly in a position to know about the origination of >various viruses and bacteria -- which could have led to the U.S. government -- >would have made him a prime target for a government seeking to cover up its >illegal work in biological warfare. > >Wiley's Anthrax Research > >And Wiley had a significant connection to anthrax research. Wiley was not >only a >professor at Harvard but also conducted research at the Chevy Chase, Maryland >Howard Hughes Medical Center, which does work for the National Institutes of >Health. On October 1, 2001, just three days before the first reported anthrax >case in Florida, the Hughes Center announced that a joint Harvard-Hughes team >had identified a mouse gene that made mice resistant to anthrax bacteria. >Although the media failed to play it up later, that research involved using >Wiley's expertise on the immune system. The new gene, identified as Kif1C, >located in chromosome 11 of a mouse, enhanced the defense systems of special >immune cells, called macrophages, against the destructive effects of anthrax >bacteria. > >Wiley's was not the only suspicious death of a scientist with knowledge of >biological defenses. Just three day before Wiley's death, Dr. Benito Que, a >Miami Medical School cellular biologist specializing in infectious diseases, >died in a violent attack. The Miami Herald reported Que died after "four men >armed with a baseball bat attacked him at his car." A week after Wiley >died, Dr. >Vladimir Pasechnik, a former scientist for Biopreparat, the Soviet Union's >biological weapons production factory, was found dead from an alleged >stroke in >Wiltshire, not far from Britain's Porton Down biological warfare center. >Pasechnik had defected from the Soviet Union in 1989 and was an expert on the >Soviet Union's anthrax, smallpox, plague, and tularemia programs. While at >Biopreparat, Pasechnik worked for Alibek, who defected three years later. When >he died, Pasechnik was assisting the British government's efforts in >providing >bio-defenses against anthrax. > >Anthrax and Operation Northwoods > >For those who disbelieve the possibility that the U.S. Government is the >number >one suspect in the anthrax attacks, they are directed to James Bamford's >book on >the National Security Agency, Body of Secrets. The book reveals that in >1962,Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer was planning, along >with other member of the Joint Chiefs, a virtual coup d'etat against the >administration of President Kennedy using acts of terrorism carried out by the >military but to be blamed on the Castro government in Cuba. The secret pan, >code-named Operation Northwoods, entailed having U.S. military personnel shoot >innocent people on the streets of American cities, sink boats carrying Cuban >refugees to Florida, and conduct terrorist bombings in Washington, DC, >Miami and >other cities. Innocent people were to be framed for committing bombings and >hijacking planes. If John Glenn's liftoff from Cape Canaveral in February >1962 >were to end in an explosion, Castro would be blamed. Plans were made to shoot >down civilian aircraft en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, >Panama, or Venezuela and then blame Cuba. The U.S. military also planned to >attack Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both British colonies, and make it >appear that the Cubans had done it in order to bring Britain into a war >with Cuba. > >So far, the Bush administration has refused to support a full and independent >Congressional investigation into the events of September 11 and the later >events >involving anthrax. It seems it and the three-letter agencies the >administration >is so fond of praising, and funding, know more about the source of the anthrax >attacks than they are admitting. If the saying, "where there's smoke, >there's >fire," has any basis of truth, the United States is in the midst of a raging >inferno. Who will answer the fire alarm? > >Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist based in Washington, DC. He can be >reached at: WMadsen777@aol.commailto:WMadsen777@aol.com
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