Those unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001

I haven't checked for the most popular conspiracy theories about the 2001 anthrax attacks. Presumably, there are some.

But the real-life mystery of those attacks, which killed five people and added considerably to the US national fright over terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, remains unsolved. The FBI, whose record on investigating this thing has been less than sterling, most recently tried to close the case by pinning it on government scientist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide while under heavy pressure from the FBI investigation.

As Glenn Greenwald explains in this summary of the current status of the case, Serious doubt cast on FBI's anthrax case against Bruce Ivins Salon 02/16/2011, the FBI commissioned a special independent study from the National Academy of Sciences of what they considered the strongest piece of their case against Ivins, the genetic trail that supposedly led back to a batch of anthrax under Ivins' control, in order to forestall a broader Congressional or independent investigation. As Dan Vergano reports for USA Today in Panel can't rule out other sources of deadly anthrax spores 02/15/2011, the study wound up raising a serious question even on the FBI's scientific case.

Meryl Nass maintains a blog that deals with issues related to anthrax, Anthrax Vaccine, including the 2001 case and the broader issue of defending against anthrax being used in bioterror attacks. Here is the text of a presentation she did last November on the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, The FBI's Anthrax Letters Investigation: Points to Consider 11/30/2010.

Thomas Maugh II and Richard Serrano report for the Los Angeles Times on bipartisan calls for further investigation of the larger case (Evidence linking anthrax to Bruce Ivins 'not as definitive as stated,' panel says 02/16/2011):

Rep. Rush D. Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey, the site of the postal box where the letters were mailed, reintroduced legislation Tuesday to establish an 11-member commission to study the anthrax attacks.

"There are still questions to be answered and still lessons to be learned," Holt said. "It would take a credulous person to believe the circumstantial evidence that the FBI used to draw its conclusions with such certainty. The FBI has not proven to me that this is an open-and-shut case."

Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also called for further investigation of the anthrax scare, saying the new report "shows that the science is not necessarily a slam dunk."

I would much prefer to see a thorough Congressional investigation. One of my big criticisms of the Democratic Party in Congress is that they don't make nearly good enough use of their investigative powers. But it's good to see members of Congress keeping this issue alive. It shouldn't be allowed to disappear down the now-proverbial memory hole. The information in the public record indicates that the anthrax used came from high-security US government supplies. The public needs to know what happened. The people responsible for the murders need to be identified.

Greenwald reminds us why the case is significant beyond the direct murder of five people:

It is hard to overstate the political significance of the anthrax attacks. For reasons I've described at length, that event played at least as much of a role as the 9/11 attacks in elevating the Terrorism fear levels which, through today, sustain endless wars, massive defense and homeland security budgets, and relentless civil liberties erosions. The pithy version of the vital role played by anthrax was supplied by Atrios here and here; in essence, it was anthrax that convinced large numbers of Americans that Terrorism was something that could show up without warning at their doorstep -- though something as innocuous as their mailbox -- in the form of James-Bond-like attacks featuring invisible, lethal powder. Moreover, anthrax was exploited in the aftermath of 9/11 to ratchet up the fear levels toward Saddam Hussein, as ABC News' Brian Ross spent a full week screeching to the country -- falsely -- that bentonite had been found in the anthrax and that this agent was the telltale sign of Iraq's chemical weapons program, while George Bush throughout 2002 routinely featured "anthrax" as one of Saddam's scary weapons. [my emphasis]

The 2001 anthrax attack

The invaluable Marcy Wheeler reminds us that the 2001 anthrax case is still not solved in FBI’s Robert Mueller Still Engaging in an Anthrax Cover-Up Emptywheel 11/01/09. The 2001 anthrax attack is an actual case of the deployment of a so-called "weapon of mass destruction", a term which thankfully seems to be disappearing from the political vocabulary, or may that's my overly-hopeful read on it. We invaded Iraq in 2003 and are still at war there that was justified to the Congress and the public as a war to eliminate "weapon of mass destruction" that didn't actually exist.

Solving this actual case of a WMD attack on the US is one of the most important pieces of unfinished business left by the Cheney-Bush administration's to the Obama administration. And, I'm sorry to say, I haven't heard anything that makes me think they're making any progress on it. Marcy provides a number of links in her post on the problems with the FBI's current explanation of the 2001 attack:

As we have discussed at length, there are reasons to doubt the FBI’s conclusions that Bruce Ivins acted alone (more here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Indeed, all the FBI has claimed it proved with its nifty new scientific analysis (and Mueller states this) is that Ivins made the strain used in the attack (I’ll leave it to the scientists to address Mueller’s certainty on that front). They certainly have not proven that Ivins mailed the anthrax. Which means, quite simply, they haven’t solved the case.

Meryl Nass has developed a lot of her work on the blog Anthrax Vaccine to the 2001 anthrax attack and the still-unresolved issues around it. (Her most recent posts have to do with other vaccine issues.)

Glenn Greenwald has written about this issue quite a bit, as well, as in Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News Salon 08/01/09. In that particular post, he focuses on the unresolved issues around the efforts by advocates of invading Iraq to tie the 2001 anthrax attack to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Tags: anthrax, anthrax attack

Anthrax story

The anthrax story is a fascinating one. It's fascinating because it's important in itself. And also because the story at this stage is as intriguing as a good crime novel or the first couple of chapters of a Kennedy assassination conspiracy book. (Just for the record, I'm one of maybe ten people in the country who actually buy the lone-gunman-in-the-Book-Depository-with-a-rifle theory.)

Meryl Nass at her Anthrax Vaccine blog provides the perspective of someone not part of the prosecution case who is very familiar with the story of the investigation and a real specialist in anthrax. Reading her blog and listening to the mainstream reporting is another reminder of how lazy many of our leading journalists have become in their reporting. The PBS Newshour last night had Mark Hosenball from Newsweek on to talk about the case who didn't seem to know much more than what he jotted down from the FBI's official statements on the case.

Nass provides several useful points to offer perspective on the case at this point. for instance, saying that the almost-accused Bruce Ivins was the "sole custodian" of the particular anthrax strain is only meaningful if you understand that any of the over 100 people who had access to the virus between the time of its creation in 1997 and the attacks of 2001 would have also become a "custodian" of the virus if they took a sample with them, authorized or not. Also, Nass notes that the FBI affadavit on Ivins' technical knowledge of weaponizing anthrax "carefully wordsmiths around Ivins' lack of knowledge for making weaponized anthrax, by emphasizing that he might have known some of the things needed to make such a product."

Glenn Greenwald is paying close attention to this case with his legal experience and journalistic talents. He cautions us that as of Wednesday, the FBI has not released its supporting evidence, only statements about their conclusions.

Marcy Wheeler, who provided such excellent coverage of the Scooter Libby trial, is also following this case at her EmptyWheel blog. She caught an odd though not necessarily that significant angle in
The Anthrax Prosecutor: The Daughter of the Defense Attorney for BushCo's "Germ Boy" 08/06/08. I met Marcy briefly at the Netroots Nation convention this year. I asked if she was an attorney and she said, "No, I only play one on TV." She has an academic background that required her to engage in careful linguistic analysis. A skill which is perfect for analyzing legal issues. As her reporting shows.

Dave Neiwert, now the editor at FireDogLake, and who has experience covering similar types of investigations, is also following the case.

But an example of how tricky this story can is Robert Scheer's column from Wednesday, Terror From the Inside TruthDig.com 08/05/08. He seems to be willing to buy the FBI's description of the Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator, which based on the information publicly available as of end of day Tuesday was certainly a questionable conclusion. And it's even more so now that some of the journalists following it have had time to look more closely at the FBI claims released Wednesday.

Tags: anthrax, anthrax+attack

The anthrax scandal

Glenn Greenwald is on to something important with his analysis of the current state of the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks. Something really ugly happened yet, beyond what is publicly known. We should always be careful in cases like this not to forget was major roles incompetence and just plain stupidity play in human affairs.

But something really stinks about the anthrax story and how the Cheney Bush administration has handled it.

This is one of many reasons why there needs to be serious criminal as well as Congressional investigations of the many misdeeds of the current administration. The threads of the anthrax story could be more consequential in showing the "dark side" of this administration, that famous "dark side" that Cheney publicly embraced, than even the Plame investigation was.

Here are some of the recent articles on this: Green Greenwald in Salon, Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation 08/03/08 and Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News 08/01/08; Alan Pearson, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Suicide of Microbiologist Demands Thorough Investigation of 2001 Anthrax Attacks 08/01/08.

This story is a good reminder why we don't need conspiracy theories: there's more than enough real skullduggery that goes on to occupy our attention.

Tags: anthrax, anthrax attack