HEAD of the FBI’s Anthrax Investigation Says the Whole Thing Was a SHAM

By WashingtonsBlog
April 17, 2015
Washington’s Blog

 

Agent In Charge of Amerithrax Investigation Blows the Whistle

The FBI head of the agent in charge of the anthrax investigation – Richard Lambert – has just filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit calling the entire FBI investigation bullsh!t:

In the fall of 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, a series of anthrax mailings occurred which killed five Americans and sickened 17 others. Four anthrax-laden envelopes were recovered which were addressed to two news media outlets in New York City (the New York Post and Tom Brokaw at NBC) and two senators in Washington D.C. (Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle). The anthrax letters addressed to New York were mailed on September 18, 2001, just seven days after the 9/11 attacks. The letters addressed to the senators were mailed 21 days later on October 9, 2001. A fifth mailing of anthrax is believed to have been directed to American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida based upon the death of one AMI employee from anthrax poisoning and heavy spore contamination in the building.

Executive management at FBI Headquarters assigned responsibility for the anthrax investigation (code named “AMERITHRAX”) to the Washington Field Office (WFO), dubbing it the single most important case in the FBI at that time. In October 2002, in the wake of surging media criticism, White House impatience with a seeming lack of investigative progress by WFO, and a concerned Congress that was considering revoking the FBI’s charter to investigate terrorism cases, Defendant FBI Director Mueller reassigned Plaintiff from the FBI’s San Diego Field Office to the Inspection Division at FBI Headquarters and placed Plaintiff in charge of the AMERITHRAX case as an “Inspector.” While leading the investigation for the next four years, Plaintiff’s efforts to advance the case met with intransigence from WFO’s executive management, apathy and error from the FBI Laboratory, politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters, and yet another preceding and equally erroneous legal opinion from Defendant Kelley – all of which greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.

On July 6, 2006, Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303. Reports of mismanagement conveyed in writing and orally included: (a) WFO’s persistent understaffing of the AMERITHRAX investigation; (b) the threat of WFO’s Agent in charge to retaliate if Plaintiff disclosed the understaffing to FBI Headquarters; (c) WFO’s insistence on staffing the AMERITHRAX investigation principally with new Agents recently graduated from the FBI Academy resulting in an average investigative tenure of 18 months with 12 of 20 Agents assigned to the case having no prior investigative experience at all; (d) WFO’s eviction of the AMERITHRAX Task Force from the WFO building in downtown Washington and its relegation to Tysons Corner, Virginia to free up space for Attorney General Ashcroft’s new pornography squads; (e) FBI Director’s Mueller’s mandate to Plaintiff to “compartmentalize” the AMERITHRAX investigation by stove piping the flow of case information and walling off task force members from those aspects of the case not specifically assigned to them – a move intended to stem the tide of anonymous media leaks by government officials regarding details of the investigation. [Lambert complained about compartmentalizing and stovepiping of the investigation in a 2006 declaration.  See this, this and this]

This sequestration edict decimated morale and proved unnecessary in light of subsequent civil litigation which established that the media leaks were attributable to the United States Attorney for the District of the District of Columbia and to a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s National Press Office, not to investigators on the AMERITHRAX Task Force; (f) WFO’s diversion and transfer of two Ph.D. Microbiologist Special Agents from their key roles in the investigation to fill billets for an 18 month Arabic language training program in Israel; (g) the FBI Laboratory’s deliberate concealment from the Task Force of its discovery of human DNA on the anthrax-laden envelope addressed to Senator Leahy and the Lab’s initial refusal to perform comparison testing; (h) the FBI Laboratory’s refusal to provide timely and adequate scientific analyses and forensic examinations in support of the investigation; (i) Defendant Kelley’s erroneous and subsequently quashed legal opinion that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) precluded the Task Force’s collection of evidence in overseas venues; (j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions. Plaintiff further objected to the FBI’s ordering of Plaintiff not to speak with the staff of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes or investigative journalist David Willman, after both requested authorization to interview Plaintiff.

In April 2008, some of Plaintiff’s foregoing whistleblower reports were profiled on the CBS television show 60 Minutes. This 60 Minutes segment was critical of FBI executive management’s handling of the AMERITHRAX investigation, resulting in the agency’s embarrassment and the introduction of legislative bills calling for the establishment of congressional inquiries and special commissions to examine these issues – a level of scrutiny the FBI’s Ivins attribution could not withstand.

After leaving the AMERITHRAX investigation in 2006, Plaintiff continued to publicly opine that the quantum of circumstantial evidence against Bruce Ivins was not adequate to satisfy the proof-beyond-a-reasonable doubt threshold required to secure a criminal conviction in federal court. Plaintiff continued to advocate that while Bruce Ivins may have been the anthrax mailer, there is a wealth of exculpatory evidence to the contrary which the FBI continues to conceal from Congress and the American people.

Exonerating Evidence for Ivins

Agent Lambert won’t publicly disclose the exculpatory evidence against Ivins. As the New York Times reports:

[Lambert] declined to be specific, saying that most of the information was protected by the Privacy Act and was unlikely to become public unless Congress carried out its own inquiry.

But there is already plenty of exculpatory evidence which is already publicly available.

For example:

• Handwriting analysis failed to link the anthrax letters to known Ivins writing samples

• No textile fibers were found in Ivins’ office, residence or vehicles matching fibers found on the scotch tape used to seal the envelopes

• No pens were found matching the ink used to address the envelopes

• Samples of his hair failed to match hair follicles found inside the Princeton, N.J., mailbox used to mail the letters

• No souvenirs of the crime, such as newspaper clippings, were found in his possession as commonly seen in serial murder cases

• The FBI could not place Ivins at the crime scene with evidence, such as gas station or other receipts, at the time the letters were mailed in September and October 2001

• Lab records show the number of late nights Ivins put in at the lab first spiked in August 2001, weeks before the 9/11 attacks

As noted above, the FBI didn’t want to test the DNA sample found on the anthrax letter to Senator Leahy.  In addition, McClatchy points out:

After locking in on Ivins in 2007, the bureau stopped searching for a match to a unique genetic bacterial strain scientists had found in the anthrax that was mailed to the Post and to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, although a senior bureau official had characterized it as the hottest clue to date.

Anthrax vaccine expert Meryl Nass. M.D., notes:

The FBI’s alleged motive is bogus. In 2001, Bioport’s anthrax vaccine could not be (legally) relicensed due to potency failures, and its impending demise provided room for Ivins’ newer anthrax vaccines to fill the gap. Ivins had nothing to do with developing Bioport’s vaccine, although in addition to his duties working on newer vaccines, he was charged with assisting Bioport to get through licensure.

***

The FBI report claims the anthrax letters envelopes were sold in Frederick, Md. Later it admits that millions of indistinguishable envelopes were made, with sales in Maryland and Virginia.

***

FBI emphasizes Ivins’ access to a photocopy machine, but fails to mention it was not the machine from which the notes that accompanied the spores were printed.

FBI Fudged the Science

16 government labs had access to the same strain of anthrax as used in the anthrax letters.

The FBI admitted that up to 400 people had access to flask of anthrax in Dr. Ivins’ lab.  In other words, even if the killer anthrax came from there, 399 other people might have done it.

However, the FBI’s claim that the killer anthrax came from Ivins’ flask has fallen apart. Specifically, both the National Academy of Science and the Government Accountability Office – both extremely prestigious, nonpartisan agencies – found that FBI’s methodology and procedures for purportedly linking the anthrax flask maintained by Dr. Ivins with the anthrax letters was sloppy, inconclusive and full of holes.  They found that the alleged link wasn’t very strong … and that there was no firm link.  Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences found that the anthrax mailed to Congressmen and the media could have come from a different source altogether than the flask maintained by Ivins.

After all, the entire Ft. Detrick facility – where Ivins worked – only dealt with liquid anthrax.  But the killer anthrax was a hard-to-make dry powder for of anthrax. advance.  Ft. Detrick doesn’t produce dry forms; but government labs in Utah (Dugway) and Ohio (Batelle) do.

The anthrax in the letters was also incredibly finely ground; and the FBI’s explanation doesn’t pass the smell test.

Moreover, the killer anthrax in the letters had a very high-tech  anti-static coating so that the spores “floated off the glass slide and was lost” when scientists tried to examine them.  Specifically, the killer anthrax was coated with polyglass and each anthrax spore given an electrostatic charge, so that they would repel other spores and “float”.   In other words, this was very advanced bio-weapons technology.

Top anthrax experts like Richard Spertzel say that Ivins didn’t do it. Spertzel also says that only 4 or 5 people in the entire country knew how to make anthrax of the “quality” used in the letters, that Spertzel was one of them, and it would have taken him a year with a full lab and a staff of helpers to do it. As such, the FBI’s claim that Ivins did it alone working a few nights is ludicrous.

Moreover, the killer anthrax contained silicon … but the anthrax in Ivins’ flask did not.  The FBI claimed the silicon present in the anthrax letters was absorbed from its surroundings … but Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories completely debunked that theory. In other words, silicon was intentionally added to the killer anthrax to make it more potent. And Ivins and Ft. Detrick didn’t have that capability; but other government labs did.

Similarly, Sandia National Lab found the presence of iron and tin in the killer anthrax … but NOT in Ivins’ flask of anthrax.

Sandia also found that there was a strain of bacteria in one of the anthrax letters not present in Ivins’ flask.

The Anthrax Frame Up

Ivins wasn’t the first person framed for the anthrax attacks …

Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country. And see this.

People don’t remember now, but the Anthrax attacks were as important a “justification” for the Iraq war as 9/11.   And the anthrax letters pushed a terrified Congress into approving the Patriot Act without even reading it.

And – between the Al Qaeda/Iraq angle and Ivins – the FBI was convinced that another U.S. government scientist, Steven Hatfill, did it.  The government had to pay Hatfill $4.6 million to settle his lawsuit for being falsely accused.

Ivins’ Convenient Death

It is convenient for the FBI that Ivins died.

The Wall Street Journal points out:

No autopsy was performed [on Ivins], and there was no suicide note.

Indeed, one of Ivins’ colleagues at Ft. Deitrich thinks he was murdered.

Whether murder or suicide, Ivins’ death was very convenient for the FBI, as dead men can’t easily defend themselves.

2 U.S. Government Agencies Say FBI’s Anthrax Case Is Full of Holes

By Meryl Nass, M.D.
December 20, 2014
Washington’s Blog

 

Dr. Nass is  a board-certified internist and a biological warfare epidemiologist and expert in anthrax. Nass publishes Anthrax Vaccine.

—

Here is the GAO report released today, two years in the making, a study done for unnamed “congressional requesters.” In past years, the requesters have been listed, but in this case, they are not. This most likely reflects the sensitivity of this matter. Why so sensitive?

Because the FBI botched its investigation, never had even the shred of a case against Ivins, and this is not the first time they were called out on it. The 2011 National Academy of Science (NAS) report pointed out the same things as this GAO report: that FBI and its contractors developed methods that were not validated. They never proved that the anthrax in the letters actually grew from parent spores in Ivins’ flask, as FBI purports. This failed claim forms the linchpin of the FBI’s entire case.

Here is the 2011 WaPo editorial on the need for a comprehensive investigation, following release of the NAS report. Today’s GAO investigation did not fulfill the WaPo’s request to include an investigation of the case against Ivins himself.

Following the NAS report, in October 2011, veteran investigative reporters at McClatchey (Greg Gordon, who is amazing), PBS’ Frontline and ProPublica dug deeper into the case than anyone so far had done, and created a TV show, a huge online cache of documents on the case, and several journalistic pieces, like this one.  Their work revealed new pieces of evidence that further undercut the FBI’s case, like this and this. One article explored the validity of the FBI’s scientific evidence.

UPDATE: These reporters write about the new GAO report here.

The National Academy of Science panel couched its conclusions in extremely polite, even deferential language toward the FBI. The NAS committee created new definitions for old words that could only have been intended to confuse readers of the report. (See my detailed discussion of this, below)

If you actually say, out loud, that the FBI faked its search for the anthrax criminal(s), flushed $100 million down the toilet in its most expensive case to date, and deliberately avoided conducting a credible investigation to find the anthrax letters perpetrators, then you question the entire edifice of US law enforcement and imply a conspiracy around an anthrax letters coverup at the highest levels of government, as suggested in Professor Graeme MacQueen’s recent book.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, you are simply not permitted to do.

Step back from the abyss, get a limited GAO report that still took 2 years of review to see the light of day, and close the door on the anthrax letters case. Got it?

Here is what I wrote about the NAS report following its 2011 release:

Muddying the waters: contradictory NAS Report interpretations, and how the report itself asks to be read

Professor Paul Keim, an anthrax genetics expert at Northern Arizona University and FBI contractor, is claiming the NAS report supports the FBI’s case.  It doesn’t.  Please review the report and judge for yourself.The NAS report has many confusing aspects.  But it basically says:

• The FBI totally screwed up its data collection of anthrax samples, and it should not be considered comprehensive.
• FBI failed to give the committee needed information, although it provided some response (sometimes “tersely”) to every request for information.
• FBI found a number of morphologically unusual mutants (“morphotypes”) in some letters, then chose some morphotypes to study further, but FBI provided no explanation for why only some morphotypes and not all letters were selected.
• NAS pointed out that one could not say what expertise and equipment were required, nor how long it would take to produce the amount of spores used, absent that information.  (This conclusion challenged FBI claims that Ivins had the equipment and expertise needed, and also challenged the importance made of Ivins’ late nights in the lab.)
• The assertion that Ivins tried to fool the FBI with the samples he submitted is unsupported.
• FBI was chided for failing to use the newest molecular techniques, which could have speeded up the research and helped to clarify the relationship between the letter spores and Ivins’ flask of spores.

For example, from page 26 of the report:

“No written explanatory materials were provided with these documents that would fully
inform the committee as to why the analyses were done and how these documents contributed to the FBI investigations and conclusions. The material regarding analyses of the FBIR specimens was coded, often with different numbers for the same sample set. Consequently, the committee spent a considerable amount of time sorting through and attempting to interpret the available materials before it could begin to evaluate the science and consider the scientific conclusions. In addition, much of the information provided to the committee was compartmentalized and sections of some documents were redacted.

When the committee posed questions to the FBI for clarification, the agency was always responsive; however, responses to questions were sometimes minimal or terse, or were deflected as intruding into the criminal investigation and beyond the purview of the committee despite the committee’s explanation that the questions were of a scientific nature.”

And excerpts from page 119:

“The first challenge with the repository was the lack of independence among samples and an incomplete understanding of the provenance of samplesdue to the known history of sharing…  FBI scientists and investigators sought to determine the history of shipments among institutions and the genealogical relationships among samples in the repository, but they never obtained a complete record.

Another challenge with the repository was that, since the importance of the mutant genotypes was not fully understood when the subpoena protocol was written, the document was vague (e.g., “use an inoculum taken across multiple colonies”), and was not written in a way that would maximize the chance that variant genotypes in a mixed stock population would be submitted… After the importance of the mutant genotypes became known, there was no request for additional samples using a revised protocol that might have improved the sampling.

A final challenge was that the repository collection process was based on the integrity of the individuals asked to provide samples. If the motive for the repository was to identify the source of the letter material, standards of custody of evidence would dictate that agents of the FBI should have obtained the samples. In most instances, holders of the material were asked to provide samples and send them in. The sender could have been the instigator and may not have complied with instructions, as the FBI alleges with respect to Dr. Ivins.”

Yet the report was otherwise couched in the most conciliatory language.  FBI was praised whenever possible.

The committee was barred from commenting directly on the guilt or innocence of suspects.  In order to get around this restriction and create a report that complied with its contract, while being as specific as possible about whether the science indicted Ivins, the NAS report included tables that presented FBI and DOJ statements, verbatim.  Then the report commented on whether the committee agreed with the statements.

Using this method, NAS’ report was able to say (page 15):

The results of the genetic analyses of the repository samples were consistent with the finding that the spores in the attack letters were derived from RMR-1029, but the analyses did not definitively demonstrate such a relationship. The scientific data alone do not support the strength of the government’s repeated assertions that “RMR-1029 was conclusively identified as the parent material to the anthrax powder used in the mailings” (USDOJ, 2010, p. 20), nor the role suggested for the scientific data in arriving at their conclusions, “the scientific analysis coordinated by the FBI Laboratory determined that RMR-1029, a spore-batch created and maintained at USAMRIID by Dr. Ivins, was the parent material for the anthrax used in the mailings” (USDOJ, 2010, p. 8).

The report created new definitions to specify strength of association.  This goes to the heart of the report’s meaning.  Here’s what the report says, rather oddly, about how its language conveys the strength of an association (see page 41):

“Quantifying an association, as well as the degree of certainty (or uncertainty) in that association, involves statistical methods (see Chapter 6). Common language involves qualifiers, rather than quantifiable measures, of this association and the degree of confidence in it, which can cause confusion among practitioners from different fields that use the terms. Since the interpretation of these qualifiers and the ways in which they are used differ across disciplines (e.g., statistics, science, law, common language), their use by the committee is clarified here. In the chapters that follow, the committee uses the following four qualifiers of association, listed in order of increasing certainty (decreasing uncertainty):

• consistent with an association

• suggest an association

• indicate an association

• demonstrate an association

The expression “consistent with” is frequently used in this report and conveys the weakest level of certainty (greatest amount of uncertainty). In general, when the term “consistent with” is used, it means that an association may or may not be present; the available data can neither rule out nor confirm an association. The term “suggests” denotes a greater level of certainty for an association than “consistent with,” but even here the normal use of the word in science denotes a weaker level of certainty than is implied by the word in everyday parlance. That is, the potential for an association is stronger, and the evidence for the absence of an association is weaker, but both are still possible. In contrast, the terms “indicate” and “demonstrate” denote higher degrees of certainty and these are usually reserved for strong scientific conclusions (i.e., less uncertainty, or less likelihood of an absence of an association). All four levels could potentially be quantified with measures of “statistical significance,” but the committee does not assign such measures in most instances because the data at hand are generally not appropriate for such precise quantification of the degree of uncertainty. 

In summary, the reader is cautioned to consider carefully the terminology in this report in light of the fact that the qualifiers of certainty used here are those used most commonly in the scientific literature and that these words can carry different weight in common language and in the courtroom.”

So the term “consistent with an association” in the NAS-FBI context, implies the weakest possible association.  Got that?   Keim and the FBI have taken “consistent with” to mean the NAS Report supports the FBI claims, when the report’s own definitions state that “consistent with” implies “the greatest amount of uncertainty” about the association.  UPDATE:   Keim is quoted in the 2/17/11 Global Security Newswire with the following (disingenuous) statement:

Keim disputed news reports suggesting that this week’s analysis questions the FBI for naming Ivins as the perpetrator of the attacks.  “The committee isn’t saying that. … All the major conclusions that the FBI came to, the committee said, ‘Yeah, the evidence is consistent with that.’”

[Sorry for all the mumbo-jumbo, but this level of detail helps explain how opposing sides may each cite this report to claim victory–Nass]

Media comment on today’s GAO assessment of the FBI’s flawed anthrax science

I chose the following short AP report from the WaPo because it gets right to the point:

NATIONWIDE (AP) – The Government Accountability Office says the science the Federal Bureau of Investigations used to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks was flawed.

The GAO released a report Friday on its findings. The agency didn’t take a position on the FBI’s conclusion that Army biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins acted alone in making and sending the powdered spores that killed five people and sickened 17 others.

The report adds fuel to the debate among experts, including many of Ivins’ co-workers at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, over whether Ivins could have made and mailed the anthrax-filled envelopes.

The GAO said the FBI’s research did not provide a full understanding of the methods and conditions that give rise to genetic mutations used to differentiate between samples of anthrax bacteria. The report calls this a “key scientific gap.” 

This is the crux of the matter.  FBI has said it stands by its case. Why would FBI say anything else? They have no need to provide any arguments or evidence, having successfully hounded one of their (several) suspect scientists until he committed suicide.

They tried to close the case then, in August 2008.  But some in Congress were highly dissatisfied, so at a September 2008 hearing in which he was the only witness, FBI Director Mueller promised a review of the scientific evidence by the National Academy of Science (NAS).

An excellent team was assembled by the Academy, and they set to work.  But FBI learned the committee was doing too thorough a job, and its findings did not favor the FBI’s claims in the case.  So FBI did an end run around the NAS, closing its case and issuing this report in 2010, long before the NAS was ready with its 2011 report.Once the NAS report came out, FBI sang a different tune. It wasn’t the science that was definitive; rather, it was the totality of the forensic evidence.

Except: what evidence was FBI referring to?  There was no direct evidence linking Ivins to the crime, nor evidence it was even possible to manufacture a sufficient quantity of spores in the Army facility where he worked.

Here’s what the FBI still claims about its case, despite everything:

“…New scientific methods were developed that ultimately led to the break in the case—methods that could have a far-reaching impact on future investigations.

So the new scientific methods broke the case– except they were in fact inconclusive and have not stood up to scrutiny by either the NAS or the GAO.  In fact, no agency or group besides the FBI has given them any credence. Members of Congress remained unsatisfied, like Senator Grassley.

Today, outgoing Congressmember and physicist Rush Holt (who requested the GAO study and will lead the AAAS next month)  said the report:

“confirms what I have often said — that the F.B.I.’s definitive conclusions about the accuracy of their scientific findings in the Amerithrax case are not, in fact, definitive. The United States needs a comprehensive, independent review of the Amerithrax investigation to ensure we have learned the lessons from this bio attack.”

The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy

Review of Graeme MacQueen’s Book

By Prof. Edward Curtin
December 1, 2014
Global Research

 

The anthrax attacks that followed those of 9/11 have disappeared from public memory in ways analogous to the pulverization of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center Building 7. For the towers, at least, ghostly afterimages persist, albeit fading like last night’s nightmare. But the anthrax attacks, clearly linked to 9/11 and the Patriot Act, are like lost letters, sent, but long forgotten. Such disappearing acts are a staple of American life these days. Memory has come upon hard times.

With The 2001 Anthrax Deception, Professor Graeme MacQueen, founding Director of the Center for Peace Studies at McMaster University, calls us back to a careful reconsideration of the anthrax attacks. It is an eloquent and pellucid lesson in inductive reasoning and deserves to stand with David Ray Griffin’s brilliant multi-volume dissection of the truth of that tragic September 11th. MacQueen makes a powerful case for the linkage of both events, a tie that binds both to insider elements deep within the U.S. government, perhaps in coordination with foreign elements.

MacQueen’s thesis is as follows: The criminal anthrax attacks were conducted by a group of conspirators deep within the U.S. government who are linked to, or identical with, the 9/11 perpetrators. Their purpose was to redefine the Cold War into the Global War on Terror and in doing so weaken civil liberties in the United States and attack other nations.

Obviously these are explosive charges that demand substantial evidence connected logically in a compelling thesis.

MacQueen, in countering anti-conspiratorial thinkers of the left and right who approach such issues with minds like beds already made up, explains his method thus: “The tools of investigation are no different from those used to test other proposals. We use evidence and reason. In some cases we will be able to make confident assertions and in other cases we shall have to acknowledge that we are speculating, but even in this second case we will do our best to ground our speculation in evidence. Ideology, national loyalty, outrage and ‘common sense’ will not do the job.”

There is no doubt that his thesis, backed up by abundant evidence and some intriguing speculation, is a conspiracy theory, just like the 9/11 Commission Report’s explanation of 9/11 and the Bush administration’s neo-con and media assisted conspiratorial tying of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. “We would have to look very hard to find anyone who does not hold a conspiracy theory about 9/11,” he writes. “And for this reason it is silly to denigrate people for holding a conspiracy theory about this event.”

But good theory of any kind necessitates facts to make it credible, and MacQueen provides a plethora of these, while the Bush administration made allegations and promises of evidence that was never delivered. He aptly quotes researcher Elias Davidsson ‘s evidentiary points concerning the 9/11 hijackers:

‘The following five classes of evidence should have been produced by U.S. authorities in September 2001 or shortly thereafter.

1. Authenticated flight lists;

2.Authenticated boarding cards;

3. Authenticated security videos from the airports;

4. Sworn testimonies of personnel who attended boarding of the aircraft;

5. Formal identification of the bodies or bodily remains from the crash sites, including chain-of-custody reports.”

Not only does MacQueen provide copious documented facts to support his case, but he does it in a systematically logical way that leaves the official story in shambles. If a crime were being prosecuted (as it should, but war was waged instead), MacQueen marshals a case for conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

The anthrax letter attacks began on September 18, 2001 when the first letters were mailed from Princeton, New Jersey. Between October 3 and November 20 twenty-two people were infected with dried anthrax spores and five died. Between October 6 and October 8 especially highly refined and aerosolized anthrax letters were sent to two key Democratic Senators, Thomas Daschle and Patrick Leahy. Before October 3 when the first case, that of Robert Stevens who died two days later, was diagnosed, the FBI claimed that “no one except the perpetrators knew…that the attacks were in progress.”

Yet The New York Times, between September 12 and October 3, made reference to the possibility of biological or chemical terrorist attacks 76 times, 27 references specifically to anthrax. Many of these warnings came from government leaders. Of course the Times was home to Judith Miller, notorious for her deceptions regarding Iraq’s WMD, and whose book Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, was about to be published in the first few days in October. In that book Miller et al. assert that Iraq might use a terrorist group to unleash a bioweapon against the United States.

Just coincidentally, throughout the month of October as the anthrax attacks became public, the Bush administration and the mainstream media pushed the claim that Al Qaeda (already accused of 9/11) and Saddam Hussein (slyly implicated by innuendo) were responsible for the anthrax attacks. Once the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan on October 7, alleged Al Qaeda retaliation enhanced the claim. No evidence was presented. The Washington Post, vying with The New York Times for Cassadran bragging rights, had published a September 27 article “Al Qaeda May Have Crude Chemical Capabilities.” This double foreign group suggestion – that Bin Laden’s group, state-sponsored by Iraq, sent the anthrax spores – was promoted vigorously throughout October. The crude anthrax letters written to Tom Brokaw of NBC News and Senator Daschle with their 09-11-01 headings and Muslim extremist language, released to the public on October 23, seemed to clinch the case.

MacQueen writes,

“Much evidence suggests that this option was meant to carry the day and was central to the original plan. An attack on the U.S. by groups of foreign Muslims using weapons of mass destruction could clearly serve to legitimize internal repression, external aggression, and a host of ancillary transformations. This scenario was established in advance of the anthrax attacks and pushed hard in October 2001 as citizens got sick and died of anthrax, as the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress and the large scale NSA domestic spying was launched, as the invasion of Afghanistan began, and as preparations were made to invade Iraq.”

By October 26, once Bush had signed the Patriot Act, that case began falling apart, but not before the two Democratic Senators, Daschle and Leahy, who had resisted ramrodding the bill into law, had received their own lethal anthrax letters as possible reminders.

When R. W. Apple Jr. wrote a New York Times front page article on October 18, “City of Power, City of Fears,” and said, “the government has been caught completely by surprise by the anthrax attacks,” he may not have known about the exercise termed Dark Winter, conducted four months earlier on June 22-23, though one would think he might have known of the plethora of references to anthrax in his own paper in the few weeks before the attacks became known. Maybe he thought the Bush administration didn’t read the New York Times for intelligence.

MacQueen,in a greatly significant piece of sleuthing, however, lets us know about Dark Winter, a biological warfare simulation planned and conducted by Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies/Center for Strategic and International Studies at Andrews Air Force Base with uncanny parallels to the actual anthrax attacks. Some oddities follow. Dark Winter had anonymous letters sent to the mainstream media with threats of anthrax. Dark Winter claimed that the perpetrators are probably state-sponsored international terrorists. Dark Winter claimed that “a prominent Iraqi defector is claiming Iraq arranged the bioweapons attacks on the U.S. through intermediaries.” Dark Winter concludes that the attacks necessitate harsh restrictions on civil liberties, possibly Martial Rule. Dark Winter has a fictional television anchor announce that “still no group claims responsibility for unleashing the smallpox virus, but NCR has learned that Iraq may have provided the technology behind the attack to terrorist groups based in Afghanistan.”

And yes, not to be missed, we learn that Dark Winter’s simulation’s actors included Apple’s New York Times’ colleague Judith Miller, soon to be the New York Times best- selling author of Germs, playing a reporter for the New York Times; James Woolsey, former CIA Director and supporter of The Project for the New America Century (we’ll need a new Pearl Harbor, folks); and Jerome Hauer,a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, and “an important figure in the linking of the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks,” who played the FEMA director.

Once the government’s accusations against Al Qaeda and Iraq fell apart but the Patriot Act had become law, NSA spying commenced, and the war in Afghanistan proceeded apace, the FBI changed its tune and pursued the lone wolf perpetrator theory, first accusing a scientist named Steven Hatfill and then, after he sued and eventually received $5.82 million in compensation, they accused Bruce Ivins, a scientist working on an anthrax vaccine at Fort Derrick in Maryland. MacQueen shows in detail how that claim came apart and resulted in a case without credibility but with Ivins committing suicide. But, he concludes, the Ivins accusation served its purpose of diverting attention from the real reason for the anthrax attacks and its culprits.

Finally, MacQueen details how the anthrax evidence leads to some of the alleged 9/11 hijackers in Florida as they lay down a trail of incriminating “evidence” we were meant to follow, linking crop-dusters/anthrax to 9/11. Mohamed Atta, the alleged 9/11 ringleader, supposedly went into a U.S. Department of Agriculture office seeking a $650,000 loan to buy and enlarge a crop-duster. He made

sure the agent knew and could spell his name, and when she balked at the loan, “he asked what would stop him from going around her desk, cutting her throat, and taking the money from the large safe in the office.” He then admired a photo of Washington, D.C., asked to buy it, inquired about security at the World Trade Center, implied he was associated with Al Qaeda, and told her that Bin Laden “ ‘would someday be known as the world’s greatest leader.’ “

MacQueen sardonically comments, “And that is the story of how a terrorist leader, engaged in a top-secret operation, sought a government loan to help him with his plan.”

For one familiar with Lee Harvey Oswald’s (or his double’s) antics to make himself unforgettable on visits to a car dealership and a rifle range before JFK’s assassination, the Atta charade should ring a bell. MacQueen makes a powerful case that the various crop-duster incidents were “disinformation” and that their purpose was to link 9/11 to the anthrax attacks and, notably, to Iraq. He notes that it was also at this time that the fictitious story of Atta meeting with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague was widely circulated to “solidify this connection.” He argues that once the FBI admitted that the anthrax attacks were not a foreign operation but the claim had served its purpose, the crop-duster stories vanished into obscurity. However, he concludes, “Given that the anthrax attacks were a domestic operation, and given that the alleged hijackers were implicated in that operation prior to its occurrence, the conclusion cannot be avoided: the 9/11 attacks were also a domestic operation.”

But as few can forget, on February 5, 2003 at the UN Security Council, the Iraq/anthrax/crop-duster claim arose from its sleep in the infamous, fraudulent presentation by Colin Powell as he slyly tied Iraq back to the anthrax attacks and shilled for war against Iraq. That feat of propaganda was but one of at least 532 occasions when eight top members of the Bush administration made at least 936 false statements on Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and its links to Al Qaeda, according to a study conducted by The Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism and released in 2008.

Anyone concerned about the truth behind 9/11 and the anthrax attacks should read this profoundly important book. It is filled with tight argumentation backed by solid evidence, and even the speculative parts ring true.

In closing I will mention MacQueen’s fascinating penultimate chapter wherein he speculates about the significance of the repeated word “unthinkable” by the media and government officials following George W. Bush’s use of the term “rethink the unthinkable” in a May 1, 2001 speech at the National Defense University. The mainstream media used the word “unthinkable” repetitively throughout October 2001 when referring to the anthrax attacks. And one of the early anthrax threatening letters sent to Tom Brokaw, begins: “The Unthinkabel” (sic) – showing, of course, how Muslim terrorists can’t spell English. “There is a pattern here,” MacQueen writes.

“The pattern may not signify a grand plan, or, indeed, conscious intent at all – there may be no conspiracy – but, whatever the origins of the ‘unthinkable’ discourse, it deserves investigation and contemplation.”

Words matter, and those repeated enough matter more, words such as ground zero, homeland, and unthinkable. “He who wants to persuade should not put his trust in the right argument,” Joseph

Conrad wrote in Lord Jim. “The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.”

MacQueen has chosen sense through argument, and rather than dismissing his as unthinkable, thinking people everywhere should engage it.