Senator Demands Answers On Government Anthrax Investigation Mystery

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Wants to know why DOJ quickly retracted court statements that contradicted official FBI story

Senator Demands Answers On Government Anthrax Investigation Mystery 160211detrick

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Sept 6, 2011

A ranking Republican Senator has written to the Justice Department demanding to know why it quickly retracted court papers that called into serious question a key pillar of the criminal case against Bruce Ivins, the FBI’s prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax mail attacks.

Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, who has long questioned the legitimacy of the FBI’s findings in the case, wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller this week, regarding a filing by Justice Department civil lawyers in July that noted that the Army’s biodefense center at Fort Detrick, Md., “did not have the specialized equipment in a containment laboratory that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters.”

In other words, the filing noted that Ivins’ lab, often referred to as the “hot suite”, did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that ended up being mailed to members of the Senate and reporters in the fall of 2001.

Ivins, who was found dead in 2008 from an apparent suicide at the same time the government was about to indict him, was identified by the FBI’s “Amerithrax Task Force” as the lone perpetrator of the attacks that killed five people and infected 17 others in the weeks immediately following 9/11.

The FBI based it’s entire case against Ivins on the fact that the microbiologist had access to the necessary equipment in the government lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases where he worked.

When the Justice Department realized that its recent court filing cast serious doubt on these claims, following media coverage, it did a 180 flip flop and sent the court a “list of corrections to conform with the FBI’s conclusion that Ivins did have equipment available to do the job.

In his letter, Sen Grassley notes that this turn of events “has produced a new set of questions regarding this unsolved crime.”

“My concern is accentuated by the apparent contradiction of the DOJ court documents to the original FBI investigation, the subsequent attempt to retract that information and the federal judge’s ruling that the DOJ Civil Division “show good cause” to justify a modification to the original court filing.” Grassley writes.

“The DOJ original court filing seemingly eliminated the FBI’s previous circumstantial evidence associated with Dr. Ivins without providing any additional insight as to the means and methodology he may have used to create the anthrax powder.” The Senator adds.

Grassley, the most senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also called for a briefing to “determine why it appears, at the least, that the right hand and left hand of the (Justice Department) do not know what the other is doing.”

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t
  • Senator Demands Answers On Government Anthrax Investigation Mystery

The July court filing was made as part of a government defense against a lawsuit brought by the family of Robert Stevens, Photo Editor of The Sun in Florida and the first victim who died as a result of the Anthrax attack. The court papers containing the Justice Department contradiction were discovered and reported by a researcher for the PBS program Frontline, which is working on a forthcoming documentary on the case with McClatchy Newspapers and ProPublica.

What the filing should have said, the department wrote in its retraction, was that while the Army lab did not have a lyophilizer, a freeze-drying machine, in the space where Dr. Ivins usually worked, there was a lyophilizer and other equipment in the building that he could have used to dry the anthrax into powder.

Even if this was the case, which is still highly questionable, it still significantly weakens the case against Ivins as the lone assailant, because it means he would have had to have access different areas of the building and use the equipment in those areas for some time without being noticed.

It also means that the fact that others who worked in the lab were not sickened becomes even more of a key indicator that Ivins did not prepare the anthrax spores as the FBI and the government has claimed he did.

Paul Kemp, Ivins’ lead defense attorney, noted that the department’s concession that the equipment wasn’t available “is at direct variance to the assertions of the government on July 29, 2008,” the day Ivins died, thus “invalidating one of the chief theories of their prosecution case.”

This latest contradiction adds to the already voluminous unanswered questions and contradictory evidence surrounding the case.

Earlier this year a report produced by a panel of independent scientists asserted that there was not enough scientific evidence for the FBI to convict Ivins, vindicating those who have consistently pointed to a deeper conspiracy behind the case.

The $1.1 million report, commissioned by the FBI and produced by The National Academies of Sciences, concluded that the FBI overstated the science in its investigation into the microbiologist.

Senator Grassley writes in his letter to the Attorney general that this report coupled with the latest botched attempt by the government to tie up loose ends in the case is “particularly troubling” to him.

The report cast doubt on the supposed link between a flask of anthrax found in Ivins’ office and letters containing the bacterial spores that were mailed to NBC News, the New York Post, and the offices of then-Sen. Tom Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy.

“The scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR-1029 is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary,” the 190 page report stated.

“Although the scientific evidence was supportive of a link between the letters and that flask, it did not definitively demonstrate such a relationship, for a number of reasons,” said Dr. David Relman, a bioterrorism expert at Stanford University School of Medicine who served as vice chair of the review committee. “Our overarching finding was that it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the B. anthracis in the mailings based on the available scientific evidence alone.”

“This shows what we’ve been saying all along: that it was all supposition based on conjecture based on guesswork, without any proof whatsoever,” lawyer Paul Kemp told The Washington Post.

“For years, the FBI has claimed scientific evidence for its conclusion that anthrax spores found in the letters were linked to the anthrax bacteria found in Dr. Ivins’s lab,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). The report “shows that the science is not necessarily a slam-dunk. There are no more excuses for avoiding an independent review.”

Of course, there will not be an independent review any time in the near future because, as Glenn Greenwald of Salon has pointed out, all efforts to move in that direction have been aggressively blocked by the Obama Administration:

President Obama — in what I think is one his most indefensible acts — actually threatened to veto the entire intelligence authorization bill if it included a proposed bipartisan amendment (passed by the House) that would have mandated an independent inquiry into the FBI’s anthrax investigation.

Indeed, the veto threat issued by the Obama White House was refreshingly (albeit unintentionally) candid about why it was so eager to block any independent inquiry: ”The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”

Ivins’ death provided a neat tie up to the case, which was officially closed last year by The Justice Department. However, a clear motive was never determined, and no one ever reported seeing Ivins prepare anthrax spores or mail the supposed letters.

Previous assertions by a former colleague and friend of Bruce Ivins, and the original suspect in the FBI’s investigation into the attacks, have also raised serious questions.

Shortly after Ivins’ death, Dr. Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian-born toxicologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, declared that Ivins did not kill himself and was not behind the attack at all.

Assaad made the comments in an interview with a local Fort Detrick newspaper in September 2008.

The Frederick News Post reported:

Assaad, who worked in a U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease lab at Fort Detrick from 1989 to 1997 developing a vaccine for ricin, said in an interview Saturday he does not believe Ivins was guilty.

“He’s a great man. He’s honorable, sincere, honest and most important, he didn’t kill five people and he didn’t kill himself,” Assaad told the newspaper.

Assaad knew Ivins well, not only were they colleagues but their four children were all classmates In Frederick.

Assaad was extensively questioned by the FBI On October 1, 2001, a fortnight after the first anthrax letters were mailed. It later emerged that the FBI’s lead, a letter from an unidentified person who claimed Assaad was planning a biological terrorist attack, was false.

Senator Demands Answers On Government Anthrax Investigation Mystery 090908AssaadThe mystery letter identified Assaad as a former USAMRIID microbiologist and also pinpointed his time at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, indicating that whoever sent it had access to detailed army records.

The anonymous letter was sent shortly after 9/11 but before anyone knew about the anthrax-laced letters. On October 5, 2001, about 10 days after the anonymous letter was mailed, Robert Stevens became the first of five individuals to die from an anthrax infection, indicating that someone had wanted to frame Assaad for the attacks.

“This anthrax issue is part of a much bigger issue,” Assaad also commented. “The roots of corruption are so deep in (USAMRIID), and this is the thing that the people in Frederick don’t understand.”

Former government biological weapons legislator Dr Francis Boyle shares Assaad’s view that Ivins has been used as a patsy in a larger cover up.

“Ivins is only the latest dead microbiologist.” Boyle has previously stated, “You also have to tie into this the large numbers of dead microbiologists that have appeared since around the summer before these events, when the New York Times revealed the existence of the covert anthrax weapons programs run by the CIA, and that too is in the public record.”

In  September 2007, Ivins sent an e-mail to himself, in which he said he knew of the identity of the anthrax killer, without actually stating who he believed it to be. It is not known why he did this. Prior to his death in 2008, he told friends that government agents were hounding him and his family.

Related Reading:

Government Biological Weapons Legislator: Anthrax Inside Job Cover Up Continuing

Demand that the FBI Reveal How Much of Ivins’ Anthrax Sample was Taken by Other People

Insights Into the Question of Whether the Anthrax was Weaponized

The Anthrax Attack Was a Classic False Flag Operation Targeting Arabs

Hair Samples in Anthrax Case Don’t Match

Proof that Ivins Couldn’t Have Done It (At Least Not Alone)

Handwriting Analysis Fails to Tie Ivins to Anthrax Letters

The Killer Anthrax Did Not Even Originate at Fort Detrick

FBI said to have stalked Ivins’ family

Colonel Anderson Refutes False Allegations Against Dr. Ivins

Explained: Why The Anthrax Strain Was Found in Ivins’ Office

Questions about the Anthrax Suspect and His Interactions with Mental Health Professionals

Inside the tent, the best bioterrorist money could buy?

Olbermann Countdown: Anthrax Attacks Inside Job?

Scientists Question FBI Probe On Anthrax: Ivins Could Not Have Been Attacker, Some Say

Anthrax Suspect Was Involuntarily Committed to Psychiatric Hospital Shortly Before His Death

The FBI Admits It Has No Case Against Ivins

CIA Had Killer Anthrax

Anthrax Attack Was State-Sponsored Terror (But the State Was America)

My Conversation With a Ft. Detrick Scientist

Ivins Can Defend Himself in Court and Obtain Justice Against the FBI

Attorney: Ivins never knew he was ‘the suspect’

Ivins Could Not Have Applied High-Tech Coating to the Killer Anthrax

The Anthrax Cover-Up

The Biowar Story Not Told In The Aftermath Of A Scientist’s Suicide

Related video: Prof. Francis Boyle on The Alex Jones Show August 21, 2008 – Anthrax “Inside Job”

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.


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21 Responses to “Senator Demands Answers On Government Anthrax Investigation Mystery”

  1. go to bed…they broke up

    Super Duper Man 1776 Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 11:32 am

    DUH, MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE THEY DID IT AND YOUR ASKING THE POLICE, TO POLICE THE POLICE !

    EVERYONE KNOWS HOW THAT ENDS UP, SOME POOR BUM GETS TAZED AND BEAT TO DEATH AND IT’S BLAMED ON HIM.

    MayerConcepcion92 Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 1:44 pm

    I just got a $829.99 iPad2 for only $103.37 and my mom got a $1499.99 HDTV for only $251.92, they are both coming with USPS tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prices at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 37″ HDTV to my boss for $600 that I only paid $78.24 for. I use PennyOrder.comONLY

  2. Hmm Anthrax weaponized in a form that could only be made by the military or Israel and the investigation has been swept under the rug by our mobster run government. Hey you all have lots of stuff go play with or root for your favorite sports team. Who needs justice when you have all this stuff?

    Vic Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    antrax is surelly not made by simple people or poor people thats for sure. just like Alqueda never did exist until CIA came up with it? Lies + lies = lies and chaos

    TIme to arrest the lyers .Let them look at life from a prison cell.

    Tom Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 1:17 pm

    Wrong! It’s the CDC. Back some years ago, around the time of the anthrax mailing to Senator Daschle, there were 30 of the world’s top experts in the areas of virus’s and vaccines, etc. who all COMMITTED SUICIDE IN A 24-MONTH PERIOD!!! Or so the Washington Post said. But then, days later, trying to write an article on just ONE of the experts who “committed suicide”, they wrote that he was ‘suicided off’. Hmmmm! Interesting phrase, that one!! Immediately afterwards, the anthrax mailings started, the SARS and the Swine Flu came about, the Bubonic Plague came back (‘oh, we wanted to produce a cure in case terrorists ever brought it back!’), etc. This is the NWO infiltrating and taking over the infrastructure of the CDC. And we’ve had bogus flu shots and vaccines ever since.

    It’s definately NOT the Israeli’s. Nice try, Billo.

  3. tea party enraged to learn every part of 9 11 full of lies
    Anthrax, Shanksville, Pentagon, Bldg. #7, Twin Towers

    Super Duper Man 1776 Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 11:32 am

    THIS COMMING FROM A SOCIALIST LOVER !

    PETHETIC.

  4. This is a smoking gun type investigation. This anthrax was sent to important members of congress at a time, so as to discourage any investigation of the phoney 911 story. It was obviously sent from sources within the U.S. intelligence/military/law enforcement establishment and they went from patsy to patsy trying to lay the blame for this anthrax on anybody but the insiders who sent it to the congress to discourage investigating the 911 false flag operation. Congress at some points got very deep into investigating some of the false flag investigation like the hit on JFK by government insiders. They did not want a similar investigation by congress in the 911 case, so they sent the investigators a little warning. The cover up is often as messy as the original crime.

    Vic Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    It was what it was: intimidation to silence the truth.

    They are still at it today why?

    Because if the truth came out they are dead ducks thats why, and they know it.Just like the Vatican who have been holding secrets back also know why they do not reveal the secrets.

  5. Forget it sweetie…….it doesn’t bother your wealth.

  6. This should be a campaign issue shoved down their collective throats. I am sure that Ron Paul would investigate.

    If by any strange chance Ron Paul does show signs of gaining the support that could put him in office… we will see very aggressive… revealing raw actions.

    The anthrax attack’s first patsy was in part as I remember… framed by the ADL and its networks… .

    the sage Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    …eh…Ron Paul believes the official story of 911 and has said so.
    So I can be sure…he won’t.

  7. Even if the retraction is made, doesn’t perjury still apply?

  8. 9/11 was a lie … and this happened when ? it would have taken a long time to prepare the anthrax ! its all bullshit lie’s !

    litosweed Reply:
    September 7th, 2011 at 1:12 pm

    wasnt it sent to someone in the msm ? mmmmmn a warning (keep your mouths shut)

  9. The anthrax affair was a continue of our governments murder of our citizens. It was a side show to keep our attention away while the government destroyed the evidence of their heinous crime at the WTC. How convenient that the anthrax murders began at the exact same time as the attack on the WTC.

  10. Here is something to diggest:

    THose military people who are starting to desert this evil corrupt org must be carefull in your desertions. Go public about it do not remain secret or isolated WHY?

    they will create events of terror blaming you as being the terrorists thats why.

    do like the disclosure project if need be. Let as much people know why you are deserting the military killing machine so as many people know about it.

    The evil ones are now starting to realise soldiers are getting out of that evil system.Those still human enough to care for other humans well desertion nis the thing to do. Join the true patriots of liberty and freedom. you can only be congratulated for doing so. respect the oath you have taken, your fellow Americans are being threatened by this criminal mafia.

  11. Another apparent false flag setup and convenient suicide to shut the case down to prevent any further investigation.

  12. I hope Ivin’s family sues for $100 million for the damage the DOJ did to them.

  13. Sorry I take back my suggestion after hearing FORD has opened a 2nd plant in india.

    They all are guilty for trashing America. They use cheap labor abroad to sell us the cars so in the end we all are double loosers.

    Bring em all down. Ford GM Chrysler all there to exploit human ressorces that have not yet organised by sindicating themselves. This is why they move the jobs out.

    well what will they do if people boycott there products. Buy the products that are produced in our country only.

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