2001 sparked the Iraq war and the… (2023)

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Good evening. It's Monday, May 22nd. Welcome to a new episode of System Update - The Special, our nightly live show every Monday to Friday at 19h. Eastern, only on Rumble, the voiceless alternative to YouTube.

Tonight, we focus our entire show on one of the most important events in American history of the past 40 years, which also happens to be one of the most forgotten, the 2001 anthrax attacks. Just 7 days after 9/11, and while debris from the World Trade Center still littered the streets of New York City with thousands of bodies underneath, the news outlets began reporting that the envelopes containing what was said at the time were complex, very complex. Weaponized strains of anthrax were dropped in the US Postal Service and sent to some of the nation's most prominent journalists, including NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, the newsrooms of ABC, NBC, CBS and the New York Post, as well as senior political officials, including then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschler of South Dakota and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

The anthrax spores eventually killed five people, including a photojournalist for The Sun and two postal workers, and infected 17 others, 11 of whom became seriously ill. One could easily argue that the anthrax attacks were at least as important to raising fear levels in America as the 9/11 attacks themselves. One could even plausibly argue that they are more effective at creating widespread fear and panic. Fear allowed the US government to do everything from passing the Patriot Act and imposing a pervasive domestic surveillance state to invading Iraq and bombing nine different countries over the next 15 years.

While the 9/11 attacks targeted important symbols of American corporate, political, and military power—two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, another crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth either crashed or Shot down Dick Cheney is reportedly on his way to the United States. Yet the Capitol—the anthrax attack was delivered by mail. As a result, it convinces Americans far from the country's major cities, suburbs, rural areas, small towns, and everywhere else that they, too, are in grave danger that a Bond-like terrorist villain might be coming to get them. Horrible biological weapons, which can materialize on their front lawns and mailboxes, have long been symbols of America's friendly neighborhood and implicit sense of security.

Such a sinister plot, carried out a week after the shocking and harrowing attacks of 9/11, creates a perception that all is unstable, that nothing is certain, that our enemies are highly sophisticated and Serious, but not yet restrained in any way, with an entirely new enemy unlike anything we've seen before, even during the five-year Cold War with the Soviet Union. In retrospect, there is no doubt that this widespread fear and panic was deliberately cultivated and opportunistically exploited. While the 2003 invasion of Iraq was largely justified on the basis of the dangers revealed by the 9/11 attacks, the US has a very influential camp of neoconservatives and militarists who aspire to make the 9/11 attacks happen Invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam years ago. They included Joe Biden; the neoconservatives led by Bill Kristol and David Froome, who would go on to write about George W. Cain and Dick Cheney's post-9/11 speeches. Many of them wasted little time in encouraging Americans to blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks, concocting outright lies in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attacks lingered in America's most influential news outlets , these outlets have not hesitated to convince Americans that their security depends on the overthrow of the Iraqi leader, who has long been one of America's closest allies in the region but is now said to be both a close ally of Al Qaeda and And possibly the perpetrators of these anthrax attacks.

In 2008, it took the FBI more than seven years to claim they had finally cracked the case and found the perpetrator of the attack. After first trying to blame an American biological weapons expert named Steven Hatfill, the federal probe paid him nearly $6 million in a lawsuit after admitting he had no role The Bureau announced in 2008 that they had finally found the culprit: an American microbiologist named Bruce Ivins, who worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Unfortunately, the FBI said, Dr. Ivins killed himself just as they were about to arrest him, which meant the FBI never had to prove their charges against him in court or subject the case and evidence they relied on to find the real attacker to a rigorous crossover - Review, judicial review or public review. Almost immediately, serious doubts were cast, both circumstantial and scientific, on the FBI's evidence and their claims to have found the real killer. And this kind of questioning does not come from obscure or marginal places, but from the most mainstream newspapers and academic journals in the country. When the FBI finally provided its scientific evidence to an independent group of scientific researchers, the agency concluded in 2011 that the FBI's scientific evidence was far weaker than the FBI claimed, and it raised more questions than it answered.

A crime of this magnitude—and whose effects include radically changing how the U.S. government operates, the powers they assert, and the wars and regime change operations they will ultimately wage and execute over the next 15 years—is one of a kind The fact that the issue itself remains unresolved justifies it to be revisited, especially considering that every year more and more Americans either forget about the event or never experienced it in the first place.

But the relevance of this event and the need to revisit it goes far beyond historical significance. The fact that the FBI itself claims that the worst biological weapons attack in U.S. history came from a U.S. Army laboratory run by a U.S. Army scientist says a lot about the type of research the U.S. government is doing on biological weapons, and the ongoing Competing claims about the origins of the COVID pandemic.

I spent years reporting on this anthrax case, and as I did, I became increasingly convinced that lies and deliberate deceit were driving the narrative from the start. no doubt. With each passing year, I believe it more and more, and now I believe it more than ever. We'll take you through the key events, of course the most central evidence, and examine all the important questions it raises, so you can remember what happened in this now deliberately forgotten part of the story and draw your own from it in conclusion.

As a reminder, system updates are available as podcasts on Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcast platforms, listen to our podcast version that airs 12 hours after the Rumble live broadcast. Just follow us, rate us and comment us. It helps us spread awareness of the show.

Now, welcome to the upcoming episode of System Updates.

The most important element of state propaganda is ignorance of history. This observation is often attributed to the philosopher George Santayana. "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" is based on this understanding. The more history is forgotten, the easier it is to manipulate the public using the exact same methods of deceit, lies, and propaganda. As you get older, you will find that each year more and more people never experienced the events that you experienced, but you still remember them very well. Even for those who have lived through these events, the confluence of our rushed lives, our need to focus on our work and family, conscious memory of these events, and the erosion of memory facilitated by social media means that many simply forget about those events. They learned what they experienced. In the past 40 years, I can't think of any major political event that was more real than the anthrax attacks of 2001. There is no doubt that the so-called war on terror that the United States waged after 9/11, and the financial collapse of 2008, are the most important political events of our lifetime. It fundamentally changed the way the U.S. government operates and its relationship with U.S. citizens, granting it previously unimaginable powers of detention and surveillance that persist to this day. It has led to endless wars, occupations, bombing operations, drone warfare, regimes of torture, massive domestic espionage, fair trials, free prisons, and atrocities of all kinds around the globe, with very few events fueling and enabling this bullshit The war on terror, such as the September 2001 anthrax attacks. But few remember it. That's because once it served its purpose, it was rarely discussed, especially when the FBI claimed to have settled the case by blaming it on a dead man who would never stand trial, thus ensuring that the FBI's evidence was never actually scrutinized. That's why we've decided to take a special look at this long-forgotten but indescribably important event tonight.

The facts of the anthrax attack presented to us at the time were very simple. Beginning on September 18th, just 7 days after the 9/11 attacks, Americans were clearly in a state of fear and heightened concern as things looked to be cleaning up our public safety - a massive attack on the United States by foreign powers Casualties Attacks on US soil destroyed the World Trade Center, crashed a plane into the Pentagon, and killed 3,000 Americans. Just 7 days later, we were all in awe when the media started reporting what they claimed was a highly sophisticated and highly weaponized anthrax virus that had been mailed and sent to multiple news outlets and US politicians. Over the next six weeks, anthrax continued to emerge. New letters keep appearing with a very egregious statement that clearly aims to tie it to the 9/11 attacks we just lived through.

Here you can see one of the letters.

This is the letter sent to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw along with what we are told Anthrax is very complex and only very advanced parties, very few on earth, can produce it. it says:

this is next

Now take penicillin
death of america
death of israel

Allah is good

So the letter is clearly trying to show that this is a continuation of the 9/11 attacks by the same people, that it won't be just one day of catastrophic events, but a series of new ones. "This is next," it said, as if it was just the next horror in a long line of things to come.

Remind you how appalling the reports of this anthrax attack are - and rightly so. It is said to be this extremely complex version that has never been seen before. It is extremely lethal and can be sent to you through your mailbox. You only need to open a letter and you will be killed when the spores spread. Let me show you a few real-time Internet news and cable news reports about this incident, so that everyone can get a general idea of ​​how this incident is explained.

(Video. Various clips from NBC News.)

- Welcome back, everyone. It was certainly a difficult day for all of us at NBC News because yesterday's press conference of course announced that an NBC News employee had tested positive for anthrax.

- Florida man infected with a very rare and potentially deadly form of anthrax [...]

- […] a rare inhalation form of anthrax. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson called it an isolated case and said there was no terrorist threat [...]

- A memorial service for Bob Stevens was held today in Boca Raton, Florida. He was almost certainly the first American killed in a deliberate anthrax attack [...]

— Now back on the home front, and these concerns about anthrax in Florida, after a man died of anthrax and his co-workers became infected. The FBI has taken over the investigation.

- The US strikes back. Anthrax, another infection, this time at the NBC News station in Rockefeller Plaza.

• Good evening. Tonight we find ourselves in the unusual and unfortunate situation in which one of our beloved colleagues, my personal staff, has contracted a cutaneous anthrax infection. It was a skin infection that responded positively to treatment and she is expected to make a full recovery.

- There are two suspicious letters, both arriving on the same day. One of them contained a white talc-like substance. The other contained a brown, grainy, almost sandy substance.

- In just two weeks, we've had four confirmed cases of anthrax, all with links to the media and some anthrax rumours.

• ABC NV / NJ / Tonight, the US House of Representatives will close its offices today through Tuesday to allow for a full review of the anthrax trace. Twenty-nine employees of Senator Tom Daschle's office tested positive for anthrax. / The letters to NBC and the New York Post are the same. This is next. Now take penicillin. Died in America. died in Israel. Allah is good. A letter sent to Senator Tom Daschler had similar wording. / You can't stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Died in America. died in Israel. Allah is good. All are dated September 11th at the top. All products are shipped from Trenton, NJ. / I don't have anthrax and / Good morning. President Bush tried to reassure the nation after anthrax was found in a facility that handles mail for the White House. / President Bush called the senders of the anthrax letters "criminals" and said any attempt to terrorize the country would fail.

So you can see how it develops over six weeks. It started with one person, one case, and then, over the course of six weeks, more and more letters came out until finally President Bush said it was done by people with malicious intent. This is called germ warfare. It is said to be the largest and most serious biological weapon attack ever carried out on US soil. You can imagine how much this played a role in heightening the fear Americans felt due to the 9/11 attacks.

By late October, when many of the attacks had already emerged, the administration had few demands that the American public not immediately agree to any of these new powers described as necessary to keep us all safe. They said it was like people were terrorized overnight, not just because of the 9/11 attacks, but because of these anthrax attacks, and they didn't know who did it.

But soon the media began claiming that they were getting to know the suspects they believed to be the most likely suspects in these attacks, thanks to sources at the top of the government. It turned out that according to these media reports, the government revealed that through the analysis of the anthrax strain, they found bentonite.

Bentonite sounds like a very scary and very complicated substance, it's actually basically the clay that holds cat litter together because the challenge with weaponizing anthrax is that it's very easy to spread, so, to weaponize it , you need to find a way to cluster it together so that it only spreads when touched or moved, for example when you open an envelope. And according to these reports, there is only one person on the entire planet who uses bentonite in armed anthrax. They say it happens to be the hallmark of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whom many claimed to want to go to war with and overthrow his government for many years before 9/11, and the anthrax attack became the perfect attack on him By whitewashing anonymous allegations that he was at fault to the media. It's hard to overestimate how often and with certainty this will be done.

Probably the worst offender initially was ABC News. On network newscasts, investigative reporter Brian Ross, arguably the most trusted TV anchor of the era, Peter Jennings, continually pinned the blame on Iraq. Let's look at an example.

(Video. ABC World News Tonight. Oct. 26, 2001)

Peter Jennings: […] ABC News has learned that preliminary anthrax tests sent to Senator Daschler found a chemical additive with a name that means a lot to weapons experts. It's called bentonite, and the substance prevents tiny anthrax particles from sticking together, keeping them suspended in the air. Other countries may use it too, but it is a trademark of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program.

"What this means to me is that Iraq became the main source of the anthrax used in these letters."

So there's a major TV network here, when cable was far less influential than it is now -- not so much now, but nowhere near the top. The online news model is really where everything matters and everything happens. Possibly the most trusted show started whitewashing the statement over and over again, "Iraq is the most likely suspect", "This is the hallmark and warning sign of the Iraqi weapons program", when in fact it was in America When we are in a state of extreme fear and desperate to find out who is attacking our country in these most despicable ways, there are few defenses, which of course means that such accusations are immediately accepted .

After 9/11, David Letterman, the highest-rated late-night comedy show at the time, continued to go off the air because he felt it was inappropriate to hold comedy shows and jokes in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks. When he returned, his One of the first guests was Senator John McCain of Arizona. It had high ratings because it was David Letterman back - it wasn't the first show, but it was one of the first shows, and obviously it was of interest to Americans. John McCain is touted as the most knowledgeable man and a leading foreign policy expert. Let us show you what he told David Letterman about the anthrax attacks.

(Video. The D. Letterman Show. October 2001)

John McCain: The second phase is Iraq. There are some indications, I am not conclusive, but I must say that some of the anthrax may have come from Iraq.

D. Letterman: Is that so?

John McCain: Yes.

So you see John McCain. He's not sure about that but he's definitely saying that Iraq is the most likely or one of the main culprits, Iraq has been preaching that when we think of an anthrax attack it's almost certainly Saddam Hussein of. It was based on a very "technical, complex analysis" conducted at the highest levels of the US government that revealed signs of the use of Iraqi biological weapons and anthrax (i.e. bentonite). This is a claim made time and time again. In October, John McCain appeared with his then-running mate, Senator Joe Lieberman, a neoconservative Democrat from Connecticut who was a vice presidential nominee nine months earlier, with Al Gore ran together, but lost to George Bush and Dick Cheney. Extremely competitive game. Here you see Joe Lieberman right next to John McCain, agreeing with everything John McCain said. Joe Lieberman, like John McCain, was two of them, along with Joe Biden, who had been advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein long before the 9/11 attacks. They continue to "meet the press". Apparently, a lot of Americans watched that show at the time. That was just six to five weeks after the 9/11 attacks. And listen to what they have to say.

McCain: Recently, I think, an envelope was received in Rio de Janeiro, which made me think it might be an international organization rather than being in the United States.

Lieberman: My reports have been mixed, but I'll let you know my conclusions. This is consistent with every report I've received. What was sent out, most of it, including what was sent to Tom Daschle's office, was pretty refined anthrax. In other words, when we hear stories of anthrax in labs across the country, it's basically bacteria in lab test tubes. Dr. Anthony Fauci can give you more details.

It takes real effort to take inspiration from that and make it into something to send in an envelope, and frankly, it takes more than a few people in someone's kitchen to stir things up.

So that tells me there's either a lot of money behind it, state sponsored, or something stolen from an ex-Soviet program.

(Washington Post, October 21, 2001)

The headline in The Guardian on October 14, 2001 read: "Iraq 'behind US' in anthrax outbreak,'" With no reservations, no uncertainty, bold statement citing an unknown individual, we should only blame Iraq. We should assume that this was Saddam Hussein in the memo with disgusting and morally infinite way to attack the United States.

U.S. investigators investigating anthrax outbreaks in Florida and New York believe they have all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack -- and have named Iraq as a prime suspect because it was the source of the deadly spores. Their investigation adds to what U.S. hawks say is growing evidence that Saddam Hussein may have been indirectly involved in the 9/11 hijackers. (The Guardian. 14 October 2001)

So, you see, they didn't use the anthrax attacks to claim that Saddam did it. They used it to claim that Saddam was allied to Al Qaeda, which of course was necessary to convince the Americans to go and invade Iraq.

In fact, a poll conducted at the time, six months after the invasion, found that 70 percent of Americans (70 percent) believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. Jeffrey Goldberg has since risen to one of the most important and prestigious jobs in journalism when, as a New Yorker reporter, he wrote articles claiming that Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda alliance. Jeffrey Goldberg is of course part of the neoconservative camp that has long wanted to overthrow Iraq. Do you see how they use these events to advance an agenda they have long wanted to enforce?

U.S. intelligence believes Iraq has anthrax technology and supplies suitable for use by terrorists. "They don't do these things in caves in Afghanistan," the CIA source said. "This is prima facie evidence of national intelligence involvement. Perhaps Iran is capable, but politically unlikely. That leaves Iraq." (The Guardian. 14 October 2001)

That's for sure.

It turns out that this CIA source and all these whitewashed through the Guardian and other sources were correct: there was a government involved, a very sophisticated government involved. When you consider this weaponized anthrax, it turns out it wasn't Iraq or Iran, it was the United States.

On June 1, 2002, while we were discussing whether to invade Iraq, Jonathan Rauch published an article in the Atlantic entitled "Does al Qaeda have anthrax? It's best to assume.”

There is no doubt that Al Qaeda members and allies have certain ideas about the United States. ugly stuff. Vice President Dick Cheney said in May that it was "almost certain" that terrorists would strike again. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that it was inevitable that terrorists would get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and that "they would not hesitate to use them."

Question What if they have already used it and are ready to use it again? Was the anthrax attack that killed five last year a rehearsal?

In November, the FBI released a suspect profile that identified the possible anthrax attacker as a single adult male, possibly an American with a scientific background, laboratory experience, poor social skills and a bitter heart. Some people—I'm one of them—are skeptical of this explanation. What is the theme? Why is the time so close to 9/11?

After a number of analysts, including David Tell's helpful April 29 article in The Weekly Standard, questioned the disgruntled scientist's assumptions, an FBI spokesman said in May that the agency was far from The "belief" that the attack was carried out by an American loner "does not rule out any category of suspect, motive or theory". If anything, the notion of a possible connection between anthrax and al Qaeda has become increasingly difficult to refute. (The Atlantic. June 1, 2002)

All this significantly elevated from the highly influential outlets like ABC News, Press Meet, The Guardian, John McCain, Joe Lieberman to George Bush's State of the Union address in early 2002 when President statement. Notorious is this speech by neoconservative David Frum, which declares that we are fighting an "axis of evil" consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea because these neoconservatives Not content with coming to Iraq and overthrowing Iraq. They also want to overthrow the Iranian government in the name of 9/11 and Anthrax. Here you see George Bush making the same claim and elevating it to the State of the Union address.

(Video. G. Bush State of the Union Address. Jan. 2, 2002)

PRESIDENT BUSH: Iraq continues to demonstrate hostility to the United States and support of terrorism. For more than a decade, the Iraqi regime has been planning to develop anthrax, nerve gas and nuclear weapons. The regime has gassed thousands of its citizens and left the corpses of mothers curled up next to their dead children.

So that's David Froome's job: spreading absolute lies designed to convince Americans that the countries responsible for these anthrax attacks were Iraq and Saddam Hussein, already weeks after September 11th part of the effort. Only three months after 9/11, Americans began blaming 9/11 on a country that was not involved in either the 9/11 attacks or the anthrax attacks, namely Iraq. Do you see the barrage of lies - how it's whitewashed by the media that still claims to be the only ones that can be trusted, by those who end up constantly being promoted and promoted? David Frum and Jeffrey Goldberg are also on the Atlantic. Bill Kristol is one of CNN and MSNBC's most popular guests, a hero of American liberalism. George Bush has been completely rehabilitated, and so has Dick Cheney, thanks to the liberal adoration of his daughter Liz Cheney. The CIA is still a very trusted source in the American media, only leaked to them anonymously, as they have done time and time again here, and have always been believed.

At the time, there was every reason to believe it was a lie. For starters, it's not just bentonite that's an extremely common substance - as I said, it's what's used to make cat litter. The idea that it was a special ingredient that only experienced Iraqi scientists could use to weaponize anthrax was a joke from the start. But the bigger point is that, as ABC News finally admitted, no government analysis has ever proven the existence of bentonite. It was a completely wrong story from the start.

The source who went to ABC News and told ABC News that bentonite was detected in the government analysis was a total lie. If you go to journalism school or read journalism ethics books, one of the things you'll read is that the only taboo in journalism is revealing who your sources are if you promise anonymity. You may recall that during Russiagate, it was supposed to be a sacred principle, so sacred in fact that American journalists should go to jail for not revealing their sources, even if they were ordered by a court to do so. American journalists have previously been jailed for defying court orders. Therefore, during Russiagate, this principle was sacrosanct. An apparently ill blogger named Marcy Wheeler had promised to remain anonymous to her source, but she had come to believe — because she was sick — that the source was some kind of smoking gun, which is key evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia in 2016, and without even being asked to do so, let alone subpoenaed or ordered to reveal the identity of her secret source, she demanded that the Mueller team and the FBI give her several minutes. She fancied that she was part of Mueller's team, and that she had corroborating evidence of collusion in her hands, and she went out on her own to voluntarily obtain her own sources, who she assured them of anonymity - the greatest taboo. In all journalism - a An American reporter applauded her. People like Margaret Sullivan, who was a media reporter for The Washington Post and CNN at the time, wrote articles that glorified everything this woman did, this woman who was clearly insane. Turns out, she snitched on her sources. He wasn't even mentioned in the Mueller report. He wasn't involved in any of it. It was all a morbid fantasy made up in her head. She wanted to be part of Mueller's team, and they patted her on the back. They did. The US media applauded someone who voluntarily handed over his sources without being asked, let alone subpoenaed. Today, she's like a dead end or a darling among Russians. But generally it has always been a very sacred moral precept - you never reveal the identity of a source to whom you certify your anonymity, unless in that case it is not only permitted but morally bound to be required to reveal your anonymity The identity of the source, that is they willfully lied to you when they used you to spread a lie to the public that they knew at the time to be a lie. There is no doubt that three or four senior sources that Brian Ross claims came to him and told him that government tests detected bentonite were deliberately lying to him in an attempt to get the American public to blame Saddam Hussein in Iraq Because of the anthrax attacks, because these are the very people in the government who were very eager to invade Iraq long before 9/11.

To that end, I spent two years obsessing over ABC and Brian Ross. How do you continue to protect the identities of these top officials who lied to ABC News and all other sources on one of the most critical issues of our time? You have Joe Lieberman and John McCain and the Guardian and finally George Bush spreading the same lies that led to the Iraq War through David Froome's speech. How can you possibly protect the identities of these people? Due to the entanglement, the ABC eventually admitted that the reports were false, acknowledging that the government had never disclosed the existence of bentonite, and they eventually retracted them. But to this day, they refuse to reveal the sources who lied to them. High level government sources. That's why people at the CIA, FBI, and DHS know they can knowingly lie to the media without taking any responsibility, because they're doing it while hiding behind a shield of anonymity. So even if you know they are lying, the media will protect these liars, people who willfully deceive the public by using their media platforms — despite journalistic ethics 101 stating that you not only have the right but the duty to reveal the sources who do. They never do that because they don't want to lose their sources, and even if they know they're feeding them false information, they still have at least someone telling them a story.

Aside from the fact that this was all a lie from the start, as all these people just did, the whole basis of blaming Iraq is the reality that everything we know about the strain of anthrax would lead us to believe it was The fact that a government was involved, but not Iraq or Iran or Al Qaeda, it was the US government, because reports indicated that the strain sent was the Ames strain, and the fact that it was a clear sign that the government was weaponizing anthrax. This is a clear sign of America. The Eames strain is a strain developed by the U.S. government at an Army laboratory. In 2011, PBS Frontline produced a documentary about the anthrax attacks. They interviewed one of the country's most prestigious microbiologists, who talked about his knowledge of the possible source of this anthrax in 2001. Listen to him and what he has to say.

(Video. PBS Frontline. 2011)

Off: They were stunned when they saw the FBI leads. All of them came from a single strain of anthrax, the Eames strain.

Speaker 2: We're surprised it's the Ames strain, and at the same time it's cool.

Speaker 3 because it is too violent. The Ames strain is the anthrax strain of choice for the U.S. Army's biological weapons vaccine program.

Off: When you first hear that this is the Ames Tribe, you start to say to yourself, ah, this doesn't sound like an outside job, this sounds more like an inside job.

The home of the Ames strain is Heart Suites in USAMRIID, Maryland.

So think about what that means. The public has been inundated with outright lies about these anthrax attacks based not on a mistake or a benign misinterpretation of the data, but on a blatant fabrication that bentonite was found in these tribes, something that never happened and caused The highest levels of government and the most influential mainstream media have spread a very harmful, destructive and toxic lie to the public linking Saddam Hussein to these anthrax attacks. Not only is it based on a lie, not only is it completely false, but as the scientists just explained, there is a good reason in the world that 2001 is by far the most likely culprit for those analyzing the strain of anthrax, no, Not just the U.S. government, but a specific microbiology lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, U.S.A. Army Labs, which the FBI finally blamed and said eight years later was actually the source of these attacks.

The other part is what it means, what he just said, that the FBI is now claiming that the U.S. Army, the U.S. government, developed an extremely lethal, sophisticated strain of anthrax. Why does it do this? During the past three years of the COVID pandemic, we've heard that the U.S. government has insisted that it does no research of any kind. When Victoria Nuland inadvertently went to the US Senate and admitted that Ukraine had very dangerous and sophisticated biolabs, they were very concerned about falling into Russian hands, which meant they couldn't just be old Soviet labs, because the Russians already wanted I want them. This means that they are very dangerous new biological strains in Ukraine. When people like me notice what she's saying is, "Oh, that's a crazy conspiracy theory. We don't do offensive bioweapons research. We're banned by the treaty. We're contracted to do it. Here's something that China has ...that's what Iran does, what Russia does — we don't do it." However, one of the things that the anthrax incident revealed, and one of the reasons they worked so hard to make sure you don't know it and forget it, is that it's proof that the U.S. Army labs are researching, developing, and stockpiling highly virulent, deadly strains of anthrax. This is the FBI's own version of events. Now they're proving it by saying, okay, okay, we're doing this research, but we're not doing it because we're going to use it to attack anybody. We do it only because we have to manipulate these strains and make them more lethal so we can do research to defend against them if one of the bad nations breaks the convention and does it. But who knows what their intentions are?

What we know for sure is that they are developing these types of biological weapons and making them more lethal and dangerous — something that Anthony Fauci denied when discussing the origins of the COVID pandemic. He said we would never do gain-of-function studies. We will never take dangerous drugs and make them deadlier, even though we learn that this is exactly the kind of research being done in Wuhan labs with US funding. But the anthrax attacks put a lot of weight on these issues, and it's one of the main reasons they want you to forget about it.

Just to show you a few examples of how dangerous these people end up with anthrax and the lies about where it came from. let me show you onearticleFrom Maureen Dowd, September 26, 2001, about how panicked everyone she knew in Washington was over these anthrax attacks. It's all about the anthrax attacks, not 9/11,

After clever years of fighting everyday germs and inevitable death with smart gadgets, Americans now face the specter of terrorists spreading truly terrifying deadly toxins like plague, smallpox, in crop dusters and hazardous waste trucks , blisters, nerve gas, and botulism. Women I know in New York and Washington debate whether to order Israeli and Marine Corps gas masks, and our $400 lightweight gas masks, eight-hour gas masks, baby gas masks, and pets Half the gas mask, they pay that same attention when ordering a no-foam, no-fat, no-whip latte on a more innocent day. They share information about which pharmacies still carry Cipro, Zithromax, and doxycycline, antibiotics available for anthrax, the way they used to trade tips on designer shoe deals. They talk more about real botulism now than the popular cosmetic derivative Botox. New York Times reporter Judy Miller, co-author of the surprise new bestseller "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," said she took To a large number of inquiries how to protect their phone. "It's the ultimate freak," she said. (New York Times, September 26, 2001)

So here's a live article from 2001 about the intensity of the frenzy and panic these anthrax attacks created, and you can only imagine the impact of linking these attacks to Saddam Hussein in Iraq based on absolute lies, And these attacks actually came from the United States. The government itself -- and those in the U.S. government were very aggressive and effective in using these anthrax attacks for their own ends, which was to advance their long-term goal of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

Here's a similar piece by longtime liberal columnist for the Washington Post, Richard Cohen. In 2004 he wrote an article entitled "TheOur forgotten panic,’ He was trying to justify why he supported the war in Iraq, he was trying to say: It’s 2004, let’s go back to 2001 and remember how horrible everything was. For that, he’s not focusing on the 9/11 attacks, he’s focusing on the anthrax attacks .He said so.

At the time, Stevens' death and subsequent deaths appeared to have some connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This seems plausible, since the first letters containing anthrax spores were mailed around that time, and perhaps more specifically, authorities initially said so. "There are suspicions that this is linked to international terrorists," White House spokesman Ali Fleischer said. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt echoed him: "I don't think there's a way to prove it, but I think we all doubt it." Iraq is one of the suspects. It is believed to possess a large number of biological weapons.

The reason I mention anthrax is simply because no one does it anymore. It was an odd silence because, along with the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, it pretty much dominated the headlines. Some of us didn't get the mail, and when they recovered we went into the secure room where we put on latex gloves and masks before opening the letter. As a reminder, I had my doctor prescribe me Cipro early on, only to find out that despite thinking I was an insider, pretty much everyone else was asking for the same thing. People built anti-anthrax wards, and a woman I know made a mask for her puppy.

I mean we panicked. However, this scare was never mentioned. Last month, The New Republic published a "special issue" in which some very good writers wondered if they were wrong to support the Iraq war. Most of them admitted they were wrong about one detail or another, or that they couldn't understand how badly George Bush would handle the occupation wars. But no one admits to being taken over by the zeitgeist. I read the magazine cover to cover, and unless I somehow missed it, the word anthrax never came up. imagine! Not even! None of these authors admitted to panicking about anthrax.

Well, I did. I'm not sure panic is the right word, but it's close enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush administration in eliminating Saddam Hussein. I associate him with anthrax, and I associate anthrax with 9/11. I don't want to stand there waiting for another attack -- more attacks. I want to go to the source, Hussein, and get him before he gets us. As time went on, I became more and more curious, but it was hard for me to flinch from the first war howls and whoops. (Richard Cohen. Washington Post. July 24, 2004)

The Washington Post, one of the longest-tenured and most influential liberal columnists of any newspaper in the United States, admits that part of the reason he urged liberal readers to support the Iraq war was panic — and largely because of panic — — spread by these anthrax attacks. You see him talking about people in gas masks, like Maureen Dowd said, people are petrified because they're going to be killed in their own homes. And the cultured perception, the same people, the same institutions, the same media misperception, are now constantly lying to us that it came out of Iraq.

As I mentioned, there is a large faction in Washington that has long wanted to invade Iraq and eliminate Saddam Hussein before 9/11 — years before 9/11. While we often refer to neoconservatives as people who want it, one of those people who wants it is named Joe Biden. This is a hearing in 1998. Namely, he was interrogating Scott Ritter, a field weapons inspector in Iraq, more than three years before the Sept. 11 attacks. Joe Biden spoke in 1998 about what he thought was the importance of keeping Saddam out.

(Video. C-SPAN. 1998)

THE CHAIRMAN: A minority member of the Committee on Foreign Relations who wishes to speak in the opening statement.

J. BIDEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me start off by saying, I think Major, you have and are doing a very, very, very valuable service to your country by stepping up like you because frankly, I think, what you do is you force We're here for our milk, all of us in Congress. I believe you and I believe, and many of us here believe, that as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect of you or any other inspector being able to guarantee that we are rooted, fully rooted in Saddam's mass destruction The weapons program. You and I know it, we know it here, and that's what we have to face, the only way, the only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we end up starting alone -- alone starting -- It takes someone like you in uniform to step out into the desert again and bring down Saddam's son. You know it, and so do I. So I don't think we should kid ourselves here. There are obvious choices.

you have it. This was the official position of the Clinton administration prior to 9/11. America should invade Iraq and do whatever it takes to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Joe Biden was one of the loudest supporters during the Clinton administration. We just showed you that video of him doing it in 1988. Of course, Biden was probably the most important senator to secure enough support in the U.S. Senate in 2000, and as the Democratic chair of the Foreign Relations Committee he was a very active supporter, along with Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, to bring down Saddam. The anthrax attacks were the main reason they were able to convince so much of the public that this needed to be done.

Washington neocons - Bill Kristol, David Froome and we present you the names on this list called PNAC. It was the leading neoconservative think tank or organization at the time - wrote to President Clinton in January 1988, urging President Clinton to invade Iraq and eliminate Saddam Hussein. It's the exact same person. Three years later, we stand by the lie that blames Iraq for the anthrax attacks. This is a letter to Bill Clinton.

Dear Mr. President,

We are writing to you because we are convinced that the current US policy toward Iraq is failing and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East greater than anything we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union address, you have the opportunity to chart a clear and firm line to confront this threat. We urge you to seize this opportunity to come up with a new strategy that secures the interests of America and our friends and allies around the world. The first goal of the strategy should be the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We stand ready to provide our full support for this difficult but necessary endeavour.

The only acceptable strategy is to eliminate the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use WMD in the short term. That means being willing to take military action when diplomacy clearly fails. In the long run, that means the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime. It must now be the goal of US foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this goal and direct your government's attention to implementing a strategy to remove Saddam Hussein from power. (PNAC. 26 January 1998)

There you'll find major neoconservatives - including Elliott Abrams, William Bennett and John Bolton, as well as Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria Newland, Bill Crystal, Richard Pearl, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woosley, former CIA director - in the years before 9/11 , the default group in Washington has basically been picking on everyone about regime change in Iraq and then being the leader of this lie, blaming the anthrax attacks on the country they want to invade.

As I mentioned, I started reporting on this story a year ago, at least, the FBI announced that they had finally caught the real attacker, who they said was Bruce Ivins, a bioweapons researcher at Fort Dietrich , which we will show shortly. you. The reason I started covering it was when I went back and started looking at the anthrax attacks and realized how radical the claims were, they had evidence linking this to Saddam Hussein's government, especially ABC news spreading it The core. Lying.

Honestly, as someone who basically started my journalism career — it was 2007 — and then a year and a half after I started writing about politics, I was pissed off by it. This is part of my realization of how corrupt these institutions really are. I can't believe it, I don't remember. I really didn't pay much attention to the details, the big details of it all. I've been a lawyer; I'm not a reporter. I can't believe how often ABC News is spreading this lie. What I can't believe is their reluctance to tell us who in the government is spreading this lie and using ABC News to spread this lie. So this is the first story I've written about it. Its title is "ABC News The Unsolved Mystery of the Fake Saddam-Anthrax Report’, subtitled “In October 2001, ABC News aired highly inflammatory and false reports linking Saddam Hussein to anthrax attacks. Who is behind these claims? Why didn't ABC retract its story? Here you see this article:

ABC aggressively promoted it as headlines for days at a time of high provocation. That and these are quotes:

1. "Anthrax in letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle filled with bentonite"

2. Bentonite was a "disturbing chemical additive that authorities believe was their first major lead"

3. "Iraq is the only country that uses bentonite to produce biological weapons"

4. Bentonite is "the trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program"; and

5. "The anthrax found in a letter to Senator Daschler was nearly identical to the sample they found in Iraq in 1994, and the anthrax spores found in the letter to Senator Daschler were identical in appearance to their 1994 sample Nearly identical anthrax spores recovered in Iraq. Electron microscope".

At various times, Ross attributes these claims to three well-placed but independent sources, or to "at least four well-placed sources." All of these factual statements - each individual statement - are utterly false, provably and beyond doubt.

Ross claimed at the time, and there was no reason to doubt, that the false reports — apparently designed in the eyes of the Americans to attribute the anthrax attacks to Iraq — were provided to him by “at least four reliable sources.” "

Who provided ABC News with completely fabricated claims linking Saddam Hussein to the anthrax attacks, including false claims about the government's findings? What possible reason is there to conceal the identities of those who manipulated the ABC to spread these false claims? Trusted ABC news anchor Peter Jennings then added the end of the story. Remember, this is October 2001.

The news about bentonite being a trademark additive in Iraq's biological weapons program is significant, in part because of the intense pressure inside and outside the Bush administration to go after Saddam Hussein. Some would be quick to dismiss this as smoking gun. There is a bitter struggle within the government over Iraq. (G. Greenwald. 9 April 2007)

I just want you to take a step back and consider that this anthrax attack has been used to scare Americans into a state of panic that 9/11 couldn't, and that the narrative is spread at the highest levels of politics and the media, Completely fictitious tests strongly imply, if not prove, that Iraq was behind it, that they wanted to invade the country four years before 9/11, and that all along—at least according to what the FBI is now saying—this anthrax actually The above comes from the U.S. Army Laboratory, where it was developed, maintained and stored. It was sent by a US Army bioweapons expert, a microbiologist who - unfortunately for everyone - was about to be arrested by the FBI, killed himself so the FBI wouldn't have to go to court made these allegations. These are very high-profile events. Again, at no time am I citing any obscure media, any conspiracy media - but I'm citing the conspiracy media, not the well known ones, I'm citing the most common ones - again , the highest... institutional level - government and politics - is behind all these lies.

Here's something that I think is worth noting is missing from history. In 2008, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who attended Slate as part of a seminar in which he said anthrax played a key role in the panic that led to his support for the Iraq war, said At the meeting, a group in the media and the government that advocated the Iraq War back in 2002 and 2003 came to confront their mistakes.

Here you can see Richard Cohen's article: "What went wrong with them in Iraq?’ was subtitled ‘I think we have a chance to stabilize an unstable region, and — I admit it — I want to fight back. Here's what Richard Cohen says about why he got Iraq wrong.

anthrax. Do you remember anthrax? No one seems to do it anymore - at least never mentioned it.

These attacks were not entirely unexpected. Shortly after 9/11, I was told to secure Cipro, the anthrax antidote. The information came in a detour from a senior official, and I took immediate action. I was using Cipro long before most people even heard of it. (Slate. March 18, 2008)

think about it. This is a longtime columnist for The Washington Post. He has been working close to the establishment in Washington. He has all sorts of connections at the highest levels of the US government because they've been using him for propaganda in the Washington Post for as long as anyone can remember. According to him, a senior official told him that, as a friendly reminder, he started carrying Cipro, an antidote for spotted anthrax, long before the anthrax attacks happened, before anyone had even heard of Cipro. Who told them and why did they tell him? Specifically, not just the various antibiotics, but the specific antibiotics most commonly used for anthrax.

This is a note to the story that Richard Cohen himself told, as far as I know no one but me has pressured him to tell us who told them and how they knew to tell him . But according to Richard Cohen, there are strong suspicions at the highest levels of the US government in Washington that an anthrax attack is coming now.

Of course, for a while, the question of who did it remained open. It cannot hang in the balance forever. It killed five people. It seriously injured 11 other people. As I said, this is something that is often reported. Any attempt to make it forgotten is unlikely to satisfy us, because we'll never know who did it. The FBI has had to give us an explanation for years. Not only did they follow obsessively, but they leaked to the press that an Army bioweapons expert, a physicist named Steven Hatfield, was the prime suspect, and they leaked to Nick Kristoff, Others, The New York Times, had his reputation destroyed. Wherever he went, people thought he was an anthrax attacker. He sued the FBI, and they had to pay him nearly $6 million in 2008, admitting he had no part in it. So when it happened, when the prime suspect they leaked to the press was removed and acquitted, the question became who actually did it.

Here you can see from the LA Times, when Steven Hatfield got paid, "Anthrax suspect collects money“

A former Army scientist who was a prime suspect in a deadly 2001 anthrax outbreak agreed to collect $5.82 million from the government on Friday to settle allegations that the Justice Department and FBI invaded his privacy and ruined his career.

Dr Steven Hatfill, 54, who was called a "suspect" in the case by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2002, said the Hashtags and repeated leaks of investigative details to the media have damaged his reputation.

In the months following 9/11, Hatfill was under angst, under 24-hour surveillance and widely considered a prime suspect in the country's first bioterror attack. However, he was never arrested or charged, and the federal judge presiding over the trial recently said that "there is not a shred of evidence that he was involved with these shipments." (Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2008)

So the people they tried to feed us for years are finally fully exonerated, leaving the question of who did it. About five weeks after that — the U.S. government paid off Steven Hatfield — they came back and said, this time we really found the real culprit. But unfortunately he committed suicide.

from Los Angeles how many times you saw the headline"Apparent suicide in case of anthrax’ It’s August 1, 2008, just five weeks after the last article we showed you about the government repaying for years of false accusations against Steven Hatfield.

A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from an anthrax attack in 2001 died in an apparent suicide in Maryland, while the Justice Department is preparing criminal charges against him, Los Angeles said. experienced era. Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who has worked for the past 18 years at the government's elite biodefense research laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was told he was about to be indicted and was familiar with Ivins, His suspects and sources in the FBI investigation said.

Ivins, who has not been named as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve the anthrax vaccine by preparing an anthrax preparation for animal testing. Ivins is considered a skilled microbiologist who helped the FBI analyze a powdery substance recovered from an anthrax-infected envelope mailed to the U.S. Senator's office in Washington. Evans died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland after taking heavily prescribed Tylenol and codeine, a friend and colleague said. Evans declined to be named out of fear of being harassed by the FBI. After FBI Director Robert Mueller changed the leadership of the investigation in late 2006, federal investigators moved away from Hatfield -- the only publicly identified "person of interest" in years -- and eventually concluded that Irwin Adams is the culprit. (Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2008)

Here's another fun fact. The investigation is led by Robert Mueller. As you may recall, he was George Bush's FBI director after 9/11. When the FBI falsely accused Steven Hatfill and then spent seven years -- seven years -- claiming to find the real killer, the real attacker, he was the one running the FBI. They said he worked under their noses at the state-of-the-art U.S. Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, where he studied anthrax spores and was thus able to use them to attack the nation.

As I said, the FBI doesn't have to present their case in court because this man is dead. So the FBI explained how it happened, and it took them seven years to find the perpetrator, and explain why they believed him through a series of press conferences and leaks to the media. Immediately—immediately—great doubts arose. Again, not from someone labeled a conspiracy theorist, or someone accustomed to doubting the FBI, but from the most mainstream political and scientific sources in America. Seriously suspect the FBI's case. As far as the circumstances are concerned, the evidence is meaningless, and scientifically speaking, there are huge holes in the FBI's account.

Here's an article I wrote back in 2009 titled "Remembering the Anthrax Attacks," in which I summarized just how much skepticism was expressed by the types of agencies that were rarely willing to question the authenticity of the FBI.

Sources of different ideologies expressed serious doubts about the FBI's anthrax case. That prompted a leading MP to call for an independent commission to investigate. One of the two Senate targets, Senator Patrehy said bluntly in a Senate hearing last September that he did not believe the FBI's allegations against Ivins, emphasizing that he did not believe Ivans acted alone . Republican Senator Arlen Spector told the FBI at the same hearing that they would never be able to convict Ivins in court based on their case -- although it was fraught with doubts -- and he also asked An independent evaluation of the FBI evidence. Republican Senator Charles Grassley has long been skeptical of the FBI's anthrax investigation and expressed serious doubts about the case against Ivins. (See an interview I did with Senator Grassley last year.) The final agency, the Washington Post editorial page, ran several editorials expressing serious doubts about the FBI's case against Ivins and calling for an independent investigation . The New York Times editorial page echoed these sentiments. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page cited the FBI's "so long and so many lapses," arguing that "independent parties need to review all evidence, especially forensic science," and concluding that "Congress can choose to disengage from legitimate oversight." .”

After the FBI indicted Ivins, the science journal Nature declared emphatically in its editorial that "the case is not closed"—and called for an independent investigation into the FBI's case. After the FBI publicly disclosed some evidence against Ivins, The New York Times reported that "scientists are increasingly skeptical about the strength of the government's case." The Baltimore Sun said, "Scientists and legal experts criticized the case, and expressed doubts about its success.” Dr. Alan Pearson, director of the Biochemical Arms Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, expressed many of the same scientific doubts on behalf of several experts in the field and called for a comprehensive investigation.

So it took the FBI seven years, when they claimed they had found the person who acted alone in this highly politically valuable attack on U.S. soil, and presented evidence of the person they happened to kill themselves, to lighten their burden. And the need to take it to court, everyone said the same thing, and I mean all the agencies that generally respect the FBI and write down whatever they tell them to say.

Headline from the authoritative scientific journal Nature "open case"That's what it says.

Did Bruce Ivans, the scientist who single-handedly planned the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, go wrong? Or the 62-year-old Fort Detrick, Maryland, anthrax vaccine researcher, an emotionally unstable innocent whose profile made him a scapegoat for the FBI? The jury is still out on those questions -- or rather, if anyone has had a chance to hear the evidence. Ivan's apparent suicide last month meant there would be no trial, making it all the more important that the government release the evidence it plans to use to fully indict him. Now.

On Aug. 6, the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI's parent agency, released hundreds of pages of evidence allegedly directed against Ivins and announced it was closing the case because it was satisfied that it had caught its man. But Ivins' lawyer, Paul Kemp, described the documents as "a pile of insinuations and a shocking lack of real evidence." He has a point.

Many of the documents, for example, are simply search warrants — a reminder that despite an extensive search of Ivins' home and car, the FBI failed to find physical evidence that directly implicated him in the attack. Likewise, the agency has no evidence that Ivins ever found letters laced with anthrax in a mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey.

So far, the heart of the case against Ivins has been released, contained in just a few dozen pages of affidavits—only four of which discuss what the FBI says is the smoking gun: Genetic analysis of anthrax from letters . The FBI said it found four different genetic mutations in the anthrax used in the attack. It tested these mutations and isolates of the Ames anthrax strain from 16 domestic, government and university laboratories, as well as from laboratories in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In total, more than 1,000 samples were collected, of which only eight had the four mutations, according to the statement. Each of these isolates is directly related to a batch of the strain called RMR-1029, which was created in 1997 and kept in flasks at the U.S. Army Research Facility at Fort Detrick, it said. The statement described Evans as "the sole custodian of the party". It is accessible to many other researchers. [It turns out that more than 100 people had access to that flask. ] But the FBI claimed to have ruled them all out. Genetic analysis itself seems to be very reliable. The FBI has been working with some of the top outside scientists on anthrax, and on Aug. 18 convened many of them to answer reporters' questions about the science.

None of the analytical techniques used in this case are known to be used only for anthrax drugs, the panel researchers explained. Several peer-reviewed articles on forensic work have already been published, and a dozen more are expected. While this openness to technology is laudable, neither the conclusions of the scientific analysis nor key legal elements such as the correctness of the source and processing of the samples have been tested in court. One side of the story has been heard so far: the prosecution. (Natural. 20 Aug 2008)

The New York Times published an editorial on August 8 entitled "Identification of Bacillus anthracis, which expresses very similar misgivings. The New York Times is not known for questioning the American security state.

The FBI appears confident it has finally solved the long-running case of who sent the anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001. However, its description of the evidence points to deranged Army bio-weapons experts as the sole culprit, leading us to wonder whether investigators have had a brilliant success after a rough start, or are lacking in conclusive, indisputable evidence Victory was declared prematurely. Federal agents relied on complex scientific testing and painstaking investigative work to conclude that only Dr. Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide last week, could have produced and sent the anthrax used in the letter. Newly developed test allows them to identify apparent genetic mutations, they say [...] (New York Times, 7 August 2008)

Does this sentence sound familiar? "Whistleblower genetic mutation" - the term used by the media at the highest levels of the government to accuse Iraq seven years ago. Now, the FBI says it has developed a test that allows it to identify the apparent genetic mutation in anthrax and suggests it did not come from Iraq or al Qaeda, but from "Dr. Flask kept at Army Laboratory", Maryland. "

More than a hundred people may have been exposed to the deadly substance, but over a four-year period, investigators gradually eliminated suspects until only Dr. Ivan returned. However, none of the investigators' main claims had been cross-examined or evaluated by outside experts. Federal officials must release all their data so independent experts can tell whether the anthrax posted is indeed the same as Dr. Ivins' supply and only this supply.

Officials will also have to explain more fully how they eliminated the many others who had access to the material. There is no direct evidence of his guilt. No witnesses saw him pour anthrax into the envelope. There were no anthrax spores in his house or car. No confession to colleagues or any suicide notes. There is no physical evidence linking him to the Princeton, New Jersey location from which the letter is believed to have been sent.

Because Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide before being indicted, will have no opportunity for adversarial testing of the FBI's conclusions. Unfortunately, the agency has a history of building indirect cases that seemed convincing at first but eventually fell apart. (New York Times, August 7, 2008)

In response to all of these pressures, the FBI is proactive, which means they pick and choose what scientific evidence they can provide to the panel that has been convened -- this is an FBI panel that they have actually approved -- to be the panel's expert We finally saw the scientific evidence the FBI had long touted, and they concluded that it was nowhere near as convincing, let alone conclusive, as the FBI had claimed for years.

This is from 2011. From The New York Times. title"Panel criticizes FBI work investigating anthrax letter”。

Review of FBI's scientific work investigating 2001 anthrax letters concludes bureau overestimated strength of genetic analysis linking mailed anthrax to supplies kept by Bruce Ivins Up, investigators blamed the attack on Army microbiologists. The review, by a panel convened by the National Academies of Sciences, said genetic analysis "did not conclusively prove" that the anthrax spores posted had grown from Dr.'s sample. Ivan's laboratory in Fort Detrick. However, it added that the evidence was "consistent and supportive of a link" with Dr. Ivans flasks and anthrax infestation.

The Academy report blamed the FBI for failing to exploit the broadcast from 2001 to Dr. Ivans' suicide in 2008, the sole perpetrator...many of Ivan's colleagues denied his guilt. While working at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, he was seen as an eccentric but popular figure. The academy's report is likely to reiterate claims by FBI critics that the agency simply took advantage of Ph.D. Evans ended the case by suicide. (New York Times, February 15, 2011)

The Washington Post also reported criticism of the FBI-accredited panel. You'll see the headline from February 2011: "Anthrax report casts doubt on FBI's scientific evidence in Bruce Ivins case."

For the FBI, the case of the anthrax killer was a seemingly never-ending investigation. Last year, when agents blamed the 2001 attack on a late Fort Detrick scientist, they thought they had solved the mystery. But another new issue arose Tuesday, when a group of prominent scientists questioned key scientific evidence from the FBI. A National Research Council report questioned the power of genetic testing after the government said it eventually linked an anthrax-infected letter that killed five people to Bruce Ivins' vial of the deadly bacteria. Tuesday's report cast doubt on a key piece of evidence: the link between anthrax spores stored in a flask labeled RMR-1029 stored in Ivin's laboratory at Fort Detrick and the anthrax in the attack. The Justice Department report concluded that the anthrax spores Ivin collected, which he called his "ultimate creation," were the "parent material" for the anthrax used in those shipments. “The scientific link between the letter material and bottle number RMR 1029 is not as conclusive as that stated in the DOJ investigative summary,” said the $1.1 million report commissioned by the FBI. The document added that "genetic evidence is consistent with and supports a link between the flasks used in the attack and anthrax." Pursue. But it offers another possible explanation for the apparent connection between the alphabet and the Ivins flask, namely that some of the mutations found in the alphabet may have arisen independently through a process called parallel evolution. The FBI "did not investigate thoroughly" that possibility, the report said.