ABC, Anthrax, and Agendas

[Winstonm]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...hrax/index.html

 

Glenn Greenwald in Salon has made some disturbing revelations. Most - if not all of us - have forgotten about the misinformation ABC news repeated about the anthrax attacks - attacks that came only one week following the 9-11 attacks and contributed strongly to the invasion of Iraq.

 

From the article:

 

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

 

However, there was a little problem with this Saddam/Anthrax claim:

 

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue).

 

And never was any connection:

 

It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

 

So the question is this - who were the 4 reliable sources ABC cites for the anthrax-Iraq claims, and why were they pushing known lies for this false claim? Note, that these were total fabrications, not news, so ABC has no grounds for protecting the identity of their "sources". Someone fed ABC news lies to propagandize the war in Iraq - shouldn't the nation know who these 4 sources were?

[blackshoe]

Someone fed ABC news lies to propagandize the war in Iraq - shouldn't the nation know who these 4 sources were?

How do you know ABC didn't fabricate the sources, as well as the "evidence"?

[Winstonm]

Someone fed ABC news lies to propagandize the war in Iraq - shouldn't the nation know who these 4 sources were?

How do you know ABC didn't fabricate the sources, as well as the "evidence"?

That is a good point - I don't know that; however, that would be even more sinister, then, wouldn't it? It would mean that ABC News, rather than being fooled, was actually a working conspiratory partner in misinformation and propaganda.

[blackshoe]

How does it go? "There's no one left but we and thee, and we're not sure of thee!" B)

[Al_U_Card]

Puhleeze!

 

When they realized that the threat "external" was insufficient to enact draconian laws like The Patr(id)iot Acts 1 and 2...they got the machine (MSM) going with some well placed speculation and a few sachets of anthrax powder.

 

Hysteria has the reliable effect of spreading wildly and disconnecting the brain from reality. Face it, you've been had in the most scurrilous manner. Remains to be seen what the next step will be.....

[Winstonm]

Now the NY Daily News is chiming in as well.

 

WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

 

That is the agenda.

 

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

 

The "reward" for not playing ball.

 

"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.

 

The big lie must be preserved.

 

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."

 

Knowingly providing false innuendo, Bush and Cheney paint a false picture.

 

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."

 

If it wasn't terrorists, then who was it? And seeing that Bush and Cheney had to be aware that it could not be terrorists, why did they continue to lie?

[Winstonm]

The unanswered questions in the anthrax case are literally too numerous to chronicle. It is so vital to emphasize that not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks, let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit. Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media (with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this case as though the matter is resolved.

 

Given the significance of the anthrax attacks, it would be unconscionable for there to be anything other than a full-scale Congressional or independent investigation -- with a full airing of all the facts -- regarding everything that happened here. Those issues should include exploration of the following questions, many of which might well have perfectly reasonable and benign explanations, and some of which may not, but until there is a full airing, it will necessarily be the case -- and it should be the case -- that this episode will only serve to further erode whatever lingering trust there is in media and government institutions:

 

Why were White House aides given cipro weeks before the anthrax attacks, and why "on the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, [did] the White House Medical Office dispense[] Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David"? [Washington Post, 10/23/2001];

 

 

Why, if Cheney was given cipro on the night of the 9/11 attacks, was he allegedly "convinced that he had been subjected to a lethal dose of anthrax" on October 18, and that this fear is what led him to seek refuge in "undisclosed locations" and thereafter support an array of hard-line tactics against suspected terrorists? [Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, 2008];

 

 

Which "high government official" told Richard Cohen to take cipro prior to the anthrax attacks (it wasn't a "source" who did so, since Cohen didn't write about it and apparently never intended to; it was just someone high up in Government passing along a helpful tip to a media friend) [Richard Cohen, Slate, March 18, 2008];

 

 

Did the FBI meaningfully investigate who sent an anonymous letter to the FBI after the anthrax letters were sent, but before they were made public, accusing a former Fort Detrick scientist -- the Arab-American Ayaad Assaad -- of being a "potential biological terrorist," after Assaad was forced out of Fort Detrick by a group of USAMRIID bioweapons researchers who had exhibited extreme anti-Arab animus? [Laura Rozen, Salon, 1/26/2002];

 

 

Why did the FBI gives its consent in October, 2001 for the remaining samples of the Ames anthrax strain to be destroyed, thereby losing crucial "genetic clues valuable to the criminal inquiry"? [san Francisco Chronicle, 11/9/2001];

 

 

If -- as was publicly disclosed as early as 2004 -- Bruce Ivins' behavior in 2001 and 2002 in conducting unauthorized tests on anthrax residue was so suspicious, why was he allowed to remain with access to the nation's most dangerous toxins for many years after, and why wasn't he a top suspect much earlier? [uSA Today, 10/13/2004];

 

 

If it's really the case -- as principal Ivins antagonist Jean Duley claims -- that Ivins, as far back as 2000, had "actually attempted to murder several other people, [including] through poisoning" and had threatened to kill his co-workers at his Fort Detrick lab, then why did he continue to maintain clearance to work on biological weapons, and why are his co-workers and friends, with virtual unanimity, insisting that he never displayed any behavior suggestive of being the anthrax attacker? [Washington Post, August 3, 2008];

 

 

What was John McCain referencing when he went on national television in October, 2001 and claimed "there is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq"? [Late Show with David Letterman, 10/18/2001];

 

 

What was Joe Lieberman's basis for stating on national television, three days after McCain's Letterman appearance and in the midst of advocating a U.S. attack on Iraq, that the anthrax was so complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program"? [Meet the Press, 10/21/2001];

 

 

What did Pat Leahy mean when he said the following in a September, 2007 interview:

Leahy: What I want to know -- I have a theory. But what I want to know is why me, why Tom Daschle, why Tom Brokaw?

 

VDB: Right. That all fits into the profile of a kind of hard-core and obviously insane ideologue on the far Right, somebody who would fixate on especially Tom Daschle, who at that point was the target of daily, vitriolic attacks on Right-wing talk radio.

 

Leahy: [slowly, with a little shake of the head] I don't think it’s somebody insane. I'd accept everything else you said. But I don’t think it's somebody insane. And I think there are people within our government -- certainly from the source of it -- who know where it came from. [Taps the table to let that settle in] And these people may not have had anything to do with it, but they certainly know where it came from.

 

[Vermont Daily Briefing, 9/5/2007];

 

 

Who were the "four separate and well-placed sources" who told ABC News, falsely, that tests conducted at Fort Detrick had found the presence of bentonite in the anthrax sent to Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to aggressively link the attacks to Iraq for five straight days in October, 2001? [salon, 4/9/2007];

 

 

Who was responsible for the numerous leaks even before the ABC News bentonite reports linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq? [The Guardian; 10/14/2001; Wall St. Journal Editorial, 10/15/2001 ("Is Iraq unleashing biological weapons on America?"); CNN, 10/15/2001].

[Al_U_Card]

One more time......just like the "mysterious" deaths (either (un)natural or suicides(?) of the various witnesses due to speak on the JFK assassination (some 79 or so over 2 decades but that was one of the first so the operation was not as smoothly orchestrated as this symphony of sycophantism).)

 

Why did they lie? When did they ever even get to half-truths??? Liars lie to get what they want and as long as they are not caught out or otherwise impeded, they continue to do so for imagination is much easier to manipulate than reality.

[Winstonm]

Your American tax dollars at work:

 

As early as January 2003, writes Suskind, Habbush told a British intelligence officer that Saddam, 12 years earlier, had both ended his nuclear program and destroyed his chemical weapon stockpile and was in no hurry to build them up again. "They're not going to like this downtown," said Tenet, referring to his Pennsylvania Avenue bosses. They didn't. The Habbush report was buried, the war was set in motion, and Habbush himself was spirited to Amman, Jordan, where he was placated with $5 million in CIA hush money (even as his picture showed up as the jack of diamonds in Bush's playing deck of Iraqi war criminals).

[Al_U_Card]

You mean that you are unfamiliar with the concept of a CIA "asset" whose usefulness has ended? (But that they do not wish to terminate with extreme prejudice.)

 

When OBL can no longer be a boogey-man.....he will find himself "re-born" in some comfortable location no doubt, with easy access to military medical facilities to boot.