The Anthrax Perplex: The Press Fails to Ask the Critical Questions

August 9th, 2008 - by admin

Jon Carroll / San Francisco Chronicle & Brad Friedman / BradBlog.org & Dahbud Mensch / Judicial Watch – 2008-08-09 11:22:25

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/07/DDQP125HJK.DTL

The Anthrax Perplex
Jon Carroll / San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO (August 7, 2008) — I have, of course, no knowledge about the guilt or innocence of Bruce E. Ivins, who apparently committed suicide just as the FBI was preparing to arrest him for the string of anthrax attacks in 2001 that galvanized the country in the wake of 9/11. He was one of a handful of people who had legal access to the substance (he was a government researcher), and there is anecdotal evidence that he was recently behaving in a curious and unbalanced manner.

There is also recently evidence that I’ve been behaving in a curious and unbalanced manner and that my newly painted blue fingernail is evidence of that. I am not currently under suspicion of anything.

On the other hand, he was a well-known member of his community, a churchgoer who performed a juggling act at local talent shows. He was married, had two kids and volunteered for the Red Cross. In retrospect, of course, very suspicious, because aren’t those always the guys, the religious Red Cross volunteers, who turn out to be twisted? Except, of course, for the millions of Red Cross-supporting, God-believing Americans who turn out not to have sent envelopes laced with anthrax to members of Congress.

So apparently the case is closed. Bruce E. Ivins is conveniently dead, unavailable for questioning, unable to come to the phone at this time, and so he can be declared the villain, or the probable villain, and he is unable to sue.

Steven Hatfill is another matter altogether. Steve Hatfill was the former definite we-got-our-man anthrax terrorist, identified in 2002. Of course, the FBI never formally designated him as such, leaving it to the media, working on a series of nicely orchestrated leaks, to make him a murderer before he was charged with a single crime. It is not too strong to say that the FBI made his life a living hell.

In one fabulous Kafkaesque incident, as reported by the Washington Post, an FBI vehicle trailing Hatfill ran over his foot when he attempted to approach it. Police responding to the 2003 incident did not cite the driver, but issued Hatfill a citation for “walking to create a hazard.” Hatfill fought the ticket, but a court upheld it and ordered Hatfill to pay the requisite $5 fine.

Hatfill was also involved in multiple lawsuits aimed at clearing his name, and eventually won $5.8 million from the government. That’s what a reputation is worth these days. Lots of people, including Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, were caught up in this ugly bit of media pile-on. The Times lawyers managed to protect Kristof, although other newspaper and magazine publishers are still in litigation.

I am confident that most of the reporters were using generally trustworthy sources and that the sources mostly believed that what they were saying was true. This adherence to the forms and customs of journalism is of little comfort to Steven Hatfill, the first line of whose obituary is already written, and whose career as a serious scientist is already at an end.

At about the same time, Kristof’s colleague Judith Miller was among those journalists paying attention to “high-level sources” who were detailing Saddam Hussein’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and generally ginning up the reasons why the future of the free world depended on the United States invading Iraq.

It is, of course, hard to ignore high-ranking officials revealing classified information. It’s a story; it’s a scoop. On the other hand, those high-ranking officials understand their leverage. If the FBI wants to look proactive, if the administrative branch wants to make a case for war, why not wave the big blue envelopes and make the reporters feel important? It’s all just a game. Isn’t it? Sometimes the press wins; sometimes the government wins. Then everyone goes home and has the chicken surprise.

Lest we forget: Richard Jewell. Jewell led an undistinguished and unnoticed life until, one day, while serving as a security guard at the Atlanta Olympics, he discovered a pipe bomb and evacuated the area before the bomb exploded. Initially he was a hero; later, he was the putative bomber.

He wasn’t the bomber, of course; that was Eric Rudolph, who also bombed abortion clinics. Jewell’s life was turned upside down. Tom Brokaw as good as convicted him of the crime on air; Jay Leno called him the “Una-doofus.” He too received some money, and the FBI eventually apologized. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which led the charge, still hasn’t apologized. Doesn’t matter now; Jewell died last year.

So I’m not buying the story of Bruce Ivins just yet. Maybe he did it, but the evidence is circumstantial at best. The anthrax case is still open. Maybe it’ll be solved around the time we capture Osama bin Laden.

Oh good, we’ve solved the anthrax mystery again. Maybe this time it’s the real solution. This is beginning to feel like a not-very-good mystery novel.

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Corporate Media Coverage of Deceased US Army Bio-Researcher Suspect Fails to Note Obvious ‘Liberal’ Targets of Deadly Post-9/11, Pre-War Letter Campaign
Not One’ Reporter Bothered to Ask Brother About Political Leanings of ‘Anthrax Killer’

Brad Friedman / BradBlog.org

LOS ANGELES (August 1, 2008) — With the mainstream corporate media reports today on the apparent suicide of Bruce E. Ivins of the US Government’s bio weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, MD, who was reportedly about to be charged with the Anthrax murders of late 2001, it’s curious — if hardly surprising — that none of the major outlets reporting the news bothered to note that the attacks were all made on perceived “liberals.”

Letters, seeming to appear as if they were from Muslim extremists, declaring “Death to America… Death to Israel…Allah is Great,” were sent to then-Democratic Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, powerful Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and then NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw.

Given the recent coverage (or extraordinary lack thereof) of the church shootings earlier this week in Knoxville, TN, carried out by a gunman who was said to have blamed “liberal Democrats” for all of this country’s woes… and the coinciding news that the Bush Administration’s DoJ illegally screened out applicants for career posts based on perceived beliefs that they might support “liberal Democratic” causes (a convergance that we noted, if few others did)… it’s all the more curious — if still not surprising in the least — that the supposed “Liberal Media” haven’t bothered to highlight who the actual targets of the anthrax attacks were, or the reasons why they appear to have been targeted.

Even the parade of reporters contacting the Ivins family today failed to bring up the topic.

We spoke with Ivins eldest brother Thomas today, to ask if he had any idea of Bruce’s political leanings, and he told us “No, I didn’t. I didn’t know what his affiliations where. And that’s a good question.”

He was surprised by the question, and although he said he’d been speaking with reporters all day, “one after another,” he told The BRAD BLOG none of the other reporters, not one of them, had asked him about his brother’s political affiliations, leanings, or beliefs.

Apparently, it remains open hunting season on perceived “liberals.” Today’s remarkable MSM coverage of Ivins’ death continues to underscore that point…

The Los Angeles Times‘ David Willman, who first broke the story on Ivins’ death today, noted that the anthrax attacks “shut down a Senate office building” and included “letters addressed to two senators.”

The senators aren’t named.

AP’s latest report, says only: “The letters contained [sic] anthrax powder were sent on the heels of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and turned up at congressional offices, newsrooms and elsewhere, leaving a deadly trail through post offices on way.”

Later in the article, AP misleads readers by noting, “The victims of the attacks had little in common.” That may be true, if one separates the victims who died from the targets to whom the attacks were clearly sent.

AP’s video report noted that the anthrax killer “sent letters to a number of people.” Later, the report adds: “Some of the letters were sent to members of Congress, and to the media.”

Anybody in particular in either the Congress or the media? The AP, as in its written coverage, doesn’t bother to say.

USA Today, in an article they describe as being culled “from staff and wire reports,” tells us only that “letters…were mailed to lawmakers’ Capitol Hill offices, TV networks in New York, and tabloid newspaper offices in Florida.”

The New York Times reported: “Letters containing anthrax powder were also sent to lawmakers’ offices on Capitol Hill, causing great alarm in the capital when it was still jittery from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

While no clue is offered as to who those “lawmakers” were in their description above, buried on the second page of the article, in the final grafs of the story (which I don’t recall being there this morning when I was first canvassing coverage of the story) there is some cursory coverage of the specific targets and victims of the attacks.

In the third to final graf there’s this: “The 2001 anthrax mailings were baffling in several ways, not least because the victims — whether they were chosen or were struck at random — seemed to have nothing in common.”

The graf goes on to detail those who died — “an editor at a tabloid newspaper based in Florida” and the others. Clearly, those victims had inadvertently come in contact with the anthrax via post offices through which the letters were routed.

So, despite the NY Times‘ language there, what’s actually “baffling” is not the random folks who were killed along the way, but rather, that the Times (like AP) would even focus on the random victims as a reason for “bafflement.”

The targets of the attack were quite clear, and not “baffling” in the least. They were all perceived by the rightwing as powerful “liberals.”

Finally, in the penultimate graf — and one that I suspect was added later, after the first story was posted — the NYTimes identifies the “targets of the mailings” to have included “Tom Brokaw of NBC and two Democratic senators: Tom Daschle of South Dakota, then his party’s Senate leader, and Patrick J. Leahy, a leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee but arguably not an instantly recognizable figure outside Washington and his home state.”

If Leahy was “not an instantly recognizable figure outside Washington and his home state,” he was certainly recognizable to rightwing political junkies, who feared his recent takeover as chair of the Judiciary Committee might serve to be a roadblock to the Republican legislative agenda. Leahy had taken over the Senate Judiciary Committee after Sen. Jim Jeffords left the Republican party, handing a thin majority — and the Senate committee chairs with it — to the Democrats.

On his radio program this morning, Thom Hartmann noted that Daschle and Leahy held the most important roles in Congress, as Majority Leader and Chair of Judiciary, respectively, in the possible blockage of the PATRIOT Act, which both men had originally indicated they might oppose.

The long-time attacks on NBC News and other media outlets perceived to have a “Liberal” bias are well known.

It should be noted that Anthrax letters were also sent to the Editor of the New York Post (a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper) and the National Enquirer offices, whose political bent, if they have one, seems difficult to discern.

So why the lack of focus — and in many cases, any mention at all — of who the Anthrax Killer’s actual targets were? If the attacks had been against, say, Tom Delay, Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly, would the media have noted, in summarizing them upon Ivins’ death, that the attacks were sent to “prominent conservatives”?

Of course they would have.

Attacking perceived “liberals” in the United States, illegally barring them from government jobs, shooting them in churches and sending them anthrax in the mail is, apparently, just fine in these United States of America these days.

At least that’s what the supposed “Liberal Media” coverage of these recent events would seem to suggest.

By way of related addendum… Glen Greenwald’s coverage at Salon today is an absolute must read. He notes the unbelievably irresponsible reporting of ABC News prior to the Iraq War, in which they breathlessly reported from “four well-placed and separate sources,” that the anthrax used in the letter attacks was linked with Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

While ABC’s and Brian Ross’ reports have since been discredited again and again — and certainly today’s news would seem to put yet another nail in that already rotting coffin — their report was used, big time, to help rally the country towards supporting a war against Iraq prior to Congress handing authorization to George W. Bush to do so.

In fact, ABC’s false reports seem to have been the only actual tie between Iraq and the anthrax attacks that played such an effective role when Bush referred to “the Iraqi regime [having] plotted to develop anthrax,” in his 2003 State of the Union Address, and the collective chill that ran down American spines when Colin Powell held up his infamous fake vial of anthrax in his presentation to the U.N. declaring little doubt that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction.

As Greenwald notes today [emphasis in original]:

ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks — every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks — persisted.

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story [which served to falsely connect Saddam to the anthrax attacks] and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and — as importantly — to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the US government) who were behind the attacks.

And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They’re allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

They’re not protecting “sources.” The people who fed them the bentonite story aren’t “sources.” They’re fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds.

So here we are today, almost seven years after ABC’s October 2001 report. Here we are, still waiting for either a retraction, or more importantly, the disclosure of who “concocted and fed,” as Greenwald puts it, the false reports to ABC way back then, playing what was perhaps the most crucial element in helping to lead the country into war. Here we are in August of 2008 and ABC is protecting the liars even today.

And with a major break in the anthrax story, even now the mainstream corporate media fail to note the connection to the targeting of perceived “liberals.”

Thomas Ivins, the brother of the government’s now-deceased and apparent top suspect in the anthrax attacks, said that after speaking the entire day to one reporter after another — who, he noted, had told him “a great deal” about the story which he hadn’t known — had no idea that the targets of the attacks were two high-ranking Democratic members of Congress.

“Really? I didn’t know that,” he told me when I bothered to inform him.

That part of the story, apparently, just isn’t news for the mainstream corporate media. So, the open season on “liberals” continues, even as our years-long hunt for the great mythical “Liberal Media” continues as well.

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Was Real Anthrax Data Shredded?
Along With Cheney’s Secret Energy Meetings?

Research Notes for the Anthrax Attack Challenged
FBI & Bush Sued over Anthrax Documents

Dahbud Mensch / Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch Wants to Know
Why White House Went on Cipro
Beginning September 11th:
What Was Known and When?

WASHINGTON, DC (June 7, 2002) — Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that it has filed lawsuits against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), the Center for Disease Control (“CDC”), the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (“USAMRIID”) and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for those agencies’ failures to produce documents concerning the terrorist anthrax attacks of October 2001, under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”).

Judicial Watch has additional anthrax-related FOIA requests pending with the White House and other government agencies that will see legal action in the next two weeks.

Judicial Watch represents hundreds of postal workers from the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington, DC. Until the Brentwood facility was finally condemned by the CDC, Brentwood postal workers handled all of the mail for Washington, DC, including the “official mail” that contained the anthrax-laden envelopes addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy.

While Capitol Hill workers received prompt medical care, Brentwood postal workers were ordered by USPS officials to continue working in the contaminated facility. Two Brentwood workers died from inhalation anthrax, and dozens more are suffering from a variety of ailments related to the anthrax attacks. A variety of legal actions are being planned for the disparate treatment and reckless endangerment the Brentwood postal workers faced.

In October 2001, press reports revealed that White House staff had been on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic Cipro since the September 11th terrorist attacks. Judicial Watch is aggressively pursuing the disclosure of the facts and the decision for White House staff, and President Bush as well, to begin taking Cipro nearly a month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill.

“The American people deserve a full accounting from the Bush administration, the FBI , and other agencies concerning the anthrax attacks. The FBI’s investigation seems to have dead-ended, and frankly, that is not very reassuring given their performance with the September 11th hijackers,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman. “One doesn’t simply start taking a powerful antibiotic for no good reason. The American people are entitled to know what the White House staffers knew nine months ago, ” he added.

Copyright 1997 – 2004, Judicial Watch, Inc.

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US Company Sold Anthrax Bacteria to Iraq
Frank Morales / Nightline, ABC-TV, 2/20/98)

“For the first time, some Persian Gulf War veterans have a government study that backs up what they have said all along. They’re sicker than people who weren’t there. What is making them sick is still a mystery.”
— Associated Press, February /27, 1996

(February 20, 1998) — From 1985 to 1989, the United States government approved 70 shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraqi scientists. The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), a 73-year old nonprofit company based in Rockville, Maryland, was the supplier-exporter of the anthrax and other “cultures” to Iraq. These shipments were approved by the US Commerce Department’s Technical Advisory Committee, whose membership included Robert Stevenson, then chief executive of ATCC.

This was reported by New York Newsday in a November 27, 1996 article written by Patrick J. Sloyan, entitled, “Undisclosed Connection.” Sloyan revealed that ATCC’s role as a supplier of anthrax to Iraq became known on February 9, 1994, when Sen. Donald Riegle (D. Mich.) delivered a Senate speech criticizing ATCC’s actions.

ATCC products, all 60,000 cultures in stock, can be grown to produce bio-war munitions, although, according to Sloyan, “UN Special Commission investigators in Iraq found no evidence that Bagdad used biological weapons or even succeeded in developing the pathogens into usable battlefield munitions.” Nevertheless, “150,000 frontline US combat troops got anthrax vaccine injections.”

In other words, American soldiers were shot up with anthrax, supposedly immunizing them against anthrax poisons, supplied earlier, in some quantity, with the consent of the US government itself! Dispersed as an aerosal, anthrax spores can produce high fever, breathing difficulty, chest pain and eventually, blood poisoning and death. Areas that are hit with anthrax can remain lethal to humans for decades.

The question is, were “our boys” subject to these spores during Operation Desert Storm, and possibly even used as guinea pigs in some kind of bio-war scenario? In any case, by 1993, two 75,000 US Gulf War veterans have complained of illness, fatigue, sore joints, sleeping difficulty, chronic diarrhea, memory loss and depression, all of which they claim are related to their military service.

Eventually, veterans groups brought sufficient pressure to bear, forcing President Clinton to act. As expected, the president appointed a commission to study (read: cover up) the issue. He “ordered” the Pentagon itself to study the problem and to determine whether any link exists between anthrax and sick American soldiers.

The Pentagon, in turn, set up the Defense Science Board Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects. The results of their study, released in 1994, dismissed any links between chemical and biological weapons and Persian Gulf War related illnesses. Despite this predictable Pentagon denial, coming from a task force that pre-emptively ruled out biological weapons as a cause of “Gulf War syndrome,” thousands of Gulf War veterans have participated in class action suits.

According to Newsday, they are “seeking damages from ATCC and other firms that exported products that could have been used in Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare program.” The Newsday article goes on to state that “one possible source of a low level exposure to biological weapons may have been the destruction of Iraqi biological facilities by US warplanes.”

Considering that “renowned geneticist” Joshua Lederberg headed the Pentagon study, it was no surprise to some that it reached the conclusion that it did. Lederberg, born May 23, 1925, is a former President of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, a 1958 Nobel laureate for medicine and a member of the Defense Science Board. He was chosen to head up the Pentagon study by then Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, later head of the CIA.

Deutch had no problem with Lederberg, nor with the fact that at the time of the 1994 Pentagon study, Lederberg was also one of 10 directors on the board of American Type Culture Collection! Later, Deutch claimed that he didn’t know of Lederberg’s connections to ATCC or that the firm shipped anthrax for four years, to Iraq.

The Pentagon Task Force took seven months to issue its report. In it, Lederberg devoted only a half-page to biological weapons. He stated that “there is no scientific or medical evidence that… there were any exposures of US service members to chemical or biological warfare agents in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.” Actually, a week after Senator Riegle’s February 9, 1994 attack of ATCC on the Senate floor, Lederberg wrote Riegle, as head of the Pentagon Task Force, on “Office of the Secretary of Defense” stationary.

With frothing innocence, Lederberg stated that he was “intrigued by your recent suggestion that the medical problems being exhibited by some Gulf War veterans might be related to biological warfare, specifically, to the list of biological materials sent to Iraq from the American Type Culture Collection.” He requested a “briefing” by Riegle’s staff, who then later testified before Lederberg’s panel on February 25, 1994, supplying them with this information. None of the testimony or details about ATCC’s shipments were contained in the final report.

The American Type Culture Collection, for whom Lederberg served as a director from 1990 to 1994, is according to Newsday, “a repository of bacteria, fungi and other products used by the global scientific community as a standard of reference for research.”

Author Sloyan notes that a Ms. Kay Sloan-Breen, “an ATCC spokeswoman,” defined ATCC as a “collection of scientists wearing white hats.” The direct predecessor of ATCC was the creation, in 1911, of a repository of living bacteria at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

ATCC was officially formed in 1925 by a committee of scientists and others spearheaded by the National Research Council. Relocating a number of times, ATCC settled in Rockville, Maryland in 1964, although it is scheduled to move once again to a “state of the art” facility at Prince William County, Virginia, some time in early 1998. (ATCC is currently located at 12301 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, Maryland, 20852. Telephone: (301) 881-2600.)

According to an ATCC promo, they are “a global bioscience organization that provides biological products, technical services, and educational programs to private, industry, government and academic organizations around the world.

The mission of the ATCC is to acquire, authenticate and maintain reference cultures, related biological materials, and associated data, and to distribute these to qualified scientists in government, industry and education.”

ATCC “culture distribution policy” reads as follows: “ATCC distributes cultures only to qualified organizations and scientists. Indication of adequate facilities and expertise must be demonstrated to receive cultures from ATCC. Government Permits, or Compliance Agreements, or other forms may be required for the receipt of certain cultures.

Shipments to countries outside the US, or their agents, are regulated by the US Department of Commerce. Certain countries, specified by the Department of Commerce, are prohibited from receiving cultures from ATCC.” It is not difficult for the intelligent reader to discern the loop-holes in this “policy.”

According to published reports, ATCC shipped Bacillus anthracis twice — in May 1986 and September 1988. There were also two shipments of Clostridium botulinum — a bacterium used to make botulinum toxin — on the same dates. The batches, frozen in tiny vials, were shipped to Bagdad’s Ministry of Education.

The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency knew in 1986 (or at least this is implied in a recently declassified CIA document) that quite likely there existed a “strictly controlled” area at Salman Pak which served as some kind of bio-weapons facility in Bagdad.

Again, according to Sloyan, “the main production facility, Salman Pak, was bombed from the outset of the war after an extensive debate between George Bush and his military commanders. They feared fallout from the air strikes could pollute the battlefield.” In other words, by 1991 and Operation Desert Storm, the generals and others knew full well the consequences of bombing such a bio-weapons facility, in effect waging a chemical war.

Recently acquired documents related to the American Type Culture Collection state that they are an “archive of living cultures and genetic materials” in the business of developing “biological model systems.” ATCC is extensively involved in the Human Genome Project, busily “analyzing the entire human genome,” according to Raymond H. Cypess, ATCC’s CEO and President. ATCC is extensively involved in genetic engineering and other areas, including cloning.

One should not expect ATCC to mention their policy regarding bio-warfare, counter-insurgency or the murder of innocent people. These are medical people who expect us to trust in their objectivity, compassion and skill. But like in Germany 502D years ago, have the healers become the killers?

Doctor Lederberg has refused interviews on this subject. And again, there is no mention of utilitizing a “culture” like anthrax in the massive genocide of people. The first allegations of the use of biological agents in war were made in response to attempts by the Germans to employ such agents during World War I.

At one point in 1916, the Germans were accused of inoculating horses with anthrax in Bucharest. World War II produced more accusations against Germany. According to the record of the Nuremberg Tribunal, one of those involved in germ warfare experimentation during the war was Dr. Walter P. Schrieber, who was at the time head of the Scientific Department Group C of the Military Academy in Berlin.

In March 1952, Time Magazine reported: “Dr. Schrieber, it developed, had been brought to the US in a Defense Department scoop-up of German technical men known as Operation Paperclip. His job: consultant to the (US) Airforce in a division with the grandiloquent title Global Preventive Medicine.” Fort Detrick, near Frederick, Maryland, is one of the main centers of biological warfare research in America, set up in 1943.

The facility, comprising some 1500 acres, wields a large budget, employing hundreds of “scientists.” In part, its efforts are directed toward breeding into pathogenic (harmful) organisms with precisely the characteristics–such as resistance to antibiotics–that real medical researchers would like to see eradicated. Anthrax disease is the object of considerable research at places like Fort Detrick.

Finally, among other institutions that come within the influential sway of Fort Detrick, are the National Academy of Sciences and the American Society for Microbiology. The latter group, originally called the Society of American Bacteriologists back in 1925, helped establish, as a charter founding member, the American Type Culture Collection.

It’s true. Anthrax is “news”.

References:
New York Newsday, 11/27/96, “Undisclosed Connection”, Patrick J. Sloyan, pg.A4.

A Survey of Chemical and Biological Weapons, Cookson and Nottingham, Monthly Review Press, 1969.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1985, “US Cover-up of Nazi Scientists”, Linda Hunt, pg.16ff (on Operation Paperclip)

World Wide Web: ATCC address: http://www.atcc.org

New Look at Gulf War Syndrome, NY Times

Articles: http://spj.org/sdxawards96/06washcor/1210.htm