Anthrax-laced letters
Does FBI know who did it?
By Greg Butterfield
The latest attempt to link last year's anthrax scare to the
Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
collapsed almost before it began.
A sensational New York Times headline March 23 claimed,
"Report linking anthrax and hijackers is investigated." The
story originated with Christos Tsonas, a Ft. Lau derdale, Fla.,
doctor who treated Ahmed Alhaznawi, one of the men U.S.
officials say carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Last June Tsonas treated Alhaznawi for an infected lesion on
his leg. Tsonas now says he believes the lesion was caused by
anthrax exposure and that Alhaznawi must have been producing
weapons-grade anthrax.
The FBI would have no reason to deny the story if it had any
credibility. In fact, the government has worked for
months--unsuccessfully--to link the anthrax letters to the 9/11
attack, Iraq or any Middle Eastern source.
Instead the FBI immediately refuted Tsonas's story. In a
Reuters dispatch issued the same day, an FBI spokesperson said
Tsonas's claims were investigated last fall, and no evidence
was found to support his story.
In fact, six months after the anthrax-laced letters began to
appear in newsrooms and politicians' offices, the FBI says it
still has no solid suspects. Five people died and 13 were made
very sick from the anthrax letters.
Building pretext for war
The same day that it touted a supposed link between 9/11 and
anthrax, the Times also carried a front-page story about the
discovery of an alleged "Al Qaeda bio-terrorism laboratory"
under construction near Khandahar, Afghanistan.
The article, based on a "confidential assessment" from the
U.S. Central Command, said no biological agents were found at
the site. But it claimed that anthrax production was its
purpose and a "foreign power" was probably involved.
As soon as the anthrax letters appeared, U.S. officials
tried to link them to Saddam Hussein's government or Iraqi-born
scientists living in the United States. They failed to find any
proof, or even to construct a convincing story.
Most of the world concluded by last November that the
anthrax came from someone with ties to the U.S.
military-industrial establishment. The Ames strain of anthrax,
which was used in the letters, can be found in fewer than 20
laboratories, all but three in the United States. The others
are in Canada, Britain and France.
When it comes to anthrax, the Bush administration is walking
a narrow tightrope.
The government wants to remind people of the anthrax scare,
and channel their fear into a war fever aimed at Iraq and other
countries on the Pentagon's hit list.
At the same time, the Bush administration doesn't want
anyone looking too closely at the FBI's seemingly stalled
investigation--much less at Washington's own biological weapons
program.
Expert says FBI knows
Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg thinks she knows why.
Rosenberg, a noted molecular biologist, leading expert on
biological weapons and professor at the State University of New
York at Purchase, has been trying to expose what she believes
is a cover-up in the making.
The FBI knows who sent the anthrax, she says, but is
stalling because of what the man knows about U.S. biological
weapons research and production.
The U.S. signed the 1972 Biological Wea pons Convention and
promised not to develop biological weapons. But Washington's
continued refusal to have its facilities independently
monitored has led many scientists and activists to believe it
is violating the convention.
Rosenberg published her information on the American Society
of Scientists web site. She's also spoken at Princeton
University and granted several interviews.
The New Yorker magazine of March 18 reported: "She is
persuasive in arguing that sending the anthrax letters required
not just access to the 'Ames strain' of anthrax, but also
knowledge of the weaponization technique developed by Bill
Patrick." Patrick is head of biological weapons research at the
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at
Ft. Detrick, Md.
Exposing the relationship between the letters, the Patrick
method and the Ames strain is important. It puts the lie to
most of the FBI's public "hot list" of suspects--like a Somali
student at an unnamed Midwestern university. The student's
plight was mentioned in the Feb. 26 New York Times.
The FBI targeted the student because he was Somali and
Muslim and because the school's lab had Ames anthrax. But the
student could not have known the U.S. military's Patrick
method.
Rosenberg says the real anthrax culprit worked at the Army
facility at Ft. Detrick, where he learned Patrick's method of
creating weapons-grade anthrax. After a falling out with his
bosses, he left the facility and is now employed by a
Washington-area military contractor.
Taking advantage of the anti-Arab/ Muslim racist profiling
after 9/11, he included crude pseudo-Islamic slogans in some
letters, and planted "clues" to direct suspicion at a former
colleague from Ft. Detrick: Egyptian-born scientist Ayaad
Assad.
Rosenberg believes the man was trying to prove his worth to
the military higher-ups.
The FBI and the White House deny that they have a prime
suspect. But according to the Feb. 26 Washington Post, the FBI
has indeed concentrated its investigation on the Ft. Detrick
facility.
Rosenberg said a law-enforcement agent confirmed off the
record that the man is the FBI's principal suspect.
"We know that the FBI is looking at this person and it's
likely that he participated in the past in secret activities
that the government would not like to see disclosed," said
Rosenberg. "And this raises the question of whether the FBI may
be dragging its feet somewhat and may not be so anxious to
bring to public light the person who did this.
"I know that there are insiders, working for the government,
who know this person and who are worried that it could happen
that some kind of quiet deal is made and he just disappears
from view."
Postal workers especially will be outraged if they find out
that the government has made a deal to cover up the murder of
their colleagues.
Reprinted from the April 4, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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