911-archiv.net

Suspected Terrorist Said to Have Visited Druggist

A man believed to be one of the hijackers in the terrorist attacks visited a drugstore in Delray Beach in late August for medication to treat a burning sensation in his hands, a pharmacist says.

Gregg Chatterton, co-owner of Huber Discount Drugs, said the man he identified as Mohamed Atta was evasive about the cause and the pharmacist asked if he'd been exposed to cleaning fluids or gardening chemicals.

Chatterton said Atta was accompanied by a man the pharmacist later identified from photos as suspected hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi. The pharmacist said the second man tapped himself on the chest and said he needed cough medication. Chatterton gave him the name of a walk-in clinic in case his cold got worse.

The FBI and Food and Drug Administration's criminal unit questioned him twice this week and asked whether the men had inquired about anthrax antibiotics, Chatterton said. He told them that they had not.

articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/13/news/mn-56846

A NATION CHALLENGED: BIOTERRORISM; Report Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: Saturday, March 23, 2002



The two men identified themselves as pilots when they came to the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last June. One had an ugly, dark lesion on his leg that he said he developed after bumping into a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Christos Tsonas thought the injury was curious, but he cleaned it, prescribed an antibiotic for infection and sent the men away with hardly another thought.

But after Sept. 11, when federal investigators found the medicine among the possessions of one of the hijackers, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Dr. Tsonas reviewed the case and arrived at a new diagnosis. The lesion, he said in an interview this week, ''was consistent with cutaneous anthrax.''

Dr. Tsonas's assertion, first made to the F.B.I. in October but never disclosed, has added another layer of mystery to the investigation of last fall's deadly anthrax attacks, which has yet to focus on a specific suspect.

The possibility of a connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax-laced letters has been explored by officials since the first anthrax cases emerged in October. But a recent memorandum, prepared by experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, and circulated among top government officials, has renewed a debate about the evidence.

The group, which interviewed Dr. Tsonas, concluded that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax, which causes skin lesions, was ''the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available.'' The memorandum added, ''Such a conclusion of course raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks.''

A senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, had recently read the Hopkins memorandum and that the issue has been examined by both the C.I.A. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

''No one is dismissing this,'' the official said. ''We received the memo and are working with the bureau to insure that it continues to be pursued.''

In their public comments, federal officials have said they are focusing largely on the possibility that the anthrax attacks were the work of a domestic perpetrator. They have hunted for suspects among scientists and others who work at laboratories that handle germs.

The disclosure about Mr. Alhaznawi, who died on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, sheds light on another front in the investigation. Senior law enforcement officials said that in addition to interviewing Dr. Tsonas in October and again in November, they thoroughly explored any connection between the hijackers and anthrax. They said the F.B.I. scoured the cars, apartments and personal effects of the hijackers for evidence of the germ, but found none.

Dr. Tsonas's comments add to a tantalizing array of circumstantial evidence. Some of the hijackers, including Mr. Alhaznawi, lived and attended flight school near American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., where the first victim of the anthrax attacks worked. Some of the hijackers also rented apartments from a real estate agent who was the wife of an editor of The Sun, a publication of American Media.

In addition, in October, a pharmacist in Delray Beach, Fla., said he had told the F.B.I. that two of the hijackers, Mohamad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for something to treat irritations on Mr. Atta's hands.

If the hijackers did have anthrax, they would probably have needed an accomplice to mail the tainted letters, bioterrorism experts knowledgeable about the case said. The four recovered anthrax letters were postmarked on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 in Trenton. It is also possible, experts added, that if the hijackers had come into contact with anthrax, it was entirely separate from the supply used by the letter sender.

For his part, Dr. Tsonas said he believed that the hijackers probably did have anthrax.

''What were they doing looking at crop-dusters?'' he asked, echoing experts' fears that the hijackers may have wanted to spread lethal germs. ''There are too many coincidences.''

In recent interviews, Dr. Tsonas, an emergency room doctor, said Mr. Alhaznawi came into the hospital one evening in June 2001, along with a man who federal investigators believe was another hijacker, Ziad al-Jarrah, believed to have taken over the controls of United Flight 93.

They used their own names, he added, not aliases.

''They were well-dressed foreigners,'' he said. ''I assumed they were tourists.''

The men explained that Mr. Alhaznawi had developed the ulcer after hitting his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Dr. Tsonas recalled that Mr. Alhaznawi appeared to be in good health, and that he denied having an illness like diabetes that might predispose him to such lesions. The wound, he recalled, was a little less than an inch wide and blackish, its edges raised and red.

Dr. Tsonas said he removed the dry scab over the wound, cleansed it and prescribed Keflex, an antibiotic that is widely used to combat bacterial infections but is not specifically recommended for anthrax.

The encounter lasted perhaps 10 minutes, Dr. Tsonas said.

He took no cultures and had no thoughts of anthrax, a disease at that time was extremely rare in the United States and was unfamiliar even to most doctors.

In October, amid news reports about the first anthrax victims, Dr. Tsonas, like other doctors, threw himself into learning more about the disease. An incentive was that his hospital is relatively near American Media, so victims there might come to Holy Cross for treatment.

Dr. Tsonas said he forgot entirely about the two men until federal agents in October showed him pictures of Mr. Alhaznawi and Mr. Jarrah, and he made positive identifications.

Then, agents gave Dr. Tsonas a copy of his own notes from the emergency room visit and he read them. ''I said, 'Oh, my God, my written description is consistent with cutaneous anthrax,' '' Dr. Tsonas recalled. ''I was surprised.''

He discussed the disease and its symptoms with the agents, explaining what else could possibly explain the leg wound. A spider bite was unlikely, he said. As for the hijacker's explanation -- a suitcase bump -- he also judged that unlikely.

''That's a little unusual for a healthy guy, but not impossible,'' he said.

After his meetings with F.B.I., Dr. Tsonas was contacted early this year by a senior federal medical expert, who asked him detailed questions about the tentative diagnosis.

Last month, experts at Johns Hopkins also called Dr. Tsonas, saying they, too, were studying the evidence. The Hopkins analysis was done by Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Tara O'Toole, director of the center in Baltimore and an assistant secretary for health and safety at the federal Energy Department from 1993 to 1997.

In an interview, Dr. O'Toole said that after consulting with additional medical experts on the Alhaznawi case, she was ''more persuaded than ever'' that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was correct.

She said the Florida mystery, as well as the entire anthrax inquiry, might benefit from a wider vetting.

''This is a unique investigation that has many highly technical aspects,'' she said. ''There's legitimate concern that the F.B.I. may not have access to the kinds of expertise that could be essential in putting all these pieces together.''

John E. Collingwood, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the possibility of a connection between the hijackers and the anthrax attacks had been deeply explored.

''This was fully investigated and widely vetted among multiple agencies several months ago,'' Mr. Collingwood said. ''Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had been. While we always welcome new information, nothing new has in fact developed.''

Photos: Ziad al-Jarrah, left, is believed to have accompanied a fellow Sept. 11 hijacker, Ahmed Alhaznawi, to a Florida emergency room last summer. (Agence France-Presse)

www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/us/nation-cha...spon=&pagewanted=all

2001 Anthrax Attacks history commons timeline

www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=2001anthraxattacks

History Channel Conspiracies: Anthrax Attacks

part 1:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK4B6A7t2jo&feat...ext_from=PL&index=49

part 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dl0RiRnjfc&feat...468E3DFBBE1&index=50

part 3:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cacVzml_fyA&feat...468E3DFBBE1&index=51

part 4:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUpkWDW2hGs&feat...468E3DFBBE1&index=52

The Scarlet A: Links between the Anthrax Attacks and 9/11
by Barbara Honegger

The author is a Senior Military Affairs Journalist, and former White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President in the first Reagan Administration. Ms. Honegger is the author of the 9/11 expose “The Pentagon Attack Papers” physics911.net/pdf/honegger.pdf and October Surprise (Tudor, 1989), the first book to reveal the true origins of the Iran side of the Iran/Contra scandal.

By insisting that Bruce Ivins, a biowarfare scientist then with the Army’s Ft. Detrick laboratory, was behind the anthrax attacks, the Bush Administration has officially acknowledged that those attacks were perpetrated by a U.S. Government insider -- and not by bin Laden or by Iraq.

Likewise, compelling evidence (1) has demonstrated that the mass murders of 9/11 themselves were perpetrated or enabled by U.S. Government insiders. And while it is well known that President Bush has admitted Iraq was not behind Sept. 11, it is less widely known that bin Laden has never been wanted by the FBI for 9/11 on the agency’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ web page. FBI Director Mueller and his chief investigative spokesman, Rex Tomb, have publicly stated that the reason bin Laden isn’t officially wanted for 9/11 is because there is “no hard evidence” linking him to the Sept. 11 plot. (2)

Because the Administration has thus admitted the anthrax attacks were perpetrated by a U.S. government insider -- and Sheila Casey and Barry Kissin have shown in the Sept. 2008 issue of The Rock Creek Free Press that they were a true inside job by the CIA (and DIA) and its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, not a ‘lone nut’ rogue (3) -- if significant evidence links the insider anthrax attacks to 9/11, we can reasonably infer that the same government/military insiders were behind both mass crimes.

So what is the evidence linking anthrax to Sept. 11?

1) Whatever insiders wrote the letters mailed with the anthrax wanted you to believe they were linked to 9/11. As is well known, the date hand written on the anthrax letters is Sept. 11, 2001. Though the official story -- that the first letter, to Florida photo journalist Bob Stevens, wasn’t mailed until after 9/11 and so anthrax wasn’t part of the actual 9/11 plot -- it’s clear that whoever wrote and dated the letters and added the super-weaponized (3) U.S. military anthrax wanted you to believe there is a direct connection, and that Islamic foreigners were responsible for both.

2) Superweaponizing anthrax was one of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s top priorities. Two days before 9/11, on Sept. 9, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) held a rare press conference in which it revealed that on his first day as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld ordered the DIA to take Project Jefferson, a secret and illegal anthrax weaponization program (probably using the Ames strain contained in the anthrax letters) to the next level of lethality and that it had achieved ‘success’ earlier that month in a classified field test. The mainstream press reported this event on Sept. 10, the day before 9/11.
3) Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) preplanned a bio/chem-terrorism exercise likely involving an anthrax scenario for which personnel were in New York City on 9/11, and Giuliani's just-recent OEM director urged White House staff to go on anti-anthrax Cipro on Sept. 11. Giuliani testified to the 9/11 Commission that his Office of Emergency Management (OEM) had scheduled a bio/chem-terrorism response exercise, called TRIPOD II, to begin the day after 9/11, Sept. 12. But personnel who were to take part in the exercise were already in New York City on Sept. 10th and OEM personnel were cleared out of their WTC7 offices on Sept. 11 and moved to the exercise command center on a New York pier and thus conveniently out of the building when it was brought down by military-grade thermate explosives on 9/11 -- controlled demolition charges that required weeks to pre-place, the very weeks the exercise was being planned. New Jersey’s Ft. Monmouth, an Army base just across the water from the Twin Towers, also held a ‘II’ exercise, called TIMELY ALERT II, on 9/11 (4), almost certainly coordinated with Giuliani’s TRIPOD II, further evidence that the latter was also scheduled to begin on Sept. 11.
The then recent director of Mayor Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, Jerome “Jerry” Hauer -- a bio-warfare expert and one of the signers of the pre-9/11 Project for a New American Century manifesto calling for “a new Pearl Harbor” (such as 9/11) who had been a central player in scripting the TRIPOD II bio-chem attack scenario exercise -- was an expert in the response to building collapses (5) and managing director of Kroll Associates before and on 9/11, the company that managed the WTC7 OEM ‘bunker’ and provided ‘security’ for the World Trade Center, including all three buildings brought down by controlled demolition that morning. He thus oversaw personnel with the complete access needed to pre-place explosive charges. It was Hauer who had advocated, despite the 1993 terrorist attack on WTC1, that Giuliani locate his OEM, from which a response to an expected follow up attack on the WTC would need to be orchestrated, next door in WTC7 (6). The new OEM opened on the 23rd floor of WTC7 in June 1999, where Hauer, its director, had his office. Hauer became a National Security Adviser to the National Institutes of Health on Sept. 10, the very day TRIPOD II personnel arrived in New York City, from which new NIH post he managed the Bush Administration’s ‘response’ to the imminent anthrax attacks, which falsely pointed the finger at Iraq and diverted attention from the true insider anthrax killers. Indeed, it was Hauer who zealously pushed the ‘bin Laden did it and just planes-and-fires brought down the Towers’ official story on CBS News on 9/11 in the immediate aftermath of the attacks before anyone not on the inside could have possibly determined the actual cause of the collapses, taking pains to insist that explosives were not involved, when they were. And according to mainstream press reports and a lawsuit by the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch, it was Hauer who personally advised the White House to take anti-anthrax Cipro antibiotics on 9/11 (7). [Other reports state White House personnel were put on Cipro nearly a month before the attacks (8). Did Hauer recommend that White House personnel be put on an anti-anthrax antibiotics on 9/11 because he had reason to believe the 9/11 attacks would also involve anthrax and/or because he had advance knowledge there would be subsequent imminent anthrax attacks?

4) The FBI had been told the 9/11 attacks would involve anthrax. On Sept. 11, Janette MacKinlay lived in a fourth floor apartment overlooking what was soon to become ‘the pit’ of the World Trade Center. Her neighbor and close friend Bruno told her later that day or early the next morning that he had been pulled off the street into a bank lobby next to the WTC towers by an FBI agent on the morning of Sept. 11 to protect them from the dust cloud from the collapsing tower, and was told by the agent that “We were told this was going to happen and that it would involve anthrax.” Another FBI agent told a woman about to enter the NBC Bldg. that she should leave immediately because “there are explosives in the building as well as in the WTC.” Clearly, the FBI had been pre-alerted because their own offices were in the WTC -- in WTC7 -- which, like WTC1 and WTC2, was pre-wired for a controlled demolition take down that day. MacKinlay had the presence of mind to collect the dust from the cloud that poured into her apartment overlooking the ‘pit’, and it is this dust that physicist Prof. Steven Jones has analyzed and in which he found military-grade thermate as well as other high explosives, proving the presence of pre-placed charges throughout the towers to which ‘Al Qaeda’ could not have had access to set.

Though no anthrax has been reported in the dust -- though it may not have yet been tested for -- if TRIPOD II were at least in part on an anthrax attack scenario, it wouldn’t have used actual anthrax, but an anthrax simulant -- an anthrax-like powder that would disperse through the air in a way similar to the real thing. Experts should be consulted for the chemical composition of anthrax simulants and the dust from the WTC collapses tested for these simulants.

5) In the minds of the insider scriptwriters for the Sept. 2001 New York City TRIPOD II emergency response exercise, an attack on the World Trade Center was already associated with bio/chem terrorism. According to respected New York Times science writer William Broad, the plan for the 1993 attack on WTC1, for which alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheihk Mohammed’s nephew Ramzi Yousef is in prison for life, involved a plot to push cyanide into New York City. This is reported in Germs, Broad’s book co-authored with Judith Miller. Though the latter’s credibility has been compromised, Broad remains a respected journalist.

6) Rudolph Giuliani bought the Florida-building crime scene of the first anthrax attack. Anthrax was found throughout the American Media, Inc. (AMI) building in Boca Raton, Florida where the first anthrax letter victim, Robert Stevens, worked -- as confirmed by AMI employees whose desks were near Stevens’ whom I have interviewed. A ‘don’t cross’ line was put around the building by the FBI, which had been “told 9/11 was coming and that it would involve anthrax.” AMI was forced to move to another location and put the building up for sale. According to The New York Times, this first anthrax attack crime scene with evidence still in place was then bought (at an anthrax sale price) by former NYC Mayor Giuliani, overseer of the Sept. 11/12 TRIPOD II bio/chem-terrorism probable-anthrax-scenario exercise, who formed a partnership with a decontamination expert qualified to decontaminate the building. Giuliani thus controlled and oversaw the destruction of evidence at both the New York crime scene of the 9/11 attacks, the WTC, ordering the steel containing traces of controlled demolition explosives to be removed, and the crime scene of the first anthrax attack, America Media, Inc, in Florida.

The FBI had already joined the conspiracy to obstruct its own investigation of the anthrax attacks by “agreeing to the request” of Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames, Iowa to destroy its ‘library’ of over 100 vials of the Ames strain gathered since 1928 necessary for a definitive match against the anthrax in the mailed letters, which library was destroyed on Oct. 12, 2001, one week after Bob Stevens became the first victim. (9)
This Florida anthrax is critical because, according to press reports on Ivins’ alleged involvement, the anthrax in the mailed letters -- but not the ‘first’ anthrax sent to Stevens (the FBI claims no letter was found in connection with the anthrax recovered from Stevens’ computer keyboard but assumes a ‘missing’ letter) was traced back to a flask in Ivins’ laboratory. The Stevens anthrax is thus key to proving that Ivins, if he was involved at all, did not act alone, as it does not trace back to his flask, and because it’s the closest in time to 9/11 and so most likely to be directly linked to Sept. 11.

Based on the above, a reasonable case can be made that Giuliani’s Sept. 11/12 TRIPOD II bio/chem. terrorism response exercise was at least in part on an anthrax scenario, using an anthrax simulant; that the letters mailed slightly later with real anthrax may have been written or the text drafted for that exercise; and that Giuliani’s former Office of Emergency Management director and close friend Jerome Hauer advised White House staff to take anti-anthrax Cipro on 9/11 because he was afraid the anthrax attack exercise scenario might be about to ‘go live’ just as both the NORAD hijacked-plane ‘exercise’ and the NRO plane-crashing-into-tower ‘exercise’ had already just ‘gone live’ earlier the morning of Sept. 11 as parts of their 'game' scenarios suddenly turned horribly real.

If the Florida anthrax doesn’t link back to Ivins’ Ft. Detrick flask and Ivins, who worked on vaccines (bio-defense) and not its weaponization (bio-offense) wasn’t behind the attacks -- and neither, the government now claims, was Steven Hatfill whom the Bush Administration just agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle his case -- then who was? As detailed in the September issue by Casey and Kissin, the key suspects are CIA/DIA contractor Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI); and, individually, William Patrick and Ken Alibek.

Battelle, a bio-defense contractor located in West Jefferson, Ohio, has exclusive control of the Ames strain contained in the mailed anthrax letters (10) and, in partnership with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, ran Project Jefferson, the government’s covert bio-weapons program whose goal was to develop hyper-weaponized anthrax like that contained in the mailed letters (11) and which Rumsfeld ordered developed to the next level of lethality on his first day as Secretary of Defense.

William Patrick, a former top bio-scientist at Ft. Detrick and close colleague of former Giuliani OEM Director Jerry Hauer, was the mentor of initial FBI ‘person of interest’ in the anthrax attacks Steven Hatfill. Patrick holds five classified patents and trade secrets, including on how to hyper-weaponize anthrax to the 1 trillion spores per gram contained in the letters mailed to Democratic Congressional leaders Senators Daschle and Leahy (12). After leaving Ft. Detrick, he was contracted by Battelle to research and write a report on how mailed letters could be used as the vector for dispersing weaponized anthrax. (13) On Sept. 9, two days before 9/11, Battelle contractor DIA announced the ‘success’ of Project Jefferson’s anthrax hyper-weaponization program. Following the Sept./Oct. 2001 letter mailings, some of which were reported to contain anthrax at 1 trillion spores per gram, a footnote in Patrick’s report stating that “We have now arrived at the point where we can purify [anthrax] to the extent of 1 trillion spores in a gram” was removed from publicly available copies. (13)

William Patrick worked with his close colleague and friend, former Soviet bio-weapons expert Ken Alibek, at Battelle, which also ran Project Clear Vision, a secret CIA program to reverse engineer dry-powder anthrax bombs produced by the former Soviet Union. Patrick and Alibek were the FBI’s first suspects in the anthrax attacks, but the initial FBI investigative team was taken off that focus and replaced by a new team that diverted attention to Hatfill. Director Mueller himself assured a Senator that the FBI “was not investigating, nor intending to investigate, anyone with, or formerly with, BMI [Battelle]." (14) Battelle is also a contractual partner with BioPort and Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and directs the anthrax production and experimentation program at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the second ‘home’ in addition to Ft. Detrick of the Ames strain contained in the letters. Hauer and Hatfill worked together at SAIC. (15)

The inside job anthrax attacks were then used as a pretext for the illegal secret domestic wiretap program and assault on the Constitution.

Given the timing, it is now almost certain that the U.S. government insider anthrax attacks were used as the pretext for President Bush’s illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program for which he signed the first ‘authorization’ on Oct. 23, 2001 – right in the middle of the anthrax terror (16). Senator John McCain had just gone on ABC TV, on Oct. 18, to push the disinformation that a nonexistent bentonite additive, purportedly marking the anthrax as coming from Iraq, meant that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. To this day, the White House still refuses to provide Congress with this Oct. 23, 2001 presidential authorization for its warrantless inside-the-U.S. surveillance program, and for obvious reason. This is the alleged authorization that we now know, from a footnote referring to it in another now-released document, contains Bush’s shocking claim that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures do not apply to U.S. military operations conducted inside the United States.

The fact that the Administration continued its secret and illegal domestic spying program long after its was publicly known that the anthrax attacks were the work of one of its own inside military facilities is strong evidence the perpetrators were the same high level officials who used the attacks to justify their illegal surveillance program – the White House itself. Exposing the inside job anthrax mailings as the false pretext for the illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program is thus critical to bringing President Bush and his administration to account for its Reichtag Fire-like attack on Congressional Democratic leaders Daschle and Leahy then pushing for an investigation of the 9/11 attacks and resisting the president’s railroading of the Patriot Act -- the analog to Hitler’s Enabling Act passed in the wake of the Reichtag Fire -- through Congress, as well as for the mass murders of Sept. 11.

We have seen the Terrorists, and They are U.S. It’s time for under oath pre-impeachment hearings -- and pre-court martial hearings -- to interrogate these suspects, and all others who worked with them, to expose who wears The Scarlet A.

---

Notes
1 The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Expose, by David Ray Griffin, Interlink Books, Sept. 2008.
2 www.twf.org/News/Y2006/0608-BinLaden.html
3 “FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug,” Rock Creek Free Press, Sept. 2008 issue, pp. 1 and 2.
4 www.amc.army.mil/amc/pa/oct01.html
5 New York Times, July 27, 1999
6 truthmovecom.blogspot.com/2008/07/jerome...er-911-suspect-await
ing.html
7 www.judicialwatch.org/1967.shtml
8 Crossing the Rubicon, by Michael Ruppert, pp. 505-506.
9 www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/theamesstrain.html
10 alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2008/08/project-anthrax-cover-up-p
art-five.html
11 The FBI recently held a ‘science’ briefing for reporters on the Ivins evidence in which it made a 180-degree reversal from the results of lab analyses of the anthrax reported by Ft. Detrick and other scientists and officials in the first year following the attacks. Those early analyses showed the spores in the letters to Senators Leahy and Daschle to be super-weaponized: they were found to be highly uniform, extremely small in size, extremely concentrated at 1 trillion per gram, electrically charged, and with a silica coating. At its ‘science’ briefing, the FBI absurdly claimed that mail processing machines caused the additional powderizing and electrical charge found in the samples -- both coincidentally common results of weaponization.
12 www.strike-the-root.com/columns/rarey/rarey3.html; “Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S.,” by William Broad, New York Times, Dec. 3, 2001.
13 Ibid. (Broad, New York Times, Dec. 3, 2001).
14 www.worldnewsstand.net/news/anthrax.htm
15 www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/open_letter_mueller.html;
www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/anthrax_espionage.html 16 Further confirmation that the insider anthrax attacks were used by the Bush Administration to justify creating the secret illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program is in “Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink,” Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008, by Barton Gellman. Note [6] at the end of this article reveals that the very first memorandum giving the purported legal rationale for the wireless domestic taps, by John Yoo, was dated Oct. 4, 2001 – just after published reports of the first anthrax victim, Bob Stevens, and only one day before his death on Oct. 5. This is contained in Shannen Coffin’s letter to Senator Leahy of Aug. 20, 2007 on the subject of this and other of Yoo’s ‘Top Secret-Codeword’ documents, still not released to Congress.

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Barbara Honegger is a Senior Military Affairs Journalist with Navy, and former White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President in the first Reagan Administration. Honegger is the author of the 9/11 expose "The Pentagon Attack Papers" physics911.net/pdf/honegger.pdf and the book OCTOBER SURPRISE (Tudor, 1989), the first book to reveal the true origins of the Iran side of the Iran/Contra scandal.



www.911blogger.com/node/17928

Seeking Details, Lawmakers Cite Anthrax Doubts
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: September 6, 2008



WASHINGTON — A month after the F.B.I. declared that an Army scientist was the anthrax killer, leading members of Congress are demanding more information about the seven-year investigation, saying they do not think the bureau has proved its case.
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In a letter sent Friday to Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary Committee said that “important and lingering questions remain that are crucial for you to address, especially since there will never be a trial to examine the facts of the case.”

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, committed suicide in July, and Mr. Mueller is likely to face demands for additional answers about the anthrax case when he appears before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Sept. 16 and 17.

“My conclusion at this point is that it’s very much an open matter,” Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate committee, said of the strength of the case against Dr. Ivins, a microbiologist at the Army’s biodefense laboratory who worked on anthrax vaccines. “There are some very serious questions that have yet to be answered and need to be made public.”

Bureau officials say they are certain they have solved the nation’s first major bioterrorism attack, in which anthrax-laced letters killed five people, after a long and troubled investigation that by several measures was the most complex in the bureau’s history.

But in interviews last week, two dozen bioterrorism experts, veteran investigators and members of Congress expressed doubts about the bureau’s conclusions. Some called for an independent review of the case to reassure the public and assess policies on the handling of dangerous pathogens like anthrax.

Meanwhile, new details of the investigation, revealed in recent interviews, raised questions about when the bureau focused on Dr. Ivins as the likely perpetrator and how solid its evidence was.

In April 2007, after the mailed anthrax was genetically linked to Dr. Ivins’s laboratory and after he was questioned about late-night work in the laboratory before the letters were mailed, prosecutors sent Dr. Ivins a formal letter saying he was “not a target” of the investigation. And only a week before Dr. Ivins died did agents first take a mouth swab to collect a DNA sample, officials said.

Justice Department officials, who said in early August that the investigation was likely to be closed formally within days or weeks, now say it is likely to remain open for three to six more months. In the meantime, agents are continuing to conduct interviews with acquaintances of Dr. Ivins and are examining computers he used, seeking information that could strengthen the case.

But bureau and Justice Department officials insist that the delay, which they say is necessary to tie up loose ends in a complex investigation, reflects no doubts about their ultimate verdict. “People feel just as strongly as they did a month ago that this was the guy,” said a department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Even the strongest skeptics acknowledged that the bureau had raised troubling questions about Dr. Ivins’s mental health and had made a strong scientific case linking the mailed anthrax to a supply in his laboratory.

But they said the bureau’s piecemeal release of information, in search warrant affidavits and in briefings for reporters and Congress, had left significant gaps in the trail that led to Dr. Ivins and had failed to explain how investigators ruled out at least 100 other people who the bureau acknowledged had access to the same flasks of anthrax.

In interviews, F.B.I. officials said they knew their findings would face intense scrutiny after the bureau admitted that for years it had pursued the wrong man, Steven J. Hatfill, whom the government paid $4.6 million in June to settle a lawsuit that accused the government of leaking information about him to the news media.

Officials also acknowledged that they did not have a single, definitive piece of evidence indisputably proving that Dr. Ivins mailed the letters — no confession, no trace of his DNA on the letters, no security camera recording the mailings in Princeton, N.J.

But they said the case consisted of a powerfully persuasive accumulation of incriminating details. Dr. Vahid Majidi, head of the F.B.I.’s weapons of mass destruction directorate, said the accumulation of evidence against Dr. Ivins was overwhelming: his oversight of the anthrax supply, his night hours, his mental problems and his habit of driving to far-off locations at night to mail anonymous packages.

“Who had the means, motive and opportunity?” said John Miller, assistant F.B.I. director for public affairs. “Some potential suspects may have had one, some had two, but on the cumulative scale, Dr. Ivins had many more of these elements than any other potential suspect.”

Mr. Miller said the bureau ultimately planned to release much more information from its investigative files, including notes of F.B.I. interviews with Dr. Ivins and other suspects and witnesses and surveillance logs detailing his movements and actions. But those disclosures, requiring a detailed review to remove private and classified information, are likely to be months away.

Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, is likely to face tough questions at next week’s scheduled oversight hearings, not just about the case against Dr. Ivins but about the prolonged pursuit of Dr. Hatfill. Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican and frequent critic of the bureau, said he was frustrated by the delay in closing the case and answering questions.

“If the case is solved, why isn’t it solved?” Mr. Grassley asked. “It’s all very suspicious, and you wonder whether or not the F.B.I. doesn’t have something to cover up and that they don’t want to come clean.”

Investigators have not reviewed three boxes of papers left by Dr. Ivins marked for the attention of his lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, because the records must first be reviewed to see whether they should be kept confidential under attorney-client privilege, Mr. Kemp said. A government lawyer not involved in the investigation will soon review the papers with Mr. Kemp, who said some might be given to investigators or made public.

What is clear is that the disclosures have not closed the matter.

“They took their shot,” said Representative Rush D. Holt, a Democrat who holds a doctorate in physics and has followed the case closely because the letters were mailed in his New Jersey district. “They hoped and maybe believed that the case they laid out would persuade everyone. I think they’re probably surprised by the level of skepticism.”

Many scientists who have tracked the case, too, have found the evidence less than decisive.

“For a lot of the scientific community, the word would be agnostic,” said Dr. Thomas V. Inglesby, an expert on bioterrorism at the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “They still don’t feel they have enough information to judge whether the case has been solved.”

Mr. Holt and Dr. Inglesby were among a number of outsiders who said that only an independent review of the investigation and the evidence against Dr. Ivins — either by Congress or a commission like the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks — could give the public confidence that the case was over.

Dr. Ralph R. Frerichs, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles who has created a Web site detailing the anthrax case, said that such a review was critical to establishing how the lethal powder was made.

“There’s no clarity on the simplest aspect: is this hard to do or easy to do?” Dr. Frerichs said. If the powder could be made with basic laboratory equipment and no sophisticated additives, as the bureau maintains, laboratory security and background checks for workers may have to be tightened, he said.

Skepticism toward the bureau’s case remains especially pronounced among Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues at the Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md.

“Despite the F.B.I.’s scientific and circumstantial evidence, I and many of Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues don’t believe he did it and don’t believe the spore preparations were made at Detrick,” said Dr. Gerry Andrews, a microbiologist who worked at the Army laboratory for nine years and was Dr. Ivins’s boss for part of that time.

Laboratory records obtained by The New York Times show that the anthrax supply labeled RMR-1029, which the F.B.I. linked to the attacks, was stored in 1997 not in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory, in Building 1425, but in the adjacent Building 1412. Former colleagues said that its storage in both buildings at different times from 1997 to 2001 might mean that the bureau’s estimate of 100 people with physical access to it was two or three times too low.

Some microbiologists question the time records documenting Dr. Ivins’s night hours, pointing out that one F.B.I. affidavit said he was in the secure part of the laboratory for exactly 2 hours and 15 minutes three nights in a row — an unlikely coincidence that they said raised questions about the accuracy of the records.

Confusion remains about silicon found in the mailed powder. Some F.B.I. critics say it shows that there was a sophisticated additive that might point away from Fort Detrick as a source, but the bureau concluded that it was merely an accident of the way the anthrax was grown.

Dr. Majidi said that many technical details would be cleared up by the papers published by bureau scientists and consultants over the next year or more. “It’s the collective body of evidence that’s really strong,” Dr. Majidi said.

Without witnesses or forensic experts linking the killings directly to Dr. Ivins, the Justice Department’s public case against him relies largely on “opportunity evidence,” said Robert J. Cleary, the lead prosecutor a decade ago in the Unabomber attacks.

“What prosecutors have to do to persuade the public that this was the guy is to show the uniqueness of the strain of anthrax and to eliminate everyone else who had opportunity and access to it.” That, Mr. Cleary said, “is a challenge.”

www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/washington/07...nted=all&oref=slogin

Das Anthrax kam vom Militär
Mathias Bröckers, Christian C. Walther 24.07.2011
Kein Einzeltäter beförderte den US-Patriot-Act mit Anthrax - das US-Justizministerium entlastet vom FBI überführten Bruce Ivins
Als unmittelbar nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 mutmaßlich islamische Terroristen die US-Bevölkerung mit Milzbrandbriefen in Angst und Schrecken versetzten und so die Verabschiedung des USA PATRIOT-Gesetzes maßgeblich beförderten, begann das FBI mit einer sieben Jahre andauernden Untersuchung des Falles, die nicht nur zu Schadenersatzzahlungen in Höhe von fast 6 Millionen Dollar an den unschuldig verdächtigten Biologen Dr. Stephen Hatfill führte, sondern fast gleichzeitig auch zur scheinbaren Überführung des psychisch gestörten Einzeltäters Dr. Bruce Ivins - eines in Diensten des US-Militärs tätigen Mikrobiologen, der sich dann allerdings unmittelbar vor seiner Festnahme das Leben nahm.


Obwohl Fachleute wie etablierte US-Medien inklusive der New York Times (zuletzt im Februar 2011) darauf hinwiesen, die Beweisführung des FBI sei fragwürdig, und Experten immer wieder betonten, Ivins habe nachweislich keine Möglichkeit gehabt, die zur Durchführung der Anschläge erforderlichen Sporen überhaupt herzustellen, wies die Regierung Obama zuletzt im Sommer letzten Jahres alle Forderungen von demokratischen wie republikanischen Abgeordneten nach einer Neu-Untersuchung des Falles als "redundant" zurück.

Nachdem nun aber das Magazin PBS Frontline enthüllte, dass auch das US-Justizministerium Ivins' die Fähigkeit abspricht, in seinem Labor, seiner sogenannten "hot suite", flüssiges Anthrax in das bei den Anschlägen verwandte Sporenpulver zu verwandeln, ist der Fall wieder offener denn je - und erst recht die Frage, weshalb das FBI bei der Überführung des Einzeltäters offenbar schlampte. Was das DOJ indes weiterhin nicht in Frage stellt, ist, dass die verheerende Terroranschlagserie unmittelbar nach "9/11" ihren Ursprung in US-Militär-Kreisen hatte - wie Mathias Bröckers und Christian C. Walther in ihrem soeben im Westend Verlag erschienenen Buch 11. 9.: 10 Jahre danach - Der Einsturz eines Lügengebäudes präzise dokumentieren. Telepolis veröffentlicht aus diesem Grund das entsprechende Kapitel, das viele, bislang wenig bekannte Details des Anthrax-Falls darstellt.
Intermezzo: Anthrax

Die Hintergründe der kurz nach dem 11. September in den USA beginnenden Bioterror-Anschlagserie mittels tödlicher Milzbrandbriefe sind aufgeklärt. Der Täter war ein geistesgestörter Mitarbeiter des US-Militärs - der Selbstmord beging, ehe er verhaftet werden konnte.

Die guten Nachrichten zuerst. Erstens: Entgegen allen ursprünglich felsenfesten Überzeugungen der Regierung Bush gingen die kurz nach den 9/11-Flugzeug-Anschlägen postalisch erfolgten Anthrax- Anschläge weder auf Al-Qaida zurück noch auf den Irak. Zweitens: Der mutmaßliche Täter ist tot, Dr. Bruce Ivins, allein verantwortlich für den brieflichen Angriff auf die USA. Der Molekularbiologe und Spezialist für biologische Kriegswaffen, tätig seit 1980 im militärischen Geheimlabor USAMRIID in Fort Detrick, Maryland, war einer der wenigen, die Zugang zu den potentiell massenmordenden Ames-Sporen (Typ RMR 1029) gehabt hatten, die bei den Anthrax-Anschlägen verwandt worden waren. Nach langjährigen Ermittlungen ist laut FBI seine Schuld als erwiesen anzusehen.

Über Ivins' Motive werden wir nichts mehr erfahren, denn bedauerlicherweise legte er kein Geständnis ab, sondern brachte sich am 29. Juli 2008 mit einer Überdosis des frei erhältlichen Schmerzmittels Tylenol um, kurz nachdem er von den FBI-Ermittlungen gegen sich erfahren hatte. Den Agenten, die ihn rund um die Uhr beobachtet hatten, war offenbar entgangen, dass er sich am Vortag mit einer Überdosis ausgestattet hatte. Weshalb sie den behandelnden Ärzten auch keinen Hinweis geben konnten, woran der am 26. Juli ins Frederick Memorial Hospital eingelieferte Notfall möglicherweise litt. Hätten sie, wäre er nicht gestorben, denn Todesfälle durch Tylenol-Überdosierung (Wirkstoff: Paracetamol) sind, da es ein hocheffektives Gegenmittel gibt (ACC), "extrem selten" - sofern man rechtzeitig medizinisch interveniert.[1]

Ivins hinterließ Frau und Kinder, aber keinen Abschiedsbrief. Das FBI machte sich nicht mehr die Mühe, die genaue Todesursache des Verbrechers per Autopsie feststellen zu lassen.[2] Mit dem Abschluss des Falles als irrelevant verworfen wurden allerdings praktisch alle entscheidenden Details. Denn nicht genug damit, dass Ivins selbst die Behörden bei den Ermittlungen unterstützt hatte, erst recht verfügte er nachweislich über keine Möglichkeit, das verwendete Anthrax überhaupt herzustellen[3], wie Glenn Greenwald und Jay Epstein maßgeblich dokumentierten[4] und zuletzt im April 2011 der ebenso wie Ivins für die US Army tätigte Mikrobiologe Henry S. Heine stellvertretend für Dutzende Kollegen ausführte: Zur Produktion der tödlichen Menge hätte Ivins nämlich sagenhafte 26 Gallonen Anthrax-Kulturen benötigt sowie etwa 8.000 zusätzliche Stunden Arbeitszeit im Speziallabor B3 in Fort Detrick.[5]. Die er aber nie dort verbracht hatte, wie aus den vom FBI vorgelegten Arbeitsstunden-Aufzeichnungen für das Labor hervorgeht. Wie das FBI zu seiner Schlussfolgerung kam, Ivins hätte das 2001 auf den Postweg gebrachte Anthrax auch nur herstellen können, bleibt bis heute vollständig schleierhaft
Dass der posthum Verurteilte - ebenfalls nachweislich - auch den Briefkasten unmöglich hatte erreichen können, in den die tödlichen Briefe Mitte September 2001 eingeworfen worden waren[6], spielte für die Justiz am Ende erst recht keine Rolle mehr, denn fraglos musste die für das FBI überaus peinliche Ermittlung nach sechs Jahren, 9000 Befragungen und der Untersuchung von zigtausend Fotokopierern und Briefkästen irgendwann erfolgreich abgeschlossen werden. Erst recht, nachdem dem 2002 von Justizminister Ashcroft öffentlich zum Terror-Hauptverdächtigen ernannten Mikrobiologen Dr. Stephen Hatfill im Juni 2008 eine Schadenersatzsumme in Höhe von 5,62 Millionen Dollar zugesprochen worden war.[7].

Weshalb FBI und Justiz den »Fall Anthrax« im Juli 2008 für erledigt erklärten. Ivins war's gewesen, der Selbstmörder. Der Einzeltäter. Der irre Soziopath. Der laut FBI seit 1997 in Behandlung gewesen war und als so schwer gestört galt, dass am Ende nicht einmal mehr seine Therapeutin mit ihm zu tun haben wollte. Allerdings war seine Vollmeise offenbar keinem seiner Vorgesetzten aufgefallen, weshalb er den Schlüssel zum Labor mit den Massenvernichtungswaffen hatte behalten dürfen. Auch nach dem 11. September.

Da angesichts dieser erdrückenden Beweislast gegen die ermittelnden Behörden zu befürchten steht, dass auch die dringenden Forderungen von Senator Charles Grassley und des Abgeordneten Rush Holt nach Untersuchung der Untersuchung nicht erfüllt werden werden - die US-Regierung wies dieses Ansinnen zuletzt im August 2010 als »redundant« zurück[8] -, machen wir uns schuldig. Nämlich der Redundanz. Und rekapitulieren noch einmal im historischen Schnelldurchlauf.

Die Ermittlungen des FBI in Sachen 11. September 2001 wurden am 12. September 2001 vorläufig beendet. An diesem Tag nämlich teilte der damalige Präsident George W. Bush seinem Justizminister John Ashcroft und dem seit dem 10. September neuen FBI-Chef Robert Mueller mit: »Wir müssen uns darauf konzentrieren, den nächsten Angriff zu verhindern, statt uns damit zu beschäftigen, wer diesen verursacht hat.« Mueller und John Ashcroft taten, wie ihnen geheißen - und der nächste Angriff begann umgehend, nämlich am 3. Oktober, auf dem Postweg.

Das FBI konzentrierte sich fortan auf die Anthrax-Gefahr, statt sich um die noch frischen 9/11-Tatspuren zu kümmern. Ashcroft hatte schon vorher begonnen, juristische Nägel mit Köpfen zu machen. Der US Patriot Act wurde dem Kongress quasi über Nacht vorgelegt, nämlich zunächst als »erste Fassung« am 19. September: ein 342 Seiten umfassendes Gesetz, das die Freiheiten der US-Bürger weitgehend ad acta legen sollte. Gebetsmühlenartig versicherte der stramme »Pfingstler« Ashcroft, auf Amerikas Straßen transportierten Dutzende islamo-faschistischer Schläfer lastwagenweise biologische Massenvernichtungswaffen - und drängte so die Mitglieder des Kongresses zur Eile. Das Patriotengesetz sollte verabschiedet werden, auch wenn niemand Zeit gehabt hatte, die 342 Seiten wenigstens zu lesen.

Eben dies behagte dem demokratischen Mehrheitsführer im Senat, Tom Daschle, ganz und gar nicht, weshalb er, wie sein demokratischer Mit-Senator Patrick Leahy, die Abnahme des Gesetzes verweigerte. Oder jedenfalls am 3. Oktober drohte, das zu tun. Tags darauf berichteten die Medien vom ersten Anthrax-Opfer, dem Journalisten Robert Stevens. Daschle und Leahy wurden von Präsident Bush und dessen Vize Cheney persönlich angerufen und gewarnt, sich dem Gesetz nicht in den Weg zu stellen. Beide blieben stur und bekamen umgehend, am 15. Oktober (mit Stempel vom 7.), selber Post - vermeintlich vom Demokratenwähler Ivins, garniert mit ein paar Zeilen: »You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great.«

Daschle und Leahy leisteten keinen Widerstand mehr und verabschiedeten im Verein mit allen anderen Abgeordneten am 24. Oktober 2001 wie gewünscht den Patriot Act. Seinen ersten - und tödlichen - Brief hatte der irre Täter allerdings an Bob Stevens geschickt, obwohl der gar nicht gedroht hatte, das Patriotengesetz zu verhindern. Dieser Bob Stevens war nämlich kein Politiker, sondern Redakteur des südfloridianischen Revolverblattes Sun. Sein Chef, Michael Irish, war nach Angaben der St. Petersburg Times im Besitz einer Pilotenlizenz und früheres Mitglied der Civil Air Patrol in Lantana, wo Mohammed Atta im August 2001 auch ein paar Flugstunden genommen hatte. Stevens lebte in Lantana. Michael Irishs Frau, Gloria, vermietete ein Apartment in Delray Beach an die 9/11-Attentäter Marwan Al-Shehi und Said Al-Ghamdi. Die Frage von Chaim Kupferberg, einem der gründlichsten Skeptiker des offiziellen 9/11-Narrativs, ob die Irishs »Babysitter im Rahmen einer Geheimdienstoperation« waren[9], ist vom FBI amtlich mit »Zufall« beantwortet worden.[10] Daher wollen wir an dieser Stelle lediglich festhalten: Zufälle gibt's.

Der Aufstieg der Firma BioPort

Stevens' zufälliger Tod spielte indes nicht nur dem Panik verbreitenden Justizminister Ashcroft und den Freunden des Patriot Act in die Hände, sondern auch der schwer angeschlagenen kleinen Firma BioPort aus Michigan, die nach der kurzen Anschlagserie wie Phönix aus der Asche stieg und Anfang 2004 mit einem 245 Millionen Dollar schweren Drei-Jahres-Vertrag zur Belieferung des Pentagon mit Anthrax-Impfstoffen belohnt wurde. Was das mit dem geisteskranken USAMRIID-Selbstmörder Ivins zu tun hat? Allerhand. Aber der Reihe nach.

BioPort versuchte seit Ende der 90er Jahre, einen Impfstoff gegen Anthrax herzustellen, brachte jedoch lediglich ein untaugliches Mittel namens AVA zustande. 2000 wurden Militärangehörige genötigt, sich mit dem Stoff impfen zu lassen, nur wurden die Soldaten bedauerlicherweise krank. Als dieses Exempel für »Menschenversuche« durchsickerte, war die Empörung groß.[11]

Drei Jahre lang hatte die Food and Drug Administration (FDA) BioPort die Zulassung für ein neues Labor standhaft verweigert, wegen ernsthafter Sicherheitsbedenken in Bezug auf die alte Anlage in Michigan. Und so klang das, was Robert Myers, der Chefchemiker des Hauses, im Januar 2001 zur Lage seiner Firma von sich gab, in den Ohren der meisten Zuhörer bloß wie Pfeifen im Walde respektive wie die letzten heroischen Lügen aus der Vorstandsetage eines todgeweihten Unternehmens, das jahrelang auf Panik gesetzt - und verloren hatte. Dennoch bekräftigte Myers[12]

Auch wenn vieles über unsere Beziehung zur FDA gesagt worden ist, ziehen wir ein Scheitern unserer Bemühungen, die Zulassung durch die FDA zu bekommen, nicht in Betracht. Wir werden sehr bald wieder einen sicheren, reinen und effektiven Anthrax-Impfstoff herstellen - und zwar rechtzeitig und zu einem angemessenen Preis. Wir haben uns ganz und gar der Vollkommenheit verschrieben, und wir werden nicht ruhen, solange wir dieses Ziel nicht erreicht haben.

Und nochmals: Was hat das mit dem irren Dr. Ivins zu tun? Beziehungsweise Ivins mit BioPort? Doch wohl hoffentlich nichts. Na ja. Fast nichts. Außer, dass ausgerechnet Ivins der Pentagon-Troubleshooter war, der das existenzielle BioPort-Problem lösen sollte. Gemeinsam mit sechs anderen USAMRIID-Molekularbiologen war der posthum als verrückt und zugenäht Deklarierte nämlich im Jahr 2000 von Donald Rumsfelds Ministerium angewiesen worden, die Firma und deren Impfstoffproduktion zu retten. Allerdings klang Ivins in seinen E-Mails aus diesem ersten Jahr in neuer Position weit weniger zuversichtlich als die BioPort-Geschäftsführung: "Leider sind die BioPort-Leute keine Wissenschaftler, deshalb ist uns die Aufgabe zugefallen, ihr Problem für sie zu lösen", sowie - im Juli 2000, betreffend das Impfprogramm: "Die K***e fliegt uns demnächst um die Ohren, im großen Stil … Das alles ist einfach ein schöner Mist."[13]

Ab August 2001 machte der Pentagon-Beauftragte dann nachweislich nächtliche Überstunden im Labor. Heimlich? Auf der Suche nach einem besseren Impfstoff? Was das FBI als Hinweis auf seinen geplanten Anschlag betrachtet, erscheint Ivins' Kollegen jedenfalls bis heute als weit hergeholt[14], aber wir wollen zugunsten des FBI annehmen, dass der Doktor tatsächlich an gewinnbringenden Briefsendungen arbeitete. Auf eigene Faust, natürlich. Einsam und allein im gut gesicherten Top-Secret-Anthrax-Labor.

Tatsache ist: BioPort stand auch am 11. September noch am geschäftlichen Abgrund - ohne Aussicht auf Zulassung der FDA für seinen umstrittenen Anthrax-Impfstoff. Aber dann kamen die Briefe. Und mit ihnen die Panik. Sowie die politischen Ansagen von sehr weit oben: Wir brauchen den Patriot Act. Und wir brauchen den Impfstoff. Im Dezember 2001 vergaß die FDA all ihre ernsten Bedenken gegen BioPort - und Chefchemiker Myers konnte stolz verkünden, seine Anthrax-Firma sei gerettet und saniert.[15]

Wohlgemerkt: Am Ende 2001 sprunghaft steigenden Absatz des Gegenmittels für Anthrax-infizierte Patienten (das Antibiotikum Cipro) verdiente versehentlich nur ein deutscher Konzern, nämlich Bayer. Deutlich mehr jedoch sollte sich langfristig mit einem Impfstoff einfahren lassen - und dieses lukrative Marktsegment eroberte unmittelbar nach den ersten Todesfällen die Firma BioPort, die heute der weltweit einzige Hersteller ist, dessen Anthrax-Impfstoff BioThrax™ von der amerikanischen FDA zugelassen ist. Verwunderlich ist daran auf den ersten Blick allerdings, dass die US-Regierung sich keinen größeren Partner gesucht hat - schließlich hatte Donald Rumsfeld qua Karriere allerbeste Kontakte zur Pharmaindustrie. Und auf den zweiten Blick wird alles noch ein bisschen verwunderlicher. Denn BioPort gehört, auf einigermaßen simpel nachzuvollziehenden Beteiligungswegen, den Firmen Intervac LLC und Intervac Management LLC sowie Michigan Biologic Products.

Intervac LLC, der Mehrheitseigner, befindet sich im Besitz von William J. Crowe, Fuad El-Hibri, dessen Frau Nancy sowie der auf den Antillen ansässigen Investmentfirma von Vater Ibrahim El-Hibri, I & F Holdings.[16]

Letztere war zuvor maßgeblich beteiligt an der englischen Biotech-Firma Porton Products Ltd., die im ersten Golfkrieg die US-Truppen mit Impfstoffen gegen biologische Waffen versorgt hatte. Interessant ist aber nicht nur die Vita von BioPort-Mitbesitzer Fuad El-Hibri, einem Libanesen, der mit deutschem und US-Pass reist und in den 90er Jahren in England geschäftig gegen Milzbrand forschte, sondern erst recht die seines Partners Admiral William J. Crowe, der 22,5 Prozent an Intervac LLC hält. Crowe nämlich war von 1994 bis 1997 US-Botschafter in Großbritannien, aber das allein hätte ihn sicherlich nicht als Biotech-Experten und Partner der El-Hibris qualifiziert. Dafür sorgte dann möglicherweise schon eher die Karriere, die er vorher hingelegt hatte, denn der Mann, der maßgeblich von der 2001 in den USA ausgebrochenen Anthrax-Panik profitierte, war von 1985 bis 1989, unter US-Präsident Ronald Reagan, Oberbefehlshaber der US-Streitkräfte.

Bob Kramer, der Geschäftsführer von Admiral Crowes seit Dezember 2001 wieder wie geschmiert laufenden Firma BioPort, verkündete im Januar 2004 voller Stolz den erfolgreichen Abschluss einer maßgeblichen Geschäftsoperation: "Regierungsvertreter haben unlängst ihre Befürchtungen hinsichtlich der Anfälligkeit im Falle eines massiven, aus der Luft geführten Anthrax-Angriffes nochmals unterstrichen. Dieser Vertrag erlaubt anderen Behörden wie der für die Homeland Security zuständigen, den Health And Human Services sowie dem State Department, BioThrax über das Verteidigungsministerium anzufordern."[17] zwischen Militärchef Rumsfelds Behörde und der Firma des Ex-US-Militärchefs Crowe geschlossen worden. Er garantiert der kleinen Firma aus Michigan 245 Millionen Dollar - für (allerdings nur bei Bedarf) zu liefernde Anthrax-Impfstoffe.

BioPort-Troubleshooter Dr. Bruce Ivins setzte im Juli 2008 seinem Leben ein Ende, ehe die Behörden ihn befragen konnten, ob er von all diesen gewinnbringenden Verbindungen gewusst hatte. Auch wir können ihn daher nicht mehr fragen, weshalb ausgerechnet er so interessiert daran gewesen war, den Patriot Act über Nacht durchzupeitschen, einen Fotografen aus dem Atta-Umfeld schleunigst umzubringen - und erst recht können wir ihn nicht mehr fragen, weshalb er das Weiße Haus im Vorfeld über seine bevorstehenden Anschläge informierte. Denn Richard Cheneys Angestellte wurden schon am Abend des 11. September angewiesen, das Anthrax-Antidot Cipro einzunehmen.[18] Eine Woche vor den ersten Briefen.







www.heise.de/tp/artikel/35/35173/1.html