The government is trying to bury the 2001 anthrax attack scandal (the anthrax came from a U.S. military base) by claiming that one of the key suspects - Bruce E. Ivins - was a "lone nut" who committed suicide. The government claims that the anthrax letters were an innocent mistake which was "part of an Army scientist's warped plan to test his cure for the deadly toxin". Case closed.
There are just a couple of loose ends:
- "The attacks were not entirely unexpected", according to a journalist, who was urged soon after 9/11 to take Cipro by a high-level government official (confirmation that government employees started taking Cipro before the Anthrax attacks here). As Michael Fury put it, "So even if Ivins was involved, how would 'a high government official' know that a rogue bioweapons scientist was going to 'go postal' with anthrax if that 'high government official' was not himself involved?" (and see this comment by Atrios)
- If Ivins was trying to "test his cure for the deadly toxin", why did he only send anthrax to the members of Congress most likely to say no to the Patriot Act and to people within the media? (I guess the Unabomber's lawyer should have argued that his client sent bombs to certain specific people involved in the technology field because he was testing defenses to bombs). And why didn't Ivins send his "cure" to the targets before he mailed the anthrax? How could that be a "test [of] "his cure"?
- Why did the anthrax letters attempt to link 9/11 and the anthrax attack and pretend to be from radical Muslims and be anti-America and anti-Israel, if they really came from an American with a warped plan but good intentions?
- Why did the U.S. government - including, apparently, the people responsible for sending the anthrax letters - falsely claim (and read this) that the materials in the anthrax proved that it was manufactured in Iraq? Would a disgruntled "lone nut" be motivated to concoct a false justification for invading Iraq?
- "The FBI has completely shut Congress out of its now five-year investigation into anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill and around the nation". In other words, Congress -- which legally has every right to know what really happened, and which was the main victim of the attack -- is being kept in the dark. Why is that?
- An entirely different guy was actually caught on tape entering the storage area where the anthrax used in the letters was stored, without proper authorization and after being fired from his job over a racially motivated attack on an Egyptian co-worker. But instead of investigating him, or Ivins, the FBI spent years wasting time and falsely accusing an innocent guy
- The lawyer who had been representing Ivins in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains Ivins' innocence
Is he right?
Maybe, but he clearly forgot one motive: to justify war against Iraq.
Note: Even if Ivins was the killer, and even if he did act alone, it was still a false flag attack. Why?
Because Ivins was solidly in the Judeo-Christian, not Muslim, camp, and yet the anthrax letters were made to frame Muslims for the attack. For example, Ivins was a parishioner and musician at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church. And he wrote:
"By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen"One thing is clear: he wasn't a Muslim.