Bruce E. Ivins, the Anthrax Terrorist? 20 questions

Another "conspiracy theory" has just been proven true.

The anthrax attack letters were an inside job. The lunatic "conspiracy nuts" have been saying this for seven years based on the facts like the Ames strain being involved.

Perhaps Ivins was just a lone nut, but an inside nut nevertheless. Bruce E. Ivins (deceased some time before 1800 hours 7/29/08) was a highly decorated AMERICAN working for the US military. He used US military anthrax to kill Americans and he tried to blame it on Islamic extremists, by writing "Allah is great" in his letters.

CNN on 8/6/2008 said, "Some of the anthrax-laced letters, written in crude block letters, included the words "Take penacilin (sic) now," according to photographs released by the FBI." - No mention of the attempted frame job. Look at the actual letters on the FBI's web site. Example:



Why the bizarre complete lack of mention of Israel by the mainstream press? Are the "Israel did 9/11" nuts who talk about the white van and the spy ring right after all? Did Israel attack the USA and attempt to frame Muslims to get us to fight their enemies for them? This is from Whatreallyhappened.com.

Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again. CNN followed by "Orwellizing" their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED.

"Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying ... is considered career suicide."

-- Carl Cameron, as quoted in The Spies Who Came In From The Art Sale

You can view the removed FOXNews report here.

Bruce E. Ivins, the supposed lone anthrax attacker, wrote, in his last letter to his local paper, “By blood and faith, Jews are God’s chosen, and have no need for dialogue with any gentile. End of dialogue.” - nypost Right wing religious zealot.

I still trust that there are mostly good people in the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon, etc. But the anthrax case proves at the very least that one or more bad egg government insiders can pull off a major act of terror and be undetected and/or unreported by the good guys for seven years.

Some things don't add up.

1. Why did Ivins attempt to frame Muslims?
   


2. How could Ivins create weaponized anthrax?


3. Could the anthrax attack have come from another country?
   


4. What was Ivins motive?


5. What was the full nature of Ivins involvement in Operation Noble Eagle?


6. What did Ivins find when he evaluated the anthrax he also supposedly used in the attacks?


7. If Ivins wanted to profit by showing his vaccine worked, why didn't he send it to any of the victims?


8. What was Ivins reaction to the 9/11 attacks?


9. Why did it take seven years for Ivins to be discovered as the anthrax attacker?


10. Why is the FBI sure Ivins did it when they were wrong about Hatfill?


11. Did Ivins drive to Trenton, New Jersey on Tuesday, September 18, 2001 the day the anthrax letters were postmarked?


12. Why were the particular targets of the attacks selected?


13. Was Ivins working alone?


14. How did Ivins get the Anthrax to use?


15. How can a homicidal sociopath end up working for 35 years at the US Army's biological warfare defense labs?


16. Who are the three or four top White House staff members who told ABC News that the anthrax was from Iraq?


17. How did White House staff know to begin taking Cipro on September 11, 2001?


18. Now that the killer has been caught, will the FBI share everything it knows with Congress?


19. When Ivins did unauthorized testing, on who's secretary's desk and keyboard did he find spores where he worked?
    


20. Is it true that the FBI never investigated the one man actually CAUGHT ON THE SECURITY SYSTEM 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?


21. Anthrax Trivia bonus question: Where did the anthrax used in the attacks originally come from?

These reader COMMENTS are interesting.

#1: The anthrax mailer wrote "Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great." on the letters. Interesting, considering the man the FBI fingered, Bruce E. Ivins, wrote, in his last letter to his local paper, "By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for dialogue with any gentile. End of dialogue."- nypost Any bets on Ivins being a member of the Anti-Arab "camel club" where he worked?

#2. A coworker said, "He did not have the skill set to make the powder. That is pretty sophisticated aerosol engineering, and he had no training in that whatsoever. None."

the New York Times revealed the technology behind the letter to Senator Daschle. [The anthrax used was] a trillion spores per gram, [refined with] special electro-static treatment. This is superweapons-grade anthrax that even the United States government, in its openly proclaimed programs, had never developed before. - afterdown

Richard Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins at the lab at Fort Detrick, said a more advanced machine than a lyophilizer would have been necessary. "There is no way" that a lyophilizer could have created the fine spores contaminating the 2001 letters, he said. In addition, he said, no one working at a U.S. government lab could have produced such high quality anthrax in secret. - cnn

#3.

"...Different grades of anthrax were prepared at... Ness Ziona. Coarse brown granules that would cause only skin infections were prepared for the New York media letters. The deadlier "weapons grade" anthrax was reserved for Senators Daschle and Leahy." - planetquo

#4. He was either trying to test his anthrax vaccine ... or make money by selling more of his vaccine ... or get billions in funding for bioweapons research.

#5. According to USA today, Ivins was "deeply involved" with Operation Noble Eagle, the government’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

#6. Ivins was one of the people investigating the anthrax attacks. Incredible. This is like a child murder working on the team to investigate her disappearance.

Investigators believe the spores in the three letters sent to Daschle, NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw and the New York Post come from the same strain of anthrax. The anthrax in the media letters was in a heavier, grainier state than the material in Daschle's letter, which was a finer, more dangerous grade. The Leahy letter is still being examined at a crime lab in Fort Detrick, Md. - salon

#7.

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines. - lat

#7. The entire country was still in shock one week after 9/11. So... Ivins thought up his plan alone and mailed anthrax letters in the midst of everything else that was going on?

#9. A new DNA technique took years develop and this is what linked the victims to the exact type of anthrax Ames strain Ivins was working with. Interesting. Could we have some technical details about this technique?

"... prosecutors worried that because the genome technology was so new, it might be questioned and eventually thrown out if the case against Ivins ever went to trial. Researchers tested it for many more months to make sure its conclusions were reliable." - wtop

#10. Hatfill, the main FBI suspect in the case before Ivins, was proven innocent.

On June 27, 2008 Hatfill was exonerated by the government and a settlement was announced in which the Justice Department has agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle the lawsuit in which Hatfill claimed the Justice Department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case.^wiki

Answer: The new DNA technique showed that the anthrax Ivins was working with was the same as the anthrax used the attacks.

#11. Where was he on that day? Did anyone see him on that day?

Update: "Investigators also can't place Ivins in Princeton, N.J., when the letters were mailed from a mailbox there." - ap

Wait, what? Princeton? The letters were mailed from Trenton, right? Well Trenton is only 12 miles (20 min) from Princeton, NJ.

The anthrax attacks came in two waves. The first set of anthrax letters had a Trenton, New Jersey postmark dated September 18, 2001, exactly one week after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Five letters are believed to have been mailed at this time, to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and the New York Post, all located in New York City; and to the National Enquirer at American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida.^[3]

#12. The National Enquirer and the New York Post, which I think were the first two hit and mailed a week after 9/11, had unflattering photos and articles of the Bush daughters. Was Bruce E. Ivins aware of this? Why did Ivins target Daschle and Leahy the top two Democrats who were about to block the Patriot Act?

#13. Answer: Unknown. The FBI will signal that they believe so if they close the investigation.

#14. I don't understand why this stuff is not carefully monitored by multiple people. Wouldn't the amount he used be detected as missing from the lab in daily checks and set off alarm bells?

Answer: He worked there for over 30 years, he had access.

#15. Are there any more undiscovered homicidal sociopaths employed by our government?

"Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapist," Duley said, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic. -foxnews

#16. Why did they say this?

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons." ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue).

#17. The anthrax letters were supposedly mailed by lone-nut Ivins on or after 9/11/2001, so how did the White House know to start taking the antidote on September 11?

"...the Bush administration has failed to provide a complete and accurate response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request concerning the decision to place White House staff on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic, Cipro, the same day as the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." - jwatch

#18. There was previously a blackout of information due to media leaks.

Bonus. The original "Ames strain" came from Bush's home state of Texas, not Ames Iowa.

The bacteria was isolated by the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostics Laboratory at Texas A&M University and shipped to USAMRIID in May 1981. - ucla