The US Post Office could play a key role in distributing medical aid in the event of a biological attack, according to an executive order released by the White House.
The order signed by President Barack Obama directs government agencies, local law enforcement and the US Post Office to work on a model for distribution of medical countermeasures in the wake of a biological attack.
“This policy would seek to: (1) mitigate illness and prevent death; (2) sustain critical infrastructure; and (3) complement and supplement State, local, territorial, and tribal government medical countermeasure distribution capacity,” the order said.
“The US Postal Service has the capacity for rapid residential delivery of medical countermeasures for self administration across all communities in the United States,” the order added.
The US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were instructed to work with the post office to develop a “dispensing model for US cities to respond to a large-scale biological attack, with anthrax as the primary threat consideration.”
The order calls for the model to be drawn up within 180 days, but gives no details as to whether the idea of using the US postal system to assist Americans in the wake of a biological attack is a new one.
The United States has sought to bolster its capacity to respond to biological attacks since 2001, when anthrax-laced letters mailed to people across the United States led to five deaths.
The order came amid heightened security concerns here following an attempt to bring down a US-bound jetliner on Christmas Day. A 23-year-old Nigerian has been charged in the case.
Over 159 in Mexico have died and around 2,500 (only 7 deaths and 26 infected have been confirmed) have been hospitalized from hybrid swine flu according to mainstream media. CDC confirms 51 New Yorkers have been infected, the new total of U.S. cases on Wednesday is 91 people in 10 states (64 in the U.S. are confirmed to have the virus). [Source]
Many countries are infected by the flu; 6 in Canada are confirmed to be infected, 3 in New Zealand; 2 in Spain 3 in Germany, Austria, France, South Korea, Slovakia, Costa Rica, and U.K. and Israel.
Scientists say the virus combines a mix of A-Influenza, Avian Bird Flu (H5N1) and Swine Influenza (H1N1) viruses.
There are numerous questions unanswered as to where the source of the outbreak originated, why are only deaths reported in Mexico and what public health official Dr. John Carlo meant when he said this virus was “cultured in a laboratory”:
Swine Flu Influenza first started at an army base in Fort Dix, New Jersey in 1976. The first outbreak infected hundreds of soldiers on the base. Gerald R. Ford was president and he ordered a nationwide vaccination program. More than 40 million people were vaccinated and the vaccine caused over 500 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome, a debilitating nerve disease, the vaccine also caused 30 people to die. [Source]
The hype from the media has seems to have died down a bit since this situation doesn’t resemble at all a “pandemic” this could be a hegelian dialectic situation meaning that there is a problem that may be manufactured, the media hypes the story creating a lot of fear and the solution is making vaccines that create even more deaths. One of the prime examples is Baxter Pharmaceuticals.
Baxter is a U.S. based pharmaceutical company that was blamed for creating and distributing Bird Flu Contaminated Vaccines to 18 countries worldwide. Baxter is now working with the World Health Organization to create a vaccine for this current swine flu “pandemic”! [Source]
Also just recently, there is a criminal investigation going on against Fort Detrick’s U.S. Army Medical Research Lab (AKA: USAMRIID) to see if this lab is missing vials of the VEE virus (Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus). [Source]. USAMRIID is the same laboratory that lost vials of weaponized anthrax that lead to the October 2001 attacks. Not only were anthrax vials lost in 2001 but 27 other specimens including AIDS, hanta virus, and viruses labeled ‘unknown’ were stolen as well. [Source]
There seems to be a correlation between the U.S. military and biological terrorism outbreaks. On June 17, 1996 the U.S. Air Force released an ominous study to examine the future of military dominance in 2025. In the study’s fifth chapter the authors present a timeline chart where it labels the year 2009 is when 30 million people in America will die from a pandemic influenza outbreak! Although this could be just a coincidence that the Pentagon would say in a study made in 1996 that there would be a deadly flu pandemic in 2009? [Source]
The government says by January there will be a vaccine created to combat this hybrid swine flu, they could release a government propaganda commercial like this fear-piece that was sold to the public in 1976:
There are many reasons to be concerned about what exactly is in all vaccines, Baxter was caught red-handed putting the H5N1 virus in their vaccines, the vaccines that were given to soldiers in 1976 gave them nerve disorders and killed a few, that is the reason why this swine flu “pandemic” story could all be just hype scaring the masses into being inoculated with who knows what.
Recently released by the Wayne Madsen Report; Top scientists for the UN have examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus and HIV/AIDS virus victims, and they concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-engineered as a military biological warfare weapon (which is possibly a race specific bioweapon if only mexicans are dying)! The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents! [Source]
In 1969 the Department of Defense requested $10 million to develop “synthetic biological agents for germ warfare” (HIV/AIDS) through the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC).
Dr. Robert Gallo in the 1970’s oversaw Litton Bionetics Inc., one of the Army’s leading contractors operated the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Dr. Robert Gallo is known as the developer of HIV/AIDS retrovirus. Henry A. Kissinger the former National Security Advisor of the Nixon administration called for the creation of an ebola-like bioweapon and contracted Litton Bionetics to create HIV/AIDS:
National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) a 200-page study developed by the U.S. National Security Council under the Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. The study claimed that 3rd world populations were a threat to national security and was adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford. NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in 3rd world countries through birth control, war and famine. [Source]
Here’s a clip from MSNBC’s Scarborough Country in 2006 highlighting how the FDA and the U.S. Government allowed the Bayer Company to dump AIDS-contaminated vaccines into countries such as Spain, France and Japan:
This is biological warfare against humanity, there are probably hundreds more examples i can give you that this eugenics society (I call them the Illuminati) mean serious business.
They wish to depopulate the globe by 90% so they can have their New World Order utopia for a world system. According to the Georgia Guidestones (the amendments of the New World Order) they seek to “Maintain Humanity Under 500,000,000 In Perpetual Balance With Nature”.
This swine flu “pandemic” may or may not be the final solution to the elite’s problem (us). But the hype may lead to a mandatory vaccination type situation which may create the pandemic situation, we don’t know. This whole swine flu outbreak could just be a beta test.
These genocidal fascist like Kissinger and others are ever increasing the potential for a One World Government, for example; during the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Summit in Montebello, Canada in 2005, the “three amigos” (Bush, Harper and Calderon) released “North American Plan for Avian and Pandemic Influenza,” described as a “collaborative North American approach that recognizes that controlling the spread of avian influenza or a novel strain of human influenza, with minimal economic disruption, is the best interest of all three countries.” The plan outlines how “Canada, Mexico and the United States intend to work together to prepare for and manage avian and pandemic influenza.” [Source]
Like the global war on terror and the global economic crisis, this is just one step twords a One World Government, they pretend they are the saviors and not the creators of these events in history, but people are waking up. Let’s just hope they don’t have their megalomaniacal world order.
The Keating Five scandal, and John McCain’s role in it, has received relatively little mention in presidential campaign coverage, and at least one Fox News host seems dedicated to keeping it that way.
Appearing Thursday morning on Fox & Friends, radio host Mike Papantonio tried to remind viewers about McCain’s intervention with federal regulators on behalf of real estate mogul Charles Keating, who was trying to avoid regulations of a savings and loan he owned during the S&L crisis of the 1980s.
F&F’s Steve Doocy told Papantonio to “pipe down,” called him “rude” and demanded he “cut it out.” A show producer could be overheard saying “cut his mike.”
As Papantonio tries one last time to explain the details of the Keating Five scandal, Doocy again cuts him off.
“This is not the History Channel,” he says.
Papantonio’s apparent crime was interrupting fellow guest Michael Reagan, the conservative radio host, who was arguing that it would be unfair to judge McCain based on his actions 20 years ago.
“It has everything to do with what’s happening today,” Papantonio said before being told to pipe down.
Regardless of whether Papantonio was being rude, preserving an orderly debate certainly could not have been Doocy’s goal in silencing the guest. Not two minutes before his admonition that Papantonio was “being rude,” Doocy repeatedly interrupted his guest to deliver talking points that might as well have been written by the McCain campaign.
At least three times Doocy interrupted Papantonio as he argued that McCain’s political gambit to “suspend” his campaign and delay Friday’s debate was more a response to his flagging poll numbers than an attempt to fix the economic crisis. Doocy wasn’t buying it.
“If Barack Obama wants to do so much for the economy, why doesn’t he go to his day job and work in the US senate?” he asked Reagan, cutting off Papantonio’s argument.
A former colleague and friend of Bruce Ivins, and the original suspect in the FBI’s investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, has declared that Ivins did not kill himself and was not behind the attack that killed five people shortly after 9/11.
Dr. Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian-born toxicologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, made the comments in an interview with a local newspaper in the area of Fort Detrick last weekend.
Assaad, who worked in a U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease lab at Fort Detrick from 1989 to 1997 developing a vaccine for ricin, said in an interview Saturday he does not believe Ivins was guilty.
“He’s a great man. He’s honorable, sincere, honest and most important, he didn’t kill five people and he didn’t kill himself,” Assaad told the newspaper.
Assaad knew Ivins well, not only were they colleagues but their four children were all classmates In Frederick.
Assaad was extensively questioned by the FBI On October 1, 2001, a fortnight after the first anthrax letters were mailed. It later emerged that the FBI’s lead, a letter from an unidentified person who claimed Assaad was planning a biological terrorist attack, was false.
The mystery letter identified Assaad as a former USAMRIID microbiologist and also pinpointed his time at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, indicating that whoever sent it had access to detailed army records.
The anonymous letter was sent shortly after 9/11 but before anyone knew about the anthrax-laced letters. On October 5, 2001, about 10 days after the anonymous letter was mailed, Robert Stevens, Photo Editor of The Sun in Florida, became the first of five individuals to die from an anthrax infection, indicating that someone had wanted to frame Assaad for the attacks.
“This anthrax issue is part of a much bigger issue,” Assaad also commented. “The roots of corruption are so deep in (USAMRIID), and this is the thing that the people in Frederick don’t understand.”
Former government biological weapons legislator Dr Francis Boyle shares Assaad’s view that Ivins has been used as a patsy in a larger cover up.
“Ivins is only the latest dead microbiologist.” Boyle stated, “You also have to tie into this the large numbers of dead microbiologists that have appeared since around the summer before these events, when the New York Times revealed the existence of the covert anthrax weapons programs run by the CIA, and that too is in the public record.”
The FBI has had a difficult time making its case to a skeptical public and scientific community. A hair sample snagged from a Princeton, N.J., mailbox linked to the attacks turned out not to match that of Ivins.
Some Congressional critics have questioned whether one man could really have carried out the elaborate attacks.
But FBI officials continue to press their case.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to put the suspicions to bed,” said Vahid Majidi of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. “There’s always going to be a spore on the grassy knoll.“
This is very telling.
The FBI could have said “we will prove to Congress, the scientific community and the public that only Ivins could have done it”.
But they didn’t.
Instead, the FBI is trying to discredit the many top anthrax scientists who question the government’s case against Ivins by using the “grassy knoll” conspiracy-theory smear.
If they had a case against Ivins, they would have presented it, instead of resorting to Bill O’Reilly style smear tactics.
“As always, in Establishment Media World, nothing is more insane or radical than refusing to believe every word the Government says. Even after Iraqi mushroom clouds and the whole litany of Government falsehoods, the establishment hallmark of Seriousness and Sanity is accepting the Government’s word. When it says Iraq was behind the attacks, then it was. When they said Hatfill was the culprit, he was. Now that they say that Ivins is, he is, and only “conspiracy theorists” — comparable to those who disbelieve we landed on the moon — would question that or demand to see the actual evidence. The FBI is relying, understandably so, on their mindless allies in the media to depict its case against Ivins as so airtight that no real investigation is necessary.”
The widow of a tabloid photo editor who died in the 2001 anthrax attacks insisted in a $50 million federal lawsuit filed years ago that the U.S. government was ultimately responsible for his death.
The widow of a tabloid photo editor who died in the 2001 anthrax attacks insisted in a $50 million federal lawsuit filed years ago that the U.S. government was ultimately responsible for his death.
Now that the FBI is pinning the blame on government scientist Bruce Ivins, the lawsuit brought by Maureen Stevens looks positively clairvoyant. And results of the FBI investigation could have a major effect on the outcome of her case.
“We were right all along,” Patrick Hogan, the son-in-law of Maureen and the late Robert Stevens, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It seems to me it’s pretty much a slam dunk.”
Stevens was a photo editor at American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Sun and Globe gossip tabloids, when he was exposed to anthrax that was mailed to AMI offices in Boca Raton. Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, the first of five people to be killed and 17 others to be sickened in the anthrax attacks.
Two years later, Maureen Stevens filed her lawsuit. In it, she claims the U.S. government was negligent because it failed to safeguard strains of the deadly anthrax bacteria at the U.S. Army disease research center at Fort Detrick, Md.
The government, her lawsuit says, “owed a duty of care, the highest degree of care” in handling of anthrax and supervising employees who had access to it. Although she didn’t know it when the lawsuit was filed, Ivins was one of those employees, a microbiologist who was working on an anthrax antidote. Ivins committed suicide last week as he was being investigated.
“One of the real areas of satisfaction, if you can call it that, is that we’ve maintained all along this was an inside job,” said Richard Schuler, Maureen Stevens’ attorney.
The case is unique among the legal actions brought after the anthrax attacks, according to the lawyers involved. Employees of a postal facility in Washington, D.C., where two workers died, sued the Postal Service for allegedly failing to protect them, but a federal judge in 2004 ruled the service is immune.
If the federal government ultimately names Ivins as the anthrax attack perpetrator, Schuler said the government’s lawyers should drop their long battle and settle the lawsuit. He noted that another scientist wrongly implicated by the FBI in the plot, Steven Hatfill, recently was paid $5.8 million to settle his lawsuit against the Justice Department.
“It’s been a long road for this family,” Schuler said. “I hope somebody who has some authority will call us and make it right with this family.”
Maureen Stevens declined an interview request, deferring to her attorney. The lawsuit, also filed on behalf of the couple’s three grown children, seeks a maximum of $50 million in compensatory damages for the government’s alleged negligence in Stevens’ death. Schuler said that figure represents the upper reaches of a possible damage award or settlement.
Two of the Stevens children did not return phone messages or e-mails seeking comment Tuesday. Hogan, husband of daughter Heidi, said he’s hopeful that the FBI has its man in Ivins.
“It seems to me they botched this thing from the beginning. It was one of their own people,” Hogan said. “I’m just very happy that they actually found somebody.”
The Department of Defense continued its controversial mandatory anthrax vaccinations program despite high ranking Bush administration officials acknowledging there were problems with the vaccine within months of the Bush administration taking office—well before the 9/11 attacks and the October 2001 anthrax letters.
A 2001 memorandum from former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz indicates that the White House knew of problems relating to the Gulf War Syndrome and the military’s controversial anthrax vaccine.
Obtained by RAW STORY earlier this year from a senior military official and referenced in today’s New York Daily News, Rove wrote, “I do think we need to examine the issues of both Gulf War Syndrome and the Anthrax vaccine and how they can be dealt with. They are political problems for us.”
Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.
The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation.
The last thing the FBI needed was another embarrassment. Overreaching damaged the FBI’s reputation in the high-profile investigations: the Centennial Olympic Park bombing probe that falsely accused Richard Jewell; the theft of nuclear secrets and botched prosecution of scientist Wen Ho Lee; and, in this same anthrax probe, the smearing of an innocent man — Ivins’ colleague Steven Hatfill.
In the current case, Ivins complained privately that FBI agents had offered his son, Andy, $2.5 million, plus “the sports car of his choice” late last year if he would turn over evidence implicating his father in the anthrax attacks, according to a former U.S. scientist who described himself as a friend of Ivins.
Ivins also said the FBI confronted Ivins’ daughter, Amanda, with photographs of victims of the anthrax attacks and told her, “This is what your father did,” according to the scientist, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because their conversation was confidential.
The scientist said Ivins was angered by the FBI’s alleged actions, which he said included following Ivins’ family on shopping trips.
Washington attorney Barry Coburn, who represents Amanda Ivins, declined to comment on the investigation. An attorney for Andy Ivins also declined to comment.
The FBI declined to describe its investigative techniques of Ivins.
FBI official John Miller said that “what we have seen over the past few days has been a mix of improper disclosures
Casting further doubt on the FBI’s anthrax case, accused government scientist Bruce Ivins passed two polygraph tests and a handwriting analysis comparing samples of his handwriting to writing contained in the anthrax letters, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say.
The Justice Department yesterday closed the case, announcing the late “Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks.”
Ivins passed the first polygraph to satisfy a security requirement prior to working with the FBI as part of a team of scientists at the Fort Detrick, Md., lab who originally helped analyze the anthrax letters. He passed a second exam after he became a suspect.
WND has learned that the FBI was so frustrated with the exam results that last October authorities asked a judge for permission to search Ivins’ home and vehicles specifically for evidence of any materials, such as books, that would have helped him “defeat a polygraph.”
Also, officials confirm that FBI handwriting analysts were unable to conclusively match samples of Ivins’ handwriting with the writing on the anthrax envelopes and letters, which sounded as if they were written by jihadist accomplices of the 9/11 hijackers. The crude notes declared: “DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT.”
Investigators also failed to uncover other critical evidence linking Ivins directly to the letters. For instance:
No textile fibers were found in his office, residence or vehicles matching fibers found on the scotch tape used to seal the envelopes;
No pens were found matching the ink used to address the envelopes;
Samples of his hair failed to match hair follicles found inside the Princeton, N.J., mailbox used to mail the letters.
Also, no souvenirs of the crime, such as newspaper clippings, were found in his possession as commonly seen in serial murder cases.
What’s more, the FBI could not place Ivins at the crime scene with evidence, such as gas station or other receipts, at the time the letters were mailed in September and October 2001.
While acknowledging the circumstantial nature of their case against Ivins, prosecutors argue they’re confident they would have been able to prove his guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” in court.
They say they used new forensic technology to narrow the deadly spores used in the attacks down to a batch stored in Ivins’ lab. However, they concede that more than 100 other people – including some Arab-American scientists – had access to the batch and that the virulent Ames strain was found elsewhere.
The Real “Anthrax Killer” Caught on Security Camera Surveillance tape shows Dr. Philip Zack entering Fort Detrick laboratory containing the Anthrax spores after he was fired for racist attacks on an Egyptian co-worker.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ chemical and biological weapons program, says the US government has “a strong hunch” about who is behind the anthrax letters, but is “dragging its feet” in the investigation because the chief suspect is a former government scientist with knowledge of “secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed.” Rosenberg has written a very interesting analysis of the anthrax attacks that leads to one and only one ineluctable conclusion: that the chief culprit was not some Arab terrorist, associated with Al Qaeda or similar groups, but an American, a former US government employee – one who, furthermore, is a middle-aged “insider” in the biodefense field, with a doctoral degree, who probably worked in the USAMRIID laboratory, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, still has access – and had some dispute with a government agency.
Furthermore, given the information compiled by Rosenberg, and with the aid of Google.com, anyone with computer access can identify by name the person or persons in possession of the key to unlocking the mystery of the anthrax attack.
The strain of weaponized anthrax used in the attacks narrows the search for the perpetrator(s) down to a few US labs: but law enforcement agencies have yet to issue a single subpoena for employee records at the four labs with a history of working with this strain. We know about the anthrax letters, of course, and the several hoax letters, but a major clue in this investigation is an anonymous letter, sent before the anthrax hysteria, in late September, to the military police at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, accusing a US government bio-engineer, Egyptian-born Dr. Ayaad Assaad, of being behind a bio-terrorist plot. The letter-writer revealed a detailed knowledge of Dr. Assaad’s life and work at USAMRIID, including details of his personal life that only someone who worked with him could have possibly known: indeed, the poison-pen author claimed to have formerly worked with Dr. Assaad.
While FBI spokesman Chris Murray confirmed that Assaad was not under suspicion, he also stated to reporters that the FBI is not trying to find out who sent the anonymous hate-letter – which the FBI won’t show to Assaad. The odd timing of the letter – sent after the anthrax letters were mailed, but before their deadly contents were known – doesn’t even have them mildly curious.
Rosenberg believes that the poison-pen missive was written by the real perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, who sought to ride the wave of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim hysteria that swept the nation after 9/11. This also fits the pattern of masquerade that characterizes the anthrax letters to NBC, Daschle, Leahy, et al, with their anti-Israel, pro-Muslim slogans neatly printed in block letters. Indeed, the one thread that seems to run throughout this story is anti-Arab animus, as the astonishing – and truly frightening – story of what happened at Ft. Detrick in the early 1990s makes all too clear….
Things were turning up missing at USAMRIID, and Lt. Col. Michael Langford was baffled. He suspected that someone was tampering with records, perhaps in order to conduct unauthorized research. He told a lab technician to “make a list of everything that was missing,” and ” it turned out that there was quite a bit of stuff that was unaccounted for,” 27 sets of specimens, including anthrax, hanta virus, simian AIDS virus “and two that were labeled ’unknown’ – an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret,” as this chilling Hartford Courant story by Jack Dolan and Dave Altimari puts it. One set of specimens has since been found: the rest are still missing….
An investigation was launched that exposed the shockingly lax security measures at the lab, and raised the possibility that some specimens may never have been entered in lab records. Also uncovered was a tape from a surveillance camera showing the entry of an unauthorized person into the lab, at 8:40, on January 23, 1992, let in by Dr. Marian Rippy, lab pathologist. The night visitor was Lt. Col. Philip Zack, a former employee who had left as a result of a dispute with the lab over his alleged harassment of Dr. Assaad. The Courant reports:
“Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy, [lab technician Charles] Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination.”
Earlier today, we noted the suicide of Bruce Ivins, a biodefense researcher who the DOJ was close to filing criminal charges against. Ivins, 62, was a leading military anthrax researcher who worked for the past 18 years at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Ivins had reportedly been told of the impending prosecution. For their part, the prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty against Ivins.
“For more than a year, we have been privileged to represent Dr. Bruce Ivins during the investigation of the anthrax deaths of September and October of 2001. For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with that investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him. He was a world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years with the Department of the Army. We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law. We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial. The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins’ case, it led to his untimely death. . . .”
The chief suspect in the 2001 anthrax postal attacks in the US has died from an apparent suicide just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him.
Bruce Ivins, 62, one of America’s top biodefense researchers, had been told that he was going to be prosecuted for the attacks that killed five people and sent the country into panic in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. He died in hospital on Thursday after taking a huge dose of prescription Tylenol, a painkiller, mixed with codeine.
The scientist had worked at the the United States Army Medical Research Institute,(USAMRIID), the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories in Maryland for 18 years. He had played a pivotal role in research to improve anthrax vaccines, and during the attacks had helped the FBI analyse powdery material recovered from an envelope tainted with anthrax which had been sent to the Washington DC office of Tom Daschle, a US senator.
His imminent prosecution had not been made public but followed a government payout of $US5.82m (Pounds 2.9m) to a former government scientist, Steven Hatfill, who had been the FBI’s chief suspect for the anthrax attacks almost since the beginning. The payout to Hatfill, an unusual development that exonerated him of being the anthrax attacker was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, lawyers familiar with the case told the LA Times.
“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 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?
“In an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared … to duplicate the letter material,” the e-mail reads. “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ’But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!’”
Indeed, 3 of the 4 suspects the FBI is investigating are employees of Fort Detrick, which is run by the Army.
Some people are pretending that someone unconnected with the army bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick stole the anthrax. However, as the above-quoted article states:
“Fort Detrick is run by the United States Army. It’s the most secure biological warfare research center in the United States,” a bioterrorism expert told FOX News.”
It is not very likely that someone could steal anthrax from the most secure facility in the U.S., run by the Army.
Indeed, the FBI apparently knew in 2002 who mailed the anthrax letters. See this, this, and this.
And yet government investigators and prosecutors have covered up and refused to disclose who did it for 6 years. Initially, the FBI tried to frame an innocent man for the attacks.
The FBI has narrowed its focus to “about four” suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.
Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.
The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed.
The Pentagon has assured residents of Crystal City, Virginia, that the gases they will release downtown on Thursday are completely harmless, while on the other hand secretly hoping that the fearmongering about imminent biological terror attacks the tests are set to generate is contagious.
“The Pentagon is scheduled to release an odorless, invisible, and yes, harmless, gases into the city Thursday to test how quickly they spread through buildings, officials said.”
“The test is part of the military’s national security preparation for the capital area,” reports The Examiner.
The Pentagon will release perfluorocarbon tracers as well as sulfur hexafluoride amongst the general public without their consent, a practice that would otherwise be illegal in a free society.
Urban Shield: Crystal City Urban Transport Study will be another opportunity for the media to show armed men barking orders at citizens while trusted officials in hazmat suits deal with the deadly outbreak that’s “inevitably” going to happen for real somewhere down the line, we are constantly reminded.
Which country or terror group has the capability to release weaponized biological agents other than the government isn’t made clear but I presume it’s some offshoot of Saddam Hussein’s fabled UAV drone armies.
Since the only biological agents released in the U.S. came directly from Uncle Sam, including the 2001 anthrax attacks, citizens of Crystal City might have pause for thought.
Residents should probably be thankful that the Pentagon at least told them in advance of the tests, unlike the New Yorkers exposed to Bacillus globigii in 1966.
The fact that U.S. veterans were used as guinea pigs for 50 years during tests under the banner of Project SHAD and other programs involving deadly substances, including sarin nerve gas, without their knowledge or consent , reminds us that some were not so lucky.
After six years of US-led military support and billions of pounds in aid, security in Afghanistan is “deteriorating” and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.
Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control.
The Afghan government angrily denied the US director of national intelligence’s assessment yesterday, insisting it controlled “over 360” of the country’s 365 districts. “This is far from the facts and we completely deny it,” said the defence ministry.
But the gloomy comments echoed even more strongly worded recent reports by thinktanks, including one headed by the former Nato commander General James Jones, which concluded that “urgent changes” were required now to “prevent Afghanistan becoming a failed state”.
The Pentagon can require its troops be vaccinated against anthrax, a federal judge said Friday.
Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said the Food and Drug Administration acted appropriately when it found the vaccine to be safe and approved its use. She dismissed a lawsuit by military officials who argued the drug is unproven and the scientific data unsound.
“The court will not substitute its own judgment when the FDA made no clear error of judgment,” Collyer wrote.
The dispute has languished in the court system for years. A federal judge suspended the vaccination program in 2004 after faulting the FDA’s process for approving the drug. After the FDA redid the process and again found it to be safe, the military announced plans to reinstate mandatory vaccinations.
That prompted this latest lawsuit by eight military members who argued the vaccine should be optional.
“We owe it to our service members to give them every possible protection,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “Force protection is the number one priority in the Defense Department and the anthrax inoculation program is an important force-protection measure.”
Mark Zaid, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the FDA relied on outdated studies that didn’t prove the vaccine is safe or effective against inhaled anthrax.
“It would appear the court has condoned an agency’s manipulation of decades-old data to support a present-day policy objective,” Zaid said. “We are absolutely going to appeal.”
Former CIA: Warhawks Pray Iran Backs Terror to Justify Military Strike
Here is an excerpt from the New York Times by a former CIA officer who writes that the warhawks pray Iran backs a terror attack that kills Americans to justify a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities
“What has been the response of most American hawks to this mess? Prayer. They are essentially waiting for (Iran) the clerical regime to do something stupid so that they can galvanize an awareness among Americans that mullahs should not have the bomb. True, the Iranian clerics have often done the wrong thing at the right time, from aiding the bombers of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and our African embassies in 1998, to the kidnapping of British sailors and marines last year. It is possible that Tehran, which wants to cause us great harm in Iraq and Afghanistan, could again back a terrorist attack that kills enough Americans to make preventive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities mandatory.But the Iranians know this. They know they are in the final nuclear stretch: they will likely play it sufficiently cool to make it difficult for the United States to strike them pre-emptively.“
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg raps those aware of Bush’s violations of the Constitution, saying they should speak out and save lives.
“When they keep silent about their knowledge of that situation, they are themselves violating their oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Ellsberg said in an interview with City Pages.
Advising such people to reveal truths that might save an untold number of lives, the former military analyst explained that there is a high possibility of new military adventurism in the Middle East.
“Don’t wait till bombs are falling in Iran or a new war is started wrongly or thousands more people have died when you know that your bosses are lying the public into a wrongful war or committing other crimes or violating the constitution,” said the former Pentagon official.
According to Ellsberg, there is a good chance that Bush will wage war on Iran in the next year.
“I think that the risk remains significant, and indeed the fact that the President isn’t running again for office may free him in his mind,” he explained.
Daniel Ellsberg, who shocked the world in 1971 by disclosing 7,000 classified pages of a Defense Department report, revealed the existence of a much deeper battle in Vietnam than the public was aware of.
A GROUP of former Israeli army recruits are suing the government for compensation after it allegedly made them unwitting guinea pigs by testing them for nerve gas antidotes, a newspaper reported.
The army claims the testing was carried out by volunteers.
“We were laboratory rats for the army,” Avi Yogev, 55, referring to a case dating back to 1971, told Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
“We were guinea pigs for Tsahal (the army) and today we are paying the price.
“They told us we were participating in a secret project,” Mr Yogev said, explaining that the soldiers were told during training that they had to participate or would not be allowed to serve in a combat unit.
“They had us swallow pills. We suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea. It was not until years later that we discovered that they had given us medicine against nerve gas after having tested it on animals.”
Mr Yogev said the suit named the army, the defence ministry and the Nes Tsiona biological research institute as defendants.
Yediot said the tests lasted for 11 days, during which the recruits were separated into three groups and placed in isolation at Tel Hashomer base, near Tel Aviv. It said they were given dozens of pills, and the experiment continued despite their vomiting and diarrhoea.
The newspaper said the soldiers had since suffered from heart disease, skin ailments, respiratory and liver problems and hypertension.
The army did not deny the facts, nor did it comment on whether it considered the tests to have been appropriate.
An army statement said that a list “detailing the products and medicines given to the volunteers during the tests has been provided to the lawyer representing the plaintiffs”.
“The army’s medical department has set up a special unit to gather complaints from soldiers who say they participated in these laboratory tests,” the statement added, with the department for rehabilitation “examining the case files in order to follow up on them”.
In May, the army acknowledged that experiments had also been conducted on Israeli soldiers for a vaccine against anthrax in the late 1990s over fears of a possible Iraqi attack. It said 700 soldiers had volunteered for those tests.
During the 1991 Gulf War, during which Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles on Israel, the authorities distributed gas masks to all citizens as a precaution against attacks with unconventional weapons.
Folks, you had better sit down, take a very deep breath. Merk drug company vaccines admits injecting cancer viruses into their vaccines and we have the proof on video for you to watch.
This censored interview conducted by medical historian Edward Shorter for WGBH public television (Boston) and Blackwell Science was cut from The Health Century due to its liability–the admission that Merck drug company vaccines have traditionally been injecting cancer viruses (SV40 and others) in people worldwide.
This segment of In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood & Terrorism, produced and freely contributed by consumer protector and public health expert, Dr. Leonard Horowitz, features the world’s leading vaccine expert, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, who explains why Merck’s vaccines have spread AIDS, leukaemia, and other horrific plagues worldwide.
Dr. Hilleman, who developed the Mumps, Rubella and Measles vaccines, said: “Vaccines are the bargain basement technology of the 20th century.”
In the taped interview (with about 6 Merck executives in the room, their nervous laughter audible in the tape) Dr. Hilleman explains how in his search for uninfected monkeys, Merck imported green monkeys from Africa. Those monkeys, it turned out, were carrying the AIDS virus: “I didn’t know we were importing AIDS.”
Dr. Hilleman also acknowledged that he discovered that the Sabine polio vaccine (manufactured by Merck) was infected with the SV-40 cancer virus. In the process of developing vaccines Merck scientists are shown to blithely disregarded public safety as they conducted massive tests exposing millions of unsuspecting people to wild viruses. Dr. Hilleman acknowledged that the cancer infected polio vaccine had been tested in massive field trials in Russia, then in the U.S.
The issues raised in this candid interview raise serious doubts about the propaganda the public has been fed about the safety of vaccines. Vaccines that have been promoted as “safe and effective” miraculous cures have been infecting (possibly) millions of people with cancer, leukaemia, and AIDS.
The interview was conducted by Dr. Edward Shorter, Professor of the History of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. I checked the authenticity of the tape with Dr. Shorter who informed me that he did it when preparing a PBS series called “The Health Century.” Doubleday published a companion volume of the same title in 1987.
Dr. Shorter deposited the entire tape of the interview, including portions omitted from the book, along with other interviews in the National Library of Medicine.
The uncovered facts should prompt a re-examination of the advisability of US mandatory vaccine policies–
The person who posted this censored portion of the interview on Youtube is Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a controversial and prolific healthcare expert with multiple academic degrees–including 3 doctorates.
In his forthcoming documentary film, “In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood & Bioterrorism,” Dr. Horowitz examines official directives for national preparedness against outbreaks, nuclear explosions, and other disasters. A critical examination of what officials are saying and not telling that impacts the future of public health and urgent life-saving decisions every American is currently being encouraged to make.
Pentagon Poised To Resume Open Air Biological Weapons Testing
Francis Boyle, a University of Illinois Professor of International Law: “The Pentagon is fully prepared to launch biological warfare by means of anthrax,”
The Pentagon has denied President Bush issued a directive for it to resume open-air testing of chemical and biological warfare(CBW) agents that were halted by President Richard Nixon in 1969. Yet, the Pentagon’s stated preparations make it appear it is poised to do just that.
Spokesperson Chris Isleib did not respond to a request for comment on a passage from the Defense Department’s annual report sent to Congress last April that suggests the Pentagon is gearing up to resume the tests.
Resumption of open-air testing would reverse a long-standing moratorium adopted after a public outcry against them following accidents in the Sixties.
The Pentagon’s annual report apparently calls for both the developmental and operational “field testing of (CBW) full systems,” not just simulations.
The Pentagon’s report to Congress contains the following passage: “More than thirty years have passed since outdoor live-agent chemical tests were banned in the United States, and the last outdoor test with live chemical agent was performed, so much of the infrastructure for the field testing of chemical detectors no longer exists or is seriously outdated. The currently budgeted improvements in the T&E infrastructure will greatly enhance both the developmental and operational field testing of full systems, with better simulated representation of threats and characterization of system response.” “T&E” is an acronym for testing and evaluation.
“Either the military has resumed open-air testing already or they are preparing to do so,” said Francis Boyle, a University of Illinois Professor of International Law who authored the implementing legislation for the U.S. Biological Weapons Convention signed into law by President George Bush Sr. and who has tracked subsequent developments closely.
“I am stunned by the nature of this development,” Boyle said. “This is a major reversal of policy.” The 1972 treaty against germ warfare, which the U.S. signed, forbids developing weapons that spread disease, such as anthrax, a pathogen that is regarded by the military as “ideal” for conducting germ warfare.
“The Pentagon is fully prepared to launch biological warfare by means of anthrax,” Boyle charged. “All the equipment has been acquired and all the training conducted and most combat-ready members of U.S. armed forces have been given protective equipment and vaccines that allegedly would protect them from that agent.”
Open-air testing takes research into deadly agents out of the laboratories in order to study their effectiveness, including their aerial dispersion patterns, and whether they actually infect and kill in field trials. Since the anthrax attacks on Congress in October, 2001, the Bush administration has funded a vast biological research expansion at hundreds of private and university laboratories in the U.S. and abroad involving anthrax and other deadly pathogens.
The anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal workers, injured 17 others and temporarily shut down the operations of the U.S. Congress, Supreme Court, and other Federal entities.
Although a Federal statute permits the president to authorize open-air testing of CBW agents, Boyle said this “does not solve the compliance problem that it might violate the international Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention as well as their related domestic implementing legislation making such violations crimes.”
Boyle charged the U.S. is already “in breach” of both conventions and also of U.S. domestic criminal law implementing them. In February, 2003, for example, the U.S. granted itself a patent on an illegal, long-range biological-weapons grenade, evidently for offensive purposes.
Boyle said the development of anthrax for possible offensive purposes is underscored by the government’s efforts “to try to stockpile anthrax vaccines and antibiotics for 25-million plus Americans to protect the civilian population in the event there is any ‘blowback’ from the use of anthrax in biowarfare abroad by the Pentagon.”
“In theory,” Boyle added, “you cannot wage biowarfare abroad unless you can protect your civilian population from either retaliation in kind, or blowback, or both.” Under Project BioShield, Homeland Security is spending $5.6 billion to stockpile vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox, and other bioterror agents. The project had been marked by delays and operational problems and on December 12th last year Congress passed legislation to pump another $1 billion into BioShield to fund three years of additional research by the private sector.
Boyle said evidence the U.S. has super-weapons-grade anthrax was demonstrated in the October, 2001, anthrax mail attacks on Senators Thomas Daschle(D-S.D.) and Patrick Leahy(D-Vt.) The strain of highly sophisticated anthrax employed has allegedly been traced back to the primary U.S. Army biological warfare campus at Ft. Detrick, Md. The attacks killed five persons and sickened 17 others. A current effort to expand Ft. Detrick has sparked widespread community opposition, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun.
“Obviously, someone working for the United States government has a stockpile of super-weapons grade anthrax that can be used again domestically for the purposes of political terrorism or abroad to wage offensive warfare,” Boyle said.
The Associated Press has reported the U.S. Army is replacing its Military Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick “with a new laboratory that would be a component of a biodefense campus operated by several agencies.” The Army told AP the laboratory is intended to continue research solely for defense against biological threats.
Undercutting the argument U.S. research is for “defensive” purposes is the fact government scientists have been creating new strains of pathogens for which there is no known cure. Richard Novick, a professor of microbiology at New York University, has stated, “I cannot envision any imaginable justification for changing the antigenicity of anthrax as a defensive measure.” Changing a pathogen’s antigenicity means altering its basic structure so that existing vaccines will prove ineffective against it.
Biological warfare involves the use of living organisms for military purposes. Such weapons can be viral, bacterial, and fungal, among other forms, and can be spread over a large geographic terrain by wind, water, insect, animal, or human transmission, according to Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The Biotech Century”(Penguin).
Boyle said the Federal government has been plowing money into upgrading Ft. Detrick, Md., and other CBW facilities where such pathogens are studied, developed, tested, and stored. By some estimates, the U.S. since 2002 has invested some $43 billion in hundreds of government, commercial, and university laboratories in the U.S. for the study of pathogens that might be used for biological warfare.
According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, more than 300 scientific institutions and 12,000 individuals have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare and terrorism. Ebright found that the Number of National Institute of Health grants to research infectious diseases with biowarfare potential shot up from 33 in the 1995-2000 period to 497 by 2006.Ebright has stated the government’s tenfold expansion of Biosafety Level-4 laboratories, such as those at Fort Detrick, raises the risk of accidents and the diversion of dangerous organisms. “If a worker in one of these facilities removes a single viral particle or a single cell, which cannot be detected or prevented, that single particle or cell can form the basis of an outbreak.”
During the Cold War era, notably in the Fifties and Sixties, various Government agencies engaged in open-air CBW testing on U.S. soil and on naval vessels at sea to study the effects of weaponized pathogens. U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, were among the targets and sickness and even a number of deaths were reported as a result.
According to an article titled “Lethal Breeze” by Lee Davidson in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City of June 5, 1994, “In decades of secret chemical arms tests, the Army released into Utah winds more than a half million pounds of deadly nerve agents.” Among them, he said, was VX, a pinhead-sized drop of which can be lethal. The tests were conducted at Dugway Proving Ground but Davidson said the evidence suggests “some (agents) may have escaped with the wind.”
Pentagon documents obtained by the News listed 1,635 field trials or demonstrations with nerve agents VX, GA and GB between 1951 and 1969, “when the Army discontinued use of actual nerve agents in open-air tests after escaped nerve gas apparently killed 6,000 sheep in Skull Valley,” Davidson wrote. The Skull Valley strike also sickened a rancher and members of his family.
Boyle has previously charged the Pentagon with “gearing up to fight and ‘win’ biological warfare” pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted in 2002 “without public knowledge and review.” He contends the Pentagon’s Chemical and Biological Defense program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing “first-use” strike of chemical and biological weapons in war.
The implementing legislation Boyle wrote that was enacted unanimously by Congress was known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989. Boyle has written extensively on the subject. Among his published works are “Biowarfare and Terrorism” and “Destroying World Order: U.S. Imperialism In the Middle East Before and After September 11th,” both from Clarity Press.
Yesterday, Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney, reiterated this point on The Daily Show, claiming that terrorists regularly struck between 1993 and 2001 but not since 9/11. “It’s been more than six years. And that is not an accident. … There were many attacks between 1993 and the World Trade Centers coming down in 2001,” Cheney said.
Stewart rebutted Cheney’s claim by listing off the many terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11:
I mean, there was the anthrax thing. … [Terrorists] have been doing that all these past six years. The Spanish bombings, the English bombings, and then all the bombs in Iraq.
Cheney replied that attacks on other countries were not relevant to the discussion: “Yes, yes. But we’re talking about American interests.” The audience booed Cheney’s remarks. An incredulous Stewart responded, “Aren’t we interested in [attacks on those countries]? I’d assumed they were our allies.”
Worldwide terror attacks are rising as a result of the policies Cheney supports. A State Department terrorism report released this year showed a nearly 30 percent increase in worldwide terror attacks in 2006. Prior to an attempted terrorist attack in London in June, British experts warned that the war in Iraq had increased the threat of terror attacks on their country.
Evidently, according to Cheney’s logic, even though almost 170,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, bombings and terrorist attacks there don’t have anything to do with our nation’s “interests.”
LONDON – A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine designed to stop it, international health officials say, leaving at least 69 children paralyzed.
It is a frightening paradox in a part of the world that already distrusts western vaccines, making it even tougher to stamp out age-old diseases.
The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally — the preferred method in developing countries because it is cheaper and doesn’t require medical training to dispense.
“This vaccine is the most effective tool we have against the virus, but it’s like fighting fire with fire,” said Olen Kew, a virologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC and the World Health Organization announced the cause of the polio outbreak last week, even though they knew about it last year.
Outbreaks caused by the oral vaccine’s live virus have happened before. But the continuing Nigerian outbreak is the biggest ever caused by the vaccine. It also follows a nearly yearlong boycott of the vaccine in Africa’s most populous country because of unfounded fears the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.
Officials now worry that the latest vaccine-caused Nigerian outbreak could trigger another vaccine scare.
Experts say such outbreaks only happen when too few children are vaccinated. In northern Nigeria, only about 39 percent of children are fully protected against polio.
The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of polio virus. Children who have been vaccinated excrete the virus, and in unsanitary conditions it can end up in the water supply, spreading to unvaccinated children.
In rare instances, as the virus passes through unimmunized children, it can mutate into a form that is dangerous enough to spark new outbreaks.
In 2001, officials reported that 22 children were paralyzed from polio in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in this way. Subsequent vaccine-caused polio outbreaks have occurred in the Philippines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia.
In the West, the polio vaccine is given as a shot and uses an inactivated virus, but that method is more expensive and requires training.
In Nigeria, the outbreak comes “in the wake of all the other problems they’ve had in,” said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who led WHO’s smallpox eradication campaign in the 1970s.
In 2003, politicians in northern Nigeria canceled vaccination campaigns for nearly a year, claiming the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. That led to an explosion of polio, and the virus jumped to about two dozen countries.
Now, health officials’ decision to keep quiet about the cause of the outbreak for so long may look suspicious.
Dr. David Heymann, WHO’s top polio official, said that because the organization considered the outbreak to be a problem for scientists and not something that would change global vaccination practices, they thought it was was unnecessary to immediately share publicly.
CDC’s Kew added: “The people who are against immunization may seize on anything that could strengthen their position, even if it’s scientifically untenable.”
Rumors are still rife among Nigerians that the vaccine is unsafe, and several religious leaders continue to lecture on its dangers. Another mass vaccine boycott could lead to further polio spread, derailing long-standing eradication efforts for good.
Nigerian health officials contacted by The Associated Press declined to comment on the situation.
“Convincing the Nigerians to take even more of this vaccine will be a tough sell,” said Dr. Samuel Katz, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and co-inventor of the measles vaccine.
More than 10 billion polio doses have been given to children worldwide, and the vaccine has been credited with cutting polio incidence by more than 99 percent since 1988. Far more children are paralyzed by the wild polio virus than the virus spread by the oral vaccine. But no vaccine is risk-free.
WHO said that changing the vaccination strategy is unnecessary. “It would be nice if we had a more stable oral polio vaccine, but that’s not the way it is today,” Heymann said. “We will continue working the way we have been working because we don’t want children to be paralyzed anywhere.”
The US Post Office could play a key role in distributing medical aid in the event of a biological attack, according to an executive order released by the White House.
A former colleague and friend of Bruce Ivins, and the original suspect in the FBI’s investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, has declared that Ivins did not kill himself and was not behind the attack that killed five people shortly after 9/11. 
Casting further doubt on the FBI’s anthrax case, accused government scientist Bruce Ivins passed two polygraph tests and a handwriting analysis comparing samples of his handwriting to writing contained in the anthrax letters, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say. 
noworldsystem.com 
