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The FBI Admits It Has No Case Against Ivins

The FBI Admits It Has No Case Against Ivins

George Washington’s Blog
August, 19, 2008

As summarized in an article today in the Washington Post:

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.”

– Glenn Greenwald

FBI Admits It Destroyed Evidence In Anthrax Case
http://georgewashington2.blogspo..bi-admits-it-destroyed-evidence-in.html

The Real “Anthrax Killer” Caught on Security Camera (it’s not Ivins or Hatfill)
http://noworldsystem.com/2008..er-caught-on-security-camera/

 



Anthrax Victim’s Widow Blames U.S. Government

Anthrax Victim’s Widow Blames U.S. Government

AP
August 5, 2008

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.”

Read Full Article Here

Hair Samples in Anthrax Case Don’t Match
http://www.washingtonpost.co..icle/2008/08/13/AR2008081303731_pf.html

DARPA-linked Cycorp “Predicted” the Anthrax Attacks – 6 months before they happened.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17033

 



FBI Tormented Mentally Ill Daughter of Dead Anthrax Suspect

FBI Tormented Mentally Ill Daughter of Dead Anthrax Suspect

AP
August 5, 2008

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

Read Full Article Here

 



The Real “Anthrax Killer” Caught on Security Camera

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.

Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
February 22, 2002

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAYMd3RjFBk

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.”

Read Full Article Here

Related: The Hidden Anthrax Letters Suspect
Related: Anthrax Cover-up:We know who the suspects are – then why no arrests?
Related: Philip Zack Steals Anthrax

 

Attorneys for Bruce Ivins Respond to Client’s Suicide

The Wall Street Jounal
August 1, 2008

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.

This afternoon, Ivins’ attorneys at Venable, Paul F. Kemp and Thomas M. DeGonia, released the following statement:

“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. . . .”

Army Scientist Bruce E. Ivins Accused of Anthrax ’Commits Suicide’
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/08/0..%80%99commits-suicide%e2%80%99/

Scientists Question FBI Probe On Anthrax
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-..008080201632.html?nav=hcmodule

FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials
http://www.nydailynews.com/n..s_told_to_blame_anthrax_scare_on_a.html

Washington Post Scrubs Own Story Questioning Case Against ’Anthrax Killer’
http://www.democraticunderground…_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3725177

Mounting questions over US anthrax probe and scientist’s alleged suicide
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/anth-a04.shtml