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Gold9472
07-05-2007, 09:53 AM
Anthrax Coverup: A Government Insider Speaks Out

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24273

(Gold9472: Here are the two other articles related to Francis A. Boyle:

U.S. Weapons Legislator Says Anthrax Attacks Part Of Gov. Bio-Warfare Program (http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13834)
Anthrax Attack On U.S. Congress Made By Scientists And Cover Up By FBI, Expert Says (http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13815))

By Steve Watson
7/3/2007

Is it possible that the anthrax attacks were launched from within our own government? A former Bush 1 advisor thinks it is.

Francis A. Boyle, an international law expert who worked under the first Bush Administration as a bioweapons advisor in the 1980s, has said that he is convinced the October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the later Military Commissions Act.

"After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration tried to ram the USA PATRIOT Act through Congress," Boyle said in a radio interview with Austin-based talk-show host Alex Jones. "That would have set up a police state.

"Senators Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) were holding it up because they realized what this would lead to. The first draft of the PATRIOT Act would have suspended the writ of habeas corpus [which protects citizens from unlawful imprisonment and guarantees due process of law]. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, come these anthrax attacks."

"At the time I myself did not know precisely what was going on, either with respect to September 11 or the anthrax attacks, but then 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. So it was obvious to me that this was from a U.S. government lab. There is nowhere else you could have gotten that."

Boyle's assessment was based on his years of expertise regarding America's bioweapons programs. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 that was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.

After realizing that the anthrax attacks looked like a domestic job, Boyle called a high-level official in the FBI who deals with terrorism and counterterrorism, Marion "Spike" Bowman. Boyle and Bowman had met at a terrorism conference at the University of Michigan Law School. Boyle told Bowman that the only people who would have the capability to carry out the attacks were individuals working on U.S. government anthrax programs with access to a high-level biosafety lab. Boyle gave Bowman a full list of names of scientists, contractors and labs conducting anthrax work for the U.S. government and military.

Bowman then informed Boyle that the FBI was working with Fort Detrick on the matter. Boyle expressed his view that Fort Detrick could be the main problem. As widely reported in 2002 publications, notably the New Scientist, the anthrax strain used in the attacks was officially assessed as "military grade."

"Soon after I informed Bowman of this information, the FBI authorized the destruction of the Ames cultural anthrax database," the professor said. The Ames strain turned out to be the same strain as the spores used in the attacks.

The alleged destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, Iowa, from which the Fort Detrick lab got its pathogens, was blatant destruction of evidence. It meant that there was no way of finding out which strain was sent to whom to develop the larger breed of anthrax used in the attacks. The trail of genetic evidence would have led directly back to a secret government biowarfare program.

"Clearly, for the FBI to have authorized this was obstruction of justice, a federal crime," said Boyle. "That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That's the DNA, the fingerprints right there. It later came out, of course, that this was Ames strain anthrax that was behind the Daschle and Leahy letters."

At that point, recounted Boyle, it became very clear to him that there was a coverup underway. He later discovered, while reading David Ray Griffin's book on the 9/11 attacks, The New Pearl Harbor, that Bowman was the same FBI agent who allegedly sabotaged the FISA warrant for access to [convicted co-conspirator] Zacharias Moussaoui's computer prior to 9/11. Moussaoui's computer contained information that could have helped prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In 2003, Bowman was promoted and given the Presidential Rank Award by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to Mueller, chastising the organization for granting such an honor to an agent who had so obviously compromised America's security.

During the anthrax scare, the House of Representatives was officially shut down for the first time in the history of the republic. Once opposition from Leahy and Daschle evaporated in the wake of the attempts on their lives, the USA PATRIOT Act was rammed through. Testimony by Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) revealed that most members of Congress were compelled to vote for the bill without even reading it.

"They were going to move to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which is all that really separates us from a police state," Boyle said. "And that is what they have done now with respect to enemy combatants [in the Military Commissions Act of 2006]." Boyle added that lawmakers are now arguing that Amendment XIV, which guarantees due process of law to all Americans, does not mean what it has been taken to mean and that, under the Military Commissions Act, any U.S. citizen can be stripped of citizenship and be labeled an enemy combatant.

Continued Boyle: "In other words, they have taken the position that at some point in time, if they want to, they can unilaterally round up United States native-born citizens, as they did for Japanese-Americans in World War II, and stick us into concentration camps." Boyle asserted that top officials, such as White House legal advisor John Yoo and former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith (now a professor at Harvard Law School), are pushing for the legalization of torture as well.

"The Nazis did the exact same thing," said Boyle. "They had their lawyers infiltrating law schools. Carl Schmidt was the worst, and he was the mentor to Leo Strauss, the [ideological] founder of the neoconservatives. So the same phenomenon that started in Nazi Germany is happening here, and I exaggerate not. We could all be tortured; we could all be treated this way."

Boyle stressed that it is vital to keep up the pressure on Senator Leahy, who now chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, giving him subpoena power. Since Leahy was himself a target, he may have sufficient motivation to get to the bottom of the attacks. The FBI and the Justice Department have so far refused full disclosure to Congress.

In addition to his credentials as a government advisor, Boyle also holds a doctorate of law magna cum laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard University. He teaches international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Boyle also served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-92) and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court.

Boyle alleged that due to his activities as a lawyer, he was interrogated by an agent from the CIA/FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in the summer of 2004. The agent tried to recruit him as an informant to provide the FBI with information on his Arab and Muslim clients. When he refused, according to Boyle, the FBI placed him on the government's terrorism watch lists.

AuGmENTor
07-05-2007, 10:05 AM
Disturbing to say the least...

dMole
10-04-2007, 05:06 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071004/ap_on_go_co/dangerous_germs

Vulnerable germ labs tough to identify

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 19 minutes ago


Federal terror-fighting agencies can't identify all the American research laboratories that could become targets of attackers, congressional investigators have found.

The Government Accountability Office asked a dozen agencies whether they kept track of all the labs handling dangerous germs and toxins, or knew the number. All responded negatively.

The findings were prepared for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Thursday.

The government regulates 409 laboratories approved to work with 72 of the world's deadliest organisms and poisons, including anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria.

But less is known about other labs that work with organisms that cause whooping cough, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, meningitis, typhoid fever, hepatitis, herpes, several strains of flu, rabies, HIV and SARS.

The GAO said U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, told its investigators they need to track all labs that could be vulnerable to terrorism.

U.S. intelligence agencies said they already are handicapped by the failure of some foreign countries to regulate the shipment or possession of biological agents.

The Associated Press reported this week that American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

The GAO report disclosed that inspectors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited a high-security lab at Texas A&M University in February 2006, just 13 days after one worker was exposed to Brucella bacteria. Inspectors were not told about the exposure. The worker eventually became seriously ill, but recovered.

simuvac
10-04-2007, 09:56 AM
Sounds like plausible deniability.

Weapons labs? What weapons labs?

What's a weapon?

100 "missing shipments". Sounds like when the mob used to find some "missing transport trucks" full of cigarettes or booze. One can only wonder how many of these "missing shipments" of dangerous chemicals are in the hands of black ops teams waiting to pose as al Qaeda.

dMole
10-04-2007, 11:46 AM
---Quoted from my earlier post
"But less is known about other labs that work with organisms that cause whooping cough, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, meningitis, typhoid fever, hepatitis, herpes, several strains of flu, rabies, HIV and SARS."
----------
[An impending STD attack, like those "Free Love" 1960s??]
------------
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071004/ap_on_go_co/dangerous_germs;_ylt=Au0HGKjLRgk0B8nNai_5SaAb.3QA

Labs may fail to report germ accidents

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago


With accidents rising at high-security research laboratories, congressional investigators said Thursday that incidents with dangerous germs and toxins may not be reported because labs fear bad publicity and workers fear for their jobs.

The accidents, ranging from skin cuts to animal bites, result mostly from "human error due to carelessness, inadequate training or poor judgment," said Keith Rhodes, a Government Accountability Office expert on lab research.

The Associated Press reported this week that American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

Rhodes told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee the GAO found "a disincentive to report acquired infections and other mishaps at research institutions."

The reasons, he said, are "negative publicity for the institution or the scrutiny from a granting agency, which might result in the suspension of research, or an adverse effect on future funding.

"Further, it is generally believed that when a worker acquires an infection in the lab, it is almost always his or her fault, and neither the worker nor the lab is interested in negative publicity."

The major known breakdown came at Texas A&M, where lab officials failed to report worker exposures to Brucella bacteria and Q fever. One worker became seriously ill but recovered.

Rhodes said these barriers must be removed, so that "accidents are thoroughly examined and contained."

He suggested lab accidents could be treated like aviation incidents, where mistakes are analyzed to learn lessons rather than to blame individuals.

"Experts have agreed that some form of personal anonymity would encourage reporting," said Rhodes, who is the GAO's chief technologist at the Center for Technology and Engineering, Applied Research and Methods.

Dr. Richard Besser, the CDC's terrorism and emergency response coordinator, says the agency's regulation of the labs is under review by an internal watchdog.

Besser's written testimony said the Health and Human Services inspector general will issue his report next year.

"We need improvements in our inspection process," Besser said.

Labs are routinely inspected by the CDC just once every three years, but accidents and changes in research trigger new inspections.

Besser said CDC changes under consideration include:

_Possible changes in the composition of inspection teams and the frequency of inspections.

_More expansive interviews of lab employees and closer examination of accident response plans.

_Interviews with more types of laboratory workers, in par to check their training.

_Reviewing more internal lab documents to identify problems that may go unreported.

_Verification, through additional visits, that problems were corrected.

Still, Besser said the regulation program has "greatly enhanced the nation's oversight of dangerous biological agents and toxins. Because of the efforts of the individuals in these programs, there is improved awareness of biosafety and biosecurity throughout the select agent community."

dMole
10-04-2007, 12:22 PM
http://www.fbi.gov/anthrax/amerithraxlinks.htm

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/43459/the_forgotten_anthrax_attacks_of_2001 (http://www.fbi.gov/anthrax/amerithraxlinks.htm)

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j022202.html

dMole
10-21-2007, 02:59 PM
FAS Bio-"defense" [offense?] expert says CIA did study on anthrax "going postal" and FBI foot-dragging on the investigation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/archive/1873368.stm

Anthrax attacks 14/3/02 http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1870000/images/_1873368_anthrax100.jpg
A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control.

The shocking assertion is that a key member of the covert operation may have removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax which killed five people.

In the wake of Sept 11th, the anthrax attacks caused panic throughout the States and around the world. But has the FBI found the whole case too hot to handle?

Our science editor Susan Watts reported from Washington.

SUSAN WATTS:
America's anthrax attack last autumn was second only to that on the Twin Towers in the degree of shock and anxiety it caused...Some even say the anthrax letters triggered sub-clinical hysteria in the American people...yet this, the first major act of biological terrorism the world has seen remains an unsolved crime...

Initially the investigation looked for a possible Al-Qaeda or Iraqi link, then to a domestic terrorist, then inwards to the US bio-defence programme itself. But in the last four or five weeks the investigation seems to have run into the sand...There have been several theories as to why ...

Three weeks ago Dr Barbara Rosenberg - an acknowledged authority on US bio-defence - claimed the FBI is dragging its feet because an arrest would be embarrassing to the US authorities. Tonight on Newsnight, she goes further...suggesting there could have been a secret CIA field project to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail - whose top scientist went badly off the rails...

DR BARBARA ROSENBERG:
FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS:
Some very expert field person would have been given this job and it would have been left to him to decide exactly how to carry it out. The result might have been a project gone badly awry if he decided to use it for his own purposes and target the media and the senate for his own motives as not intended by the govt project...but this is a possibility that I think needs to be considered

WATTS:
And another leading bio-defence analyst has already sketched out a similar profile for the kind of person likely to be behind the anthrax attacks...

MILTON LEITENBERG:
CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL & SECURITY STUDIES:
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND:
I would think it was somebody who had this kind of experience, and I think the word that I used for you was 'a cowboy' when we first spoke, that simply means in the United States someone who feels such bravura in his actions, he feels he's a free actor, he can decide what should be done and what shouldn't be done, and what the reason is.

WATTS:
In recent weeks, the focus of the investigation has been the US army medical research institute at Fort Detrick near Washington. Fort Detrick is the site at the centre of a web of military centres spread across the US and twilight private companies which work with these military sites hand-in-hand as contractors...

Colonel David Franz was in charge at Fort Detrick for eleven years - he's had hands-on experience with biological agents and has his own ideas about the kind of person the FBI should be looking for.

COLONEL DAVID FRANZ:
FORMER DETRICK MEDICAL RESEARCH PROG, 1987-98:
It's not someone who just got on the Internet or went to the library and got a book and held the book in one hand and a big wooden spoon in the other and stirred up batches. It's someone who has spent a significant amount of time I believe working with a spore former of some kind and knew how to grow ...and how to purify and how to dry

WATTS:
Inside accounts by former staff at Fort Detrick during the nineties reveal a research site in disarray with questionable security measures. We spoke to one former lab technician now working in Belize about unexplained night-time activities in the lab.

DR MARY BETH DOWNS:
ST MATTHEW'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE:
FORMER FORT DETRICK EMPLOYEE:
I came in developed my negatives and here they said anthrax and I looked at this little counter that would have been putting the sequential numbers on the film and there weren't any films missing and yet I knew that Friday I had used it and it hadn't said anthrax.

WATTS:
What did that suggest to you had been happening over the weekend?

DOWNS:
That someone had been in there working on anthrax....Anyone who did have access to the labs was not monitored in what they did, either in what they did in the lab that is the amount of agent they were growing, or in what they did with that agent, that is if they put it in their pocket and took it home ...

WATTS:
Such is the FBI's determination to establish if Fort Detrick is at the heart of this that it has turned to genomic analysis of the powder itself...The Inst for Genomic Research was founded by Craig Venter - the man who sped up the decoding of the Human Genome... their anthrax team has created a DNA "fingerprint" of anthrax taken from the body of the first person to be killed - a Florida-based newspaper man. They're looking for differences between this so-called Florida "strain" and stored samples from a number of US military sites

This is the first time genomic analysis has been used for microbial forensics...Tim Read is one of the world's leading authorities on the genetic make-up of anthrax . He compared the fingerprint of the Florida strain with that of samples originating at Fort Detrick. The results are not yet published - so he's being careful what he says:


DR TIMOTHY READ:
THE INSTITUTE OF GENOMIC RESEARCH:
They're definitely related to each other ...closely related to each other

WATTS:
Could they be so closely related that one could consider them to be one and the same thing?

READ:
I'm not commenting on that...

WATTS:
But the real answer may lie not just in where the anthrax came from, but who had access to it. Veterans of the 1960s US germ warfare programme were the obvious first thought. Early on in the investigation, there was one name that immediately came to many people, but few dared whisper it aloud. William Capers Patrick the third was part of the original US programme, which officially drew to a close in the 1960s...The New York Times claimed last December he was the author in 1998 of a secret paper study on the possible effects of anthrax sent through the mail, although he now denies that. ...

We went to see Bill Patrick to ask him if he might know the culprit...

Hello Susan Watts BBC

Patrick is an acknowledged showman...known for his startling demonstrations ...some in less than classified company. During the course of our interview he told us several pieces of technical information which one expert said could help anyone intending to create an anthrax weapon.

WILLIAM CAPERS PATRICK III:
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE CONSULTANT:
I've prepared two harmless simulant powders... beautiful flow properties...

WATTS:
It's clear from what Bill Patrick told us that he's been a central figure in the bio-defence community for many years and that he may well have met or come across the person behind the attacks...

PATRICK:
Most of my discussions about the biological problem has been in secure conferences and meetings, and involve people with need to know, with security clearance and what have you. I don't talk about 'how to', I don't get into 'how to' with many people, no people other than the fact that those who really have a need to know.

WATTS:
Does it nag at you in the back of your mind that possibly you do know him?

PATRICK:
Possibly, possibly, I could have talked to these people. But it would have been within the context of their having a need to know.

WATTS:
He told me two FBI agents and an official from the attorney general's office interviewed him for 3 and a half hours two weeks ago. He says they told him he had been a suspect, but left him believing he was in the clear.

And just to put on record can I ask you did you perpetrate these attacks..

PATRICK:
my goodness I did not ....I did not...I'm an American patriot.

WATTS:
Patrick was on the UN team that inspected Iraqi weapons facilities in the mid 1990s, and he WAS surprised the FBI didn't come to him straight after the attacks, simply because of his expertise. He acknowledges it was only logical to consider him a suspect, but for Patrick, the most likely explanation, or perhaps the most comfortable, is that the powder and the motive originated overseas - in some rogue state...

PATRICK:
I would hate to think that anyone in our country.. that would do this to our own people, if we ever find whoever does this I hope it comes from overseas, because that way I would.. well I don't want.. I want someone to be caught, I want the perpetrator to be caught, but I would rather think that it came from our enemies outside of our own country as opposed to our own people perpetrating this crime against our own

WATTS:
Bill Patrick is no longer seen as a suspect, but the net IS closing around someone at the heart of the US germ warfare programme.

We now know by piecing together information from well-placed sources that there's another individual. He's been interviewed by FBI agents, and remains under widespread suspicion...

But he's no loner. He's likely to have worked on a key government project in the past and to have a network of friends and colleagues he can rely on. The possibility that more than one person is involved may answer some of the perplexing geographical questions about where the attacks originated.

DR RONALD ATLAS:
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MICROBIOLOGISTS:
I think that the significance of focussing on a group is that you can have one person with the expertise to produce this weaponised anthrax and someone else to actually deliver it to Trenton. I think that a large part of the investigation early on focused on AN individual. As such we would ask the question, could that individual have gotten to New Jersey. If you begin to think that it could have involved two or more, then the alibi of an individual that I was not near New Jersey may in fact fall apart and you could look at someone else delivering it...

WATTS:
The private contractor companies linked to the military and jokingly referred to as "beltway bandits" because they're sprinkled around the Washington beltway ring-road, is where individuals with the right mix of skills might be working. Some of these contractors are now known to have been involved in classified bio-defence projects. One of these secret projects, carried out in the Nevada desert, was part of a series of three In the first few days of September last year - immediately prior to the attacks of the 11th, the New York Times carried a major investigation which at any other time would have been a story of huge significance...It revealed three secret bio-defence projects at a time when the American people believed none was taking place. One - run by a contractor - Battelle - was to create genetically altered anthrax. The question now is - are there more such projects?

MILTON LEITENBERG:
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND:
now we've discovered that the CIA is in this business too, though presumably only through contractors. But we don't know how many contractors. One contractor is now publicly disclosed, Battelle, that did one of those projects. There may be other contractors, so there was this whole story has not been clarified publicly, so that's the rest of your iceberg, in other words we don't know how many contractors, we don't know how many projects.

WATTS:
The 1998 paper study on anthrax in the mail was one secret project. Dr Rosenberg is making the astonishing suggestion that there may have been a deadly follow-up by somebody else. Last time she questioned the investigation, she was attacked by the FBI and the White House. But she says she's prepared to speak out again because she's so afraid of what might happen next.

DR BARBARA ROSENBERG:
FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS:
This person is.. knows a lot about forensic matters, knows exactly what he can be prosecuted for and what he can get away with and I think he had some personal matters that he might have wanted to settle but I think in addition that he felt that biodefence was being under-emphasised for some time in the past

WATTS:
Rosenberg's claims are astonishing but she's an insider with good contacts. She thinks the FBI must act soon.

ROSENBERG:
I think the time is rapidly coming when it will be very important to bring him to trial, even if they don't think they have sufficient evidence. This might at least, if not result in a criminal conviction, make it possible to bring civil charges somewhat like what happened to OJ Simpson in the past. So I think it's time to start moving because it's very important from the point of view of deterrence of any possible future terrorist.

WATTS:
America's desire to protect its biodefense programme from scrutiny at all costs was part of why it walked away from an international agreement to control biological weapons last summer. Could its near obsessive secrecy have come home to roost? breeding a climate that allowed one of its experts to take a step too far and turn bio-terrorist against his own?

THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS READ OUT AFTER THE BROADCAST : The CIA have told Newsnight they totally reject Dr Rosenberg's theory and say they were unaware of ANY project to assess the impact of anthrax sent through the mail.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.