The Baltimore Sun reports: "Adding fuel to a debate that has simmered among scientists since the 2001 anthrax attacks, an article published today in Science magazine says that the deadly spores mailed to two U.S. senators contained sophisticated additives to make the powder float more freely in the air. If confirmed, such a technical innovation might be an important clue in the seemingly stalled FBI investigation, narrowing the field of potential suspects to people with access to such additives and expertise in using them. It would point away from an alternative possibility: that a person with modest scientific skills working alone in a home lab could have made the powder, which killed five people and sickened at least 17 others in October and November 2001. The latter possibility appears to have been the leading theory guiding FBI agents who over the past 18 months have sunk huge amounts of manpower into investigating former Army biowarfare expert Dr. Steven J. Hatfill."

"A Marine has received a bad-conduct discharge for refusing an anthrax vaccination, officials said. Lance Cpl. Kevin Lotz, 21, a machine-gunner from San Diego stationed at the Twentynine Palms base, pleaded guilty this week and was sentenced to two weeks in military jail. After the sentencing, Lotz said he still thought the military's vaccination stance is wrong. He refused inoculation in December, he said, because research convinced him that it was not safe."

"The Federation of American Scientists has asked the Defense Department to release an unclassified report on lessons learned from the 2001 anthrax attacks that the Department has withheld for over a year. The report emerged from a December 2001 meeting organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and ... explored medical and public health issues related to bioterrorism; law enforcement and national security concerns; and an integrated approach to crisis management and response, according to a brief description on the CSIS web site. The resulting report, 'Lessons from the Anthrax Attacks: Implications for U.S. Bioterrorism Preparedness,' presented 'a whole series of specific recommendations and policy proposals,' said David Heyman of CSIS, the report's author. Yet few of those recommendations have been implemented or even received a public airing because the Defense Department has blocked the release of the unclassified report."

From this week's "Nature Magazine": "Researchers [including Timothy Read] have decoded the genome of the bacterium that causes anthrax. The sequence may aid diagnosis, and highlight new targets for vaccine and drug development." Left out of the list of course, was the additional forensics tool this new data provides. What do you want to bet this info gets swept under the rug by the FBI's Robert Mueller - just as did the results of the genetic analysis of the terrorist anthrax strains submitted by Read in late April, 2002. Two weeks later in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee (May 8, 2002), Mueller basically indicated he had nothing new to report. In addition, the FBI stalled publication of the analysis so that it would not come out in "Science" ("Nature's" U.S. counterpart) until May 9.

"The biggest terrorism-related mystery is who sent anthrax around the country and where he or she got the anthrax. Because 'only' five people died, compared with 3,000 on Sept. 11, 2001, the hunt for the anthrax killer has received less attention. Because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the search has receded more in the public mind. Around the Stevens house, however, it's still the big story. Robert Stevens, a photo editor who lived in Lantana and worked at American Media in Boca Raton, was the first person to die from the anthrax... News reports suggest that the anthrax may have come from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (AMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. It would be shocking and embarrassing to find that a former federal employee used government-made anthrax to kill Americans. So one reason for their $50 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the government, says the family's attorney, Richard Schuler, 'is to make sure the investigation continues.'"

Baltimore Sun reports, "Army scientists have reproduced the anthrax powder used in the 2001 mail attacks and concluded that it was made using simple methods, inexpensive equipment and limited expertise. The findings reinforce the theory that has guided the FBI's 18-month-old investigation - that the mailed anthrax was probably produced by renegade scientists and not a military program such as Iraq's. 'It tends to support the idea that the anthrax came from a domestic source and probably not a state program,' said David Siegrist... The new research, carried out at the Army's biodefense center at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, raises the disquieting possibility that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups could create lethal bioweapons without scientific or financial help from a state. The Bush administration had cited the possibility that Iraq might supply weapons to al Qaeda as a key reason for overthrowing Saddam Hussein."

Tom Flocco writes, "While we had originally planned a total focus upon Marine Lance Corporal Kevin Lotz and his refusal to submit to untested anthrax vaccinations, explosive additional documents, personal accounts, and congressional testimony uncovered in research necessitated an expanded treatment of the anthrax issue. Moreover, our conversation with a Defense Department - anthrax spokesman - only confirmed suspicions of an attitude of cover-up regarding safety issues and informed consent. Early symptoms of the anthrax shot -- dizziness, blackouts, fatigue, and blurred vision -- were enough incentive for some 2,000 National Guard and Reserve pilots to resign recently, rather than face medical loss of their civilian airline flight status and family income -- but at a staggering loss to taxpayers and national security for the shot program's failures."

Eleven Australian sailors serving on a warship in the Gulf have been sent home after refusing to have an anthrax vaccination ahead of possible military action against Iraq... The defense department spokesman said personnel would not be disciplined for refusing to have the anthrax inoculation. But one of the crewmen removed from the Kanimbla, electrical engineer Able Seaman Simon Bond, told Australian media he was threatened with administrative action if he refused the vaccine.

The FBI has focused on Dr. Steven Hatfill as the most visible suspect in the FBI's glacial Anthrax investigation. But "Three veteran investigators have independently narrowed the field of anthrax mailings suspects to a single Russian defector affiliated with two heavily implicated defense contractors and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - Kanatjan Alibekov, alias 'Ken Alibek,' the President of Hadron Advanced Biosystems." The accusers are Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, Michael Ruppert, and Stewart Webb. "Dr. Alibekov was the first Deputy Director of Biopreparat-the Soviet Union's leading biological weapons testing center. He oversaw military anthrax production for nearly 20 years, and was personally responsible for 32,000 employees at 40 facilities when he suddenly defected to the United States in 1992 to begin working for the CIA." Alibekov worked for the Battelle Memorial Institute, the CIA's chief contractor in Anthrax weaponization. Hadron is affiliated with Pug Winokur's Dyncorp.

Salon's Anthony York reports that scientist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg has worked to keep the anthrax investigation alive. "For months, Rosenberg has been quoted widely on all things anthrax... her memos began as an effort to pressure the FBI, which she has repeatedly accused of dropping the ball in its investigation. [Rosenberg says she has always been] careful never to name Hatfill, despite requests from everyone from the FBI to the media to the U.S. Senate. 'If there isn't a good reason for what they're doing, I think it's really disgusting that the FBI's done this," Rosenberg says, joining Hatfill's critique of the bureau. 'No question, it was the FBI who outed him. They informed the media before they searched his apartment [in June] so that the media would be there in their helicopters, etc. The FBI clearly did this on purpose.'"

"Dr. Steven J. Hatfill went on the offensive Sunday against the FBI for naming him a 'person of interest' in the investigation into last year's anthrax attacks, claiming the FBI leaked private information. The press conference came after Hatfill's attorneys filed an ethics complaint against Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging that Ashcroft continues to publicly stigmatize him... Hatfill was more personal in his defense this time around. The doctor excoriated the reporting of Nicholas D. Kristof, a New York Times reporter, whom Hatfill said published erroneous information in a Times story about Hatfill's having failed three lie-detector tests since January. At one point Hatfill called the story 'a total lie.' 'I have not taken, let alone failed, three polygraphs on anthrax since January,' Hatfill said...'Mr. Ashcroft has not only violated Justice Department regulations and guidelines, but in my view, he has broken the 9th Commandment: thou shalt not bear false witness.'"

An FBI forensic linguistics expert believes the US anthrax attacks were carried out by a senior scientist from within America's biological-defence community...Prof(essor Don) Foster told the BBC he had identified two suspects who had both worked for the CIA...Prof. Foster says the killer is likely to be highly patriotic individual who wanted to demonstrate that the US was badly prepared for an act of biological terrorism...he does not believe the killer will strike again as he has achieved his goal. He explained: "To that end his misplaced patriotism has worked. Today millions of government dollars have gone into research and anthrax antibiotics are now available to the public...My two suspects both appear to have CIA connections...the CIA and the FBI, are sometimes seen as rivals. "My anxiety is that the FBI agents assigned to this case are not getting full and complete co-operation from the US military, CIA and witnesses who might have information about this case."

"In 1999, working with just fragments of the genome of West Nile virus from a victim in New York, researchers rapidly and conclusively linked the NY isolate TO A DEAD GOOSE IN ISRAEL, determined that the strain was a wild pathogen (not a lab strain) and formulated detailed hypotheses as to how the pathogen made its way to New York. Now, considering that the anthrax team is working with not one but two or three complete anthrax strain genomes, with another 1,200 isolates 'on file' and are using the most advanced genomic screening techniques available (advances are now occurring on an all but weekly basis — 1999 is now 'the old days').....we are supposed to believe that, had those controlling the investigation been truly serious about nailing the culprit, they could not have done so by now?" So writes Cheryl Seal.

With the current questions surrounding the investigation of Steven Hatfill in the Anthrax case -- and that Anthrax was just detected in another New Jersey mailbox -- we are reposting this item from May. "Was this story in any U.S. paper? Nope - it comes from Canada's 'Globe and Mail'…'It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up. Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism.' Could there possibly be any connection between the delay in revealing the anthrax terrorist - already known to the FBI - and the 'elimination' of these experts/potential witnesses?.'' Is Hatfill the culprit or a scapegoat? Were the Anthrax attacks strictly the work of a lone perpetrator? Or is something more nefarious being covered up?

"In 1999, [Hatfill] maintained that he had 'respiratory and medical clearance to conduct research on Biosafety Level 3 pathogens [including] Plague and Anthrax.' He also asserted that he had 'working knowledge of the former U.S. and former BW [bioweapons] programs, wet and dry BW agents, large-scale production of bacterial, rickettsial, and viral BW pathogens and toxins....' Hatfill also noted on his resumé that he was the 'principal architect' for a pilot project to deal with a comprehensive response to a large-scale attack involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, including biological agents. Such a response would also include a 'rational approach to decontamination following threats with Bacillus anthrasis [anthrax] and other BW agents.' It was apparently for this pilot project that Hatfill and another researcher commissioned a report...Although Hatfill apparently did not request such information, [the] final report included specific details considering a mailed anthrax attack."

San Jose Mercury News reports, "The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window, is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history. Only in 1975 did Olson's family learn that the CIA had slipped LSD into his drink, days before his death. President Ford apologized for an experiment gone awry, and promised that the government would reveal everything about the case. But newly obtained documents show that the Ford administration continued to conceal information about Olson -- particularly his role in some of the CIA's most controversial research of the Cold War, on anthrax and other biological weapons. The documents show that two of the key officials involved in the decision to withhold that information were White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld... 'These documents show the lengths to which the government was trying to cover up the truth,' said the scientist's son, Eric Olson." Is this why the Anthrax terrorist remains free?

"Dr. Steven Hatfill, a bioweapons expert under scrutiny in connection with deadly anthrax attacks, on Sunday denied that he had anything to do with the mailing of the spores and decried what he said was a smear campaign against him...Hatfill said he had never worked with anthrax, noting that he has specialized in viral diseases rather than bacteria such as anthrax...Law enforcement officials...on condition of anonymity, have said Hatfill is one of about 30 scientists being looked at...Hatfill worked for two years for the Army Medical Institute of Infectious Disease, center of the nation's biological warfare defense research...Although he probably had access to anthrax, his primary duties didn't involve working with it, a spokesman for the base has said." Is Hatfill telling the truth? Are Ashcroft and Mueller too incompetent to find the Anthrax killer, or are they covering up a darker truth? We demand the truth!

"The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window, is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history. Only in 1975 did Olson's family learn that the CIA had slipped LSD into his drink, days before his death...But newly obtained documents show that the Ford administration continued to conceal information about Olson -- particularly his role in some of the CIA's most controversial research of the Cold War, on anthrax and other biological weapons...The documents show that two of the key officials involved in the decision to withhold that information were White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld...In 1993, Eric Olson arranged for his father's body to be unearthed and examined by a forensic scientist, James Starrs. Starrs concluded that Frank Olson had probably been struck on the head and then thrown out of the hotel window." Who would become CIA Director in '76 and help whitewash exposed CIA ops such as payola to the Media? Bush Sr.

The FBI is gingerly investigating "20 to 30 scientists" for the Anthrax terror - including Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who "has denied involvement in the anthrax mailings and complained to The (Baltimore) Sun in a March telephone message that he had been fired from the defense contractor because of media inquiries." "Hatfill and another scientist, Joseph Soukup, commissioned the report in February 1999 in their official capacity as employees of the contractor's biomedical sciences group." The report "was written by bioterrorism expert William C. Patrick III and describes placing 2.5 grams of Bacillus globigii, a simulated form of anthrax, in a standard business envelope, The Sun reported."

Salon's Anthony York writes, "The scientist who has been a persistent thorn in the FBI's side over its handling of the anthrax investigation finally got her audience in Congress this week. As the FBI continues to investigate who was behind domestic anthrax attacks last fall, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg came to Capitol Hill to brief Senate staff members about her own widely disseminated theories of who may be responsible -- and how the FBI has botched the search for the anthrax mailer... The meeting, which was requested by Rosenberg, lasted about 90 minutes. After Rosenberg left, Senate staff talked to FBI representatives for an additional 45 minutes." But no one will say whether Rosenberg convinced the staffers that a disgruntled government biowarfare scientist (or CIA contractor) is to blame.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg says the Anthrax terrorist "is a middle-aged scientist with a doctoral degree who works for a CIA contractor in Washington DC. She adds he has to know or have worked closely with Bill Patrick, the weapons researcher who holds five secret patents on how to produce weapons-grade anthrax, that he suffered a career setback last summer that embittered him and precipitated his campaign and that he has already been investigated by the FBI. Most crucially, she believes the suspect has in the past actually conducted experiments for the government to test the response of the police and civil agencies to a bioterror attack." So why is he still on the loose? "Either the FBI is under pressure from the Pentagon or CIA not to proceed because the suspect knows too much and must be controlled forever from the moment of arrest," she said, "or the FBI is sympathetic to the views of the biodefence clique or the FBI really is as incompetent as it seems." We demand Senate hearings!

The FBI has had nearly 9 months to figure out which right-wing government or industry scientist - among only a few dozen possibilities - killed 5 Americans with weaponized Anthrax, and tried to kill two powerful Democratic Senators. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists has privately named the prime suspect for the FBI and the media - and publicly described him in detail - but the FBI's investigation continues to drag on. Rosenberg will meet privately with staffers for Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Tom Daschle, D-S.D, who were sent the most lethal letters by the Anthrax terrorist, to increase the pressure on the FBI. Has Mueller truly fixed the FBI, or is the FBI only capable of investigating Democrats?

Judicial Watch "is suing the Bush administration for access to documents about last fall's anthrax attacks, asserting that top officials might have known the bioterrorist attack was coming... Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, said administration officials said last fall that some White House staff members had begun taking the antibiotic Cipro on Sept. 11, weeks before the anthrax attacks were made public. 'We believe that the White House knew or had reason to know that an anthrax attack was imminent or underway,' Klayman said. 'We want to know what the government knew and when they knew it.' 'We did not know about the anthrax attacks. Period!' said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman." [Gee Gordon, why don't we believe a word you say?] Klayman said the mistake goes beyond a bad judgment call. 'They deliberately withheld information,' he said. 'The political elite, they'll be protected from day one. The ordinary folks will be treated in a lesser fashion.'"

"Microbiologists…are beginning to wonder aloud whether the FBI's problem is not that it knows too little, but that it knows too much…The letter received by…Tom Daschle contained one trillion anthrax spores per gram: a concentration which only a very few US government scientists, using a secret and strictly controlled technique, know how to achieve….In February, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the FBI had yet to subpoena the personnel records of the labs which had been working with the Ames strain. Four months after the investigation began, …it had not bothered to find out who had been working in the places from which the anthrax must have come…prominent scientists have suggested that the FBI's investigation is being pursued with less than the rigour we might have expected because the federal authorities have something to hide. The FBI has dismissed them as conspiracy theorists...there is surely a point after which incompetence becomes an insufficient explanation for failure."

Richard J. Ochs writes: "Most commentators and the FBI agree that only a select group of Americans have easy access to the Ames strain of anthrax used in the letters mailed last October. But why would any of them want to kill and terrorize Americans? The clue is in the timing. A chronology of events suggests that the motivation was to boost passage of controversial legislation in Congress last October, called the USA Patriot Act. A number of unlikely 'coincidences' associated with the anthrax attacks makes it hard to believe that they were random... Senator Leahy received an anthrax threat after he expressed reservations about the Bill... Senate Majority Leader Daschle received the first Senate anthrax letter as he led the opposition to the original version of the Bill. No Republican received an anthrax letter." Check out the list of suspects, including BushDaddy's CIA. We demand a Blue Ribbon Commission!

The NY Times opines, "It has been seven months since the anthrax attacks claimed their first victims, yet investigators seem no closer to finding the culprit than they were at the beginning." Why? Because the FBI is missing the point by focusing on the DNA of the Anthrax. Of all possible political targets, two were chosen to receive the deadliest Anthrax of all: Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Pat Leahy (D-VT). What do they have in common? Hint - it's not an R. There are only a few dozen scientists in US government labs familiar with weaponizing Anthrax. Has the FBI checked their party registrations, and asked their colleagues about their political views? The Pink Panther could find this guy, so the question must be asked - is the FBI looking for the Republican Anthrax Terrorist (RAT)???

Was this story in any U.S. paper? Nope - it comes from Canada's "Globe and Mail" where, apparently, they still take investigative journalism seriously: "It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up. Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism." Could there possibly be any connection between the delay in revealing the anthrax terrorist - already known to the FBI - and the "elimination" of these experts/potential witnesses? We demand that an international investigation be launched into what may be the systematic execution of scientists who "knew too much."

Last October, a sophisticated scientist murdered several Americans, attempted to assassinate Senators Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Pat Leahy (D-VT), as well as terrorizing the entire nation. Six months later, that scientist REMAINS FREE TO KILL. Why??? Why has the FBI - with unlimited legal, financial and technological resources - not caught the Anthrax Terrorist? Is it because John Ashcroft is too busy chasing after California medical marijuana coops and Oregon physicians who assist in suicide? Or is it because the Anthrax Terrorist is part of a supersecret biowarfare program that violates US treaty obligations? After 6 months, WE DEMAND ANSWERS!

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen details mounting evidence that the source of the anthrax was a top secret U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland, and that the perpetrators involve high-level officials in the U.S. military and intelligence infrastructure. On March 23, the FBI officially announced that "exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was present anywhere the hijackers had been." If not the hijackers, who would have the capability to produce and disseminate the high grade anthrax? Is it mere coincidence that the new Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved the questionable use of anthrax vaccine on military personnel? Or that Harvard biophysics scientist and anthrax expert Dr. Don C. Wiley met with a very suspicious demise just a month after the attacks first began? Those questions only scratch the surface! When will the Bush Administration's investigations start producing long-overdue results??

On BBC's Newsnight, Dr. Barbara Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists made a dramatic charge: that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control. "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... This person ... 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... 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." Or is this the 'lone scientist' theory?

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who chairs the independent Federation of American Scientists' Bioweapons Working Group believes the FBI knows the identify of the perpetrator of the Anthrax attacks on Americans but is withholding it because it would embarrass the U.S. government. The evidence points to someone within the military's own bioweapons programs, and Rosenberg believes this individual has not been arrested due to the depth of his or her knowledge of the government's own programs to develop biological weapons. Her paper is now on the FAS Web site and it casts serious doubt on the interest of the national security establishment in pursuing justice since U.S. actions that violate international treaties could be revealed. "This guy knows too much," she was quoted as saying, including details of the U.S. bioweapons program that could come out in prosecuting him.

It's bad enough that Texas has given America the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Gramms, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, Enron, and the assassination of JFK. Now it turns out the so-called "Ames" (Iowa) strain of Anthrax really came from TEXAS. Let's give Texas back to Mexico. Remember the Alamo? Heck, that was 166 years ago! It's time to "get over it!"

Slowly but surely, the source of the deadly Anthrax is being traced to the US Army's biowarfare research facility at Fort Detrick, MD. Since the first Anthrax attack, Americans were told that the US biowarfare program was cancelled by Richard Nixon. But that has been exposed as just one more government lie. Towards the end of the Bush I administration, Anthrax specimens mysteriously began to disappear from Fort Detrick. In 1992, "an odometer-like device that records the use of a high-powered microscope had apparently been tampered with in a way that had concealed its use during evenings or weekends, according to court papers." In other words, the Anthrax thefts were an inside job. So who did it? If this was reported in 1992, why haven't they been caught? Who is covering this up? The Anthrax terror goes to the very heart of our super-secret intelligence agencies - and has Bush fingerprints all over it.

"An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992, and samples of the bacteria were shipped back and forth between that facility and Fort Detrick, Md., on several occasions in the past several years, according to government officials and shipping records...The Utah Spores, grown and processed at the 800,000-acre Dugway Proving Ground about 80 miles from Salt Lake City, belong to the Ames strain -- the same strain used in the deadly letters sent to media outlets and two senators in September and October. No other nation is known to have made weapons-grade Ames. And although it is legal to make small quantities of such agents under the provisions of an international treaty the United States has signed, experts said yesterday they were surprised by the revelation that a U.S. lab was producing such lethal material."

"A man accused of mailing hundreds of anthrax hoax letters to abortion clinics across the country was surprised to find himself on the FBI's list of 10 most wanted fugitives. He said he doesn't hold it against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft: 'I understand he's anti-abortion also. He's a good man,' Clayton Lee Waagner, 45, told reporters in court Thursday. Waagner was charged with a firearms violation and ordered held without bond at a short hearing in U.S. Magistrate Court. He was arrested Wednesday in suburban Springdale, Ohio, after using a rented computer at a copy shop."

Two more Democratic Senate offices were contaminated with Anthrax - Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Combined with Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Pat Leahy (D-VT), this brings the total to 4 liberal Democrats, 0 Republicans. Do YOU see a pattern? We do! So why are officials pretending it's merely a coincidence? Will they notice when the tally reaches 50-0?

"The FBI discovered a fourth letter yesterday that appears to contain anthrax spores, this one addressed to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) but bearing the same Trenton, N.J., postmark and handwriting as others found to contain the deadly microbes. The letter, discovered yesterday afternoon during a search through barrels of quarantined mail in Northern Virginia, was postmarked Oct. 9 and 'appears in every respect to be similar to the other anthrax-laced letters' found in Washington and New York, the FBI said…A previously discovered letter with the same postmark was sent to Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), and two others postmarked Sept. 18 in Trenton were mailed to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post." Other than the Post, all of the targets were Democrats and enemies of America's radical right. Why hasn't this evildoer been found? Is Ashcroft protecting his backers in the radical right???

"A Pakistani native whose home was searched by the FBI said Wednesday that agents asked him about anthrax and other biological agents and also seized his computer, medicines and financial records. Asif Kazi, 39, who is the Chester city accountant, also said his television screen and furniture were swabbed. He denied any wrongdoing. 'I haven't had a parking ticket in my life. I'm shaking. We watch The X-Files on television, but we never thought it would happen here,' said Kazi, who came to the United States from Pakistan in 1999. His home was raided Tuesday by about 30 FBI agents and a hazardous materials team, along with the home of two brothers who are also Pakistani natives who work for the city. Armed FBI SWAT teams spilled from black sport utility vehicles to raid the homes. Neighbors said agents used battering rams to break through the front doors."

When it comes to finding the terrorists who sent the Anthrax letters that have murdered 4 people so far, the FBI is officially clueless. One of our members called the FBI and urged them to track down everyone who has bought a gas mask in the 6 months before the first Anthrax attack. We'd add moon suit purchases too, as well as any mysterious thefts of such items. Notice the pattern: NONE of the people checking into hospitals with Anthrax infections were terrorists. So how did they protect themselves through all of the steps involved in procuring, handling, and mailing this deadly stuff? As the Apple ads say, Think Different.

"Despite the letters sent to Mr Brokaw in New York and to Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader in Washington, calling for 'death to America' and praising Allah, agents are quick to point out the messages do not mean anything. The letters could have been sent by a right-winger, trying to stir up racial tension in the wake of 11 September and using the hijackings as cover...Investigators are also puzzled by the choice of targets. They do not bear the hallmarks of the hijackers...Mr Daschle, despite his prominence as majority leader, is a Democrat not a Republican (indeed, investigators have noted, few politicians have riled the right as much as Mr Daschle, with websites calling for a concerted effort to bring him down)...For right-wing groups in particular, making false claims about anthrax is a weapon of choice." So writes Chris Blackhurst for the UK Independent.

Larry Margasak of the AP writes, "The messages in anthrax-contaminated letters read 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel.' The work of a foreign terrorist, or a homegrown attacker manipulating his countrymen? Arguments can be made for either case, whether you analyze the content of the letters or try to tie the anthrax to a particular country... 'I think it's someone who's playing with us,' said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro. 'I think it's a nut. I don't think it has anything to do with foreign stuff.'" Sorry, Vincent, this is no "nut" - it's a sophisticated terrorist who is either acting alone, as part of a group, or as the agent of a government. And Bush had better find the culprit(s) - now, before they try something even deadlier than a letter!

"The federal government struggled...to reassure Americans about the safety of their mail in the face of hard new realities, as the surgeon general [David Satcher] bluntly said 'we were wrong' not to act more quickly to protect postal workers from anthrax threats. The head of the postal service said most mail is safe but it's impossible to guarantee that every piece is free of anthrax spores... Ultimately, he said, the postal service plans 'to use electron beams' to irradiate mail, a technique now used on some food products. 'But the most important thing we're doing right now is preventative,' he said, including the issuance of masks and latex gloves to many postal workers."

"Kenya's health minister says an envelope sent from Atlanta to a private Kenyan citizen has tested positive for anthrax spores... [It] was mailed September 8 from Atlanta via Miami and was received in Nairobi on October 9. It was opened on October 11. The letter contained white powder and pieces of cloth. The person who received it took it to the health ministry and it tested positive." Is this the work of a US racist, a visiting foreign terrorist, or has the whole world just gone mad?

"Law enforcement officials hunting for the source of anthrax that has turned up in U.S. mailboxes lack an important tool that might help solve the mystery, some terrorism and public health experts say: a full list of the laboratories that keep anthrax on hand. The Clinton administration asked Congress in 1999 to require U.S. laboratories to list all their dangerous biological agents, including anthrax, with the federal government. But the proposal failed amid fears that it would inhibit medical research...The proposal did not gain momentum because bioterrorism was not perceived as a major problem, said one former senior Justice Department official."

"The Capitol and office buildings for the Senate and House of Representatives will be closed starting tomorrow to conduct tests that can detect the bacteria that cause anthrax...The decision to conduct widespread environmental testing in and around the Capitol came in response to Daschle's announcement that 31 people…were exposed to the potentially deadly bacteria when a contaminated letter was opened there Monday...Later in the day, Sen. Russell Feingold's (D-Wis.) office [next to Daschle's] announced that two members of his staff also tested positively for exposure to the bacteria…In addition, anthrax spores were also detected in a Senate mail room in the Senate Dirkson building, sources said…Hastert also reported that a suspicious package that came to his office…It remained unclear as of midday today whether the anthrax spores sent to Daschle's office had indeed been milled to a very fine particle size as some sources had reported yesterday."

"Anthrax has been discovered in Gov. George Pataki's Manhattan office, the governor said Wednesday. Tests taken Monday night in a room used by his State Police security detail came back positive Wednesday morning, Pataki said."

"As tests confirmed more instances of anthrax exposure, the Bush administration today announced a huge expansion of its program to deal with the threat. It said it was moving to buy antibiotics that could be made available quickly to treat up to 12 million people, six times the number that could be treated by drugs now kept in reserve. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said the White House would ask Congress for an additional $1.5 billion for the purchase of the antibiotics and for other programs to combat bioterrorism... The Department of Health and Human Services said that as part of the $1.8 billion package it would also request new money to accelerate and increase the production of the vaccine for smallpox, widely seen as another grave bioterrorism threat; to improve hospital preparedness for a bioterrorism attack; to hire more epidemiologists; and to improve security at laboratories handing bioterror agents."

"How did [William Job] Leavitt and [Larry Wayne] Harris, identified by the FBI as a self-styled lieutenant colonel in the hate group Aryan Nations, get their hands on anthrax? What were they trying to do with it? Where would the men - both renegade microbiologists - come up with $20 million? Was there a third man involved? And were they really considering a biological attack on a major city? Harris and Leavitt remain in custody while federal agents determine if the anthrax was indeed military grade, strong enough to kill hundreds of thousands of people, or simply an anthrax livestock vaccine. Just last summer, Harris discussed how easy it would be for him to kill hundreds of thousands of people in New York City's subways in just such an attack, 'No smell, no taste, no kaboom,' he said. He allegedly claimed that the Iraqis would be blamed for the event, the FBI said in its criminal complaint." Reported by ABC News, Feb. 20, 1998.

"ABCNEWS officials said that a 7-month-old boy who visited the network's headquarters in New York on Sept. 28 contracted the cutaneous form of the disease, which officials say is highly treatable. The case is being investigated by the New York city police, the FBI and health officials, who said they have no evidence that anyone else at ABC has contracted the disease."

According to Juliette Kayyem of the Kennedy School, the media "'has not been a particular target of Islamic fundamentalist groups or groups we associate with Sept. 11. It has been a target of right-wing groups in America.' The one thing that Islamic radicals and American right-wing radicals have in common, she added, is a paranoid belief that American media outlets are pawns in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. And one of the letters that has been a focus of the anthrax investigation in Florida came with a Star of David inside... At Harvard's [Kennedy School, Jessica Eve] Stern also finds some logic in suspecting the media attacks may have a domestic origin. 'Right-wing extremists,' she said, 'are obsessed with biological warfare.' She has studied a former member of a neo-Nazi group who in 1997 was arrested - though the parole-violation charges were later dismissed - for claiming, falsely, that he had 'military-grade' anthrax in his possession."

To learn about Anthrax, London's Guardian has an interactive page.

"California is the latest state to report a possible case of anthrax exposure. An employee of Sony Pictures in Culver City has been admitted to the hospital after opening an envelope containing a white powdery substance, a local law enforcement official said. 'When he opened it, he took an item out and got a white powdery substance on his hands,' Culver City Police Lt. Dave Tankenson said...Other suspicious substances were reported and are being investigated at The New York Times and a subsidiary of Microsoft in Reno, Nevada. Reno authorities said tests indicated the substance there was unlikely to be anthrax. Anthrax is NOT CONTAGIOUS among humans, and skin anthrax is more treatable and not as serious as the inhaled form of the disease, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson."