Anthrax 2001, a spaced odyssey

Introductory essay: www.jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2010/4/27/american-anthrax/

Anthrax Story Features: http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/anthrax-addendum/

“When, in 1934, Stalin had a Leningrad party boss killed–and then wept at the man’s funeral, railing at the enemies of Russia–a uniquely modern phenomenon, which I shall call state vendetta, was born.  State vendetta is somewhere between conventional warfare and mafia violence.  Where the narrow aim of the former is to suppress a specific enemy, and the indiscriminate aim of the latter is to terrorize all rivals, state vendetta is closer to ritual assassination.  Blending secrecy with rumor, death with propaganda, the totalitarian chieftan or oligarchic group aims above all to manipulate public opinion, terrifying the populace into submission.  The elimination of a specific opponent is never the issue.”

…”More recently, circumstances surrounding the events of September 11, 2001, have been interpreted by a majority of the population in ways that differ markedly from the official version, yet the fear of being branded a conspiracy monger effectively deters the average citizen from delving too deeply into the controversy.  This is precisely the sort of emasculation of public opinion that state vendetta aims to achieve.”

…”Given such symbiosis, any observer of the epoch who is not a conspiracy theorist is not deserving of the name of historian, while any citizen of democracy who is afraid to read his books is not deserving of the name of citizen.”

— Andrei Navrozov,  June 2010 issue of CHRONICLES

           

Anthrax Revisited

On the seventh day after September 11, 2001, two letters filled with an unusual powder were mailed in central New Jersey, bound for the New York City offices of NBC, addressed to Tom Brokaw and an Editor at the New York Post. At that time, only the perpetrator(s) knew that the second wave of domestic horror begun on 9-11 was underway. Public attention to the “anthrax attacks” did not accrue for another two weeks when a Florida photo-editor, working for American Media Incorporated in Boca Raton, collapsed into a coma and died within 3 days after his admission to the hospital (Oct. 2-5).

   On October 7, 2001, the U.S. declared war on Afghanistan’s Taliban for harboring Public Enemy #1, Osama bin Laden. Two days after that, on the 9th, another pair of powdery missives were stamped by the automated sorting machines in the Hamilton, NJ, mail center outside Trenton. These two envelopes were headed for Washington, D.C. bearing the names of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. They arrived for processing at the USPS’s Brentwood Road distribution center where at least one of them, the Daschle letter, was confirmed to have passed through at 7am on Oct.12, three days after mailing. From Brentwood, mail going to Capitol Hill was merely a few hours away from personalized delivery.

   Perhaps the Daschle letter went unnoticed nestled in a stack of mixed material, awaiting the hands of a staffer who fatefully sliced it open on Monday the 15th and released a cloud of aerosolized spores that spilled onto the carpet and even into the neighboring office suite. In the minutes and hours that followed, garbage bag-wielding agents demanded the return of unopened Congressional mail which was whisked away to an impromptu quarantine facility where it sat in isolation for weeks to come. It was not until mid-November that the unopened Leahy letter was found among the quarantine collection, “leaking like a sieve” with a needle-like hole through its paper sheath. Deadliest of the four “recovered” envelopes, the Leahy letter was said to contain a super-weaponized grade of highly refined spores –a powder so dangerous, in fact, that a robot was required to handle it. The ‘opening’ proceedure was delayed an additional month, to mid-December, until it could be done remotely in a special-made vacuum containment — a box within a box within a box.

    But something more was not right with the Leahy letter. CDC investigator Jim Hayslett had been dispatched to Washington with the task of tracking down this letter which had been “misread” by the Brentwood scanning machine and redirected to the State Department’s mail center. It should have received a coded State Department stamp as it returned into the automated routing system –it did not– but spores from the envelope allegedly dirtied the State’s mailroom and severely sickened a worker there. It was Hayslett who later learned that the “undelivered” Leahy letter actually did arrive in the Senator’s office. A staffer remembered it, he said, and handed it in for collection. Not one single spore was left behind in Leahy’s suite.

    Florida’s American Media Inc., similarly, showed no anthrax spores in the likeliest of places: the air ducts leading directly from the mailroom “hot zone”. The victims’s homes were free of spores.  It was reported that the attack’s last fatality of five, in Connecticut, died as a result of thrice cross-contamination, emanating from the Leahy letter as it entered the system in New Jersey. A federal panel of medical experts, who were stymied in their deliberations, finally concurred that the 94-year-old must have exposed herself by tearing up her junk mail. They had no evidence, but seldom do inconvenient facts stop official panels from constructing conclusions: that’s why we pay them.

The official story goes something like this:

Four (4) anthrax-laden letters were sent through the U.S. mail; two, post-marked September 18, went to newsmedia outlets in NYC and two, post-marked October 9, went to Washington Democratic senators. Three of them ‘hit the mark’ and one was intercepted on its way.

Does this scenario sound like the planes on 9-11?

   A great deal of effort was expended by the feds to forge connections between the hijacking terrorists of September 11 and the anthrax attacker(s). In the months immediately post-911, anthrax became the leading suspect highlighting complicity on the part of Iraq, but it could not be proven –so, it must have been an inside job! Months turned into years, the investigation was dubbed with a catchy name (Amerithrax), and the circus focused on a bioweapons researcher who worked for the government and had helped the investigators track the source of the pathogen. The FBI launched the largest investigation in its history –over 9,000 interviews and 5,000 subpeonas– and Dr. Bruce Ivins was the last man standing scrutiny until his suicide on July 29, 2008, on the cusp of a federal indictment. Shortly after, his guilt was posthumously declared and the case was officially closed.

End of story, almost.

   Details of how the bureaucratic negligence of U.S. agencies and contractors which led to the anthrax attacks could be forthcoming any year now. The ‘wrongful death’ lawsuit concerning  photo-editor Robert Stevens, filed on behalf of his family in 2003, has been permitted to proceed by the courts and is scheduled for another round at the bench sometime in 2011.  If Armageddon and the Dimension Shift don’t interrupt the court proceedings, we might get to hear the bitter end of this tale.

And so reads the last entry of the Timeline, logged November 2011: …”In the end, the government conceded the anthrax came from one of its Army labs at Fort Detrick, Md… ” http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-11-30/news/fl-maureen-stevens-anthrax-lawsuit-20111129_1_anthrax-scientist-anthrax-attacks-bruce-ivins

Editor’s Note and Comments

This blog is pursuing a theory to construct an alternate probabilty in the unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001.

The working theme is that the First Victim, Bob Stevens of American Media Inc., was a carefully orchestrated murder as were the four deaths that followed.  Mr. Stevens’s death was the ‘wake up’ to officials that there was a biological attack in progress. Gaps and inconsistencies in the reported stories suggest room for this as likely. The owners of AMI and their business interests are being explored. Bob Stevens’s spinal fluid was flown by corporate jet to Arizona for hasty confirmation of anthrax by a Los Alamos specialist, Paul Keim, who made an effort to determine the strain. The editor thinks it’s probable that Mr. Stevens was contaminated elsewhere (North Carolina, perhaps) and his office was planted with anthrax spores after the AMI employees were barred from re-entry. This event is key. The “anthrax strain evidence” resembled a three-ring circus and has largely been discredited.

Barbara Honegger is one of the “inside job” journalists who brought a fact to light about the prepared White House ‘memo’ recommending unwarranted wiretapping of Americans: the anthrax attack was pointed to as the primary cause for this illegal surveillance, and the memo recommendation draft was observed on October 4 –the same day Mr. Stevens infection was announced, and a day before his death. If true, the WashD.C. memo indicates that the attack was prepared, “in the chute”, and perhaps carefully timed. The strongest indicators that the Anthrax Attack was NOT what it seemed are the letters themselves.

The next two victims were Postal workers from the Brentwood Road post office in Washington D.C. Shortly after their deaths, a Postal Service forensics specialist announced that they believed only three anthrax letters were circulated in the mail, opposing the publicized theory that seven letters had been sent. A third worker who developed an inhalation-infection before the other two could have inadvertently transmitted the anthrax to his fellows from the express mail sorting center where he bagged D.C.-bound mail and carried it to Brentwood. The three men were “the closest friends” who saw each other socially. And then there was a fourth worker from Brentwood who fell ill, checking himself into the hospital on the last day of postal-worker fatalities. He is described only as “an unidentified man”, who recovered faster and was released. His identity has remained a secret though he was said to be a floor supervisor among the 2,000 postal workers who were active at the “sprawling” Brentwood mail center in 2001.

Motive against the USPS, which had the power to launch its own investigations into ‘mail (and wire)  fraud’  often leading to indictments in phony securities and drug smuggling cases, does not need proving. USPS workers also help maintain a public service ‘exposure’ website called Judicial Watch. It’s been suggested that the anthrax contamination cost “billions” to the USPS and that there are additional deaths and illnesses officials omit. Proof of additional anthrax cases is absent. New York City reported no anthrax cases among postal workers, although some deaths were thought to be stress related. On the subject of the six contaminated post offices in South Florida, the media goes silent; no names, no deaths, no illness. In the apparent route of postal processing, we’re told, the closer to end-point delivery, the more lethal the ‘letters’ became, and yet this is not what happened.  Bob Stevens’ workplace, AMI, was reputedly swarming with spores. Why wasn’t one South Florida case of anthrax reported among the postal workers there? Strangely, mail sent from Brentwood that was isolated and shrink-wrapped at a Kansas City stamp facilty that tested positive, proved to have no trace of contamination. The Kansas City ‘spores’ were limited to postal workers’ trash cans.

A disturbing anomaly about the Brentwood Rd USPS contamination is this : an inconsistency of timing in the Brentwood Rd. contamination is the claim that the postal workers who developed lethal infections were exposed from a sorter-machine cleanup that used blower equipment on the morning of October 11. Mr. Leroy Richmond’s lawsuit ‘discovery’ revealed that the Daschle letter did not pass through the facility until the 12th. By then, several lawsuits were in progress and it wasn’t in anyone’s interest to reconcile this discrepancy. While Mr. Richmond was in the hospital, and memories were fresh, his Brentwood supervisor came to his bedside to help reconstruct the exact sequence of events that led to his exposure. It was agreed that Mr. Richmond’s cleaning activity on the the 11th was the cause of his infection. (See the Washington D.C. page for more). Does it matter because (a) it was not a normal duty of Richmond’s routine as a floor supervisor and (b) he may have been at the airport facility on the 12th?

The last two victims were a ‘hospital supply room’ worker in Manhattan and a random-seeming ‘little old lady’ in Connecticut. A theory of cross-contaminated mail is supposed in the deaths of these two women. The elder woman in Oxford, CT had a distant neighbor’s mail test positive for “a spore”, said to have followed the Leahy letter in the sorting machine by 15 seconds, but the Leahy letter’s circumstance, by accounts, is highly suspect –it turned up on Nov. 16 in an undelivered mail quarantine bag “leaking like a sieve” and yet was known to have been delivered to the senator’s office over a month earlier, around the same time as the Daschle letter reached its destination. The Leahy senate office tested completely negative, while the ‘Leahy letter’ found later, “undelivered”, had a mysterious pinhole in the envelope and contained an even more deadly “super weaponized” anthrax powder when it was found.

Only four “evidence” letters existed. The first two recovered, from the New York Post (which was unopened) and NBC, both mailed Sept.18, were identical copies. The Washington D.C. anthrax trail appears unexplainable by means of cross-contaminated letters. Other anthrax-tainted mail was recorded outside the country. This “trail” must be telling a story…  The FBI conducted the largest investigation in its history, over 9000 interviews, 5000 subpoenas and could not nail a suspect. The anthrax attacks were seized upon in the media spin as a primary link to Iraqi involvement and,  failing that,  evolved as an ‘inside job’ .

The Anti-Defamation League summed up its review of prior anthrax hoaxes this way: “The period 1995-2000 resulted in America inadvertently telegraphing to the entire world, as well as to dissidents and malcontents within its own borders, how vulnerable the American psyche was to the threat of anthrax, to say nothing of the American critical infrastructure.” http://www.adl.org/learn/anthrax/hoaxes2.asp  The first anthrax hoax in this cycle to gain national attention happened at the D.C. headquarters of B’nai B’rith in April of 1997.

Webster Tarpley wrote:  “The anthrax incidents of October 2001 must be regarded as an integral part of the entire 9/11 operation. The 9/11 terror attacks were highly effective in terrorizing urban populations, since no one knew when another city might be struck, and with what means. But what of the vast suburbs, and what of rural America? Here kamikaze aircraft, poison gas and dirty bombs were hardly likely. But everyone in the country had a mailbox, and now that mailbox could become the delivery system for a deadly disease. Even the most humble and obscure person living in the most remote location could never be sure that a piece of junk mail in the letterbox had not brushed up against an envelope teeming with lethal anthrax spores. The most harmless daily routine, that of checking the mailbox, suddenly became a tense encounter with the world of biological warfare.  The anthrax attacks also provided a most welcome pretext for the Bush administration and the FBI to scale down and to slow down the ongoing probes into 9/11. The anthrax letters provided a reason to re-assign FBI agents to the new danger, before they got anywhere near unearthing the explosive secrets of 9/11. On October 10, FBI assets were shifted away from the 9/11 investigation with the explanation that they were needed for the anthrax emergency. At the same time the anthrax attacks, if properly regarded, can become the Achilles heel of the entire 9/11 operation…”http://www.american-buddha.com/911.syntheticterrormade12.htm

Isn’t it an interesting choice of words by Tarpley that the last two of five anthrax fatalities fit the description of “most humble and obscure”? Kathy Nguyen was a Vietnamese immigrant living alone in a poor section of New York dominated by Puerto Ricans. Ottilie Lundgren was a 94-year-old widow living alone by the woods in a hilly Connecticut hamlet. These women had something in common: they were both devoted church-goers with regular habits, and neither of their cases turned up a plausible route of exposure. Are Tarpley’s words, perhaps, too insightful?

2001 Anthrax Attack

“The 2001 anthrax attacks had begun occurring in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, with anthrax-laced letters sent to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and the New York Post, all in New York City, as well as the National Enquirer in Boca Raton, Florida. Two additional letters (with a higher grade of anthrax) were sent on October 9, 2001 to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy [Leahy’s not opened until Dec.5] in Washington. Twenty-two people were infected; five died. In 2008, as the government’s investigation of these mailings focused on Bruce Ivins, Mr. Ivins committed suicide. The official view is that Mr. Ivins acted alone”…  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_%28journalist%29

…scientists analysing the anthrax from the attacks are comparing its DNA with a library of strains collected from all over the world. And in this collection, what’s called “Ames” has more interesting origins. It emerged in the mid-1980s from a freezer at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research, the British biodefence establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire.

   “The terrorists at least had access to considerable know-how,” concludes Michael Powers of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington DC. “This suggests some level of state involvement.” But [Ken] Alibek dismisses claims that milling the powder this fine is too hard for mere terrorists. “You can use readily available equipment to do this,” he says.

   “His view is supported by a secret experiment last year called Project Bacchus, in which employees of the US Department of Defense covertly produced a kilogram of bacteria similar to anthrax. It was milled to a few micrometres using machines available openly in the US.”

 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17223140.300-trail-of-terror.html

So why choose this strain? “Ames is certainly a challenge to any vaccine,” says Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. When lab animals immunized with the vaccine now being given to thousands of American troops are exposed to anthrax, many are still killed by the Ames strain.
“Alternatively, the attackers may simply have wanted a strain of proven virulence that’s hard to trace, says Ken Alibek, former deputy head of the Soviet bioweapons program. ‘If I were a terrorist, I would certainly not use a strain known to be from my country,’ he told New Scientist.” http://www.worldpress.org/print_article.cfm?article_id=242&dont=yes

[Feb 9, 2002] …”But the genetic trail may now have gone cold. Investigators hoped that samples from the dozen labs holding USAMRIID’s strain would be sufficiently different to reveal where the attacker got his bacteria. They include three US military facilities: the navy’s medical research lab, the army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and Battelle, a defence contractor based in Ohio. So far, all the samples tested in [Paul] Keim’s analysis have been identical. His lab is now working with the Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland to try and find more revealing differences in non-repeat DNA. But it’s not looking good-the labs have clearly been sharing the same bacteria. Hope now rests on analysing the way the anthrax was turned into the fine, floating powder that makes it a weapon…

“…to the expert eye, the envelope opened in Senator Tom Daschle’s office on 15 October obviously contained weaponised anthrax. It even resembled the powder the US military concocted in the 1960s…The US government insists it destroyed all its old weaponised anthrax. But in December [2001], an American journalist broke the news that Dugway had been making more for nearly four years under the tutelage of Bill Patrick, who ran the anthrax programme before 1969…Dugway undoubtedly weaponised Ames…

“THE US is vastly increasing its biodefence research in the wake of the anthrax attacks. But even though biosafety standards will be tightened up,  critics  fear  this  explosion  in research may only make another bioterrorist strike more likely. This  week  President  Bush  announced  an  $11  billion  increase  in biodefence funding over the next two years… Congress is finalising a Bioweapons Protection Act  that  will  demand  increased  security  and containment, and the registration  of  labs,  scientists,  and  the genetic fingerprints of laboratory pathogens, to track any future release… That could drive the research away from smaller university  labs,  even  though  they  tend  to do the most innovative research, says Martin Hugh-Jones… Soon only the biggest labs may be able to afford  the  few  experts  in the area.”  http://www.zcommunications.org/anthrax-attacks-by-debora-mackenzie

 

 

How common are anthrax outbreaks?

http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc9.html [about 3/4 down the page] Local veterinarian discusses anthrax threat during 2005 Bovine Connection

December 07, 2005, Sidney (Montana) Herald
In light of the tragic loss of 37 cattle in Roosevelt County earlier this fall, Schieber felt it was prudent to inform the large group about the potential risks of anthrax epidemics.
“Anthrax is not new, it’s been here for hundreds of years. There typically is an outbreak every five to 10 years. It is something that is here to stay,” Schieber said…“In the summertime if you suddenly notice a cow death, you have to suspect anthrax”…
Once the anthrax spores are hatched, the incubation period ranges from three to seven days. Symptoms of infected animals include fever, initial aggression, depression, muscle trimmers [sic], seizures, breathing difficulty and mild bloating. Death occurs rapidly.”

In the course of the unfolding 2001 Anthrax Attack, New York Times medical correspondent, Lawrence K. Altman MD wrote, “The normal incubation for inhalation anthrax is one to seven days” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/science/the-doctor-s-world-cdc-team-tackles-anthrax.html?pagewanted=3

     day 7, cutaneous lesion

Timeline

 

{{WORKSHEET}}     TIMELINE

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/euro … x.history/ Russian scientists first grew spores in secret labs in 1926. But anthrax didn’t become powerful until the 1950s, when experiments on rats produced stronger strains….
“Perhaps a million people worked in the anthrax program since 1926,” says Fyodorov. “Yes, some people went away to other countries … but (each person) only brings a fragment of the knowledge required to develop a strain.”

http://universitypress.info/USABiologicalTerror.pdf
In the early 1940s, the US and Britain began working on developing “anthrax bombs” which they intended to drop on German cities. According to Stanford University historian Prof. Barton J. Bernstein: “British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was advised that 1,000 projectiles, each of 500 pounds and containing 106 four-pound anthrax bombs, could destroy life in a 25 mile area…
Because the Germans surrendered before any of these anthrax bombs could be tested on German civilians, these biological bombs were instead dropped on the villagers of Gruinard, an island off the northwest coast of Scotland.
…the island became uninhabitable for more than 45 years”..

http://www.anthraxattacks.net/2009/07/the-anthrax-mystery-solved/  “…Israel’s bio-weapons programs dates back to the earliest formation of the Zionist state. Dr. Avner Cohen documents Israel’s program in his paper, “Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons: History, Deterrence, and Arms Control.” Cohen begins by describing how Zionists during the 1948 war poisoned the wells and water supplies of Arab villagers. According to Israeli military historian Dr. Uri Milstein, the typhoid epidemic that spread throughout the costal town of Acre in May 1948 was the result of Zionist Jews contaminating the Arabs’ water supply. In Gaza the Jews failed in a similar attempt. The Egyptian Army found four Jews disguised as Arabs near the water wells. The four terrorists were caught with a canteen filled with dysentery and typhoid bacteria. All four were tried, convicted, and hanged within a three-month period. Dr. Cohen questions if the two incidents were isolated or part of a larger program of bio-warfare during the 1948 war.”

 

—snips from this timeline>> http://www.heartson.com/Politics/anthra … eline.html are added and marked with [snip]

*

1948

“Philadelphia..1948,..a furniture factory worker died of inhaled anthrax…epidemiologists learned its source only after they tore apart his newly purchased wool coat and found Bacillus anthracis in one sleeve.

*

1949 — “In 1949 and 1950 [Dr. Frank Olson] worked briefly on “Operation Harness”, a joint US-British effort to spray virulent organisms –so-called BW antipersonnel agents– around the Caribbean, decimating untold thousands of plants and animals. At the time of his death Olson was developing a new, portable, and more lethal form of anthrax that could be put into a small spray can….According to his son Eric, Frank Olson also learned that the Americans were deploying Anthrax against enemy troops in Korea” http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articles/Chase.html

*

1951 and 1957.. two homemakers… died of inhaled anthrax even though they were never directly exposed to a source of spores. They lived or worked near businesses that handled hides or wool, but they had never set foot in them.” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/us/a-nation-challenged-the-inquiry-clues-overlooked-to-a-coming-threat.html

At this time, January 1951, the Nevada Proving Ground is activated with “Operation Ranger”

*

1952 —Israel Institute of Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona (also Nes Ziona, Nes Tona) a few miles southeast of Tel Aviv. In 1952 the IIBR consisted of a single building hidden in an orange grove. Today, the IIBR has grown into a massive 14-acre compound with several hundred employees surrounded by high walls and electronic sensors.

1954

U.S. devises first human quality anthrax vaccine

1957

Anthrax kills four New Hampshire factory workers

1966

“Manchester, N.H… in 1966, nine years after a fatal outbreak in workers at a wool-processing mill, Norbert Lemoine, a 46-year-old employee of a machine shop across an alley, died of an anthrax lung infection.”

1970

Michigan Biological Products Institute makes the only licensed US anthrax vaccine, based on a formula devised in 1954 and tested at the Arms Textile Mill in Manchester, New Hampshire (from 1955 to) 1957 when an “unexpected” outbreak kills four workers.

1972

144 nations.. signed the 1972 treaty banning biological weapons

1977

“In the Senate hearings held in 1977, we were in fact warned that the United States government reserved the right to continue attacking its own citizens in order to protect national security. According to Pentagon spokesperson, Lt. Colonel George A. Carruth, “additional tests” would be conducted in the future if the Army felt it necessary to assess our ‘vulnerability’ to biological attacks”  http://universitypress.info/USABiologicalTerror.pdf

1979

April — Bioweapon anthrax released from base ’19’ in Sverldovsk –96 human cases, 68 deaths. It had been claimed through unauthorized channels that there were thousands of victims. The Sverdlovsk release occurred in the initial fallout ‘window’ from the accident at Three Mile Island.  http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/histc … de/82.html

http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/publ … No%204.pdf
http://www.anthrax.osd.mil/documents/li … dlovsk.pdf

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117197&page=1

http://www.wbur.org/special/specialcove … e_bio2.asp  – “A mysterious outbreak of the disease killed at least 68 people 22 years ago in the Russian industrial center of Sverdlovsk, today known as Yekaterinburg (its former name). At the time, neither the victims nor their families suspected they had been hit by a biological weapon.”

—Zimbabwe anthrax on Tribal Lands in a civil war that included the use of bioweapons (1978-1980) http://www.whale.to/vaccine/anthrax_epizootic.html

— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hartford_Courant The Courant was purchased in 1979 by Times Mirror, the Los Angeles Times’ parent company. The first years of out-of-town ownership were described by a former Courant reporter in a book titled Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America’s Oldest Newspaper.

–Agora Inc., Baltimore publisher, founded (in conflict with a Maryland BBB listing which cites 1972)

1984

–Oregon,  followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh deliberately contaminated restaurant salad bars, leading to 751 cases of salmonella poisoning.

–Tokyo, the Aum Shinrikyo ‘yoga club’ is established [see the Bioterrorism page]. By the time of the 1993 anthrax attack and the 1995 sarin gas attack, Aum Shinrikyo claimed 40,000 worldwide members.

1988

Russian scientists hold US conference to present anthrax data on the Sverdlovsk incident.

http://www.bulldognews.net/anthrax_russ … break.html  “The amazing explanation Russian public health leaders gave for this episode will appall the reader, as it did those of us who heard their story when they visited the United States in 1988. These Russian officials fabricated a story of a foodborne epidemic brought on by faulty inspections by public health veterinarians….[David] Walker had no doubt that the 64 persons whose tissues he examined were victims of a release of anthrax aerosol that occurred for a few hours on April 2, 1979”

1991

The ‘Goldcor’ stock swindle is uncovered, the company president suicided and the major executive players regroup (in part) as The Oxford Club of  Agora Inc., “newsletter” publisher out of Baltimore. Link to info on Agora http://webindexnet.wordpress.com

1992

—Phillip Zack is said to have stolen anthrax from Ft. Detrick (Hartford Courant breaks this story after 9-11); “A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack’s, according to a report filed by a security guard……Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared…the specimens included hanta virus, simian AIDS virus and two that were labeled “unknown” – an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret.” [Jan 20, 2002, Hartford Courant]

— American scientists Meselson (Salk Institute founding Fellow), Guillemin (Meselson’s wife), Walker, Shelokov (Salk Inst.), et.al travel to Russia for an onsite anthrax investigation of the 1979 bioweapon release.

1993

–The first bombing of the WTC

–Porton Down bioweapons center (CAMR) is privatized. Dr. Zsolt Harsanyi is president of Porton International Products. Harsanyi is a Hungarian associate and co-investor with George Soros who founds the pharmaceutical company Dynport and later in 2004 becomes a director of BioPort, as does Jerome Hauer.

–the AUM SHINRIKYO cult in Japan sprays anthrax in a wide attack, which goes “unnoticed”; the event is used as proof that effective bioweapons are “hard to make”

–Marvin Bush becomes a director of Securacom (until 2000), responsible for security at Dulles Airport, Los Alamos, and United Airlines….

1994

–The analysis of the Sverdovsk/Yekaterinburg anthrax release from 1979 is published in Science magazine. The living members of the research team from the U.S. later have leading roles and influence in the 2001 anthrax attacks, especially in the characterization of suspects.

–“In 1994 Los Alamos helped provide some answers to one of the world’s most perplexing biological warfare puzzles: Why did 68 people living near a weapons plant in the former Soviet Union die suddenly in 1979?

…”Los Alamos researchers and others examined tissue from the victims. Tests confirmed that all were infected by an unnatural mixture of anthrax strains, indicating they probably inhaled spores released from the weapons plant… Today[2001], Los Alamos is largely mum on its current anthrax mission. Officials will only discuss in general terms the esoteric DNA analysis going on…The lab has highly advanced equipment, some of it able to run 100 times faster and 200,000 times more sensitive than conventional DNA testing….On the commercial side, the lab traced an anthrax outbreak in Australia to 145-year-old anthrax spores from buried cattle that had been imported from India….Until now, Los Alamos has not used actual bacteria in its studies” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011101/aponline145044_000.htm

1995

–March 20, Aum Shinrikyo cult perpetrates a SARIN gas attack in the Tokyo subway, klling 12 and injuring 5,500

–The (future) BioPort is founded by, among others, Fuad El-Hibri (Citigroup), Yoav Stern (IDF) and Nivi Zedivi (IDF). Stern and Nedivi also co-found Israeli Technological Acquisition Corp. and Kellstrom (Aircraft), located in the Boca Raton area. This post on BioPort opens with a dual account of BioPort’s founding: http://citizen2009.wordpress.com/bioport/ . The “1995” founding year is provided by Los Angeles journalist/author Alex Constantine who wrote the serial article “Project Anthrax”….Who’s Alex Constantine? –a musician-turned-journalist after his fascination with a satanic ritual murder case in San Francisco, making a name for himself as a 9-11 investigator. He blames the neo-Nazis within the US government and dismisses the involvement of Jews. Here’s an interview, in the archives: http://www.givemesometruth.info . Around minute 54 he says that lots of people had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks and someone called him a week in advance with a warning. Is it a coincidence that a former DEA director is named Thomas A. Constantine (retired July 2, 1999, and hired by the British)?

1996

 http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=jerry_hauer   “New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was created in 1996 by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to manage the city’s response to catastrophes, including terrorist attacks (see 1996). In the years preceding 9/11, it holds regular interagency training exercises, aiming to carry out a tabletop or field exercise every eight to 12 weeks. Mayor Giuliani is personally involved in many of these. The exercises are very lifelike: Giuliani will later recount, “We used to take pictures of these trial runs, and they were so realistic that people who saw them would ask when the event shown in the photograph had occurred.” Scenarios drilled include disasters such as a sarin gas attack in Manhattan, anthrax attacks, and truck bombs. One exercise, which takes place in May 2001, is based on terrorists attacking New York with bubonic plague (see May 11, 2001)… OEM will be preparing for a bioterrorism exercise the morning of 9/11…

–Pritzker Group forms Galaxy Aerospace, buying the “the assets of Astra Jet Corp., a struggling [[Princeton]] New Jersey company with a single product –the midsize Astra SPX.” and merging them in joint venture with Israeli Aircraft Industries. [IAI] http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/1995/10/04/24053/iai-stars-in-galaxy-production-reshuffle.html  ***In the 1980s, Bush family friend Jim Bath was an exclusive dealer for Israeli Aircraft Industries– Bath set up a company called SkyWay Leasing in the Cayman Islands and “Via Skyway, Bath brokered about $150 million worth of private aircraft deals to major BCCI stockholders” [p314, Family of Secrets, Russ Baker]

1997

— April 4, “Russia has developed a new variant of the anthrax toxin that is totally resistant to antibiotics and which could cause a catastrophe if it fell into the wrong hands…” http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1997-04-04/news/9704031628_1_anthrax-toxin-jane-russia

–April, B’nai B’rith headquarters receives a package HOAX of anthrax. The material turns out to be Bacillus cereus, an anthrax ‘simulant’ also capable of causing serious disease http://www.cnn.com/US/9704/24/bnai.brit … index.html

–the Lansing Michigan anthrax vaccine-maker (MBPI) is shut down by the FDA

—Martin Hugh-Jones, an epidemiologist and anthrax expert at Louisiana State University, said the Ames strain showed up in the field as recently as 1997, during a natural outbreak of anthrax among livestock in Terrell, Texas. The implication, experts said, is that whoever released the anthrax could have obtained it from animals with the disease. [Tribune, Oct 12, 2001]

—[snip]… The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) initiated a second project, “Clear Vision,” in 1997.

–Pritzker hires Deloitte Touche to process the ‘offer’ applications from cities for the new Galaxy Aerospace headquarters. In August/Sept, Fort Worth-Alliance is chosen: “The Galaxy and SPX are built in Tel Aviv and flown green to Alliance for completion”…

— Sept., another newly named “Galaxy”, Galaxy Aviation, is founded at the Boca Raton Airport, reincorporated from its predecessor company, Boca Aviation, owned by tax attorney Martin Greenberg. (by 2001, Galaxy/Boca will be certified to repair the Gulfstream jet, among others) http://www.aionline.com/news/single-news-page/galaxy-aviation-florida-chain-looks-beyond-state-lines/?no_cache=1&cHash=aee977  Gulfstream (General Dynamics) bought out (Pritzkers’) Galaxy/Astra corporate jet production in April 2001. Boca’s Galaxy Aviation may be the only small airport ‘repair’ certified for Gulfstream in the area.

1998

–BioPort becomes a registered business entity, buys out Michigan Biologic Products Inst. with borrowed money from the state of Michigan and inherits the defense contracts.

–the Monterrey Bioweapons watch organization records that in October 1998, a surge of anthrax threats begins  http://lxmi.mi.infn.it/~landnet/Biosec/cameron.pdf.

–Los Alamos: high profile spying case in 1998  http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2000_hr/cook.html … Dr. Peter Lee confessed in a plea bargain to having knowingly passed a document classified Secret Restricted Data to China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP) associates during one of his trips to Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

—[snip] ” The OraVax company..dealings with..government orders for a yet to be tested West Nile Virus vaccine…manufacturer directly connected to the major players..was developing a WNV vaccine before the 1999 outbreak….its VP went to Washington with Jerry Hauer and the head of Rockefeller University in 1998 to pressure President Clinton to stockpile billions of dollars worth of vaccines”

>>>prior to the 1999 oubreak of West Nile Virus,  no cases of WNV  had ever been recorded in the U.S.

1999

–anthrax threats (all hoaxes but one) comprise 82 of the entire 104 bioterror events in the U.S.

–the American ‘Sverdlovsk’ team issues a medical information abstract about the signs and symptoms of anthrax to prepare diagnostic criteria and bioterror countermeasures. They state cutaneous “lesions are painless“

–genetic sequencing of B. anthracis experiences “breakthroughs” at Los Alamos, by the work of Jackson and Paul Keim

Around this same time, a major breach of security at Los Alamos leads to another nuclear secrets “Chinese spy” case, resulting in the arrest of Dr.Wen Ho Lee

–Evercore Partners buy the National Enquirer and consolidate a string of other tabloids as the new owners of American Media Incorporated. The headquarters are moved from Lantana to Boca Raton.

—http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/messageanthrax.html  “In April 1999, [William C.] Patrick told Fox News that in two years there will be an attack with a sophisticated agent manufactured overseas. His prediction was not far off the mark.”

—[snip] July 1999: Thomas Inglesby, Hopkins Institute and top advisior of the Pentagon, writes his first popular scenario: “Anthrax: A Possible Case History” http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5no4/inglesby.htm

—Project Bachus (1999-2000) was a covert investigation by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency US Defense Department to determine whether it is possible to construct a bioweapons production facility with off-the-shelf equipment..and remain undetected. The secret Project Bachus was revealed to the public in a September 2001 article in The New York Times. Reporters Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad collaborated to write the article.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Bacchus

—October – the U.S. Postal Service issues Management Instruction EL-860-1999-3, titled “Emergency Response to Mail Allegedly Containing Anthrax”

—November – Japanese authorities release a sample of the anthrax used by Aum Shinrikyo in 1993 which the CDC doesn’t analyze until October 2001. It turns out to be the ‘Stern’ vaccine strain from Colorado Serum Co. In the same month, the cult’s jailed (since May 1996) leader no longer verbalizes even the ‘incoherent babbling’ that caused his removal from the courtroom over the previous two years. In a few more months (Feb2000) the cult re-emerges with a new name –the Hebrew ‘Aleph’– and launches new ventures in publishing, internet, and outreach.

—December, Dec. 1999, Chinese official visits Israel Aircraft Industries {Pritzker/Galaxy partner} http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/02/world/chinese-official-visits-israeli-aircraft-plant.html?pagewanted=1     ..top Chinese official concluded a five-day visit to Israel on Tuesday with an unannounced stop at a state company that is outfitting Chinese aircraft with sophisticated surveillance radar…Israeli press reports said the official, Li Peng, personally inspected the Chinese-owned, Russian-made aircraft at Israel Aircraft Industries’ headquarters outside Tel Aviv. The military contractor, owned by the Israeli government, is receiving a reported $230 million to equip the plane with its airborne radar system….The Israelis said further that despite United States concerns, they were offering to equip three more aircraft for China, in what would be one of Israel’s largest foreign military contracts to date.”

–“…in 1999 DEA seized 4,552 dosage units of Ketamine and by 2001, that had risen to 7,020,317 http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/history/1999-2003.html

2000

–[snip] March 2000: In early March 2000 at his home in Irvine, Orange County, California, Larry C. Ford, M.D., died of a shotgun blast. His death was later ruled a suicide, notwithstanding the fact that his firearms had supposedly been confiscated by the police several days before, after the attempted murder of his business partner, a crime for whichhe was a principal suspect. Only later was it revealed that Ford had served as a consultant to both the CIA and the chemical- and biological-weapons program of the South African Defense Forces, headed by Wouter Basson. Ford’s contributions to Basson’s program included lecturers on converting ordinary items into lethal biological weapons. After Ford’s death his Irvine neighborhood was evacuated for several days as federal authorities excavated a weapons’ bunker in Ford’s yard and removed samples of various toxic biological agents found in Ford’s refrigerators. The specific biological agents found in Ford’s home have never been identified by the authorities, nor have they reported if any toxic agents were found in the university and other laboratories used by Ford. An initially frenzied FBI investigation quickly became quiescent. One Ford associate reports that Ford had been in contact with BioPort Corporation, sole U.S. manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. Recently discovered evidence indicates that, shortly before his death, Ford was actively preparing to move his medical-scientific work abroad. Close Ford associates expected a revival of the investigation after the onset of the recent anthrax incidents but have observed no evidence of any current Ford-related activity on the part of the FBI or other agencies. [Forensic Intelligence International, LLC Re: Investigation into Responsibility for Recent Anthrax Incidents, Stephen P. Dresch, Ph.D.]

—June, 2000 “A merger [of the Chicago Tribune] with The Times Mirror Company.. effectively doubled the size of Tribune by adding more newspapers… The $8.3 billion transaction was the largest acquisition in newspaper industry history…[t]he merger added seven daily newspapers to the Tribune group, including the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant. Tribune was now the only media company with newspapers and television stations in the top three markets.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_Company

—[snip] July 2000, Germany’s Bayer AG negotiated an unprecedented sole endorsement by the FDA of the antibiotic Cipro (ciprofloxacin) for anthrax, despite the drug’s high risk, high price, and largely untested status…

                                      ________________________________________________

2001 –”In March 2001, an alert was issued by the National Counterintelligence Executive, a branch of the CIA, warning federal employees to be aware of “suspicious visitors to federal facilities.” There had been reports of Middle Eastern persons showing up at government buildings—many of them DEA offices—claiming to be Israeli art students. At first it was thought the Israeli art students might be Arab terrorists planning an attack. However, it later turned out the art students were indeed Israelis.” http://www.anthraxattacks.net/2009/07/t … ry-solved/
–“The Lone Gunmen, produced by Rupert Murdoch in 2000, revealed an extremely uncanny prescience of 9-11…pilot episode aired on FOX Television in March 2001. http://.bollyn.com/the-mass-media-the-9-11-cover-up

–In April [2001].., Gulfstream Aerospace parent company General Dynamics announced it would purchase Galaxy Aerospace for $330 million cash”…Galaxy is headquartered at Ross Perot’s Alliance Airport outside Fort Worth –”In the spring and summer of 2001, eight additional hijackers arrived in the United States and settled in Florida. Nine opened SunTrust bank accounts. Three others arrived in San Diego, rounding out the five-man team based in California. http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/01/911/Florida_terror_s_lau.shtml

*

 –July 10 — Gloria [Irish] first met one of the terrorists when he walked into the office of her company, Pelican Realty, around July 10. http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html#ne011031

*

 – “In August 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resumed the [BioPort anthrax] vaccine program, but only on a limited basis”..http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/fbirushjudgement.html

*

Sep 1 — “a Canadian study published on Sept.1, 2001…indicated that anthrax particles might be small enough to seep out of microscopic pores in envelopes” [see footnote] http://www.ndu.edu/ANTHRAX%20CHRONOLOGY.pdf   – 

*

[snip] Early September 2001: NY Times Investigation reveals Battelle to make genetically altered anthrax. In the first few days of September 2001 – 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…

–[snip] September 4. 2001: Details have emerged regarding a number of biological weapons research programs initiated by the United States. Under “Project Bachus,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) officials constructed a BW production facility using only materials readily available on the commercial market and produced “simulated” BW agents in 1999 and 2000…[The New York Times, September 4 and 5, 2001..]

*

BEFORE September 11 — Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly will later say (see Nov.1) that they received several anthrax threat letters before 9-11; Hannity will declare his matched the anthrax-containing, block-lettered envelopes.

*

September 11

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011023/aponline201158_000.htm  ..”On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was “a precaution,” according to one person directly involved…”

*

Sep 18 –”Investigators believe seven letters containing anthrax spores were mailed….Two recovered letters did not have a return address but were postmarked 2001-09-18 in Trenton, New Jersey”..  http://mindprod.com/politics/anthrax.html These two letters were sent to NBC News and the New York Post      —“On September 18, 2001, a scientist in Milwaukee tells police that he is building an anthrax delivery system in his basement. The unnamed scientist is drunk and having a dispute with a neighbor when he makes the comments to the police…The man is said to work in a bowling alley, but had worked as a senior research scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute, a private contractor working with the US government on bioweapons programs including anthrax. He was fired from Battelle in 1996 and again in 1999.” http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091801battellescientist&printerfriendly=true

 [[2008, 3 anthrax hoaxes http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=33907609]]

* day-by-day Anthrax Attacks from Sep 18 to Dec 8: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/chronologyanthraxevents.html

*

Sep 19 –this is the recalled day that AMI editor Bob Stevens and others opened the “Jennifer Lopez” love letter

*

Sep 20 –NBC  letter, addressed to Tom Brokaw, is postmarked Sept.20 from St. Petersburg, Fla…”The Brokaw letter matched two other biothreat letters….One was sent to Judith Miller [opened Oct.12]…and the other to Howard Troxler, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times.” http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/messageanthrax.html *  http://www.anthraxattacks.net/2009/07/t … ry-solved/

 …”During this period, the DEA was investigating the activities of Israeli organized crime. Israeli mobsters, along with the Russian Mafia, control the distribution of the drug Ecstasy in America. It should be noted there is no real difference between these two criminal organizations. It has been known for a long time that the Russian Mafia is made up of Russian Jews from the former Soviet Union. Questions still remain: Why were Israeli spies posing as art students interested in the activities of the DEA? What connection does the Mossad have with the Russian Mafia? The conclusion that best fits the known facts is that Israeli intelligence launched an operation against the DEA to protect their new intelligence asset, the Russian Mafia, from prosecution. After September 11, the activities of Israeli art students were seen in a new light. The FBI began to investigate the trail left by the Arab hijackers and found many of them had residences in Florida. Interestingly, one third of the art student spies were also based in Florida. It was discovered that some of the Israeli art students had addresses in the same locations as the hijackers. One commentator said that, at times, they were just yards apart….”

*

Sep 21 –The NY Post, Johanna Huden, “determined to be the first victim”, notices a blister on her finger which bursts the next day…She goes to a doctor on Sept. 29 but is “not properly diagnosed for weeks”. The “low-grade” anthrax-containing letter said to have caused her exposure was found unopened on October 19

*

Sep 22 –Hamilton postal center; Richard Morgano “has two mosquito-bite-sized spots on his arm”. He appears to be the first actual New Jersey case but the second chronologically reported, after Trenton letter-carrier Teresa Heller.

*

Sep 24 –Boca Raton, AMI; Ernesto Blanco “has onset fatigue which turns to fever, cough on Sept.28″

*

Sep 25 –Phillip Zack allegedly sent a letter to the FBI implicating Dr. Assaad

      –Stephanie Dailey, in the American Media Inc. mailroom, opens a second letter, believed to contain the anthrax that contaminated the Boca Raton building. (refer to Ed Lake)

    —“An envelope at NBC was tested negative. (The same envelope that later tested positive in October). This information didn’t become public. Barry Mawn, FBI doesn’t allow to investigate the NBC-Anthrax

http://www.policetalk.com/anthrax-fbi.html ” [from http://www.rense.com/general25/anthtime.htm ]*

Sep 26 –Bob Stevens first showed symptoms of sickness, according to his wife Maureen and their doctor Larry Bush, and yet he left for a 5-day driving trip to his daughter’s home in North Carolina(?)…”Mr. Stevens had traveled with his wife to visit a daughter and go hiking in North Carolina, but became ill on the drive back to Florida.” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/science/the-doctor-s-world-cdc-team-tackles-anthrax.html?pagewanted=2

*

 

Sep 28 — child of ABC News employee is exposed and develops cutaneous anthrax…”when Dr. Borkowsky first examined the infant’s skin lesion on Oct. 2, tests showed no evidence of anthrax. The infant also suffered kidney damage, bleeding and a type of anemia that rapidly destroyed red blood cells and required four blood transfusions. ”The syndrome this child had had never been described in anthrax” but had been linked to spider bites, Dr. Borkowsky said…[on Oct.12] Dr. Mostashari said the infant’s lesion looked exactly like the one that he had seen four hours earlier in Erin O’Connor, 38, the first recognized anthrax victim in New York City.  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/04/science/the-doctor-s-world-first-challenge-in-anthrax-case-not-missing-it.html

*

Oct 1 –AMI coworker Ernesto Blanco is hospitalized at Cedar Medical Center in Miami for pneumonia; Blanco has chronic respiratory disease. Overnight, at 2am on the 2cd, Bob Stevens checked into JFK Medical, adjacent to the Lantana Airport which has a ban on jet traffic –Stevens’ spinal fluid was flown by jet to Arizona on the 3rd.      — http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/us/nation-challenged-response-experts-adjust-approach-each-new-anthrax-case.html  ”The woman at CBS developed cutaneous anthrax, the most treatable form of the disease, on her cheek on Oct. 1.”….”Dr. Richard P. Fried told the city health department on Oct. 1 that a patient might have anthrax.” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/nyregion/a-nation-challenged-nbc-doctor-in-city-reported-anthrax-case-before-florida.html

*

Oct 2 — at 2am, Maureen Stevens drove her husband to the hospital.  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/science/the-doctor-s-world-cdc-team-tackles-anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 …”the patient himself was unable to communicate — he was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital in Atlantis, Fla., and died without regaining consciousness. So health workers had to interview his wife and family to reconstruct what he did during the preceding two weeks. …In all their work, the epidemiologists ”found nothing that was suspicious,” said Dr. James M. Hughes, a top C.D.C. expert who oversaw the investigation from Atlanta….Meanwhile, C.D.C. workers sought advice from Dr. Philip S. Brachman, an expert in anthrax epidemiology and a former director of the Epidemic Intelligence Service…Dr. Brachman said he reviewed his records from his days as an officer with the epidemic service in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when he investigated anthrax cases that developed among workers exposed to contaminated goat hair and wool at three mills in North Carolina and one in South Carolina. The mills are now closed, but given how long anthrax spores can live in the environment, Dr. Brachman wondered if Mr. Stevens could have contracted the disease in one of the cities where the mills had been.” * http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Hatfill,Stephen.shtml

   —“Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reports that on October 2, 2001 – just two days before the first anthrax case was reported in Boca Raton, Florida and a week and a half before the first anthrax was sent through the mail to NBC News in New York  – Advanced Biosystems received an $800,000 grant from NIH to focus on very specific defenses against anthrax: http://www.counterpunch.org/madsenanthrax.html ” [ed.–this should read: sent to the senators in Washington. New York-bound threat letters were sent in September]

*

Oct 3 –” doctors determine that Robert Stevens in Florida has been infected with anthrax (see October 3, 2001). A culture of anthrax bacteria is grown from a sample of his spinal fluid and quickly flown by corporate jet to Paul Keim. Keim is a geneticist at Northern Arizona University who had recently developed a means to distinguish between strains of anthrax. He and his team gets the sample on October 4 and work all night. By Friday morning, they tell investigators that it is the Ames strain of anthrax. (Flam 9/1/2008) The media will first report that the anthrax was the Ames strain on October 10. (Breed 10/10/2001) Despite Keim’s findings, the FBI will approve the destruction of a vital repository of Ames samples, also on October 10 (see October 10-11, 2001).” http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=paul_keim_1&printerfriendly=true

      —…”the Florida Department of Health laboratory was able to provide a rapid diagnosis of anthrax, thanks to the efforts of technicians who had recently completed a training course as part of the Laboratory Response Network funded with bioterrorism response money.” http://www.ndu.edu/centercounter/ANTHRAX%20CHRONOLOGY.pdf

*

Oct 4 –An “unusual” large team of 15 epidemiologists from the CDC are dispatched (13 by private jet) to South Florida         — news media and  AMI employees are informed of Stevens’ condition Oct 5 –Stevens dies at JFK Medical Center (Lantana). Another worker at AMI, chief librarian Martha Moffet, is ‘out’ with pneumonia at the time. Investigators go to the Stevens’ home, seal it with crime-scene tape, and test for anthrax. They find nothing.

—“[Stevens] had returned from a visit to North Carolina, but the only place he was known to have visited was Duke University about a week ago, said Debbie Crane, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health..” [New York Times] http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/nyt1a.html

       —St. Petersburg, hoax letter postmarked this day to Judith Miller (and presumably Howard Troxler)

*

                                                                       U.S.  INVADES  AFGHANISTAN

*

Oct 7 –[Sunday] AMI lawyer and VP Michael Kahane is called at 4 p.m. to evacuate and close the building. Hours of phonecalls ensue to instruct AMI employees to report to the health department in the morning.

*

Oct 9 –two letters to Senators Daschle [opened in the Hart Building office Oct.15] and Leahy [opened by experts Dec.5] are postmarked from Trenton. These bear the return address “Greendale School”

     — Troxler, from the St. Petersburg Times, receives a hoax letter that matches the  Judith Miller letter

     ––”Ms. O’Connor’s case [NBC News] of cutaneous anthrax was diagnosed on Oct. 9, rattling the city and setting off an intense investigation into its source…Dr. Fried said that on Oct. 1, after he first examined Ms. O’Connor, he told her she might have an infected spider bite or Lyme disease, but he did not mention anthrax…he re-examined Ms. O’Connor on Oct. 3 and on Oct. 8, when the lesion had developed into a black crust, which is characteristic of cutaneous anthrax.  But Dr. Fried and the health department were perplexed because anthrax did not grow on the culture taken from the skin lesion.”   http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/nyregion/a-nation-challenged-nbc-doctor-in-city-reported-anthrax-case-before-florida.html

On Oct.19 the NYTimes wrote “a few spores have been found at NBC”

*

Oct 10 –Stephanie Dailey, from AMI’s mailroom, is the third employee to test positive for anthrax and the last confirmed case in Florida –all Florida cases (3) are limited to AMI, despite contamination in 6 post offices

       —[NY] “..a postal supervisor, Laura Jones..died on Oct.10 and..worked at the Morgan Station [NYC] distribution center…Her death..had been attributed to hypertensive cardiovascular disease” [Oct 28, New York Times] http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/nyt1a.html

*

Oct 12  – at 7:10 am the “Daschle Letter” is fed by hand, processed and stamped by machine DBCS#17 at the Brentwood Road postal center in Washington D.C.

     –Judith Miller opens a hoax letter at her office  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_%28journalist%29   …”Born in New York City to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother, Judith Miller grew up in Miami and Los Angeles, where she graduated from Hollywood High School….Judith Miller attended Ohio State University…She graduated from Barnard College in 1969 and received a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 1971, while at Princeton, Miller traveled to Jerusalem to research a paper. She became fascinated with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and spent the rest of the summer traveling for the first time to Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon”…Miller started at the Washington bureau of the New York Times in 1977, part of a new post-Watergate intake. She and her boyfriend Steven Rattner, also a Times reporter, became close friends of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the son of the publisher of the Times….For several summers, Miller and Rattner shared a weekend house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with Sulzberger and his wife Gail. In 1992 Sulzberger became publisher of the Times in his own right.”

     —[FL]”So far, weapons experts say, the Florida case appears to be crude bioterrorism…the Florida anthrax particles apparently came in three sizes..” [New York Times, Oct 12, 2001] http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/nyt1a.html

*

Oct 14 – The anthrax-bearing NBC letter (mailed Sep18), addressed to Tom Brokaw, is found. It tests positive for ‘trace’ amounts left by a brownish granular substance. It’s the first of four recovered evidence letters.

*

Oct 15 –Daschle letter is opened  “.. 31 workers on Capitol Hill were exposed to anthrax spores from a contaminated letter sent to the office of Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader.” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/us/nation-challenged-response-experts-adjust-approach-each-new-anthrax-case.html

*

Oct 16 — White House press briefing, “QUESTION: Ari, can you talk about what the volume of mail response is to the White House, from the president’s request that children send in dollars for children in Afghanistan?
QUESTION: And also is there any concern at the White House that the president solicited this mass mailing right before we have all these concerns about what’s in the mail?….FLEISCHER:..as of yesterday afternoon the White House had received some 8,000 pieces of correspondence addressed to the children of Afghanistan, and then by 9:15 this morning it had been upped to 18,000. So obviously it’s coming in, and the president is very pleased..”    http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0110/16/se.16.html

*

Oct 17  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/17/us/nation-challenged-first-cases-jeb-bush-tries-avert-panic-2nd-anthrax-victim.html  ”Dr. John Agwunobi, the Florida secretary of health, said that health officials had tested 1,100 people, only 3 of whom have tested positive for anthrax exposure….But Dr. Agwunobi made no mention of five additional American Media employees who senior company executives have said tested positive for anthrax antibodies….State health officials also said today that they were testing a summer intern at American Media for exposure to anthrax after he suddenly became ill and was hospitalized on Sunday with flulike symptoms, a high fever and possible pneumonia….”He had a little fever,” said Hank Arizmandi, the student’s father. ‘ They thought the low-grade fever might be attributable to recent dental surgery. Jordan had a nasal swab for anthrax that came back negative. At the hospital, he was also given a blood test for anthrax.’ “

          —the House of Representatives is recessed for decontamination

*

Oct 18  –Officials in Kenya and Argentina report finding anthrax spores in letters mailed from the United States.      — http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/nyregion/a-nation-challenged-nbc-doctor-in-city-reported-anthrax-case-before-florida.html  ” Three days before anthrax was first detected in Florida, a Manhattan doctor called the New York City Department of Health to report a suspicion: one of his patients might have contracted anthrax.”

*

Oct 19  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/us/nation-challenged-response-experts-adjust-approach-each-new-anthrax-case.html   The response to the new anthrax case at CBS News was decidedly lower-key….The CBS News building, on West 57th Street in Manhattan, was not evacuated. Workers — including the woman who tested positive for anthrax spores — remained at their jobs. And health officials did not recommend antibiotic treatment for large numbers of workers. All this was in sharp contrast to the response at NBC when a case of cutaneous anthrax was diagnosed in an assistant to Tom Brokaw on Oct. 9, said Dr. Stephen M. Ostroff, an epidemiologist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

>> “a few spores were found at NBC”

       –the New York Post letter is finally found.

– Brazil
New York Times officials say that an envelope postmarked in New York City and received at the newspaper’s Rio de Janeiro offices contained anthrax. The letter was later deemed “not dangerous”.

     – Argentina
In Argentina, health officials say a travel brochure mailed from Florida to Argentina tested positive for anthrax.

—[Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10-19-01] …”Brian Levin, a professor of criminal justice and director of the center on Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernadino, said that ‘because of the sophistication needed to put together an anthrax threat and the timing of this, I think it’s far more likely that this is foreign rather than domestic” http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html

*

Oct 21 –Thomas Morris Jr., Brentwood Road (Wash DC) postal worker, dies

           –announcement that the Princeton Main Post Office has “significant amounts of anthrax.. throughout” http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2001/10/22/3665/

*

 Oct 22 –Joseph Curseen Jr., Brentwood postal worker (from Clinton, MD), dies. Mr. Leroy Richmond, who was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, is expected to recover. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/us/a-nation-challenged-the-doctors-experts-revisit-views-on-surviving-anthrax.html?pagewanted=1 . On this [Sunday] night, postal workers finally leave the premises and the facility is closed for the next 26 months.

      –A stamp center in Kansas City, Missouri isolates mail from Brentwood after employees wastebaskets test positive; “On Monday Oct.22, Stone ordered the trays [from Brentwood] set aside and shrink-wrapped. None of the Brentwood mail has tested positive for anthrax…and it was unclear how the  employees trash might have been contaminated…200 workers were advised to take antibiotics as a precaution” http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2001/oct/31/anthrax_found_at/

     —“..an initial test at Brentwood Road, where the Daschle letter had been processed, had turned up no evidence of contamination. And there was the curious case of the worker at the P Street station, who had tested positive for inhalation-anthrax exposure immediately after the Daschle letter, but then, after retesting, was put..on the negative list” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/26/us/a-nation-challenged-the-anthrax-trail-tracking-bioterror-s-tangled-course.html?pagewanted=8

*

Oct 23 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/science/response-on-many-fronts-experts-plan-for-the-unthinkable-biowarfare.html  “Protection against biological and chemical attack was never very high on lists of national priorities — until the days after Sept. 11, when it collectively occurred to Americans how vulnerable they were.” [wrote Lawrence K. Altman MD, of the NYTimes]

*

Oct 24 – http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/24/us/a-nation-challenged-news-analysis-fighting-a-new-health-threat-on-the-fly.html ”We don’t have much data on humans,” said David R. Franz, former commander of the Army’s germ-defense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md. ”Most of what we know is based on 3,000 monkeys.  There is hardly any human data on the effects of inhaled anthrax spores.”

      — “The inspector in charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s main forensic laboratory told [AP news]..that investigators were confident there have been only three anthrax–tainted letters sent through the mail…’I still think we’re dealing with three letters’ said Roy W. Geffen, who runs the lab in suburban Virginia. ‘That’s the best information we have.’ ” http://www2.ljworld.com/2001/oct/31/hospital_worker_dies/

     —Iowa State University destroys anthrax [Chicago Tribune, 10-24-01] “The destruction of the anthrax in Cheville’s department was, as much as anything, a bow to pressure exerted by the state’s public relations-minded governor, Tom Vilsack [Vilsack is Obama’s current Secretary of Agriculture]. The school’s small supply had been unused, but safely locked in storage for at least 20 years…’The USDA complex here, which also includes the National Animal Disease Center, does research on other infectious diseases that are in the news.. [such as] the early work on the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which is making inroads in the U.S.”

*

Oct 25  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/us/nation-challenged-treating-disease-be-alert-anthrax-clues-doctors-are-told.html ..”Dr. Schuchat [CDC] said, ”In the Washington, D.C., area, very nonspecific, unimpressive symptoms in a postal worker should be taken extremely seriously.” She added that experience so far has shown that a patient whose symptoms ”would not cause an excess amount of concern” can quickly become critically ill….Yet the diagnosis can be a major challenge for even the most astute doctors….Centers for Disease Control officials warn that for all their epidemiological value, nasal swabs have little or no value in diagnosing anthrax in patients…Dr. Fleming added that studies in monkeys suggested that anthrax spores disappeared quickly after appearing in the nose.”

*

 ___________ Pentagon turns to Israel for advice on biological attacks
By Ellis Shuman October 25, 2001 “The Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s Ministry of Health reportedly provided the Pentagon this week with detailed documents of operational procedures for dealing with biological attacks. According to a report in Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s leading daily newspaper, the Americans requested the documents, prepared by the IDF’s Home Command and Medical Corps, due to the high respect the U.S. has for Israel’s preparedness against such attacks. This week, the IDF’s military liaison in the Pentagon reportedly gave the Americans a copy of a file and documents entitled, “The medical guide for dealing with and treating those injured by agents of biological warfare.” The guide was prepared by the IDF Home Command and the Medical Corps “biological department,” as well as the Health Ministry. The Israeli medical guide relates primarily to missile-borne biological attacks, but much of the information provided could be utilized in situations where anthrax exposure is based on mail delivery as well. http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/security/articles/sec_0128.htm

___________

White House Press Briefing, Oct 25, 2001

Gov. Tom Ridge, new chief of Homeland Security:

“Today we want to share with you the latest scientific analysis of the anthrax samples…DNA tests have also revealed that none of the anthrax samples have been genetically altered, which is very good news, obviously, because it means that the samples all respond to antibiotics. And, therefore, people who are exposed can be treated.  ..Unfortunately, we have not been able to conduct similar tests on the anthrax from Florida or the Brokaw letter because of limited amounts of substance retrievable from the scene. Just wasn’t enough for us to retrieve from the scene to conduct the same tests. ” http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html

*

 Oct 27 — ..”London Times claims that Atta was given a flask of anthrax by an Iraqi agent in April 2001″ http://911review.org/Wget/www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/AAanthrax.html

 Oct 28 — “New Jersey health officials said the bin at the Princeton Main Post Office in neighboring West Windsor tested positive for what they said was a tiny ‘single colony’ of anthrax” [New York Times] http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/nyt1a.html

         —the Postal Service announces it is buying irradiation equipment

*

Oct 29 — “(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has learned the government health authorities have reversed earlier promises to test private mailrooms “downstream” from the anthrax-contaminated Brentwood postal facility. As reported by such media outlets as the Associated Press and The Washington Post in recent days, health officials said they would begin environmental testing for anthrax in up to 4,000 private entities which receive mail in bulk from the Brentwood facility. Yet, contrary to these promises, Judicial Watch learned from the federal and D.C. public health authorities today that only private facilities where individuals test positive for anthrax exposure or infection, or facilities which have physical evidence of possible anthrax contamination (unusual powder, suspicious letters, etc.). Private facilities who wish to be tested must plead for testing by the government.” http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2001/1067.shtml
*

Oct 30 –”Investigators could not find even a single spore of anthrax near Ms. Nguyen’s home in the Bronx, or at Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital where she worked” http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/26/us/a-nation-challenged-the-anthrax-trail-tracking-bioterror-s-tangled-course.html?pagewanted=8 , or at the local post office. Ms Nguyen lived in the Crotona Park East neighborhood, attending regular mass at St. John Chrysostom Church. Her apartment was not far (south) from Interstate 95 and the East Tremont area where AMI executive David Pecker was born and raised.

*

Oct 31 –fourth victim, Kathy T. Nguyen, a worker in the basement supply room at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, dies from inhalation anthrax. Her work area was once the mailroom. …”the source of Nguyen’s infection remains unknown. A co-worker’s suspicious lesion has been determined not to be anthrax.” ….”it is not known what mail she might have handled at her job at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, or at home in the Bronx. So her death appears to broaden the population that must be concerned about vague flulike symptoms.” “Kathey Nguyen..an immigrant from Vietnam who lived alone..and commuted by subway..died at Lenox Hill Hospital….[she] had been too sick to help the..investigators” . http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2001/oct/31/hospital_worker_dies/  Nguyen’s job was distributing supplies around the hospital. White House spokesman, “Ari Fleischer said a coworker of Nguyen has a suspicious lesion…There are no results yet, he said…’Somebody is trying to kill the American people by sending anthrax through the mail’ Fleischer said.”

         —the Bellmawr, New Jersey post office is closed. A worker there developed a lesion on Oct 13.

*

 Nov 1 — “Fox News Channel..Sean Hannnity and Bill O’Reilly were hit by threatening letters similar to those laden with anthrax….The letters arrived before Sept. 11…[and] bore a postmark from Indianapolis, where the Post Office discovered yesterday that some of its equipment is contaminated…Hannity said that he’d begun receiving suspicious mail last winter and again in August…. The ‘Hannity & Colmes’ co-host revealed that in addition to the letters with an Indianapolis postmark, “one or two were from Trenton (N.J.), “where traces of anthrax have also been reported.” Hannity said he hasn’t gotten any more..since the Sept. 11 attacks and hasn’t been tested for anthrax exposure.”  SOURCE: newsmax.com  http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html#ne011031 http://archive.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/1/29/125952  “Jan. 31, 2000 –WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times of London, has joined the international advisory board of NewsMax.com …NewsMax.com has, in its first 15 months, become the leading news site on the web” [Rees-Mogg, Vice-Chair of the BBC Board of Governors (1981-1986)]…”Prudential Securities stated that NewsMax.com is “one of the web’s truly great new sites”…”In November 1999, NewsMax.com expanded into the financial news arena with..MoneyNews.com”. Rees-Mogg is the Chairman of Newsmax Media, originally registered by Ruddy in Nevada on 8-20-1998, filed in Florida, Sept., at 560 Village Blvd, Ste. 120, West Palm Beach 33409  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsmax_Media “Christopher W. Ruddy started Newsmax.com on September 16, 1998, supported by a group of politically conservative investors, including the family of the late Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Casey. Later, Richard Mellon Scaife, his former employer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and a supporter of conservative causes, invested in the fledging company. One of the initial board members was author James Dale Davidson who edited a financial newsletter that had shared Ruddy’s interest in the alleged suicide of President Bill Clinton’s aide, Vincent Foster. Davidson’s co-editor, Lord Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times and Vice Chair of the BBC” —later became chairman of Newsmax Media http://www.answers.com/topic/christopher-ruddy – Long Island, NY native; alumnus of London School of Economics and Hebrew University, Jerusalem; media fellow of Hoover Institution; former New York Post and and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review contributor. The Times (London) and The New York Post are/were owned by Rupert Murdoch  (News Corporation)

*

Nov 1 — [New York Times] “spores were.. found in four of the five mailrooms of the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters in Rockville, Md.” (from 11/2 news)      

*

Nov 1   – Anthrax in Lithuania
In Lithuania, a laboratory confirms that traces of anthrax were found in a mailbag from the US Embassy, the first such case in Europe. The embassy mailroom is sealed off and the 120 embassy employees are offered antibiotics.

*

Nov 2  – Anthrax in Pakistan
Overseas, Pakistan’s largest newspaper evacuates some of its editorial offices after anthrax is found on a letter.

         –Anthrax in India
In India, the health secretary of a western state says that powder found in an envelope in a government office has tested positive for anthrax and will be examined further.

—[Star-Ledger staff writers] “We’re dealing with a very intelligent mind” the source said. “It could be a case of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ .” http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html

*

Nov 4 –WASHINGTON: The anthrax scare spread further as deadly spores were discovered at yet another mail distribution center in New Jersey, while investigators in Washington studied a suspicious letter sent to the US Treasury Department.
The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services announced late on Saturday that one of the environmental samples taken by the FBI in the Bellmawr Mail Distribution Center last Wednesday came back positive…Health officials focused their attention on the Bellmawr center after a Delaware resident who works there came down with skin anthrax”.. http://www.dawn.com/2001/11/05/int7.htm  …”CNN reported on its website that the mailroom at a Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Washington has tested positive for the presence of the bacteria.” – http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/us/nation-challenged-precautions-us-sets-up-plan-fight-smallpox-case-attack.html  “The government has begun taking steps to cope with the possibility of a terrorist attack involving smallpox by training doctors to recognize the disease and by vaccinating small teams of experts…Last week, the disease centers vaccinated about 140 members of epidemiologic teams that can be summoned at a moment’s notice”

*

Nov 6 –” Anthrax arrives in Russia in US mailbag
The US consulate in Yekaterinburg, Russia, reports that one of six diplomatic mailbags received from Washington Oct 25 tested positive for anthrax spores. The consulate asked Russian health authorities to test the mail Oct 26 after a State Department mailroom employee in Virginia contracted anthrax. Yekaterinburg, formerly called Sverdlovsk, was the site of an anthrax disaster due to an accidental release in 1979.” http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/bioprep/btwatch/btwatch-nov.html

*

Nov 10 –  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/us/nation-challenged-anthrax-testing-new-tests-confirm-potency-anthrax-senate.html “The E.P.A. conducted tests of Mr. Daschle’s office on Nov. 10 and on Nov. 15, in part to answer the question of whether the spores would stick to an object or become airborne again. The office, and the entire Hart Senate Office Building, have been closed for decontamination since Oct. 26.”

      —“One sign leading investigators away from the prospect of an Islamic fundamentalist is the use of ‘Allah is great’ to close all three letters. Fitzgerald said the phrasing and the absence of Arabic text do not jibe with past Muslim attacks.” [Republic news services] http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html#ne011031

*

Nov 15 –”$3.2 billion Kennedy-Frist bioterrorism bill introduced
Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Bill Frist, R-Tenn., introduce a bill to authorize spending $3.2 billion to combat bioterrorism. The bill would authorize $1.5 billion for state and local preparedness in fiscal 2002, including hospital preparedness, and $400 million to improve oversight of the nation’s food supply.”…

*

Nov 16 — The Leahy letter is “discovered Nov. 16 in a barrel of unopened congressional mail” where it leaks “like a sieve” [Nov 30, Newsday, by Earl Lane]

*

Nov 20 – “Anthrax traces in Kennedy and Dodd offices…offices are both in the Russell Senate Office Building.”

*

Nov 21 –Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford Connecticut, dies of inhalation anthrax. Tests in and around her home come back negative, baffling authorities…”Lundgren died at Griffin Hospital in Derby the same day the CDC confirmed that she had inhalation anthrax. CDC spokeswoman Nicole Coffin says testing so far has shown that the strain of anthrax that killed Lundgren was similar to anthrax found in other recent cases.”  http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/bioprep/btwatch/btwatch-nov.html

*

Nov 23 – “Chilean and U.S. officials confirmed the first reported case of a deadly strain of the bacteria in mail outside the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed on Thursday that a letter sent from [[Zurich]] Switzerland to Chile was tainted with anthrax. The letter had been sent to Dr. Antonio Banfi, a pediatrician at a children’s hospital in Santiago.”

*

Interestingly, this link provides a description of Israeli art students who were ‘caught’ and profiled by the DEA  carrying passports issued in Buenos Aires,Argentina and Santiago, Chile  http://www.911-strike.com/dea-il-spy.htm   [The Royal Society of Liechtenstein “administrative functions are conducted in Zurich” http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1987/8701100366.asp ; and they had a Florida address]

*News from http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/bioprep/btwatch/btwatch-nov.html :

Nov 25 – “The Sep 11 events have led to new opportunities to address preparedness and consequence management, says Margaret A. Hamburg, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration who heads the foundation’s biological projects.”

Nov 27 — “Smallpox virus can be homemade”

Nov 28 — “US to buy 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine
United States health officials agree to buy 155 million doses of a new smallpox vaccine from a partnership between Acambis, a British-based company, and Illinois-based Baxter International..” http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/bioprep/btwatch/btwatch-nov.html    [[Acambis was acquired by Sanofi-Aventis in 2008 http://citizen2009.wordpress.com/sanofi-aventis/]]

Dec 1, 2001 — “Investigators have found a trace of anthrax bacteria on the outside of a letter sent to a residence in Seymour, Conn., about 1½ miles from the home of an elderly widow who mysteriously died of the disease last week….The newly discovered Seymour letter — a business letter sent to an estate liquidator who works from home — was postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and dated Oct. 9 — the same day that letters containing billions of deadly spores were mailed to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.)….Joxel Garcia, Connecticut’s public health commissioner, emphasized that the Seymour letter bore only the slightest contamination. “Very, very small amounts — one colony,” he said….On the reverse side of most mail, a machine prints a faint orange bar that reveals the date, time, location and machine that sorted that piece of mail.Then an automated sorter scans the destination information for each piece into a computer. It is that computer file that led investigators to 88 Great Hill Road in Seymour, home of John S. Farkas, 53.”  http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxtraceconn.html

Is there  a relative of Mr. J.S. Farkas here?—-“A MadCowMorningNews investigation has revealed that San Diego defense contractor Titan Corp is at the center of a private intelligence network engaged in a broad range of criminal activities with seeming impunity, everything from drug trafficking to white collar crime that includes massive stock fraud cumulatively totaling billions…The companies involved market products to businesses and consumers that were originally developed for grandiose defense schemes like the U.S. Stars Wars program, or dreamed up in the labs of the CIA, Mossad and other intelligence agencies….Titan Corp’s most curious partner [is] Miami attorney Michael D Farkas…. Today Farkas and Beni own a company attempting to market Israeli anti-missile technology to U.S. airlines and owners of commercial aircraft…..Of course, it is Titan’s still-unexplained involvement with both Michael Farkas and the company he founded, SkyWay Aircraft of St Petersburg, FL., which is ultimately the firm’s most intriguing criminal connection….  Skyway is the company recently in a spotlight of unwanted media attention (okay, a flashlight of attention, from only the MadCowMorningNews) as the owner/operator of “Cocaine One,” the DC9 caught carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine in Mexico in April for which no one, apparently,  is responsible.”  http://www.madcowprod.com/11062006.html 

Dec 3   http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/us/a-nation-challenged-the-inquiry-clues-overlooked-to-a-coming-threat.html    ..”Suddenly, the United States Postal Service was recognized as a spore-spreading system.  In the last three days, even the most enigmatic of the five anthrax deaths — the cases of a Connecticut widow and a New York City hospital worker have been shown to have possible links to the mail. Letters that passed through a Hamilton, N.J., sorting center within seconds of the tainted letters sent to two senators on Oct. 9 had gone to the neighborhoods of these two victims, investigators discovered….Many conundrums posed by the postal assaults will not be resolved quickly, officials said….There is still nothing leading investigators back toward the source of the anthrax, Mr. Mihalko said.”

Dec 4, 2001  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/04/science/the-doctor-s-world-first-challenge-in-anthrax-case-not-missing-it.html  ..”Until the intentional spread of anthrax in recent months, only 18 cases of inhalation anthrax had been reported since 1950, and 227 of the skin form from 1955 to the beginning of the intentional spread this fall.”…

Dec 19 — http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/hcourant.html   The Hartford Courant  …”.Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist affiliated with the Federation of American Scientists, earlier this month.. predicted that the perpetrator is an American microbiologist with access to weaponized anthrax, that likely came from a government lab or one contracted by the government.”

Dec 25 –  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/25/health/the-doctor-s-world-in-offering-anthrax-vaccine-officials-admit-to-unknowns.html  “Thousands of postal employees and workers on Capitol Hill who took antibiotics because they were exposed to anthrax two months ago now face a difficult new medical decision: whether to take an anthrax vaccine to forestall the slim and theoretical possibility that they may still develop the disease….health officials last week were forced to do what they rarely do — confess ignorance about the risks of a disease and its treatment options….For example, on Sept. 21, a few days before the first cases in the outbreak of the deliberate spread of anthrax, Tommy G. Thompson, the health and human services secretary, confidently said on CBS’s ”60 Minutes,” ‘We’re prepared to take care of any contingency, any consequence that develops or any kind of bioterrorism attack.’…Because the vaccine has never been used to prevent anthrax after people have been exposed to spores, its effectiveness in such circumstances is unknown and it is classified as experimental.”

“According to statistics from the CDC, its laboratories and other members of the agency’s Laboratory Response Network tested over 125,000 samples during the period following the first reports of the outbreak. In several cases, some state and local laboratories were so overloaded with testing requests that they contemplated setting up triage procedures to prioritize tests…the reported difficulties in meeting testing demands highlight the need for those laboratories to ensure a surge capability for possible future bioterrorist incidents. Ensuring adequate laboratory capacity was one of the issues raised during a December 2001 meeting convened by the CDC to examine lessons learned from the anthrax response and to chart a research agenda for preparing for future attacks.” http://www.ndu.edu/centercounter/ANTHRAX%20CHRONOLOGY.pdf

****

2002

Jan 06, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/us/nation-challenged-anthrax-anthrax-missteps-offer-guide-fight-next-bioterror.html  “While it is too early to glean a set of precise lessons for a future bioterror attack — particularly since no suspect has yet been charged in this one — the officials acknowledge that the handling of the outbreak was marked by a catalog of miscalculations, missteps and misunderstandings about bioterrorism in general and anthrax in particular….In late September [of 2001], Secretary Thompson told television viewers that the government was prepared to deal with any kind of bio terrorism attack.”

Jan 20 –the Hartford Courant names Phillip Zack, reporting on his past associations at Fort Detrick and the harassment directed at coworker Dr. Ayaad Assaad. Owner of the Hartford Courant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_Company  “The Tribune Company is a large, employee-owned,[1] American multimedia corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. It is the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher, with ten daily newspapers and commuter tabloids including Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Baltimore Sun and the The Morning Call, among others.”

March 26, 2002  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/26/health/director-defends-cdc-s-handling-of-anthrax-attacks.html  Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, the departing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, defended again yesterday his agency’s handling of the anthrax attack ..as he announced that he would become vice president for academic health affairs at Emory University…news reports suggested that he was leaving under pressure….In the last three years, C.D.C.’s budget has doubled to $7.7 billion from $2.5 billion in 1998.”

May 5, 2002 — ” Jerome Hauer became director of the federal Office of Public Health Preparedness (OPHP), succeeding Dr. D. A. Henderson from Johns Hopkins Institute”  http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Hauer,Jerome.shtml

June 23, 2002 –“In an interview, Mr. Pence said he learned from an F.B.I. briefing last week that investigators were having trouble scrutinizing possible foreign links because some countries were not cooperating. “They’re leaving no stone unturned on the domestic front,” he said. “But there are some stones they can’t flip overseas.” One senior official said of the overseas inquiry: “It’s more problematic and difficult. Some countries aren’t going to tell you anything.”  http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/nyt2.html

Aug 16 — “US Sen. Bill Nelson said today he is drafting legislation to require the federal government’s assistance in cleaning up the anthrax-contaminated American Media Inc. building at the Arvida Park of Commerce….Nelson said he is working with Sen Lieberman to find a solution..to create the new homeland security agency”  http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/details.cfm?id=244107

Aug 29 —  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/us/threats-responses-countering-bioterrorism-many-workers-ignored-anthrax-pill.html  “Most postal, government and news people who were advised to take an antibiotic to prevent inhalation anthrax a year ago failed to complete the full course of therapy, a federal study has found….No cases of anthrax developed, including among those workers who took no antibiotics at all….56 percent of those advised to complete the course did not. It also found that mild and transient adverse reactions like headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, stomach aches and diarrhea occurred commonly among people taking the antibiotics prophylactically….This is believed to be the first large-scale study of prophylactic antibiotic therapy for inhalation anthrax….Federal health officials had recommended a 60-day course of an antibiotic for more than 9,300 workers who were exposed to anthrax spores in four states and the District of Columbia in 2001….The study did not include those people who were told to stop taking antibiotics after laboratory tests determined that they had not been exposed…Ciprofloxacin was the drug used most often in the initial days of the anthrax attacks. It can cause convulsions as well as other adverse effects on the brain and central nervous system, and also lead to rupturing of the Achilles tendon and others…..The anthrax study was conducted at six sites where spores were released in Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C. ”

Oct 5, 2002 — “Dr Meryl Nass, one of the world’s leading experts on anthrax, claims at least two postal workers in New York died mysteriously during the outbreak, and scores of others displayed symptoms consistent with anthrax, but which went unreported.

“Dr Martin Hugh-Jones, an anthrax specialist at Louisiana State University, also thinks it likely that there were other cases. “At a low enough dose breathed in, most people would not even know they have it,” he says. In one case, doctors treating William R Paliscak, 37, a postal worker from Brentwood, Washington, concluded that the disease was present even though it was undetected by standard tests.” http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/smgpubs/access/204905191.html?did=204905191&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&date=Oct+5%2C+2002&author=Aaron+Hicklin&desc=Anthrax+toll+may+have+been+higher+than+reported

Dec 6, 2002 — “Judicial Watch filed a complaint on December 6, 2002 for criminal investigation with the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia concerning the October 2001 anthrax contamination of the Brentwood Postal Facility. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court rejected our petition for writ of certioari on May 11, 2006.”

______________

Aug.7, 2008 — “Federal authorities released hundreds of pages of documents yesterday in an effort to show that they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bruce Edwards Ivins, the Army scientist who killed himself last week, was the sole person responsible for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks.” http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/bal-te.anthrax07aug07,0,3039100.story

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Nov.30, 2011 — “Stevens’ lawsuit against the federal government — seeking to hold it responsible for not safeguarding the anthrax spores used in the biological attacks in the weeks following 9/11 — ended last week after an eight-year pitched legal battle…In the end, the government conceded the anthrax came from one of its Army labs at Fort Detrick, Md., but admitted no liability in the death of Robert Stevens, a photo editor at tabloid publisher American Media Inc.” http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-11-30/news/fl-maureen-stevens-anthrax-lawsuit-20111129_1_anthrax-scientist-anthrax-attacks-bruce-ivins

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