Tuesday, October 21, 2003
This one's tough to pull a quote from. Read the whole thing, but here's half.
Unresolved anthrax enigma By Jack Kelly
Miss Mylroie explains:
"Ordinarily, anthrax spores contain an electrostatic charge that makes the microscopic spores stick together in clumps that are too big to be inhaled into the lungs. But these spores had been coated with a Teflon-like substance containing silica. ... When U.S. Army experts tried to examine them, the spores refused to stay put on the glass microscope slide. ... It behaved like no sample the Army scientists had ever seen. ...
"The weightless, almost gaseous quality made this batch of anthrax particularly effective as a weapon. ... The Army's premier anthrax expert, John Ezzell, was especially worried. The evident level of expertise involved in the production of this weaponized anthrax powder suggested that the United States had been attacked by a sophisticated, ruthless and formidable foe."
Had the anthrax in either of those envelopes been put into the ventilation system at the World Trade Center, it would have killed more people than the hijacked airliners did.
On Oct. 25, 2001, an article in The Washington Post said only the U.S., Russia and Iraq were capable of weaponizing anthrax in the form found in the letters to the senators. And as we have seen, the FBI has been unable to duplicate it.
The Washington Post's editor Bob Woodward wrote in his book, "Bush at War," that CIA Director George Tenet believed the anthrax attacks were made by al Qaeda, with the backing of a state. Vice President Dick Cheney agreed, but said it was important not to talk about state sponsorship, "because we're not ready to do anything about it."
Miss Mylroie deftly summarizes evidence linking 9/11 hijackers to the anthrax letters. Mr. Woodward quotes Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, in explaining why the administration did not acknowledge an al Qaeda link, even though it thought there was one: "If we say it's al Qaeda, a state sponsor may feel safe and then hit us, thinking they will have a bye, because we'll blame it on al Qaeda."
The FBI's bizarre focus on Mr. Hatfill — against whom not a shred of evidence has been found — may be less political correctness run amok than a deliberate deception, a means of calming Americans until the real source of the problem can be dealt with.
If al Qaeda could all by its lonesome have produced the anthrax in the letters to the senators, surely they would have attacked us again by now.
But if the anthrax were manufactured by Iraq, we apparently have yet to find evidence of where and how. If Saddam didn't do it, we need — urgently — to find out who did.
I'm damn glad Saddam is gone. Thank you, Mr. Bush. It was the right thing to do for so many reasons, but now we're stuck in the mud over there - no, not a quagmire of Iraq reconstruction, but a quagmire of the entire War on Terror. The memory of the anthrax mailings is fading, and we don't have the will to go on any farther. It's going to take more Pearl Harbors to get us unstuck and show us which way to go, and that's a scary prospect. The momentum has gone out and inertia has set in.
There is one obvious suggestion of who did it. Think of the criminal who assaults a victim, then leaves with the threat "If you seek help, I'll do worse."
My bet is that the anthrax was a warning. Fortunately, we called the bluff.
Very possible. I agree there's a strong possibility of that. I think what events like this illustrated was that we can't sit on our asses - we need to do them before they do us. Thing is, it's still totally speculative in regard to the anthrax. We can craft any scenario we desire because the data is simply insufficient, at least for us out here in the world without Top Secret clearance.