 | ||||
| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 30 October 2001 | Vol II, No. 77 | ||
|
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 30 October 2001 | Vol II, No. 77 | ||
|
| ||||
| ||||
In a move reminiscent of the botched FBI investigations of the Clinton era, the bureau is actively pursuing weak leads suggesting "right-wing hate groups" are involved in the recent wave of anthrax attacks on the U.S.
Meanwhile, clear circumstantial evidence pointing to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden appears to have been placed on the back burner.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 the U.S. hadn't suffered a single case of inhalation anthrax since 1976.
Still probers continue to insist they see no connection between the events of that day and the anthrax-laden letters sent out the next week to every branch of the U.S. government, the CIA, the big three network news divisions and the headquarters prominent newspapers from New York to Florida.
"Everything seems to lean toward a domestic source," one senior FBI official told the Washington Post Saturday. "Nothing seems to fit with an overseas terrorist type operation."
For some victims, such a claim seems more than a little absurd.
Steve Coz, for instance, whose National Enquirer headquarters in Florida was the first to be hit with an anthrax attack, complained two weeks ago that al Qaeda terror kamikaze pilot Mohamed Atta had been spotted in a local drugstore with reddened hands -- a condition he thought could be a symptom of cutaneous anthrax.
Another detail the FBI seems anxious to overlook: The widely reported visits by Atta and his coconspirators to Florida airfields where they inquired about renting cropdusters and the size of the chemical loads the planes could disperse.
The bureau seems none too interested in other potential evidence that could tie Atta to the anthrax assault. "In Florida, agents haven't tested cars or residences used by some of the hijackers, including those of Mohamed Atta," reported the Wall Street Journal Thursday. "FBI officials said testing isn't a priority, because they assume that by now, the hijackers' cars and apartments would have been cleaned, removing any trace of anthrax."
Ken Alibek, who headed up the Soviet Union's biological weapons program said the FBI's "assumption" is wrong. He told the Journal that investigators should be conducting extensive testing for anthrax traces in vehicles used by suspects and in all places that a suspect resided.
Alibek's advice notwithstanding, Special Agent Rene Salinas told the paper, "At this time, there are no plans to go back and check (Atta's car and apartment) for traces of anthrax."
The FBI's belief that so-called domestic terror groups are behind the bioterror scourge is also belied by Friday's reports that anthrax found in a letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle contained bentonite, a substance weapons experts say is Iraq's signature.
While some analysts point out that bentonite was also used in U.S. anthrax production, the Journal reported Friday that those stocks "were destroyed in the 1960's."
Dr. Khidhir Hamza, a former top official in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, also disagrees with the FBI's domestic terrorism hunch.
"This is Iraq," Hamza told CNBC.
"This is Iraq's work. Nobody (else) has the expertise outside the U.S. and outside the major powers who work on germ warfare. Nobody has the expertise and has any motive to attack the U.S. except Saddam to do this. This is Iraq. This is Saddam."
Saturday's news that the Czech government now confirms several meetings betweeen Atta and a top Iraqi intelligence official in Prague last June -- combined with reports last week that bin Laden was able to purchase anthrax from a factory in the Czech Republic -- add further legitimacy to suspicions of a foreign bioterror tie.
Still, as the evidence mounts of al Qaeda and Iraqi involvement, the FBI seems hellbent on looking the other way.
"Ultra right-wing organizations -- including a particular West Coast Group -- have become a key focus of the massive federal investigation into the murderous anthrax attacks," the New York Post reported Thursday.
"Our feeling is the anthrax does not point to an international terrorist group," an FBI source told the Post for its front page report.
The sentiment was echoed by a Washington Post front page report two days later:
"The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are considering a wide range of domestic possibilities, including associates of right-wing hate groups and U.S. residents sympathetic to the causes of Islamic extremists," reported Post star Bob Woodward.
What actual evidence does the FBI's have of a homegrown anthrax plot? Not much, at least if published reports are any indication.
Charges against suspected domestic bioterrorist Larry Wayne Harris, who was thought to be targeting Las Vegas with "weapons grade anthrax" earlier this year, had to be dropped after the "suspicious biological agent" he was carrying turned out to be a harmless anthrax vaccine.
At least 20 abortion clinics have been evacuated in the last three years after receiving anthrax threats -- including powdered letters. All turned out to be hoaxes.
The only U.S. prosecution for domestic bioterrorism to date was for a man who had mailed out two suspicious vials along with the note, "You have just been contaminated by anthrax."
Though the threat alone was a crime, the vials themselves turned out to contain nothing more toxic than tap water.
In fact, of the more than 300 homegrown anthrax scares investigated by the FBI in the last three years, all proved to be bogus. Until bin Laden put the U.S. in his crosshairs on Sept. 11, that is.
Still, federal probers seem anxious to round up the usual suspects, no matter how unconvincing the evidence. One supposed hot lead currently being pursued: the gun show connection.
"The FBI has been making inquiries about a Nebraska man who for several years has been selling manuals at gun shows that provide information on making chemical and biological weapons," the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. If the FBI thinks the unidentified suspect actually possesses any anthrax, it isn't saying so.
Then there's the ever popular militia angle, which the bureau is reportedy following with little apparent reason:
"In Michigan, FBI agents have met several times since Sept. 11 with Ann Arbor police to talk about the whereabouts and capabilities of local militiamen," the Journal noted. "(There's) some concern that people in that element might see Sept. 11 as a good way to get more notoriety and exposure," the local police chief told the paper, citing no other evidence.
Even the Southern Poverty Law Project, which monitors U.S. hate groups and is seldom reluctant to point fingers, told the Post they have seen no evidence of a domestic group capable of launching a sophisticated anthrax attack.
If these reports reflect the true thrust of the FBI's anthrax investigation, it's clear the bureau has yet to overcome eight years worth of Clintonization, where the only leads pursued were the ones that supported predetermined outcomes.
In fact, the bureau's decision not to test Atta's apartment for trace anthrax seems like deja vu all over again. Recall the Vincent Foster death case, where FBI agents told Congress there was no need to analyze blond hairs found on his body or carpet fibers on his clothing.
Or Flight TWA 800, where investigators were uninterested in talking to 300 witnesses who said they saw a missile strike the plane.
With blunders like that, it's no wonder Mideast terrorists thought they could get away with anything.
[ NewaMax ]
Efforts to launch a Pearl Harbor-style commission to investigate roots of the Sept. 11 disaster are being impeded by efforts to protect Janet Reno, who is running an uphill campaign for governor of Florida.
A blue-ribbon commission, appointed by Congress and the judiciary and modeled after the inquiry into the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, would have to probe Reno's performance during eight years as attorney general. The commission's report would come six months from now, at the peak of Democrat Reno's efforts to defeat Republican Gov. Jeb Bush. Since Sept. 11, Bush has widened his lead in the polls over Reno.
The proposed inquiry is encountering trouble from another source: defenders of the FBI and its former director, Louis Freeh. While Freeh often clashed with Reno (his nominal superior), he also would come under a commission's scrutiny for the nation's degree of anti-terrorism preparedness.
[ Novak, Sun-Times ]
"The (Colin) Powell option would build a coalition so broad as to make it irrelevant, and guarantees that the war on terror fails. The secretary of state would include the sponsors of terrorism - Iraq, Syria, even the Taliban - in the coalition in the forlorn and naïve hope that including them would neutralize if not reform them, or at least persuade them not to assist in blowing up Manhattan skyscrapers while the rest of the coalition tries to punish those who do. You probably have to work at the State Department to believe something so foolish. These pointy heads would have invited Machine-gun Kelly and Pretty Boy Floyd to join a task force on how to rehabilitate Bonnie and Clyde."
[ Wes Pruden, ]
The speech Yasser Arafat delivered Saturday, October 27, restored to their true perspective a whole range of happenings in the week just ending - in particular, the well-meaning attempts to persuade Israel that its army's anti-terrorist cleanups in seven Palestinian towns, in the wake of the assassination of its tourism minister, Rehavem Zeevi, was a punishment the Palestinian leader could not be expected to bear - as well as hampering the American campaign against terror.
Then came the rise and fall of a deal brokered by the US to enable Israeli troops to pull out of Bethlehem and Beit Jalah. Struck on Friday night, October 26, the deal broke down Saturday morning, October 27. Instead of holding their fire for just 24 h ours, the Palestinians stepped up their attacks from the Al Aida refugee camp in the Bethlehem sector (as well as in most other parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip). Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thereupon suspended the pullout indefinitely.
Amid the noise and fury, Arafat made it clear that however much the world may have changed since September 11, every one of his spots remains firmly in place.
For one of his most bellicose speeches in months, Arafat gathered in his office in Gaza the political activists of all the Palestinian groups - Fatah-Tanzim, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, Hamas and Jihad Islami. Under the caption, "Facing the Challenges", he placed the Palestinian struggle at the center of the Muslim scene and in the context of the war in Afghanistan.
Certain phrases, for which he raised his voice, drew loud cheers:
"The Palestinian struggle is Al Qaeda (literally "The Base")" or "Palestine is the true Al Qaeda. Those who don't agree can drink the sea water of Gaza." And: "The day will come for us to liberate all the mosques and churches of Jerusalem and unfurl the Palestinian flag over our capital city, Jerusalem."
Arafat by reiterating the name of Osama bin Laden's terror network, Al Qaeda, was throwing down a symbolic gauntlet.
DEBKAfile's Palestinian experts interpret him as saying in effect that the Palestinian cause was the true basis for the Islamic struggle - not bin Laden, but the Palestinian people and their leader were the authentic fighters on behalf of Islam.
He was not trying to discredit bin Laden's terror campaign against the United States, which has been lauded in Palestinian demonstrations which Arafat's police suppressed violently. He drew cheers from his audience by declaring that the campaign was just, but at the same time the Saudi-born terrorist had done the Palestinians and their leader a grave injustice by usurping their rightful place as the original instigators of the struggle.
This was Arafat's way of answering Osama bin Laden's televised address shortly after the US launched its war in Afghanistan. Bin Laden then embraced the Palestinian cause and sneered at depraved Arab leaders, among them Arafat, for betraying that cause by being corrupt.
It should therefore have come as no surprise to anyone that, while sending his top officers, among them General Intelligence West Bank Chief Tawfiq Tirawi, to meet Israeli and American officers to discuss the Israeli army's withdrawal from Palestinian territory, he also ordered the sameTirawi to defeat the exercise by keeping up the shooting at full blast in the Bethlehem-Gilo sector.
Arafat has no interest in ending his war against Israel; what he cares about is his place in Islamic history. When he launched his Al Aqsa intifada last September, he fought his holy war alone in the Arab and Muslim arena. Now he has powerful competition from the millionaire terrorist who despises him and has declared a global intifada. Arafat is not one to back down when faced with competition. Quite the opposite, he is stepping up the combat.
The suspension of the Israeli withdrawal from Bethlehem and Beit Jala - until Sunday in the first instance - is likely therefore to drag out much longer, as long as Israel insists on not pulling its troops back under fire. Meanwhile, American and European diplomats have gone into action to get Arafat to halt the shooting by Monday.
In the meantime, the wars go on - in Kabul, in Bethlehem and in Gilo alike.
All the distinctions drawn by US diplomats and media, like Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, between the two arenas are therefore artificial because it is Yasser Arafat who will never accept them. He sees himself as bin Laden's forerunner and more than an equal in the great Islamic campaign against the infidel.
[ DEBKAfile ]
The American Red Cross admitted today that some of the $550 million in donations to a special fund established for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will be used for other things instead. "It takes a lot of money to do a lot of work. We believe very much that we are honoring donor intent," Red Cross spokesman Mitch Hibbs said. "Yes, we are helping the families, but we're also helping everyone else."
Philanthropic watchdogs, though noting the Red Cross meets high standards overall, said the group has not clearly publicized its distribution plans for the Liberty Fund, the Associated Press reported today.
"We've begun to receive inquiries from the public raising questions about the distributions of 9-11 funds," said Bennett Weiner, a spokesman for the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, in Arlington, Va. "I think the public certainly expects the 9-11 relief organizations to follow through" by helping the victims of the attacks.
[ NewsMax ]
*** TCN Comment: The only way to be sure that 100% of your donations are being used as you intended, is to make your donation through an independent local church to another independent local church. All organizations like the Red Cross skim from all donations to cover huge administrative costs, and giving through organizations like United Way adds even another layer of skimming. Even donations given through a denominational church's program get skimmed to cover costs that are often inflated, especially when the donations are large.
After Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts had a run-in with an airport security police officer late last month, media outlets, both in Oklahoma and around the country, amply covered the story.
But a more egregious altercation in mid-October involving New York Senator Hillary Clinton has received almost no coverage, despite the fact that the police officer involved was injured so badly by Clinton's car that he has yet to return to duty.
A Lexis-Nexis search reveals that the Watts incident was covered in no fewer than 21 mainstream press reports since it was revealed on Oct. 7. Many of those reports were stand-alone stories in venues like the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Wire services such as the Associated Press and United Press International featured eight stories on the Watts altercation, which had the leading House Republican allegedly bristling after receiving a parking ticket at Oklahoma's Will Rogers Airport on Sept. 28, then stuffing the ticket underneath a security officer's badge.
But an Oct. 14 altercation at the Westchester County Airport, where Sen. Clinton's limousine blew past a security checkpoint at 35 miles per hour - injuring county police officer Ernest Dymond in the process - has been the subject of just one mainstream print report.
The Washington Times covered the incident two days later, in a story that quoted Officer Dymond as saying Clinton's car was going so fast, "I didn't know if we had a terrorist." The senator's limousine sped on for another 100 yards with Dymond banging on the window and door and shouting for the vehicle to stop.
It finally did, but only when the Westchester County cop threw his shoulder into the door like a football lineman, sustaining injuries that required emergency room treatment.
In the two weeks since, no New York newspaper has reported the Clinton incident. A Lexis-Nexis search reveals only two other mentions of it - one a report in the Hotline linking to the Internet version of the Washington Times report, and another brief mention in The Hill quoting Mrs. Clinton's spokesman saying the accident was the result of confusion.
Westchester County Police spokesman Det. William Rehm told NewsMax.com Friday that Officer Dymond had yet to return to duty due to injuries sustained in the Oct. 14 Clinton car accident.
[ NewsMax ]
"What's got me feeling warm and tingly all over is the sudden eviction of bull-oney from our midst. Political correctness has been sent scurrying back under its silk-taffeta tuffet, there to pout and pen long, mournful journal entries, while the rest of America enjoys a shot of Truth. Make it a bottle; I'll buy.
". . . This new understanding has been demonstrated in myriad ways, most recently a few nights ago during the Concert for New York City.(featuring) some of Hollywood's biggest stars, (including) - surprise! - Hillary Clinton. Huh? Who invited HER, the crowd seemed to say. Sen. Clinton could barely be heard during her 20-second gig, as firemen and police officers booed and jeered the former first lady. Translate for yourself what it means when America's largest heroes, urban warriors who gave all for nothing, hurl invectives at their state's senator.
"Could it be that they remember when she rolled her eyes and looked bored, barely bothering to clap her hands, during Bush's address to the Congress a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks? . . . America is fed up with hypocrisy and deceit and frozen-smile rhetoric; the junior senator from New York showed her true colors on live television while all America watched. As the rebel yell goes, they ain't fergettin'. . . . Truth is back in vogue, and those who practice deception and speak in rhetorical tongues won't be tolerated long."
[ Kathleen Parker, Orlando Sentinel / GOP N&V]
"Never mind Monica. Never mind the impeachment. America is living - day to day, and for many years to come - with the former president's fecklessness regarding international terrorism, too. Clinton promised to track down the architects of bombings at the World Trade Center (1993), Khobar Towers (1996), American embassies in Africa (1998) and USS Cole (2000) - and he didn't. This sent a signal that U.S. interests at home and abroad were open to attack.
"The Clinton administration also determined that the CIA should not use sources that had 'dirty hands' - i.e., individuals with possible criminal or human rights violations in their past. Soon it had no significant sources at all. In other words, the man's lack of self-control caused him to ignore his primary responsibility - keeping America and its citizens safe. And the price of that irresponsibility is being paid now."
[ New York Post ]
The homepage and archives for The Conservative Newsletter are located on the WWW at http://www.wilderness-cry.net/tcn/
This newsletter is sent by subscription only. If you do not wish to be on the mailing list, please let us know and you will be removed immediately. To be removed from this mailing list, simply reply to this newsletter with the word REMOVE in the body of your reply. You may also send your request to tcn@wilderness-cry.net .
Thank you.