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The Biowar Story Not Told In The Aftermath Of A Scientist's Suicide
Danny Schechter
News
Dissector
Monday, Aug 4, 2008
It is Saturday morning, and as the skies darken, and the rains
threaten, I am reading about biowar investigator Bruce E. Ivins
who is said to have taken his life with a fatal cocktail of codeine
and other drugs just as he was about to be arrested and charged
with five cases of murder in connection with the still fully unsolved
anthrax attacks of 2001.
The naming of Mr. Ivins, born in Lebanon (Ohio), not the Middle
East, and a veteran employee at the U.S. Government’s massive
US Army bio weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, MD at least suggests,
as many have long contended, that this was a domestic crime, not
a foreign terrorist act.
The story, broken by the LA Times Friday got the full card monte
coverage treatment by the New York Times on Saturday with acres
of print. Is there any reason to conclude that we now know all
the facts, or that the case is closed or even that Ivins was the
guilty party?
(Article continues below)
The last man accused by the FBI Dr Stephen Hatfill went to Court
and won a $4.6 million settlement in his suit against the FBI
for violating his rights. His law suit against the NY Times reporting
on the issue failed when the Judge ruled he could not prove the
newspaper knowingly published false information. Clearly, the
information was false then. How credible is the reporting now?
Ivins’ lawyer Paul Kemp insists that it was FBI harassment
and humiliation that led to the suicide. He also contends that
Ivins would have been exonerated if his case went to trial. Obviously
he was facing a long and costly legal ordeal contributing to his
anxieties. One report said he did not have the money to properly
defend himself.
The Washington Post reports that other scientists at the lab
are skeptical about suggestions that Ivins is the man described
in the NY Post as “DR DOOM.”
Yet, colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained
convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had
neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal
powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional
offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous
FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply
skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.
“I really don’t think he’s the guy. I say
to the FBI, ‘Show me your evidence,’ ” said
Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division
at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases,
or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick.
“A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate
him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons.”
Investigators are so confident of Ivins’s involvement
that they have been debating since Friday whether and how to
close the seven-year-old anthrax investigation. That would involve
disbanding a grand jury in the District and unsealing scores
of documents that form the basis of the government’s case
against Ivins.
Congressman Rush Holt does not trust the FBI either. In a statement
buried at the end of the Times story on page A10, rather than
in the lead on page l where it belonged, he said, “What
we learn will not change the fact that this has been a poorly
handled investigation that has lasted 6 years and already has
resulted in a trail of embarrassment and personal tragedy.”
According to another report, FBI investigators had conducted
9100 interviews, sent out 6000 grand jury subpoenas and conducted
67 searches. They also traveled to “many” unnamed
countries. They would not disclose their case against the late
Mr. Ivins. He saw himself as a fall guy or patsy. Was he? Who
else and what else was behind this attack on news outlets, US
Senators and the postal service employees who died.
UNASKED QUESTIONS
The Brad Blog noted that “it’s curious — if
hardly surprising — that none of the major outlets reporting
the news bothered to note that the attacks were all made on perceived
“liberals”.
Even a parade of reporters contacting Ivins family today, failed
to bring up the topic.
We called Ivins oldest brother Thomas today, to ask if he had
any idea of Bruce’s political leanings, and he told us “No,
I didn’t. I didn’t know what his affiliations where.
And that’s a good question.”
He was surprised by the question and though he said he’d
been speaking with reporters all day, “one after another,”
he told The BRAD BLOG, none of the other reporters, not one of
them, had asked him about his brother’s political affiliations,
leanings or beliefs….”
No reporters have also brought up a crazy angle on the case:
a reported at the time JLO connection.
FBI AND MEDIA FLAWED
So both the FBI probe and the media coverage has been flawed
but there is one rather large and dangerous aspect of this that
has also so far escaped much notice. In the Times accounts, one
story suggested that Ivins may have acted to “raise an alarm
about the bio terrorism threat.” Another suggested that
Ivins had bought a bullet proof vest and gun and contemplated
killing co-workers at the Army research lab “to take everyone
else out with him.”
Was he a nut, another lone maniac, or is it possible that his
motives were more nuanced?
The NY POST reduced his motive to making money, although he never
made any as a result of his still unproven role in the anthrax
attacks:
The suicidal scientist revealed as the likely culprit behind
the 2001 anthrax mailings was part of a megamillion-dollar deal
to have his own vaccine mass produced in the wake of those biological
attacks and the national panic they created.
Bruce Ivins, 62, was the co-owner of a patent on what was seen
as a cure to the terrifying threat.
Before the attacks, the vaccine developed by Ivins - who killed
himself last week as a seven-year federal investigation closed
in on indicting him for five murders - garnered little attention.
But the deadly post-9/11 mailings brought $50 billion in government
funding to the field of bioterror prevention.
An $877.5 million contract was inked with biotech firm VaxGen
to provide Ivins’ vaccine in a deal in which he stood
to profit, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. One
estimate put the potential windfall in the tens of thousands
of dollars.
A VaxGen executive said his company did not have a profit-sharing
agreement with Ivins personally, and he had no knowledge of
what arrangement Ivins had with his employers.
A former senior official at the US Army Medical Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases - the high-security lab in Maryland where
Ivins worked for 36 years - believed the mad researcher mailed
the anthrax-laced letters to move government resources to his
field.
“It had to have been a motive,” the official told
the LA Times. “I don’t think he ever intended to
kill anybody. He just wanted to prove ‘Look, this is possible.’
He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those
envelopes and kill those postal workers.”
The Associated Press quoted a therapist who suggested the scientist
was a homocidal killer. This angle will no doubt interest Hollywood.
Watch for the HBO Special later this year:
Social worker Jean Duley testified at a court hearing in Frederick
on July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins
— who five days later committed suicide — that he
“actually attempted to murder several other people.”
Ivins took a fatal dose of acetaminophen, the active drug in
Tylenol, as federal authorities monitored his movements and
prepared to charge him with the murder of five people who died
from anthrax poisoning in the weeks after the Sept. 2001 terror
attacks.
An audio recording of the court session was obtained by The
New York Times and posted it on its Web site.
“As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually
attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning.
He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he’s been slighted
or has had — especially toward women — he plots
and actually tries to carry out revenge killings,” Duley
said.
Another possible motive: could it be that the threat he saw,
from his own insider experience, was not overseas, but here at
home, inside the military for whom he worked, not from some cave
in Afghanistan? He was a vaccine man in a world that was increasingly
moving in a more military mode. Maybe that is what he wanted to
“take out!”
WHERE IS THE REAL THREAT?
If so, he would not be the only scientist worried about the direction
bio research was taking and this new threat. And what could that
threat be? Perhaps it was not necessarily one fabricated bio attack
but rather the covert development of a bio war industry through
which the US government is reviving its bio war capacity for aggressive
use, not domestic protection. In fact, many researchers in this
field share this concern.
Reported the Times about his work, ”the work became even
more intense in the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attack, as the
field grew tremendously with BILLIONS (my caps) in new federal
support for research on anthrax AND OTHER POTENTIAL BIOLOGICAL
WEAPONS (my caps) and to buy new drugs or vaccines to handle a
possible future attack.”
The Times might have added this line had they conducted their
own investigation into the controversy over the proliferating
U.S. bio war INDUSTRY: “and to create new weapons for use
in a possible future attack by the US military.”
Bear in mind that it was the US and Germany who sold Saddam the
bioweapons he used on the Kurds. Also remember the Operation Tailwind
Story suppressed by CNN alleging bio-weapons (ie. nerve gas) use
in Vietnam by the US. When the producers fired by CNN later sued,
demanding access to documents and information on the pressure
the network came under for their story, CNN settled and paid the
producers large sums of money as long as they signed a gag order
and refused to disclose the amount they were paid and other information.
I covered this issue extensively on Mediachannel.org
That industry is, of course, sold to the public entirely as a
defensive response and public health necessity. In the same way
that the attack on Iraq was sold to the US to protect us from
attack, using the 911 attack as its rationale, the far less public
expansion of the Bio war industry had a similar rationale.
The anthrax attack was a 9/11 for the expansion of the biowar
industry.
INVESTIGATING THE BIO WAR INDUSTRY
I know a bit about this because three years ago, I was working
with a team to find funding for an investigative film about this
issue. We begged funders for help, writing:
While most of our media is focused on covering the war on terror
and the conflict in Iraq, another Administration initiative
could easily turn into another arena of conflict with truly
frightening implications.
I am referring to a massive and under-reported Bush Administration
initiative to spend six BILLION dollars on a new “Bio-Defense”
program that is building as many as 20 BL-4 labs equipped to
handle the deadliest pathogens known to man. Without a public
debate or media scrutiny this program is attacking serious criticism
from the scientific community and community groups opposed to
siting these labs in densely populated urban areas
The International Center for Global Communications Foundation
is seeking support for a Globalvision investigative documentary
on the dangers posed by this Initiative. “WHEN BIO SAFELY
BECOMES A BIO THREAT” (TENTATIVE TITLE) will examine this
program which major medical schools and the National Institute
of Health has embraced while community groups and top scientists
involved in arms control oppose.
The response: ZERO, ZIP, NADA!
We first learned about this story because of opposition in Boston
to the construction of a level containment 4 lab (top security),
for use with major pathogens, at Boston University. When the university
announced it was to be built in the black community of Roxbury,
community groups there became concerned.
They were pissed that they were not consulted, but and, also,
soon worried about how any accident at the lab might put the community
at risk. Their initial fears were predictably dismissed until
reports came out of an unplanned release of a dangerous rabbit
virus at a nearby level 2 lab. Suddenly, their concerns could
not downplayed as a hysterical or paranoid reaction.
The organization Roxbury Safety Net contacted Globalvision and
we started looking into the issue. So did a Boston area anti-war
organization. What we found was that the Boston lab was part of
a national program run out of the National Institute of Health
and coordinated by an ex CIA official with a budget of billions.
The NIH, at the direction of the Bush Administration and with
funding provided by Congress, escalating bio research will cutting
back on funding for other diseases and research,
Slowly, opposition to more labs emerged in other parts of the
country, at the Livermore Labs in the Bay Area and even at Ft
Detrich in Maryland. Some were defeated. Across the country, citizen
researchers dug out documents and soon scientists expressed alarm.
WHEN DEFENSE BECOMES OFFENSE
I spoke with a top researcher at Rutger’s University who
explained how easily a “defensive” program could become
an offensive one even as the flouted international treaties and
American law. (Richard Nixon ended the US bio war program, but
many in the military objected in part because the Soviet Union
had its own massive and secret facility for many years. And yes,there
had been accidents.)
This became a media story, or rather anon media story, when we
could not find any money to fund our investigation and film. Thank
you media consolidation and caution at all the foundations for
the fear to challenge the government’s national security
obsession.
Despite its importance, despite the unsolved anthrax attacks,
and despite the obvious public concern, fear of terrorism and
worries about public safety, we struck out. Our film has yet to
be made. It is painful for a journalist to have a big story and
not be able to interest any outlet or funder in it.
Most of the media was once again asleep at the switch, Perhaps
with this suicide, some media outlets will pursue the story and
the larger context that has been missing. I am also trying to
get back in touch with activists at Ft Detrich who have been monitoring
this story and have additional information missing in most press
reports.
SAFETY CONCERNS RAISED
Most media outlets have yet to discuss the potential for a revival
of our bio-war program but are raising deeper questions. The Houston
Chronicle asked this weekend:
“Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made
the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with
access to dangerous germs?
“We are putting America at more risk, not less risk,”
said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of a House panel that
has investigated recent safety lapses at biolabs.”
But the proliferation of biodefense research laboratories presents
real threats, too, congressional investigators recently warned.
More people in more places handling toxic agents create more
opportunities for an accident or intentional misuse by an insider,
Keith Rhodes, an investigator with the Government Accountability
Office, said at a congressional hearing in October.
Nationwide, there are an estimated 14,000 people working at
about 400 laboratories who have permission to work with so-called
“select agents” — which could be used in a
bioterror attack — although a much smaller amount of this
research involves the most dangerous materials, like anthrax.
With so many people involved, there is insufficient federal
oversight of biodefense facilities, Rhodes testified.
Heightening the concern has been a string of accidents at certain
new or expanded biodefense laboratories, several of which were
not properly reported to the authorities when they first took
place.
One of the first accidents was in Ivins’ laboratory in
late 2001, when he and his colleagues were aiding the federal
investigation of the anthrax attacks and spores accidentally
spilled outside the secure area.
He failed to report the event to his superiors and instead
tried to disinfect the contaminated areas, according to an Army
report, which concluded, “Adherence to institute safety
procedures by laboratory personnel is lax.”
In early 2006, at Texas A&M University, a worker was infected
with Brucella bacteria, a pathogen common in livestock that
can cause flulike symptoms like fever, fatigue and joint pain,
although it is rarely fatal. Later, three researchers at the
same lab were infected with Q fever, another cattle-borne disease
that can cause serious but generally not fatal illness in humans.
After the two incidents belatedly became public, federal officials
temporarily shut down the laboratory, citing a series of safety
shortcomings.
This story originally came from the NY Times. It also raises
a related question: have tens of millions poured into bio research
presumably investigating various new threats, led to funding cutbacks
of serious other health crises?
“Apart from the threat from insiders, some public health
experts believe money being used to study obscure pathogens that
are not a major disease problem could be better directed to study
known killers like influenza or AIDS.”
(IF YOU CAN HELP US MAKE THIS FILM, OR HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT
THE ISSUE PLEASE CONTACT ME AT dissector@mediachannel.org)
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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