Justice Dept. Negotiates Huge Settlement in Anthrax Patsy Case

From the NYT:

The Justice Department announced Friday that it would pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Stephen J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense researcher intensively investigated as a "person of interest" in the deadly anthrax letters of 2001.

The settlement called new attention to the fact that nearly seven years after the toxic letters were mailed, killing five people and sickening at least 17 others, the case has not been solved.

A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said in a statement that the government admitted no liability but decided settlement was "in the best interest of the United States."

"The government remains resolute in its investigation into the anthrax attacks, which killed five individuals and sickened others after lethal anthrax powder was sent through the United States mail," Mr. Roehrkasse said.

An F.B.I. spokesman, Jason Pack, said the anthrax investigation "is one of the largest and most complex investigations ever conducted by law enforcement" and is currently being pursued by more than 20 agents of the F.B.I. and the Postal Inspection Service.

"Solving this case is a top priority for the F.B.I. and for the family members of the victims who were killed," Mr. Pack said.

Uh-huh.

I would respectfully suggest that the size and complexity of the case could be made significantly more manageable if the FBI started looking for the likely culprit, rather than a patsy. The likely culprit is one (or more) members of a relatively small and easily identifiable population of researchers in the United States who have ready access to the requisite materials and the right training and experience to handle them.

He/she/they would no doubt have had extensive government background checks. The government should know where to find them in order to ask them to account for their whereabouts on the dates in question.

How hard could this be if the FBI really WANTED to find the person(s) responsible and not just a patsy?

ANTHRAX

Anybody still recall the anthrax attacks that took place in this country during the panic that ensued the week of 9/11/01? Remember those? Remember how the F.B.I. thought it had a fall guy in Steven J. Hatfill until it became obvious that Hatfill had no intention of taking the fall--and so they backed off in the glare of publicity and legal actions and appear to have buried the case? The Mazeppist doesn't know much about this sort of thing but, as a reasonably educated citizen of this former republic, I do have a few questions about that whole forgotten episode.

For example, just how many individuals are there in the United States (or the world for that matter) who have access to weapons grade anthrax and the requisite knowledge to produce and deliver it--without harming themselves in the process? I would have to imagine that we are talking about a discrete, finite, and easily identifiable community of individuals. So how is it possible that the case has gone unsolved? I have not joined the conspiracy theorists who contend that 9/11 was plotted by the Bush Administration, but I do wonder if the anthrax case might not hold the explosive key to government complicity in the 9/11 attacks at a very high level--and this is why the case quickly disappeared from public view...

I happened to be in the District of Columbia two Thanksgivings ago and found myself strolling by the FBI building. I had a notion to walk up the steps and exercise my right as a citizen to know the status of the case. But I decided that I didn't really want to wind up in the gitmo-gulag so I passed on by...Nothing like assigning the fox to watch the hen-house.

Yeah, we're the most free people on this earth; just ask our jailers...

I was reminded this morning that Monkey-Boy Bush, in his famous "Axis of Evil" address, accused Iraq of manufacturing weapons-grade anthrax. This leads me to a hypothesis: in 2002, the White House (mistakenly) believed that the national press would hold the federal government accountable for the investigation of the 9/11 anthrax attacks. Little did they suspect that the media in this country is so supine that they would allow this crime to drop off the radar--despite the fact that several "liberal" journalists were the targets of the attacks! So, in an attempt to create a false trail, the White House decided to blame it on Saddam. As it turns out, that particular falsehood wasn't necessary now that what passes for "investigative journalism" in the 21st century U.S. consists largely of journalists interviewing other journalists about their latest briefing by State Department officials.

White House anxiety over a REAL anthrax investigation (i.e., one NOT conducted by the Executive Branch) suggests inside knowledge of, and/or complicity in, the 9/11 anthrax attacks.

The place to begin asking questions would not be Monkey-Boy; one can be reasonably assured that he wouldn't know the difference between shit and shinola. The place to begin asking questions would be the Vice President's office--not that anyone there would do anything but stonewall. But if you look long and hard enough, someone with a conscience might just turn up. Or turn up dead.

After 8 Miserable Years of Monkey-Boy Bush...

I am almost allowing myself to hope that we might be entering a new era...

the era of Barack 'n Roll!

If Obama gets elected, he must do what Bill Clinton was always too bought to do...conduct a ruthless purge of Washington policy-wonk bureaucrats. No more neo-fascist sleeper cells of Wolfowitz's and Feith's. These people need to be finished in government. Let the pink slips rain down!

And the revolving door of government-big business- government that has made multi-millionaires of the Bush and Cheney families and countless others...NO MORE!

If I weren't a pacifist, I would urge show-trials and firing squads for the lot of them. We cannot do that; but we must make certain that they are driven back under the rocks from whence they came and NEVER, never EVER heard from again by decent folk.

And then we'll deal with Dobson and his Christo-Fascist ilk...

Let the spirit of the 1960's return! Let America be a place of possibility, of courage, of integrity. And let the Plutocratic War Party be disgraced from this time forward...

OK, OK, OK--one step at a time, one step at a time....

And Now a Word From Lao-Tzu

I make no secret of the fact that I detest George W. Bush and his criminal co-conspirators within and without the federal government. I detest their deep dishonesty towards the people that they claim to represent; their ignorance of the worlds of those whom they profess to care about and upon whom they have visited death, destruction, chaos; their self-righteous and supremacist version of Christianity--Christo-fascism, I call it. I never tire of ridiculing them. But today I think that I will offer them some wisdom...Not because I harbor the illusion that wisdom is something that Bush-Cheney, Inc. desires or has any use for...I offer it just because...

From the Tao te Ching:

When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world.

--trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Still Waitin' To Hear From Smilin' Jay...

Yes, indeed. I'm still waiting for a response from the Senator from West Virginia as to whether the Senate Intelligence Committee (no doubt an oxymoron) intends to pursue the criminals who sold the Iraq war to the American people under false pretenses--as that Committee's published findings reveal.

The good Senator is a member of the Democratic Party wing of the PWP (Plutocratic War Party--fondly referred to by some simply as "the junta") that runs the federal government of the United States. The PWP is, however, an international organization--having "gone global" some time back.

Come to think of it, I'm also curious if anyone in the federal government is pursuing the anthrax attacks that took place in this country during the panic that ensued the week of 9/11/01. Remember those? Remember how the F.B.I. thought it had a fall guy in Steven J. Hatfill until it became obvious that Hatfill had no intention of taking the fall--and so they backed off in the glare of publicity and legal actions and appear to have buried the case? The Mazeppist doesn't know much about this sort of thing but, as a reasonably educated citizen of this former republic, I do have a few questions about that whole forgotten episode. For example, just how many individuals are there in the United States (or the world for that matter) who have access to weapons grade anthrax and the requisite knowledge to produce and deliver it--without harming themselves in the process? I would have to imagine that we are talking about a discrete, finite, and easily identifiable community of individuals. So how is it possible that the case has gone unsolved? I have not joined the conspiracy theorists who contend that 9/11 was plotted by the Bush Administration, but I do wonder if the anthrax case might not hold the explosive key to government complicity in the 9/11 attacks at a very high level--and this is why the case quickly disappeared from public view...

And by the same token, I don't expect to be hearing from Smilin' Jay about the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the circumstances surrounding the illegal and immoral U. S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The PWP protects its own. The republic of the people, by the people, for the people is no more.

Barack, Bobbie, and Jay

The first time I saw Barack Obama referred to as the "Black Bobbie Kennedy," I said to myself, "Self, let's not get caught up in wishful thinking." And I still say it. But I remain hopeful; with gasoline at $4.00/gallon, hope is just about all I can afford.

The PWP (Plutocratic War Party) that runs this country--that's right, the junta--is powerful and prone to violence. I do not trust Republicans or Democrats. I certainly do not trust the Clintons or Scarface McPain. But I hope against hope that the electorate has had more than enough of Bush-Cheney, Inc. and its criminality.

Speaking of which, I sent a message today to Sen. Rockefeller, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and asked him, now that his committee has made "official" what many of us have known for the last 5 years--that this country was taken into war with Iraq for reasons personal to the President of the United States and members of his inner circle--I asked him, "Jay, what will be the federal government's next move?" More reports or arrest and prosecution of the war criminals Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Powell (at the very least)? I anxiously await his reply...

In the immortal words of Bob Dylan: "Don't it make you feel ashamed/To live in a land/Where justice is a game?"