Om Anthrax i USA. For å følge opp tråden Trond startet for en stund siden
(Anthrax and the Far Right).
....
Investigators have matched the anthrax used in the Florida, New York
and Washington letters. They are all from the Ames strain, a variety
of anthrax developed in the US but also exported overseas. This has
made them revise an early thought that the anthrax may have originated
in Russia or Iraq, two countries with a history of developing
biological weapons. Neither country is thought to have had that
particular strain.
....
Knut Rognes
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Independent on Sunday (London)
21 October 2001, p. 5
ANTHRAX 2: IOS INVESTIGATION - NET CLOSES ON ANTHRAX TERRORISTS AS 'US
CRANK' THEORY GAINS GROUND
By Chris Blackhurst
In Wynnewood Manor they know her as Terry, the mother in her mid-30s
who collected their mail every weekday for three years. Today, Terry
is being treated for exposure to anthrax, and black-jacketed FBI
agents are swarming over the route she took. The net is closing on the
anthrax terrorists and Terry might just be their critical mistake.
Terry did not pick up from public post boxes; she dealt only with
residential addresses in Wynnewood Manor, a suburb of Ewing, New
Jersey, a working- class town west of Trenton, the nearby city.
Somebody left Terry a letter to post.
If she checked the address, she may have been surprised to see it was
for Tom Brokaw, the veteran NBC anchorman. What the suburban terrorist
did not realise was that while the envelope to Mr Brokaw was stamped
"Trenton, NJ", it also had a Postal Service bar code, which narrowed
it down to Terry's sorting office. When she was found to be suffering
from anthrax, the search narrowed: she was on duty the day the bar
code was franked on Mr Brokaw's envelope; probably, she collected it.
Teams of FBI officers questioned residents along the postal worker's
tree-lined postal route. Samantha Pae, 34, her fiance, and her
fiance's mother were interviewed by the FBI, who asked them how long
they had lived in the area and whether they had noticed any suspicious
activity or observed vehicles with out-of-state plates. Charlotte
Piepszak, who has lived in the area for 30 years, said FBI agents
asked her if she knew any chemists.
One mailbox where the FBI suspects at least one anthrax-laced letter
began its journey has now been identified. It has been taken away for
tests.
Thomas J Ridge, the Bush administration's new director of homeland
security, confirmed the FBI "has been able to identify the site where
the letters were mailed". At first, given the proximity of the anthrax
mailshots to 11 September, the authorities thought they had to be
linked to extreme Muslim fundamentalists, probably Osama bin Laden and
his Al Qa'ida organisation. But in the last few days that view has
changed, with the "crank" theory gaining ground.
Investigators are increasingly convinced that a lone individual or
group of people living in the US are behind the mailings of the white
powder, which have claimed the life of a British-born picture editor
and brought parts of the US media, political and economic
infrastructure to a standstill.
Despite the letters sent to Mr Brokaw in New York and to Tom Daschle,
the Senate majority leader in Washington, calling for "death to
America" and praising Allah, agents are quick to point out the
messages do not mean anything. The letters could have been sent by a
right-winger, trying to stir up racial tension in the wake of 11
September and using the hijackings as cover.
There is plenty of other circumstantial evidence pointing to the
letters being the work of someone sympathetic to the 11 September
hijackers - but it is only circumstantial. Trenton is a major Muslim
area and New Jersey has featured already in the hijackings. Jersey
City, not far from Trenton, was home to two men who boarded a plane on
the day of the hijackings only for the flight to be grounded in the
aftermath of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks.
The following day, the pair, Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Azmath, were
picked up in Texas, with $ 5,000 in cash and the same sort of knives
used by the hijackers. They are in custody, along with a third man who
shared their home. When it was searched, agents found press clippings
of articles about biological warfare.
Agents also know that the man they suspect was the hijackers' leader,
Mohamed Atta, wanted to acquire a crop-spraying aircraft. And he lived
near the newspaper offices in Florida where the only person to die in
the anthrax attacks worked. But they have found nothing in the credit
card details and emails of the hijackers to indicate that they had a
quantity of anthrax or were aware that another type of attack was
imminent. One of the letters containing anthrax, sent to Kenya, was
posted before 11 September.
Investigators are also puzzled by the choice of targets. They do not
bear the hallmarks of the hijackers. Selecting media organisations
guarantees publicity but they are not politically symbolic. Mr
Daschle, despite his prominence as majority leader, is a Democrat not
a Republican (indeed, investigators have noted, few politicians have
riled the right as much as Mr Daschle, with websites calling for a
concerted effort to do him down).
Investigators have matched the anthrax used in the Florida, New York
and Washington letters. They are all from the Ames strain, a variety
of anthrax developed in the US but also exported overseas. This has
made them revise an early thought that the anthrax may have originated
in Russia or Iraq, two countries with a history of developing
biological weapons. Neither country is thought to have had that
particular strain.
Much has been made of the timing of the attacks, that coming so soon
after 11 September they must be linked. But anthrax terrorism is not a
new phenomenon, especially in the US. For the last four years, the
country has been in the grip of anthrax. It is an American phenomenon:
in 1999, the latest year for which records are available, there were
83 criminal incidents worldwide where a quantity of anthrax was
actually present, of which 81 were in the US.
The obsession with anthrax began in April 1997, when a petri dish
labelled "anthrachs" was sent in a package to a Jewish organisation in
Washington.
The dish contained a red, jelly-like substance, which after nine
hours' examination was pronounced harmless. That was after an area of
the capital had been cordoned off and the building evacuated.
Emergency workers insisted that police, who forgot to wear protective
clothing and entered the "hot zone", stripped off and had showers
there and then. It was the first major anthrax scare. It received
plenty of publicity - and hundreds followed it.
In one year alone, 1999, according to The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, there were hoax anthrax threats made against a department
store, a nightclub, NBC, the Washington Post, a post office and a
government building. In just four days in February, there were 35
anthrax scares. In one, in Missouri, 20 people had to leave an
abortion clinic and have an outdoor shower in a snowstorm (they kept
their clothes on).
For right-wing groups in particular, making false claims about anthrax
is a weapon of choice. So frequent were the alarms that Neil
Gallagher, assistant director of the FBI's national security division,
has vented his frustration: "Not a day goes by without us hearing from
somewhere in the US about an anthrax threat." In 1994, there were 27
stories listed in the New York Times's archive concerning "biological
and chemical warfare" in the US. By 1998, it had risen to 278. Media
interest - hoaxes were often treated in the press as though they had
been real - plus a spate of films and novels sent fears about anthrax
attacks spiralling upwards. This was not helped by William Cohen, the
then defence secretary, appearing on national television with a bag of
sugar in his hand and claiming an equal amount of anthrax would wipe
out half the population of Washington.
Individual states carried out doomsday tests based on imaginary
anthrax outbreaks; these often involved emergency workers donning
terrifying looking suits and were usually conducted in the full glare
of local publicity. One national test, the "Topoff exercise" in May
2000, saw the federal authorities trying to cope with simultaneous
chemical, biological and nuclear attacks in three widely separated
metropolitan areas - and failing. The resulting publicity sent
national paranoia to new levels, and just may have encouraged today's
attacker.
Iraq seeking revenge for defeat in the Gulf war was seen as one likely
threat. But there were others. In 1998, Larry Wayne Harris, a
microbiologist linked to a white supremacist group, was arrested after
allegedly threatening to release "military-grade anthrax" in Las
Vegas. He did have anthrax but on examination it turned out to be a
harmless veterinary-grade strain.
Somebody, somewhere has now got hold of a lethal variety and is
putting it in the mail. They may be supportive of the hijackers or
they could, just as easily, be fulfilling a long-threatened ambition.
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