August 2, 2008
The New York Daily

FBI Was Told to Blame Anthrax Scare on Al Qaeda by White House Officials

by James Gordon Meek

In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next."

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Enver Masud, "Deadly Deception, Pretexts for War," The Wisdom Fund, August 4, 2008

[President Bush would echo what John McCain had to say, linking Iraq to anthrax in his 2002 State of the Union address just a few months later. . . . Joe Lieberman several days later on Meet the Press - there was a concerted effort to try and link the anthrax in the public mind to Saddam Hussein and to Iraq, specifically, and Islamic radicalism, more generally.--"Anthrax Mystery: Questions Raised over Whether Government Is Framing Dead Army Scientist for 2001 Attacks," DemocracyNow!, August 4, 2008]

[There are three key reasons intense public scrutiny is critical. One is the intriguing story of Bruce Ivins's background in vaccine research with the Ames strain. Another is the well-documented use of the anthrax attacks to advance the Bush agenda of war with Iraq. The third reason is the less-explored relationship between the timing of the anthrax attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act.--Bill Simpich, "The Anthrax Attacks: Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant," truthout.org, August 4, 2008]

[ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, . . . At the time, and for years thereafter, many people were led to believe that the perpetrators were Islamic extremists in service to a hostile foreign power.--Sheldon Rampton, "The Anthrax Cover-Up," counterpunch.org, August 6, 2008]

[Prosecutors could not place Mr Ivins in Princeton, New Jersey, where the letters were posted and there was no match between Ivins's handwriting and that found in the anthrax laden letters.--Guillaume Simard-Morissette, "Anthrax case against bio-weapons expert 'staggering for lack of evidence'," Telegraph, August 7, 2008]

["On 9/11 Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, told Meyer she was in "no doubt: it was an al-Qaida operation"

" . . . the anthrax scare had 'steamed up' policy makers in Bush's administration and helped swing attitudes against Saddam"--Glenn Greenwald, "Anthrax case against bio-weapons expert 'staggering for lack of evidence'," salon.com, November 27, 2009]