Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Democrats and Republicans got into a heated verbal brawl ... over a public campaign finance bill in the Senate Transportation and Economic Development Committee. Some GOP senators railed against President Barack Obama’s reversal about taking public money to finance his campaign, just stopping short of calling the president a liar and refusing to refer to him as “president,” instead calling him “Sen. Obama” or “Candidate Obama.”

Democratic Sens. Chris Smith and Tony Hill grew fidgety as the anti-Obama rhetoric escalated but spilled over after Republican Ronda Storms refused to let the matter drop.

“I understand that some are uncomfortable with Candidate Obama’s faiilure to keep his word and those of us who did not support him calling attention to that,” Storms, R-Brandon, said. “I can completely understand they don’t want to talk about the messiah having a flaw but the messiah has a flaw.”

That pushed Smith, who previously tried to limit discussion on the proposed constitutional amendment (SJR 566) by asking for a vote, over the edge.

Smith said he was concerned that the debate was about federal campaign laws and not the state laws included in the bill.

“Don’t pi** on me and tell me it’s raining. I know what you were doing and I called you on it,” said Smith, whose district includes part of Palm Beach County.

Today, Congressman Bill Posey from Melbourne drafted legislation designed to fan the rumors on the extreme fringe of the Republican Party questioning President Obama's citizenship. These rumors are completely false, but they just won't give up. Congressman Posey should be focused on creating jobs and jumpstarting the economy, but it seems he's only obsessed with pandering to the right wing.

Floridians need our leaders to be focused on how to crate more jobs, expand healthcare and fix the economy, not pander to fringe elements. Florida Democrats fighting against these smears and working to elect leaders that will work for all of us.

Labels: Barack Obama, conspiracies, Florida, right wing nut-jobs, the birthers

(New York Daily News) WASHINGTON - FBI officials had been ready to "completely overwhelm" anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins with the evidence against him when he killed himself, but his former boss is dubious that agents really had a case.

After years of bungled leads and investigative missteps - including the $5.8 million it cost feds to settle a lawsuit with an earlier target of suspicion, Ivins' colleague Steven Hatfill - the FBI and federal prosecutors took their time to build a damning file on the anthrax vaccine specialist.

"The agents kept this close-held," a U.S. counterterrorism official briefed on details of the Ivins probe told the Daily News on Saturday. "They took their time until they had enough evidence to completely overwhelm Ivins, and they expected him to plead guilty."

After Ivins committed suicide, the Justice Department acknowledged "developments" in the "Amerithrax" attacks that killed five people in the months after 9/11. It did not mention Ivins.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, whose office received a poisoned letter in 2001, said Saturday that it was time for answers.

"It's been seven years; there's a lot of unanswered questions, and I think the American people deserve to know more than they do today," he said.

The former head of the Fort Detrick lab where Ivins worked also says it's time for the FBI to lay its evidence on the table.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Adamovicz told The News that the FBI's probe into the 2001 anthrax killings had upended the work of the lab by turning scientists into suspects - and pushed his pal over the edge.

"I just cannot see that Bruce would in any way, shape or form be responsible for something like that," he said. "I'd like to see these charges substantiated, because just like [with] Dr. Hatfill, there could be nothing to these allegations."

He said the FBI has created a psychologically toxic atmosphere for scientists at Fort Detrick.

"We were there processing information for agents and then one day they turned around and treated us all like suspects," he said. The agents' criteria for additional suspicion was "who's working the most overtime," said Adamovicz, who also was questioned by the feds.

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."

Daschle said the FBI has not given him any new updates. He also raised questions about the quality of the investigation, noting that the government recently paid out almost $6 million to a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who accused authorities of unfairly targeting him in the anthrax case.

"From the very beginning I've had real concerns about the quality of the investigation," Daschle said in a broadcast interview. "Given the fact that they already paid somebody else $5 million for the mistakes they must have made gives you some indication of the overall caliber and quality of the investigation."

"Unfortunately, it doesn't bring anything to closure," Daschle said. "This probably further complicates their ability to get to the facts."

He said he did not know if the investigation involving Ivins "is just another false track and a real diversion of where they need to be. We don't know and they aren't telling us."

• Death by anthrax

Labels: anthrax attacks, Bush administration, conspiracies, crime, domestic terrorism

(Los Angeles Times) Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator's office in Washinghttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifton.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI.

The FBI's new top investigators -- Vincent B. Lisi and Edward W. Montooth -- instructed agents to reexamine leads or potential suspects that may have received insufficient attention. Moreover, significant progress was made in analyzing genetic properties of the anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two senators.

The renewed efforts led the FBI back to USAMRIID, where agents first questioned scientists in December 2001, a few weeks after the fatal mailings.

By spring of this year, FBI agents were still contacting Ivins' present and former colleagues. At USAMRIID and elsewhere, scientists acquainted with Ivins were asked to sign confidentiality agreements in order to prevent leaks of new investigative details.

Ivins, employed as a civilian at Ft. Detrick, earlier had attracted the attention of Army officials because of anthrax contaminations that Ivins failed to report for five months. In sworn oral and written statements to an Army investigator, Ivins said that he had erred by keeping the episodes secret -- from December 2001 to late April 2002. He said he had swabbed and bleached more than 20 areas that he suspected were contaminated by a sloppy lab technician.

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we’re doing fine …. I think we’ll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that’s when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made. (video here)

RUSSERT: Senator McCain, let me pick up on your point about a post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There is a lot of discussion, concern on the ground whether that's feasible. And some are suggesting our military campaign is being limited until we get a post-Taliban regime in place. How do you see it?

MCCAIN: I think that might be partially the case from the reports that we have that there has not been the kind of air attacks in the areas where the Northern Alliance are fighting the Taliban forces.

I'd be a little reluctant to not to pursue this conflict as vigorously as possible.

MCCAIN: We were worried about the departure of Saddam Hussein that there might be chaos might ensue. I think most of us, in retrospect, would have liked to have seen Saddam Hussein gone. So I think we ought to overthrow them as quickly as possible.

I don't believe there's any such thing as a moderate Taliban, although I would be interested to hear from one.

Them? Recall that the question was about Afghanistan, and the prior discussion was about Osama bin Laden. Unbelievably, Russert didn't pick up on the switch from Afghanistan to Iraq. Later in the discussion, the Senators get right to the point, calling for an invasion of Iraq:

RUSSERT: Senator Lieberman, should we include Iraq as a military target in this war against terrorism?

LIEBERMAN: Well, of course, I feel that so long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Iraq, the United States is in danger. And I think if you look at the words of the president's statement to Congress, again, the war against terrorism, it says, we're not going to be safe until we rid the world of people who have the capacity and the intention to strike at civilians to achieve political ends.

There is some evidence to suggest that Saddam Hussein may have had contact with bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network, perhaps even involved in the September 11 attack. That raises my suspicions.

But the more important point is, we know that Saddam would like to do us the worst kind of ill. We know that he has worked on chemical and biological weapons and, in fact, has used them against his own people and against the Iranians. In my opinion, therefore, Saddam is a terrorist.

And, therefore, we should--it should be a centerpiece of our policy after we finish the business in Afghanistan and bin Laden to end that regime. It begins for me by supporting the Iraqi opposition, the people within Iraq that want to get rid of him. But then, ultimately there has to be an American and, I hope, allied military component to that. Because as long as Saddam is there, our lives are threatened.

RUSSERT: Would you have any problem expanding President Bush's orders to the CIA to go after Osama bin Laden to include Saddam Hussein?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I leave that to the president. But as a matter of principle and morality, of course not.

RUSSERT: Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: I think Joe's right.

And a bit later:

RUSSERT: But after Afghanistan, you'd have no problem going after Saddam Hussein?

MCCAIN: If Saddam Hussein continues to develop weapons of mass destruction, the means to deliver them, there are ties to terrorist organizations, then we have to give him his choice. We have to give the Syrians a choice. We have to give other countries a choice. Because we've got to--if anyone thinks that, just by taking care of bin Laden, we've taken care of the problem, they obviously are not aware of the extent of the challenge we have.

RUSSERT: If Saddam refuses to allow inspectors into his country, is that enough for us to say, either give us inspectors or face military action?

MCCAIN: I can't know those kind of details, and there are other ways, diplomatic, economic, many other ways, we can put pressure on the Iraqis. So it would depend on the situation and the time. But I think we're going to be steadfast.

You start to see why Lieberman is backing McCain for the presidency. The two have been partners in the neocon cause for a long, long time... Back to the timeline, which picks up on the same Sunday...

By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks alone could have accomplished.

Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in this matter.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

MORE INVESTIGATIVE NEWS: • Atta Met Iraqi Official in Prague

Four well-placed and separate sources told ABCNEWS that initial tests detected bentonite, though the White House initially said the chemical was not found.

The first battery of tests, conducted at Ft. Detrick, Md., and elsewhere, discovered the anthrax spores were treated with the substance, which keeps the tiny particles floating in the air by preventing them from sticking together — making it more likely that they could be inhaled.

The inhaled form on anthrax is far more deadly than the skin form.

As far as is known, only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons, but officials caution that the presence of the chemical alone does not constitute firm evidence of Iraqi involvement.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had denied that bentonite was found on the letters, but another senior White House official backed off Fleischer's comments, saying "at this point" there does not appear to be bentonite.

The official said the Ft. Detrick findings represented an "opinionated analysis," that three other labs are conducting tests, and that one of those labs had contradicted the bentonite finding. But, the official added, "tests continue."

Fleischer added that no test or analysis has concluded that bentonite is present in the Daschle anthrax, and "no other finding contradicts or calls into question" that conclusion.

Reading from what he said was a sentence from the report prepared by scientists at Fort Detrick, he told ABCNEWS, "It is interesting to note there is no evidence of aluminum in the sample." Aluminum, Fleischer said, would also be present if bentonite was.

Russert: Do you still believe there's no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

Cheney: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that--it's been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report -- insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:

On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare.

• September 7-8: Bush and nearly all his top advisers blanketed the airways, talking about the dangers posed by Iraq:
  • On NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.
  • On CNN, Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
  • On CBS, Bush said U.N. weapons inspectors, before they were denied access to Iraq in 1998, concluded that Saddam was "six months away from developing a weapon." He also cited satellite photos released by a U.N. agency Friday that show unexplained construction at Iraq sites that weapons inspectors once visited to search for evidence Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms. "I don't know what more evidence we need," Bush said.

• September 7, 2002: Judith Miller of The New York Times reports Bush administration officials said "In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium."

We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government -- from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further, propagandized the public to believe that our country was sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and -- as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.

He's right, and ABC has some explaining to do, as do four "highly placed sources" in the Bush administration.

One last piece of the time line, which I left out above but which is, in light of Greenwald's reporting, and ABC News' curious dealings, more than a little relevant:

2006

March 27: The Supreme Court declines to block Hatfill's suit against the Times.

April 11: It's reported that Hatfill's lawyers have questioned at least two journalists and are subpoenaeing other reporters, seeking the identities of their confidential government sources.

Oct. 23: A federal judge orders The New York Times to disclose a columnist's confidential sources as part of a libel lawsuit filed over the newspaper's coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Dec. 2: The New York Times asks a federal judge to dismiss Hatfill's lawsuit.

2007

Jan. 12: A federal judge dismisses libel lawsuit filed against The New York Times by Hatfill.

Feb. 2: Explaining his ruling, the judge says a New York Times columnist did not act with malice when writing about whether a Hatfill was responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Aug. 13: A federal judge says five journalists must identify the government officials who leaked them details about Hatfill.

Oct. 2: Hatfill asks a federal judge to hold two journalists in contempt for refusing to identify the government officials who leaked details about the investigation into the attacks.

2008

March 7: A federal judge holds a former USA Today reporter in contempt and orders her to pay up to $5,000 a day if she refuses to identify her sources for stories about Hatfill.

March 11: A federal appeals court blocks the fines.

June 27: The federal government awards Hatfill $5.8 million to settle his violation of privacy lawsuit against the Justice Department.

That payoff looks a lot more interesting now, no?

Labels: anthrax attacks, Bush administration, conspiracies, crime, domestic terrorism

Labels: conspiracies, current affairs, news, news and politics