American Buddhist Net

It's reached the point now where almost anyone can see that the case against Ivins is not strong. It does not come near proving that he acted alone, let alone acted at all. It also does not in any way prove that he stole the anthrax--to which some 100 people had access--or that he had the means or the skills to convert it to the very sophisticated weapon it was when mailed. Furthermore, the FBI has not established a credible motive. So, opportunity has been established, but the means and the motive are far from having been proved. Beyond that, the evidence shows that Ivins, like so many humans, could be a bit weird and that he was sensitive, a trait that likely drove him to kill himself. So the question now becomes why the rush to close the investigation? Is it because Bush's term is nearing an end and this is yet one more thing they need to cover up? ABN
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Handwriting analysis also failed to tie Ivins to letters
August 07, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Bruce Ivins
Casting further doubt on the FBI's anthrax case, accused government scientist Bruce Ivins passed two polygraph tests and a handwriting analysis comparing samples of his handwriting to writing contained in the anthrax letters, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say.

The Justice Department yesterday closed the case, announcing the late "Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks."

Ivins passed the first polygraph to satisfy a security requirement prior to working with the FBI as part of a team of scientists at the Fort Detrick, Md., lab who originally helped analyze the anthrax letters. He passed a second exam after he became a suspect.

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People like Hamdan are usually not even tried for war crimes. This sentence seems appropriate, if he is let go on time, and more fitting to the image of the USA as a great nation than the life sentence proposed by the prosecution. It's not much but it is the first glimmer of sanity we have seen in some time over these detainees. ABN
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By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: August 7, 2008

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the convicted former driver for Osama bin Laden, was sentenced Thursday to 66 months in prison by the military panel that convicted him of a war crime Wednesday.

The unexpectedly short sentence was far less than military prosecutors had sought. Through more than five years of legal proceedings against Mr. Hamdan, prosecutors had pursued a life sentence, and earlier in the day, faced with Mr. Hamdan's acquittal on the most serious charge against him, prosecutors recommended a sentence of at least 30 years and said life may be appropriate.

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Bruce Ivins wrote in a September 26, 2001 email that he "heard tonight" that Bin Laden has anthrax and sarin gas.

Major report from that day:

Bin Laden terror group tries to acquire chemical arms
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 26, 2001

"Intelligence officials say classified analysis of the types of chemicals and toxins sought by al Qaeda indicate the group probably is trying to produce the nerve agent Sarin, or biological weapons made up of anthrax spores"

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Last night we received the message below in an email from a very reliable source. Today, we found confirmation here. Since this is all coming from Mike Whitney, it is surely very reliable information. ABN
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My friend Tom Feeley is in Big trouble. He runs the web site informationclearinghouse.info which updates "news you won't find in the corporate media" every day. The site is strongly anti-war. Tom has gotten his share of death threats over the years, but what happened this week is a lot more serious. Two days ago, Tom's wife found three well dressed men in their kitchen. The man who did all the talking, told Tom's wife (I won't give her name) that Tom must "Stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!" As crazy as it sounds, he pulled back his lapel and showed her a gun of some kind which she could not identify.

Facilities in Los Angeles and Tustin allegedly churned thousands of indigents through their sites and billed Medicare and Medi-Cal for costly and unjustified medical procedures.

By Cara Mia DiMassa, Richard Winton and Rich Connell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 7, 2008

On a Sunday afternoon two years ago, five homeless people being dropped off on Los Angeles' skid row by an ambulance caught the attention of police officers.

The officers videotaped what they thought was a case of hospitals dumping patients in a section of the city where few would notice or care.

But as investigators began to unravel the incident, they say they found something far different: a massive scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars by recruiting homeless patients for unnecessary medical services.

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Thursday, August 07, 2008

NEW YORK — Guantanamo waterboarding as a Coney Island sideshow — that's what one political-minded artist has created on the Brooklyn seashore.

The "Waterboard Thrill Ride," by Steve Powers, is a stone's throw from Coney Island's famed Cyclone roller coaster and Nathan's hot dog stand.

For a dollar, visitors get to look through a barred window on a Guantanamo-like interrogation, enacted by animated robots. The hooded figure leans over a man in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered with a towel and his body tethered to a tilted plane.

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Nass has written some good stuff on this case and her blog is worth following. About the evidence presented, Ivins' lawyer also puts it well: “It was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect,” said Paul F. Kemp, who represented the scientist for more than a year before his death on July 29 at age 62. “But there’s a total absence of proof that he committed this crime.”

Which brings us back to the even bigger question of why the rush to close this case now? It hardly seems to have been "solved" as the FBI claims. In the spirit of their rush to condemn Ivins, are we not permitted the same leeway in our speculation about their timing? To wit, is this case being closed now because Bush's term is coming to an end and someone does not want the matter pursued further under the next administration? Does anyone else see a pattern here with other things like telecoms, domestic spying, torture, attorney hirings and firings, executive privilege, fake WMDs, GITMO trials, and so on? ABN
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August 6, 2008
Meryl Nass

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said at a Justice Department news conference, "We regret that we will not have the opportunity to present evidence to the jury."

Everybody else regrets it too--since what came out today was another pastiche of innuendo and circumstantial evidence, with an awful lot of holes. Time for the FBI to present all of what it has to the court of public opinion, don't you think? A major benefit for the FBI of sharing its case would be restoration of confidence in the US' system of justice, the Justice Department and its FBI.

I worked all day at the hospital, but want to get something out tonight, in a hurry, regarding the strength of some of the evidence presented today. I'll no doubt have more to say once I have read the rest of the "evidence".

Here goes:

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This is our first glimpse of an overview of the evidence. The claim that he had "hundreds" of letters similar to the anthrax letters may be something, but we will need to see those letters. The other evidence is circumstantial and could well fit other people; obviously, the FBI thought so too or they would not have pursued Hatfill so relentlessly. We will know more in a few days as more people look over the files. ABN
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By DAVID STOUT and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: August 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — A few days before the anthrax attacks of 2001, the scientist who has emerged as the suspect in the case sent e-mails with wording that was sometimes identical to the language used in deadly anthrax-laced letters that autumn, according to documents released by the government on Wednesday.

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George Washington
August 5, 2008

Colonel Arthur Anderson is the chief of human use and ethics at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the bioweapons facility where Dr. Ivins worked and where the anthrax strains were apparently obtained by the anthrax killer.

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August 5, 2008
By JOHN MARKOFF

A criminal gang is using software tools normally reserved for computer network administrators to infect thousands of PCs in corporate and government networks with programs that steal passwords and other information, a security researcher has found.

The new form of attack indicates that little progress has been made in defusing the threat of botnets, networks of infected computers that criminals use to send spam, steal passwords and do other forms of damage, according to computer security investigators.

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Wed, Aug 6, 2008
By TRACIE CONE
Associated Press Writer

HICKMAN, Calif. --Friends of an elderly millionaire who was killed by a local pastor sensed something was wrong long before his death.

The agricultural museum that the Rev. Howard Douglas Porter had promised to establish using the old man's life savings wasn't being built, so one day Les Orr drove 85-year-old Frank Craig to the site. There, behind Hickman Community Church, where Porter was the pastor, stood nothing but an empty grass lot.

"As soon as he saw there was no foundation, that nothing had been done at all, he started vomiting," Orr said, recalling the feelings of betrayal that overwhelmed Craig, his friend of 60 years. "Then he said, 'Take me home.'"

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By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.

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Anyone see a pattern in this? ABN
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Dr. At Center Of August Searches Lost Job, Has Not Been Charged

TOMS RIVER, N.J., Oct. 5, 2004

(CBS/AP) Federal investigators are destroying the life of a New York doctor by wrongly linking him to fatal 2001 anthrax mailings, his lawyer said Monday.

Agents descended on the Wellsville, N.Y., home of Dr. Kenneth Berry on Aug. 5, as well as his parents' New Jersey shore summer home, for searches described by an FBI spokesman as part of the anthrax investigation. Berry has not been charged.

That same day, the doctor, who founded an organization in 1997 that trains medical professionals to respond to chemical and biological attacks, was arrested after a domestic dispute at a Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., motel.

"I believe the family cracked under the pressure," Berry's lawyer, Clifford Lazzaro, said outside court after a hearing was postponed in that case.

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By RICHARD SPERTZEL
August 5, 2008

Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in September/October 2001.

But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone.

I believe this is another mistake in the investigation.

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THE ANTHRAX ATTACKS AND THE ASSAULT ON CIVIL LIBERTIES

FLASHBACK: LAWYER: ANTHRAX PROBE MD REELING

Good essay, good work, smart man. But Glenn, what about the FLOOD of leaks in the government's 9/11 case? Remember, the same FBI controlled that "investigation." I love seeing real journalists go for the truth in this Ivins case but cannot figure out what is stopping them when it comes to 9/11. Glenn, be honest with yourself--have you ever seen a photograph of Flight #93, the one that allegedly crashed into a hole in the ground in Pennsylvania? You figured out that there was no real sorority near the mailbox in Princeton for the Ivins case. So what about the wreckage of Flight #93? Where is it and why have photos never been released? Isn't that a very important question? Does the fact that there is no photo and almost no debris at the "crash" scene not indicate that the plane was possibly shot down, as other lines of evidence also indicate? And if it was shot down, what happens to the rest of the official 9/11 story? Too weird? I know, but look at this anthrax case. It's pretty weird, too, which is my point. ABN
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Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday Aug. 5, 2008

It's certainly possible that once the FBI closes its investigation and then formally unveils its evidence -- which apparently will happen tomorrow -- a very convincing case will be made that Bruce Ivins perpetrated the anthrax attacks and did so alone. But what has been revealed thus far -- through the standard ritual of selected Government leaks which the establishment media, which some exceptions, just mindlessly re-prints no matter how frivolous -- is creating the opposite impression. The FBI's coordinated leaking is making their claim to have solved the anthrax case appear quite dubious, in some instances laughably so.

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How many of us could withstand that kind of pressure from the FBI?

While we are on the subject of credibility, is anyone else noticing that a fair number of mainstream journalists have been doing a good job digging for the truth about Ivins? That's good, right? Yes, it is. But how come they don't do the same thing concerning 9/11 where there are scores of questions even more serious than those being asked about Ivins? The cases are related in many ways. Have journalists been warned away from 9/11? Do they fear where an investigation might lead? Why is the truth suddenly so important in the Ivins case (which it most emphatically is) but not when it comes to 9/11? Already, journalists have investigated Ivins' therapist Duley, found out about the questioning of his children, and made distinctions about his having the skills to work with wet anthrax versus the skills to weaponize it. But have any of these same journalists asked how a paper passport from one of the alleged hijackers survived the crash into one of the Twin Towers, or how a bandanna and visa from another hijacker survived the crash in Pennsylvania? Or why Atta would have brought with him that morning a suitcase full of incriminating evidence that conveniently did not make it onto his plane? What's going on here? Why so fearless about anthrax and Ivins but so incredibly silent about 9/11? In this Ivins case, we all are fully aware and state outright that we don't know all the facts. Maybe he did do it. But is that stopping anyone from asking serious questions? From doubting the government's story? Not really. So why not give 9/11 the same treatment? Just ask the questions, pursue the truth, find out where it all leads? Who put that passport in the street and why did they do it? Where is the wreckage of Flight #93 and why has no photo ever been published of it? We have photos of the visa and bandanna that miraculously survived the crash Flight #93 but not of the plane itself which allegedly disappeared into a hole in the ground. How can journalists get so jazzed about the truth in one case but not the other? ABN
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By SCOTT SHANE and NICHOLAS WADE
Published: August 5, 2008

...They had even intensively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, “Your father did this,” according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend.

As the investigation wore on, some colleagues thought the F.B.I.’s methods were increasingly coercive, as the agency tried to turn Army scientists against one another and reinterviewed family members.

One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Dr. Ivins’s daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks.

“It was not an interview,” Dr. Byrne said. “It was a frank attempt at intimidation.”

Dr. Byrne said he believed Dr. Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. “They figured he was the weakest link,” Dr. Byrne said. “If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?”

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August 5, 2008
By PAUL VITELLO

...On Sunday, parishioners at Mass were told that the archdiocese had removed Monsignor Harris from his parish and priestly duties while it looked into complaints by two people that he had sexually abused them about 20 years ago.

Neither the archdiocese nor the Manhattan district attorney’s office would provide more details. But people familiar with the district attorney’s investigation said the complaints involved the fondling of two boys, about 13 or 14 years old, when they were students at the Cathedral School in Manhattan, where Monsignor Harris was assigned before becoming pastor at St. Charles Borromeo.

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August 5, 2008

Mary Winkler, the woman convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 shooting death of her husband, a minister, has taken custody of her three daughters, one of her lawyers said. The lawyer, Rachael Putnam, said Ms. Winkler picked up the girls on Friday from the minister’s parents, Dan and Diane Winkler. The children will live with Ms. Winkler at her home near McMinnville, about 60 miles southeast of Nashville.

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Good piece, in-depth, bold, unflinching, asks most of the important questions. So how come Raimondo never does the same for the subject of 9/11? I do not want to sidetrack the discussion on Ivins, but I do wonder. The anthrax attacks and 9/11 could very well be related. Even if they are not directly related (i.e. done by the same perps), they are situationally related and similar in kind. Both are crimes of terror leading to foreign wars and domestic repression; both are replete with poor research, reasoning, and evidence; both lead to questions about the US government itself. The difference is many mainstream journalists are jumping all over the anthrax case, running down leads, asking tough questions, but none of these same people are lifting a finger to question the official story of 9/11. Why? We get real detail about the anthrax story--the genetic signature of the strain used, who might have been able to weaponize it, who had access, and so on--but these same people cannot ask such simple questions as where the hell is the wreckage of Flight #93 or the massive titanium engines of Flight #77 that supposedly vaporized at the Pentagon? ABN
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Justin Raimondo
August 4, 2008

The media narrative now being woven around the apparent suicide of U.S. government scientist Bruce E. Ivins – a prominent anthrax researcher who worked at Ft. Detrick's U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases bio-weapons research lab (USAMRIID) – is that he was a lone nut, a "homicidal maniac" who poisoned the five people killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks and was determined to go on another killing spree at his workplace as the Feds closed in on him. The Times of London headline says it all: "Mad Anthrax Scientist in Threat to Kill Co-Workers."

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Monday Aug. 4, 2008
Glenn Greenwald

...Duley herself has a history that, at the very least, raises questions about her credibility. She has a rather lengthy involvement with the courts in Frederick, including two very recent convictions for driving under the influence -- one from 2007 and one from 2006 -- as well as a complaint filed against her for battery by her ex-husband. Here is Duley's record from the Maryland Judicial data base:

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Here is a really crappy story that practically convicts Ivins in print. It does have some interesting new info, though: Officials: Sorority obsession seen in anthrax case

This is an excellent source of information on anthrax and the recent Ivins case. ABN
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Aug 4, 2008
By Khushwant Singh

LAWYERS for former chief executive officer of Ren Ci Hospital Shi Ming Yi on Monday asked for more time to make representations to the Attorney-General's Chambers.

They made the request during the court appearance of the 46-year-old Buddhist monk who has been charged with criminal breach of trust, forgery and abetting falsification of accounts. He also faces six charges under the Charities Act for allegedly providing false information.

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Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, August 1, 2008

The LA Times reports on a DEA raid at Organica Collective, a Culver City medical marijuana dispensary.

Gina Ferazzi's photos of the raid are wonderful. My favorite is the one of a hipster-looking agent with a healthy soul-patch on his chin and a giant pistol on his belt.

The federal operation came on the same day an appellate court in San Diego ruled that federal law does not preempt the state's law allowing the use of medical marijuana -- a ruling touted by supporters of California's medical marijuana law as a significant win.

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Do not really like posting this sort of story, but there has been a great rise in blade attacks in England, Japan, and now China. ABN
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AFP
3 August 2008

A FARMER went on a killing rampage in a village in central China, stabbing six people to death including a seven-year-old boy, state media reported today.

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Ivins Could Not Have Been Attacker, Some Say

By Joby Warrick, Marilyn W. Thompson and Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 3, 2008; A01

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick's Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects.

Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers, according to one of Ivins's former supervisors. In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were searched, and their computers and equipment carted away.

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