* Laurie Garrett: FBI did not fully pursue evidence that might link the attacks to al-Qaida

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* Laurie Garrett in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: Reporting on Biosecurity from America to Zaire (January / February 2012) (subscription required) … Ms. Garrett Calls For Thorough Investigation Of Attacks Comparable to The 9/11 Commission Report

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* Laurie Garrett … the FRONTLINE program has convinced me that Dr. Bruce Ivins is innocent of the 2001 anthrax mailings

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Laurie Garrett writes for the Council on Foreign Relations (10/13/11) …

• FRONTLINE, the Public Broadcasting System’s premiere documentary program, aired “The Anthrax Letters” this week. It is a breakthrough piece of journalism
• Their primary take-home message …

the FBI blew the Amerithrax investigation,

and Dr. Bruce Ivins was most likely innocent of the crime.

• According to the FBI a flask of wet slurry containing anthrax bacteria was the source of all of the spores mailed in 2001.
• The FBI claimed that Ivins lied about the flask, deliberately deceived investigators by sending different anthrax samples for genetic analysis, and used these wet bacteria, through an elaborate set of drying and processing procedures, to produce the fatal spores.

But FRONTLINE discovered that

Ivins had provided RMR-1029 samples properly

on more than one occasion prior to his apparent error

in giving the FBI a sample from a different flask.

• The FBI also used time cards to demonstrate that Ivins worked unusually long hours inside his lab on the very September 2001 dates when  the agency believes the wet slurry of bacteria were dried and converted to the toxic spore form, then stuffed into envelopes.
• The implication was that Ivins performed all these homicidal activities inside his USAMRID lab during those specific hours.
• But USAMRIID did not have the sort of drying equipment Ivins would need,
• not a single spore has ever been found on any of the lab equipment,
• and Ivins’ work habits that September were not in the least bit unusual.

The revelation in the FRONTLINE program is

that the FBI focused on time in/out logs for just one location

… The reporting team obtained records for all the facilities Ivins worked in,

demonstrating that such long nighttime work hours were his norm,

and there was nothing unusual in his September 2001 schedule.

• I was never convinced Ivins was a serial killer. Thanks to this brilliant reporting effort

I am prepared to declare Dr. Bruce Ivins

innocent of the 2001 anthrax mailings.

read the entire article at … http://www.cfr.org/terrorist-attacks/anthrax-letters/p26175

 

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* Congressman Mike Pence & Pulitzer prize winning science writer Laurie Garrett agree on Anthrax Mailings.. Pence: “I don’t know who sent it” — I am afraid we may have missed the off-ramp to the truth.” … Garrett: “I get outraged because the FBI completely botched the investigation on the anthrax.”

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Congressman Mike Pence & science writer Laurie Garrett

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Brian Francisco | Washington editor – JournalGazette.net (9/11/11) …

• The 2001 anthrax mailings were the work of an Army microbiologist who killed himself in 2008, the U.S. Justice Department concluded last year.
• Health and science writer Laurie Garrett doesn’t buy it.
• “I get outraged because the FBI completely botched the investigation on the anthrax,” she said in a recent interview on NPR’s “Science Friday.”
• “I get outraged because there is so much evidence that al-Qaida was behind the anthrax mailings and that at least as strong a circumstantial case as was made against Bruce Ivins can be made against al-Qaida, even stronge
• Rep. Mike Pence, R-6th, had his doubts about the anthrax source early on. In 2002, he wrote a letter to then Attorney General John Ashcroft to ask why international links weren’t being probed in the mailings that killed five people in three states and Washington, D.C.
• “I am concerned we may possibly have missed the off-ramp to the truth,” Pence wrote.
• Pence, who is running for governor, said in a recent interview he “expressed our frustration periodically” with the anthrax investigation. But he is not ready to try to name a suspect.
• “I don’t know where the weaponized anthrax bacillius came from,” Pence said. “I don’t know who sent it.”

read the entire article at … http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110911/LOCAL1011/309119956/1066/NEWS03

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Read the opening of CASE CLOSED (below) and then buy a copy at …

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this is the opening scene of Lew Weinstein's novel CASE CLOSED

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* DXer calls on authors Laurie Garrett, Jeanne Guillemin and David Willman for help in obtaining documents still being withheld

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Laurie Garrett, Jeanne Guillemin, David Willman

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DXer’s challenge … 

In Amerithrax, the way to pursue “tough questions” is to pursue the contemporaneous documents being withheld that show what Dr. Ivins was doing in the lab in September and October 2001.  Accomplished book authors such as Garrett, Guillemin and Willman are entitled to fee waivers.

It is unacceptable that these authors and pundits do not place a priority on obtaining and reviewing the documentary evidence still being withheld. 

But it is never too late for them to do so and I urge them to focus on obtaining the documentary evidence that will permit an accurate chronology of Dr. Ivins’ activities in September and October 2001.  Once those documents are produced, we will be in a position to assess the evidence.

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