* President Obama threatens to veto the Intelligence Funding bill due to Congressman Holt’s proposed new anthrax probe … UPDATE: the Bloomberg story has been revised to state that the President finds the anthrax study objectionable but not grounds for veto
Posted by DXer on March 16, 2010
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The New York Times says the FBI’s anthrax case has “too many loose ends.” Find out where some of those looses ends might have originated in my novel CASE CLOSED. Sure it’s fiction, but many readers, including a highly respected member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, think my premise is actually “quite plausible.”
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Andrew Steele writes on America 20XY (3/16/10) …
- While Congressional oversight provisions in the new 2011 intel funding bill are being held up as the cause of Obama’s threatened veto of it, an article from Bloomberg (by Jeff Bliss) on March 15th points to another reason…mainly the fact that the administration doesn’t want a new investigation into the anthrax attacks for which the late Dr. Bruce Ivins has been blamed:
UPDATE FROM JEFF BLISS AT BLOOMBERG … Lew, Thanks for your e-mail. I had to run a correction on the story: the administration does oppose to a new inspector general investigation but that isn’t one of the provisions in the House bill that would prompt a veto. The president is likely to veto the bill if it emerges from negotiations between the House and Senate including the following: 1) Requirement to disclose spy operations to all House and Senate intelligence committee members that currently would only be briefed to congressional leaders 2) Authority for the General Accountability Office to conduct investigations into intelligence operations 3) Funding levels that are less than what has already been approved in another spending bill. Sorry for the confusion, and hope this clarifies things. Thanks again
- “President Barack Obama,” says the article, “probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.
- A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies’ inspector general “would undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.”
- Fear of casting doubt on the FBI’s conclusions is fear of transparency, something that Obama ran on the promise of…another promise broken. The administration’s panicked reaction to a new investigation, while halting it in the legislature, will no doubt cast further distrust in the informed public’s mind of the truth in the government’s official story, and increase speculation as to what really happened.
Read the entire post at … http://america20xy.com/blog6/2010/03/16/obamas-veto-threat-on-intel-budget-issued-because-of-proposed-anthrax-probe/
Glenn Greenwald writes on Salon …
As I’ve documented at length, not only are there enormous, unresolved holes in the FBI’s case, but many of the most establishment-defending mainstream sources — from leading newspaper editorial pages to key politicians in both parties — have expressed extreme doubts about the FBI’s case and called for an independent investigation. For the administration to actively block an independent review of one of the most consequential political crimes of this generation would probably be its worst act yet.
LMW COMMENT …
I am a huge supporter of President Obama, but if this story is true, we will part ways on this issue. The FBI assertion that Dr. Bruce Ivins is the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks is bogus to its core. Continued coverup of this travesty raises far more questions than the truth might, and I personally think the truth is very very bad.
Either the FBI has actually failed to solve the case and doesn’t know who the real anthrax perpetrators are, or it knows and is covering up the truth. If the latter, the reasons for the FBI covering up the truth are perhaps more important than the attacks themselves. Congressman Holt’s probe is but the first step; it would be terribly wrong for President Obama to stand in the way of full disclosure of the FBI’s actions and conclusions.
I was so infuriated by the FBI’s pathetic August 2008 announcement that I wrote a novel (CASE CLOSED) to explain why the FBI failed to solve the case. The recent release of documents has so far done nothing but provide even more evidence that the FBI is purposely and malevolently withholding the truth.
CASE CLOSED is of course fiction, but many readers, including a highly respected member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, think my premise is actually “quite plausible.”
* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *
******
CASE CLOSED ... what really happened in the 2001 anthrax attacks? 
Ike Solem said
Here’s what Orszag actually wrote on this:
“INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY INSPECTOR GENERAL REVIEW OF INTELLIGENCE TO DETERMINE IF FOREIGN CONNECTIONS TO ANTHRAX EXISTS (Section 505 of the House bill):
This provision, which authorizes the IC IG to conduct an investigation to determine if there was a foreign connection to the anthrax attacks of 2001, is duplicative, and the Administration is greatly concerned about the appearance and precedent involved when Congress commissions an agency Inspector General to replicate a criminal investigation. The anthrax investigation was one of the most thorough ever undertaken by the FBI. The case involved more than 10,000 witness interviews, more than 5,000 grand jury subpoenas, and collection of more than 5,000 samples from 60 site locations. The FBI vigorously examined the potential for a foreign connection with the attacks. It coordinated its investigation with various members of the United States Intelligence Community, as well as with various foreign governments. The investigation was conducted both within the United States as well as overseas. The FBI conducted searches, gathered potential evidence, and conducted interviews, the results of which did not support the existence of a foreign connection with the attacks. On February 19, 2010, the investigation was closed. As a result of these efforts, the FBI is confident that the attacks were planned and committed by Dr. Bruce Ivins, acting alone. The commencement of a fresh investigation would undermine public confidence in the criminal investigation and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”
None of that has much basis in reality – in fact, the Wen Ho Lee / Bruce Ivins analogy seems to fit perfectly. Sometimes, a scapegoat is needed – they never figured out how China got its hands on U.S. nuclear weapons blueprints, so they went after Lee to “close the case” – and they never figured out who was behind the anthrax case (or maybe they did, and then the politics took over), so they picked first Hatfill and then Ivins in order, again, to close the investigation down.
Notice, however, that this proposed review (for foreign links only) is a bit too narrow – in reality, a complete review of the CIA and DIA biological threat assessment programs (including details like location, security issues, etc.) will be needed, and obviously the executive branch doesn’t want to do it. If you want to look at foreign involvement in such programs, you have to figure out exactly what those programs were all about – that’s the first step.
That issue – Projects Jefferson and Clear Vision, the CIA and DIA biological threat assessments conducted jointly with Battelle – is likely the main one that has the “intelligence community” alarmed.
Ike Solem said
Regarding the 1997 NYT story on the Michigan anthrax vaccine: “It is then tested in a high containment plant in monkeys that are exposed to the fully potent bacterium.”
The “fully potent bacterium” was the Ames strain – and the high-containment facility doing the testing? Whichever one it was, it received the Ames strain from Detrick’s RMR flasks. Note, however, that Bioport and Michigan apparently never had Ames, as they only did vaccine production, not testing.
This lack of direct access to the virulent Ames strain, by the way, is why it may be possible to rule out as culprits the Michigan U / Bioport / Vaxgen / Pharmagen / Emergent Biosolutions groups – the ones bidding on federal anthrax vaccine contracts that really only exist because of the letters. However, what do all these pharma companies have in common? They rely on the public-private national biolabs for testing of their vaccines – almost all have used Battelle as a major subcontractor on those federal contracts, as well.
Battelle also manages much of the biowarfare-biodefense establishment at places like Lawrence Livermore National Labs – they run the “Biodefense Knowledge Center”:
The BKC partners with the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) located at Fort Detrick, MD, and is part of a nationwide group of institutions that collectively are referred to as the Homeland Security Biodefense Complex.
So, that’s the new biowarfare / biodefense umbrella organization.
Partner institutions include:
Biological Threat Characterization Program (BTCP) *initially housed in “contractor facilities” and that could really only mean at Battelle. Highly secretive.
National Bioforensics Analysis Center (NBFAC) *again, managed by Battelle under their NBACC contract “operated as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center for the Department by the Battelle National Biodefense Institute, LLC and also the site where many of the samples sent to Sandia for analysis were apparently prepared.
and other Homeland Security Centers of Excellence *Orwell couldn’t have said it better..
Collaborating Institutions
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) (managed by a UC-Bechtel-Battelle-BWXT group)
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) (managed by Battelle)
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) (managed by Lockheed)
These biolabs also work with the intelligence services, at the same level of security and classification as any nuclear weapons research program (which is what Sandia is more known for). However, much has come to light, regardless:
New York Times science writer William Broad covered the subject in his 2002 book “Germs, Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.” According to Broad, Projects Jefferson and Clear Vision, begun in the late ’90s were ongoing secret anthrax weaponization projects. Project Clear Vision was managed by the CIA at the Battelle labs in West Jefferson, Ohio. Project Jefferson was managed by the DIA at the Battelle-operated labs at Dugway.
If so this means that Battelle’s West Jefferson “microaerobiology” facility can generate highly controlled liquid aerosols, at the very least, for use in testing vaccinated rabbits and monkeys with inhaled Ames anthrax spores. This means Battelle (and any other anthrax vaccine testing center) must keep stocks of Ames spores on hand, suspended in neutral sterile buffer.
Since the Soviets had come up with bomblets loaded with anthrax powder (think of cluster bombs, which explode in mid-air with hundreds of little bomblets that disperse over a wide area – but with anthrax powder (or worse) instead of explosives), the CIA decided it had to replicate this, as part of the “biological threat assessment program” – and it’s likely they would have wanted virulence tests with the powder, and they would have used Ames to do this, because they wanted to compare the data to the previous decades of work with Ames. So – did West Jefferson’s Battelle labs make powdered Ames for such tests?
This is one thing any Congressional investigation should focus closely on – what is that material, and was any of it ever analyzed?
Another central issue for Congressional investigation is be why the FBI didn’t look at the isotopic ratios in the attack letter spores vs. the RMR flask spores?
As far as the Obama Administration’s “reluctance to second-guess a criminal investigation” – that’s very strange considering that similar failures by the FBI and associated agencies have lead to very public apologies by President – see the wiki on Wen Ho Lee:
President Bill Clinton issued a public apology to Lee over his treatment by the federal government during the investigation. Wen Ho Lee filed a lawsuit to gain the names of public officials who had leaked his name to journalists before charges had been filed against him. It raised issues similar to those in the Valerie Plame [and Steven Hatfill] affair, of whether journalists should have to reveal their anonymous sources in a court of law. Lee’s lawsuit was settled by the federal government in 2006 just before the Supreme Court was set to decide whether to hear the case. The federal judge who heard the case during an earlier appeal said that “top decision makers in the executive branch…have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen.”
Deja vu. However, Battelle is the world’s largest research corporation – with retired missile defense generals etc. on the board – and certainly has cultivated a Dr. Strangelove reputation. Its other research units are closely tied to the DOE and their “clean coal” and “carbon capture technology” programs, which Obama has largely supported. In fact, Battelle is the central manager of the Illinois FutureGen “clean coal” plant that the DOE has given $1 billion to in funding, despite zero assurances that it will perform as advertised. They even appear to be the ones who own the “proprietary technology” that no one can see, that the entire CCS program is based on. If so, this could explain why they get so much political protection.
P.S. Notice that no public apology was ever offered to Hatfill (who didn’t seem to mind too much, given the multimillion dollar settlement) – but one should probably be officially given to the family of Bruce Ivins.
DXer said
I would tend to want a senior executive to do everything possible to promote the morale of the employees. For example, when I see a CIA Director defend the CIA analysts against alleged failures of intelligence, I tend to think “Good for him. That’s someone who is doing their job.” I feel the same when I see FBI Director Mueller defend the work of the DOJ.
But there is a tricky balance to strike. At the end of the day, justice and correctly “connecting the dots” is the paramount value to uphold.
What is the view of FBI Director Mueller and President Obama, a former constitutional law professor, on Blackwater, involving the same lead prosecutor as led Amerithrax throughout the decade?
The judge said of the prosecutor who also has been the lead Amerithrax prosecutor advancing the Ivins Theory:
“The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants’ compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility,” wrote Urbina, voicing astonishment that such a “seasoned and accomplished” lawyer could make so many blunders.”
The federal district court judge also accused prosecutors of not giving grand jurors evidence that was helpful to the defendants.
In Amerithrax, why did Kenneth Kohl not disclose that the toner, paper and “trash marks” (that identify a copier) were not, in fact, a match with the copier allegedly used by Bruce Ivins?
Why did the DOJ Amerithrax Investigative Summary by Kenneth Kohl and Rachel Carlson Lieber not disclose this fact?
Why are those reports still being withheld?
(Relatedly, why isn’t the general science relating to identification of a copier/paper/toner part of the review of the science by the National Academy of Sciences?)
“Missteps, errors and miscommunication doomed Blackwater case,” Washington Post,
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 11, 2010
When its investigation into a deadly and politically sensitive Baghdad shooting involving U.S. security contractors ran into major trouble, the Justice Department quickly handed it over to Kenneth Kohl, a seasoned and well-respected prosecutor.
So, how then, with all the forewarning of the case’s pitfalls and Kohl’s experience and dedication, does the Justice Department now find itself defending the prosecutor’s conduct? How could such a high-profile case, one that generated international headlines and roiled U.S.-Iraq relations, implode so badly? On Dec. 31, a federal judge threw out the charges against the five Blackwater security guards.
The questions come as the Justice Department last month launched its appeal of a scathing opinion by the well-respected judge, who ruled that the conduct of Kohl and other prosecutors was so egregious that it “requires dismissal of the indictment against all the defendants.” The guards had been accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 20 others in an eruption of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square on a sunny afternoon in 2007.
***
Legal experts have said the Justice Department faces a difficult task in winning a reversal, pointing to what they consider a detailed and well-reasoned opinion by U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, and could risk further embarrassment if another set of judges comes to similar conclusions. The Justice Department’s reputation has already been marred by prosecutorial misconduct in the trial of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on corruption charges. A federal judge threw out Stevens’s conviction, and a lawyer appointed by that judge is investigating Justice Department prosecutors over potential criminal contempt violations.
A review of Urbina’s decision, recently unsealed court papers and interviews with dozens of prosecutors, investigators and defense lawyers paint a less-than-flattering picture. They reveal a passionate prosecutor who risked his life in Iraq to seek justice while pushing legal boundaries and an investigation plagued by missteps, miscommunication and bungling.
***
Tough case to prosecute
Kohl declined to comment. But in an e-mailed statement, he wrote: “All of us who were involved in this case felt an obligation to the 34 victims who were killed or wounded at Nisoor Square to do everything we could, within the bounds of the law, to bring this case to trial in an American courtroom.
“We don’t want federal prosecutors to flinch at taking on tough cases involving complex legal issues, and I worry that some of the reaction to the court’s ruling will have that effect.” He declined to elaborate.
Kohl, 50, grew up in the Chicago area and joined the Justice Department in 1985, straight out of the Northern Illinois University College of Law. He lives with his wife and two children in the D.C. suburbs.
The prosecutor quickly rose through the ranks of the U.S. attorney’s office in the District. Several colleagues say Kohl never lost a homicide trial. They described him as an aggressive and zealous advocate for victims.
In more recent years, he was assigned national security cases, including the years-long investigation into the anthrax attacks. In 2007, Kohl won a conviction against a Colombian rebel leader who took three Americans hostage. The man was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
***
The [Blackwater] guards had given written and follow-up interviews. The statements had been given under assurances that they would not be used in court and under warnings that the guards could be fired if they didn’t cooperate.
Because of the assurances, prosecutors and FBI agents should never have been exposed to those accounts, so those agents and lawyers were reassigned. The Justice Department then turned the case over to Kohl.
Kohl and another prosecutor, Stephen Ponticello, examined the evidence and decided to treat the written statements as if they were out of bounds, court records indicate.
But Kohl did not think that the initial oral interviews deserved the same protection. To help Kohl navigate immunity questions, the Justice Department assigned Raymond Hulser, an expert on such issues, to act as a “taint” attorney. His job would be to screen material before it got into the hands of prosecutors and agents and to provide legal advice.
Within weeks, according to court records, Hulser was warning prosecutors and investigators to avoid the oral interviews because he thought a judge might rule that they were also protected.
In November, Hulser wrote an e-mail detailing his concerns to a Justice Department supervisor, Michael Mullaney, who forwarded the comments to Kohl. “Got it,” Kohl responded. “Thanks Mike.”
Hulser made a string of similar warnings over the next few months. Kohl says he never received the advice, and he denied having read the e-mail to which he had responded.
By January and February 2008, Kohl and FBI agents were interviewing the State Department investigators who had taken the guards’ first oral statements — something that Hulser thought should have been avoided.
Kohl eventually obtained reports of the oral statements and used those accounts in search warrants to obtain drafts of the guards’ written statements. Hulser was never told of the search-warrant effort.
A grand jury indicted the five guards in December 2008 on manslaughter and weapons charges. A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges.
By October, Urbina was holding closed-door hearings to determine whether the guards’ statements had improperly influenced the investigation.
Kohl testified at the hearings, while other Justice Department lawyers defended the government’s case. They argued that the oral statements were fair game and that any taint from the written accounts was harmless.
The guards’ attorneys, who were paid by Blackwater, argued that prosecutors should have avoided the statements and that the case was too damaged to continue.
The judge chastised prosecutors for not heeding the advice of Hulser and other experts. He also said that he did not believe Kohl’s assertion that he had not received the expert’s advice until it was too late.
The protected statements infected the entire case, Urbina wrote, and prosecutors even exploited them to decide whether to charge two of the guards. He was particularly perplexed that Kohl had thought it proper to use the oral accounts in search warrants for written statements, Urbina added.
The judge also accused prosecutors of not giving grand jurors evidence that was helpful to the guards. He found that Kohl and other prosecutors did not take steps to shield grand jurors from tainted testimony, particularly from three Blackwater guards who read the defendants’ written statements or news stories describing them.
More subtle actions also irked the judge.
Kohl, for example, went out of his way to tell the grand jury that the five guards had given immunized statements to investigators, the judge wrote. Urbina felt that Kohl was playing dirty, “to color the grand jury’s thinking,” by alluding to the guards’ statements without further elaboration.
“The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants’ compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility,” wrote Urbina, voicing astonishment that such a “seasoned and accomplished” lawyer could make so many blunders.
Ike Solem said
A little story here… during the Clinton years, the Council of Economic Advisers (Orszag was a member) generally promoted the privatization of a number of state services, largely on ideological grounds. One of those was the anthrax vaccine production program, run by the Michigan Department of Public Health since 1964. The patent for the vaccine was licensed to the MDPH in 1970. Their clients were the Pentagon and the livestock workers industry.
Here’s the NYT, 1997:
The Michigan State Department of Health has manufactured anthrax vaccine for the Pentagon since 1964, when the Army supplied the necessary people and equipment. The vaccine is made from a relatively nonvirulent strain of the anthrax bacterium. It is then tested in a high containment plant in monkeys that are exposed to the fully potent bacterium. Workers at the plant are all vaccinated against anthrax. There have been no workplace illnesses or deaths from anthrax, a spokesman for the department said.
Now, in late 1996 the U.S. military, which had opposed vaccinating soldiers against anthrax, switched position:
Reversing earlier opposition, senior military officials have tentatively endorsed a plan to vaccinate all 1.5 million Americans in uniform against anthrax. The inoculation program would be the Pentagon’s first against a germ warfare agent, Defense Department officials said. – The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) October 3, 1996
At around this time, the retired Admiral Crowe (who had previously served as a director of Merrill Lynch, Texaco and General Dynamics) formed a partnership to take over the Michigan anthrax vaccine production, called Bioport (now Emergent Biosolutions).
Again, the NYT covered this:
Company Led by Top Admiral Buys Michigan Vaccine Lab
By JUDITH MILLER
Published: July 8, 1998
The State of Michigan yesterday approved the sale of the nation’s only licensed manufacturer of anthrax and rabies vaccine to a company led by Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the United States Ambassador to Britain until last year.
Now, let’s consider the basic facts here: isn’t there a really good argument for the government to nationalize all these biological warfare related research labs and companies? The privatization has been a disaster in the overall national intelligence community.
Notice also that a main theme of the Obama campaign was the need to reduce the privatization of national security, mainly in intelligence – but that should apply to nuclear and biowarfare contractors as well.
As far as why Peter Orszag is opposing taking another long hard look at the entire program (which is what re-opening the case would entail)?
1) It would likely be a big blow to the economic privatization ideology that Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers championed – see the Colbert Report with Bob Baer:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267527/march-15-2010/robert-baer
2) Orszag is also oddly enough also a member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences – but with the NAS committee having said nothing at all about its conclusions, what does that mean?
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49105
Meetings
Meeting 1 – 07/30/2009
Meeting 2 – 09/24/2009
Meeting 3 – 12/10/2009
Meeting 4 – 02/01/2010
What did they talk about at meeting 3 and meeting 4? All they report is the following:
The following committee members were present at the closed sessions of the meeting:
Alice Gast
David Relman
Arturo Casadevall
Nancy Connell
Thomas Inglesby
Murray Johnston
Karen Kafadar
Richard Lenski
Richard Losick
Alice Mignerey
David Popham
Jed Rakoff
Robert Shaler
Elizabeth Thompson
Kasthuri Venkateswaran
David Walt
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/CommitteeView.aspx?key=49105
Is there some reason the FBI shut down the case right after that last NAS meeting? If the press needs a contact person, here is the one listed on the site:
If you need more information please contact: Amanda Cline
Email: acline@nas.edu
Phone: 202-334-3653
Fax: 202-334-1289
Anonymous Scientist said
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/saying-it-will-put-lives-at-risk-white-house-threatens-to-veto-intelligence-bill-over-transparency-a.html
Congress is also trying to bring the intelligence communities under the oversight of the Government Accountability Office, which the administration opposes.
The president also objects to requiring that three administration positions be confirmed by the Senate: the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, the director of the National Security Agency, and the newly-created Intelligence Community Inspector General. The Obama administration argues that were those positions to becomes ones that require Senate confirmation, “critical national security positions would likely remain unfilled for significant periods of time.
In addition, the Intelligence Authorization bill would commission an agency inspector general to investigate the anthrax attacks, which the FBI has concluded were planned and committed by the late Dr. Bruce Ivins, acting alone.
As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald has covered extensively, there are many members of Congress who question the FBI’s conclusion, including members of congress such as the former head of the State Department’s Nuclear and Scientific Division of the Office of Strategic Forces Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, from whose district the letters were sent; and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vermont, whose office was targeted.
Moreover, having reported that scientists don’t think the “deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks” had the same chemical “fingerprint” as those bacteria in the flask linked to Ivins, the science journal Nature recently wrote that the case was not closed. Editorial writers from the Washington Post and New York Times are similarly unconvinced.
But even with all that skepticism, the Obama administration says it is “greatly concerned about the appearance and precedent involved when Congress commissions an agency Inspector General to replicate a criminal investigation. The anthrax investigation was one of the most thorough ever undertaken by the FBI.”
Last July, President Obama threatened to veto the Intelligence Authorization Act, asserting that Congress was unconstitutionally pursuing information about executive branch deliberations. Since then the bill was changed to alleviate administration concerns, but apparently not enough for President Obama.
– jpt
Anonymous Scientist said
http://mikechamberslive.com/?p=5925
In a letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Office of Management and Budget chief Peter Orszag highlighted several areas of the bill that have intelligence officials worried, including the GAO oversight provision.
Orszag’s letter also claims that proposed reforms to how Congress is notified of covert activities poses a “serious” threat that intelligence agencies object to.
Strangely, Orszag additionally called out an effort to re-investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks, which have since been blamed on the deceased government scientist Bruce Ivins. An unnamed Obama administration official told Bloomberg News that if the 2010 Intelligence Budget demands another look at the FBI’s conclusions, the bill would be vetoed.
The FBI’s probe has been heavily criticized by members of Obama’s own party for “numerous” mistakes made by the FBI during the lengthy inquiry. Joseph Michael, a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, also noted a key difference in “chemical fingerprints” between a flask linked to Ivins and the anthrax that was sent to government offices around the country.
Anonymous Scientist said
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/16/obama
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010 05:17 EDT
Obama threatens to veto greater intelligence oversight
By Glenn Greenwald
UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler notes what is probably the worst part of all of this, something I consider truly despicable: the administration is also threatening to veto the bill because it contains funding for a new investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, on the ground that such an investigation — in the administration’s words — “would undermine public confidence” in the FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”
As I’ve documented at length, not only are there enormous, unresolved holes in the FBI’s case, but many of the most establishment-defending mainstream sources — from leading newspaper editorial pages to key politicians in both parties — have expressed extreme doubts about the FBI’s case and called for an independent investigation. For the administration to actively block an independent review of one of the most consequential political crimes of this generation would probably be its worst act yet, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Anonymous Scientist said
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×7927060
One of the three sections of this bill that the Obama administration is evidently opposed to is a section that calls for a new Anthrax investigation.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-15/obama-veto-…
March 15 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.
A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies’ inspector general “would undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
On Feb. 19, the Obama administration released a 92-page summary of a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that said the late Bruce Ivins, a government scientist, was behind the attacks. Lawmakers including Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, have questioned the thoroughness of the investigation.
Anthrax-laced letters sent to lawmakers and news outlets nine years ago infected 22 people, killing five.
Orszag said the administration also opposes other provisions in the intelligence budget that allow more scrutiny of spy operations. “The president’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill” unless those restrictions are removed, he said.
(end snip)
emphasis mine
Also reported at Raw Story:
http://rawstory.com/2010/03/protecting-agencies-oversig… /
(snip)
Strangely, Orszag additionally called out an effort to re-investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks, which have since been blamed on the deceased government scientist Bruce Ivins. An unnamed Obama administration official told Bloomberg News that if the 2010 Intelligence Budget demands another look at the FBI’s conclusions, the bill would be vetoed.
(end snip)
Unnamed source says Obama would veto over the new anthrax investigation, but the investigation IS called out in Orszag’s letter as objectionable.
I thought we were going to try to fix the Bushco fiasco. But that would be looking back, wouldn’t it./sarcasm off.
Lew Weinstein said
Why should President Obama allow himself to become a part of the Bush/Cheney coverup? The reference to anthrax supposedly in the hands of Saddam Hussein by then Secretary of State Colin Powell (at the United Nations) as justification for the Iraq War was an assertion based on misinformation, disinformation and lies. America needs to know whether the FBI’s obvious failure to solve the anthrax case is related to Powell’s use of anthrax at the UN. Did Bush/Cheney not want the case solved? For one (fictional) take on that possible connection, read my novel CASE CLOSED.