* former Sen. Daschle’s staff lived through the horrors of the anthrax attacks … now that they are in positions of power in the Obama administration, will Pete Rouse, Laura Petrou, and Mark Patterson stand up to the FBI and support Congressman Holt’s demand for a reopening of the obviously flawed investigation?

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A huge collection of former Daschle staff members now occupy the highest echelon of posts in the Obama administration.

• Pete Rouse, then the chief of staff to the majority leader, is President Obama‘s deputy chief of staff.
• Laura Petrou, the top aide in Daschle’s suites in the Hart Senate Office Building, where an anthrax letter was opened Oct. 15, 2001, is now chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Mark Patterson, then Daschle’s top policy adviser, is chief of staff at the Treasury Department.

taken from Paul Kane’s Washington Post article at … http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021604265.html

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LMW COMMENT …

Are these former Daschle staff members a possible source of assistance to Congressman Holt as he fights uphill to re-open the anthrax investigation? We can hope.

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CASE CLOSED is a novel about the FBI’s failed investigation

of the 2001 anthrax attacks

******

read the opening scene of CASE CLOSED …

* CASE CLOSED – opening scene … the DIA re-investigates the FBI’s failed case

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* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *

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* Sen. Leahy on anthrax case: ‘It’s not closed’

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Paul Kane writes in the Washington Post (2/16/11) …

• Senator Patrick Leahy has never accepted the FBI’s decision to close the case in the series of anthrax-laced letters mailed to public officials in fall 2001.”I still wonder who sent it and why they sent it.”
• In a brief interview Tuesday, he said he has “extreme doubts” about the case. “I’ve expressed those concerns to the FBI ,and this report (the NAS report) adds to those concerns,” Leahy said.
• On Tuesday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime FBI critic, called for an independent review, and Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), from whose district the letters to Leahy and others were mailed, called for Congress to create an independent commission to examine the entire case.
• For years the targets of the Capitol Hill-bound letters felt shut out of the anthrax investigation, which included an official blackout of any congressional briefings ordered by the Bush administration in 2004.
• A huge collection of former Daschle staff members now occupy the highest echelon of posts in the Obama administration. Pete Rouse, then the chief of staff to the majority leader, is President Obama‘s deputy chief of staff. Laura Petrou, the top aide in Daschle’s suites in the Hart Senate Office Building, where an anthrax letter was opened Oct. 15, 2001, is now chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services. Mark Patterson, then Daschle’s top policy adviser, is chief of staff at the Treasury Department.
• “It is mystifying. Given the limited number of people who have experience with anthrax, you just wouldn’t think it would be this hard,” said another official who had been briefed on the Amerithrax investigation.

read the entire article at … http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021604265.html

******

CASE CLOSED is a novel about the FBI’s failed investigation

of the 2001 anthrax attacks

******

read the opening scene of CASE CLOSED …

* CASE CLOSED – opening scene … the DIA re-investigates the FBI’s failed case

******

* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *

******

 

* help Congressman Holt’s Anthrax Commission bill become law … lobby the members of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security … names and links provided

a video of Lew’s recent interview is now available at …

** NEW ** Lew’s interview 2-7-11 … mostly about the anthrax case

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Congressman Holt addressing the opening session of NAS Anthrax Committee

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H.R. 1248: Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act

(note: this bill will be re-numbered when introduced in this year’s Congress)

• Congressman Holt’s bill will go first to the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee
• to follow the progress of the bill, click … http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1248

Prior years’ legislative history

• This bill never became law. This bill was proposed in a previous session of Congress. Sessions of Congress last two years, and at the end of each session all proposed bills and resolutions that haven’t passed are cleared from the books. Members often reintroduce bills that did not come up for debate under a new number in the next session.
• Last action. Aug 19, 2009: House Committee on the Judiciary: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Members of House Judiciary Committee (2011)

see … http://judiciary.house.gov/about/members.html

• The Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security shall have jurisdiction over the following subject matters: Federal Criminal Code, drug enforcement, sentencing, parole and pardons, internal and homeland security, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, prisons, criminal law enforcement, and other appropriate matters as referred by the Chairman, and relevant oversight.

to lobby individual members of the Subcommittee, click below, or …

Write Your Representative Service available at www.House.gov

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Mr. Sensenbrenner, Chairman (R) Wisconsin, 5th

Mr. Gohmert, Vice-Chairman (R) Texas, 1st

Ms. Adams …  (R) Florida, 24th

Mr. Chaffetz …  (R) Utah, 3rd

Ms. Chu …  (D) California, 32nd

Mr. Cohen …  (D) Tennessee, 9th

Mr. Deutch …  (D) Florida, 19th

Mr. Forbes … (R) Virginia, 4th

Mr. Goodlatte …  (R) Virginia, 6th

Mr. Gowdy …  (R) South Carolina, 4th

Mr. Griffin …  (R) Arkansas, 2nd

Ms. Jackson Lee …  (D) Texas, 18th

Mr. Johnson …  (D) Georgia, 4th

Mr. Lungren …  (R) California, 3rd

Mr. Marino …  (R) Pennsylvania, 10th

Mr. Pierluisi …  (D) Puerto Rico, Resident Commissioner

Mr. Poe …  (R) Texas, 2nd

Mr. Quayle …  (R) Arizona, 3rd

Mr. Quigley …  (D) Illinois, 5th

Mr. Scott …  (D) Virginia, 3rd

Ms. Wasserman Schultz …  (D) Florida, 20th

 

* Glenn Greenwald joins the chorus … the FBI got the wrong man and we need to know why

a video of Lew’s recent interview is now available at …

** NEW ** Lew’s interview 2-7-11 … mostly about the anthrax case

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Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon (2/16/11) …

• For years, the FBI believed that it had identified the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks — former Army researcher Steven Hatfill — only to be forced to acknowledge that he wasn’t involved and then pay him $5.8 million for the damage he suffered from those false accusations.
• In late July, 2008, the FBI announced that, this time, it had identified the Real Perpetrator:  Army researcher Bruce Ivins, who had just committed suicide as a result of being subjected to an intense FBI investigation.
• Ivins’ death meant that the FBI’s allegations would never be tested in a court of law.
• From the start, it was obvious that the FBI’s case against Ivins was barely more persuasive than its case against Hatfill had been.
  • The allegations were entirely circumstantial; there was no direct evidence tying Ivins to the mailings; and there were huge, glaring holes in both the FBI’s evidentiary and scientific claims.
  • So dubious was the FBI’s case that even the nation’s most establishment media organs, which instinctively trust federal law enforcement agencies, expressed serious doubts and called for an independent investigation.
  • Doubts about the FBI’s case were fully bipartisan.
• Despite all of this, the FBI managed to evade calls for an independent investigation by announcing that it had asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene a panel to review only the FBI’s scientific and genetic findings (but not to review its circumstantial case against Ivins or explore the possibility of other culprits).
• The FBI believed that its genetic analysis was the strongest aspect of their case against Ivins — that it definitively linked Ivins’ research flask to the spores in the mailed anthrax — and that once the panel publicly endorsed the FBI’s scientific claims, it would vindicate the FBI’s case and end calls for a full-scale investigation into the accusations against Ivins.
• But yesterday, the National Academy panel released its findings, and it produced a very unpleasant surprise for the FBI (though it was entirely unsurprising for those following this case).

The report, commissioned by the FBI, specifically concluded that

“the scientific link between the letter material

and [Ivins’] flask number RMR-1029

is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary.”

• In addition to reigniting doubts, the report has also reignited calls for an independent investigation into the entire FBI case.
  • Yesterday, Rep. Holtre-introduced his legislation to create a 9/11-style Commission, complete with subpoena power, with a mandate to review the entire matter.
  • Sen. Grassley told the Post:  “There are no more excuses for avoiding an independent review.”
  • Ivins’ lawyer added that the report confirms that the case against his client is “all supposition based on conjecture based on guesswork, without any proof whatsoever.”
• All of that has been clear for some time, and yesterday’s report merely underscored how weak is the FBI’s case.
• It is hard to overstate the political significance of the anthrax attacks.
  • anthrax was exploited in the aftermath of 9/11 to ratchet up the fear levels toward Saddam Hussein
  • George Bush throughout 2002 routinely featured “anthrax” as one of Saddam’s scary weapons.
• That there’s so much lingering doubt about who was responsible for this indescribably consequential attack is astonishing, and it ought to be unacceptable.

there’s no rational reason to oppose

an independent, comprehensive investigation into this matter.

read the entire article at … http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html

******

CASE CLOSED is a novel about the FBI’s failed investigation

of the 2001 anthrax attacks

******

read the opening scene of CASE CLOSED …

* CASE CLOSED – opening scene … the DIA re-investigates the FBI’s failed case

******

* buy CASE CLOSED at amazon *

******