* recent correspondence between Congressman Jerrold Nadler and the FBI reveals the FBI’s longstanding, continuing and apparently purposeful refusal to answer direct questions asked by the Congressman

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Congressman Jerrold Nadler

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Chronology (2008-2011) in reverse order

• Congressman Nadler to FBI Director Mueller … Sept 13, 2011 (see letter below)
• noting that the FBI’s letter of August 9, 2011 has still failed to explain why their April 2009 answer to questions asked in November 2008 was incomplete
• noting that specific questions asked in May 2011 regarding additional samples were not answered in the FBI’s letter of August 9, 2011
• Letter from FBI Assistant Director, Laboratory Division to Congressman Nadler … August 9, 2011 (see letter below)
• Congressman Nadler to FBI Director Mueller … May 2011 …
• asking why the FBI’s April 2009 letter provided incomplete information in response to Nadler’s questions asked in November 2008
• asking specific new questions regarding the NAS report and whether certain additional samples were tested
• FBI letter to Congressman Nadler … April 2009 … providing incomplete information in response to questions asked by the Congressman in November 2008
• Questions first raised by Congressman Nadler … November 2008
• FBI press conference in August 2008 announcing that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks and that the case would soon be closed

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Congressman Nadler to FBI Director Mueller … Sept 13, 2011

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Letter from FBI Assistant Director, Laboratory Division

to Congressman Nadler … Aug 9, 2011

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see also …

* PBS Frontline, McClatchy and ProPublica … The FBI’s false case against Dr. Bruce Ivins, built on obviously unproven innuendos and assertions, is beginning to unravel.

 * Congressman Jerrold Nadler complains to FBI Director Robert Mueller that questions he first asked in September 2008 regarding silicon content in the anthrax in several of the 2001 attack letters were answered incorrectly … previous posts on this blog assert that the correct information may be very relevant to determining who the real perpetrator(s) of those attacks were

 * responses to Congressman Nadler’s questions of the FBI regarding the % of weight of the silicon in the powder used in the 2001 anthrax attacks

 * and then there were three … Congressman Nadler joins Holt and Bartlett in calling for Congressional review of the failed FBI anthrax investigation … waiting for Senators Grassley and Specter

* the FBI’s answers to questions posed by members of the House Judiciary Committee in September 2008 as to certain aspects of the FBI’s investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks are insulting and demeaning to the U.S. Congress and to the American people

* Congress tries to scrutinize the FBI’s anthrax investigation … so far with little success

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LMW COMMENT …

The letters presented above show a longstanding, continuing, and apparently purposeful refusal of the FBI to answer clear, specific, and important questions asked by a United States Congressman in his official capacity.

The FBI doesn’t say the information they refuse to divulge is being withheld for security or any other reasons. They don’t say the FBI doesn’t know the answers. They simply do not answer the questions asked, some of which were asked almost three years ago. 

It is my view that no member of the U.S. government has the right to treat a U.S. Congressman in the manner the FBI has treated Congressman Nadler. 

Meanwhile, the anthrax attacks of 2001 have not been solved. After 10 years of the most expensive investigation in the FBI’s history, the American people do not know who committed those attacks. Maybe the FBI knows but isn’t saying, or maybe they don’t know either.

But in any case, the accusation of a dead man where there are no witnesses, no physical evidence, and no conclusive science, with nothing but an unsupported veneer of conjecture, should not be allowed to stand. The FBI’s case could never have achieved a conviction in court.

It is important that our country still doesn’t know who attacked us with anthrax in 2001.

It is important that the perpetrators are still out there, perhaps planning another attack.

And it is very important that the FBI respond fully and respectfully to Congressman Nadler, to the entire U.S. Congress and to the American people.

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* Congressman Rush Holt: The FBI repeatedly bungled the anthrax investigation … I have introduced legislation that would create a special committee to investigate the anthrax attacks

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Congressman Holt has been relentless in his attempts to get FBI Director Mueller to answer for the FBI's bungling of the anthrax case ... Holt needs the help of other Congressmen to get at the truth which Mueller clearly wants to remain hidden

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Congressman Rush Holt – D,NJ – writes (9/16/11) …

• I (have long been) concerned about the processes and professionalism of government investigators.

The FBI’s practices for taking evidence, I saw, were sloppy and even illogical.

• One of the FBI’s first steps, for instance, should have been to examine immediately all of the mailboxes that fed into the Trenton mail facility where the letters were known to have been processed.
• Yet nine months passed before the FBI swabbed public mailboxes and identified a contaminated public mailbox on Nassau Street in Princeton as the apparent source of the letter.
• Only then did the FBI begin asking passers-by whether they remembered anything unusual happening at that box the previous fall.
• For years, the FBI investigation focused myopically on Steven Hatfill, a bioweapons expert, even after it became clear that Hatfill lacked access to the strain of anthrax used in the attacks. Hatfill later sued the Department of Justice, and he settled for $5.8 million.

The FBI’s bungling of the case squandered five years of investigative time

while the real culprit or culprits remained at large.

• Finally, after the better part of a decade of false leads and vague public statements, the FBI announced in August 2008 that it had identified a suspect: Dr. Bruce Ivins, a vaccine specialist who worked at Fort Detrick and who days earlier had committed suicide.

As FBI Director Robert Mueller ultimately acknowledged to me,

the case against Ivins was almost entirely circumstantial.

• On the basis of this (circumstantial) evidence, the FBI declared that Ivins was the culprit, that he had acted alone and that the investigation into the anthrax attacks was considered closed.

Yet the FBI has said that it does not have

any direct, physical evidence tying Ivins to the attack.

• Further investigations, including a report from the National Research Council, have cast questions on whether the FBI conclusively demonstrated that the anthrax used in the attack originated in Ivins’ lab.
• Indeed, as the NRC report noted, multiple individuals had access to the flask that allegedly contained the attack material.
• And Ivins had no experience in making, nor the proper equipment to produce, the kind of refined, easily aerosolized spores that were used in the attacks.
• In Congress, I have introduced legislation that would create a special committee, modeled after the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the anthrax attacks, including our pre-attack preparations, the incidents, the public health response, the forensic response and the subsequent improvements made.
• Such an investigation would help us understand what really happened, why and whether America has grown better prepared to deter biological attacks.

I believe that many of America’s most dangerous overreactions,

particularly the invasion of Iraq, which Bush administration officials

at first tried to link to the anthrax attacks,

can be traced directly to the panic induced by the anthrax mailings.

• Our sense that terrorists were everywhere, that even an action as innocent as opening the mail could be fatal, set the United States on a path that will haunt us for years.

http://www.app.com/article/20110918/NJOPINION06/309180016/Another-10th-anniversary-anthrax-attacks

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LMW COMMENT …

The FBI has clearly failed to solve the anthrax case, and is just as clearly trying to stonewall any attempts to get to the truth. FBI Director Robert Mueller needs to be brought on the carpet to explain his management of this case and to tell the American people the truth about the anthrax attacks.

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* In filing Its Redacted Responses, Plaintiff Redacted Even Deposition Excerpts Not Subject To Protective Order (That Were Previously Filed Unredacted)

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