Bio-Terrorism

Debra Bottcher (worked down the corridor from Mr Stevens) Oct 11, 2001:  It's just starting to hit me. At first I thought it was a fluke but now I find myself wondering about all these crazy things going on.  Bob Stevens lived in Lantana.  Atta, that terrorist, was in Lantana.  All these amazing coincidences are just too amazing for me. I'm very worried.

George W. Bush, Oct 23:  I want to first thank Chairman Biden .. for standing solidly with the administration to formulate and conduct a foreign policy that's in the best interest of our country. It's oftentimes said that when it comes to foreign policy, partisanship stops, and that's exactly what's happened here at this table.

Well, there's no question that the evildoers are continuing to try to harm America and Americans.  Today, at a remote facility, we detected some anthrax. And just like at the Congress, our government's responding very quickly. 

Two postal workers passed away, and our hearts are with their families; our prayers are with their loved ones. But the evil ones continue.

We're working hard to find out who is doing this and bring them to justice.

It's hard for Americans to imagine how evil the people are who are doing this.

We're having to adjust our thinking.  We're a kind nation, we're a compassionate nation, we're a nation of strong values, and we value life.  And we're learning people in this world, you know, want to terrorize our country by trying to take life.

They won't succeed. This country is too strong to allow terrorists to affect the lives of our citizens.

I understand people are concerned, and they should be. But they need to know our government is doing everything we possibly can to protect the lives of our citizens - everything.

We're waging an aggressive campaign overseas to bring Al Qaeda to justice.

NEWSWEEK:   Newsweek has learned that the FBI is aggressively trying to locate a summer intern from nearby Florida Atlantic University in connection with the investigation. The intern, who sources said came from a Middle Eastern country, had sent an e-mail to all employees that … thanked company employees for the help he gave them, but then contained language suggesting that he wasn’t saying “goodbye.” 

AMI official: (The email had) a sense of foreboding -  it referred to a “surprise” - something that he left behind - it was weird.

Al Qaeda

The Atlantic:, June 1, 2002:  If anything, hints that anthrax and Al Qaeda may be linked have grown harder to dismiss.

Dot one: Several of the hijackers, including their suspected ringleader, Mohamed Atta, are reported to have looked at crop dusters in Belle Glade, Fla.

Dot two: Among five targeted media organizations, only one was not nationally prominent—American Media, of Boca Raton, Fla., which happens to be a few miles from where Atta and other terrorists lived and attended flight school. (Atta rented an apartment from a real estate agent whose husband worked for American Media.)

Dot three: In March a doctor in Fort Lauderdale announced that he had treated one of the terrorists for what, in retrospect, he believes was cutaneous anthrax. Doctors at Johns Hopkins University examined the case and concurred that anthrax was "the most probable and coherent interpretation of the data available."

Deseret News, Apr 2002:  Assessing a medical case in Florida, in which one of the Sept. 11 hijackers sought treatment for a leg wound in June, O'Toole and Inglesby concluded that the skin lesion might have been caused by anthrax. That was the conclusion too of the attending physician, Dr. Christos Tsonas of the Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., but it was reached only after reviewing his notes taken while treating Ahmed Ibrahim Al Hanzawi for what appeared to be a simple, if unusual, leg injury.

Stephen D. Bryen, ex-head of Pentagon's Defense Technology Security Administration, Reagan -  managing partner of Aurora Defense:  (Mailing) is not how regimes think about dispersing a biological or chemical weapon, which should say that the guy distributing it was a total amateur.  (That leads me to) "sample" theory" - the sample theory being that somebody gave these guys a small amount. It has all the characteristics that it was given to people who didn't have any idea how to use it.

The Atlantic::  Other recent reports cite captured documents and an unfinished lab in Afghanistan that suggest Al Qaeda was interested—as presumably it would be—in producing biological weapons, including anthrax. In 1999, an Arabic-language newspaper in London reported that: "elements loyal to [Osama] bin Laden" had, for a few thousand dollars, "managed to obtain an offer for the supply of samples of anthrax and other poisons" from a former Soviet bloc country.

BBC:  Red Thomas is a retired army officer living in Mesa Arizona. He wrote what has become the definitive article on the internet preaching against overblown fears.

There is only one way, says Mr Thomas, to take out 10,000 people with one dirty letter:

Red Thomas:  We'd have to find 10,000 volunteers to line up and lay down on a big metal table while a doctor stuck a tube down into the lungs and blew the anthrax in there, and then we'd get all 10,000 of them and fly them to Pango Pango so they could avoid any medical intervention, and then yes, we could kill 10,000 people