SYNOPSIS OF "GOVERNMENT BY ANTHRAX"

"Government by Anthrax" is a 10 page paper available from the website: freefromterror.net The paper is a compilation of circumstantial evidence that justifies an independent and open congressional investigation of the origins of the anthrax letters which were mailed to senators in October of 2001.

The timing and targeting of the letters suggests that the motivation of the perpetrators was to promote legislation, namely the USA Patriot Act. Anthrax laden letters were mailed to the Democratic senate leadership on the same day that they blocked an attempt to rush the Bill through without debate or amendments. These threats frightened congress in general and intimidated certain opponents of the Patriot Bill in particular. No Republicans received any anthrax laden letters. The closing of the House and Senate office buildings made it difficult for members to read the bill. After the letters were received, the democratic leadership gave up their insistence on a two year sunset clause. The day after the constitutionally-challenged Patriot Act was signed, the Supreme court was closed by a false anthrax scare. Anthrax letters to the news media created widespread fear and a lockstep mentality in support of the Administration’s policies. Initial Administration reports suggested that the anthrax attacks were perpetrated by the same people who crashed planes on 9/11.

While agreeing that the anthrax came from U.S. government sources, the FBI’s investigation has been so inept that members of Congress and anthrax scientists have complained. More ominously, the FBI approved the destruction of the only stockpile of the Ames strain of anthrax, carried out the day after the contaminated Senate letters were postmarked, making the tracing of the anthrax type more difficult. Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists thinks that the culprit is known by the FBI but may be untouchable because he has knowledge damaging to the government, possibly, that the US is doing illegal research in violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

An article by Laura Rozen in Salon (2/8/02) revealed that the "Defense Intelligence Agency hired Battelle to create a genetically enhanced version of anthrax" even though no vaccine was proven to be effective beforehand. A former Clinton administration official, Elisa D. Harris, "was shocked to read in the New York Times" (9/4/01) about bioweapons research "that she herself had not known about, although she had served for eight years in the White House as the point person for weapons of mass destruction nonproliferation issues."

The FBI investigation seems to have ground to a halt. Some categories of suspects may be precluded due to the FBI’s ideological boundaries and/or conflicts of interest. It is therefore advisable for Congress to conduct open hearings on the greatest criminal germ attack on citizens in U.S. history.