Rep. Nadler Seeks ANTHRAX Answers From a 'Dissembling' FBI

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Nadler Seeks Answers from FBI on Anthrax Investigation

WEDNESDAY, 25 MAY 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller requesting answers to remaining questions in the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks.  Nadler specifically asked Mueller why the FBI appears to have provided incorrect information on the case to Nadler and the Judiciary Committee subsequent to a September 16, 2008 oversight hearing on the FBI.

Text of the letter follows:

May 25, 2011

The Honorable Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20535-0001

Dear Director Mueller:

I am writing with respect to the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the 2001 anthrax attacks and information provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ)/FBI to me about that case, which appears to have been incomplete and misleading.

On September 16, 2008, the House Committee on the Judiciary, on which I sit, conducted an oversight hearing of the FBI at which you testified.  At that hearing, I asked you the following:  “[W]hat was the percentage of weight of the silicon in the powders that your experts examined?”  You testified that you would get back to me.  On November 26, 2008, I sent to you this follow-up question in writing:  “What was the percentage of weight of the silicon in the powder used in the 2001 anthrax attacks?”

On April 17, 2009, then-Acting Assistant Attorney General M. Faith Burton, of the DOJ Office of Legislative Affairs, responded with the following answer:

FBI Laboratory results indicated that the spore powder on the Leahy letter contained 14,470 ppm of silicon (1.4%). The spore powder on the New York Post letter was found to have silicon present in the sample; however, due to the limited amount of material, a reliable quantitative measurement was not possible. Insufficient quantifies of spore powder on both the Daschle and Brokaw letters precluded analysis of those samples.

A February 15, 2011 report by the National Academy of Sciences (“NAS report”), in which the NAS included its review of the FBI’s data and scientific analysis in the anthrax investigation, raises three questions about this DOJ/FBI response to me.  First, with respect to the anthrax on the letter sent to Senator Leahy, the NAS report shows on pages 66 and 67 (Table 4.4) that the silicon content found by the FBI was 1.4% in one sample and 1.8% in a second sample.  Why were both figures not provided to me in response to my questions?

Second, the NAS report shows on pages 66 and 67 (Table 4.4) that the FBI found the silicon content in the New York Post letter anthrax to be 10% when the bulk material was measured by mass and 1-2% when individual spore coats were measured by mass per spore.  Why was neither piece of data provided to me in response to my questions?

Third and finally, the NAS report raises questions about the appropriateness of the measurements taken of the anthrax on the letter to the New York Post.  Specifically, on page 77, the NAS report says:

ICP-OES analysis indicated a silicon content of the bulk New York Post letter material of 10 percent by mass, while SEM-EDX performed by SNL demonstrated silicon in individual spore coats at a level corresponding to 1 percent by mass per spore. At the January 2011 meeting, the FBI attributed this difference to a limited amount of sample available (only one replicate was performed for ICP-OES analysis) and the heterogeneous character of the New York Post letter.  An explanation based on the heterogeneous character implies that the specific samples analyzed were not representative of the letter material.  In such a case, additional samples should have been analyzed to determine representativeness.  If such data exist, they were not provided to the committee. Lacking this information, one cannot rule out the intentional addition of a silicon-based substance to the New York Post letter, in a failed attempt to enhance dispersion.  The committee notes that powders with dispersion characteristics similar to the letter material could be produced without the addition of a dispersant.

Were additional samples tested to determine the extent to which the ones examined were representative of the New York Post letter material?  If not, why not?  And, if the FBI does not have this data, how would you respond to the NAS that, without it, one cannot rule out the possibility that silicon was intentionally added?  If the FBI did do these additional tests, please provide the resulting data to me and NAS.

If you have any questions, please contact Andrew Ginsburg on my staff at 202-225-3218.  I look forward to your prompt response.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Jerrold Nadler
Member of Congress

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JUDITH MILLER: Bin Laden Got the Death He Deserved

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[ed.note: Enough said…]

End of Discussion

by Judith Miller
Fox News

May 9, 2011

http://www.judithmiller.com/9567/bin-laden-death-deserved

Enough already. The blood of Usama Bin Laden's corpse had barely dried on the Abbottabad compound floor when the complaints about the raid began. By Sunday May 8, the whining had become a veritable Greek chorus.

First came the unseemly dispute between some veterans of the Bush administration and supporters of the White House over who deserves credit for the raid. Bush proponents argued that there would have been no mission without their reform and restructuring of the nation's intelligence and homeland security capabilities. A senior Obama official claimed that President Bush had deliberately downgraded the importance of getting Bin Laden after the U.S. botched the attempt to catch him at Tora Bora and shifted vital intelligence and special forces assets to the war in Iraq, a catastrophic diversion, he called it, from the manhunt.

On his show Sunday, Fareed Zakaria blasted both sides of the debate, calling the argument "silly." "Lots of people deserve credit," he said, sensibly, a view echoed on his program by former Bush national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She called the stunning raid "a victory across presidencies." (Yes, that includes President Clinton, the first commander-in-chief to sense that Bin Laden was more than a nuisance – a militant Islamist creep mouthing off in remote, Islamist-friendly Sudan.)

Then came the even more ridiculous debate over whether Bin Laden had gotten a proper Muslim burial. Although Bin Laden's body was washed, wrapped in a white shroud, prayed over in Arabic and English and dumped into the sea within 24 hours of his death – which is more consideration that the thousands of his Muslim and non-Muslim victims alike received -- Ahmed al-Tayeb, the sheikh of Al Azhar, Egypt's preeminent authority on Islamic issues, called the burial "inappropriate."

So, too did Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood whom the Bush administration had banned from America but to whom the Obama administration gave a visa to speak here.

Bin Laden's death and burial were also attacked by the militant Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, newly triumphant from its "reconciliation" with the Palestinian Authority's "Fateh" on the West Bank, a merger designed to strengthen the Palestinians' hand against their true enemy, Israel.

Writing in the Evening Standard, Lee Smith gives this idiotic argument about Islamic burial the rhetorical burial it deserves. Examining what leading Islamic authorities have said about disposing of the dead since the birth of Islam, Smith, a frequent critic of the administration's foreign policy, nonetheless concludes that the Obama administration "has more justice on its side here." It's a lengthy, complex discussion, which boils down to this: burial at sea is permissible if a person died at sea or would be difficult to bury on land. The latter was certainly true for Bin Laden, since even his family had disowned him and no country wanted to play host to what might well have become the dead "martyr's" shrine. (Never mind that most fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, including the Wahabi sect that spawned Bin Laden, ban such shrines and bury even Saudi kings in unmarked graves).

The argument was followed by an equally unseemly dispute over whether torture (the euphemism is "enhanced interrogation techniques") played a role in unearthing information that ultimately led to the Abbottabad compound.

Here, former CIA director Michael Hayden cut thru the hyperbole. The man who told George Bush about the existence of a courier who might lead the U.S. to Bin Laden adroitly dodged the specific issue of whether such techniques directly produced the information at the base of the intelligence pyramid that led years later to the raid. But on Zakaria's program, Hayden confirmed that initial clues to Bin Laden whereabouts came from detainees who had been interrogated at the CIA's infamous "black sites," which he still declined to name or locate, and after – how long after he did not say – some of them had been subjected to such extreme measures. Yet no single bit of intelligence had been dispositive, he said. Rather, it was "one pebble" rather than "one brick" at a time. All of the intelligence community's many capabilities – among them "humint," or human intelligence, electronic signals, satellite feeds, wiretaps, etc etc. – had played a role.

A confession here is in order: For me, the issue of whether such measures work – I concede that they sometimes do -- is secondary to the moral aspects of the debate. As a rule, people who believe in civilized government and the rule of law should not engage in such barbaric activity. It's antithetical to everything America stands for, shatters the nation's moral high ground and therefore reduces our reputation and influence at home and abroad. In non-moral, marketing terms, it's bad for the brand.

Finally, we ended the week with a debate over whether Bin Laden's killing was legal. My usually wise friend, Kenneth Rothman, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, whose group has done excellent work in the complex, politically charged arena of domestic and international law, tweeted that Bin Laden's murder was unjust because there had been "no trial" or "conviction." Never mind that the man and his organization explicitly declared war on Americans back in 1998, or that it openly claimed credit for the death of thousands of victims throughout the world – most of them Muslim, incidentally –during his rampage of terror.

Roth's tweet was more proof that our country has too many lawyers. Yes, Bin Laden was unarmed and may not have been given a chance to surrender. And yes, it is still unclear what kind of "resistance" he offered, as the White House called it in its competing descriptions of the raid and his death. No, he was probably not told to drop his weapon, raise his hands above his head and get down on the ground. He was not read Miranda rights.

But in the court of public opinion, this was a no-brainer. Every now and then, law courts and trials are not the only appropriate venues for justice. Bin Laden has gotten what for so long he has so richly deserved. End of discussion.

Amidst all the kvetching, one group may deserve some sympathy. Soon after Obama's announcement, Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a Washington-based Native rights group, denounced as "shocking" and "insulting" the military's use of the Indian hero Geronimo as a code name for Bin Laden. She had a point, said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Indian Affairs panel, who called the Navy SEALs' inadvertent comparison of the legendary Indian warrior to a terrorist "unfortunate."

Compared to Bin Laden, Geronimo was a pussycat.

W. Scott Malone: Did the U.S. Teach Iraq To Hide Its Terror Arms?

W. Scott Malone on how Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, Gates, and Bush Screwed up Iraq Intelligence...in 1991.

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[ed.note: For the initiated, as well as the noveau and even the naive, the below article was the original broadside about the glaring and deadly INTELLIGENCE FAILURE of the CIA, the NSA and the military intelligence agencies over WMD in Iraq that were uncovered only after the war had ended, circa 1991.

Those WMD 'terror weapons' had been employed to ghastly effect by Saddam--first against the Iranians during their 8-year war--then again against his own Iraqi Kurdish population beginning in 1988.

Dick Cheney was the SECDEF at the time, and his two key deputies were Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz. They were apparently deeply chagrined over this failure--their failure.

And after they had personally effected the delivery of a collective 90,000 ton payload of bombs rained down on Iraq.

After UN Inspectors uncovered murdered artillery designer Gerald Bull's 200-foot-long SuperGun sitting placidly, if firmly, on a hillside pointing at Israel, even Jay Leno had a little fun at Cheney and Libby's expense:

"The Iraqi Branch of the National Rifle Association put out a statement today saying that the Supergun was intended for sporting purposes only..."

And their collective fear was of a chemical or biological attack. Libby later became known around the Bush 43 White House as 'Mr. Bug,' over his abiding concern over possible Anthrax attacks. Feeble attempts from 1991 to 2001 to achieve a reliable anthrax vaccine had also met with failure, and increasing trepidations of many 1991 war vets that their first generation vaccine injections were the mysterious cause the dreaded 'Gulf War Syndrome.' (SEE: previous blog post below of my review of the 2004 Gary Matsumoto book on the troubled anthrax vaccine program.) 

The leading US Army researcher on the troubled vaccine program was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008 as the FBI closed in on him as the sole cause of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks. In the Spring of 2001, both Wolfowitz and Karl Rove exchanged memos on shutting down the Defense Department's failing anthrax vaccine program.

Such was 'Dr. Bug's' lingering concern, that in the weeks following the September 11th attacks, before any hint of the coming anthrax attacks of October, Libby was began to advocate strongly that White House officials, from the President on down begin a prophylactic course of the powerful antibiotic Cipro.

Indeed, it was also a deeply ingrained fear of probable Iraqi chemical weapons, that was so palpable in the new post-9/11 world.

Back in '91, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, in his 'Mother of ALL Briefings,' upon the apparently premature conclusion to ground campaign of Operation DESERT STORM, described his 'nightmare scenario'--that his forces would get caught in a deadly artillery crossfire of chemical shells. Schwartzkopf prolonged the air campaign an additional ten days to take out over 500 of Saddam's American designed, long-range 155 artillery platforms.

The story below was followed up about a month later by late-comer Sy Hersh in the New York Times. Bob Gates, the current SECDEF, was just facing his Senate confirmation as the new CIA Director when the below article was published, and he had privately vowed to take corrective action. (Although the CIA's Operations Director at that time, Tom Tweeten, did call up his predecessor, BlackNET Member Ed Juchniewicz, to rather pedantically, if threateningly, remind him of his security oath over being quoted on the record, in the below Washington Post article.)

Perhaps not so ironically, it is now Gates' problem, again. But it was George Tenet, the then chief aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee's chairman, who went on down to glory as the 9/11 CIA Director with his "slam dunk" (and apparently erroneous) prediction about the extent of extant Iraqi WMD, this time in 2002.

But nobody is innocent. That includes moi, and my friends and fellow BlackNET Members Judy Miller and Gary Matsumoto, to name but few. While America's intelligence, military and political minions were wrong then, and wrong again in 2003, those of us in the media at the time have nothing to be particularly, or collectively, proud about either.

So, do two wrongs make a crybaby right? Go figure. Go to the Washington Post, below...]

November 3, 1991

[Re-posted with Permission and Author's copyright]

Did the U.S. Teach Iraq To Hide Its Terror Arms?

By William Scott Malone

AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE that was shared with Saddam Hussein for six years during the Iran-Iraq War may have helped Iraq hide weapons of mass destruction -- including most of its secret atomic bomb project -- from U.S. forces seeking to destroy the arsenals during the Gulf War.

This possibility has arisen in the aftermath of the recent discoveries in Iraq by United Nations inspectors that Saddam's deadly stockpile was more than 10 times as large as predicted by U.S. intelligence agencies during the Gulf War.

By any analysis, what Operation Desert Storm missed in its Gulf War effort to destroy Saddam's secret arms caches was staggering -- more than 819 Scud missiles, a huge cannon almost 170-feet long resting on a mountainside and aimed at Israel, more than 11,000 chemical shells and three uranium enrichment/hydrogen bomb component factories, according to U.N. reports.

"Our failure to cover the Iraqi weapons programs was clearly a significant intelligence failure," former acting CIA operations chief Edward Juchniewicz recently concluded.

The causes of the U.S. miscalculations are not clear. But numerous former intelligence officials and other specialists in interviews expressed concerns that information given to Iraq -- including photo-reconnnaissance data -- as part of the Reagan administration's "tilt" toward Saddam to prevent an Iranian victory in the 1980-88 war could have been used to shelter Saddam's military might during Operation Desert Storm.

On one occasion, Saddam is said to have personally shown one Soviet defense official a U.S. satellite image, according to two former intelligence officials, and asked for help in concealing things from the spy orbiters. The Soviets responded with training in military deception tactics and communications security. According to one of the former officials, the Soviets later provided the United States with some of the details of the techniques just before the Gulf War.

The long-running U.S. "intelligence liaison" with Iraq was the subject of a recent closed-door debate on the nomination of Robert M. Gates as CIA director.

A majority of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that all intelligence supplied to Iraq was "appropriately sanitized" and thus of little use to Saddam other than helping him in his war with Iran. But not all the senators agreed, and important questions about the scope of the intelligence transfer remain unanswered.

In a report released last week, the panel noted that during the summer of 1986, "CIA staff officers had, on two occasions, shared certain intelligence with the Iraqis which, at the time it was provided, may have exceeded the scope of the sharing arrangement which had been authorized."

The problem was taken care of, the report noted, by having the National Security Council (NSC) grant an expanded "authority" three months after the fact, in October, 1986. But this did not keep the Iraqis from scrutinizing the data for minute clues to U.S. intelligence-gathering methods -- perhaps so that counter-measures could be designed and implemented.

"Generally speaking, it is always a risk when you share intelligence," said Gen. William Odom, director of the super-secret National Security Agency from 1984 to 1987. "When you give people intelligence, however well-sanitized, it is pretty hard to keep the recipient from making certain deductions. And the more you do it, the worse the risk becomes."

"Anytime you give access to photo-reconnaissance," said another former intelligence official and technical consultant, "a good interpreter could devise the countermeasures necessary to counteract the effectiveness of such coverage."

Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), who opposes Gates' nomination, asserted during the confirmation hearings that "there are still important and unanswered questions about [Gates's] management and supervision of the undisclosed ties between Iraq and the United States."

Gates and acting CIA director Richard Kerr maintained in closed session that a still-secret July 1991 CIA inspector general's report cleared them of any "supervisory negligence" in the program, according to sources.

However, a review of declassified testimony, classified documents, academic studies and interviews with more than 40 former officials and analysts adds unsettling details to the story of the "intelligence liaison" between the Reagan administration and Baghdad. It also raises questions about whether the Soviet military may have gained insights into U.S. intelligence-gathering methods because Saddam shared some U.S.-supplied intelligence with the Soviets.

And the episode stands as a cautionary tale for U.S. policymakers contemplating the nation's intelligence activities in the post-Cold War era.

Although the Senate committee said the U.S. intelligence "liaison" with Iraq began in 1984, it actually started two years earlier, when Iran began winning the war that Iraq had initiated. It was then that the Reagan administration decided to secretly "tilt" toward the then "terrorist" regime of Saddam Hussein.

"The theory [was] that the enemy of our enemy [was] our friend," said Juchniewicz.

"The basic decision was made March 15, 1982, when Iraq was taken off the [State Department's] terrorist list," recalled former Reagan NSC staff member Howard Teicher. "The political decision was made to help [the Iraqis] help themselves -- to show them how they were vulnerable."

Said former NSC staffer Geoffrey Kemp, "I don't recall ever seeing a [particular] piece of paper . . . . It was [more of] a hip pocket operation -- there was no formal agreement." Kemp recalled that "from time to time we provided intelligence to Iraq of what the Iranians, in a timely manner, were up to."

During the first two years, the intelligence was delivered by CIA operatives through "third countries," namely Jordan and Saudia Arabia, various officials recalled.

Said Kemp: "The tilt was absolutely justified . . . You have to remember the magnitude of the problem in the spring [of] 1982. The Iraqis had suffered stunning reversals on the battlefield. We were terrified" that vulnerable Kuwait was next. "The intelligence sharing was of tactical importance."

In 1983, the Reagan administration publicly launched "Operation Staunch" to stem the international flow of weapons to Iran only. In November 1984, President Reagan signed a still-secret National Security Decision Directive (NSDD), calling for direct "intelligence liaison" with Baghdad. The United States reopened its Baghdad embassy and intelligence began to flow.

According to recently convicted Iraqi arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, who was in constant touch with Saddam and his generals in the early 1980s, "Sometimes [the intelligence] was good, and sometimes it was bad. The Iraqis felt that they [the U.S.] were playing both ends against the middle." But, Soghanalian recalled, "the Iraqis took whatever they offered."

The intelligence provided to Iraq, Juchniewicz said, "was short range tactical intelligence. Tactical. To keep Tehran out of Baghdad. To neutralize Iran, not to strengthen Iraq. The only thing the U.S. government did was to stop the collapse of Saddam's military. It was perfectly clear to us, and to the Israelis, that Iran was lusting after the Arab Gulf states. We could not allow that to happen."

But the flow of intelligence increased in 1986 to much higher quality data delivered in "almost real-time," (with very little time lag between the event and the intelligence) according to sources. The material included narrative text reports derived from highly-sensitive electronic intercepts and photo-reconnaissance of Iranian targets, according to several former intelligence officials.

The liaison proved remarkably resilient, surviving even the scandal that erupted with disclosure of the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deals with Iran and the May 1987 Iraqi attack on the U.S. warship Stark that killed 37 sailors. Despite these episodes, U.S. intelligence continued to flow to Baghdad "on a sporadic basis until [July] 1988 when the war between Iraq and Iran ended," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the Gates nomination.

What precisely was provided to Iraq is still highly classified. Whether the material included actual satellite photographs is the subject of some controversy.

According to a retired military intelligence official and consultant familiar with satellite imagery and military matters, the Iraqis' knowledge of U.S. collection devices employed during the Iran-Iraq war could only have helped the Iraqis during the Gulf war three years later. "By knowing how we go about it, the layering of [satellite] passes -- they [probably] were able to work it back so they could employ deception. It gave them an enormous advantage."

After the Iran-Iraq war ended in July 1988, Gates has testified, "ourintelligence assets were shifted away." But when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, U.S spy satellites reappeared over the region. The nature of satellite "orbital parameters" could have easily become clear to the Iraqis, specialists said. "If a physicist in Berkeley with a slide rule can do it, the Iraqis certainly can," said William E. Burrows, author of "Deep Black," a book on satellite espionage..

Part of the worry about the material Iraq obtained relates to whether it was actual imagery from photo-satellites and communications intercepts from eavesdropping apparatus. The more precise the material, the more the Iraqis could glean from it in assessing U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Juchniewicz, who left the CIA before the program was "upgraded" in 1986, said: "I saw one packet and it was all hand-drawn. I think they may have showed them the photos, but they sure wouldn't let them leave with it."

Acting CIA Director Kerr recently testified that the Iraqis were given "some line drawings" and that "imagery was shown."

Former NSC staffer Teicher thinks the question is irrelevant. "What are satellite photos if not computer generated diagrams? You can find out the altitude and figure out the focal length. It's not like they couldn't figure it out once you opened that Pandora's box."

One retired military intelligence official said the Iraqis may have been given an actual overhead photograph, although it was somewhat "sanitized," "I've heard that [the photograph] got down to vehicular size -- 2 meters to 1.5 meters resolution."

A CIA spokesman said the agency does not comment about U.S. intelligence-sharing arrangements. A White House spokesman declined to comment; an NSA spokesman said there would be "no comment" about the Iraq liaison program.

Soghanalian said recently he is certain that the United States supplied photographs. "They provided satellite photographs, not [just] diagrams."

"If somebody gave them actual photos they should be prosecuted," said Juchniewicz.

Some specialists have raised the possibility that Saddam shared his U.S. intelligence with his major arms benefactor, the Soviet Union. This could have benefited Soviet intelligence agencies in the years before the country was overtaken by internal crisis. The Soviets may have aided the Iraqis in finding ways to thwart U.S. espionage collection by analyzing the U.S. data.

"It is only reasonable to conclude, given the level of cooperation between Iraqis and Soviets, that they were privy to what Saddam knew, particularly [U.S.] intelligence," said former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney.

Even more sensitive than satellite reconnaissance is signals intelligence (sigint), interception and decryption of electronic signals and communications, the purview of NSA.

Juchniewicz said that until mid-1986, U.S. intelligence reports that went to the Iraqis usually contained "general numbers of tanks and troops, order of battle scenarios."

But after the liaison upgrade that summer, one source said, "the words [that] went with the diagrams" were a major improvement for the Iraqis. "The extent to which there was information on unit designations . . . . They could see how radio silence and land [telephone] lines worked; they could see the raw product and how it contrasted with what they received from their own intelligence."

"I do know they later received information derived from intercepts," said Teicher. "And then they buried their land lines." Underground lines are much harder to eavesdrop on than radio or landlines. Saddam even laid high-tech European-made fiber optic lines to all major commands, making them virtually surveillance-proof.

Said Neil Livingstone, a terrorism consultant, "The U.S. missed virtually every key element of the Iraqi special weapons and weapons of mass destruction -- much of the nuclear program, underestimated the count of the Scuds, and more importantly, the number of launchers. We missed a lot of targets." 

Scott Malone is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter for PBS' Frontline, whose documentary, "The Man Who Made the Supergun," will be rebroadcast Nov. 26. [1991]

Scott Malone: VACCINE IS HELL

VACCINE IS HELL...

[Ed. Note; re-posted with full permission from original site]

NavySEALs.com/Military.com - October 25, 2004
by Scott Malone
 
In these times of panicked waiting lines for flu vaccine, here comes a new and even more frightening look at the US military's ill-fated anthrax vaccine program.
In "Vaccine - A: The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our Soldiers And Why GI's Are Only The First Victims," author Gary Matsumoto tells an amazing, six-year scientific mystery story, unraveled literally strand by strand and lab sample by lab sample. It is a real-life and death CSI show, and perhaps a tragic mistake of gargantuan proportions, affecting thousands if not hundreds of thousands of US fighting men and women.
In a crash effort to boost the effectiveness and lessen the required doses of existing anthrax vaccines, US military researchers apparently turned to squalene, a naturally-occurring oil distantly related to cholesterol. The squalene was added to various "experimental" batches of the vaccine administered to troops destined for the first Gulf War in 1991. But when injected, even in the minutest of amounts, squalene oil can cause the body's immune system to create its own specialized anti-bodies which then indiscriminately attack all such other oils in the body. These auto-immune reactions have the exact same symptoms as those of the victims of the so-called Gulf War Syndrome.
Proving that this additive, called an 'adjuvant' (a word not often heard outside of microbiology), was causing these adverse reactions has been an uphill battle for a handful of dedicated civilian researchers. And it is their stories, along with those of some fearless victims, that become the focus of Matsumoto's book.
Matsumoto has done his research and it shows. He is very precise and careful. His book is also well-written, with the occasional clever turn of phrase, such as "Rube Goldberg immunology," to help walk readers through some of the tougher technical data.
And Matsumoto writes with a sad heart and weeping pen. His father and three uncles all proudly served in the US Army. As a former NBC foreign correspondent he served in Iraq covering the first Gulf War. Matsumoto is also an award-winning magazine journalist, and has even been published in the very prestigious, scientist peer-reviewed journal, "Science." He is clearly not your run-of-the-mill author/journalist.
The book starts off with a very scary, up-close look at a secret outbreak of anthrax in the then dark out reaches of Soviet Russia in 1979, with hemorrhaging patients coughing themselves literally to death. The Soviet Union had reinvented the bug wars. It was to remain a top-secret until after the end of the Cold War. But as US intelligence began to pick up hints at the scale of the bio-warfare program, they were then faced with a dramatic choice--they would have to prepare and update US defenses against such a weapon.
During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army secretly tested anthrax and other bugs as weapons, and in response, the US and the British did the same. Fortunately for all, they were never used. And in 1969, President Nixon unilaterally put the US military out of the bio-warfare business.
All that remained in the US arsenal was the "weakest [possible] vaccine" for anthrax. US military researchers would soon find themselves secretly following a long tradition of testing new drugs on uniformed military personnel without their informed consent. Despite the precedent of the Nuremburg trials, the US had secretly hired Japanese bio-war criminals and later the CIA conducted unwitting LSD experiments. Unfortunately, because of the nature of war, US military personnel are exempt from such disclosure requirements, and barred by a Supreme Court precedent from ever suing.
During the 1980s, US intelligence began reporting that Iraq had developed a lethal, "dusty" form of anthrax mixed with silica for use against Iran. It was a scary new threat, and the US bio-weaponeers immediately began planning an antidote. The secret US program became a crash program when the Soviet fear factor again raised its ugly head, this time in the form of a Russian bio-weapons defector, in 1989. Not only did the Soviets pose a previously unknown bio-threat, but they were also known to share deadly military technologies with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It would be hard to blame US military researchers then, as Matsumoto accurately points out, for preparing for a possible new nightmare threat. If the Iraqis or Soviets had employed anthrax and US troops been caught unprotected, there would have been hell to pay. Just ask the flu vaccine manufacturers of today.
In secret, the military researchers began to labor away with adjuvants, rushing to increase the potency of the weak, but licensed vaccine, before US troops faced a deadly Iraqi anthrax attack. However, these efforts would be labeled as "unique research opportunities," according to a recently declassified US document uncovered by Matsumoto.
But when Persian Gulf War vets later began to return home and complain of a whole myriad of debilitating auto-immune symptoms, the potentially heroic medical efforts to 'boost' the vaccine with squalene were quietly hushed up.
The symptoms included rashes, malaise, fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain, weakness and sweating, neurological problems, pneumonia, and Lupus. And in some cases even blindness and death.
What was most glaring, in hindsight, was that only vaccinated US, British, Australian and Canadian troops had acquired these various maladies. And some US troops had not even actually been sent to the Gulf, but had been vaccinated in preparation. Further, no local Arab troops or even press members, unvaccinated all, ever came down with any of these autoimmune maladies.
While a media controversy revved up for several years over the newly-named Gulf War Syndrome, in 1997 the government floated a red-herring theory in the form of a CIA "simulation" of a possible gas plume from the detonation of Iraq's captured Sarin nerve gas stockpiles. All of the sudden, the simple solution-seeking media lost all interest, even though the "simulation" had totally failed the basic logic test.
Problem was, most of the affected troops were no longer in theater when the detonation occurred on March 10th, 1991. Further, again, none of the indigenous troops suffered any such consequences. And nerve gas exposure is instant, with much different symptoms.
Complicated medical research, however, is not the usual purview of the American media. An 'adjuvant crossover,' with one wrong injected squalene molecule affecting the entire human immune system, was apparently beyond the comprehension of the average journalist, not to mention most medical professionals. What Matsumoto has managed to dig up is not comforting. Military researchers had ignored animal studies clearly showing the autoimmune pathologies of injected squalene as an adjuvant. These animal studies showed precisely the same symptoms as those experienced by the Gulf vets.
During his investigation, Matsumoto soon crossed paths with medical researchers Pam Asa and Bob Garry, who, working through Tulane Medical Center at Tulane University, had actually been the first to measure the actual anti-bodies caused by injected squalene. They began to test veterans for these anti-bodies.
Dr. Garry dug out an old batch of some 300 blood serum samples from veterans sent to him in 1993 by the Veterans Administration. Out of 86 who had served in the Gulf War, 95% of the sick ones tested positive for the squalene anti-bodies. The number of healthy Gulf vets with the anti-bodies was zero.
Enter Patient X, who met with Asa in Memphis. He was suffering from "auto-immune peripheral neuropathy," consistent with the Gulf War Syndrome. But Patient X had never been in the military nor stationed in Iraq or Saudi Arabia. His only exposure had been in a confidential experimental herpes vaccine study. Further, he was a medical doctor. And he knew exactly what the injection was that he had received-"MF59…squalene and water."
Some British anthrax vaccine samples (a sister to the US program) were later found dumped overboard and washed ashore, apparently from a troop ship heading for the Gulf-which, when tested by Granada Television, also contained the squalene adjuvant. And Matsumoto even discovered a patent held by the Army for the potential new vaccine with squalene in one of its several formulations
"It might even be the single most dangerous oil to come out of a hypodermic needle," Matsumoto writes.
Matsumoto has found many nice historical asides, explaining how disease and war have long been intertwined in US history. In 1775, in a desperate ploy to stave off a smallpox epidemic which threatened the collapse of the Continental Army with desertions, Gen. George Washington ordered that healthy troops be "variolated" by having smallpox pus placed into cuts on their arms. It worked, and the rest is history.
The present day vaccine story is not so pretty a tale, however, with descriptions of the occasional horrible death, including one vet who died in excruciating pain as the skin on his entire body withered away. The book is littered with stories of proud US soldiers dealing with amazing pain, medical confusion and bureaucratic betrayal.
"Perhaps it was the importance of their apparent breakthrough [with squalene] that blinded these scientists to do what they had done," Matsumoto can only sadly surmise.
"By 1997, hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent testing the efficacy of vaccines formulated with squalene adjuvants," Matsumoto reports. Scientists were also frantically looking to squalene to help stem the tides of AIDs and cancer. Adverse news about squalene could potentially threaten "billions of dollars worth of HIV research."
A tragic comedy of errors.
Matsumoto presents a long record of seeming deception by medical and military officials at all levels. It apparently continues to this very day, judging by the coming avalanche of press statements emanating from the Pentagon in response to the book's publication.
After Matsumoto wrote a preliminary article about the squalene adjuvant for Vanity Fair magazine back in 1999, the Air Force quickly struck back.
"Let me say this as succinctly as I can," Air Force Surgeon General Charles H. Roadman II told assembled airmen and pilots at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware who had received the vaccine. "There is not, there never has been, squalene as an adjuvant in the anthrax immunization. And that's a fact."
The director of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program, Major Guy Strawder, went so far as to call Matsumoto's article "reckless, irresponsible and wrong."
Yet, Matsumoto subsequently found, "contrary to General Roadman's strenuous protests, that various batches of the new anthrax vaccine [administered at Dover and elsewhere] had contained squalene since 1987." And when the supposedly independent Food and Drug Administration finally found that the vaccine contained some amounts of squalene, they too withheld that information from the public for another year and half.
When Matsumoto requested under the Freedom of Information Act any US contracts for adjuvants containing squalene, he was informed that two contracts "and fifteen purchase orders" had, "unfortunately, all…been destroyed."
Although the book can get bogged down occasionally, (but necessarily), in some rather technical issues, Matsumoto does not overplay his hand, perhaps even erring too closely on the side of caution.
And it even has a shocking surprise ending: Matsumoto reports that scientists have only discovered this past summer that the latest possible victims of adjuvant-induced squalene antibodies are the recently returned Iraq War II veterans-a few even suffering some of the same auto-immune symptoms as their earlier comrades.
While the plot twists and turns throughout this excellent book, by far the most ominous twist is that these vaccines are currently stockpiled for use by US civilians in case of further terrorist anthrax attacks on the general population.
This book is the very definition of "a seminal work"-one that cries out for further studies.
Scott Malone is a multiple Emmy and Peabody award-winning investigative journalist who is currently the editor of NavySEALs.com and its counter-terrorism newsletter, "BlackNET Intelligence."

http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Malone_102504,00.html

Some History: UPI showed love to BlackNET

[Ed Note: Digging up some old info; even back in the day UPI had discovered the BlackNET; and what we do...]

Original UPI Article Here

Taking a look at the article, we see that they put in a nice summary of our work.

Ensconced at an undisclosed location in the lonely wooded mountains of West Virginia, the BlackNET has been abuzz in recent weeks as the United States prepares for the moment of truth in the Persian Gulf.

The pending invasion of Iraq and the possibility that it will bring new terrorist attacks to the United States has stoked the level of chatter on the Internet mailing list that has become a "must-have" for government officials, investigative reporters and world affairs scholars in the netherworld of international spooks.

"The consensus is that (Iraqi leader) Saddam (Hussein) is an eternal optimist," said Scott Malone, moderator and founder of the Web site dubbed "BlackNET," which was originally launched in Arlington, Va., in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attack on the nearby Pentagon. "And (President) Bush is going to do exactly what he says."

If you go directly to the source; you'd find that there is more depth to the BlackNET then appears to the naked eye....

And they seem to have found some of our members (from the article):

"It's an interesting group," said Morgan Clements, a member of the list and publisher of the Web site TerroristWarning.com.

"They have a curious and uncanny awareness of things which are not always publicly available and are clearly a group of knowledgeable individuals working toward a common goal behind the scenes without getting or expecting credit for the information they provide."

While BlackNET's membership is limited to people that work in the field of security and intelligence; you can read here some of our new information that is for unlimited public dissemination.

As always; keep your eyes here, as there will be more to come.....