Suicide Ain't Painless for the Rest of Us - More to Follow
I hope and trust you are aware of the death (apparent suicide) of the reported candidate of greatest interest to FBI in the investigation of the anthrax mailing attacks shortly after 9/11. (Okay, off the record, the latest candidate - they had to pay $5M+ to the previous victim of their stupefyingly inept work.)
I have invested a couple hours in composing and sending LTTE's in hopes that the topic might actually do more than barely break the surface in the dying print media that is the only alternative for a lot of folks for the boob-tube. While I have no strikes for my efforts, I was pleased today that there is some genuine roiling of the waters, even in a few cases in the corporate media.
But the "authorities" and some of their fully-disenfranchised (owned) media seem to be intent on the idea, right out of an old (bad) western that this death can be marketed as neatly wrapping it up. Actually, there is a repeat character, big-chinned, little-brained (named something like Lt. Gill) in the Thin Man series who does the same bush-like "why bother with nuance, with us or against us" thing. Hey! This guy could have done it! Case closed.
[We are working through the "Thin Man" series lately, having enjoyed the first three.]
So all we need now is Powell and Loy (Asta??). Okay, maybe Gary Cooper.
We can do better than that, not settling for newsprint and the idiot box. Glenn Greenwald deserves something worthy of display on a mantlepiece (has there been a Pulitzer for a blog yet? why the hell not?) for his indefatigable pursuit of this issue. I could ply you with plenty more, but let's start with this one, toots, that at least references in decent fashion many of the articles spread out over the last few days. I'm sharing the first part of a post you should read in its' entirety. Let me know if you need more from other sources:
If we've learned anything in the United States during the Bush era, it's that we have to resist rushing to judgment in the face of catastrophic events. The exercise of careful, independent judgment is the best tool available - we should use it. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who often wrote on the benefits of both privacy and transparency, offered the reminder "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
The impact of the anthrax attacks was at least as damaging to the US as 9/11. The weeks after 9/11 brought the Homeland Security Act and the war in Afghanistan, ostensibly to stop "the bad guys." As shown below, the result of the anthrax attacks was a greatly-toughened Patriot Act and a war in Iraq that destroyed the fabric of life in America as we know it. If 9/11 resulted in Americans suffering from psychic dislocation, the aftermath of the anthrax attacks was the deeply-felt sensation that there was literally no place left to hide anywhere in the United States.
As we work to end these wars and roll back this repressive legislation, we have to end these fundamental mysteries about what happened to America during the latter part of 2001. If we can't resolve the anthrax attacks, we sure as hell aren't going to resolve anything else. The best way to have closure is to have the truth. No investigation can be totally open - but with the prime suspect now dead, it must be as open as possible.
It's bad logic to assume that the accused microbiologist, the now-deceased Bruce E. Ivins, is either guilty or innocent. Nor should we assume that either Ivins or someone else was "a loner" or that he or she "worked with others." No matter how deep our biases or how strong our beliefs, we should pull together and fight as hard as we can for a truly independent investigation - which ultimately means out of the hands of the investigators at FBI and USAMRIID (the US Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases, the biodefense center in Fort Detrick, Maryland). The Los Angeles Times reports Ivins was one of those very investigators helping the FBI analyze the powder recovered from the envelopes sent to Capitol Hill in the days after 9/11. This investigation is now deeply tainted.
This is not a time to rely on Newsweek's "earth-shattering breakthroughs" cited by "unnamed sources." It must be remembered, during the panic of the opening days of the anthrax attacks, the FBI permitted Iowa State to destroy on October 11, 2001, the original "Ames strain" evidence during the opening phase of the investigation, simply because they weren't certain of its origins. If that puzzle could have been cracked, the germ's distribution could have been tracked over time, which might have quickly led to the identity of the perpetrators.
With Bruce Ivins dead, the ongoing grand jury investigation of him should be made public, with the possible exception of evidence that would unfairly damage the reputation of others. The use of an open grand jury has been used in controversial police shootings, and should be replicated in this case. This process has been used at least twice in Santa Clara County, California, most recently in 2004. The latter case resulted in the indictment of a state narcotics agent, who fatally shot a fleeing Latino man in the back. "It's essentially an effort to reassure the public that law enforcement is held responsible,'' said Joseph McNamara, a former San Jose police chief and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
There are three key reasons intense public scrutiny is critical. One is the intriguing story of Bruce Ivins's background in vaccine research with the Ames strain. Another is the well-documented use of the anthrax attacks to advance the Bush agenda of war with Iraq. The third reason is the less-explored relationship between the timing of the anthrax attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act.
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I have invested a couple hours in composing and sending LTTE's in hopes that the topic might actually do more than barely break the surface in the dying print media that is the only alternative for a lot of folks for the boob-tube. While I have no strikes for my efforts, I was pleased today that there is some genuine roiling of the waters, even in a few cases in the corporate media.
But the "authorities" and some of their fully-disenfranchised (owned) media seem to be intent on the idea, right out of an old (bad) western that this death can be marketed as neatly wrapping it up. Actually, there is a repeat character, big-chinned, little-brained (named something like Lt. Gill) in the Thin Man series who does the same bush-like "why bother with nuance, with us or against us" thing. Hey! This guy could have done it! Case closed.
[We are working through the "Thin Man" series lately, having enjoyed the first three.]
So all we need now is Powell and Loy (Asta??). Okay, maybe Gary Cooper.
We can do better than that, not settling for newsprint and the idiot box. Glenn Greenwald deserves something worthy of display on a mantlepiece (has there been a Pulitzer for a blog yet? why the hell not?) for his indefatigable pursuit of this issue. I could ply you with plenty more, but let's start with this one, toots, that at least references in decent fashion many of the articles spread out over the last few days. I'm sharing the first part of a post you should read in its' entirety. Let me know if you need more from other sources:
If we've learned anything in the United States during the Bush era, it's that we have to resist rushing to judgment in the face of catastrophic events. The exercise of careful, independent judgment is the best tool available - we should use it. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who often wrote on the benefits of both privacy and transparency, offered the reminder "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
The impact of the anthrax attacks was at least as damaging to the US as 9/11. The weeks after 9/11 brought the Homeland Security Act and the war in Afghanistan, ostensibly to stop "the bad guys." As shown below, the result of the anthrax attacks was a greatly-toughened Patriot Act and a war in Iraq that destroyed the fabric of life in America as we know it. If 9/11 resulted in Americans suffering from psychic dislocation, the aftermath of the anthrax attacks was the deeply-felt sensation that there was literally no place left to hide anywhere in the United States.
As we work to end these wars and roll back this repressive legislation, we have to end these fundamental mysteries about what happened to America during the latter part of 2001. If we can't resolve the anthrax attacks, we sure as hell aren't going to resolve anything else. The best way to have closure is to have the truth. No investigation can be totally open - but with the prime suspect now dead, it must be as open as possible.
It's bad logic to assume that the accused microbiologist, the now-deceased Bruce E. Ivins, is either guilty or innocent. Nor should we assume that either Ivins or someone else was "a loner" or that he or she "worked with others." No matter how deep our biases or how strong our beliefs, we should pull together and fight as hard as we can for a truly independent investigation - which ultimately means out of the hands of the investigators at FBI and USAMRIID (the US Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Diseases, the biodefense center in Fort Detrick, Maryland). The Los Angeles Times reports Ivins was one of those very investigators helping the FBI analyze the powder recovered from the envelopes sent to Capitol Hill in the days after 9/11. This investigation is now deeply tainted.
This is not a time to rely on Newsweek's "earth-shattering breakthroughs" cited by "unnamed sources." It must be remembered, during the panic of the opening days of the anthrax attacks, the FBI permitted Iowa State to destroy on October 11, 2001, the original "Ames strain" evidence during the opening phase of the investigation, simply because they weren't certain of its origins. If that puzzle could have been cracked, the germ's distribution could have been tracked over time, which might have quickly led to the identity of the perpetrators.
With Bruce Ivins dead, the ongoing grand jury investigation of him should be made public, with the possible exception of evidence that would unfairly damage the reputation of others. The use of an open grand jury has been used in controversial police shootings, and should be replicated in this case. This process has been used at least twice in Santa Clara County, California, most recently in 2004. The latter case resulted in the indictment of a state narcotics agent, who fatally shot a fleeing Latino man in the back. "It's essentially an effort to reassure the public that law enforcement is held responsible,'' said Joseph McNamara, a former San Jose police chief and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
There are three key reasons intense public scrutiny is critical. One is the intriguing story of Bruce Ivins's background in vaccine research with the Ames strain. Another is the well-documented use of the anthrax attacks to advance the Bush agenda of war with Iraq. The third reason is the less-explored relationship between the timing of the anthrax attacks and the passage of the Patriot Act.
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posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:40 PM
1 Comments:
Well written article.
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