Anthrax and the Homeland Security Complex
In September of 2001, Bruce Ivins was just an unappreciated bio terror researcher in a lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He lived just off the base and many days walked to work. Though we now know he was probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, he had access to the most dangerous toxins in the U.S. Army's unrivaled storehouse. Ebola, Anthrax, smallpox, you name it, Bruce could get his hands on it. And then Bruce probably realized he didn't have to be the mousy nerd any more. And he carefully sent out some anthrax letters.
F.B.I. investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Dr. Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field.If that was the motive, it succeeded. In the years since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, killing five people, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs.
After the attacks, for example, an experimental vaccine Dr. Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed $877 million federal contract, though the deal collapsed two years later. Federal documents suggest that Dr. Ivins, along with several colleagues, might have earned royalties had the contract gone forward, but the deal ultimately collapsed.
According to some very reliable sources, Ivins was the main insider pushing the Steven Hatfill investigation , which ended with the government apologizing and paying Hatfill millions of dollars. He evidently helped play ABC News at the outset to get them to believe the Anthrax was from Iraq.
Two take-aways for me.
- How the fuck did this nut case get access to these labs? And what did we do in reaction?
We added 10 times as many University and corporate labs that have access to this deadly stuff. This is insane.
- The lures to get in on the Homeland Security Gravy Train, a major topic of The Cost Of Empire, might move a truly mentally ill patient like Ivins, to kill people to get his patent taken seriously. It's like a Batman villian. But for every truly crazy guy who made big money in the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) in the last 30 years, there are 100 Jack Abramoffs--just short of being institutionalized--we'd call them ambitious, who've made far more than Bruce Ivens, as readers of this blog well know.
Some were ambitious for money and some like Dick Cheney, who had already scored in the MIC Game, did it for power. The power to remake the American Constitution--to create a Defacto set of laws that concentrates power to the executive, backed by a conservative Supreme Court. Those laws allow the president to torture in contravention of the Geneva Convention of which we are a major signatory. Those laws allow the President to declare de facto war on terrorism that only ends when he says so. In South American dictatorships these are called a "State of Emergency". This is America, God Dammit. We're not supposed to act like General Pinochet. We were going to be "The Light on a Hill", not as someone said, "The man on a box with wires coming out of his fingers";
These de-facto laws allowed The President and vice President to leak names of American undercover agents and classified documents to their propaganda wing in the establishment media. These laws allow the President and Vice President to read every one of your emails and listen ot all your calls through their IP vacuum pumps at the major switches. Anyone with any technical know how, knows that the decision as to whether your phone call is "of interest" is made after the IP splitter has sent you out of AT&T's custody and into the government network.
And don't you believe for a minute John McCain would change any of these "de-facto laws". My guess is that Obama would look again at each of these decisions and make major changes.
We can do much better.
I'm not buying that this guy was motivated purely by the opportunity to profit on his patents. I believe there was a strong and obvious element of political motivation. And I believe political motivations and prejudices are behind the outrageous failure to solve this case in a timely manner.
Democrats are such patsies. If someone tried to assassinate Mitch McConnell, Bill Frist, Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch by sending them anthrax; and if that attack happened during a Democratic administration; and if the case remained unsolved for seven years with the perpetrator still at large - well then, you can bet the Republicans would be screaming bloody murder, and probably would have initiated an investigation and impeachment hearings long ago.
But Democrats apparently don't get too miffed when their own Senate leaders are targeted for death by right-wing kooks. They still look for every possible reason to give the benefit of the doubt, even when the political agenda of the perpetrator seems as clear as day. While our highly politicized executive branch dicked around for months pursuing the theory that Muslim terrorists would for some reason have an axe to grind against Tom Daschle and Pat Leahy - those noted scourges of Islam - this unhinged, conservative Christian fanatic Ivins was still out there, probably in a position to attempt another assassination any time he wanted to. What a joke we are as a party.
And Fort Dietrich, the place that is supposed to be the front line of our biological weapons defense effort, turns out to be the source of the weapon used in a spectacularly successful act of domestic bio-terrorism against American citizens, an act that had the nation riveted by panic for weeks, and was one of the crimes of the century. And yet Democrats are still strangely silent on all this, and more interested in talking about campaign television commercials.
Will we ever get it?
August 3, 2008 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, I'm not quite ready to accept the MSM story on this guy. By some reports he didn't have the expertise in delivering anthrax via aerosols. According to friends and neighbors he was a decent guy. The only knock against him seems to be from one brother.
August 3, 2008 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
--- a brother who hadn't spoken with Ivins in 21 years and can hardly be considered a knowledgeable or for that matter, an unbiased expert on Ivins' current mental state.
August 4, 2008 5:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. The only basis of suspicion against Ivins that I've seen presented thus far is his mental state, and it appears that all of the scientists that were part of this anthrax research were being relentlessly and aggressively hounded by the FBI for years - enough to create substantial stress and perhaps unusual behavior for any individual. There are suggestions that Ivins may have had previous history of mental health problems. That might have made him an easy target of suspicion for the FBI, don't you think? Not to mention, fragile enough that he would break down readily under the pressure of being heavily investigated.
Without some solid evidence, I'm not prepared to accept that the FBI found the man responsible for these attacks. It appears that they found someone that they could easily accuse and he broke down under the pressure.
August 4, 2008 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
We have turned into a Banana Republic where the rule of law is an absolute joke. The sad/scary thing is a majority of the American people don't seem to give a rat's ass about it.
Ummmmmm...he had a chance to make a statement on this and he said 'carry on'. For some reason I always expect the D's to do the correct thing even though I know their track record (which is FAR better than the R's but still 'mixed' at best). But for some reason I am always surprised and disappointed when, invariably, they end up not doing the correct thing yet again. And are you so definitively sure that a President Obama would change course on these policies? To me that is like believing in God...I guess it is all about being a true believer and keeping the faith. I hope there is a heaven too...
August 3, 2008 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some bones of contention, Jonathan:
First, it sounds like you have already bought into the story as it is being presented: don't 'real' journalists know better than to just accept the narrative they are being presented?
Second, your 'very reliable sources' carry very little weight these days, given the amount of disinformation being passed to the media, this means nothing--not to mention that you are merely implicating Ivins via the innuendo that his pointing at Hatfill is proof of his guilt.
Third, I don't see in Greenwald's article that you linked to any mention of Ivins that Ivins 'helped play ABC.' That part seems yellow to me.
Finally, who really did profit off the anthrax scare? Didn't Bayer actually make a windfall off Cipro?
Sorry, Jonathan, but if you want to get into this one, you need to go way deeper than just a weekend one-offer with a weak premise. This is a dilettante's effort.
August 3, 2008 11:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ditto. All I hear is "I am being paid off."
August 3, 2008 11:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
August 4, 2008 3:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
August 3, 2008 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dumbest post of the year.
August 3, 2008 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're a credulous man Jonathan, I give you that. And, if the story about Ivins, as you tell it, is right, then you make some good points.
But come on... this story doesn't pass the smell test and if you don't know that, well... it's hard to even talk to you.
As Dan K points out: if somebody had sent anthrax to Republicans rather than to Democrats, it wouldn't have taken 7 years for us to know his name. He'd have been outed, accused and sent to Guantanomo immediately. The mere fact that this investigation took so long is evidence that he's a patsy.
Also, we've already gone through this with Wen Ho lee, a guy with security clearance who broke some mundane work rules and was prosecuted basically because of his ethnicity, and that with a Democrat in the White House. So... never error on the side of the government in cases like these.
Finally, the guy's lawyer says he's innocent. Not like the lawyer's going to get paid more now. Somem might see the Ivins suicide as an admission of guilt but, again, given what we know about how our government has treated people at Guantanomo or Abu Ghraib or, heck, given how our government has treated American citizens since 9/11... is it that hard to believe that a falsely accused guy could be driven to suicide by the various abuses of power that government agents engage in on an almost daily basis?
August 4, 2008 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
If the government was looking for someone to blame, it seems unlikely that they would blame a guy with a history of writing conservative letters to the editor of a local newspaper, and someone that in 2003 was given an award for being a good citizen. Not to mention the fact that he was a good catholic. Cheney and Co would probably find a good liberal to blame if they were just looking for a scapegoat.
In fact Cheney is probabaly in Nancy Pelosis' office right now planting evidence.
August 4, 2008 2:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
. . . a guy with a history of writing conservative letters to the editor of a local newspaper . . . .
I appreciate your skeptical tone, JohnRove -- indeed, any post by Jonathan Taplin should always be met with a raised eyebrow -- but I do think your characterization of Ivins' letters is questionable.
IIRC Ivins objected to the tone of conservative talk radio, argued in favor of married priests and women priests in the Roman Catholic Church, and suggested that he was quite open to the idea that homosexuality is not a life-style choice but biologically based. These views are not generally thought to be "conservative."
His letters do imply he was religious and believed that the strong "no religious tenets in public discourse" position of many liberals was incoherent and ahistorical -- see, E.J.Dionne for general agreement.
As for his assessment post-November 2004 that Christian Conservatives would rule the Administration, it's not clear he approved but it is clear he was correct -- see, Marcia Goodling for confirmation et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Altogether, his political views would appear to be rather mainstream.
August 4, 2008 4:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even if he(Ivins) does turn out to be the anthrax mailer the investigation was so botched that their will always be some doubt. First it was the Iraqis when that was politically beneficial,then it was some other guy(Haskins I believe), and now Ivins who cannot defend himself.
The third time may be the charm but their will always be some doubt.
August 4, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Taplin,
This is a very disappointing post. You provide no evidence to show that Ivins helped play ABC on the bentonite story.
You also provide nothing to back up your claim that Ivins "probably suffered from paranoid schizophrenia." Statements offered up by social worker Jean Duley in the context of requesting a no-contact order are simply not credible without further evidence. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Jean Duley, either--just that her statements are not backed up. (Bear in mind she said Ivins tried to poison several people--quite an accusation and one which cries out for substantiation.)
It may be that Ivins was a total nutcase responsible for the crime, and if evidence is presented that demonstrates so, I'll certainly go with it.
But right now we do not have that evidence, and so to posit paranoid schizophrenia and rhetorically ask how such a nutcase could get access to the labs is simply not helpful.
August 4, 2008 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't read that any psychiatrists were calling Ivins a "paranoid schizophrenic". Rather the reports I have seen claim that psychiatrists had determined that Ivins was "homicidal and sociopathic".
August 4, 2008 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
You mean that we don't, per Jonathan Taplin, "now know he was probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia"?
No way! Who you gonna believe? Those johnny-come-lately MSM reporters or a well respected psychiatric diagnostician like Jonathan?
August 4, 2008 7:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The statement that psychiatrists have in the past determined Ivins to be "homicidal and sociopathic" came from Duley's testimony at the hearing request for a restraing order:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jvXZcXSnx_qWIv5ZmpIWTArdoadgD92AHJEG0
Duley's a licensed clinical social worker. She's not qualified to diagnose psychiatric conditions.
If, in fact, Ivins had been diagnosed as homicidal and had a past history of attempted murder, I find it hard to believe that he would now be handling anthrax as a contractor to the U.S. Army.
I find it very believable that this man may have had a severe breakdown under the strain of being investigated by the FBI.
August 4, 2008 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the result you get with a weak congress and a strong executive. Power is out of balance and desperately needs to be restored. This is also an indication of how the nation was, incorrectly I might add, pushed to the right because of 9/11. The nation incorrectly evaluated the reasons for 9/11 having occurred. The threat existed but we didn't take the necessary and prudent precautions to mitigate it. The Bush administration has busted its ass deflecting responsibility for 9/11 with the sole intent of shifting power to the executive. Prior to and after 9/11 our government has failed miserably. There is no other way to say it and the failure has been compounded by using the event to alter the framework of power established by the constitution. We have gone from bad to worse. I see no indication that the added federal expenditures for intelligence via Homeland Security have created any ability to provide a different result. A sitting president now has greater authority to react or not to a reported threat. Congress has to share in that evaluation. Leaving it to the executive means a dumb ass like Bush will screw it up again.
August 4, 2008 4:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll tell you who the homicidal and sociopath is, that would be the person who was pushing Tom Ridge to blame the anthrax on Al Queda, in hopes that it would elevate the war. Now, who could that be? ....Would it be, S-A-T-A-N...CHENEY?????
August 4, 2008 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wen Ho Lee intentionally breached national security measures repeatedly and was caught while doing so. He's no martyr.
August 4, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wen Ho Lee took work home with him and was prosecuted for being Chinese. He wasn't ever a spy.
August 4, 2008 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
destor23 says;
I disagree, I think he was prosecuted so some could be seen as tough on spies, on terror, or whatever, just as Hillary Clinton cast that political cover your ass vote for the war in Iraq.
Political Theater has become the Theater of the Absurd.
By the way, I don't think Wen Ho Lee took classified work home with him, he just move data from a classified computer to an unclassified computer INSIDE Los Alamos.
August 5, 2008 8:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
One long-time Anthrax case observer has his doubts about this very convenient turn of events, as well. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com rounds up all the reasons the "case closed" scenario now presented is specious, at best. He includes interesting reactions from Ivins' co-workers - you know: The ones supposedly on his "goin' postal" hit list. Raimondo quotes a story in - of all places - today's Washington Post:
"Colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.
"'I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, "Show me your evidence,"' said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. 'A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons.'"
Another one of his co-workers, Richard O. Spertzel, pointed out that "USAMRIID doesn't deal with powdered anthrax. I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it. You would need to have the opportunity, the capability, and the motivation, and he didn't possess any of those."
August 4, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
As others have pointed out, Taplin's assertion that Ivins "evidently helped play ABC News" is not supported by the Greenwald post to which Taplin links.
Also, Mr. Taplin, you don't provide any sourcing or substantiation for your claim that Ivins' was pushing the Hatfill angle. Who are these reliable sources? If they are reliable because they are well-placed individuals in the anthrax labs, aren't you concerned that these may be the same people who deceived ABC News on the bentonite story?
Very disappointing post, Mr. Taplin, full of baseless claims and innuendo.
August 4, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This article by Jonathan Taplin is the weakest post I have ever seen on TPM. Taplin seems to have swallowed most of the cockamamie MSM propaganda on Ivins hook, line and sinker.
August 4, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two things about this story just don't make sense to me. First of all, there were quotes in the newspaper from Bruce Ivins Therapist about his condition. What ever happened to patient confidentiality? And secondly, how does a guy who frequents a therapist, pass the screening to work with top secret, deadly toxin research?
August 4, 2008 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good questions.
I think your confidentiality agreements die with you so, once Ivins committed suicide his lawers or doctors would be free to speak.
As for your second question: I don't know. Maybe the type of scientific acumen needed for the work means that the people who can do them are sufficiently rare that the government can't discriminate to that degree and still get the talent it needs. Or maybe he starter seeing a shrink after he got his clearances and it never came up again.
August 4, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
That would be a first. This government has never shown any inclination for retaining people on the basis that they are highly skilled (or even competent). The FBI claims they have years worth of backlog from foreign wire taps, because we do not have enough translators, while this government is firing people who speak arabic because they are gay.
August 5, 2008 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Other interesting details on this case have been brought to light.
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/08/jean-c-duley-te.html
Larisa Alexandrovna (link above) looks at Jean Duley, the therapist who got the restraining order against Ivins. Although I think the personal attacks against Duley are unfair--she's a social worker and group therapist, not an expert on anthrax killers--the information does encourage an objective look at what she said, why she might have said it, and how it fit in to the FBI's attempt to pressure Ivins into a confession.
Briefly--what is the significance of Duley's recent arrest for DUI?
--what is the significance of her work for Comprehensive Counseling Associates, a company that specializes in using Suboxone, an anti-opoid, to help people addicted to prescription drugs escape their cravings?
--was Ivins taking Suboxone, a drug whose side effects include insomnia, anxiety, sweating and depression?
--how did Duley come to be interviewed for not one but two newspaper stories about her work a month before she obtained the protection order against Ivins?
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=76902
And a story featuring a photo of Duley (who has also written some entertaining letters to the editor unless there is another Jean Duley in the area). She looks like a nice person.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/archives/display_detail.htm?StoryID=84241
--what is the significance of FBI investigation tactics and could they have been used to magnify Duley's fears about Ivins? According to this article,
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/bal-te.md.ivins03aug03,0,1282203.story
the FBI told people in Ivins' hometown that they were investigating him because he had faked his own death as an insurance fraud. So it seems the FBI doesn't have a problem using manipulative tactics. One Dr. Gerry Higgins who claims to have been a close friend of Ivins says
"The new FBI director needed a capture in this case. So, they took all of the Ft. Detrick anthrax researchers and put them under intense interrogation.
Bruce was a mild, meek and sensitive scientist. The FBI showed his clinically depressed daughter, who was institutionalized in a mental hospital, photos of the anthrax victims, and said "your father did this." They offered his son $2.5 M and a sportscar if he would "rat" on his father."
Finally, how did Bruce Ivins come to be barred from his workplace? Was it because of the protection order obtained by Duley?
Here's an article from the New York Post that provides lurid detail about Ivins' decline.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08032008/news/nationalnews/mad_thrax_genius_was_banking_on_success__122802.htm?page=0
Sorry for the long post and lack of html tags. I never did figure out how to do those.
August 4, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
i'm not sure i'd need anyone to give me a sports car if they were giving me $2.5 million. but hey if it's a package deal... either way, my old man would be kicking it in the hoosegow if the feds ever made that sort of offer to me. and i actually like my dad. and am pretty sure he didn't have anything to do with that whole anthrax thing...
August 5, 2008 1:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
i mean, sure, he's my dad and all but come on, what's he done for me lately?
August 5, 2008 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
link text
BUT eliminate the spaces in the tag, above. I left spaces in the example, above, because failing to do so would (might?) have resulted in the link being generated.
Another example (but eliminate the spaces):
HTML tags
And thanks for the numerous links -- especially the one to the New York Post which I'd never have found on my own. It's nice to know what the lower orders are reading.
August 5, 2008 6:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously, my plan didn't work. Click on the "HTML tags" link and hopefully, all shall become clear.
August 5, 2008 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Ellen!
August 5, 2008 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I rest my case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/washington/07