Basically, ABCNews received misinformation about the anthrax threat from administration officials seeking to deflect blame to Saddam. We now know that the anthrax scare was an internal job.

Who in the administration was complicit in the disinformation?

Why is ABC News protecting media manipulators under the guise of protecting sources?

Also, as Atrios notes, how were Administration sources able to warn WaPo's Richard Cohen about the anthrax scare before it had taken place?

For six years, I've been trying to find Johnelle Bryant, the woman that Brian Ross "interviewed" at length on 6/6/02 about her meetings with Mohamed Atta before 9/11.

Bryant's story was so obviously fabricated that I was sure Brian Ross was on the government payroll or else ABC was participating in a government-sponsored propaganda program or both.

Bryant, a USDA employee in Homestead FL, claimed that Mohamed Atta, and the other hijackers visited her office several times before 9/11, looking for farm loans. Bryant told Ross that Atta, among other things, talked about the destruction of Washington DC and building a chemical tank to insert into a cropduster.

ABC News long ago deleted almost all of the Johnelle Bryant interview and the accompanying story from its website but I have a copies of both Parts I and II and the story which, at one time, were posted on the TPM Cafe.

My favorite lines from the interview:

"During the initial applicant interview, Bryant was taking notes. "I wrote his name down, and I spelled it A-T-T-A-H, and he told me, 'No, A-T-T-A, as in Atta boy!' "

"But that wasn't the only time she saw Atta. He returned again, slightly disguised with glasses. He claimed to be an accountant for Marwan Al-Shehhi, who was with him, and said he wanted $500,000 to buy land for a sugar-cane farm."

"...And I told him that I took about six months of karate training. Koname Ru, karate training. And he asked what karate was. He asked if that was similar to tae kwon do. I said yes, it is, it's just a type of martial arts training. And he was very surprised that a woman would have that kind of training. And he was very interested in that kind of training. And he wanted to know how, once he became settled down, in, in the United States, how he could take that kind of training. And I told him that, just look it up in the Yellow Pages."

I haven't tried for awhile but you used to be able call to Johnelle Bryant's number at the USDA in Washington DC where Bryant was stationed before moving to FLA. Johnelle herself asked you to leave a message.

202-690-1728

More evidence that Ross's story was propaganda. is that the right wing has used the Bryant interview over the years as a prime example of multi-culturalism gone wrong. Bryant didn't want to offend Atta and refrained from questioning his motives or so she says.

When TPM journnalist, Justin Rood, took a job working for Brian Ross at ABC, I asked him to look up the background on the Johnelle Bryant interview but I didn't really expect to hear from him.

Gee, now I wonder if Brian Ross's "exclusive report" in March 1990 about Iraq trying to buy trigger mechanisms for nuclear weapons just months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was true.

Do you think?