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“The FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether U.S. government bioweapons research programs, including one conducted by the CIA, may have been the source of deadly anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to sources with knowledge of the probe. The results of the genetic tests strengthen that possibility. The FBI is focusing on a contractor that worked with the CIA, one source said....
“Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio . . . [is one of the] only other facilities [besides Dugway] known to have received samples from USAMRIID....
“The anthrax contained in the letters under investigation ‘absolutely did not’ come from CIA labs, the [CIA] spokesman said. . . . Law enforcement sources, however, said the FBI remains extremely interested in the CIA's work with anthrax, with one official calling it the best lead they have at this point.”
Five days later, on December 21, 2001, the Miami Herald published the following:
“Federal anthrax researchers are attempting to match the strain that killed a Boca Raton man and four others to a weaponized strain secretly manufactured at a U.S. military facility in the Utah desert, according to sources familiar with the probe....
“Agents are examining lab workers and researchers who had access to the weaponized, powdered anthrax grown at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds and later supplied to Battelle Memorial Institute, a military research company based in Columbus, Ohio....
“It is clear that a strong theory has emerged that the refined powder used in the anthrax attacks bears striking similarities to U.S. military grade anthrax manufactured only at Dugway....
“The anthrax at Dugway is the only known sample they intend to check right now. The investigation is clearly focused on the Dugway anthrax,'' said Dr. Ronald Atlas, dean of the University of Louisville Biology Department, and incoming president of the American Society of Microbiology. "The word in the scientific community is that they are very close to something.’ Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Thursday the FBI has ‘winnowed' the field of its investigation....”
The DOJ-FBI has never explained what became of this initial focus upon Dugway, the CIA and Battelle. And apart from its very recent attempt on the front page of the New York Times to fraudulently explain away Dugway, the CIA and Battelle, the DOJ-FBI has never explained how they were excluded.
Certainly not everyone involved in Amerithrax who work for the DOJ and the FBI understands all of this, but the ultimate decision-makers certainly do. These decision-makers turned Amerithrax into a deliberate cover-up of the evident source of the anthrax letters. The tragedy is the persecution to death of an innocent man named Bruce Ivins. The tragedy is also a society wherein ultimate decision-makers act on behalf of a “military-industrial-intelligence complex” whose power President Eisenhower warned Americans against in 1961 – a warning that we have yet to heed.
