ABC Exclusive: How the FBI Botched [sic] the Anthrax Case

[bks]

Ahab,

Many thanks for this. Could you say why you believe Dresch to be less than wholly reliable?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

It's mainly because I'm a bit stupid, and when I go on a website (like the Forensic Intelligence International one) and it opens up a .PDF download prompt without my choosing it, and the .PDF is called,"TrueRepub" and the sidebar mentions Terry Nichols I just think - Christ, Gunderson's boys. Here we go again. And click Back.

I didn't download the PDF, so it could well be good stuff. Dresch is well respected, and seems to be considered reliable by everyone who has looked at these connections. Except me, sometimes. But I'm paranoid.

From a mainstream source that states the facts quite well (at least in this case) here is the face of a real bastard, and perhaps the biggest mass murderer in history, if the obvious suspicions turn out to be true. He's certainly a mass murderer, anyway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1926117.stm

I cant search on Cryptome for some reason, but the real stuff is there.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Finally got back into Cryptome. More from Mr. Dresch.

The reason I get spiny on him, and that I compare all this to Promis and Gosch, is that he appears to have access to documents and information that he really should not have. And these docs have been up online for a few years now. Also, whenever you think it's got too big, too unrealistic, it gets bigger - in a BIG way. This link (slow-loading, Cryptome style) contains another link to a downloadable .PDF of a supposed briefing given to Nelson Mandela when he became President of South Africa, outlining to him the details of Project Coast and the other biochemical warfare programs (much redacted by those delivering the briefing, presumably).

It is not directly related to Hatfill or Ford, except that they both served in South Africa, and worked on Coast. So, yeah, actually, it is related to them.

http://cryptome.org/mandela-cbw.htm

It is clear that the Apartheid regime was working on a "discriminating" virus - something that would kill blacks, basically. And everything that's happened since suggests to me that they found one, and used it, and it either adapted subsequently, or the creator's "master race" proved not to be as hardy and resistant (or as different) as they'd dreamed.

But they seem unrepentant (those of them who remain alive). And the likes of Hatfill are still happy to take part in other operations, like the Anthrax letters. I don't think he filled them, or wrote them, or sent them.
But he probably knows where the Anthrax came from. If he is ever tried, the prosecutor will have to be very careful not to ask him.

Loads about Project Coast and it's subsidiaries (Delta-G, Roodeplat, etc.) is here: http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/ ... index.html

The CIA and MI6 visits go without saying. Mossad too, naturally. And the Germans.

When the Apartheid regime fell the US scooped up all their biochemical warfare documents, the same as they did with Japan after WW2. They have them still.

If I can say one thing for the US Govt, it's this: - they really DO have an aversion to experimenting on their own people. They still do it, but they are careful about it. Mass experimentation on human subjects, as carried out by the Japanese in China, and the South Africans on "guerilla fighters", seem to have been a goldmine to them. They certainly went to some trouble to make sure they got the goods.

Let's not mention the Nazis.

Christ, I really do need me bed. Hope I've been of some help.

[stefano]

Thanks Ahab, this is pretty meaty stuff. I'm South African, this stuff doesn't get spoken about back home. The ANC agreed to not make a fuss about the secret police stuff in exchange for co-operation from the army. All sorts of stories about the tons and tons of paper that got dumped into the furnaces at Iscor, the state steelmaker. And I'm sure the CIA got a look in to see what they could find useful.

I actually met Wouter Basson once, years ago. Obviously a heartless fucker but I find it hard to join the bandwagon of people calling him 'Doctor Death' and wishing him life in prison when the politicians and soldiers who gave him the orders are living out their last days in seaside houses on government pensions.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I actually met Wouter Basson once, years ago. Obviously a heartless fucker but I find it hard to join the bandwagon of people calling him 'Doctor Death' and wishing him life in prison when the politicians and soldiers who gave him the orders are living out their last days in seaside houses on government pensions.

You met him? Christ!

Was Hannah Arendt right about the banality of evil? Just a normal guy, if you didn't know his background? I could believe that.

But let's be fair, as you say, and not just wish Dr. Basson life in prison. The givers of orders should be in the dock too. But they're all too old, or dead, or dying - and if Basson has been found not guilty despit [ersonally killing people by his own hand, the others have nothing to fear.

All in all, would rather see the full truth being told than see the guilty parties being put in prison - but that will be an even longer and less fruitful wait, I think. Because the full truth would not stay in South Africa.

Deals with the ANC I can believe. Anything for an easy life. A "smooth transition" and hand over of power. This would be mainly Winnie's job, I expect. When she wasn't otherwise engaged in killing people.

[stefano]

I didn't really know his background actually, it was before his trial started, the old school journalists weren't naming names and the new generation hadn't found out what had gone on. I found him a bit aloof, I was with my granddad (who knew him) and they greeted and I just got to shake his hand etc. When he'd walked away my granddad said 'that's the cleverest man you'll ever meet'. He is phenomenally intelligent, maybe that contributed to his total lack of compassion for the people he killed, as far as I can tell it was an intellectual problem for him, a chemistry challenge. He's still an active heart surgeon in private practice (or was two years ago), and he successfully did an MBA while he was on trial. He also apparently at one stage, while spying/representing in Europe, had a house and a woman on either side of the French-German border.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I didn't really know his background actually, it was before his trial started, the old school journalists weren't naming names and the new generation hadn't found out what had gone on. I found him a bit aloof, I was with my granddad (who knew him) and they greeted and I just got to shake his hand etc. When he'd walked away my granddad said 'that's the cleverest man you'll ever meet'. He is phenomenally intelligent, maybe that contributed to his total lack of compassion for the people he killed, as far as I can tell it was an intellectual problem for him, a chemistry challenge. He's still an active heart surgeon in private practice (or was two years ago), and he successfully did an MBA while he was on trial. He also apparently at one stage, while spying/representing in Europe, had a house and a woman on either side of the French-German border.

It seems he was taken to court again by the South African medical council in 2007, this time over accusations from other doctors that he "acted unprofessionally" by following some of the orders he was given by the SADF. He could lose his license to practice - maybe he already has, but I couldn't find anything - which would put an end to his private heart clinic. Although the chances of him ever receiving anything other than an acquittal from a South African court - or any court, for that matter - seem slim to me. I think your granddad was right. Basson is definitely a smart guy, a genius really, and he insured himself long in advance by holding onto the Project Coast documents which he was ordered to destroy (he must've just not felt like "only following orders" at that point).

The story is here, but you will probably already know of this: http://www.mg.co.za/article/
2007-11-19-wouter-basson-denies-unprofessional-conduct

The link I actually meant to give in my last post was wrong, and didn't go straight to the biological (anthrax-y) part of the South African WMD program. The correct link is here: http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/ ... index.html

It's a lot of reading, so I will put up what I think are the most relevant parts to the OP (though it's all relevant really):

...Others have expressed fears that Basson and other Coast scientists were associated with an even broader international right-wing network, purportedly known as Die Organisasie (The Organization), among whose members are said to be expatriate Rhodesians and South Africans who emigrated to other countries both during the apartheid era and as the apartheid system was collapsing.[74]

If an organization of this sort actually exists, which remains to be substantiated, it may turn out that the American doctors Larry Ford and Jerry Nilsson, an outspoken white supremacist, were among its members. According to a pair of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informants, in the mid-1980s Dr. Ford transferred a suitcase full of dangerous "kaffir-killing" pathogens to Surgeon-General Knobel at the Los Angeles residence of the South African trade attaché, Gideon Bouwer.[75] It has also emerged that Nilsson fought as a volunteer against nationalist guerrillas during the Rhodesian civil war, that Ford and Nilsson repeatedly visited South Africa, that Knobel consulted with Ford on CBW matters and personally introduced Ford to Basson, that Basson arranged to have secret accounts opened in Ford's name, and that at Knobel's request Ford lectured Coast scientists about the contamination of household items with biological agents.[76]

In the wake of Ford's March 2000 suicide, which transpired just as he was beginning to be implicated in the attempted assassination of his Irvine business partner James Patrick Riley, the police discovered an arsenal of small arms and explosives, Christian Identity militia literature, and over 260 containers of biological materials on his various properties. (For unknown reasons, the FBI has yet to divulge the contents of all but 20 or so of those containers.) Patients and former mistresses have testified that Ford secretly poisoned them, and a jar of ricin toxin was found in a refrigerator in his garage.[77] The fact that one of ex-Selous Scout and EMLC armorer Philip Morgan's "special applicators" was also found among Ford's possessions is itself indicative of what appears to have been a close relationship between the American doctor and key Project Coast personnel.

There is also some evidence indicating that Stephen J. Hatfill, an American biological warfare expert who the FBI has designated as a "person of interest" in its investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter mailings in the United States, was involved in various Rhodesian intelligence or counterinsurgency operations. Although Hatfill's activities in Southern Africa have yet to be fully clarified, it is known that he worked for the Rhodesian police's Special Branch and that he later obtained his medical degree from the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.[78] Some have hinted that he operated out of the Selous Scouts base at the Bindura Fort, from whence McGuinness facilitated the launching of "black operations," including CW actions. At present, however, intimations that Hatfill may have been personally involved in the covert dissemination of CW or BW agents in southern Africa can only be characterized as unsubstantiated.

Be that as it may, in 2002 the South African media reported that Hatfill had earlier helped to train the Aquila Brigade shock troops of Eugene Terre'Blanche's right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB: Afrikaner Resistance Movement).[79] During this period, he also claims to have received advanced medical training from various SAMS components, as well as to have been assigned to its 2 Medical Battalion Group.

Um, I swear, that was me trying to sum it up as briefly as possible. There is much more at the link.

The only problem I have is that there is an awful lot of "it is alleged" and "remains to be substantiated" in the article - but I suppose that is to be expected. The fact that NTI.org, like ABC, is owned by Ted Turner also makes we wonder if this might just be part of his his "editorial view" on the anthrax attacks, as pointed up in the OP. He is as much a press-baron as Murdoch and Moon, I suppose, and presumably indulges in the same blackmail and limited-exposure games.

I still can't believe you shook Wouter Basson's hand!

There are a lot of people who would like to shake his throat - but while he remains unconvicted of any crime (even fraud, despite the near-incontrivertible evidence) I suppose it is wrong as well as dangerous to say so.

I wouldn't expect or want you to give out any personal details here, but can I ask how your granddad came to know him? Don't say if you don't think it's wise, even in PM.

In the end, it makes me laugh (bitterly) that Basson was cleared of all fraud charges related to the "privatisation" of Project Coast when he can turn up as a bit player in a comparatively small-time case about British horse racing like this one:

By the time of his departure Buffham had lost the confidence of much of the racing community. He was, perhaps unfairly, blamed for the very public collapse of a trial at Southwark crown court, the product of a long, and ultimately fruitless, investigation into alleged doping and race-fixing.

There was also unease at the club's Portman Square headquarters when evidence emerged of business links between Buffham and Wouter Basson, who was acquitted after a controversial trial in his native South Africa for hundreds of alleged offences including murder and fraud.

During the Southwark crown court trial, evidence showed that Basson had made payments of £1.5m and £960,000 to a company co-owned by Buffham, which then passed them on to a Swiss bank after deducting a 1% commission. Though Buffham's integrity was not questioned, his judgment in his choice of business associates certainly was.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2002/oc ... g.gregwood

Over two million? Lot of money for an army medic to be squirrelling away. He certainly must've been saving up the pennies!

[Edited a few times due to a link that won't stop spreading the page]

[stefano]

Awesome stuff, that'll keep me from working today... I read that report to Mandela you linked to (so interesting how they insisted that it was to help the SADF, which was in Angola at the time, defend itself), I'll go through the site as I find the time. I have absolutely no doubt that 'organisasie' exists. There's no shortage of racists in SA/Zim to start with, now take them when they're 18 and send them into the bush for five years to fight communist blacks who want to take over 'our' country, you can imagine the kind of psychos you end up with. And they definitely travelled to the States and the UK in the old days to make friends, I'm sure those ties are still strong. A mate of mine tried getting into the British Army (failed the medical), says it is absolutely full of those characters, bush war vets who won't obey a black officer and went to the UK.

I though about it when reading this thread on RI, someone mentioned a paedophile neo-nazi. On the BBC page he's posing in front of an AWB flag, where do you think he got that?

As for Basson, he was less an army medic than a kind of freelance chemist/spy. And don't forget at one stage he was importing Ecstasy by the pallet, I'm sure he found a way to make that profitable.

Thanks Ahab, you know when all this stuff was going down I was too young and incurious to pay much attention. Plus there's a widespread idea in SA that it's unhealthy to pick at old scabs, you know, to talk too much about the old days. My granddad was a civil servant in the NP government, a development economist. He passed away before I could ask him the stuff that I'd like to know now... I actually have no idea how he knew Basson, whether it was through work or whether B was his doctor.

Thanks again for the links.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I've met a few white South Africans here, Stefano, and I wouldn't tangle with them. They still seem to be hurting. Let's face it - what is a mercenary army these days without white South Africans? If it wasn't for you guys ( ) Blackwater would currently consist of Erik Prince, three Rednecks, two Germans, a Scotsman, and Irishman, and a vicious dog...

As for Basson, he was less an army medic than a kind of freelance chemist/spy. And don't forget at one stage he was importing Ecstasy by the pallet, I'm sure he found a way to make that profitable.


No, no, he was an army medic. Honest he was. If you wish to characterize him as a freelance chemist/spy then that is your choice - I could not possibly comment. Allegedly.

But yeah, it was hilarious how he originally got busted for Ecstasy (which, admittedly, Roodeplat seems to have been producing, as a "calmative") and the right in South Africa went mental about him being framed.


Framed for one crime in order to wrap up one court case in many, and excuse him of many other crimes, I would say.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I have the feeling he wasn't dealing E on the street!

[stefano]

Just got through the whole thing... Good work. I like the tone of the thing as well, good journalism. The Peter Stiff they mention is worth a read if you're interested in the Rhodesian/Angolan bush war (I guess it's one conflict). I've read his book on the Selous Scouts.

the entire project was built on personal relationships and informal networks.

I think that applies in all countries where this kind of shit goes down. All verbal, all involving guys you've known for years. That's also why Basson didn't hesitate to skim a bit off the top when he could, I don't think he felt any particular attachment to the government. That's also why I think the possibility of right-wing lunatics getting their hands on those poisons is remote. The fanatic racists and the really connected spooks aren't the same people.

even after more than ten years of investigations, various South African government agencies have been unable to clarify exactly what it was that Basson and his associates were up to overseas

Ha. No good, I'll warrant! I've heard that Basson lived in the north of France for a while, i.e. near Belgium. After reading that article by Joel van der Reiden about the Dutroux affair and the elites involved, I'm wondering whether he wouldn't have contacted those fascist/colonial freaks. I wouldn't be surprised.

Dan Goosen provided toxins to a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer named Robert A. Zlokie and his handler Donald G. Mayes, an ex-U.S. intelligence contract operative who spent years functioning as an "independent" arms dealer. The middleman between Goosen and the "foreigners" was a right-winger and retired SADF Major-General associated with the CCB named Tai Minnaar, who in 1989 established a private company called Military Technical Services (MTS) that had links with the powerful South African mercenary recruitment agency Executive Outcomes (EO).

That Mayes is another example of a typical spook: not a fanatic patriot willing to do 'whatever it takes' to keep his beloved country safe, as per Hollywood propaganda, rather a greedy maniac who gets a kick out of operating in that kind of world, and who'll work with whatever government gives him money and contacts. EO is in the news these days in connection with Simon Mann's conviction. The mercenary circles in Africa are quite small (not the hired help, the businessmen at the top), they all know each other and have been working together since the 70s.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Thanks Stefano. I had forgotten about the extreme right-wingery of Nihoul and his "contacts" in the Dutroux case. Bloody hell. See what I mean about how it just keeps getting bigger, in weird leaps and bounds?


"The fanatic racists and the really connected spooks aren't the same people."

That's definitely true - the spooks need their brains. They can't sit around being racist all day. They have jobs. Though they can certainly be both extremely smart and extremely racist, and a bit crazy, Bobby Fischer and Howard Hunt -style.

I think you, and your grandad, hit the nail on the head when you said earlier that Basson suffers from a lack of feeling due to an excess of intellect.

Bucking the trend of normal Apartheid style, I don't think he sees black people as being inferior to him. I think he sees everyone as being inferior to him.

And the problem is, he might be right. Cheney wouldn't get near him. The Supreme Court certainly never will.

Thanks for the info on Mayes too, Stefan.

Christ, the Equatorial Guinea Coup attempt. Hehehe. As if the government didn't have enough embarassments from the resurgence of Al Yamamah - we get Thatcher's son leading an old-fashioned mineral grab too. Classic.

[MacCruiskeen]

A walk down Memory Lane:

Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Dr. Francis A. Boyle and the Anthrax Attacks

The now long-forgotten anthrax attacks on Senators Daschle and Leahy were a vitally-important early battle in the soon-to-be-global War on Terror. Dr. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois has now, quite bravely, stated the obvious; so wait for David Corn, Alexander Cockburn and the denizens of Lenin's Tomb to call him a 'conspiracy nut' - or else, more likely, to ignore him very carefully. Such is the "antiwar" "left" in December 2006.

Anthrax attack on US Congress made by scientists and covered up by FBI, expert says

Sherwood Ross

Middle East Times
December 11, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The terrorists who perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely were US government scientists at the army's Ft. Detrick, MD., bioterrorism lab having access to "moonsuits" that enabled them to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, an eminent authority on the subject says.

Although only a "handful" of scientists had the ability to perpetrate the crime, the culprit among them may never be identified as the FBI ordered the destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, IA., from which the Ft. Detrick lab got its pathogens, the authority said.

This action makes it impossible "to pin-point precisely where, when, and from whom these bio-agents had originated," said Dr. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign.

Boyle, who drafted the US Biological Weapons Convention of 1989 enacted by Congress, said destruction of the Ames anthrax "appears to be a cover-up orchestrated by the FBI."

If impartial scientists could have performed genetic reconstruction of the anthrax found in letters mailed to Senators Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick Leahy, (D -Vt.), "the trail of genetic evidence would have led directly back to a secret but officially-sponsored US government biowarfare program that was illegal and criminal" in violation of biological weapons conventions and US laws, Boyle said.

"I believe the FBI knows exactly who was behind these terrorist anthrax attacks upon the United States Congress in the Fall of 2001, and that the culprits were US government-related scientists involved in a criminal US government biowarfare program," Boyle said.

The anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal workers, injured 17 others, and shut down the operations of the US Congress.

Boyle, a leading American authority on international law, said after the attacks he contacted senior FBI official Marion "Spike" Bowman, who handles counter-terrorism issues, and provided him with the names of the scientists working with anthrax. Boyle told Bowman the Ft. Detrick scientists were not to be trusted.

In addition to then destroying the anthrax, the FBI "retained every independent life-scientist it could locate as part of its fictitious investigation, and then swore them all to secrecy so that they cannot publicly comment on the investigation or give their expert opinion," Boyle said.

Boyle pointed out that Bowman is the same FBI agent "who played a pivotal role in suppressing evidence which in turn prevented the issuance of a search warrant for the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th Al Qaeda hijacker on 11 September 2001, which might otherwise have led to foreknowledge and therefore prevention of those terrorist attacks in the first place."

A self-confessed Al Qaeda operative, Moussaoui was detained on immigration three weeks before 9/11 when a Minnesota flight school reported he was acting suspiciously.

Boyle asked if Bowman received an FBI award in December 2002, for "exceptional performance" because of his capacity "to forestall investigations, because of where they may lead?" He went on to inquire, "Could the real culprits behind the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, and the immediately following terrorist anthrax attacks upon Congress ultimately prove to be the same people?"

Because of its "bogus investigation," Boyle said, "the greatest political crime in the history of the United States of America since its founding on 4 July, 1776 - the anthrax attacks on Congress, which served not only to deliver a terrorist threat on its members, but actually to close it down for a period - may remain officially
unresolved forever."

"Could it truly be coincidental," he continued, "that two of the primary intended victims of the terrorist anthrax attacks - Senators Daschle and Leahy - were holding up the speedy passage of the pre-planned USA Patriot Act ... an act which provided the federal government with unprecedented powers in relation to US citizens and institutions?"

Leahy is incoming Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and may have a personal interest in holding hearings to learn who tried to kill him. He recently said President George W. Bush should be "terrified" that he will be the new Chair.

Boyle's views are contained in his book Biowarfare and Terrorism, published by Clarity Press, Inc., of Atlanta, GA. His previously published titles include, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Destroying World Order. Dr. Boyle holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard.

In a foreword to the book, Dr. Jonathan King, Professor of Molecular Biology at M.I.T. and a founder of the Council for Responsible Genetics, said the government's "growing bioterror programs [described by Professor Boyle] represent a significant emerging danger to our own population."

A harsh critic of Pentagon biowarfare activities, Boyle pointed out in inflation-adjusted dollars the US spends more on them today than it did on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb in World War II. He has accused the Bush administration of diverting the bio-tech industry "towards biowarfare purposes" and of making corrupting payoffs to Academia to turn university scientists to the pursuit of biowarfare work.

Sherwood Ross is an American journalist who writes on military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com


http://qlipoth.blogspot.de/2006/12/dr-f ... tacks.html

Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Prof. Francis Boyle: 2001 anthrax attacks were a covered-up inside job

http://qlipoth.blogspot.de/2007/07/prof ... tacks.html

[Elvis]

Boyle, a leading American authority on international law, said after the attacks he contacted senior FBI official Marion "Spike" Bowman, who handles counter-terrorism issues, and provided him with the names of the scientists working with anthrax. Boyle told Bowman the Ft. Detrick scientists were not to be trusted.

In addition to then destroying the anthrax, the FBI "retained every independent life-scientist it could locate as part of its fictitious investigation, and then swore them all to secrecy so that they cannot publicly comment on the investigation or give their expert opinion," Boyle said.

Boyle pointed out that Bowman is the same FBI agent "who played a pivotal role in suppressing evidence which in turn prevented the issuance of a search warrant for the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th Al Qaeda hijacker on 11 September 2001, which might otherwise have led to foreknowledge and therefore prevention of those terrorist attacks in the first place."

Marion Bowman
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35408&start=240#p643547