Question official version of Army bioweapons researcher Bruce Ivin's suicide

by What else is hidden at Fort Detrick, MD? Friday, Aug. 08, 2008 at 8:55 AM

Questions arise following the death of U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins as a so-called suicide, when the hidden goings on at Fort Detrick bioweapons laboratories may "justify" the need for a scapegoat to blame the post 9/11 antrax attacks on without casting any suspicion on the Bush/Cheney regime who used the public panic following 9/11 and anthrax attacks to launch their Patriot Act and illegal invasion of Iraq..

The recent so-called 'suicide' of U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins is not without some suspicion, and according to earlier reports, he was not the only U.S. military bioweapons scientist who committed suicide. It is most convienient for the GW bush/Cheney regime to use Bruce as the mentally disturbed "mad scientist" who acted alone in the anthrax scare so soon after 9/11. When there is so much more hidden about the U.S. military bioweapons program, the story of the "lone nutcase" scientist is becoming less plausible..

Here's a response to the official version from Organic Consumers website;

"Web Note: Articles like the below, and the similar cover-up in the New York Times today are a graphic reminder of why the majority of Americans do not believe the "official story" of what happened on 9/11, nor the official story from Bush & Cheney (echoed by McCain in 2001) behind the mysterious anthrax attacks which caused panic among the American public and pushed Congress to pass the fascist Patriot Act a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Isn't it interesting that two high-ranking Democratic Senators (Daschle & Leahy) who were criticizing the Patriot Act in Congress at the time had deadly anthrax letters mailed to their offices?

OK, so now we know Al Queda or Saddam didn't send the anthrax, that it was a genetically engineered "weaponized" strain from the US military's Fort Detrick, MD facility. Who then are the real terrorists who obtained this heavily-guarded anthrax, weaponized it, and then mailed it to two liberal US Senators and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC? First, the FBI said Army scientist Steven Hatfill did it, now they say, no, Army scientist Bruce Ivins did it, but Ivins then inconveniently (or conveniently) committed suicide. However another scientist who worked with Ivins at Fort Detrick said in today's New York Times that Ivins couldn't have weaponized the anthrax strain himself, transforming it into tiny nano-like particles that could be inhaled. Bruce Ivins was an expert on anthrax vaccines, not weaponizing anthrax, a highly specialized and complicated undertaking. As Keith Olbermann MSNBC piece on national TV suggested yesterday, this all looks like an "inside job."

http://digg.com/lbv.php?id=7794188&ord=1

This all brings up other, even more troubling questions. If the Administration lied about the anthrax attacks, and the CIA & FBI helped cover this up, and are continuing to do so, then why should we believe their other rather preposterous stories about 9/11 (no prior warnings to Bush and Cheney, FAA didn't properly notify the Air Force, no standard Air Force interceptions of hijacked planes, no anti-aircraft batteries guarding the Pentagon, physics-defying molten steel pouring out the side of one of the Twin Towers--aircraft fuel and building materials do not produce a hot enough fire to produce molten steel, molten steel filmed on national TV in sub-basement areas, and magical free falls and near-disintegration of three skyscrapers, one of which, WTC7, was not even hit by a plane)? How does this relate to Bush/Cheney/Congress lies about non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about Iraq links to our former Carter/Reagan/Bush operative in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden? If these are all lies, then why did we attack Iraq and kill hundreds of thousands of people? Why did we pass the Patriot Act? Why are we occupying and making war on Afghanistan and allying ourselves with psychopathic warlords who are just as evil as the Taliban? Unfortunately the corporate mass media are not going to answer these questions. Nor will Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Nor will MoveOn and the other middle of the road liberal and progressive groups who are afraid to look at the evidence and admit the scary truth: Bush and Cheney have created a near-fascist state. The Democrats are too scared or too compromised, or both, to stand up to Bush and Cheney and the rogue Shadow Government that has hijacked our democracy for the last 45 years. But here I'll say it: America's wave of terror in September 2001, including the anthrax attacks, was an Inside Job.

For real information, censored by the mass media, and unfortunately ignored by many progressive publications, you can look at well-documented books like The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin, or websites like;

http://www.911truth.org

and 911blogger.org

To Press the Politicians on the Anthrax issue, 9/11, the War, Climate Change, Greening the Economy, and other Burning Issues go to;

http://www.GrassrootsNetroots.org

Ronnie Cummins
__________________________________________________________

Dead Army vaccine scientist eyed in anthrax probe

Aug 1 11:37 AM US/Eastern

By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN

Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against a top Army microbiologist in connection with anthrax mailings that killed five people. The scientist, who was developing a vaccine against the deadly toxin, committed suicide this week.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md. For more than a decade, he worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed, which made vaccines ineffective, according to federal documents reviewed by the AP.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of ongoing grand jury proceedings, said prosecutors were closing in on Ivins, 62. They were planning an indictment that would have sought the death penalty for the attacks, which killed five people, crippled the postal system and traumatized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials said that Ivins, who shared in the 2003 Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, was under investigation to determine whether he released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine. The decoration is the highest honor given to civilian Pentagon employees.

The Justice Department has not yet decided whether to close the investigation, officials said, meaning it's still not certain whether Ivins acted alone or had help. One official close to the case said that decision was expected within days. If the case is closed soon, one official said, that will indicate that Ivins was the lone suspect.

Ivins' attorney said the scientist had cooperated with investigators for more than a year.

"We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law," attorney Paul F. Kemp said. "We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial."

Kemp said that Ivins' death was the result of the government's "relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo"

White House press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush was aware there were "about to be developments" in the case but did not elaborate.

Authorities were investigating whether Ivins released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine, officials said. The Justice Department has not yet decided whether to close the investigation, officials said, meaning it's still not certain whether Ivins acted alone or had help. One official close to the case said that decision was expected within days.

If the case is closed soon, one official said, that will indicate that Ivins was the lone suspect. [Gee, if they repeat their lies enough times...maybe no one will keep looking?]

Ivins was "hounded" by aggressive FBI agents who raided his home twice, said Dr. W. Russell Byrne, a colleague who worked in the bacteriology division of the Fort Detrick research facility for 15 years. Byrne said Ivins was forcefully removed from his job by local police recently because of fears that he had become a danger to himself or others. The investigation led to Ivins being hospitalized for depression earlier this month, Byrne said.

He said he does not believe Ivins was behind the anthrax attacks.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that his other brother, Charles, had told him that Bruce committed suicide and Tylenol might have been involved. The Los Angeles Times, which first reported that Ivins was under suspicion, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

The Fort Detrick laboratory and its specialized scientists for years have been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings. In late June, the government exonerated a colleague of Ivins', Steven Hatfill. Hatfill's name has for years had been associated with the attacks after investigators named him a "person of interest" in 2002.

Unusual behavior by Ivins was noted at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings, when he conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus long stayed on Hatfill.

Ivins was the co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Henry S. Heine, a scientist who had worked with Ivins on inhalation anthrax research at Fort Detrick, said he and others on their team have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings for more than a year. He declined to comment on Ivins' death.

FBI vehicles with tinted windows had watched Ivins' home for a year, neighbor Natalie Duggan, 16, said.

"They said, 'We're on official business,' " she said.

Tom Ivins said Friday that federal officials working on the anthrax case questioned him about his brother a year and a half ago. "They said they were investigating him," he said from Ohio, where he lives, in a CNN interview.

Ivins played keyboard and helped clean up after masses at St. John the Evangalist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick, where a dozen parishoners gathered after morning Mass to pray for him Friday.

The Rev. Richard Murphy called Ivins "a quiet man. He was always very helpful and pleasant."

The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit contending he was falsely accused and had been made a scapegoat for the crimes.

"We are not at this time making any official statements or comments regarding this situation," said Debbie Weierman, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office, which is investigating the anthrax attacks, said Friday.

Five people died and 17 were sickened by anthrax powder in letters that were mailed to lawmakers' Capitol Hill offices, TV networks in New York, and tabloid newspaper offices in Florida. Two postal workers in a Washington mail facility, a New York hospital worker, a Florida photo editor and an elderly Connecticut woman were killed."

found @;
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_13881.cfm

What else is going on there at Fort Detrick, and just who is this "red team"??

Background on Ft. Detrick;

"In Boyle's view, Fort Detrick's NBACC and USAMRIID heighten risks because their work involves: "acquiring, growing, modifying, storing, packaging and dispersing classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens." This work is an "unmistakable hallmark of an offensive weapons program" in violation of the 1989 Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act that he authored. Even worse according to Edward Hammond, former director of the Sunshine Project: Recreating the deadly 1918 "Spanish flu" germ that killed an estimated 40 million worldwide (or other dangerous pathogens) increases "the possibility of (a) man-made disaster, either accidental or deliberate....for the entire world." If a single viral particle or cell escapes or is unleashed, an enormous outbreak may result with potentially catastrophic consequences.

The Fort Detrick plan derives from a Bush Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-10) written April 28, 2004. It states: "Among our many initiatives we are continuing to develop more forward-looking analyses, to include Red Teaming efforts, to understand new scientific trends that may be exploited by our adversaries to develop biological weapons and to help position intelligence collectors ahead of the problem." Boyle calls it "a smoking gun" aimed at the BWC.

"Red Teaming means that we actually have people out there on a Red Team plotting, planning, scheming and conspiring how to use biowarfare" and sooner or later will unleash it using living organisms for military purposes. They may be viral, bacterial, fungal, or other forms that can spread over a vast terrain by wind, water, insect, animal, or humans, according to Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Biotech Century." Rifkin also asserts it's "impossible to distinguish between defensive and offensive research in the field," and given this administration's penchant for lying and secrecy, other nations will be justifiably suspicious.

The Bush administration proceeded anyway. Since 9/11, it spent or allocated around $50 billion on bioweapons development through 11 federal departments and agencies, including DOD and DHS. For FY 2009, it wants an additional $8.1 billion or $2.5 billion more than in FY2008. It calls its program preventive and defensive and cites Project BioShield as an example. It became law in July 2004 as a 10 year program to develop countermeasures to biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) agents. It was, in fact, a gift to companies like Gilead Sciences, the company Donald Rumsfeld led as chairman from 1997 to 2001 (and remains a major shareholder) until he left to become George Bush's Defense Secretary.

It would have also required every American to be vaccinated under the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005. It passed the Senate but not the House and would have, under a public emergency, allowed experimental or approved drugs to be used with insufficient knowledge of their safety - in violation of the Nuremburg Code on medical experimentation. It also would have immunized companies from liability and denied those harmed the right to sue."

entire article found @;
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9685&id=9856

NOTE; The Sunshine project has documented additional evidence on their website, though the group no longer exists;

"Example 4: Invisible anthrax

In December 1997, the same Russian research group from Obolensk published a paper in a British scientific journal on another effort to genetically engineer anthrax. (10) By putting new genes into fully pathogenic strains of anthrax, the scientists altered anthrax´s immunopathogenic properties, making existing anthrax vaccines ineffective against the new genetically-engineered types.

In most cases, detection of bioweapons relies on molecular recognition of the microbe using antibodies similar to the human immune system. Altering the immunogenicity not only overcomes vaccinations; but also the detection systems.

Western military experts were alarmed by this work. The chief of the bacteriology division at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md, Col. Arthur Friedlander, commented: "This is the first indication we're aware of in which genes are being put into a fully virulent strain. They genetically engineered a strain that's resistant to their own vaccine, and one has to question why that was done". (11)

The Russian researchers also constructed a new vaccine against the new strain. This is of particular importance, as it could enable an army to use such a bioweapon by vaccinating their soldiers against a specific strain, while the enemy remains vulnerable. The case is an example of the frightening potential of genetic engineering applied to biological weapons research."

visit sunshine project @;
http;//http://www.sunshine-project.org/bwintro/gebw.html

That's all for now folks!!