Steven Hatfill: Coconspirator or Scapegoat?
By Alllie
Connecting
the Dots and Asking Questions about theAnthrax Letters
By Richard J. Ochs September 17, 2002
- Only 20 or 30 people who worked in USAMRIID
labs have the capacity to make the concentrated powder that
was used.
- One of those people, Steven Hatfill
claimed he served with the Special Forces of the white Rhodesian
government in its civil war against black rebels in the late
1970s.
- Reporter Nicholas Kristof asked if Hatfill
had connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans
ever recorded, one that sickened 10,000 black farmers in Rhodesia
in 1978-80?î (New York Times, 7/2/02).
- Pat Clawson, radio executive for Oliver
North (who was guilty of selling guns to Iran for the cocaine-running
contra terrorists) admitted being at a shooting party with his
friend Hatfill and like-minded guys. It took place in a remote
cabin suspected of being contaminated during the anthrax attacks
last October (Baltimore Sun 8/13/02).
I admit that once I knew about Hatfill's links with Oliver North,
"coconspirator" started to seem more likely than "scapegoat."
Just being in a group with these "like-minded guys" suggests
to me that, like them, he would do anything. But, on the whole,
his history says not "racist lone wolf" but "CIA
field agent." I believe that was what Hatfill was doing in
Africa in the 70s and 80s. Think the US government would have run
field tests of anthrax in Africa? No? How about in the US? No? Go
read about Arms Textile.
- Kristof reported: "The FBI knows
that Hatfill gave Cipro (anthrax vaccine) to people who visited"
this property, which "may be operated by American intelligence"
(New York Times, 7/2/02).
Questions
- Who else will be implicated if Hatfill
talks under duress of prosecution? Can he embarrass big shots
in the Pentagon or government? Will he skate, take the fall
or is he a walking dead man?
- Who knowingly hired a known racist mercenary
to handle the world's most dangerous biological agents?
Is Hatfill part of a clique of racist germ
warriors? (Hartford Courant, 12/19/01) The apparent plot to blame
Arabs for the anthrax letters failed miserably.
FBI Cover Up?
Is the FBI deliberately sabotaging the legal case for successful
prosecution with irregular procedures? Remember that the war criminals
Sgt. Calley and Oliver North never served a day in jail even though
they were found guilty of war crimes and other felonies.
Why is the FBI showing only one photograph
to the public in Princeton NJ where the contaminated mailbox was
found? Why don't they show pictures of all the men who were at
the remote cabin a week after the anthrax mailings? Was North
at the cabin?
Who else was there? What phone records
exist for these men? Who called who, and when? Where were these
men on October 9 when the anthrax letters were mailed from New
Jersey? Who was missing? Have the credit/debit card records of
gasoline purchases on the route to and from New Jersey been checked
for these men? Who has ironclad alibis?
Some Tentative Conclusions
"The FBI knows who did it,"
concludes Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg of the Federation of American
Scientists (FAS), "but it is dragging its feet because an
arrest would be embarrassing to the U.S. authorities . . . The
suspect is part of a clique that includes high- level former USAMRIID
scientists and high-level former FBI officials."
The anthrax attacks could be a conspiracy
to intimidate Congress and influence legislation. Any such cabal
is operating in the context of a military-intelligence culture
of impunity, illegality, racism and international aggression.
The anthrax perpetrator was helped by accomplices before and after
the fact, by investigators who are not investigating and by an
administration which allows such transgressions. The public spotlight
on the domestic anthrax terrorism has also revealed other associated
crimes, malfeasance and treaty violations. See: www.freefromterror.net
Dr. Rosenberg of FAS summarizes the
political climate which allows racist military cliques to run
rampant: The Bush administration blocked action by the rest
of the world on a vital treaty to monitor the ban on biological
weapons . . . Rejection of the biological weapons treaty follows
an administration pattern of arrogance . . . The Bush administration,
which is a minority government, is intent on using its brief opportunity
to impose unilateral security decisions on the rest of the world,
and to do so in as irreversible a manner as possible . . . We
recognize that there is no way to defend populations from such
weapons. Therefore, the world cannot afford to turn down any reassurance
that would contribute to prevention.(See FAS website: http://fas.org/bwc/news
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/connecting.html
Ochs made some good points but I'm still not convinced that Hatfill
is that anthrax terrorist or even involved, certainly not that he
acted without orders.
War
on terror: FBI 'guilty of cover-up' over anthrax suspect
Rosenberg's profile suggests that the suspect
is a middle-aged scientist with a doctoral degree who works for
a CIA contractor in Washington DC. She adds he has to know or
have worked closely with Bill Patrick, the weapons researcher
who holds five secret patents on how to produce weapons-grade
anthrax, that he suffered a career setback last summer that embittered
him and precipitated his campaign and that he has already been
investigated by the FBI.
Most crucially, she believes the suspect
has in the past actually conducted experiments for the government
to test the response of the police and civil agencies to a bioterror
attack.
"It has been part of the suspect's job to devise bioterror
scenarios," Rosenberg said. "Some of these are on record.
He is known to have acted out at least one of them, in hoax form,
perhaps as part of an assignment to test responses. Some hoax
events that have never been solved, including several hoax-anthrax
events, also correspond to his scenarios and are consistent with
his whereabouts."
The question she wants the FBI and the
Bush administration to answer is, why it has taken so long to
arrest this man? In the unlikely event that the government divulges
all it knows about what she now believes to be a full blown cover-up,
Rosenberg said responsibility can be expected to fall on a number
of government agencies, all with a vested interest in shielding
the truth.
"Either the FBI is under pressure
from the Pentagon or CIA [or the White
House] not to proceed because the suspect knows too
much and must be controlled forever from the moment of arrest,"
she said, "or the FBI is sympathetic to the views of the
biodefence clique or the FBI really is as incompetent as it seems."
Rosenberg's analysis suggests a combination of all three. The
American defence establishment guards its secrets well and given
the suspect's covert work on their behalf their reluctance to
see him publicly exposed appears natural.
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=655812002
Rosenberg seems unwilling to consider another possibility: that
Hatfill is part of the ex-intelligence agency cabal around Bush,
was following instructions and is now being protected.
Anthrax:
Former USAMRIID Scientist Studied Envelope Attack
Steven Hatfill, the former biological weapons defense scientist
whose apartment the FBI searched this week, commissioned a study
in 1999 examining a potential anthrax attack using a spore-filled
envelope opened in an office.
The study examined the risks of anthrax spores spreading through
the air and the decontamination measures that would be needed
after various types of attacks, according to the Sun. William
Patrick, a former scientist in the U.S. offensive biological weapons
program, prepared the study and submitted it to Hatfill and another
researcher at the defense contractor where Hatfill then worked.
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_6_27.html#7
Talk about things that make you go "ahhh." But it really
means nothing because we don't know if this study was Hatfill's
idea or if he was instructed to commission it. We also don't know
how many other people read it and how many of them had access to
the proper strain of weaponized anthrax. And the biggest question:
Did Hatfill have access to the anthrax AND acess to a Level 3 or
4 Biosafety facility after 9/11. The reports say he was no
longer working for the CIA nor at any bioweapons contractor and
had no access to the necessary lab. All that might be a lie. He
might still be on the CIA payroll today. Not like they don't lie
at every turn. For instance, did you know the Watergate
burglars were long time CIA agents. (During his time in the
CIA Bush41 began the use of contractors to commission "projects"
illegal for the CIA. God knows what all of them were but during
the Iraq war we have seen the use of contract torturers, foreign
nationals, to conduct "interrogations." They seem immune
to prosecution while any American that engaged in similar actions
could be charged with war crimes.)
Slowness
in tracking down anthrax killer is intolerable
We've learned that his former colleagues in the biodefense community
brought Hatfill's name to the FBI's attention last October, shortly
after the anthrax victims began dying. He recently had lost his
security clearance through polygraph inconsistencies.
This makes me wonder if Hatfill deliberately lost his clearance
so he would have an alibi, that it would appear that he couldn't
be the source of this material because he no longer had access to
the labs necessary to produce it or even put it in an envelope then
he could do his work in a CIA lab and no one be the wiser. Or perhaps
he accidentally lost his clearance because he was part of this plan,
under orders or part of a rogue group of "like minded guys"
who engineered it.
Some investigators believe the FBI's amazing
caution stems from Hatfill's loose connections to the late Ron
Brown, President Clinton's commerce secretary. Others think
that he was working for the CIA; and still others believe that
the anthrax killings were a defense-related exercise that went
badly wrong. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_83108.html
I don't believe that Hatfill was the anthrax terrorist, at least
not in the sense that he was working independently, without orders.
I have several reasons for this opinion:
© Alllie,
2004
Distribution: This article is copyrighted by Alllie,
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