Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo has written a lot about the Quantico letter, posted before the attacks and fingering Ft Derrick's Egyptian-born Dr Assaad, which seems to have been repeatedly if not deliberately overlooked by the FBI.

Now we hear that the Bush White House was pressuring the FBI to find a Middle East connection to these attacks. The White House pressure ties in nicely with the attempt to frame Dr. Ayaad Assaad: did somebody in the White House know about that letter?

Let's speak clearly for a moment (perhaps Glenn cannot speculate too much without a barrage of criticism, but I can).

It looks like someone at the Fort Detrick lab framed Assaad by sending the letter ahead of their premeditated anthrax attack, and it looks like somebody in the White House knew what was happening, and it looks like the people who did that are now being protected, which would explain why the whole FBI case looks so bumbling, incompetent and illogical.

It is highly unlikely that whoever did this was working alone. Remember, Fort Derrick is a US military installation and these people are expected to follow orders. There was a chain of command here. Dr Assaad and two other Arab scientists were dismissed by their supervisor, Colonel Franz, who slammed the door on Assaad when he tried to complain of harrassment. And remember, this was years before 9-11, when anti-Muslim racism became more common. It looks like there was a concerted effort to get certain people out of that lab.

When you compare this anthrax story with the 9-11 attacks, isn't it odd how this case has the same shady characters (e.g. it was Ashcroft who fingered Hatfill) and groups on the sidelines, the same anti-Muslim motives apparent, the same lack of investigation from the corporate media on seemingly critical issues, the same bumbling incompetence from government investigators, the same high-level White House push for political capital...?

Very odd indeed. You would almost think the same people were involved, for the same reasons. The highly politicized 911 Commission cleaned up that other mess. But this time they have screwed it up a whole lot worse.

Francis A. Boyle, an international law expert who worked under the first Bush Administration as a bioweapons advisor in the 1980s (he was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), spoke out about these anthrax attacks last year. This is a MUST READ:

After realizing that the anthrax attacks looked like a domestic job, Boyle called a high-level official in the FBI who deals with terrorism and counterterrorism, Marion "Spike" Bowman. Boyle and Bowman had met at a terrorism conference at the University of Michigan Law School. Boyle told Bowman that the only people who would have the capability to carry out the attacks were individuals working on U.S. government anthrax programs with access to a high-level biosafety lab. Boyle gave Bowman a full list of names of scientists, contractors and labs conducting anthrax work for the U.S. government and military.

Bowman then informed Boyle that the FBI was working with Fort Detrick on the matter. Boyle expressed his view that Fort Detrick could be the main problem. As widely reported in 2002 publications, notably the New Scientist, the anthrax strain used in the attacks was officially assessed as "military grade."

"Soon after I informed Bowman of this information, the FBI authorized the destruction of the Ames cultural anthrax database," the professor said. The Ames strain turned out to be the same strain as the spores used in the attacks.

The alleged destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, Iowa, from which the Fort Detrick lab got its pathogens, was blatant destruction of evidence. It meant that there was no way of finding out which strain was sent to whom to develop the larger breed of anthrax used in the attacks. The trail of genetic evidence would have led directly back to a secret government biowarfare program.

"Clearly, for the FBI to have authorized this was obstruction of justice, a federal crime," said Boyle. "That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That's the DNA, the fingerprints right there. It later came out, of course, that this was Ames strain anthrax that was behind the Daschle and Leahy letters."

At that point, recounted Boyle, it became very clear to him that there was a coverup underway. He later discovered, while reading David Ray Griffin's book on the 9/11 attacks, The New Pearl Harbor, that Bowman was the same FBI agent who allegedly sabotaged the FISA warrant for access to [convicted co-conspirator] Zacharias Moussaoui's computer prior to 9/11. Moussaoui's computer contained information that could have helped prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In 2003, Bowman was promoted and given the Presidential Rank Award by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller.

The full article is here: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24273

That New York Post story has this very interesting bit:

A former senior official at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases - the high-security lab in Maryland where Ivins worked for 36 years - believed the mad researcher mailed the anthrax-laced letters to move government resources to his field.

"It had to have been a motive," the official told the LA Times. "I don't think he ever intended to kill anybody. He just wanted to prove 'Look, this is possible.' He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those envelopes and kill those postal workers."

First of all, who is this "former senior official"? Was he a member of the Camel Club or one who turned a blind eye to it? Was he one of the people responsible for the supposedly lax security? And why is he talking anonymously if he no longer works there and Ivins is dead?

Secondly, what is this about anthrax (or 'thrax, as NYP calls it) "aerosolizing" through an envelope? Is that meant to explain why something that wasn't a powder could act like a powder? Any scientific evidence of that?