Letters to the Editor
GlennGreenwald
Published Letters: 2221 Editor's Choice: 18
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thelastnamechosen:
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't trust Beecher
He's an FBI official at the center of the anthrax investigations. I don't trust any source as gospel - including him - but his findings are certainly relevant.
Moreover, I really relied on the analysis of Edward Fox -- not just his conclusions, but the multitude of highly credible sources he cites for the conclusion that there were no additives (see Item 4 on his main page, as I indicated, with 10 or so links to primary documents).
Most of all, even if there were silica found, there was certainly no bentonite, which was the claim at the core of the ABC report. I don't think anyone - other than those relying on Ross's reports -- claims there was any more. Those reports have to be retracted because they are false.
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LWM
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes - Ed Lake, not Fox - fortunately, it's correct in the post.
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thelastnamechosen/ondelette
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree that the bentonite claim is almost certainly false, but the question of silica has not been resolved in my mind. While silica has no bearing on the ABC report, using unnamed sources to knock it down certainly does.
The Bush administraiton itself says that there was no bentonite every found in the anthrax. Beecher says it. Lake says it. Have you read Lake's analysis as to why? As I made clear, he was arguing that long BEFORE Beecher's article was published.
Let's be clear that there are two separate issues: (1) whether there was a bentonite additive in the anthrax; (2) whether there was some form of silica present.
There is no real dispute on (1) Every credible source that I know (including even the Bush administration, however you want to characterize them) says there was no bentonite. That is what the ABC report is about, and that -- regardless of (2) -- makes those reports false. Even Ross said on ABC, on November 1:
There are chemical additives in that anthrax including one called silica. That's not a trademark of any one country's weapons program, but it is known to be used by Iraq, Russia and the US in making a military style anthrax."
The presence of silica (as opposed to bentonite) no more points to Iraq than it points to Russia or a domestic source. So that's the issue I'm interested in for this post.
On issue (2), there are people -- led by Gary Matsumoto -- who claim that it was weaponized, with silica, etc. I find those sources to be lacking in credibility and agenda-driven. I find Lake's analysis (and he has a lengthy analysis tearing apart Matsumoto's November, 2003 article in Science) much better-documented and more persusaive (i.e., that there were no additives).
But since that's not relevant to the ABC report, I'm not going to go through all the reports and (as you requested) provide you with links (you can do that yourself - start here: http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/Update-History2006.html#060125).
But clearly, Lake's analysis does NOT depend on Beecher's article AT ALL, since Lake argued in his book that "the attack anthrax did not contain any visible additives" in his book, published BEFORE Beecher's article was published.
Beecher is ONE source of many. He's relevant, not dispositive. But as I said, I find the voluminous evidence compiled and analyzed by Ed Lake, which I spent all weekend reading and which long pre-dates Beecher, to be persuasive on the question of whether there were additives and absolutely definitive on whether there was bentonite.
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thelastnamechosen/ondelette
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Also, it is not true that the NYT article relied only on Beecher. In addition to citing Lake's PRE-BEECHER findings, it also included this:
William C. Patrick III, a scientist who once made germ weapons for the American military and is now a private consultant on biological defense, agreed with the F.B.I.'s assessment. ''The material was good, but not weapons grade,'' Mr. Patrick said in an interview. ''You can't make that in your basement. It requires sophisticated equipment.''
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waitaminute:
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How do you know this is false? To disprove it, don't you have to prove that either (a) other countries have used Bentonite to produce biological weapons or (b) Iraq hasn’t done that?
The WSJ article I excerpted in the comment (and linked to in the update) says that the U.S., for one, conducted research using bentonite and anthrax.