Letters to the Editor
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What are the odds...
...against getting a response from Brian Ross, as opposed to Jeff Schneider?
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@whitek re Pipes and Laurie Mylroie
Interesting that you should find examples of Pipes and Mylroie pushing the Iraq/anthrax/bentonite claim. The two of them are neo-con extremists (they might even make Cheney look rational) who have been pushing to blow up the Middle East for years. Pipes is particularly horrifying for his anti-Arab/Muslim racism. Google if your stomach can stand it.
But the fact that those two were on the bentonite train adds credence to the Cheney/Addington/Abrams wing being the "sources" behind that particular lie.
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I would really like to know
How the conversation went down where the White House denied ABC's story initially. Was it a non-denial denial? I mean there's a lot of parsing ways to deny something, but give a reporter the notion to go with the story anyway...to wit:
ABC: We have sources claiming a positive bentonite test linking the samples to Iraq. Can you confirm?
WH: No, we're not prepared to confirm that, at this time.
OR
WH: We haven't reached that conclusion.
OR
WH: I do not have that information.
OR (a proper denial)
WH: The initial tests did not find bentonite and we have no evidence the anthrax has an Iraqi origin.
Serious question, ABC News, if you are reading: What did the White House say to you when they denied this story? Verbatim please.
I mean, here's the one instance where the White House wasn't publicly peddling lies and hyping unlikely links between terrorism and Saddam, and the media goes off on its own to create one for them!
It's beyond remarkable. Which is what makes me doubt the White House's denial was categorical or assertive enough to make ABC hesitant to report on it.
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Pond fishing
In regards to the issue of why the administration didn't push for the on the Iraq/anthrax angle. There has always been a good cop/bad cop approach to the march to war. Even today we have Cheney contradicting the president on key aspects of the Iraq story. A couple of points:
- The attacks targeted high ranking members of the democratic party.
- The initial reporting of the sophisticated nature of the anthrax manufacturing and the high quality of the product focused much attention on the US military.
- Stephen Hatfield became an early suspect which drew attention to Fort Detrick and South Africa's possible connection with a continuing US biological weapons program.
- Numerous security issues with Fort Detrick and high level scientists were revealed.
- Because of the targeting of the democratic leadership, the information surrounding the attacks could not be manipulated and controlled as easily as yellow cake and the aluminum tubes.
- The anthrax attacks were, in the public's mind, connected to the 9/11 attacks. No matter how hard they pushed, the administration had to believe there would be some kind of investigation of 9/11 by congress or a commission.
In other words, this was one hell of a can of worms which, I believe, the administration thought was best to leave well enough alone.
The administration's behavior with this story may best be viewed though the prism of a specific timeline of what information came out when. I believe such a timeline would go very far to explain why they acted the way they did. I currently don't have the time available to construct such a timeline myself but if someone wants to take a stab at it I will add what pennies I can.
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Obliterated.
Boy -- I work in academia, with a lot of high-powered dudes arguing full blast with each other every day, and yet still I have rarely seen anyone's argument that thoroughly obliterated. Awesome.
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"4 sources"
This reminds me of a passage from "All the Presidents Men", describing Woodward and Bernstein's reporting of the Watergate scandal. At one point in their early coverage they got something wrong, even though they had gotten what they thought were two separate sources for the story. They got a lot of flak for it and had to issue a correction. When they looked back at what they did wrong, they realized that they didn't have confirmation from two independent sources, but rather from two sources who got their information from the same original source, hence their "two sources" were really only one source, once removed.
It seems that ABC and Ross should have immediately questioned whether the same thing hadn't happened to Ross, as well as looked into the possibility that they were being played. That they apparently didn't only reflects on their incompetence and arrogance.
And as an interesting sidenote, neither Woodward nor Bernstein were mainstream Washington reporters at the time. None of the mainstreamers were covering the story then, and many of them considered it a non-story. Besides W & B, the only other significant coverage of the story was by one or two investigative reporters from a Miami newspaper. Mainstream reporting has gotten worse over the years, but it was no paragon in the 70's either.
And, while the "chemical additive" bentonite is a common type of clay, the "chemical additive" silica is the major component of ordinary sand.
Of course, by the kind of reasoning ABC used, Iraq has a lot of sand, so that must prove that the Saddam was behind the anthrax attacks. ;-)
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Is Saddam's Anthrax another case of the "16 Words"
If I have this right, ABC claimed four independent ANONYMOUS sources for their story that the anthrax has Saddam Hussein's fingerprints on it.
ABC has never revealed there 4 independent sources or until Glenn wrote them acknowledged the story was untrue.
The story served to embolden the president and the white house that the nation would support their pre-emptive war in Iraq.
The White House denied the story from the outset. That doesn't matter because the story served its purpose.
Are there other cases in the run-up to the war where leaks were made to news agencies about Saddam Hussein's fingerprints or evidence of Saddam's WMD weapon systems that turned out to be false?
The Anthrax episode remains one of the unexplained criminal acts in the run up to the Iraq War.
We know the Niger Uranium documents were forged and that Bush insiders inserted the 16 words despite being told the claim was not credible. We know the aluminum tubes were not suitable for uranium enrichment. We know from a DOD inspector general report released last week Saddam and al-Qeada had NO operational relationship. The case for war is being to shape up as a fraud perpetrated by Bush and Cheney on Congress and citizens of the USA.
What is the status of the FBI investigation of the anthrax letters?
Who provided ABC news with this lead?