Anthrax Attacks

We all remember the details of those awful couple of weeks. Just days after 9/11, mysterious packages of anthrax started appearing at government offices and media headquarters, turning what could have been an isolated act of terror into a full-fledged contagion of fear in the US. The culprit - complete with the damning evidence of letters praising Allah - were of course Islamic extremists, but the story ran cold after a few months and nothing definitive was thereafter announced about the origins of the deadly powder. We did, however, collectively live in fear of biological/chemical attacks over the next few months as a result of the anthrax packages. Living in New York at the time, the Times ran stories of how Al Qaida might be able to release anthrax into the subway system, and suggested that we be on the lookout for Arabic men with big packages who had recently shaven. America had been spooked, and the boogeyman, then as now, was what Thomas Friedman calls the "super-empowered angry men" - radical Muslims. That was the narrative.

Today's news comes as quite a revelation, then. The lead suspect in the anthrax attacks (we had a suspect?) is none other than Bruce Ivins, a government scientist working at Ft. Detrick, a biological warfare research facility. No beard. No Kalashnikov tossed over the shoulder. Just a civil servant. Earlier this week, Mr. Ivins committed suicide, bringing anthrax back into the news again for one more appearance.

Let's take a moment to examine what this actually means. Instead of the Enemy of Civilization assaulting America, it was most likely a scientist within our own military. A seminal event in the dark chronology of fear that overtook our leaders and citizenry in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq (the ultimate act of lashing out in panic) was falsely attributed. This is a huge story indeed.

Of course, you wouldn't guess the significance of this revelation from the mainstream media's coverage of it. It's gotten coverage today, but the story has been stripped of its explosive power and decontextualized. All we learn is that a key suspect has killed himself, end of story. Case closed. This article is perhaps the most open-and-shut about the whole affair (courtesy Chris), but even NPR's coverage didn't penetrate too deeply into what this actually means. On All Things Considered today, one the Ivin's psychotherapists talked about his "homicidal tendencies" and they essentially left it at that. Indeed, relying on only the mainstream media, one would think that Ivins was simply a "bad seed," much as the torturers at Abu Ghraib were simply a few renegades acting on their own twisted volition. The truth, however, is much more complex and much more appalling.

As is becoming all too common, the blogosphere has been far more aggressive in investigating this story than the well-paid members of the mainstream press. Glenn Greenwald's post today on Salon should be required reading for all discerning and critical Americans. In a nutshell: after Ivins sent anthrax to government and media offices, the powder was analyzed in a lab and ABC began reporting that a compound in the material was a trademark of the Iraqis. This claim dominated ABC's coverage of the anthrax attacks and quickly entered into the administration's case for why Iraq posed a clear and present danger. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush even talked about the Iraqi regime's development of anthrax.

But here's the catch: the four "well-placed and separate sources" that ABC got their information from were none other than Ft. Detrick officials and scientists. The lab from which the anthrax originated, then, was charged with determining its origin. And the claim that only the Iraqis could have inserted this extra compound was completely spurious. The anthrax had nothing to do with Iraq; instead, a government agency was responsible for 1) sending the anthrax in the first place, framing Iraq, and 2) claiming that only the Iraqis could have done such a thing. This story, then, is much bigger than just that of a psychopathic renegade scientist committing suicide. We're bogged down in Iraq today because of the long campaign of government misinformation and fear-mongering in which the anthrax scare played a key role. Greenwald's post documents the pundits who encouraged the administration to invade Iraq based primarily on Saddam's ties to anthrax. This was a big piece in the puzzle, and to think that the threat was generated by none other than the US government? The implications are jaw-dropping.

This is not conspiracy theory wackiness - it is copiously documented. But the resounding silence in the mainstream press indeed makes it feel like even bringing up the larger context for the Ivins story is engaging in something a little fringy. Congress is not investigating issues like this because congresspeople aren't being pressed by their outraged constituents to do so. And largely, people aren't outraged because they don't know. So, good M&M readers, get the word out on this story. Read the Greenwald article and forward it ahead to your friends. The only thing that can combat this sort of wool-over-the-eyes complacency is a little knowledge.

Chris and I will be following this post up with a short series on related topics. More to come.