Reply #42: FBI official: Florida anthrax appears to be 'isolated incident'

[UpInArms]

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/10/11/anthrax.investigation/index.html

October 11, 2001

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Investigators have found no evidence linking the presence of anthrax at the offices of a supermarket tabloid publisher in Florida with the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, an FBI official said Thursday.

"The FBI has found no connection between the anthrax and the terror attacks of September 11," Tim Caruso, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, told a House Intelligence Committee hearing on national security. "The anthrax appears to be an isolated incident."

A tabloid photo editor who died of inhalation anthrax and two co-workers who tested positive for the bacteria but show no symptoms of the disease apparently were infected with the same strain.

The strain also was found in the newspaper mail room and on the photo editor's computer keyboard, Caruso said.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told CNN that investigators were treating the anthrax incident in Florida as a criminal matter but weren't prepared to label it a bioterrorism attack.

"I don't think we can say it (is a bioterrorism attack) conclusively, but obviously anthrax is a very serious matter, and its presence would be very unusual in that setting," Ashcroft said. "We are treating this as a criminal matter and are investigating it with great care."

Ashcroft added that any evidence connecting the anthrax with the hijackers who slammed commercial jets into the New York's World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside "would be of great interest to us and it would assist us very substantially in understanding and evaluating other circumstances."

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and then there's this piece to the puzzle

George Bush went on Anti-anthrax "Cipro" on 9-11

Los Angeles, Alta California - 6/10/2002 - (ACN) La Voz de Aztlan learned yesterday that the White House Staff including President George Bush went on a regiment of the anti-biotic "Cipro" that is use to ward off anthrax infections on September 11, 2001. This is a few weeks before the anthrax attacks that began on October, 2001. This means that the White House had fore-knowledge of the impending anthrax terrorist attacks and did not warn the American people.

Judicial Watch, an organization who's mission is ". . . to serve as an ethical and legal 'watchdog' over our government, legal, and judicial systems to promote a return to ethics and morality in our nation's public life" has filed lawsuits against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for those agencies’ failures to produce documents concerning the terrorist anthrax attacks of October 2001, under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The public interest organization wants to know why the White House went on Cipro beginning September 11th as well as what they knew and when?

Judicial Watch is representing the Afro-American postal workers from the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington, DC. The Brentwood facility handled all of the mail for Washington, DC, including the “official mail” that contained the anthrax-laden envelopes addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy. While Capitol Hill workers received prompt medical care, Brentwood postal workers were ordered by USPS officials to continue working in the contaminated facility. Two of the Black Brentwood workers died from inhalation anthrax, and dozens more are now suffering from a variety of ailments related to the anthrax attacks. Legal actions are being planned for the disparate treatment against the Black postal workers.

In October 2001, press reports revealed that White House staff had been on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic Cipro since the September 11th terrorist attacks. Judicial Watch is aggressively pursuing the disclosure of the facts and the decision for White House staff, and President Bush as well, to begin taking Cipro nearly a month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill.

“The American people deserve a full accounting from the Bush administration, the FBI , and other agencies concerning the anthrax attacks. The FBI’s investigation seems to have dead-ended, and frankly, that is not very reassuring given their performance with the September 11th hijackers,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman. “One doesn’t simply start taking a powerful antibiotic for no good reason. The American people are entitled to know what the White House staffers knew nine months ago, “ he added.

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