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Edited on Fri Aug-06-04 12:54 AM by Zan_of_Texas
would a defense company specializing in biological and chemical weapons, including close proximity to the Ames strain of anthrax..... ....... ....... ....... be involved in national election exit polls for ABC, CNN, CBS, etc. Unbelievable? Yep. True. Yep. Well, it was true until early 2003. from the Cooperative Research.net site (some time ago, perhaps updated since then): November 30, 2001: A report suggests that the strain of anthrax used in the attacks likely originated from USAMRIID and was shared with only a small number of other labs. USAMRIID gave it to Battelle Memorial Institute, in Columbus, Ohio; the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, in Canada; the US Army Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah; and the Chemical Defense Establishment at Porton Down, Britain. These in turn sent it to seven more labs, for a total of a dozen. But only five labs total received the virulent form, and some of these may have received strains that were too old (it is known the anthrax used was two years old or less http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/national/23ANTH.html>>). http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A36408-2001Nov29¬Found=true>>
December 13, 2001: The US Army responds to a journalistic investigation and confirms that it has been making weapons grade anthrax in recent years, in violation of an international treaty. The US offensive biological weapons program was supposedly closed in 1969 when the US signed a biological weapons treaty. In 1998 scientists at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah turned small quantities of wet anthrax into powder. This weaponized anthrax appears to be very similar or identical to the anthrax used in the recent attacks. http://www.sunspot.net/bal-te.anthrax13dec13.story>, New York Times, 12/13/01 <../2001/nyt121301.html>>
December 21, 2001 (B): The FBI is now investigating "whether potential profit from the sale of anthrax medications or cleanup efforts may have motivated" the anthrax attacks. Battelle, a company doing anthrax work for the CIA, is the one company most discussed in the article and is strongly featured in another. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A9523-2001Dec20¬Found=true>, ABC, 12/20/01 <../2001/abcnews122001.html>> The same day, the FBI says it is not investigating a former Battelle scientist in relation to an anthrax scare, contrary to national broadcast news reports. A US Senator further claims FBI Director Mueller told him "no one with or formerly with Battelle is a suspect." Is Bayer also under investigation (see October 21, 2001 <timelineafter911.html>)?
January 26, 2002: Salon exposes details about the FBI's anthrax investigation. The FBI appears to be casting a very wide net, for instance approaching all 40,000 members of the American Society of Microbiologists and putting flyers asking for information all over New Jersey. Yet all the evidence suggests that the anthrax strain could only be made in one of two places: USAMRIID in Maryland or US Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Meanwhile, the FBI has not yet subpoenaed employee records of the few labs that used the strain of anthrax used in the attacks. Numerous anthrax experts express puzzlement. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biological arms control expert, believes the FBI is dragging its heels for political reasons. She is convinced the FBI knows who mailed the anthrax letters, but isn't arresting him, because he has been involved in secret biological weapons research that the US does not want revealed. "This guy knows too much, and knows things the US isn't very anxious to publicize. Therefore, they don't want to get too close." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/01/26/assaad/index_np.html?x>>
Okay, so what does this have to do with elections?
Battelle, a private defense contractor in Ohio with strong ties to weapons (the kind we call weapons of mass destruction if we allege other countries have them) and strong ties to the CIA, also had the computer contract to do exit polling around the country in the 2002 election, in conjunction with a murky organization called Voter News Service. The project melted down on election day 2002.
January 13, 2003
Voter News Service: What Went Wrong?
ByLarry Barrett
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,3959,826676,00.asp
After two humiliating technology failures, six major news services are disbanding VNS, a consortium formed to count votes and conduct Election Day surveys. How could the system have been overhauled before disaster struck twice?
In November 2000, a "perfect storm" of vote-counting miscues and polling problems led the major TV networks repeatedly to change their minds as to whether Al Gore or George Bush was the next president. In November 2002, a second storm whipped through the networks' election broadcasts. Unfinished and mismanaged efforts to update the computer systems used by Voter News Service forced executives at the consortium's owners-ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC and the Associated Press-to abandon the use of exit polling data before it even got all collected. Indeed, by mid-January the failures led to the disbanding of VNS itself. On Jan. 13, the six organizations said only that they were "collectively reviewing a number of strong options'' to avoid another fiasco in the future. Back up to Election Day, Nov. 5. The balance of power in Congress was up for grabs. Yet by 10 a.m., the TV networks confirmed what they had feared for months: They couldn't derive any meaningful exit-polling data from a system they had just spent between $10 million and $15 million to overhaul.
Disasters were almost comical. Many of the more than 30,000 temporary workers collecting exit-poll information were disconnected from VNS' new voice-recognition system before they could finish inputting data over the phone. Some poll workers were unable to access the system at all. Live operators weren't always a help, as the phone system periodically crashed under the crush of callers dialing in. Using computers was not much of an alternative. News organizations and other VNS subscribers were repeatedly instructed to log off their machines, so the new servers running BEA Systems' WebLogic application server could be rebooted. When users finally were able to access the system, they quickly discovered they were being presented with incomplete and inaccurate information. For instance, early exit-polling data indicated that Erskine Bowles was leading Elizabeth Dole in the North Carolina senatorial race. As the day progressed and more exit-poll data was added, that margin grew. However, when the actual votes were tallied, Dole won the election by almost 200,000 votes, a convincing victory. "Everyone could smell this coming months in advance," says Joseph Lenski, co-founder of Edison Media Research, a Somerville, N.J., firm that provided supplemental polling data for CNN. "VNS had been trying to rewrite and retool the system for years. This was just the most recent attempt and it failed miserably." <SNIP> "It was a joke," one political analyst at a major television network told Baseline. "It became obvious to everyone that this wasn't going to work. There wasn't enough testing. There was not enough collaboration between the networks and the IT people. And, worse, there was nothing we could do about it. You can't postpone an election." Network executives quickly concluded they would not use the bulk of the data they were able to collect, particularly the exit-polling information. Projecting winners and losers in various races would take several hours longer than in the past. Also, the networks would be unable to give the type of detailed explanations as to why voters voted the way they did this time around. For example, according to TV network analysts working the election, the networks wouldn't be able to tell viewers why particular demographic groups voted for specific candidates nor the issues that they considered most or least important when voting.
This second debacle meant the end of VNS, as the news organizations said they would look at new ways of tabulating national and state results. Insiders close to VNS say the media organizations will likely rely more on their own individual exit polling and that of the Associated Press exit polling data in future elections. Battelle Memorial Institute, the Columbus, Ohio-based technology firm charged with overhauling the VNS system, was terminated. "There's no way the networks are going to do anything that's connected to Battelle going forward," says one network analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That ship has sailed." <MORE>
If you were going to rig elections, would you want to either tweak the exit polls, or, just vanish them? You would, wouldn't you.
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