Media Roots Radio- The Anthrax Attacks, From The Memory Hole by Media Roots

MEDIA ROOTS — Abby and Robbie break apart the official government narrative of the Anthrax Attacks by discussing foreknowledge, government complicity, and gross inconsistencies regarding every aspect of the events on this edition of Media Roots Radio. The episode is fully transcribed and sourced below.

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MEDIA ROOTS RADIO — Welcome to Media Roots Radio. This is your host, Abby Martin, Creator of MediaRoots.org.



“This is your Co-Host, Robbie Martin. This is Part Two of our Media Roots Radio episode about 9/11. And we thought we’d spend most of the time on this second part of it talking about the Anthrax Attacks because they were, not only, the only other hyped terrorist attack around 9/11, but they allowed the Iraq 'War' to take place. They scared everybody. But people who were first targeted by the Anthrax Attacks were postal workers, and just completely random people. It was this event and the catalyst for everybody being scared of terrorism. It was no longer localised.”

Abby Martin (c. 2:06): “Right. Yeah; it ratcheted up the fear to everyone in the United States. I mean the 9/11 Attacks were one part of it. It was like one part of the chilling effect. But then the Anthrax Attacks were like, it was like the chilling effect permeated everywhere. Anyone was a victim at that point.”

Robbie Martin: “Yeah. Even people who lived in remote areas, who still had mailboxes were now susceptible targets. If you thought you were unaffected by the War on Terror after 9/11, the Anthrax Attacks brought it back home for everybody.”



Abby Martin: “And the fact that it was a biological weapon was just so scary because that’s like the scariest thing you could think of, other than nuclear weapons. You know? It’s: Oh, my gawd, terrorists are gonna get their hands on a biological weapon or a chemical weapon.”

Robbie Martin: “Yeah. And it’s something you can’t smell or see. It could just be released and you would never, you know, you would get a disease later. It was meant to frighten the public. It opened the door for the whole WMDs era of our government where we were starting to talk about the other nations that had biological and chemical weapons.

“If it weren’t for the Anthrax Attacks those seeds wouldn’t have been able to grow so well.

Abby Martin (c. 3:12): “The Anthrax Attacks happened on October 3rd of 2001. So, we’re talking about not even a month after 9/11.”

Robbie Martin: “Yeah.”

Abby Martin: “We were all still in this completely paralysed mode, as a country. And then the Anthrax Attacks happened less than a month later.

“And we’re gonna go over the case today and just poke holes in all the official explanations. And I mean, essentially, it’s admitted now; it’s admitted now that it came from within the government. And it’s just still one of the greatest mysteries. And still one of the most underreported things. All the evidence that’s come out over the last nine years about the Anthrax Attacks points directly to our own government. And they even admit that. It’s readily admitted.”

Robbie Martin (c. 3:52): “Yeah. If you wanna use the term inside job to describe the Anthrax Attacks, it’s much more appropriate in this case than it would be to describe the 9/11 Attacks because we have admitted statements from the FBI, their press releases. Their most recent statements have said that the anthrax came from Fort Detrick, Maryland, which is a military bioweapons lab."

“So, no matter which way you look at the Anthrax Attacks, it was an inside job. The FBI’s official story is that Bruce Ivins acted alone and sent these Anthrax Letters out to everybody. But he was a government employee who had access to anthrax spores.

“Our theory is that someone within our own government, along with several other people in our own government, wanted to frame Arab and 'Muslim terrorists' for spreading anthrax out to American citizens. And they were able to do this without the media really following up or doing any true investigative reporting of these events.”

Abby Martin (c. 4:49): “Yeah. First, let’s talk about what the Anthrax Attacks were; I mean let’s just first refresh people’s memory here.

“It happened on October 3rd, 2001. The attacks killed five people, closed down a Senate office building, and caused a national panic.

“The anthrax was sent to Senators Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, and Russ Feingold.”

Robbie Martin (c. 5:12): “Yeah. And several more people were tested and shown positive for anthrax spores, but didn’t die. I think over 28 Congressional staffers were found to have had anthrax spores in their system.”

Abby Martin: “It shows you how easy it is to spread, airborne.”

Robbie Martin: “Yeah. The Anthrax Letters, when they were sent, they were very peculiar. I mean the way that they were actually worded.

“The Anthrax Letter sent to Tom Daschle, for instance, is written in this weird capitalised block-letter handwriting. And it says, ‘Take penicillin. This is anthrax. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great.’

“And then all the other letters that came out said similar things, with slight variations, but that same weird handwriting and the same strange half-Arabic/half-English phrase, Allah is great. Usually, a Muslim would say Allahu Akbar or God is Great. It’s just very peculiar that that phrase would be in there. And then, also, the fact that they say, 'take penicillin now.' If you wanted to kill as many people as possible in a terrorist attack, wouldn’t you just not tell them what they had? Wouldn’t it just be like a letter with anthrax in it? And not like with any text attached to it?”

Abby Martin (c. 6:23): “Absolutely. That doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that aspect of it. It was also sent to numerous media organisations. NBC. The New York Post.”

Robbie Martin: “Yeah. Dan Rather. We could only speculate why he was the target of anthrax. But he received a letter.”

Abby Martin: “Maybe it was just to shut up the media, just to scare political players and also media organisations who might’ve been more vocal.”

Robbie Martin: “The letters were sent to Tom Daschle, who was the Democrat Senate Majority leader at the time, and Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy.

“Russ Feingold was the only senator to vote against the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. And he has voted against its renewal every subsequent time. Tom Daschle put immense pressure on Russ Feingold to vote for the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act because he wanted everyone to stand unanimously. And, so, those were the two targets of the Anthrax Letters. One was the Senate Majority Leader to cause an effect where, from the top down, he would pressure all of his fellow Democrat Senators to vote for the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act—and then Russ Feingold, the only hold-out on the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. I mean it’s incredibly coincidental that some terrorists outside would’ve wanted to sent it to these two people.”

Abby Martin (c. 7:36): “It seems really interesting. What was the motive of a rogue Al Qaeda operative working to send anthrax to these specific people? It doesn’t make much sense.”

Robbie Martin: “No. It does not.”



Abby Martin: “Why would they go after people who are opposing the government? Isn’t that helping the government with them going after the people that are not going along with them, necessarily, at the time, or the tendency?”



Robbie Martin: “Yeah. The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act was just completely shoved down their throats. They didn’t give anybody time to read and just demanded that they pass it. And vote on it. And it calls into question, who are the architects of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act? It would be interesting to follow up on that. The people who sent the Anthrax Letters, it seemed like their motivation was to get the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act passed.”

Abby Martin (c. 8:21): “Viet Dinh was the author of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act.”

Robbie Martin: “Interesting. I don’t know who he is, but it’d be interesting to find out more about him. But I think that’s the main motivation that we can pull from it besides, also, trying to scare the American public and to thinking more terrorist attacks were following.”

Abby Martin: “Yeah. If you look at these bizarre letters that talk about Allah in a weird detached way from, like, real Muslims would talk about Allah. And if you look at Steven Hatfill and Bruce Ivins, what would be their motive to frame Muslims? Independently?”

Robbie Martin: “Yeah. And, just so the audience knows, Steven Hatfill and Bruce Ivins were the two other people of interest in the anthrax investigations that the FBI did. And we’ll talk later about what happened to them.”

Abby Martin (c. 9:11): “If Steven Hatfill or Bruce Ivins really did write that weird letter and sent it with anthrax, it just seems there would be no motive for them to act independently and try to frame Arabs for this.

“And, secondly, the FBI immediately knew that the anthrax did not come—”

Robbie Martin: “They knew within months, yeah, that it didn’t come from an outside entity.”



Abby Martin: “Yeah. And they knew that it was like a very highly specialised grade of anthrax that could only have come from these weapons labs that we have.”



Robbie Martin: “And I want to go back a little bit to the psychology of why the Anthrax Attacks were so important to scare the American public into going along with all these things, civil liberties erosion, all the things we talked about, the 9/11 cause, as a result. This put in the public mind that it wasn’t just like a singular event. Like 9/11, in and of itself, could be, after 9/11 you could look back on it right after the event and say, well, maybe this was just like a fluke; one terrorist attack finally got through to the United States. But the Anthrax Attacks chilled the public again and kind of showed everybody, No, look, it’s happening again. And it’s going to happen again, regularly.”

Abby Martin: “It’s gonna keep happening, unless you let us do what we want.”



Robbie Martin (c. 10:22): “Exactly. And it was all about that idea that it’s going to be a frequent occurrence. And I think that that’s important; you have to look at 9/11 and the Anthrax Attacks together.

“And, also, other little things that happened afterwards like the, mostly untalked about now, D.C. Sniper Incident—”

Abby Martin: “The D.C. Sniper. Yeah.”

Robbie Martin: “—where it happened that they were two Muslim guys. And they tried to tie that in to the whole War on Terror that these were some sort of 'crazy Muslim' guys who were taking revenge on America’s foreign policy.”

Abby Martin: “The part that disgusts me the most about the government propping up Al Qaeda being involved in the anthrax thing is the fact that they knew it wasn’t Al Qaeda. Even if it was some independent rogue guy within these weapons labs releasing the anthrax, they knew that it wasn’t an Al Qaeda operative. And the fact that they let the public believe that it was and propped up that propaganda to try to sell more of what they were doing is absolutely disgusting.”

For the full transcript go to Media Roots