On October 12, 2001, Judith Miller opened an anthrax hoax letter

[seemslikeadream]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller

On October 12, 2001, Judith Miller opened an anthrax hoax letter mailed to her New York Times office. The 2001 anthrax attacks had begun occurring in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, with anthrax-laced letters sent to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and the New York Post, all in New York City, as well as the National Enquirer in Boca Raton, Florida. Two additional letters (with a higher grade of anthrax) were sent on October 9, 2001 to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy in Washington. Twenty-two people were infected; five died.

In 2008, as the government's investigation of these mailings focused on Bruce Ivins, Mr. Ivins committed suicide. The official view is that Mr. Ivins acted alone.

Miller was the only major U.S. media reporter, and the New York Times the only major U.S. media organization, to be victimized by a fake anthrax letter in the fall of 2001. Miller had reported extensively on the subject of biological threats and had co-authored with Stephen Engelberg and William Broad a book on bio-terrorism, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War which was published on October 2, 2001. Miller also co-authored an article on Pentagon plans to develop a more potent version of weaponized anthrax, "U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits", published in Yhe New York Times on September 4, 2001, weeks before the first anthrax mailings. Miller also participated in a senior-level bio-terrorist attack simulation on Oklahoma City conducted on June 22-23, 2001 - Operation Dark Winter - her role was media reporter/observer.


Miller announced her retirement from the New York Times on November 9, 2005, citing among other reasons difficulty in performing her job effectively after having become an integral part of the stories she was sent to cover.<9> The announcement may not have been voluntary - her journalism had come under intense criticism with accusations that she had become a shill for the Bush administration. This criticism generally followed the line that her reporting of cherry-picked intelligence favorable to the administration's pro-war positions prior to the Iraq war reflected an uncomfortable "entanglement" with administration officials.



http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CEFDD143EF936A15756C0A9629C8B63

Russian Scientist Dies in Ebola Accident at Former Weapons Lab
By JUDITH MILLER
Published: Tuesday, May 25, 2004

[wildbilln864]

1. thank you! nt

:hi:

[JackRiddler]

2. Okay, we can't prove a thing...

but who here doesn't think the sender of this anthrax hoax letter was, in fact, Judith Miller herself? Or, at best, her publisher, or a PR agent? For what it's worth, that was my immediate thought back then.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Was there an investigation of who sent that letter?

[JackRiddler]

4. Don't recall any reports to that effect...

You can be certain it was handed over to the FBI, as were the many hundreds of hoax letters sent in the months before the real anthrax attacks. First of all, what are the chances there'd be any leads? Seriously, how hard can it be to get away with a hoax letter full of baby powder? (I remember they caught one guy who was doing hundreds of them). And ha, if she did it herself and then opened the envelope when she got it, what would her fingerprints prove?

Second: What priority do you figure they'd give it, with the real attacks happening? I wish, but unlike us they probably didn't think: hey, here's an opportunity to take down a neocon war propaganda infiltrator, a traitor posing as a journalist at the NYT as she does the dirty work of justifying aggressive war for Scooter, Chalabi and the Cheney regime. Nah. They bagged the baby powder (or the baking soda, or whatever it was), slapped a label on it, and put into it a warehouse bigger than the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And Judy got to go on TV to pimp her book and her lies.

(In context: In the weeks before 9/11 she had been hand-picked by the Pentagon to write a couple of limited-hangout articles about their anthrax biowarfare programs, once these had been exposed by the French at a UN forum.)

[seemslikeadream]

5. Didn't the FBI get the guy who anthrax hoax letters sent to, was it Citi Bank?

oh it was Chase


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1695140.stm

[bahadir]

16. there certainly was

they were sent without sender info

[Bolo Boffin]

6. Sounds good to me, on the face of it

Was the lettering on the Miller envelope ever released to public viewing? (I don't think there was a letter in there.)

[sofa king]

8. Um, I don't think that.

I think that the letter sent to Miller was sent by the perpetrators.

I think the perpetrators were the government of the United States of America.

[JackRiddler]

9. While we agree on the likely perpetrators of the real-anthrax attacks...

I don't see why Judy Miller couldn't figure out how to do herself what amounted to a huge favor in the way of book promotion. You probably agree that since it was a harmless powder, this was someone doing her a favor. And since it was a harmless powder, it could have been anyone doing it. Given her truly evil and shameless record I can't imagine any compunctions she would feel about doing this herself. Of course, we might also note she was tantamount to an agent of the Cheney regime.

What basis do you have for thinking as you do?

.

[sofa king]

11. The short version is this:

Miller's September 4, 2001 article is hardly flattering to the Bush Administration. It's been a long time since I actually read it, but it pretty clearly spells out the fact that the Bush Administration was violating treaties to make better biological weapons, hardly the sort of thing they would want known if the anthrax letters were already being planned.

But only ninety or so days later, Miller provided what may have been her first favor to the Bush Administration. On December 3, 2001, Miller called up an Islamic charity, asking them to comment on whether or not they were funding terrorists. The following day the DOJ raided that charity's offices. Miller's tip (and subsequent tip-off) clearly came from inside the Bush Administration, and one only has to look at the years of obstruction and foot-dragging that John Ashcroft later played on the Islamic charity issue to guess that something large is afoot there. (I could hazard a guess about what that issue is, but it's only more speculation. Also worthy of note is that this incident marked the first time Patrick Fitzgerald and Judith Miller bumped heads over disclosure of sources.)

So my guess is that sometime in those ninety days, Miller was recruited by the Bush Administration and began serving as an operative. The major incident in that time was the fake anthrax letter, so my guess is that was the recruitment letter, or "invitation," if you will. It could also be a deal-sealer for a prior arrangement, but again that arrangement must have been made sometime after September 4.

Whatever the case, by September of 2002 Miller was clearly in the Bush Administration basket, serving as one part of the "feedback loop" created where the Bush Admin tipped off Miller about aluminum tubes, then used Miller's article as "proof" that what they were saying was true. As I suggest in the post below, Miller's escapades in Iraq appear to be an attempt to set up a similar loop, which failed, and Miller's role in the Plame Affair seems to have similarities as well.

Note that if Miller sent the letter to herself, it could still be used as a coercive recruitment tool, should the Bush Administration have discovered it was a hoax (or knew it was a hoax, because they didn't send it). So your opinion is just as valid as mine.

[JackRiddler]

12. Let's have a look at the Sept. 4, 2001 article by Miller...

I don't think your idea is implausible at all - it's just too specific for my tastes, given how little we really know about the personal constellations behind the scenes. She could have been recruited at many times for her function on behalf of the "Mighty Wurlitzer" (Cheney version). I'd like to see her and a lot of other people hauled up before tribunals to be grilled under oath for days, to explore exactly when and how these relationships arose. My sense is that she was part of the neocon Iraq-attack disinformation network at a far earlier stage, and that this is how she got the kind of access that allowed her to pay visits to the Pentagon's anthrax facilities in the first place. But again, that doesn't rule out your idea.

Due to the quote limits on DU I'll start by quoting the beginnings of the two articles from Sept. 2001. As I read it, details of the programs were out and Miller was in a privileged position to report on them as a neutral-seeming friendly...



Sept. 4th:

U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits

September 4, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William J. Broad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04GERM.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons. The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.

Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare. The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug, which was first created by Russian scientists. A Bush administration official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final go-ahead later this month.

Two other projects completed during the Clinton administration focused on the mechanics of making germ weapons. In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market. The C.I.A. device lacked a fuse and other parts that would make it a working bomb, intelligence officials said.

At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials. Pentagon officials said the project demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs. Both the mock bomb and the factory were tested with simulants - benign substances with characteristics similar to the germs used in weapons, officials said.

A senior Bush administration official said all the projects were "fully consistent" with the treaty banning biological weapons and were needed to protect Americans against a growing danger. "This administration will pursue defenses against the full spectrum of biological threats," the official said.

SNIP

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E1D71639F937A3575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&&scp=26&sq=%22judith%20miller%22%20september%202001%20anthrax&st=cse

archive
http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2001nn/0109nn/010904nn.htm#320

------------------

Sept. 5th:

September 5, 2001
When Is Bomb Not a Bomb? Germ Experts Confront U.S.
By JUDITH MILLER

A former senior government lawyer yesterday vigorously disputed the Bush administration's assertion that the global treaty banning biological weapons permits nations to test such arms for defensive purposes.

The lawyer, Mary Elizabeth Hoinkes, who was general counsel of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1994 to 1999, said such an interpretation of the 1972 treaty was a ''gross misrepresentation'' that ''risks doing serious violence'' to an accord the United States has long championed.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the United States had made and tested a model of a small Soviet-designed biological bomb as part of a series of secret research projects that officials said were aimed at defending against a growing threat of a germ attack. The projects were begun under the Clinton administration and approved then by Pentagon and Central Intelligence officials, but Ms. Hoinkes said she did not know details of the project at the time. She refused to discuss it further.

The treaty bars nations from developing, acquiring or stockpiling biological weapons to be used for ''hostile purposes or in armed conflict.'' It permits experiments on microbes, provided that quantities are small and the purpose is defensive.

An administration official contended this week that the treaty also allows such experiments as long as the aim is ''protective,'' not hostile. The distinction, Ms. Hoinkes said, was ''too cute by half.''

SNIP

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00EFD71439F936A3575AC0A9679C8B63&pagewanted=print

[sofa king]

13. Yeah, I still don't know for sure.

The part that really pricks up my ears is that classic "no, it's not illegal" lie from "a senior Bush Administration official," which at best required some serious hair-splitting to be believable at the time.

By then, the Bush people had already perfected the news-cycle dance of "no it's not," followed by "well, it might be," followed by, "we'll get back to you," and ended with, "we already answered that question." Showing up the next day with an article quoting lawyers pooh-poohing the official position was hardly the best way to ingratiate one's self with those gangsters.

In that respect, at least, the Bush Administration is still treating Miller like all other reporters out there, flatly lying to her, and to a certain extent Miller appears to bite back. That part, at least, squares with my recollection of the articles being somewhat hostile.

Other parts of the articles, though, not so much. First and foremost is the fact that Miller already has access to senior officials. And how 'bout this line as a bit of CYA-in-advance:

"Several officials who served in senior posts in the Clinton administration acknowledged that the secretive efforts were so poorly coordinated that even the White House was unaware of their full scope."

Looks to me like someone in the Bush Administration took the time to find out.

I am reminded of the old joke about the First World War, which due to politics and geography hasn't worn very well since I first heard it: "A Yugoslavian killed a Yugoslavian in Yugoslavia, which naturally started World War I."

In this case it might be, "The Americans killed Americans with American anthrax in America, so they invaded Iraq."

[aldo]

15. Judith Miller, a shameless self promoter?

Judy, who actually worked for Cheney and Rove, who didn't bother to report to her editor? That Judy? That lieing POS? A fake anthrax letter would have been a felony. Of course, with her gubmint clearance . . .

[sofa king]

7. Just need to point out:

I helped write that section of the Wikipedia article.

What I didn't mention in that article, but which is certainly worthy of note, is that during the Iraq War Judith Miller became General Petraeus' best girl, and Miller had exclusive access to Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, the one unit in Iraq specifically charged with "finding" the non-existent WMDs. At one point, she ran off a Washington Post reporter who threatened to horn in on her gig. It also appears as if it was Miller herself who was directing the movements of MET Alpha, at least for a brief period of time.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/index3.html

Now here's where I depart from established fact and point out that if someone wanted to plant WMDs in Iraq, the way to do it would have been through MET Alpha, and Judy Miller would have been there to reap the rewards. In fact, the whole thing looks like a setup designed to net Miller another Pulitzer while she was carrying the Bush Administration's heavy water.

Why the WMDs were not "found" is also pretty obvious to me. Intelligence agencies around the globe knew that Bush's WMD stories were full of shit (all they had to do was ask an American intel person about it, 'cause they all knew it was bullshit, and many were not shy about saying it), and they no doubt turned their attention to the United States in order to make sure that Bush didn't succeed in planting false evidence. Judy Miller probably played an important role in killing the plant, too, probably by being totally compromised by foreign intelligence agencies.

Building upon that speculation, one wonders what foreign agencies know about the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal, and how and when they knew it.

[JackRiddler]

10. Yes, the MET Alpha story also incredible.

Thanks for reminding me of her role!

[defendandprotect]

14. May be Valerie Plame's investigations got in the way . . ????

There were at least two reports of attempts by US to plant WMD in Iraq ---

As I recall it, one said we sent in 75 guys -- only a small number survived.

Second attempt also failed.

Just got to your final line re VP . . .