Anthrax & The Lure Of Big Military Money
In September of 2001, Bruce Ivins was just an unappreciated bio terror researcher in a lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He lived just off the base and many days walked to work. Though we now know he was probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, he had access to the most dangerous toxins in the U.S. Army’s unrivaled storehouse. Ebola, Anthrax, smallpox, you name it, Bruce could get his hands on it. And then Bruce probably realized he didn’t have to be the mousy nerd any more. And he carefully sent out some anthrax letters.
F.B.I. investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Dr. Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field.
If that was the motive, it succeeded. In the years since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, killing five people, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs.
After the attacks, for example, an experimental vaccine Dr. Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed $877 million federal contract, though the deal collapsed two years later. Federal documents suggest that Dr. Ivins, along with several colleagues, might have earned royalties had the contract gone forward, but the deal ultimately collapsed.
According to some very reliable sources, Ivins was the main insider pushing the Steven Hatfill investigation , which ended with the government apologizing and paying Hatfill millions of dollars.
Two take-aways for me.
- How the fuck did this nut case get access to these labs? And what did we do in reaction? We added 10 times as many University and corporate labs that have access to this deadly stuff. This is insane.
- The lures to get in on the Homeland Security Gravy Train, a major topic of The Cost Of Empire, might move a truly mentally ill patient like Ivins, to kill people to get his patent taken seriously. It’s like a Batman villian. But for every truly crazy guy who made big money in the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) in the last 30 years, there are 100 Jack Abramoffs–just short of being institutionalized–we’d call them ambitious, who’ve made far more than Bruce Ivens.
Some were ambitious for money and some like Dick Cheney, who had already scored in the MIC Game, did it for power. The power to remake the American Constitution–to create a Defacto set of laws that concentrates power to the executive, backed by a conservative Supreme Court. Those laws allow the president to torture in contravention of the Geneva Convention of which we are a major signatory as Jane Mayer so brilliantly shows us in her new book The Dark Side
These de-facto laws allowed The President and Vice President to leak names of American undercover agents and classified documents to their propaganda wing in the establishment media. These laws allow the President and Vice President to read every one of your emails and listen ot all your calls through their IP vacuum pumps at the major switches. Anyone with any technical know how, knows that the decision as to whether your phone call is “of interest” is made after the IP splitter has sent you out of AT&T’s custody and into the government network.
While this frontal assault on the constitution was being carried out, Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater and the rest of their MIC cronies helped themselves to the public treasury. And don’t you believe for a minute John McCain would change any of these “de-facto laws” or reduce the power of the Military Industrial Complex.
By contrast, my guess is that Obama would look again at each of these decisions and make major changes.
We can do much better. We can restore the Constitution.
I agree there’s no chance McCain would do anything to correct the many egregious changes we’ve seen in our government’s relationship to the Constitution during the Bush administration. And like you I think this country badly needs Obama and the change his candidacy generally represents. But I’m also deeply disappointed in Obama for his recent vote on FISA. [See http://getfisaright.net/
Even if an Obama administration conducts itself with orders of magnitude more integrity than the current one -- as I believe it will -- this kind of erosion of civil liberties and privacy are like a ratchet, they only change in one direction. So while Obama's administration might not abuse its power, at some point in the future there will likely be other terrible, even Bush-like presidents who will take every opportunity to do so. At that point, if the constitutional mechanics of checks and balances have already been dismantled or reconfigured to grant essentially kingly power to the executive branch, and we've all gotten used to the idea that it's ok for the government to spy on all of us all the time, we'll be in even deeper trouble than we are now, when there's still at least some outrage at this illegitimate, illegal, un-American, fascist behavior of our so called leaders.
Perhaps Obama will reconsider when he becomes president; he did express concerns about the bill and certainly seems interested in listening to his supporters (virtually none of whom support the position, and nearly all of whom, if aware, oppose it). We need to pressure him to do exactly that.
I also have some hope that our maturing collective ability as citizens to use similar tools of transparency to shine a spotlight on what our elected representatives are actually doing, to turn the tables and essentially "spy" on our (supposedly open) government, will help. Jon Udell's recent writings on GovTrack and MAPLight are relevant here, see e.g. http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/07/23/kudos-for-maplights-visualization-of-congressional-activity/
and the Change Congress movement founded by Larry Lessig [http://change-congress.org/] is a force for good… but given the public’s lack of outrage against Bush et al, this may not be enough. If those of us paying attention do nothing, it certainly won’t be. So:
Write! Talk! Take action!
I agree there’s no chance McCain would do anything to correct the many egregious changes we’ve seen in our government’s relationship to the Constitution during the Bush administration. And like you I think this country badly needs Obama and the change his candidacy generally represents. But I’m also deeply disappointed in Obama for his recent vote on FISA. [See http://getfisaright.net/
Even if an Obama administration conducts itself with orders of magnitude more integrity than the current one -- as I believe it will -- this kind of erosion of civil liberties and privacy are like a ratchet, they only change in one direction. So while Obama's administration might not abuse its power, at some point in the future there will likely be other terrible, even Bush-like presidents who will take every opportunity to do so. At that point, if the constitutional mechanics of checks and balances have already been dismantled or reconfigured to grant essentially kingly power to the executive branch, and we've all gotten used to the idea that it's ok for the government to spy on all of us all the time, we'll be in even deeper trouble than we are now, when there's still at least some outrage at this illegitimate, illegal, un-American, fascist behavior of our so called leaders.
Perhaps Obama will reconsider when he becomes president; he did express concerns about the bill and certainly seems interested in listening to his supporters (virtually none of whom support the position, and nearly all of whom, if aware, oppose it). We need to pressure him to do exactly that.
I also have some hope that our maturing collective ability as citizens to use similar tools of transparency to shine a spotlight on what our elected representatives are actually doing, to turn the tables and essentially "spy" on our (supposedly open) government, will help. Jon Udell's recent writings on GovTrack and MAPLight are relevant here, see e.g. http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/07/23/kudos-for-maplights-visualization-of-congressional-activity/
and the Change Congress movement founded by Larry Lessig [http://change-congress.org/] is a force for good… but given the public’s lack of outrage against Bush et al, this may not be enough. If those of us paying attention do nothing, it certainly won’t be. So:
Write! Talk! Take action!
Though I concur with most of this post, the initial part of swallowing whole the disinfo on Ivins needs reconsideration. See Glenn Greenwald’s recent post.
Though I concur with most of this post, the initial part of swallowing whole the disinfo on Ivins needs reconsideration. See Glenn Greenwald’s recent post.
I actually believe that Obama is more concerned with healing the rift between Republicans and Democrats than with any “major changes” people hope he’ll make.
Politically that’s the prudent thing to do – Obama has recognized the ideological bankrupcy of the NeoCons and Republican party in general.
And he’s paving the way for many left-wing ideas to be taken up by the right wing as well.
Sort of a reverse Ronald Reagan.
Looking at his vote on the FISA bill (and his rhetoric surrounding it) I find it hard to believe he’s going to spend all his political capital on any radical legislation or politics.
His recent compromise on offshore drilling as well as continuing support for Ethanol, leads me to believe that he’s not going to challenge any entrenched policies.
His “change” is all about creating a new center. Not so much about making unpopular decisions.
Hope is good. And if anyone CAN make a difference – it’s him. But I wouldn’t let my own personal hopes and wishes get in the way of a pragmatic view of Obama’s presidency.
I’d suggest the same to others.
I actually believe that Obama is more concerned with healing the rift between Republicans and Democrats than with any “major changes” people hope he’ll make.
Politically that’s the prudent thing to do – Obama has recognized the ideological bankrupcy of the NeoCons and Republican party in general.
And he’s paving the way for many left-wing ideas to be taken up by the right wing as well.
Sort of a reverse Ronald Reagan.
Looking at his vote on the FISA bill (and his rhetoric surrounding it) I find it hard to believe he’s going to spend all his political capital on any radical legislation or politics.
His recent compromise on offshore drilling as well as continuing support for Ethanol, leads me to believe that he’s not going to challenge any entrenched policies.
His “change” is all about creating a new center. Not so much about making unpopular decisions.
Hope is good. And if anyone CAN make a difference – it’s him. But I wouldn’t let my own personal hopes and wishes get in the way of a pragmatic view of Obama’s presidency.
I’d suggest the same to others.
But the lucre, Signor Assante. The promise in every speech of an unprecedented spending spree on the People’s plastic. That’s not Centrism. And neither is it the least bit “new” or “fresh”.
But the lucre, Signor Assante. The promise in every speech of an unprecedented spending spree on the People’s plastic. That’s not Centrism. And neither is it the least bit “new” or “fresh”.
No, we didn’t increase access to anthrax. Nose around. Several of the best labs in anthrax had their programs shut down. One of the biggest problems: Many of the best graduate students were foreign. They went home at the end of the semester and couldn’t get back into the U.S.
Homeland Security shut down U.S. work to protect us from anthrax and other biological weapons, unintentionally, perhaps — but shut it down all the same.
And had a foreign power done the same? We’d call it an act of war.
Can’t we impeach for treason?
(Greenwald’s article is troubling. I can see Cheney’s office ginning up a poisoning incident to trigger war — was it really just coincidence the anthrax went to liberals and tough media, with the exception of National Enquirer? Greenwald lays out the case that our government created the anthrax scare, but he doesn’t connect the dots. Should we?)
No, we didn’t increase access to anthrax. Nose around. Several of the best labs in anthrax had their programs shut down. One of the biggest problems: Many of the best graduate students were foreign. They went home at the end of the semester and couldn’t get back into the U.S.
Homeland Security shut down U.S. work to protect us from anthrax and other biological weapons, unintentionally, perhaps — but shut it down all the same.
And had a foreign power done the same? We’d call it an act of war.
Can’t we impeach for treason?
(Greenwald’s article is troubling. I can see Cheney’s office ginning up a poisoning incident to trigger war — was it really just coincidence the anthrax went to liberals and tough media, with the exception of National Enquirer? Greenwald lays out the case that our government created the anthrax scare, but he doesn’t connect the dots. Should we?)
Ed, that’s scary about the idiocy of withholding student visas from the grad students who were doing all the work.
Many years ago, when I was a candidate myself, I learned inadvertently that my university had been engaged by the feds to find ways to attenuate Anthrax. I was sickened, as my school had a strict ban on secret research or defense research, per se. So I raised a ruckus among some of the faculty and asked their representative to take the matter to the Faculty Senate. The quite liberal Senate voted to continue the research, as they understood that one must first attenuate the awful stuff before one (or someone, like Ivins) can work on antidotes and vaccines. Their reasoning was that I and my sponsors were exactly wrong; that the projects did not constitute war work, but rather peace work.
I learned a lesson from that little imbroglio. And I thank you for catching these distinctions in the Ivins case. Still, I have so many questions about the lax security, but that’s for other folks to parse.
Ed, that’s scary about the idiocy of withholding student visas from the grad students who were doing all the work.
Many years ago, when I was a candidate myself, I learned inadvertently that my university had been engaged by the feds to find ways to attenuate Anthrax. I was sickened, as my school had a strict ban on secret research or defense research, per se. So I raised a ruckus among some of the faculty and asked their representative to take the matter to the Faculty Senate. The quite liberal Senate voted to continue the research, as they understood that one must first attenuate the awful stuff before one (or someone, like Ivins) can work on antidotes and vaccines. Their reasoning was that I and my sponsors were exactly wrong; that the projects did not constitute war work, but rather peace work.
I learned a lesson from that little imbroglio. And I thank you for catching these distinctions in the Ivins case. Still, I have so many questions about the lax security, but that’s for other folks to parse.
Ed, that’s scary about the idiocy of withholding student visas from the grad students who were doing all the work.
Many years ago, when I was a candidate myself, I learned inadvertently that my university had been engaged by the feds to find ways to attenuate Anthrax. I was sickened, as my school had a strict ban on secret research or defense research, per se. So I raised a ruckus among some of the faculty and asked their representative to take the matter to the Faculty Senate. The quite liberal Senate voted to continue the research, as they understood that one must first attenuate the awful stuff before one (or someone, like Ivins) can work on antidotes and vaccines. Their reasoning was that I and my sponsors were exactly wrong; that the projects did not constitute war work, but rather peace work.
I learned a lesson from that little imbroglio. And I thank you for catching these distinctions in the Ivins case. Still, I have so many questions about the lax security, but that’s for other folks to parse.