Why was WH Staff given Cipro on 9/11, a month before Anthrax was detected?

[elehhhhna]

Why was the White House staff given the powerful anthrax antibiotic Cipro on 9/11, a full month before the first cases of anthrax were reported?


"Evidence obtained through Judicial Watch and confirmed by multiple press reports suggest that White House staff had been given doses of the powerful antibiotic Cipro at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks, one month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill." - Judicial Watch

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/newsletter/2002/0802k.shtml

[gademocrat7]

1. Inquiring minds want to know.

Just protect the shrub cabal. The rest of America be damned.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Is it really unraveling, now? n/t

MKJ

[OhioChick]

3. One can hope. n/t

[elehhhhna]

11. YES. Can't you FEEL IT? I can.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

36. I can't. n/t

[Raksha]

54. I can feel it too. n/t

[porphyrian]

4. And why has no one been found responsible yet?

I mean, if we're asking questions we suspect we know the answer to.

[elehhhhna]

13. Perp was secretly pardoned already? It's plausible.

[Nozebro]

5. Maybe they were just being cautious! EOM

mt

[Sydnie]

About what? Why protect for that and not give them gas masks and

bullet proof vests too?

Cautious my ass.

[silverweb]

6. Ummmm... let's see.

ummm.... uhhh... hmmm.... OH!

:think:

Insider information???

Ya think?

[rodeodance]

7. JW Sues Bush Administration For Anthrax Docs

.....JW Sues Bush Administration For Anthrax Docs
Seeks Documents About Terrorist Attack that Killed At least Five

On June 7, JW filed lawsuits against the FBI, Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Postal Service, and a top military research facility for their failure to respond to JW¹s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the anthrax attacks.

Evidence obtained through Judicial Watch and confirmed by multiple press reports suggest that White House staff had been given doses of the powerful antibiotic Cipro at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks, one month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill.

At the heart of Judicial Watch¹s investigation is the treatment of those in power versus ordinary citizens. Judicial Watch currently represents hundreds of postal workers from the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington, D.C. It was through this facility that the anthrax-laced letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy were processed.

At the same time staff from The White House and Capitol Hill were treated with antibiotics, postal workers handling contaminated mail were ordered to continue working without medical care. Two of those workers died from inhalation anthrax, while dozens more suffer, even today, from a variety of ailments resulting from the attacks. Thus far, a total of eight postal workers have died since September 11.

[rodeodance]

10. looky---obviously WH had the information (others did not):

....."It’s like our lives are not as important," said Melvin Thweatt, an employee at the Brentwood facility, in an interview with CNN. During a hearing before Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson testified that he was "frustrated at times," in his efforts to obtain and disseminate information on anthrax. According to the New York Times, Thompson said he "could not disclose all the information that might be important to public health because some was classified and some was restricted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

[Sydnie]

8. Didn't they track that down as military grade?

If I recall correctly, all Anthrax (and all biological weapons for that matter) has a "signature" so they can tell just where it came from if they need to. Didn't the stuff sent in those letters get tracked back to our miltary? Could they have KNOWN that it was about to be mailed out because they gave it out for that purpose?

Strapping it on ... :tinfoilhat:

The Path to 9/11

[John Q. Citizen]

19. Here's an article from the Wa Po

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28334-2002Oct...

FBI's Theory On Anthrax Is Doubted
Attacks Not Likely Work Of 1 Person, Experts Say

By Guy Gugliotta and Gary Matsumoto
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 28, 2002; Page A01

A significant number of scientists and biological warfare experts are expressing skepticism about the FBI's view that a single disgruntled American scientist prepared the spores and mailed the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people last year.

These sources say that making a weaponized aerosol of such sophistication and virulence would require scientific knowledge, technical competence, access to expensive equipment and safety know-how that are probably beyond the capabilities of a lone individual.

"In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them," said Richard O. Spertzel, chief biological inspector for the U.N. Special Commission from 1994 to 1998. "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."

Instead, suggested Spertzel and more than a dozen experts interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks, investigators might want to reexamine the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism, or try to determine whether weaponized spores may have been stolen by the attacker from an existing, but secret, biodefense program or perhaps given to the attacker by an accomplice.

The Defense Department and FBI refused repeated requests from The Post to discuss recent developments in the anthrax investigation. But in some important respects, the official version of events -- developed in part during the early, frantic days of the probe -- is at odds with the available evidence, the experts say. (...)

[Sydnie]

23. So, the FBI says one thing and the admin says

No, no no. That's not right.

Par for the course with this admin.

[John Q. Citizen]

26. The "state sponcerd terrorism" statement from the biologist

is interesting in light of the fact that the strain came from the US Army.

Perhaps that's why the case remains unsolved.

And then when we see who the targets were, one has to wonder.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. I suspect that Fort Detrick had a breach, and that the anthrax was

found missing even before 9/11 hit. They probably didn't know where it would have ended up, or they would have given those postal workers the Cipro too.

[IChing]

15. The timeline thanks to Jack Ridder

This is from Jack Ridder's post here:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=113377&mesg_id=114111

FBI approved destruction of evidence on Oct. 10 as investigation underway

First, let's start with a smoking gun. I'll post a timeline of essential points below.

A story that appeared complete only in the print edition of NY Times revealed that the FBI "approved" (demanded?) the destruction of the original samples of of the Ames strain of anthrax, although an investigation into the Bob Stevens case was underway and although the anthrax was already known to have originated with this strain.

The Ames strain original vials were destroyed by Dr. James Roth of the College of Veterinary Sciences at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, on Oct. 10-11, 2001, several days after news of the first anthrax case was reported. The official rendering is that the college wished to destroy the samples for security reasons, aked for and received permission to do so from the FBI and the CDC. Destruction of these vials may have made it impossible to determine when exactly the anthrax strain used in the attacks was first isolated historically, and therefore how widespread it was at facilities around the world. However, in the story Dr. Roth says he thinks "they" (CDC and FBI) had the samples anyway.

New York Times, Friday November 9, 2001

LESS COMPLETE electronic versions are archived at
http://www.wanttoknow.info/011109nytimes
http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2001nn/0111nn/011109nn.htm

Print edition - relevant passages transcribed

IN ANTHRAX CASE, SOME SEE MISSTEPS AND LOST CHANCES
UNSTEADY F.B.I. INQUIRY
Destroying Bacteria Samples is Just One Stumble Cited by Variety of Experts

This article was reported and written by William J. Broad, David Johnston, Judith Miller and Paul Zielbauer.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's inquiry into the anthrax attacks has stumbled in several key areas and may have missed opportunities to gather valuable evidence as criminal investigators have been unable to fully and quickly grasp the scientific complexities of the case.



<...>

Several experts, including some on whom the F.B.I. has relied, said the anthrax investigation has taken some wrong turns.

Several weeks ago, the F.B.I. said it had no objection to the destruction of a collection of anthrax samples at Iowa State University, but some scientists involved in the investigation now say that collection may have contained genetic clues valuable to the criminal inquiry.

Criminal investigators have not visited many of the companies, laboratories and academic institutions with the equipment of or capability to make the kind of highly potent anthrax sent in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle...

<...>

Last month, after consulting with the F.B.I., Iowa State University in Ames destroyed anthrax spores collected over more than seven decades and kept in more than 100 vials. A variant of the so-called Ames strain had been implicated in the death of a Florida man from inhalation anthrax, and the university was nervous about security.

Now a dispute has arisen, with scientists in and out of government saying the rush to destroy the spores may have eliminated crucial evidence about the anthrax in the letters sent to Congress and the media.

The Ames strain was originally isolated at Iowa State, but just when is in dispute. If they could have solved the mystery of its origins - by comparing the signatures of the anthrax DNA in the letters to those of the anthrax DNA in the archive - scientists might have been able to track the germ's distribution over the zears. And that, in turn, might have given investigators important clues about the killer's identity.

Martin E. Hugh-Jones, an anthrax expert at Louisiana State University who is aiding the fedeal investigation, said the mystery is likely to persist. "If those cultures were still alive," he said, they could have helped in "clearing up the muddy history."

Experts say it is as if federal investigators now have a bullet, but no idea if the bullet factory opened 20, 50 or 70 years ago, and little insight into where its lethal goods were shipped.

Ronald M. Atlas, president-elect of the American Society of Microbiology, the world's largest group of germ professions, based in Washington, said the legal implications could be large. "Potentially," he said, "it loses evidence that would have been useful" in the criminal investigation.

"We didn't recommend one way or another whether they should destroy it," said Larry Holmquist, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Omaha, which runs the bureau's Iowa operations. "But we did say it had no evidentiary basis. There was a decision reached that there was no significance to them keeping it for evidentiary reasons."...

<...>



Intertwined with the mystery of the Ames strain's origin is the question of whether it was used in America's abandoned effort to develop anthrax as a weapon, which took place between 1943 and 1969, when President Nixon renounced germ warfare.



The scientific literature is contradictory. A 1986 paper by Army researchers said the strain did not arise until 1980. But a paper in 2000 by Dr. Hugh-Jones, Paul J. Jackson of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University and five other anthrax researhcers asserted that the Ames strain played a central role in the American biological warfare program.

If true, that could raise the question of whether the perpetrators of the current crimes learned of the American recipe or even found and exploited lost anthrax stockpiles.

Caree Vander Linden, spokeswoman for the Army's germ defense lab at Fort Detrick, Md., said officials there had not investigated if the Ames strain was used in the old weapons program.

The Iowa State archive was destroyed on Oct. 10 and 11, after relatively brief deliberations with the F.B.I., said Julie Johnson, an official in environmental and safety at Iowa State. The F.B.I., she said, "told us we didn't need to keep it for evidence."

It is unclear if the F.B.I. understood that Iowa State destroyed many strains of anthrax, or that the origins of the Ames strain were cloudy. Mr. Holmquist of the F.B.I. in Omaha said the rationale for the destruction had been "sent out to numerous places" around the globe in the past "40 or 50 years."

Tom Ridge, the White House director of homeland security, confirmed publicly that the tainted letters contained the Ames strain on Oct. 25, two weeks after the destruction.

Iowa State says it won destruction approval not only from the F.B.I. but from the fedeal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are involved in the federal investigation.

James A. Roth, a microbiologist at the College of Veterinary Medicine who presided over the destruction, said the university's records on its anthrax strains were extremely limited and that the labeling on the vials was often cryptic, leaving officials unsure exactly how many strains the university had.

Even so, "we think they had all the strains already," he said of the F.B.I. and the C.D.C.

The oldest strain in the collection dated to 1928. If the Ames strain was similarly old, experts said, it is conceivable that the potent germs were distributed far more widely than conventional wisdom holds.

Since the destruction, Dr. Roth said, the university has heard nothing from the F.B.I. about anthrax. As for whether the destroyed strains might have clarified the origins of Ames, he said, "now we'll never know."

www.newamericancentury.org
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/9_11_-_all_the_proof_you...
www.madcowprod.com
and read Paul Thompson's timeline!

[IChing]

12. boy I brought this up 4 times today and the threads died.

September 18th 2001 scared the shit out of anyone who opened mail

which was the largest terrorist act against the nation
that affected millions personally in their day to day life.
I want this to be remembered by Americans and have them give us some answers.

[elehhhhna]

16. been there, IChing. Just have to keep at it...

sometimes it hits, sometimes not. Thank you for your persistence.

[IChing]

17. I want it brought up in the media

During these times so the public think, oh yeah, I remember being afraid of opening my mail
I thought about it every-time did during those weeks, not too much but it was on my mind when I picked up my mail.

[elehhhhna]

20. Keep kicking this & it might. Lotsa lurkers out there.

[elehhhhna]

34. so email Keith, Lou, Katie Couric (lol, right) etc. w/ links...

I've gotten some headway by doing so. We all can.
Media's lazy and if you HAND them a story...

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

18. Truer words....

:hi: MKJ

[MH1]

14. Anthrax? What anthrax?

There hasn't been any terra attack on American soil since 9/11, remember?

You and JW must have imagined that whole anthrax thing.

:sarcasm:

[mslawstudent]

21. This is what convinced me the BA was complicit in 9/11

Waiting for the children, the way the towers fell, delays in investigation were all suspicious but not damning. The anthrax attacks came at a time when there was a growing outcry for investigations into 9/11. Those attacks primarily accomplished closure of congress for that period of time and when it reopened the urgency of conducting an investigation had passed and the Bush Administration had spent the time killing the idea of an investigation. Taking a drug with serious side effects used primarily to prevent anthrax infections before public knowledge of an anthrax attack that closed down congress sealed the deal for me.
Some part of the Bush admistration knew and was complicit in some form in 9/11. I don't know how or who exactly but some faction.

That's my opinion.

[elehhhhna]

41. The mailings to the media sent a hell of a message :STFU or you're dead.

Sounds like a Cheney thing to me.

[teryang]

43. Why no progress in the anthrax investigation?

Obstruction of justice.

Why doesn't Congress have hearings on this? Why isn't Gonzales called on the carpet for this by Congress? Congress was the victim, yet they do nothing to inform the public or hold the administration accountable. It was obviously an inside job, meant to intimidate the press and Congress.

[Nikki Stone 1]

47. I agree with you on this: Remember too that

The unPATRIOTic Act was up for vote in Congress just after these attacks. This act was seen as the way to prevent another 9/11 from happening, even as the BA was trying to stall any real investigation into it.

And remember the Washington sniper case, right around the "Homeland Security" Act vote. When Congress went on break and talked to their consituents back home, all the constituents wanted to talk about was the sniper, not the Homeland Security Act.

I think both the anthrax scare and the sniper were political theater--distractions with some minimal collateral damage to keep the American people and a Democratically controlled Senate (until 2003) from investigating 9/11 for real, and from fighting the more draconian legislation of this administration, but keeping them as scared and panicked as possible. It's basically "look over here!" and "be very afraid!" PR with a few deaths.

[Karenina]

22. WHY was FEMA in NYC

on September 10th?

[IChing]

24. Because they thought it was New Orleans 5 years later?

LOL

Not just there but ...........

[SlavesandBulldozers]

you mean 5 years and 2 weeks.

;)

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. Don't know about September 10th, but I do know that FEMA knew in

early 2001, there were three major incidents that could occur in the U.S.:

(1) An attack in NYC
(2) A breach of the levees in New Orleans
(3) An earthquake in San Francisco.

[bobthedrummer]

27. I've stated the following facts for years with the focus on Tommy Thompson

former Governor of my State.

As head of DHHS Tommy hired former NYC "biological defense expert" Jerome Hauer from SAIC on September 10, 2001.

Immediately after the attacks of 9/11 but before any indication of any type of biological attack (let alone a specific weaponized anthrax attack that came from the US Ames strain spores and was weaponized by the US Army for the end user our CIA) Thompson and Hauer promoted the use of Bayer's Cipro, an antidote for anthrax, within the government of George W. Bush. Bayer is a business spin-off company from I.G. Farben.

Later, as U.S, Postal Service employees and others were exposed in HOT ZONES Thompson bragged about his negotiating skills with the Germans at Bayer for 300 million doses of Cipro.

I must also report that Tommy Thompson did get classification authority for DHHS, and that he is a lying war profiteer that left a legacy of massive corruption in Wisconsin.

Tommy Thompson as Wisconsin's Governor hired eugenicists like "The Bell Curve" co-author Charles Murray to shape policy on the Wisconsin Works!/W2 welfare reform program which became the model for the federal government and some other nations-including Israel.

Tommy Thompson was a major force behind privatization schemes and was supported by leading neo-conservative Wisconsin resources like the Bradley Foundation, Michael Joyce, The Pettites, Wallace Hilliard.
Tommy Thompson helped make Madison a world center of genetic modification, cloning and stem cell research.
..well now I'm going off-topic.

Today Tommy is lobbying for Applied Digital, maker of the Radio Frequency Identification Chip trademarked VeriChip. Tommy was going to have one implanted in himself but he backed out.

Jerome Hauer is an executive with Hollis Eden Pharmaceuticals-they make all kinds of vaccines and do classified "research".

They are fascists and worse. How did they know to take precaution by promoting Cipro well before any indication of an anthrax attack???

No arrests have ever been made in the anthrax attacks.

[elehhhhna]

35. bob, that should be it's own thread. Please. It's a doozy.

[elehhhhna]

38. Pls. see this, bobthed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2090584

[lumpy]

49. Kick

v

[midnight]

57. I'm in Wisconsin, and now have seen Wisconsin become a

brain drain state over the last years of his administration here. I quess the real nail in the coffin was his tax rebate to the citizens of wisconsin. This drained the coffers, but ensured him nairly being re-elected. You are about the Gop goverened legislation being corrupt.

[leesa]

28. Was it Rumsfeld who made the big bucks on this one? I forget whose

profiteering moment this was. Then they spread a little army Cipro around to scare the Dems back into their burrows.

[bobthedrummer]

29. Rumsfeld made at least $5M off of bird flu vaccine. eom

[Old and In the Way]

30. I recall reading, at the time, that Cipro is not a preventative therapy

but is administered after the existance of anthrax has been established. So, why did they take it? Was someone handling it in the WH? It takes weeks for the infection to develop...so, they haven't told us the whole truth as to why they were put on Cipro.

from the CDC-

In the event that persons are exposed to potentially aerosolized Bacillus anthracis spores, what will CDC recommend to prevent inhalation anthrax?
CDC will recommend 60 days of selected oral antibiotics in conjunction with a 3-dose regimen (0, 2 weeks, 4 weeks) of anthrax vaccine (BioThraxT, formerly known as AVA) as an emergency public health intervention. Two major U.S. national advisory bodies have considered strategies for post-exposure prophylaxis for prevention of inhalation anthrax among individuals exposed to potentially aerosolized B. anthracis spores. Both groups, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the John Hopkins Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, concluded that based on available data, the best means for prevention of inhalation anthrax is prolonged antibiotic therapy in conjunction with anthrax vaccination. In addition, a recent Institute of Medicine Report on anthrax vaccine safety and efficacy also concluded that based on limited animal studies, anthrax vaccine administered in combination with antibiotics following exposure to B. anthracis spores may help to prevent the development of inhalation anthrax. BioThraxT is not licensed for post-exposure prophylaxis for prevention of inhalation anthrax, or for use in a 3-dose regimen; therefore, this program would be conducted under an Investigational New Drug (IND) application.

Not sure how recent the report is, but I don't believe Cipro was considered to be a recognized therapy for preventing an Anthrax infection back in 2001.

[bobthedrummer]

31. Well Thompson and Hauer certainly knew-they began promoting

Cipro use immediately after 9/11.

[elehhhhna]

39. Someone in the WH? Sure! Cheney probably eats anthrax for breakfast.

[Little Star]

32. Keith O would be

a good person to remind about this.

[elehhhhna]

42. google Countdown's webpage. It has an email link.

I stopped wishing & started emailing recently. It works. Especially if they get several on the same topic. It only takes 2 minutes. A 2 sentence letter and a link is all you need to type.

[dogday]

33. Just another one of those strange Coincidences that

Bush and Co. keep having, but mind you, we can't question such things or we would be accused of being some :tinfoilhat: person....

[leftofthedial]

37. is this a rhetorical question?

[SlavesandBulldozers]

40. lol

seriously.

:spray:

[Taxloss]

44. Cipro isn't for anthrax alone, it's powerful against a broad spectrum

of different infections - the strongest antibiotic commericially available, I think. So if you thought a biological attack was a possibility, or a likelihood, Cipro would be the obvious choice of counter-agent.

In short, stocking up on Cipro doesn't mean they were expecting anthrax specifically - just that they were expecting a biological attack. But the fact that it was ordered hardly inspires confidence!

[file83]

45. True, HOWEVER, the fact that shortly after this our country was IN FACT

attacked with anthrax begs the questions:

What did they know, and WHEN did they know it?

And most importantly: Why weren't the American people informed of said threat???!!???

Just like the Ground Zero air toxicity issue - the government KNEW there was a threat - but did nothing about it...now people are dying of lung diseases...nice.

Which comes back to the LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) 9/11 theory - Did the government KNOW we would be attacked and did NOTHING to inform the public of such said threat???!!???

[Taxloss]

50. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?

The one fact does not guarantee the other. Perhaps they knew nothing, and were taking precautions against the sort of attack that the fevered speculation endemic at the time told us to expect. The air was full of wild imaginings.

But the anthrax saga is one that deserves far more intense scrutiny from the press and the authorities, it is right to demand that scrutiny, and it is mystifying as to why those attacks have been forgotten. You might be surprised to hear that I consider LIHOP (or even MIHOP) to be far more credible in this instance than it is in the case of the 9/11 attacks themselves. Credible theories, but certainly only theories among many, many theories.

[file83]

51. Good point....

but if your neighbor installed a fire sprinkler system on his roof, and then 1 month later a fire breaks out in the forest behind both your houses and it burns your house down - aren't you going to investigate that - regardless of circumstance?

[Taxloss]

52. Sure, absolutely!

Which is exactly why I would love to see the anthrax business investigated more thoroughly and openly. It's strange that the press isn't shouting about it, and it's perfectly reasonable to consider that this odd silence is suspicious.

[file83]

53. Me too. As soon as it was found out that the anthrax came from

our government supplies - the investigation suddenly stopped. That's how I remember it at least.

[McCamy Taylor]

46. Anthrax was a US military test on US civilans we all know that.

The US military has conducted similar tests before. We are their guinea pigs for biological warfare. They cant study the effects if they test this stuff on foreign populations.

Geez, asking questions that we all know the answers to.

[Poiuyt]

48. Why was John Ashcroft told not to fly in commercial planes months

before 911?

[elehhhhna]

55. That was Runny Rumsfeld, iirc. Was A'croft warned too?

[Laurab]

56. Yes

I've heard and read many times about Ashcroft, never about rumsfled, and I've read a LOT!

[Cobalt-60]

58. They don't know about Coventry, do they?

Churchill didn't warn Coventry that they knew it was to be bombed by the Germans.
It would have given away Ultra the code breaking program that let the Allies read Nazi messages.
Apparently they didn't realize that this action is a clear admission of fore knowledge of the anthrax attack.
What a bunch of pikers.

[lumpy]

59. Planned scare tactic ?

A not so subtle warning to all? Anything is possible with this administration.