We have written here at Blue Jersey about Congressman Rush Holt's attempts to get answers about who was responsible for the Anthrax attacks when many have long moved on. Glenn Greenwald provides another reason why we need answers, courtesy of a key British official:
Britain is currently engulfed by a probing, controversial investigation into how their Government came to support the invasion of Iraq, replete with evidence that much of what was said at the time by both British and American officials was knowingly false, particularly regarding the unequivocal intention of the Bush administration to attack Iraq for months when they were pretending otherwise. Yesterday, the British Ambassador to the U.S. in 2002 and 2003, Sir Christopher Meyer (who favored the war), testified before the investigative tribunal and said this:
Meyer said attitudes towards Iraq were influenced to an extent not appreciated by him at the time by the anthrax scare in the US soon after 9/11. US senators and others were sent anthrax spores in the post, a crime that led to the death of five people, prompting policymakers to claim links to Saddam Hussein. . . .
On 9/11 Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, told Meyer she was in "no doubt: it was an al-Qaida operation" . . . It seemed that Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, argued for retaliation to include Iraq, Meyer said. . . .
But the anthrax scare had "steamed up" policy makers in Bush's administration and helped swing attitudes against Saddam, who the administration believed had been the last person to use anthrax.
Greenwald continued:
Here we have one of the most consequential political events of the last decade at least -- a lethal biological terrorist attack aimed at key U.S. Senators and media figures, which even the FBI claims originated from a U.S. military lab. The then-British Ambassador to the U.S. is now testifying what has long been clear: that this episode played a huge role in enabling the attack on Iraq. Even our leading mainstream, establishment-serving media outlets -- and countless bio-weapons experts -- believe that we do not have real answers about who perpetrated this attack and how. And there is little apparent interest in investigating in order to find out. Evidently, this is just another one of those things that we'll relegate to "the irrelevant past," and therefore deem it unworthy of attention from our future-gazing, always-distracted minds.
Yet another reason why it's so important that we get answers as to who was truly responsible for the Anthrax attacks. Unfortunately, many who would be able to get those answers seem uninterested in asking further questions and want to call the case closed.
I try to emulate his approach in holding NJ media accountable.
So here's a story I'd like to share.
After publishing my Op-Ed piece "No Teeth In 'Tough" Pollution Law" in October 2006, (see: http://www.peer.org/docs/nj/07... ) Star Ledger editors invited me to blog at their site, NJ Voices.
I published scores of stories there that focused on environmental issues. Several posts were critical of media coverage of environmental issues, particularly for failure to cover policy stories out of Trenton and hold DEP accountable. (see: http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wo... ).
So you could say I stepped on a lot of toes.
But my NJ Voices blog was terminated by Star Ledger editors without warning in June 2009 after posting about the debate on the Lieberman bill and Obama efforts to suppress the torture photo's. Editors agreed that I had not violated the user agreement, copyright laws, or posted inappropriate material. They explained the termination as related to trust and my failure to seek the pre-publication review of controversial material - even though pre-publication review was not even mentioned in the user agreement. This was obviously a pretext, so I think much more was going on, and that this controversial post was the last straw.
Well yesterday, after posting the below comment, I was banned from even posting comments there.
As you can see, all I was trying to do was emulate Greenwald's approach in holding media accountable - ironically, my post was on a column about searching for voices of reason in the health care debate:
Posted by nohesitation on 08/25/09 at 8:06PM
Perhaps the media has a responsibility and a role to evaluate the various "claims" against facts in search of truth. Oh, but this might take some real work and anger powerful interests (insurance, big Pharma, et al).
Instead, seeking "balance", the media portrays the debate" as a "he said she said". The "intelligent design" advocates and global warming denial "science" claims fit this dynamic - they manufacture false debates - e.g. claiming there is a valid scientific debate on evolution.
The media has abdicated its responsiblity. This enables lies and propaganda to flourish.
The swiftboat operation of the anti-health care forces is a sophisticated campaign - Town Hells. There are plenty of facts already in the public record to support the fact that organized economic forces are inhtentionally poisoning and polarizing the debate to scare and manipulate well meaning but poorly informed people (e.g. the death panels, et al)
Yet, media can't seem to call them out for it.
This column is a perfect illustration of this failure.
Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.
In mid-2008, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in a case bearing his name -- ruled that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was unconstitutional because it denied Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus (i.e., to have the validity of the accusations against them reviewed by a court). When, pursuant to that decision, Boumediene finally had a U.S. court review the accusations against him in November, 2008, a federal judge -- the far right, Bush-43-appointed Richard Leon -- ruled there was no credible evidence to justify his detention (as well as the detention of four other Algerian-Bosnian detainees) and ordered them all released immediately. In other words, Boumediene spent almost 8 years in a Guantanamo cage, being brutally tortured, despite there being no evidence (as Bosnian courts had already found) that he had done anything wrong at all. I wrote about Boumediene's story in detail here.
Here is an interview with Lakhdar following his release:
(1) The central premise of all discussions about Guantanamo -- still -- is always that the people who are detained there are "Terrorists." They're the Worst of the Worst. Media figures and many citizens just uncritically believe -- and constantly assert -- that Guantanamo detainees are "Terrorists" even though they've had no trial and it's just the Government's claim that they're "dangerous." We repeatedly saw that premise asserted during the recent debate over Obama's proposal of indefinite detention ("There are dangerous Terrorists who he can't release!"). If this episode doesn't demonstrate the extreme dishonesty of that premise -- of assuming that people who have had no trials are Terrorists simply because the Government claims this -- what would demonstrate it?
(2) Those who voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- all GOP Senators (except Chafee) and Democrats Jay Rockefeller, Ken Salazar, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Tim Johnson, Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Ben and Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and Joe Lieberman, plus 219 GOP and 34 Democratic House members -- were in favor of keeping people like Boumediene at Guantanamo indefinitely without any right of judicial review. The only reason Boumediene was released is because the Supreme Court (by a 5-4 vote) ruled that law unconstitutional and he was thus able to have a court review the evidence (i.e., the lack thereof) against him.
Does anyone object to the term "moral depravity" being applied to those in Congress who voted to keep completely innocent people in cages for life without any opportunity to have a court review the accusations against them? If these members of Congress had their way, these completely innocent individuals would still be encaged at Guantanamo.
Many politicians try to boil this down to talking points about letting terrorists loose on the streets. But what about the people like this, who are branded a terrorist without review or trial and don't get to see the street again? And for those who think he got a review and that's how he got out, that's after nearly eight years.
Congressman Holt still hasn't gotten the answers he wants from the FBI on the 2001 anthrax attacks and he has re-introduced legislation to establish a commission to investigate. Here's his speech from the floor:Holt has pushed all along for answers on the person truly responsible for the anthrax attacks, not settling when the latest suspect (according to the FBI), died last year. Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com has more on the situation:
I've writtenrepeatedly and atlength about the huge questions that still remain with regard to the anthrax attacks, with a particular focus on the early and quite successful efforts (aided by ABC News' Brian Ross) to blame the attacks in the public's mind on Saddam Hussein, followed by the extremely unconvincing FBI assertion last year that it was now-deceased U.S. Army research scientist Bruce Ivins, and Ivins alone, who perpetrated that attack. The FBI's case is riddled with glaring inconsistencies and numerous internal contradictions, enormous evidentiary holes, and pretenses of scientific certainty that are quite dubious (my interview with a scientist specializing in biosecurity over some of the scientific holes in the FBI's case is here). Doubts about the FBI's case continue to emerge.
Holt's skepticism about the FBI's claims is notable for several reasons. It was Holt's Congressional district from which the anthrax letters were apparently sent, and the attacks imposed a serious disruption on the lives of his constituents. More significantly, Holt, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, is a trained physicist. Before entering Congress, he taught physics as a faculty member at Swarthmore College and also headed the State Department's Nuclear and Scientific Division of the Office of Strategic Forces during the Reagan administration. Both his interest in this matter and his knowledge of it are at least as great as any other member of Congress. That he maintains extreme skepticism over the FBI's case and vehemently believes in the need for an independent investigation should, by itself, be quite compelling to any rational person (I interviewed Holt about the anthrax case in September of last year -- here).
The Greenwald piece is a really good read. There are some parts of the story that just don't add up. Holt's idea for an independent commission could help answer any remaining questions. It will look at the incident, why it wasn't prevented and what we can do to stop the attacks in the future. Unfortunately this won't be the last time we face a chemical attack using biological weapons. It would make more sense to get the answers now, rather than try to make it go away. We don't want to find ourselves dealing with an even larger disaster in the future because we didn't learn the lessons when we had the chance.
You hit the nail on the head regarding Joe Klein and the wobblies in congress that listen to him. I was a Dem congressman for 14 years representing Dallas and eight rural counties in North Texas, hardly a liberal consitituency. I had only one close race (1994) in seven congressional elections, in spite of votes against Reagan's Central American war, GWH Bush's first Gulf War, and all the Repub social demagoguery, and was never defeated for reelection. My experience was that a majority of voters prefer a candidate with strong stand on the issues to one who is in exact agreement witth their own views.
