Did White House Officials Pressure the FBI to Blame Anthrax Attacks on Al Qaeda?

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise at 5:22 AM on August 6, 2008.

An interesting item from Saturday's New York Daily News:

WASHINGTON - In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens, Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, "There may be some possible link" to Bin Laden, adding, "I wouldn't put it past him." Vice President Cheney also said Bin Laden's henchmen were trained "how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together."

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S. senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. "Very quickly [Fort Detrick, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the ex-FBI official said. "They couldn't go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next. [NYDN]

This item relies on anonymous sources. I'd like to a name attached to these claims.

The source's account seems plausible in light of the Bush administration's extensive record of public deception on matters pertaining to national security.

It's interesting that the anonymous source is saying that the pressure was to link the attacks to Al Qaeda and not to Saddam Hussein.

We know there was a neoconservative propaganda effort to tie the anthrax to Iraqi weapons programs via false claims that the anthrax used in the US attacks contained traces of an additive found only in anthrax made in Iraq.

These false claims originated with anonymous sources cited by ABC News. They claimed to have knowledge of tests conducted at Fort Detrick. Note that the FBI's current prime suspect in the anthrax attacks, the late Dr. Bruce Ivins, was employed as a bioweapons specialist at Fort Detrick at the time.

Tagged as: bush, saddam hussein, anthrax, fbi, al-qaeda, bruce ivins

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.