The Anthrax attacks: YOUR turn to play "Profiler"

Great Debates
1

Up front, I have NO expertise on Anthrax, no background in criminology, NO inside information about the person(s) sending out anthrax-infected letters… in short, my opinion means little here. But I’m going to offer it anyway. You are not only free, but ENCOURAGED to offer your own takes and theories.

Do I believe that Arabs or fundamentalist Moslems are behind the recent anthrax attacks? No, I don’t. As horrible as it is that 3 people have died, and many more have been put through an ordeal, the fact remains, whoever HAS been behind these attacks is strictly a small-timer. He’s a penny-ante crook, who’s accomplishing little, but getting lots of publicity. To me, that means that the guilty party is a home-grown product… undoubtedly a white American.

My hunch is, the guy who’s doing this is the same kind of jerk who writes computer viruses: namely, a highly intelligent guy with no people skills, who’s ended up working at a job he thinks is beneath him.

The guys who write computer viruses are the super-nerds with Ph. D’s in computer engineering, but who end up working in mailrooms because they can’t hold “real” jobs in the real world.

In the anthrax case, my profile of the killer is this: A middle-aged white guy with an advanced degree in microbiology who’s ended up working as a flunky or lab assistant in some pharmaceutical firm. He’s convinced that he’s the most brilliant scientist on earth, and that “office politics” are the only reason he isn’t CEO.

I suspect the guy will be nailed soon, because he’s SO freaking proud of himself right now that he can’t possibly keep it to himself. He’s obviously got a HUGE ego, which explains why he sent letters to so many big media outlets (when he’s watching the TV in his mother’s basement, he’s probably jumping up and down on his bed, as Brokaw and Rather read the news). He’ll feel an unyielding urge to tell people what a cool thing he’s done.

I’m concinced that ,when he’s revealed, we’ll find a Ted Kaczynski-ish loser behind the whole affair- NOT Osama Bin Laden.

2

OK, the handwriting on the envelopes looks to me as if it has been copied as a picture, not writing (i.e. as if the Roman alphabet is something with which the sender is unfamiliar, either that or it has been copied with the envelope deliberately inverted in an attempt to disguise the handwriting) The characters had a peculiar flattish look to their tops.

The text of the letter to Tom Brokaw contained a the word ‘Penicillin’ spelt as ‘Penacilin’, which strikes me as more of a ‘western internet community’ kind of spelling mistake.

There’s another spelling mistake on the envelope too; I think we would have to consider these deliberate if we are to entertain the ‘educated disgruntled lab assistant’ hypothesis.

Of course, I’m not any kind of expert on any of this, so the above should be taken with a modicum of NaCl.

3

According to the news reports I’ve been watching this morning (and if anyone can confirm or refute this please do, our 6am news isn’t known for letting facts get in the way of a good headline), it’s now being publicly acknowledged by both the CDC and the FBI that the anthrax hitting the US mail system is “weapons grade”. That very strongly suggests that Biopreparat is the original source.

I’m not convinced that bin Laden and al-Quaeda are behind the anthrax attacks (if only because there are “better” biochemical weapons to which they have access); my gut instinct is that this is the work of another terrorist network, rather than the demented action of an individual. (sorry, I’m currently studying criminology and my son is studying forensic science, so we have a tendency in our household at the moment to try to assess what’s happening in the world right now according to our respective fields). I don’t believe that if even the most tenuous link had been established between the anthrax attacks and ObL, it wouldn’t have been all over CNN. The FBI has no reason whatsoever to keep any proven or suspected links quiet (quite the reverse, in fact).

I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but every instinct I have is screaming at me that another “enemy” is taking advantage of the fact that just about anything which goes wrong in the US right now is bound to be blamed on ObL.

4

Well I think regarding the OP I would say that I do not in any way think this is a home grown criminal. There are many facets to my deduction. First of all the Al Quaeda and the Taliban, and other Terror Groups are not saying peep about this, this in itself I think should raise an eye brow or two. Second, The materials started out as non-weapons grade anthrax in Florida and once it moved to D.C. and NYC it got more and more lethal, aerosol-ish. Thirdly, the places across the world that it has shown up. Nairobi(sp?) Argentina, UK, a couple others slip my biological roladex.

Basically, I think that ‘a’ terror group is responsible for starting the spread of anthrax, a group who has much fundage and can buy small seemingly innocuous strains as well as lethal weaponized strains. Saving the small strains for organizations like the tabloids and others who have pissed them off in the past and the lethal strains for D.C. The only rationale for my deduction is what I have seen on the front lines and on different news stations. So I may be wrong, but I do not think a home grown American committed these acts. I think that any true red blooded American when they saw the trade centers going down and the pentagon hit, they felt the same as anyone else. Enraged.

5

My personal bet (voiced in a number of threads) is that the perp or perps are connected to Christian Identity or a spin off group. Larry Wayne Harris was connected with them. For those that are not familiar with him, he’s the lovely guy that was arrested for:[ul]
[li]Obtaining plague culture by fraud.[/li][li]Bragging about having enough Anthrax to “wipe out a city.”[/li][li]Stockpiling Anthrax vaccine[/li][li]Trying to purchase millions of dollars worth of microbiology lab equipment.[/li][li]Plotting to unleash plague in New York and blame it on Iraq.[/li][/ul]

Here is a charming excerpt from a 1998 PBS Documentary about bioterrorism:

Christian Identity nutjobs consider Armageddon a good thing. They expect that there will be a final war between White Christians and dark Jews and Muslims, and that the world will end and the White Christians will go to paradise while everyone else goes to hell.

This anecdotal evidence, combined with the al Qaeda operation manual’s references to pitifully crude “biological agents”, (basically spoiled food,) and absence of any intelligence that suggest they have ever experimented with more sophisticated agents, leads me to believe that domestic terrorists, looking to exacerbate the already tense situation in order to further their own agenda, are the more likely culprits.
Phlosphr, I read your post on preview. Read this Christian Identity doctrine, and ask yourself if these people are “Red Blooded Americans” with values that even remotely resemble the rest of us.

6

I have a theory that this is meant to tie up law enforcement, while whoever is behind it works at catching us unaware in some other, devastating way.

I base that on the messages with the notes. In addition to saying stuff like “9-11-01; Death to America; Death to Israel, Allah is great,” the letters say (paraphrasing), “You’ve been infected with anthrax. Take penicillin.”

Why would they tell them that, if their goal is to kill people?

And why anthrax? It doesn’t transmit from one person to another, and it is combatted relatively simply if detected early enough (which they ensure by what they say in the letters).

I think the post office deaths were, to a certain extent, inadvertent.

Their higher goal, rather than killing the letter recipients, was making sure they knew how they were infected. And causing a major investigation.

Which I’m guessing is a diversion of some sort.

7

I just assumed it was Iraq. Now I’m beginning to wonder about the possibilities of domestic terrorists.

Of course, the only problem with the possibility that it’s Christian Identity is that it wouldn’t make much sense to inform their victims of Anthrax infection if they’re going for Armageddon.

8

Milo, my fear and and my belief is that you are correct - this is just a diversionary tactic to focus attention on anthrax while “someone” (and I don’t presume to know precisely which someone) performs the kind of sleight of hand we usually associate with entertainment by David Copperfield.

Perhaps I’m being more than a little paranoid here (or perhaps I have a more devious mind than the terrorists), but if I was a terrorist who had access to RBC weapons, I’d only be using anthrax as “foreplay”.

9

Larry Mudd covered most of what I was thinking, I agree, but I do think that there is also another possibility: just like great minds think alike, terrorists and criminal minds do also. I remember this example:

About a year ago a police helicopter crashed around the San Francisco bay area, this meant that the police had no capability of pursuing suspects in the air in the locality for awhile. Then the news reported on the great number of police officers that were going to attend the funeral. Right there I thought some criminals could think that that was a good opportunity to act and evade the police, and indeed: about three or more bank robberies, unrelated to each other, occurred the day of the funeral. Unfortunately for the crooks the police had thought already of the possibility and had more cops on the street that usual. All suspects were caught.
IMO the domestic terrorists are involved, either alone or taking advantage of the original mail strikes. And not in support of the foreign terrorists, but to incite Americans into supporting more xenophobic behavior like theirs.

10

I’m not sure that that follows. If their intention was to escalate a war, then the main point would be to create panic and place the blame on Arabs, which was the M.O. in the 1998 conspiracy.

11

I would lay 100:1 odds that this is NOT a domestic terrorist.

I’ve been thinking about scenarios for this, and a number of them come to mind.

First, the most likely possibility is that this is another attack related to Bin Laden. People keep pointing out how ‘amateurish’ it is, but that’s not necessarily the case. First, if they happened to have some anthrax, and couldn’t devise a better delivery method, then they just used the best one they had. That’s not amateurish, it opportunistic. Second, before we start talking about how ineffective this attack is we’d better stop and think about the possible motives behind it. Sure, if the intent was to kill thousands of people it was a failure (so far). However, what if the intent was a diversion? What if it was to lull us into a false sense of security so that we treat the NEXT round of anthrax attacks with less care, only to find out afterwards that that stuff is resistant to antibiotics and aerosols easily?

Then there is the possibility that it was done as a tactical strike against the U.S. Command and Control. So far, it seems to have completely bottled up mail communications into the federal government. Perhaps that is important to the next attack. Who knows? But when the U.S. sends a strike into a country and wipes out nothing but communication towers, are you likely to say that the attack was a failure because no soldiers are killed, or are you more likely to say that the U.S. wanted to destroy that particular communications link and did a great job of it? We shouldn’t underestimate the enemy.

Then there is the P.R. hit - Perhaps they wanted to panic the government, and demoralize the people by having us see the Senate and Congress flee Washington. If so, then that goal was partially achieved when the house bugged out of town, and it was the reason why I was strongly opposed to them doing so. And notice now that mail workers are demoralized, because they were told to stay on the job while Congress ran? If you are Bin Laden, you’ve gotta score yourself some points for that.

A scarier scenario is that this attack was designed to be very visible and widespread so as to stretch the resources of the CDC so that they will be less able to respond to an attack of something really dangerous like Smallpox. How many CDC field agents are tied up right now?

So far, with about 10 bucks worth of stamps and a few ounces of anthrax powder the terrorists have completely freaked out the U.S. media, bottled up the major postal outlets into the nerve center of the U.S. government, killed a bunch of people, and have caused the CDC to stretch its resources thin. THIS is a failure? Seems pretty damned effective to me.

Then there are the disturbing reports of crop-dusters ‘bombing’ several locations with some sort of powder - It was reported today that a crop duster dropped a load of powder on a national guard location, and another crop-duster dusted a river boat towing a barge or something. Unless this is some kind of nut, this is really disturbing.

12

You know, before I left for work this morning I heard both of these incidents mentioned on the morning news. When I got to work, I searched CNN, Reuters,AP, ABC, etc., and I couldn’t find any mention of these stories anywhere??? What the hell is up with that? Is it that something major is going on and there is an enforced “hush” so as not to panic everyone or was it somehow not considered newsworthy? That seems strange, if true, being that the media is jumping on one unsubstantiated story after another.

Sorry if this is a hijack

13

By the way Sam, you make a hell of a lot of sense but I sure hope you are wrong.

14

Larry Mudd,

the problem with your theory is that the anthrax letter sent from America to Kenya was mailed on 8th September, three days before the WTC attack.

This means that either the two events are connected or they aren’t (which involves a BIG coincidence).

Phlosphr,

The first guy who died, the one in Florida, died of inhaled anthrax.

There have been no anthrax cases in the UK. Only Kenya and Argentina, and both these letters were mailed from inside America.

Sam Stone:

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at your ludicrous view of the situation.

  • Anthrax wouldn’t work by cropdusting, in fact, anthrax is pretty ineffective as a weapon of mass destruction. The CDC will be fully focused on the danger of smallpox or any other potential disease.

Just because there is an ongoing anthrax alert doesn’t mean the CDC are neglecting other areas of potential biological threat.

  • “A tactical strike at US command and control centers”? Get real. Like they are going to knock out America’s communications systems with a few poisoned letters in the same way that the US has knocked out some Afghan radars?

Please, get real.

  • The PR success? So OBL gets a point or two. Who cares? The PR war is not of primary importance here, the real war is.
15

Well, if I had the money to gamble with, I’d take that bet. I think that this is a homegrown psycho, someone with too much access and too little respect for the lives of others.

The most recent reports (CNN or MSNBC, I forget which) I’ve heard on it said that they’re almost ready to publicly confirm that all the samples they’ve collected from exposed persons are from the same batch. To me, that sounds like someone was working alone and cultivating it in private, though of course I don’t have a real idea of how big a batch would be.

Why would terrorists who did something as big as the WTC and Pentagon attacks follow up with something so small as this? Terrorism is the sort of thing that’s supposed to escalate until goals, as nebulous as they might be, are achieved, not get scaled down to an almost petty level. This is more the work of someone taking advantage of people’s fears and takes the opportunity to get off on making people panic. (sort of like the copycat crimes after the Tylenol poisonings). If their goal is to inspire fear, then a small scale attack with something this odd is prefect for what they want-high fear to effort ratio.

My bet is within 2 months some US born sociopath that has more in common with McVee or the Unibomber than the Talabain is going to be caught red-handed.

16

I should, perhaps, explain that the TV version of profiling is about as real and relevent as “Quincy, ME” is to forensic science.

There’s nothing metaphysical or magical about profiling. Some people are born with the ability to suspend their own thoughts and emotions and “get inside” (not really an accurate term, but it will do until a better one comes along) the minds of other people, just as some people are born with an intuitive grasp of mathematics, or art, or music.

It’s not that a profiler can read minds - they can’t. The ability they use is mostly empathic. They have a talent which allows them to momentarily suspend their own identity and walk in the shoes of another. This is not an unknown talent. Actors use the same talent all the time - they just use it differently.

Profiling, like many other talents, is very much a reflection of how you perceive the world. An artist can look at a block of marble and see a potential sculpture. All I see is a piece of rock. The visual world pretty much doesn’t exist for me. Sounds, body movement, and the ways in which people use language, I NOTICE, and I notice them bigtime

17

There seems to be no consensus that the anthrax is ‘weapons grade’. The only person saying that lately is Tom Daschle in several widely reported comments today. Daschle and others have also stated that this was not “weapons grade” material in earlier stories. There seems to be a bit of Keystone Cops revolving around these allegations.

There is also no substantiated indication that the anthrax spores being delivered are becoming more lethal. The CDC confirmed that the strains in New York and Florida were indistinguishable.

18

Theory: It’s a disgruntled postal worker.

Yes, it’s cliche, but it fits some of the facts.

Most interesting fact: the Kenya sample was mailed on September 8 to a doctor in Nairobi from a relative in Atlanta. That relative apparently did not contaminate the package – this was done after the package was mailed.

So: some nutjob who could contaminate that package did so somewhere between Atlanta and Nairobi, sometime between Sept 8 and Oct. 9 when it was delivered.

Who could have done this? Someone who works for the post office.

Why did it take a month for an Express Mail package to arrive at it’s destination? Because someone in the delivery chain, for reasons unknown, intercepted and tampered with that package at thier leisure. And then, who could have made sure that that package was correctly delivered with the original postmark? Someone who works for the post office.

(OK, sometimes it does indeed take an Express Mail package a month to arrive…)

Who could have easily contaminated the mail workers in the Brentwood facility in D.C.? Someone who works for the post office. No tainted mail required, just sprinkle some powder.

Just a wild theory. Obviously there are holes you could drive a mailtruck through, but the OP invited speculation. No offense intended to the poor members of the mailworker community who have been victimized by these horrible acts.

19

Which isn’t to say that the Anthrax scare is unrelated to 9/11. That person in the postal chain could either have connections to the terrorists, or could be using the 9/11 events as an opportunity for thier own ugly gratification by raising terror the stakes using the mail as a weapon.

20

Actually, xanakis, that letter was later found not to contain anthrax. It was a package of cloth samples that had become mildewy. See here.