If they were going to lie about that, I would think that they might as well lie and say they found better evidence against Ivins.
Except then they would have to actually show that evidence. As is, they can't really explain or defend what they've already claimed.
I also can't see any possible motivation for the FBI to not want to think it was Al Qaeda.
Why not? I already told you one. The US wasn't ready militarily to take on the source of the anthrax if it was Iraq. If they'd revealed that Iraq was behind it, there would have been severe public pressure to do something about it … before we were ready. Cheney said as much back then. The following is from Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" book (
http://books.google.com/books?id=BR...&resnum=3&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false ):
"I'm not going to talk about a state sponsor [of anthrax letters]," Tenet assured them.
"It's good that we don't," said Cheney, "because we're not ready to do anything about it."
Look at it this way. It's the same logic that kept the Bush administration from following up (or at least telling the public about any follow up) on the finding by the ISG in Iraq that WMD related materials may have been moved to Syria just before the invasion of Iraq. Because if it had been admitted back then that such materials were moved to Syria, there would have been a public demand that the government to do something about that … even though Syria is heavily armed with both missiles and WMD, and sitting in easy range of Israel's largest cities. Sometimes governments … even the US government … don't tell the public everything because it's deemed not to be in the national interest.
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Second, even if the FBI did check known hijacker locations and effects, we can't be certain that those were the only places the hijackers resided. We can't be sure that anthrax would have been transported from those locations to the locations that were known. We know that there were others involved in the 9/11 plot in the US, who are still not in custody. Therefore, we probably don't know all the places they resided. Nor is there a guarantee that even at the places we know they resided the FBI would have found anthrax had it been stored there at some point.
These are arguments from ignorance.
No they are not. They are arguments that come from an appreciation of the reality of the situation. We did not get all the al-Qaeda that were involved in the 9/11 plot. This is a fact:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...aks-FBI-hunts-the-911-gang-that-got-away.html . And part of the reason is that we don't know all the places that al-Qaeda resided at the time. Thus there are places that could have been the location where the anthrax was prepared for use.
This is a bit like that old trick question "If a plane crashes on the border between Canada and the USA, where do they bury the survivors?". If the 9/11 hijackers lived in New Jersey before 9/11, where did they live a week later when the anthrax letters were mailed? The correct answer in this case is "a week after 9/11 they didn't live anywhere, they were all dead".
Funny story but you are still logically wrong. Given that we know there were other al-Qaeda beside the hijackers in the country at the time, there was nothing to prevent them from mailing letters after 9/11. Furthermore, as I said, there is evidence to suggest the first victim got the disease from a letter mailed BEFORE 9/11.
Yes, they could have had a co-conspirator who stuck around on their home turf for a week cooling his heels and only then mailed the letters, there's just no evidence that they did.
Now THAT is arguing from ignorance. Willful ignorance.
However you don't know the single most important thing, which is whether the 9/11 hijackers ever actually did have weaponised anthrax.
Other than several bioterrorism groups concluding that the lesions on several of the hijackers were consistent with exposure to anthrax. Other than several of the hijackers expressing an interest in cropdusters which would have had absolutely NOTHING to do with the 9/11 airline plot. Yes, all that I stated is circumstantial, but folks have been convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence. It's the quantity of such evidence that is note worthy. It's the fact that the government to this day has not explained the first case of Anthrax and the coincidence in it showing up only a few miles from an airport where the hijackers had asked about cropdusters and in a media outlet where the editor's wife actually had contact with some of the hijackers. It's quite a string of coincidences that the government is ignoring.
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We know that an Iraq paper owned by one of Saddam's son's seems to have been aware there was going to be an attack on the US closely matching 9/11.
Sadly I don't think the JREF would offer me the million for my prediction that this is going to turn out to be male bovine excrement of one form or another.
Are you so uninformed that you are unaware of this?
Two 9/11 families were awarded over $100 million by U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer based on evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11 (
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/05/september11/main520874.shtml ), in part, because of an editorial that was published July 21, 2001 in the Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya which was owned by Saddam's son, Qusay. The columnist was Naeem Abd Muhalhal, who evidence at the trial indicated had a long term connection with Iraqi Intelligence. On September 12, 2002, Senator Fritz Hollings entered the editorial into the Congressional record (
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005332.php ). Here are a few quotes from it:
"Meanwhile America has started to pressure the Taliban movement so that it would hand them Bin Ladin, while he continues to smile and still thinks seriously, with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House ....."
"It seems that they will be going away because the revolutionary Bin Ladin is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting. That the man will not be swayed by the plant leaves of Whitman nor by the ``Adventures of Indiana Jones'' and will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs."
So just before 9/11 we have reference to upcoming attacks on the Pentagon, the White House and, if we are going to curse the memory of Frank Sinatra, New York (since New York, New York was Sinatra's most famous song). Mulhalhal also stated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer," which perhaps references an airplane attack. How could these people have had such foreknowledge of the attack details without Iraq being involved at some level in 9/11? In fact, that court heard that evidence and ruled that Iraq was indeed involved in 9/11. So it's not just "male bovine excrement".
But in this case you're asking us to believe in coincidence piled on coincidence piled on coincidence piled on coincidence. After a while you have wonder if it really was just coincidence.
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Especially since there are facts suggesting that letter was mailed BEFORE 9/11.
They were postmarked a week after the attacks.
But not necessarily the first letter. MSNBC quoted Newsweek (
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067576/site/newsweek/) saying that the Lopez letter arrived a week before 9/11. This site,
http://www.postalmag.com/editorial14.htm, dedicated to postal employees, also says that the Lopez letter arrived the 4th. Here's another site that says the 4th:
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/anthraxreport.htm. And this site,
http://anthrax2001.blogspot.com/, states "The media reports on the AMI letters confirm what the CDC reports in many important details. The media reported that Bob Stevens was indeed seen by his colleagues holding a letter close to his face on September 19, 2001. It was pointed out by Phil Brennan writing for Newsmax that this letter that Stevens was seen reading had actually arrived at AMI on September 4, 2001." So maybe Steven's contracted the anthrax on September 19th, however the letter arrived at AMI before 9/11. And if it arrived before 9/11 to coincidentally infect someone working within a few miles of where the hijackers stayed, that sort of rules out a domestic terrorist, doesn't it?
Or maybe the source wasn't that letter. We really don't know. But we do know Stevens started showing symptoms some time before October 2nd, when he was hospitalized. This somewhat authoritative report (
http://www.fpd.umn.edu/files/GlobalChron.pdf at a link no longer working) said the onset of symptoms was around September 28th. Inhalation anthrax has an uncertain incubation time (from less than a week or two to as much as 2 months). The median time is reported to be 10 days according to one study. The CDC says its generally less than 2 weeks but "due to spore dormancy and slow clearance from the lungs, the incubation period for inhalational anthrax may be prolonged." And according to CNN, Florida Health Secretary Dr. John Agwunobi advised anyone who spent more than an hour in the AMI building since August 1st to report for testing. Just to give you an idea of how uncertain officials might really be about the timeline.
The bottom line is we don't really know when Stevens was exposed. The hijackers killed on 9/11 could indeed have done it within the margins of certainty on what we do know. And when that's combined with all the rest that I've noted ...
Where's the actual evidence?