There are two sides to every story. Judges rightly admonish juries to check out both sides before coming to a conclusion. Our entire system of adversarial justice is built on this principle. But under surveillance by FBI in the 2001 anthrax mailings case, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide. So only one side got to tell its version of the story.
Upon closing the case on February 19, 2010, FBI issued an Amerithrax Investigative Summary that concludes that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. The Summary contains serious errors as well as minor ones. It also omits crucial information. So, to ensure a fair outcome, we need to look at it through the eyes of a defense attorney, to make sure that the American people can check out both sides of the story before coming to a conclusion.
Tags: al Qaeda, anthrax mailings, biodefense, Bruce Ivins, FBI, Jdey, terrorism
Historian and former State Department intelligence analyst Kenneth J. Dillon interprets the 2001 anthrax mailings case. He explains why domestic Mailer theories were mistaken and why we should think that al Qaeda operative Abderraouf Jdey was the real Anthrax Mailer as well as the shoebomber of American Airlines Flight #587 on November 12, 2001. In all likelihood, US Army scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins was the Innocent Preparer of the anthrax. Then al Qaeda stole it. See also Was Abderraouf Jdey the Anthrax Mailer?
Who Was the Anthrax Mailer?
Tags: Abderraouf Jdey, al Qaeda, American Airlines Flight #587, anthrax, anthrax mailings, Bruce Ivins, shoe bomb
Here are the judge’s March 16, 2020 Order and Memorandum opinion giving his final ruling. For a general explanation of the anthrax mailings case, see Was Abderraouf Jdey the Anthrax Mailer? The judge does not appear to have read it.
Of the documents, the first set was released by FBI in the course of the litigation. The second set includes selected lawsuit documents from Dillon v. U.S. Department of Justice. Following this is a discussion of possible destruction of evidence.
The first set includes 102 pages of emails to and from accused Mailer Bruce Ivins, released by FBI on court order on March 20, 2019, plus Laboratory Notebook 4282. FOIA request #1327397 sought Ivins’s emails and other documents for September and October, 2001. FOIA request #1329530 sought the Table of Contents and the 16 pages on Ivins from the 2000-page Interim Major Case Summary of 2006. After repeated failures to find emails, FBI experts located them as 1A attachments in the Amerithrax file.
Tags: Abderraouf Jdey, anthrax, anthrax mailings, Bruce Ivins, FBI, FOIA, Robert Mueller
Unfinished business in a nation’s history can undermine citizens’ trust in government and sense of participating in a meaningful collective life.
In the case of fatal moments such as assassinations and terrorist attacks, the damage adds to the impact of the attacks and helps the attackers achieve their goals of demoralizing the people and fraying the social fabric. Compounding the problem, government agencies and the media often show reluctance to reveal what they learn because they lack 100% assurance of its validity, because they fear the public reaction, or because they are covering up their own mistakes. As a result, people often believe that certain crimes remain unsolved or are even unsolvable when in fact they have already been solved but the information is being denied to the public.
Tags: Abderraouf Jdey, American history, anthrax mailings, Bruce Ivins, cover-up, Flight #587, George W. Bush, Kennedy assassination, KGB, Mary Meyer, terrorism, War on Iraq
