Amerithrax: The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer

This book is a useful part of an ongoing national dialogue of great importance. The failure of the FBI to solve the anthrax case is a disgrace. Dr. Bruce Ivins is clearly not the sole perpetrator and he was probably not involved at all. In my view, the FBI knows who the mass murderers are but is covering up the truth. I wrote a short novel Case Closed in which I present one scenario to explain why the FBI is acting as they are. Is my novel true? Of course not ... it's a novel! But readers agree it raises questions that very much need to be answered. I also manage a blog at "caseclosedbylewweinstein" that has a vibrant daily interchange on the anthrax case and the FBI's failures. Maybe some day we'll know the truth.

Robert Graysmith, a political cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper, wrote other books ("Zodiac", "Zodiac Unmasked") about a true crime of the late 1960s. This 2003 book of 500 pages has loads of details about the unsolved terrorist poisoning. The `Prologue' notes that the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers was caused by their deficient design and construction. The collapse of one weakened floor led to a chain reaction that destroyed the buildings. There was no attempt to destroy traditional high-rise buildings whose steel frames were encased in concrete. The `Empire State Building' survived an accidental crash of a medium bomber in 1945. The collapsed towers spewed toxic dust throughout lower Manhattan, the financial capital of America. On September 2001 letters containing anthrax spores were received at a weekly tabloid publishing company in Boca Raton. People were sickened, one died. Inhalational anthrax was discovered in the 19th century industrial factories that processed textiles and leather from animal products. Gardeners who used contaminated bone meal fertilizers were infected. More letters were mailed to New York and Washington. Some postal workers developed rashes and lesions from handling the mail. The Army began a biological weapons program in 1942 (Chapter 7). Chemical weapons were prohibited by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention was adopted, but some countries kept supplies for retaliation. [The murder of Dr. Parkman by Dr. Webster was caused by a loan that was overdue (p.97).] Letters to US Senators contaminated the Washington postal facilities (Chapter 8). Washington postal workers were infected and some died (Chapter 10). Chapter 13 tells of the Army's 1966 test that spread bacteria in the New York City subway system. Chapter 14 is about the Soviet germ warfare laboratory in Sverdlovsk. In 1979 an accident (a missing filter) spread anthrax spores into the air. Over a hundred people died, mostly middle-aged men who were outside at night. Chapter 16 has a good story on postal inspectors. [As I remember it, the `Mad Bomber' was caught after NY police searched Con Ed's old correspondence files until they found matching handwriting samples.] The `profile' is discussed in Chapter 17. A human breath can leave DNA on a sheet of paper (p.255). Poison pen letters can create much trouble to innocent people. Sometimes they are written by strangers (p.256). Domestic terrorists have poisoned people (p.264). Anthrax is a recurrent disease to grass-eating animals, but a vaccine prevents the disease. Chapter 23 tells how the US Army secretly tested biological weapons on American citizens. [Who ordered this?] The contaminated buildings were sanitized (Chapter 24). The anthrax in the letters could only have come from the US bioweapons program (p.292)! Security was poor at Government labs (p.294). One scientist said the anthrax used was beyond the capabilities of a lone individual (p.302

this was a fairly quick read. as we all know the plot, the writer offers many details unknown and some interesting analyses. i felt carried along for hundreds of pages, only to be dropped in the end without resolution - of course, our finest investigative services have publicly never reached a conclusion either. reading this book is a lot like listening to someone describe a web. there's no simple way to describe one with its concentric lines of slightly different thicknesses and angles. same with this book, the facts from different sites and the progress (or lack thereof) at each site make for a quite difficult story to tell. this was far from one of the best books that i've read in the past 12 months, but it is a topic in which i am puzzled. it is a worthwhile read, if you can tolerate the above limitations, new or used.

I work in biological counter-terrorism and I found this book to be extremely helpful to better my understanding of the mail based attacks that took place in September and October of 2001. Interestingly , I discovered that my company's product the Mail Defender was mentioned on page 411 of the hard copy. One point the book makes is that is extremely difficult if not impossible to unmask the predator, while the United States mail system still remains the most open and largest distribution system in the world. Please feel free to contact me anytime by email to discuss.

Graysmith correctly concludes that the Jennifer Lopez letter which was opened at AMI on September 19 2001 is the "Holy Grail" of the entire case. The AMI staff members remember that this letter contained a powder and that Bob Stevens, the first victim, held it up closely to his face. The official conclusion of the CDC was that Bob Stevens was infected with the disease from that letter.However, Graysmith does not offer any explanation or commentary as to why the the perpetrator of the world's first anthrax bioweapons terrorist attack would choose to use the subject of Jennifer Lopez in delivering the bioweapon.Jennifer Lopez is popularly called "Jenny" in Europe - especially in Germany. I don't know if Graysmith was aware of this when he wrote his book - but Mohammed Atta, who was living nearby the AMI building in the weeks leading up to the 9/11 attacks was communicating with a terrorist contact in Germany at the same time. As code for these messages, in which he revealed the date of the planned 9/11 attacks - he pretened to be writing to an imaginary girlfriend - her name was "Jenny". See anthrax2001.blogspot for more details.