FBI Anthrax Case:Paid Witnesses? “New” DNA Test?

by Scott Creighton

****UPDATE**** Class Action Lawsuit: American People VS FBI 

In a stunning development, it is being reported by several news organizations that Dr. Ivins told a friend that at some point during the investigation the FBI offered $2.5 million and “a sports car of his choosing” to his son for info that could be used to implicate his father in the anthrax killings. Was he the only witness offered money to come forward?

I have also learned that this “new DNA” test that connected this strain of anthrax to the lab Dr. Ivins worked in, took place in early 2002. So why are we being told that if they had it 3 years ago, Hatfill wouldn’t have been charged?

Some kind of new evidence is bound to be forthcoming today (unless some big news event breaks and takes all the attention away from this case, like say, when Donald Rumsfeld announced on Sept. 10th 2001 that 2 trillion was “missing” from the Pentagon) because they are supposedly briefing the victims families about the case this morning.

So that gives me a brief window of opportunity to explore a little more of the “evidence” that has been leaked by the investigators so far.

Paid Witnesses

Cruising through the news cycles now is the reported story that, according to a friend of Dr. Ivins, Ivins complained to him awhile ago that the FBI was so aggressive in their persuit of him, “they offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.” CBS. 

“In the current case, Ivins complained privately that FBI agents had offered his son, Andy, $2.5 million, plus “the sports car of his choice” late last year if he would turn over evidence implicating his father in the anthrax attacks, according to a former U.S. scientist who described himself as a friend of Ivins.” CBS.

If this statement is found to be accurate (at this point no-one, including Jean Duley, has even implied that Dr. Bruce Ivins was a liar) then that is a huge development in this case. Because it means that someone on the FBI’s investigative team was so desperate to pin this on Ivins that they would offer huge sums of tax-payer money to ANY witness for ANY information.

Once impropriety is exposed in one part of an investigation, as long as the investigator that committed it is still on the team, you HAVE to question all the other parts of that investigation. Meaning; if they offered cash to one witness to step forward, then it follows that it is possible that they offered that same cash to another witness.

During the Aug. 2nd press interview that Jean Duley’s boyfriend, Mike McFadden, gave, he admitted that Duleyhad been talking with the FBI for awhile.

“Duley had numerous meetings withthe FBI in the past month, McFadden said, but he declined to provide specific information about those meetings.” Fredrick News Post.

According to the timelinethat his statement creates, that means the FBI was in communications with Duley BEFORE she reported Dr. Ivins strange group therapy rant on the 9th of July. This is VERY important because it sets up the FBI’s case that Ivins has a history of mental illness as well as the restraining order that Duley files later on the 24th.

But then the interview takes a strange turn. Out of nowhere McFadden claims that “”She had to quit her job and is now unable to work, and we have spent our savings on attorneys.”. Others have already done a fantastic job of picking this comment apart, so I won’t waste your time withthe obvious problems with his comment. But I will ask this: why is McFadden introducing the idea of Duley’s financial sacrifice at this point?

He would even go further with this theme: “She sacrificed all this stuff because she wanted to do the right thing.” . FNP.

Sounds to me like someone is justifying something, now doesn’t it?

Look, we now know that the FBI wasn’t opposed to paying witnesses huge sums of cash for their testimony in this case. That being said, lets look at the facts. The FBI was in contact with Duley BEFORE she called the cops about the July 9th rant; The FBI, according to Duley’s audio testimony, told Duley to file the restraining order; and according to Duley’s statements, the FBI prepped her by sharing case file information with her, as a witness, so that she would include that information in the court records, without having that information vetted or scrutinized by the courts; and now we know that the FBI in this case, wasn’t above paying cash to get witnesses to help.

Conclusion: Was Jean Duley paid millions to help set up Dr. Ivins? That may be the case. We need to look into her financial background to see if she has come into a windfall of some kind since she was in contact with the FBI.

Paying a witness to testify is one thing; but paying someone to file fraudulent claims in court and to make false statements to the police, is quite another. By ALL accounts thus far, Jean Duley’s comments are the exception to every stated opinion of this man and, at the same time, they are the basis for EVERY legal action taken against him that seems to set up the FBI’scase. It is illegal for the FBI to pay a person to file fraudulent claims with any official agency and it is equally illegal for someone to accept payment to do so. 

For these reasons there should be a serious investigation into the actions taken by the FBI investigative team and Jean Duley’s financial records.

New DNA Test

 On this past Sunday, the story broke that the FBI had “new DNA evidence” that would link this strain of anthrax to Dr. Ivins lab.

This story got allot of traction for a few days, until it was uncovered by many that the DNA evidence linked to a sample that many people in the lab had access to, and that it still wasn’t, at that time, in it’s weaponized form; a process that many of his fellow scientists say he was just incapable of doing.

According to the New York Sun: “Using new genome technology, researchers looked at samples of cells from the victims to identify the kind of anthrax Ames strain that killed them, the scientist said. They noticed very subtle differences in the DNA of the strain used in the attacks than in other types of Ames anthrax.”  NYS.

The New York Sun goes on to say: “The science is known as DNA fingerprinting. Although any two samples of anthrax bacteria will likely share roughly the same DNA structure, there are tiny differences from sample to sample.” NYS.

“The new genome technology that tracked down Ivins was either not available or too expensive to use often until about three years ago.“  NYS.

Really?

From an article from New Scientist dated May 9th 2002;

“The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory.”

The data released uses codenames for the reference strains against which the attack strain was compared. But New Scientist can reveal that the two reference strains that appear identical to the attack strain most likely originated at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick(USAMRIID), Maryland.

The new genetic sequencing work was done by the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland (TIGR), and Paul Keim’s team at the University of Northern Arizona at Flagstaff.

The idea was to tease out subtle differences between the two genomes that might identify the source of the attack strain…” New Scientist.

Notice the similar hot-points from the articles. This is the same “evidence” they had since early 2002, but because it didn’t get much attention, they picked it up and dusted it off as if it was something new pointing to Dr. Ivins. But we know that all it pointed to was the Ames strain of anthrax at the lab. Well, apparently they knew that back in 2002.

So, the FBI’s “new DNA evidence” and the reason they started looking at Dr. Ivins for this? I don’t think so. This story get’s worse and worse by the minute.

Someone from the local or state-level investigations units in Maryland needs to step in and take over this investigation, or there needs to be a congressional hearing on the level of the 9/11 commission. We know that the FBI has botched the investigation from the beginning and now, we are being spoon fed misleading evidence from the FBI team.

The FBI’s Keystone Cops production is embarrassing. They tend to forget that they are supposed to be trying to find the ‘terrorist” that used OUR ANTHRAX to kill civilians and to attack MEMBERS OF CONGRESS. What makes the FBI so sure that there won’t be another attack while they are framing the second guy for this?

This is deeply serious, and unless the congress wants the citizens of this country to know that our government is either completely inept or actually protecting the terrorists who sent the anthrax, then they need to step in and take the FBI off this case now.