The anthrax blame game

Do you remember the anthrax letters that terrorized the United States, in connection to the well known 9/11 attacks, 18 years ago? Someone obviously wanted to blame these deadly letters on Muslims. Some letters with anthrax incuded the following lines of text:

Death to [country name removed].
Death to [country name removed].
Allah is great.

Almost at once, Iraq was named as a prime suspect (not only for the anthrax, but also for somehow being involved in the 9/11 attacks) and Pentagon hardliners pressed for strikes on Saddam.

However, it was later concluded that the source of the anthrax was a U.S. bioweapons laboratory.

Finally, authorities blamed the anthrax letters on a single individual, Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, who worked at U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. After that, Ivins was hospitalized for depression and died in 2008, officially from suicide. In 2010, the FBI closed its investigation.

The FBI investigation results, claiming that Ivins carried out the anthrax attacks entirely on his own, have later been questioned, among others by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Government Accountability Office.

Watch the KenFM interview in German with Heiko Schöning (also available as MP3 for download), about his book on this subject.