US Army Reports "Accidental" Live Anthrax Shipments

In 2001, the United States confronted a threat that hypothetically was far greater than terrorists using commercial aircraft as mass murder instruments. Shortly after 9/11, deadly anthrax found its way into postal facilities and a media outlet. Washington's bone stupid reaction to the menace did not diminish its potential for disaster.

Biological weapons have been in the American military arsenal since World War II. They remain on the military's roster of deadly force, with the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and laboratories scattered throughout the United States, functioning as repositories and testing facilities for germ warfare. Recently, the Pentagon revealed that live anthrax was "accidentally" shipped from Dugway to labs in a number of states. Live anthrax was also sent to South Korea and Australia. Oops.

According to an Associated Press story printed in The Washington Post, the Defense Department is reviewing its procedures for handling the deadly material. While they're at it, the Pentagon could simply say basta to maintaining and "improving" its biological arsenal.

Well, we all can dream.

US Settles Another Anthrax Attack Lawsuit

The US Government, after years of legal fighting, finally agreed to settle a lawsuit by the family of the first person killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States.

According to The New York Times, the settlement requires the Feds to pay the family of tabloid photo editor Robert Stevens $2.3 million. (Another and better version of the story appears in online editions of The Washington Post.)

It has never been established why Stevens or the American Media Inc., the tabloid firm in question, were a murderer's targets. There remains considerable doubt that Bruce Ivins was the perpetrator, as the government has alleged. Meanwhile, the shadow of American Media Inc.'s publishing activities as connected to this case's fatal motive remains bafflingly unaddressed. The firm's tabloids were scourge of many high-profile celebrities, politicians, and (if you can take these stories seriously) creatures from outer space. If you've seen the National Enquirer, Star, or Men's Fitness, you've visited American Media's lurid world, one that could easily provoke one or more of its victims to seek revenge for real or imagined slights.

The government mismanaged, by accident or design, its probe into the anthrax attacks. However, the Feds had not counted on a very determined Stevens family. Their willingness to pursue justice kept the government case on its heels. Eventually, the court proceedings revealed dreadful security at the nation's top biological warfare facility. The case became a real thorn in the government's side, especially as it focused on programs national security officials understandably preferred kept in the Information Society's most remote, darkest corners.

The anthrax attacks remain a disturbing, unfinished episode from the fateful year of 2001. It is likely we will never know the story's complete truth. We are aware of a few facts. Will the real culprits ever be identified?

October 2001 Anthrax Attacks to be Recalled During DC Event

Maibox Sealed to Prevent Anthrax Spread, 2001

In October 2001, anthrax attacks killed postal workers in New York City and Washington, DC. The episodes led to an FBI investigation that provided more doubt than certainty.

The anthrax affair will be noted, at least in the District, this Friday during commemorative services at an area church. The US Postmaster General and others will speak at the event, according to a story in the Washington Post.

Scientists Doubt US Anthrax Probe Findings

Mailbox covered during the 2001 anthrax scare

In the days following "nine eleven," a series of fatal incidents involving anthrax occurred in the northeastern United States and in Florida. The government's dreadful response to the episodes provided a deeply disturbing look at the nation's lack of preparation for an attack using biological agents as the weapon of choice. At one point, a New York post office annex which experienced an anthrax episode was demarcated by yellow crime-scene style tape. On one side -- anthrax; the other side -- clean. Let's just say that unenlightened approach did not inspire confidence.

The subsequent probe of the anthrax incidents has been a murky, clumsily handled affair. The federal government and its principal investigative arms concluded that a lone, rogue scientist was the perpetrator. Some concerned scientists did not buy the feds' New Millenium equivalent of Lee Harvey Oswald. They researched the unclassified documents related to the case and questioned significant aspects of the investigation.

The story noting the scientists' skepticism originally appeared in the October 9th The New York Times. It details the most important objections the scientists raised, and the government's response to them.

Senator Leahy Not Buying FBI Anthrax Case

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who was a target of the 2001 anthrax attacks, isn't buying the FBI's recent conclusion regarding the attack's perpetrator. He spoke with the Washington Post about his misgivings, including his belief that the case is "not closed."

The Post story also usefully reminded readers that then Senator Tom Daschle was another target of the anthrax mailings. The article noted that a number of former Daschle aides now work in high levels of the Obama administration. They might be inclined to work behind the scenes toward achieving a more believable investigatory conclusion than the FBI's "lone assassin" theory.

I still have a plastic bag used by the USPS during the anthrax scare; our postal mail was delivered in it. It won't do the FBI any good, but it serves as a reminder of a dark, unsolved, and very frightening episode in the strange days immediately following September 11, 2001.

The photo shows FBI agents wearing protective suits during their 2001 investigation of the anthrax affair.

National Enquirer's Publishers Emerges from Bankruptcy

American Media Incorporated, Florida-based home to the National Enquirer, WWE, and other publications, will emerge from bankruptcy "as early as this week," according to a Palm Beach Post report posted in today's Miami Herald.

The Enquirer is a curious media creature. It specializes in publishing salacious stories about public figures. Its approach involves working the edges of the First Amendment and the dodgy side of human behavior. Its reporters are not exactly "investigative reporters"; rather, they are similar to private detectives unearthing dirt on behalf of divorce clients. In this case, the customer is the Enquirer's readership.

Who reads the Enquirer? Well, millions of Americans do, although it's difficult to envision the publication's subscription list. The Enquirer is an impulse purchase typically done in supermarkets and the endangered species known as the news stand. Many people read it standing on line, killing time in a laundromat, or getting a haircut. I am among them.

The Enquirer and like-minded tabloids have occasionally provided revealing stories that have entered the national dialogue. The articles typically demonstrate a combination of old-fashioned journalistic hustle, pay-to-tell sourcing, and a shameless shaping of fact to drive reader interest. As with its Britsh and other Anglo-Saxon cousins, the Enquirer has always proudly flown journalism's version of the pirate flag. However, unlike Rupert Murdoch's politically slanted slander sheets, the Enquirer is intriguingly nonpartisan. It has broken stories on right-wingers such as Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction and left-wingers such as John Edwards' love child.

The Enquirer is Hollywood's particular bete-noire. Stories about movie stars provide a volatile amalgam of fully founded facts and lurid speculation that provides readers with the feeling of opinionated escape. The American public insatiably devours this information. To feed the public's craving for dirt, the Enquirer is cozy with the hellhound paparazzi that mercilessly track celebrities, relentlessly invade their privacy, and commercially benefit from their exploitation. Agents, publicists, and attorneys have a love and (mostly) hate relationship with the publication's writers, editors, and lawyers. It's not a business for the faint of heart.

During my undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin, I worked on the student newspaper. One of its editors at that time later joined the Enquirer staff and eventually became a name near the top of its masthead. Given the editor's collegiate years' interest in radical leftist politics, I found his career move a puzzling one. I have never understood his motivation to work, and achieve a sort of success, with a supermarket tabloid. By extension, I don't know why any Enquirer reporter chooses to call "home" the dicey neighborhood where fact, innuendo, and dark motives uneasily co-exist.

Yet, as most journalists would admit, there's something about the hunt for the story that deeply matters to them. It's in every good journalist's blood, from the Pentagon Papers' Neil Sheehan on down. Enquirer reporters fit quite comfortably into that way of being, although they find embarrassing sexcapades more compelling than national policy.

The Enquirer supposedly faces an uncertain commercial future. Analysts cite its declining audience, inability to draw sufficient advertising, and competition from specialized Internet sites and dreadful television programs. We'll see. The psychological phenomena that form the foundation of tabloid success are essential elements of our collective character. They are unlikely to disappear, and neither will the public's desire for a publication that provides a goofy look into our lives' shared, unseemly desires.

However, the Enquirer could be literally killed. In the fall of 2001, an American Media employee died from anthrax delivered to the premises, and the building had to be abandoned for a substantial period of time. The subsequent federal investigation suggested a domestically-based scientist produced the deadly material. The episode remains part of the anthrax scare mystery, in which high profile targets experienced fatal consequences. Not even the Enquirer's top reportorial bloodhounds could find a trail, or enough printable information to pass its editorial and legal team's scrutiny. One wonders why.

Anthrax Investigation Delay

The New York Times reported in today's editions that the F.B.I. has asked for a delay in the National Academy of Sciences' report on the 2001 anthrax scare. It appears the Bureau has found another 500 pages of documentation, even though the Academy had asked for all relevant material when it started its review over a year ago.

The anthrax scare was a weird series of incidents that characterized the creepy fall of 2001. I still possess a Postal Service plastic envelope stating that my mail, sent during the height of the scare, had been irradiated for my safety. The most troubling episode occurred at the Postal Service's Morgan Annex in New York. Postal employees died from anthrax exposure. The federal government's response was to place yellow crime scene tape at an arbitrary point inside the annex, and declare one side anthrax-free. It also meant postal employees returned to an obviously unsafe work environment.

The government's bizarre, unfeeling response to the anthrax scare made one wonder about the sanity of those elected or appointed to represent the interest of American citizens. That question was definitively answered some years later, in the indifferent federal response to Hurricane Katrina's survivors in New Orleans. The government's lethal legacy remains, even though the F.B.I. and other agencies who work the dark shadows would prefer the whole business be forgotten.

The photograph shows a cordoned off mailbox in Washington, D.C. during the 2001 anthrax scare.