-Caveat Lector-
> Many of those who initially test positive may not be victims of a
> recent terrorist attack, but may have merely encountered the bacteria
> at some time in their lives.
> Freeh said the goal was �to create social and political chaos, thereby
> forcing the US Government to declare martial law, an act the group
> believed would lead to a violent overthrow of the Government by the
> American people.�
> Rightist elements have a history of making threats involving anthrax.
> According to a California-based center that monitors such events,
> there were 172 false anthrax threats in the United States from January
> 1998 to April 2001.
>From www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
US anthrax scare: Why the silence on right-wing terrorism?
By Patrick Martin
27 October 2001
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Amid the saturation media coverage of the anthrax attacks in Florida,
New Jersey, New York and Washington, DC, a central political issue is
being suppressed. There is every likelihood that those responsible
for mailing anthrax spores to media and government targets are right-
wing extremists bent on spreading panic and creating the conditions
for new attacks on democratic rights. Many such elements have close
political links to the Republican Party and the Bush administration.
So much misinformation has been spread by government spokesmen and
rebroadcast by the media that it is difficult to be sure of many of
the facts surrounding the anthrax scare. More than a dozen people
have contracted the disease, which is relatively rare among humans
but not unusual among farm animals. Three people have died, four
others have contracted the more dangerous pulmonary form of the
disease. Three letters carrying anthrax spores in powder have been
recovered, one at NBC News, one at the New York Post, the third at
the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
Thousands of people have been tested for possible contamination and
hundreds of thousands affected by the shutdown of schools, workplaces
and public facilities and the cancellation of plane, train and bus
service. The overwhelming majority of the reports of possible anthrax
contamination have proven to be unfounded or the result of panic,
largely provoked by semi-hysterical media coverage.
Dozens of people have tested positive for exposure to anthrax spores,
but the majority of these are not actually infected. The significance
of these results is not clear. The tests show the presence of disease-
fighting antibodies, but there is no way to easily determine when the
person came into contact with anthrax. Many of those who initially
test positive may not be victims of a recent terrorist attack, but
may have merely encountered the bacteria at some time in their lives.
There is similar uncertainty over the significance of the presence of
spores, usually in minute quantities, in postal and other mail-
processing facilities. Anthrax spores have been known to persist
dormant in the soil for up to 80 years. Public health officials have
not provided a baseline of the �normal� occurrence of anthrax
antibodies in the population, or of anthrax spores in the
environment, against which to compare the results of the current
tests.
The record of right-wing terrorism
The media, with the tacit encouragement of the Bush administration
and congressional leaders, encourages the notion that the anthrax
attacks represent a second wave of Middle East-based terrorism,
following the September 11 suicide hijackings. There are sporadic
attempts to link the anthrax mailings to the Iraqi regime of Saddam
Hussein, although none of the evidence so far made public
substantiates such suspicions. On the contrary, the circumstances
surrounding the anthrax attacks�the method employed, the targets
chosen, previous experience�suggest that homegrown American fascists
are the perpetrators.
The past two decades have seen the rise within the Republican Party
of extreme-right and Christian fundamentalist elements, many of them
linked to a fascist underground of racists, militia fanatics and anti-
abortion activists. Individuals and groups sharing the political
agenda of the ultra-right have been responsible for the vast majority
of terrorist actions in the United States in recent years, including
the bloodiest such attack in US history prior to September 11�the
1995 Oklahoma City bombing by right-wing militia supporter Timothy
McVeigh, which killed 168 people. Anti-abortion extremists have
murdered doctors, bombed clinics and planted the bomb that killed one
person at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
There is a history of rightist elements seeking to obtain anthrax for
use as a weapon of terror. In 1998 a microbiologist with ties to
white supremacist groups was arrested in Las Vegas on charges of
unauthorized possession of an anthrax strain that turned out to be
non-lethal. In 1999, in testimony before Congress, FBI Director Louis
Freeh said that �a growing number, while still small, of �lone
offender� and extremist splinter elements of right-wing groups have
been identified as possessing or attempting to develop or use�
weapons of mass destruction.
Only last May, Freeh told a congressional committee that the FBI had
prevented two �potentially large-scale, high-casualty attacks being
planned by organized right-wing extremists.� These included the
blowing up of a large propane storage facility in Elk Grove,
California, and the raiding of National Guard armories and attacks on
electric power lines in several southern states. In the latter case,
which involved militia members from Georgia, South Carolina and
Florida, Freeh said the goal was �to create social and political
chaos, thereby forcing the US Government to declare martial law, an
act the group believed would lead to a violent overthrow of the
Government by the American people.�
Rightist elements have a history of making threats involving anthrax.
According to a California-based center that monitors such events,
there were 172 false anthrax threats in the United States from
January 1998 to April 2001. Of these, one third were made against
abortion clinics. The current anthrax attacks have been accompanied
by a barrage of threats against abortion clinics and Planned
Parenthood offices throughout the United States�threats that have
gone largely unreported in the media.
The National Abortion Federation said more than 30 clinics in 14
states and the District of Columbia had received letters claiming to
contain anthrax, some with references to the Army of God, an extreme-
right anti-abortion group. Planned Parenthood said 90 family planning
offices and abortion clinics in more than a dozen states had received
similar threats. Each of six Planned Parenthood clinics in the
Washington, DC area received a powder-filled envelope enclosing a
letter from the Army of God that warned, �You have been exposed to
anthrax. We are going to kill all of you.�
That right-wing extremists are responsible for the current round of
anthrax attacks is further suggested by the choice of targets:
Senator Daschle, the most prominent Democrat in Washington, and the
offices of the major television networks, regarded by the far right,
however incorrectly, as bastions of liberalism. The casualties up to
now have all been workers in the federal government and the media,
long demonized by the extreme right.
The role of the media
Frequently, what does not appear in the American media is as
significant as what does. It is as though the attack on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon blotted out the bloody experience with
right-wing terrorism in America�the Unabomber, Oklahoma City, the
Aryan Nations, abortion-related bombings and assassinations. If the
anthrax attacks had taken place before September 11, the prime
suspects would have been anti-abortion zealots or right-wing militia
fanatics seeking to avenge the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
The White House and Pentagon recognize that a clear-cut link between
the anthrax attacks and homegrown American rightists would cut across
their efforts to generate public support for the US military
intervention in Central Asia. While admitting that there is no
concrete evidence of a connection to Islamic fundamentalists, let
alone Iraq, the Bush administration tacitly encourages the belief
that Middle East-based terrorists are responsible for the anthrax
mailings.
Those actually engaged in investigating the anthrax mailings,
however, have been compelled to consider the likelihood of right-wing
involvement, and a few hints have begun to creep into the newspaper
coverage. According to an October 24 report in the New York Times,
�investigators who at first thought the anthrax mailed to Mr. Daschle
was so finely milled and highly concentrated that it was likely to
have been obtained from a state-sponsored weapons program have now
revised their assessment.� An FBI source told the Associated Press
the anthrax �could be locally produced given the right
circumstances.�
The Washington Post reported the same day, �investigators have found
no connection between the Sept. 11 plot and the anthrax mailings,
numerous officials said yesterday. Although they continue to operate
under the assumption that there might be a link, investigators from
the FBI, the US Postal Service and other agencies say privately that
the mailings do not have the earmarks of an al Qaeda terrorist
operation and seem more likely to have come from a domestic source.�
On October 26, White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer declared
that federal investigators had concluded that a skilled
microbiologist with access to lab facilities could have produced the
anthrax used in the mailings, without a vast military or government
apparatus. The substance, he admitted, �could be produced by a
broader range of people� than the foreign governments generally cited
in media speculation, most frequently Iraq and the former Soviet
Union.
Even more suggestive is a lengthy front-page article that appeared
October 26 in the Washington Post, reporting that the anthrax mailed
to Daschle�s office had been chemically treated to make it spread
more readily through the air. �The United States, the former Soviet
Union and Iraq are the only three nations known to have developed the
kind of additives,� the newspaper said. The article continued: �A
government official with direct knowledge of the investigation said
yesterday that the totality of the evidence in hand suggests that it
is unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former
Soviet Union or Iraq.�
The statement points to the conclusion that the anthrax mailed to
Daschle�s office was either stolen from US military stocks or
supplied directly by US military personnel with access to supplies.
In either case, it is far more likely that the anthrax was passed to
American fascists, who have numerous sympathizers in the military,
than to Islamic fundamentalists.
Copyright 1998-2001
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
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