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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 11, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
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EDITORIAL: ANTHRAX AND MR. Z
A tremendous challenge looms for the postal workers and
their unions. The government knows who probably sent the
deadly anthrax letters, but has done nothing about it.
This shocking assertion doesn't come from us. It was first
made by Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a prominent expert on
biological weapons who reported her findings on the American
Society of Scientists Web site. An article about her views
appeared in the March 18 New Yorker magazine.
Now the culpability of the government has been suggested by
an even weightier establishment source: the New York Times.
In an op-ed piece on July 2, Pulitzer Prize-winning
columnist Nicholas D. Kristof describes in detail the person
responsible, identifying him only as "Mr. Z" for obvious
legal reasons.
He is not somebody from the Middle East, says Kristof, but a
"true-blue American with close ties to the Defense
Department, the CIA, and the American biodefense program."
He had access to an isolated residence last fall that could
be a government "safe house." The FBI "knows that Mr. Z gave
Cipro to people who visited it," says Kristof. Cipro is the
antibiotic recommended to counteract anthrax.
While the Bush administration pretends that its
strengthening of the repressive apparatus here and abroad is
for "fighting terror" and "homeland security," and has put
more than a thousand Muslim and Arab people behind bars, it
has allowed the prime suspect in the domestic anthrax
attacks to use multiple passports and identities and "travel
abroad on government assignments, even to Central Asia,"
says Kristof.
His identity appears to be an open secret in Washington.
Kristof says many experts are "buzzing about Mr. Z behind
his back."
Kristof notes that the FBI has polygraphed him, searched his
home twice and interviewed him four times. But the agency
has not placed Mr. Z under surveillance or asked a
handwriting expert to analyze any similarities between his
writing and that on the letters that accompanied the
anthrax.
The political police also declined to obtain comparison
anthrax samples from labs until March and allowed the stocks
of anthrax at Iowa State University to be destroyed before
they could be tested. Scientists at two likely labs--Fort
Detrick, Md., and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah--were not
systematically polygraphed until June.
This person has an extreme racist political pedigree that is
also known to Washington. Kristof says he has "claimed that
he participated in the white army's much-feared Selous
Scouts" in Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe. He "also
claims involvement in the former South African Defense
Force," which committed horrendous crimes against the
African majority before apartheid was finally dismantled.
The worst recorded outbreak of anthrax in history occurred
in Rhodesia from 1978 to 1980, exactly the period when the
liberation movement was winning the war against the Selous
Scouts and white minority rule. The disease raged in the
African-owned Tribal Trust Lands. Some 10,000 Black farmers
were sickened and 182 died, but the white elite of Rhodesia
and their cattle were untouched. There was suspicion that
the disease was spread by aerial spraying.
The FBI and the Bush administration appear totally
unconcerned that a person with Mr. Z's background has worked
high up in the biological weapons program of the U.S. and is
viewed by his colleagues as a prime suspect in the anthrax
murders.
But postal workers, many of whom are African American, must
look at it differently. There have been nine known deaths
since the letters started to appear--the majority postal
workers. All were purposely exposed to anthrax. If that's
not "terrorism," what is?
Don't they have the right to conduct an independent
investigation of what is going on? Kristof ascribes a benign
motive to the killer: he "probably had no intention of
killing people. ... My guess is that the goal was to help
America by raising preparedness against biological attacks
in the future."
But what if the goal of this unregenerate racist was
something much more sinister? To provide a pretext to
dismantle civil liberties and strengthen a police state?
And/or to wage war on countries U.S. imperialism wants to
conquer, like Iraq? And what if the cover-up is similarly
motivated?
The workers' movement--particularly the postal workers'
union--has the right to take control of this investigation
and pry it open to public view, here and around the world.
- END -
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