{"id":4244,"date":"2008-08-04T16:06:03","date_gmt":"2008-08-04T15:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4244"},"modified":"2008-08-04T16:06:03","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T15:06:03","slug":"fbi-told-to-blame-anthrax-on-al-qaeda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/fbi-told-to-blame-anthrax-on-al-qaeda\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Told to Blame Anthrax on al-Qaeda"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK<\/a>\u00a0– WASHINGTON<\/a>\u00a0| In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House<\/a> officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller<\/a> to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda<\/a>, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned.<\/p>\n

After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo editor Robert Stevens<\/a>, Mueller was “beaten up” during President Bush<\/a>‘s morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden<\/a>, according to a former aide.<\/p>\n

“They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East<\/a>,” the retired senior FBI<\/a> official told The News.<\/p>\n

On October 15, 2001, President Bush said, “There may be some possible link” to Bin Laden, adding, “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Vice President Cheney<\/a> also said Bin Laden’s henchmen were trained “how to deploy and use these kinds of substances, so you start to piece it all together.”<\/p>\n

But by then the FBI already knew anthrax spilling out of letters addressed to media outlets and to a U.S.<\/a> senator was a military strain of the bioweapon. “Very quickly [Fort Detrick<\/a>, Md., experts] told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with,” the ex-FBI official said. “They couldn’t go from box cutters one week to weapons-grade anthrax the next.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK\u00a0– WASHINGTON\u00a0| In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out, the Daily News has learned. After the Oct. 5, 2001, death from anthrax exposure of Sun photo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[41],"class_list":{"0":"post-4244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-war-terrorism","7":"tag-fbi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}