The BioPort Connection

The latest government plant in the Ivins case is that the scientist was motivated by opposition to mandatory anthrax inoculation of the military, knowing that an attack would eliminate skepticism and most likely lead to a large government purchase of the controversial anthrax vaccine. While the premise overall is believable, surely there were people who stood to benefit much more than Ivins if that was indeed the impetus for the attacks.

Enter BioPort, the sole government supplier of the anthrax vaccine, and the direct beneficiary of the anthrax attacks. BioPort was in serious trouble, having been cited several times for health violations and contamination, which combined with the campaign against forced vaccinations was threatening to bankrupt the company. Despite its obvious problems, BioPort remained the sole government supplier, raising questions as to just who its friends were in the government.

A 2000 report by Defense Department Assistant Inspector General for Auditing, Robert Lieberman, details some peculiarities.

On August 13, 1999, the Office of the Inspector General, DoD, received a request from Congressman Walter B. Jones for a review of the financial and contractual relationship between the Department of Defense and BioPort Corporation, the sole U.S. domestic source of Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA). In his request letter, Congressman Jones noted that the General Accounting Office and Defense Contract Audit Agency had reported that BioPort was experiencing financial problems and having difficulty performing against Army contracts for AVA production. Congressman Jones expressed concern that "despite these serious questions regarding the overall viability of BioPort, the Federal government has chosen to more than double the value of the existing contract."

The report also notes that the facility's license was revoked in 1996, shut down from 1997 to 1998, and strapped for cash. BioPort asked the Army to supply it with a cash infusion to cover their lack of funds, and the request was duly granted. BioPort remained the sole contract holder with the government despite these problems and the fact that the FDA had not yet approved its only product, the anthrax vaccine.

Bioport was formed in 1998 by Ibrahim and Fuad el-Hibri, Lebanese businessmen, with the sole purpose of buying Michigan's state-run laboratory which only output was the anthrax vaccine. Fuad el-Hibri, not surprisingly, has contacts with Booz-Allen Hamilton and serves as CEO of the Carlyle Group, founded in part by George H. W. Bush, where he has immense dealings with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. The Carlyle Group's interdependence on the Sauds and the the revolving door with right-wing politicians in several countries is legendary.

Also on the board of Carlyle was Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan. Crowe invested heavily in Bioport prior to the 2001 attacks, despite the signals to outside observers that the company was in dire straits due to the issues already mentioned, which raises serious questions about what assurances el-Hibri was able to give to Crowe to compel him to invest in a failing company. After the anthrax mailings, the government predictably ordered significant amounts of the vaccine from its only distributor, Bioport, practically begging to pay three times the going rate.

Bioport continued its PR campaign into 2002, utilizing the administration's favorite surrogate journalist, Judith Miller.

The nation's sole producer of anthrax vaccine says it is in financial jeopardy because the Bush administration has failed to say how much vaccine it intends to buy, preventing it from selling vaccine to foreign and private customers at much higher prices.

Robert Kramer, president of the producer, the BioPort Corporation, said that although foreign and private parties -- which outsiders characterized as foreign governments and even large multinational corporations -- were pleading to buy vaccine for more than $100 a dose, the company could not sell to them until it had fulfilled its contract with the military to supply what one administration official estimated was about 3.4 million doses.

Despite the government providing a lifeline for a flailing and failing company based on no visible signs of viability, BioPort was still planting stories into 2002 hoping to further push the government along to buy even more vaccines, preferably at the boosted price (triple the cost). Miller even finds a way to work in her favorite hobby horse:

The impasse comes at a time when the Bush administration is vowing to oust Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who is believed to be storing thousands of gallons of anthrax that could be used as weapons in war or terrorism.

Again, the article designed purely as a PR campaign for BioPort, hoping to push larger contracts and ridiculous prices for its only product.

Beyond the speculation as to motive I mentioned at the outset of this piece, the FBI has offered no indication of just what Ivins stood to gain financially or otherwise by prompting the purchase of BioPort's product. BioPort's relationship to the anthrax attacks raises serious questions and presents serious irregularities, all of which would lead one to believe that its officials stood to gain much, much more than Ivins ever did by domestic anthrax attacks.

As with every theory advance by the FBI thus far, the latest suggestion about Ivins raises more questions than it answers.

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The Ivins Case Revisited

***Update Appended 8/10 @ 1134 CDT***

Tuesday, I made the case that the failure on the part of the FBI to present a viable case against Bruce Ivins and likewise of American journalists to be sufficiently skeptical of that proposition was independent of the eventual resolution to the scenario. Indeed, there will likely be no resolution, as there is no longer anyone to prosecute and closing the case precludes further investigation proving someone other than Ivins is responsible (if he, in fact, is not).

Under enormous pressure, the FBI has since outlined its case, which shapes to be exactly as I suspected it was from the start, a collection of circumstantial evidence lacking anything remotely definitive which will avoid serious scrutiny for lack of a living suspect. The government released a substantial stack of documents which prove to be nothing more than a series of warrant applications and findings. In other words, as Ivins lawyer states, "it was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect," but offers nothing in the way of conclusions.

The FBI, of course, assures the skeptical among us that they "could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt," a task surely far easier when the jury is purely hypothetical. Again, of Ivins' guilt are innocence I am not sure, but what remains clear is that he provided the FBI with the perfect fall guy, a suspect who acted strangely enough to present himself as a plausible suspect with the added bonus of never forcing the government to test its hand in court. Once the media predictably forget about the case in a week's time, seven years of bumbling ineptitude will be safely down the memory hole.

And that, really, is all the government is after. For all the time given to assuring us that the government is in good hands and providing safety against foreign terror, the only tangible proof in that direction is their inability to protect the country from domestic attack, much less foreign, failure to ascertain the responsible party for those attacks, and a wildly-expanding bureaucracy no more capable of preventing testers passing weapons by TSA screeners. By posthumously prosecuting Ivins in the court of public opinion, the government can point to success in the national security arena without the threat as in previous instances of facts painting a different picture down the road.

The Ivins case, though predicated on the flimsiest of evidence, provides a salve for an ailing government which, though given seven years, is no closer to closing the gaps which stood wide open in 2001. Here, the FBI is aided immensely by the lack of an accused able to stand trial and a complicit media more than willing to play their role without question.

Throughout, there has been scant mention of Steven Hatfill, as any mention of the previous suspect in the case may beg the question: "If you were so wrong on Hatfill, are we now to believe that you've nailed it on Ivins?" Pleasing enough to the FBI, no one seems to have been so impolite as to ask such an impropriety.

The script for the two individual accusations could not be more similar: the FBI launching a baseless allegation built upon scant evidence and a media more than willing to spit it out to a credulous public without digestion or investigation. Yet no one seems the least bit apprehensive about performing an encore, even if the last act closed with the government forced to pay Hatfill $5 million for destroying his reputation and career. Fortunately for Hatfill, he still has his life.

The Ivins suicide is, in some respects, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The FBI exerts ever-growing pressure on the scientist, accuses him of murdering American citizens in cold blood, Ivins becomes paranoid as a result, folds under pressure, and presto he opens the door for the government to point and say, "See. Would an innocent man do that?" We see the same tact in foreign policy, where we perform unprovoked attacks on countries meant to provoke a response, and if it comes we say, "See they're a danger to their neighbors."

I claim no omniscient knowledge of Ivins' guilt or innocence, but I can lay claim to historical literacy, something that is sorely lacking on the American scene. Americans have long lacked even basic competency in linking events together through time, viewing each occurrence as a separate instance completely disconnected to everything that happened before. Clearly this is a deficiency, as holding such a talent might allow gullible observers to see the public prosecutions of Hatfill and Ivins as two sides of the same coin. If the memory of the American public was longer than 48 hours, questions beneficial to the search for the truth might be broached, and lives might be saved in future acts of the tired play. But I'm not holding my breath.


***Appended 8/10 @ 1134 CDT***

Apparently, the FBI agrees with me:

FBI official John Miller said that "what we have seen over the past few days has been a mix of improper disclosures of partial information mixed with inaccurate information and then drawn into unfounded conclusions. None of that serves the victims, their families or the public."

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Nothing to See Here, Move Along

After lying dormant for six or seven years, the topic of Anthrax has assumed the role of Lazarus and again forced itself into the national discourse, though most likely for just as brief a stay as the first. To understand just why it has been away for so long is not difficult, as one need only recognize that the perpetrator of the 2001 attacks is most likely home-grown, and therefore of no use to an administration in dire need of a them.

That is not to say they didn't try, of course.

When the anthrax attacks occurred, Iraq was immediately fingered by some experts and many neoconservative hawks as a possible source; ABC News quoted three unnamed government sources as saying the powder in the letters matched the type produced in Iraq.

Even though most serious analysts were highly skeptical that the tainted letters came from Hussein, the mere possibility that Iraq could have maintained a stockpile of anthrax was enough to convince many people that it was a looming threat.

ABC's ineptitude in this case is par-for-the-course in American journalism, where the government leaks things to the media it thinks will help its cause and the media dutifully act as stenographers for those in power. Totalitarianism has its bludgeons and gulags. America has its complicit press.

Afghanistan, though by this time was assuredly the source of the WTC attacks, was simply not sexy enough a target. One of the most backward and poorest countries in the world, the pot at the end of the rainbow would surely not be filled with gold. Most of Bush's top aides had been praying for a disaster to link to Iraq since the late 90s under the umbrella of the PNAC, and thought for sure they could manufacture one in the Anthrax attacks, helpfully guided by gullible journalists with an unquenchable thirst for access to government sources.

Unfortunately for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, facts presented at least a fleeting obstacle, though one in its waning days of influence. Once the attacks were believed to be of US origin, they were duly forgotten and discarded, as though domestic terror is not in fact terror at all, at least not terror that can be used to propagate fallacies about foreign nemeses. The people that died, however, remain dead to this day, comforted little by the lack of utility found in their deaths.

Seven years later, 'unnamed government sources' are back, slowly sowing the seeds for another disappearance of the topic, this time in the form of a dead scientist. Completely ignoring their previous credulity in the public prosecution of Steven Hatfill, the media bandwagon is once again taking passengers, destination to be determined by the US government. Journalistic timing couldn't be more impeccable, as it was only late June of this year that the government settled with Hatfill for its propagation of lies about him in the initial phase of the story. No bother, all the more reason to blindly jump after the next government target without question.

I don't pretend to know the guilt or innocence of Bruce Ivins, no one does, but the story reads to me like so many we've read before, with endings well known. There was Hatfill. Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympics bombings. The constant rehashing of the Jon Benet case. And of course, the story of the pretty, affluent, blond girl in Aruba that insists on keeping Nancy Grace compelling me to throw a blunt object at my television on a nightly basis. Aesop was no more proficient in providing ample guides on how to proceed, but reason-be-damned, sensationalism must rule the day.

Others have examined the details of the FBI's shaky case in much more detail than I wish to, and they are worth reading, but in doing so, they seem to be placing the verdict in the hands of the outcome. The final fate of the case, however, has no bearing on the lack of integrity involved all around.

Journalists are widely being used as tools of the FBI in the case, waiting patiently to write unquestioningly the next tidbit of information passed onto them by the government, and in that way are no better than journalists used to perform their patriotic duty a century ago by printing stories of bombed American ships in order to instigate war with Spain, though the ships were done in by the US itself for precisely that function. The tale, though the players are different, is well-worn and remains transparent.

The argument over the state of journalism in America shouldn't be over liberal versus conservative, but rather over competency versus sheer ineptitude, the latter a defining characteristic of all but a select few American journalists. Whether Ivins is proven in some way guilty at the end of this parody is unimportant. It will do nothing to obfuscate the fact that there has been no actual reporting on the case at all, merely rote repetition of unnamed government sources weaving the tale most beneficial to their cause.

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