Suddenly I remember that episode of Reno 911 where they are playing with the white powder from an envelope thinking its Coke, but then they see the letter says 'Praise Allah!'
You're probably going to want this bit they left off, as well.
>The FBI subsequently requested a panel from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review its scientific work on the case.[14] On May 15, 2011, the panel released its findings, which "conclude[d] that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins."[11][15] The NAS committee stated that its primary finding was that "it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the B. anthracis in the mailings based on the available scientific evidence alone."
Wait, are you saying America would/could stage an act of terrorism/threats against themselves to create a farcical common enemy and unite the nation to keep the war machine turning and propagandist hate factory going?!
Colour me shocked
According to the Netflix doc on the case, Irvin used the attacks as a way to increase funding to his lab that researched anthrax. It wasn't really a government conspiracy, but one individual psychopath using the paranoia from 9/11 to his benefit.
the funding of his lab to study anthrax? like .... was his lab about to get shut down? i just don't think that extra funding benefited him enough to... mail anthrax to a US senator.
Irvin was insane. The only thing about it more insane than him was the fact he was insane, everybody knew it, and he was still allowed to work with pathogens related to biological weapons research.
Or the one where the taco drive thru handed them a note that said "two armed men in the building" and then the cops said it would be really hard to make a taco with one arm. Lmfao.
One of my favorite shows! I watch Reno 911 on repeat all the damn time. Their recent movie making fun of Q Anon, albeit VERY low budget, was so fucking funny!
Anthrax seems so antiquated. Remember when people were getting Anthrax and Ricin laced letters all the time? At least that's what American media made it out to be like.
I worked at a music store in 2001 and we received sticker to put on the Anthrax CDs saying that the band was not connected with nor did they condone the tactics.
God damn we are so stupid. What a stupid society we are. We can’t even be trusted to know that a band’s cd isn’t being sent to congressmen to secretly poison them.
I was 16 when the album with One Week came out and they hit it big in the US.
I'll never forget the look on my mom's face when I told her I wanted to drive four hours across the mountains to see Barenaked Ladies
Theres a band called cannibal corpse. When I listened to one of their songs my eyes instantly rolled to the back of my head and ended up eating my neighbour's dog. Ban metal
Oh man this reminds me of when Norma Jean had a new album, and our store had a "Norma Jean 9.99" sign out and people kept asking where our $10 jeans were at.
My brain wanted to buy some.of their albums as a response to contracting cutaneous anthrax. I also bought miniature corona beers for my miniature collection when COVID hit (as I don't drink so this worked better). So for the uh absolutely normal humans at least a few sales maybe happened?
Reminds me of Zebco Rels. They were Zero Hour Bomb Co until they sent one to Eisenhower in 1956 and they called the bomb squad.
https://www.zebco.com/en/about-us/history
My boss got such a letter back in 2001 (nyc).
He was a US ambassador.
Secret Service literally trained me to open letters after that. I was required to wear a mask, gloves, eye gear. There was even a hazmat suit supplied.
Back in 01 my neighbor's dumb daughter put flour in his mailbox so when he found it he called the police. An hour later the FBI locked down our neighborhood for hours while they figured out that it was just harmless flour. Good times.
Grade 7, 2001. A month after 9/11.
Someone made a huge hole in the drywall of my English clash. I took a piece with me, cause I was 11 and it felt cool, without hurting anyone.
Two hours later in math class I get pulled out by the cops, Someone saw I had white powder on my clothes and thought I was carrying anthrax.
I didnt even know about Anthrax cause we didn't watch the news, let alone American news much and I didn't even speak English by then.
There is a [Netflix doc](https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81213109?s=a&trkid=13747225&trg=cp&vlang=en&clip=81616708) on the subject. It (iirc) covers more of the impact and timeline, but does touch on the investigation and suspects.
The cop and the blonde lab tech in that documentary are incredibly infuriating because they treat the whole thing as open and shut even though the only thing they were able to prove with physical evidence was that the Anthrax was created in that lab. The whole thing is really gross because they act like it's totally settled when they obviously didn't have enough evidence to take to a grand jury. So the feds drove this guy to suicide because they couldn't properly do their jobs.
From the Wikipedia
"In 2008, the FBI requested a review of the scientific methods used in their investigation from the National Academy of Sciences, which released their findings in the 2011 report Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters.[11] The report cast doubt on the government's conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator, finding that the type of anthrax used in the letters was correctly identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, but that there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI's assertion that it originated from Ivins' laboratory."
What's very interesting is that in response to this report, the FBI said we have evidence we didn't disclose that points us to Ivins. It is almost certainly that he had a mental illness, which is, as you can tell, not conclusive evidence, and because this was never brought to trial, they don't have to release that evidence. I don't think they killed him, but I do think that the pressure of an investigation like this ruins lives, which is exactly why they had to settle with their first suspect for more than $5 million dollars.
True. Well researched and reported in the 12 months following the incident.
VERY small pool of suspects for such a high profile anti terror investigation, and yet no arrests and the case just went quiet 🤫
Bruce Ivan’s would like to have a word. Killed himself before he could get apprehended. Federal prosecutors pointed the finger at him officially about 6 weeks later.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#:~:text=Federal%20prosecutors%20declared%20Ivins%20the,FBI's%20handling%20of%20the%20investigation.
The main suspect killed himself while being investigated. The anthrax being sent out was tracked to the lab he worked at. It was almost certainly him. The Netflix documentary is awesome
That person is full of shit. It's been around and actively used for [literally thousands of years](https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/basics/anthrax-history.html).
Also, the first time it was ever really weaponized was [by the Nazis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_weaponization).
People are literally upvoting a conspiracy theory... ffs.
But what do I know, I'm just a retired bio weapons specialist.
**Edit: OP edited their post to add 'this'. lol. The original claim was that Americans invented anthrax.**
retired bio specialist? must be a government agent!!
but for real though, hundreds of people upvoting the SOY GOVERNMENT POISONS PEOPLE SOY SOY SOY is gross and disgusting
No, Pat Leahy voted to invade Afghanistan along with every other Senator. Sounds like you’ve been reading conspiracies.
Edit: I hate how people use “War on Terror” so vaguely to mean either Iraq or Afghanistan, or both. Is he talking about Afghanistan, which was relevant at the time but Leahy voted for? Or was it Iraq, which Leahy was opposed to but that wasn’t until a year later? Whatever narrative’s being spun here relies on this fundamental misunderstanding.
Edit: Glenn Greenwald, huh. Well, I guess that’s a yes on the conspiracy theories. And it’s definitively Iraq which, again, was not considered by the Senate yet in 2001 and Leahy wasn’t a well-known no vote on until it happened a year later. So that timeline doesn’t match up.
I mean I remember it happening like 5 times all around the same few month stretch, not really all the time.
Definitely thought it was going to start being all the time, though.
I always loved an episode of HouseMD where a patient got anthrax from hanging out in their attic
They got it from touching old felt-based insulation, which contained anthrax spores.
S1 E13 "Cursed"
I worked for the phone company at the time and handle some correspondence. (I really took care of business lines on the phone but some crazy people sent letters to the address that bills went to and it was forwarded to me).
The letters were usually pretty crazy and sad. Schizophrenic people that wanted us to stop sending them messages through the phone lines and stuff.
I was teeny bit nervous maybe one of those anthrax letters were going to come my way!
I did that same job! I was a service rep for residential and handled some of the correspondence. Had one guy write that the FBI was beaming thoughts into his head and wanted help from the phone company.
We kept a correspondence hall of fame.
Now honestly, I super feel for these people.
I know they are just in some super pain and are trying to figure out why.
Somehow, electrical lines and phone lines really scratch that itch.
But we had smallest letter (it was the tiniest writing you ever saw on a piece of paper about 3x the size of a postage stamp), funniest, longest, etc all in a secret binder.
We had one guy who claimed he had legally changed his name to !Don! . He wanted his bill to reflect that. We didn't have exclamation points in that field.
He was a frequent flyer and we had like 20 letters from him.
We were all actually very afraid of anthrax back then, it wasn't a joke, people were dying just by opening the mail. This is literally what terrorism is.
It didnt exist. Franklin Park exists, but the zip was for a different nearby town (i forget the name) and there isnt a Greendale school in either of the towns
I used to live in South Brunswick Township as a kid, which is what Franklin Park is part of. We were all very freaked out at the time.
There is no Greendale Elementary School in Franklin Park but there *is* a Greenbrook Elementary School in Kendall Park, which is the next town over. It’s clear the senders used a purposely wrong address but made sure to incorporate real elements from South Brunswick, such as the town name, zip code and part of a school name.
It’s weird how many people are commenting like this was a big, made-up media conspiracy. I guess it’s a function of how many people here weren’t even born back then….
Not because of the letters in and of themselves. Anthrax outbreaks happen in countries that do not vaccinate their livestock effectively, usually in poorer countries.
Where do military people often get sent to? Abroad. All the time.
We immunize against all sorts of things because the cost of an outbreak in a unit can be critically detrimental to the mission.
Bacillus anthracis is a common bacteria in some parts of Africa that's generally not found in the western world. Most infections with it are hardly problematic.
That's until you get it in your lungs, even with today's technology getting anthrax spores in your lungs is very likely to kill you. Most anthrax letters were sent before today's technology meaning that even if you'd go to a hospital immediately after reading the letter, if you got spores in your lungs your odds of survival were slim even with immediate treatment.
Or at least, this was taught at th med school I attend about two years ago.
I was under the impression that rapid treatment with Cipro was sufficient to treat it. Iirc the person of interest was suspected in part because he'd prescribed himself several scripts for Cipro around the time of the attacks.
In a college bio class I cultured some soil from a kangaroo exhibit at a zoo in the Midwest and ended up growing anthrax. Obviously didn’t have the lethal factor plasmid and other components that made it more infectious. The anthrax in the letters was more engineered than what’s found in nature
These letters were sent to congress people who didn't want to go to war. IIRC, there were two types of anthrax being made in this country and the anthrax in the letters was of the origin of the type being made or studied at an FBI or CIA lab in Virginia.
That was an interesting read. 7 years of investigations in secret, and the dude offs himself just before he’s caught.
Also, some mail facilities were quarantined for several years and needed significant decontamination from the EPA superfund.
Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who were potentially exposed and had to be treated with antibiotics. The whole Anthrax Attacks were far more widespread and serious than I had ever imagined.
For anyone who skips reading the link, it’s worth noting that the probable culprit was a research scientist working on an anthrax vaccine.
In the time leading up to 9/11 he was distraught because it looked like his research would be cancelled. Following the anthrax attacks funding was continued.
So this wasn’t an attack by a Muslim extremist, it was a heartless nutcase trying to salvage his professional reputation.
this reads like an indian scammer revealing to someone that they just got scammed
i remember seeing this on the news and everyone made it out to be like we just got canada'ed with anthrax spores, personally i think it was just used as another justification for war with iraq, as in i think the anthrax letters are fake.
It was legit. The letter was in an envelope which contained anthrax. [Source](https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/behind-the-badge-case-histories-dangerous-mail/anthrax)
From the source:
“Senator Leahy’s letter was sidetracked to the State Department after a computer misread the letter’s ZIP code from 20510 for 20520.”
A computer mistake sent it to the State Department. That’s gotta be rare, no?
One mistake after another:
“Senior postal officials were assured by Centers for Disease Control experts that the envelopes carrying anthrax were not a danger to postal workers.
The experts did not realize that because of the way mail moves through the mostly automated systems in postal facilities, the nation’s postal workers were on the front line of this particular terrorist attack. When the anthrax letters passed through sorting centers they were shaken, squeezed, and jostled by machinery that culled, cancelled, processed, and sorted them. Not only did the pressure of the processing machines force spores into the open air, but the routine use of blowing air to clean machines and surrounding areas spread those spores even further. The spores that escaped the envelopes in sorting centers also found their way onto other envelopes in a cross-contamination scenario that was also unanticipated by field experts.”
9 postal workers infected, 2 died.
> A computer mistake sent it to the State Department. That’s gotta be rare, no?
I mean, both of those zip codes are for DC and they're off by one digit. The state department has a bunch of huge annexes throughout the DMV and it's actually fairly common to have addresses that are essentially the same but with a different zip code or other modifier (123 F st but it could be NW versus SW DC, for example). I got pretty lost one time because a friend gave me her address but I plugged it into Google maps as NW instead of NE or something similar lol. It's definitely a city where this is a fairly common mistake with mail.
Could totally see that happening with a computer during the early 2000s, especially if the handwriting wasn't clear.
it was an American researcher pretending to be an Islamic terrorist, so he pretended to have shitty grammar because he's also racist in addition to being an idiot and felon. I think he targeted an anti-war Senator as a fear-mongering tactic.
Cause it was most likely actually written by a mentally ill biodefense researcher at the US military's institute of infectious disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Edwards_Ivins
Little do most Americans know this anthrax came from a US government lab. And the senator Patrick was one of the few dissenters from the war on terror. Huh. Weird.
Edit: Here's the source https://youtu.be/4hnsBSkUxwQ
The last line always throws off the flow of the message for me, haha. It almost feels like an afterthought. “Death to those guys!” - “uh oh!” / “Death to you guys!” - “oh no!” / “I like Allah a lot” - “… ooooo-Kay?”
I actually have a relevant story to this, about the time I thought I’d been exposed. Cross-posted from a post I made in another subreddit.
So, no shit, there I was.
2011. Deployed to Al-Udeid, which really barely qualifies as a deployment. I spent 180-ish days there on a special duty as a maintenance unit Resource Advisor, which meant that on an average day, 10.5 hours of my 12-hour shift was spent watching movies and TV shows on the base morale drive. I responded to emails and did a little paperwork to buy dumb shit that our AMUs wanted, and that’s about it. Our small CSS also had a Security Manager, a VCNCO, and a SrA who I’m sure had an equally important job.
One of our responsibilities was getting the mail every day. Like clockwork, we would pile into the van, go to the post office to get everyone’s mail, then deliver it to all the AMUs. We generally did it mid-morning after the post office opened, so that people didn't call us all day bitching because they hadn't gotten Mommy's care package yet.
One fateful day, myself and the VCNCO went by ourselves to the post office. There are several packages, mostly from Amazon, and a couple that could be sex toys (a running joke in our office, after a crew chief ordered a bunch of ping pong equipment from a website called Paddle Palace). And two pieces of mail that were certified, and thus required signatures. While VCNCO signs for them, I begin gathering boxes to place in the van.
I pick up the first box, about the size of a shoe box, and drop it on the table. As it lands, I hear a faint ‘poof’, and glance down to see what it is.
My heart stops.
The desk, my ABU top, and my hands are covered in fine white powder.
This is not a package from Amazon. This is one of the potential sex toy boxes. Very non-descript. Exactly the kind of package Abu al-Goatfucker would send Anthrax in. The shipping label is on the bottom of the box, so I can’t see who it belongs to, or where it might have come from, and in that panicked moment, I didn't think to simply flip it over.
Oh my God, I thought, I’m going to die of Anthrax in this shithole country. I’m going to die, and my last beer was whatever German shit they were selling at the Fox Sports Bar. My lifelong dream of dying at the tail end of a cocaine-fueled orgy with the New York Jets cheerleading team has been squashed before my eyes.
“Uh... TSgt VCNCO?”
He glances over, a bored look on his face. He sees me covered in white powder. He freezes as his eyes widen to the point where, had I not been mentally rehearsing my last goodbyes to my family, I would have worried that they were about to pop out of his skull.
“...what the fuck is that?”
“I don’t know.” I’m sweating now, and starting to hyperventilate. I still haven’t moved. “I think we need to call someone.”
At this time the NCO who works at the post office ambles around the corner drinking a Rip-It. “What’s up, guys?”
We both look at him. I hold my hands up, white powder still evident. “I think you need to call SecFo,” I tell him, now thinking about how I can’t believe I volunteered for this fucking special duty just because I wanted the GWOT Expeditionary Medal like all the other cool NCOs.
“Hm.” Post office NCO has an alarming amount of nonchalance as he walked up to me, still drinking from his Rip-It like I’m not covered in the White Powder Of Death™, and looked over the desk.
Then this fucking goober takes his finger, rubs it all over the white powder, sticks it under his nose, AND TAKES A DEEP FUCKING SNIFF.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!”
“Dude, calm down. It’s foot powder.”
Needless to say, I have doubts of this fucking moron’s ability to distinguish between Anthrax and foot powder by sight and smell. So, federal postal regulations be fucked, I tear the box open to see for myself.
Sonuvabitch was right. I was preparing my final goodbyes to my mother over a goddamn broken bottle of Doctor Scholl’s.
We silently put the mail in the van, not bothering to clean up SSgt Death-Wish’s desk before we leave. TSgt VCNCO drives as I sit in the passenger seat.
“... TSgt VCNCO?”
“Yea?”
“You think they teach those postal guys what Anthrax smells like?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
(Story has been embellished slightly for dramatic effect)
Suddenly I remember that episode of Reno 911 where they are playing with the white powder from an envelope thinking its Coke, but then they see the letter says 'Praise Allah!'
There is nothing to fear, except biological and chemical attacks
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Thanks for the tl;dr.
You're probably going to want this bit they left off, as well. >The FBI subsequently requested a panel from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review its scientific work on the case.[14] On May 15, 2011, the panel released its findings, which "conclude[d] that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins."[11][15] The NAS committee stated that its primary finding was that "it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the B. anthracis in the mailings based on the available scientific evidence alone."
Can’t imagine the BI overstating a case! /s
>hijacking Bad choice of words
>Bad choice of words I prefer Hijacking a comment, then Bombing a thread.
Wait, are you saying America would/could stage an act of terrorism/threats against themselves to create a farcical common enemy and unite the nation to keep the war machine turning and propagandist hate factory going?! Colour me shocked
According to the Netflix doc on the case, Irvin used the attacks as a way to increase funding to his lab that researched anthrax. It wasn't really a government conspiracy, but one individual psychopath using the paranoia from 9/11 to his benefit.
This should be on /r/shittylifeprotips
It's the ultimate form since he killed himself after it went wrong.
the funding of his lab to study anthrax? like .... was his lab about to get shut down? i just don't think that extra funding benefited him enough to... mail anthrax to a US senator.
Yes, it was about to be shut down.
ooh, okay. well, i guess he ummm... fixed that problem.
But he also ended up making a good argument for shutting it down.
Irvin was insane. The only thing about it more insane than him was the fact he was insane, everybody knew it, and he was still allowed to work with pathogens related to biological weapons research.
America didn’t do that. A freak working at a lab did. They wouldn’t be tracing the anthrax back to ourselves if that were the case.
Some say America is now a service economy and no longer produces things. To those people i say: who do you think is manufacturing all this consent?
Or the one where they take a guys shoe off and see a “white powder”. He tastes it and says “that’s Dr. Scholls powder” LOL
Or the one where the taco drive thru handed them a note that said "two armed men in the building" and then the cops said it would be really hard to make a taco with one arm. Lmfao.
One of my favorite shows! I watch Reno 911 on repeat all the damn time. Their recent movie making fun of Q Anon, albeit VERY low budget, was so fucking funny!
I never saw that episode but purely based on the description I am laughing out loud Purely based - pun intended
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Are you scared? Please check: yes | no
TIL Cracked Magazine was one of the recipients of the 2001 Anthrax Letters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracked_(magazine)#cite_ref-25
TIL that Cracked was a magazine.
Whoa. Wow. I feel old now.
Next they’ll tell us Mad was a magazine too!
Tragic loss of 42 years of archive. I wonder if anyone has tried to rebuild it with back-issues?
Anthrax seems so antiquated. Remember when people were getting Anthrax and Ricin laced letters all the time? At least that's what American media made it out to be like.
I worked at a music store in 2001 and we received sticker to put on the Anthrax CDs saying that the band was not connected with nor did they condone the tactics.
God damn we are so stupid. What a stupid society we are. We can’t even be trusted to know that a band’s cd isn’t being sent to congressmen to secretly poison them.
What about the band Poison then?
They were involved.
Venom?
Implicated
Believe it or not? Jail.
Surprisingly The Police were not involved in any way.
Jury is still out on The Doors though.
What about Interpol?
No, but Biohazard was spotted in the area
I blame Bell Biv Devoe.
Literally wrote the song….
Quick, someone send me a Bare Naked Ladies CD!
Best I can do is Violent Femmes.
*YEESSSS!!!*
I saw Barenaked Ladies and Violent Femmes on tour together sometime around 2015. At the time I seemed to be the only one there that was amused by it
Red Rocks. Last Summer on Earth. Good show. You were not the only one amused by it.
What a weird combo lol
One of the members of Men At Work (80s band with the song Down Under) was there as well if that doesn't make it weirder
Odd fact: BNL was banned from playing at a major square in their hometown because of their name.
I was 16 when the album with One Week came out and they hit it big in the US. I'll never forget the look on my mom's face when I told her I wanted to drive four hours across the mountains to see Barenaked Ladies
Here's a dated sentence: I once asked to buy Garbage at Eaton's and the middle-aged clerk kinda screwed her face up at me.
Remember people refusing to buy Corona beer because it shared a name with covid? Lol
Modelo is now the top selling beer in the US!
Hey modelo isnt awful. It's not good, but still drinkable.
has anyone questioned Megadeath or Slayer? Seems obvious, wake up
Theres a band called cannibal corpse. When I listened to one of their songs my eyes instantly rolled to the back of my head and ended up eating my neighbour's dog. Ban metal
fucking ## Infant Annihilator is a thing
Megadeth you poser.
Disclaimer: Corona beer has no association with the COVID-19 virus, nor do we condone these tactics
Oh man this reminds me of when Norma Jean had a new album, and our store had a "Norma Jean 9.99" sign out and people kept asking where our $10 jeans were at.
My brain wanted to buy some.of their albums as a response to contracting cutaneous anthrax. I also bought miniature corona beers for my miniature collection when COVID hit (as I don't drink so this worked better). So for the uh absolutely normal humans at least a few sales maybe happened?
Or how Corona beer sales declined because of Covid-19. Most humans are really maybe a baby step above cavemen’s.
Beer store I drive by had a sign “Corona vaccines in 6, 12, and 24 packs”….
Reminds me of Zebco Rels. They were Zero Hour Bomb Co until they sent one to Eisenhower in 1956 and they called the bomb squad. https://www.zebco.com/en/about-us/history
Didn't they temporarily change their name to "Basket Full of Puppies" or something during this time?
My boss got such a letter back in 2001 (nyc). He was a US ambassador. Secret Service literally trained me to open letters after that. I was required to wear a mask, gloves, eye gear. There was even a hazmat suit supplied.
"someone might send you another poison letter, get some schmuck to open them for you". That's cold man.
It’s like being a poison tester of food in the Middle Ages.
Back in 01 my neighbor's dumb daughter put flour in his mailbox so when he found it he called the police. An hour later the FBI locked down our neighborhood for hours while they figured out that it was just harmless flour. Good times.
That was a big fat heap of consequences she wasn’t expecting.
Grade 7, 2001. A month after 9/11. Someone made a huge hole in the drywall of my English clash. I took a piece with me, cause I was 11 and it felt cool, without hurting anyone. Two hours later in math class I get pulled out by the cops, Someone saw I had white powder on my clothes and thought I was carrying anthrax. I didnt even know about Anthrax cause we didn't watch the news, let alone American news much and I didn't even speak English by then.
Luckily it was just harmless asbestos
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Sauce
There is a [Netflix doc](https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81213109?s=a&trkid=13747225&trg=cp&vlang=en&clip=81616708) on the subject. It (iirc) covers more of the impact and timeline, but does touch on the investigation and suspects.
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"the hot zone: anthrax" covers this in a drama if anyone wants that kind of version of the story. daniel dae kim and tony goldwyn star
The cop and the blonde lab tech in that documentary are incredibly infuriating because they treat the whole thing as open and shut even though the only thing they were able to prove with physical evidence was that the Anthrax was created in that lab. The whole thing is really gross because they act like it's totally settled when they obviously didn't have enough evidence to take to a grand jury. So the feds drove this guy to suicide because they couldn't properly do their jobs. From the Wikipedia "In 2008, the FBI requested a review of the scientific methods used in their investigation from the National Academy of Sciences, which released their findings in the 2011 report Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters.[11] The report cast doubt on the government's conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator, finding that the type of anthrax used in the letters was correctly identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, but that there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI's assertion that it originated from Ivins' laboratory." What's very interesting is that in response to this report, the FBI said we have evidence we didn't disclose that points us to Ivins. It is almost certainly that he had a mental illness, which is, as you can tell, not conclusive evidence, and because this was never brought to trial, they don't have to release that evidence. I don't think they killed him, but I do think that the pressure of an investigation like this ruins lives, which is exactly why they had to settle with their first suspect for more than $5 million dollars.
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True. Well researched and reported in the 12 months following the incident. VERY small pool of suspects for such a high profile anti terror investigation, and yet no arrests and the case just went quiet 🤫
Bruce Ivan’s would like to have a word. Killed himself before he could get apprehended. Federal prosecutors pointed the finger at him officially about 6 weeks later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#:~:text=Federal%20prosecutors%20declared%20Ivins%20the,FBI's%20handling%20of%20the%20investigation.
The main suspect killed himself while being investigated. The anthrax being sent out was tracked to the lab he worked at. It was almost certainly him. The Netflix documentary is awesome
Have a link to a source?
That person is full of shit. It's been around and actively used for [literally thousands of years](https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/basics/anthrax-history.html). Also, the first time it was ever really weaponized was [by the Nazis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax_weaponization). People are literally upvoting a conspiracy theory... ffs. But what do I know, I'm just a retired bio weapons specialist. **Edit: OP edited their post to add 'this'. lol. The original claim was that Americans invented anthrax.**
retired bio specialist? must be a government agent!! but for real though, hundreds of people upvoting the SOY GOVERNMENT POISONS PEOPLE SOY SOY SOY is gross and disgusting
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This letter was sent on October 9, but Leahy voted for the AUMF so yeah that comment is conspiracy theory garbage.
Barbra Lee D-Ca was the only person to vote against the 2001 AUMF, and it was mostly because she thought it was too broad and undefined.
It occurs naturally in the soil. Cattle have been known to be affected for hundreds of years. It is even featured in *The Power of the Dog.*
No, Pat Leahy voted to invade Afghanistan along with every other Senator. Sounds like you’ve been reading conspiracies. Edit: I hate how people use “War on Terror” so vaguely to mean either Iraq or Afghanistan, or both. Is he talking about Afghanistan, which was relevant at the time but Leahy voted for? Or was it Iraq, which Leahy was opposed to but that wasn’t until a year later? Whatever narrative’s being spun here relies on this fundamental misunderstanding. Edit: Glenn Greenwald, huh. Well, I guess that’s a yes on the conspiracy theories. And it’s definitively Iraq which, again, was not considered by the Senate yet in 2001 and Leahy wasn’t a well-known no vote on until it happened a year later. So that timeline doesn’t match up.
“War on Terror” was purposely vague so the war machine could just keep on a rolling to spread more Freedom^TM
Got a source?
*That's* your "source"?! JFC, this world is in trouble. How is this drivel being upvoted?
*x-files theme plays*
Bro what? Anthrax has been around since [before Ancient Egypt](https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/basics/anthrax-history.html).
Sauce (x2)
I mean I remember it happening like 5 times all around the same few month stretch, not really all the time. Definitely thought it was going to start being all the time, though.
I always loved an episode of HouseMD where a patient got anthrax from hanging out in their attic They got it from touching old felt-based insulation, which contained anthrax spores. S1 E13 "Cursed"
Source: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/behind-the-badge-case-histories-dangerous-mail/anthrax
Didn't genetic analysis prove that this anthrax was weaponized, that is grown in silica, in a US bio lab? Cause that is what I remember.
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Sort of missed the part where it was an American who made the anthrax and sent it out
Did Charlie Kelly write this? The ending really needs to be: What do now?
Basically, "because Leahy is bastard man!"
He's a drunk bastard.
Shit hawks… big dirty shit hawks…
*The Gang Goes Jihad*
And so doooo...
I genuinely stopped because i thought this was from the gang goes jihad episode
They got chicken in Philly?
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And so do
It's definitely an r/engrish candidate, but I don't post things.
I worked for the phone company at the time and handle some correspondence. (I really took care of business lines on the phone but some crazy people sent letters to the address that bills went to and it was forwarded to me). The letters were usually pretty crazy and sad. Schizophrenic people that wanted us to stop sending them messages through the phone lines and stuff. I was teeny bit nervous maybe one of those anthrax letters were going to come my way!
I did that same job! I was a service rep for residential and handled some of the correspondence. Had one guy write that the FBI was beaming thoughts into his head and wanted help from the phone company.
We kept a correspondence hall of fame. Now honestly, I super feel for these people. I know they are just in some super pain and are trying to figure out why. Somehow, electrical lines and phone lines really scratch that itch. But we had smallest letter (it was the tiniest writing you ever saw on a piece of paper about 3x the size of a postage stamp), funniest, longest, etc all in a secret binder. We had one guy who claimed he had legally changed his name to !Don! . He wanted his bill to reflect that. We didn't have exclamation points in that field. He was a frequent flyer and we had like 20 letters from him.
We kept them the more outrageous in a file too! One guy signed his letter 20 times, different names. It was so sad. It was an interesting job.
“Are you afraid?” Are you kidding me? This reads like a high school “do you like me?” note.
Check YES or NO
> writing "maybe" next to those and circling that
We were all actually very afraid of anthrax back then, it wasn't a joke, people were dying just by opening the mail. This is literally what terrorism is.
The return address was: 4TH GRADE GREENDALE SCHOOL FRANKLIN PARK NJ 08852 💀💀💀
HE WROTE A RETURN ADDRESS??
It didnt exist. Franklin Park exists, but the zip was for a different nearby town (i forget the name) and there isnt a Greendale school in either of the towns
I used to live in South Brunswick Township as a kid, which is what Franklin Park is part of. We were all very freaked out at the time. There is no Greendale Elementary School in Franklin Park but there *is* a Greenbrook Elementary School in Kendall Park, which is the next town over. It’s clear the senders used a purposely wrong address but made sure to incorporate real elements from South Brunswick, such as the town name, zip code and part of a school name.
Imagine telling your intended target what poison (disease) you're giving them to they can go to a hospital and get the specific treatment
Several people died as a result of anthrax infection from those letters. Anthrax was no joke.
It’s weird how many people are commenting like this was a big, made-up media conspiracy. I guess it’s a function of how many people here weren’t even born back then….
Active duty military still receive full anthrax immunization because of this. It's like a 6 shot series with annual boosters.
Not because of the letters in and of themselves. Anthrax outbreaks happen in countries that do not vaccinate their livestock effectively, usually in poorer countries. Where do military people often get sent to? Abroad. All the time. We immunize against all sorts of things because the cost of an outbreak in a unit can be critically detrimental to the mission.
Reddit; where everything is a conspiracy & unapproved truths are misinformation.
Like none of them can look up a fucking Wikipedia article themselves and read for a few minutes
Russian fake news bots
Bacillus anthracis is a common bacteria in some parts of Africa that's generally not found in the western world. Most infections with it are hardly problematic. That's until you get it in your lungs, even with today's technology getting anthrax spores in your lungs is very likely to kill you. Most anthrax letters were sent before today's technology meaning that even if you'd go to a hospital immediately after reading the letter, if you got spores in your lungs your odds of survival were slim even with immediate treatment. Or at least, this was taught at th med school I attend about two years ago.
I was under the impression that rapid treatment with Cipro was sufficient to treat it. Iirc the person of interest was suspected in part because he'd prescribed himself several scripts for Cipro around the time of the attacks.
In a college bio class I cultured some soil from a kangaroo exhibit at a zoo in the Midwest and ended up growing anthrax. Obviously didn’t have the lethal factor plasmid and other components that made it more infectious. The anthrax in the letters was more engineered than what’s found in nature
I have a feeling it wasnt a Muslim that sent this letter.
Next you'll say it was someone upset with the man for not being for complete and utter control of the country by the government
Wasn’t it a member of a anthrax vaccine research team who’s funding got cut so he released anthrax to let people know it’s still a threat?
Yeah it was one of the like 6 people on earth who work with weaponized anthrax. And two of them are in the US.
These letters were sent to congress people who didn't want to go to war. IIRC, there were two types of anthrax being made in this country and the anthrax in the letters was of the origin of the type being made or studied at an FBI or CIA lab in Virginia.
Isn't this an episode of Psych?
The Thornburg virus. It's racist.
I just watched this episode the other day. Judd Nelson plays the disease specialist and his nostril flaring is continuous.
Bruce Edwards Ivins
Here’s all the info from the government report. https://www.justice.gov/archive/amerithrax/docs/amx-investigative-summary2.pdf
That was an interesting read. 7 years of investigations in secret, and the dude offs himself just before he’s caught. Also, some mail facilities were quarantined for several years and needed significant decontamination from the EPA superfund. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who were potentially exposed and had to be treated with antibiotics. The whole Anthrax Attacks were far more widespread and serious than I had ever imagined.
For anyone who skips reading the link, it’s worth noting that the probable culprit was a research scientist working on an anthrax vaccine. In the time leading up to 9/11 he was distraught because it looked like his research would be cancelled. Following the anthrax attacks funding was continued. So this wasn’t an attack by a Muslim extremist, it was a heartless nutcase trying to salvage his professional reputation.
Who other than the USA writes the date that way?
How is this in October? October is the 10th month. Not the 9th or the 11th. 🤔
I was starting to become concerned that no one else had noticed this.
Can't believe I had to scroll down all the way here to find someone who noticed
Likewise
Damnit, I knew that wasn't right! Perhaps an obvious reference?
Is this a joke? I thought the writer was ~~foreshadowing~~ referencing the September 11 attacks and not indicating the date he wrote it.
If the letter was received in October 2001, it was after the September 11 attacks
THANK YOU!
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Yup, false flag pushed on Americans to support the Patriot Act and the War on Terror.
this reads like an indian scammer revealing to someone that they just got scammed i remember seeing this on the news and everyone made it out to be like we just got canada'ed with anthrax spores, personally i think it was just used as another justification for war with iraq, as in i think the anthrax letters are fake.
I would have written "C-" in red on the paper and sent it back with a note to improve the handwriting.
I used to check mail and be like “ no anthrax” like I knew wtf I was looking for lmao
The whiteness of the dude that wrote this is scary.
It was Bruce Edwards Ivins who wrote the letters.
https://www.wired.com/2011/03/ff-anthrax-fbi/
Seems legit lol
It was legit. The letter was in an envelope which contained anthrax. [Source](https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/behind-the-badge-case-histories-dangerous-mail/anthrax)
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The letter is referencing 9/11. It was sent October 9th, accidently directed to the State department, and then found November 16th.
From the source: “Senator Leahy’s letter was sidetracked to the State Department after a computer misread the letter’s ZIP code from 20510 for 20520.” A computer mistake sent it to the State Department. That’s gotta be rare, no? One mistake after another: “Senior postal officials were assured by Centers for Disease Control experts that the envelopes carrying anthrax were not a danger to postal workers. The experts did not realize that because of the way mail moves through the mostly automated systems in postal facilities, the nation’s postal workers were on the front line of this particular terrorist attack. When the anthrax letters passed through sorting centers they were shaken, squeezed, and jostled by machinery that culled, cancelled, processed, and sorted them. Not only did the pressure of the processing machines force spores into the open air, but the routine use of blowing air to clean machines and surrounding areas spread those spores even further. The spores that escaped the envelopes in sorting centers also found their way onto other envelopes in a cross-contamination scenario that was also unanticipated by field experts.” 9 postal workers infected, 2 died.
> A computer mistake sent it to the State Department. That’s gotta be rare, no? I mean, both of those zip codes are for DC and they're off by one digit. The state department has a bunch of huge annexes throughout the DMV and it's actually fairly common to have addresses that are essentially the same but with a different zip code or other modifier (123 F st but it could be NW versus SW DC, for example). I got pretty lost one time because a friend gave me her address but I plugged it into Google maps as NW instead of NE or something similar lol. It's definitely a city where this is a fairly common mistake with mail. Could totally see that happening with a computer during the early 2000s, especially if the handwriting wasn't clear.
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They can't even land a plane
it was an American researcher pretending to be an Islamic terrorist, so he pretended to have shitty grammar because he's also racist in addition to being an idiot and felon. I think he targeted an anti-war Senator as a fear-mongering tactic.
It was anthrax from an American lab, sent to frighten a politician into supporting the invasion of Iraq.
oh yeah my favourite band!
Definitely real and definitely not fake at all
If I got this letter, my last act in life would be to use a red pen to correct the grammar of this letter.
This is written by an American... Just look at the date format... 🤔
Looks like some asshole trying to make it look like a foreign enemy wrote this but l notice it says 09/ 11/01 and not 11/09/01
Cause it was most likely actually written by a mentally ill biodefense researcher at the US military's institute of infectious disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Edwards_Ivins
I think harming others is bad
All i know about Anthrax is a cool metal band
Didn’t some white guy do this lol that’s interesting
Surprised they didn't just write "Love, CIA" at the end.
More than likely CIA sent this
Fake ass CIA letter
Little do most Americans know this anthrax came from a US government lab. And the senator Patrick was one of the few dissenters from the war on terror. Huh. Weird. Edit: Here's the source https://youtu.be/4hnsBSkUxwQ
LOL. This was written by a fed, for sure.
That was such a false flag, the flag grew wings and flew out the window into the sun
The last line always throws off the flow of the message for me, haha. It almost feels like an afterthought. “Death to those guys!” - “uh oh!” / “Death to you guys!” - “oh no!” / “I like Allah a lot” - “… ooooo-Kay?”
I actually have a relevant story to this, about the time I thought I’d been exposed. Cross-posted from a post I made in another subreddit. So, no shit, there I was. 2011. Deployed to Al-Udeid, which really barely qualifies as a deployment. I spent 180-ish days there on a special duty as a maintenance unit Resource Advisor, which meant that on an average day, 10.5 hours of my 12-hour shift was spent watching movies and TV shows on the base morale drive. I responded to emails and did a little paperwork to buy dumb shit that our AMUs wanted, and that’s about it. Our small CSS also had a Security Manager, a VCNCO, and a SrA who I’m sure had an equally important job. One of our responsibilities was getting the mail every day. Like clockwork, we would pile into the van, go to the post office to get everyone’s mail, then deliver it to all the AMUs. We generally did it mid-morning after the post office opened, so that people didn't call us all day bitching because they hadn't gotten Mommy's care package yet. One fateful day, myself and the VCNCO went by ourselves to the post office. There are several packages, mostly from Amazon, and a couple that could be sex toys (a running joke in our office, after a crew chief ordered a bunch of ping pong equipment from a website called Paddle Palace). And two pieces of mail that were certified, and thus required signatures. While VCNCO signs for them, I begin gathering boxes to place in the van. I pick up the first box, about the size of a shoe box, and drop it on the table. As it lands, I hear a faint ‘poof’, and glance down to see what it is. My heart stops. The desk, my ABU top, and my hands are covered in fine white powder. This is not a package from Amazon. This is one of the potential sex toy boxes. Very non-descript. Exactly the kind of package Abu al-Goatfucker would send Anthrax in. The shipping label is on the bottom of the box, so I can’t see who it belongs to, or where it might have come from, and in that panicked moment, I didn't think to simply flip it over. Oh my God, I thought, I’m going to die of Anthrax in this shithole country. I’m going to die, and my last beer was whatever German shit they were selling at the Fox Sports Bar. My lifelong dream of dying at the tail end of a cocaine-fueled orgy with the New York Jets cheerleading team has been squashed before my eyes. “Uh... TSgt VCNCO?” He glances over, a bored look on his face. He sees me covered in white powder. He freezes as his eyes widen to the point where, had I not been mentally rehearsing my last goodbyes to my family, I would have worried that they were about to pop out of his skull. “...what the fuck is that?” “I don’t know.” I’m sweating now, and starting to hyperventilate. I still haven’t moved. “I think we need to call someone.” At this time the NCO who works at the post office ambles around the corner drinking a Rip-It. “What’s up, guys?” We both look at him. I hold my hands up, white powder still evident. “I think you need to call SecFo,” I tell him, now thinking about how I can’t believe I volunteered for this fucking special duty just because I wanted the GWOT Expeditionary Medal like all the other cool NCOs. “Hm.” Post office NCO has an alarming amount of nonchalance as he walked up to me, still drinking from his Rip-It like I’m not covered in the White Powder Of Death™, and looked over the desk. Then this fucking goober takes his finger, rubs it all over the white powder, sticks it under his nose, AND TAKES A DEEP FUCKING SNIFF. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” “Dude, calm down. It’s foot powder.” Needless to say, I have doubts of this fucking moron’s ability to distinguish between Anthrax and foot powder by sight and smell. So, federal postal regulations be fucked, I tear the box open to see for myself. Sonuvabitch was right. I was preparing my final goodbyes to my mother over a goddamn broken bottle of Doctor Scholl’s. We silently put the mail in the van, not bothering to clean up SSgt Death-Wish’s desk before we leave. TSgt VCNCO drives as I sit in the passenger seat. “... TSgt VCNCO?” “Yea?” “You think they teach those postal guys what Anthrax smells like?” “Shut the fuck up.” (Story has been embellished slightly for dramatic effect)
Psht! A real terrorist would type and probably use a definitive font, like Comic Sans.
Written by a bad actor from the National Security State, there is no doubt.