The anthrax letters were they used to silence and control the press?

Shortly after 911 happened the anthrax letters came, they were sent to two senators and several media outlets, NBC, ABC, CBS, NY Post and the headquarters of the National Enquirer. Now if you were taking a test and asked to pick out the oddity here, the one that does not belong, it would have to be the National Enquirer, where btw the first fatality was working.

But why send them to the media, of course they are going to report on it, no matter where it was sent. So why specifically the media? Why The National Enquirer?

Sorry forgot to mention in the first post two other interesting things I found when I was doing some research. Something interesting about the very first victim and ,also forgot to mention that the white house staff started taking cipro as early as the night of 9/11/01 as a precaution, long before anyone received any anthrax laced letters, cipro is the anti-biotic used to treat anthrax.

killtown.911review.org...
October 5, 2001 - Bob Stevens becomes the first person to die from the anthrax attacks who was a photo editor at American Media, Inc., the parent company who owns the National Enquirer which published a photo of Bush's daughter Jenna shown drunk with a cigarette in her hand falling on top of another girl.

Here is a report about white house staff taking cipro long before anyone knew or heard about anthrax letters.

www.judicialwatch.org...
On June 7, JW filed lawsuits against the FBI, Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Postal Service, and a top military research facility for their failure to respond to JW¹s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the anthrax attacks.

Evidence obtained through Judicial Watch and confirmed by multiple press reports suggest that White House staff had been given doses of the powerful antibiotic Cipro at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks, one month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill.

I'd be really interested to hear more about the anthrax mailed to the news media, and wouldn't be surprised they were hit to ensure silence over controversial 9/11-related issues.

The anthrax certainly seemed to speed things along in Congress, where the PATRIOT Act was having a hell of a time trying to pass. Two democratic leaders in the Senate, Daschle and Leahy, were leading an effort that was ensuring the bill would never get to a vote, not that it looked good for a vote in the first place. The Bush Admin was getting irritated, and accusing democrats in the Senate of pussyfooting around, and that's when the anthrax attacks started. The two senators it was mailed to were Daschle, and Leahy. Congress was dismissed for obvious reasons, only to come back and be immediately presented with a new, longer version of the bill, which most senators would later admit to not even reading in its entirety before voting (in a rush). The bill was voted in, 98 to 1. And that's how the PATRIOT Act was passed.

I've never really heard much as to the media side of it. Like I said, I'd be interested. I would imagine it was to make certain influential individuals kept their noses out of sensitive issues.

Bush's "Signing Statements" worked pretty well too.

Bar association task force urges Congress to push for judicial review of Bush signing statements

Source: www.usnews.com...



[edit on 26-7-2006 by Slap Nuts]

There are so many questions associated with 911 that should get mainstean media news coverage like the fact that at least 7 of the hi-jackers are alive, (of course the simple answer is their passports were stolen, so who were the hi-jackers and why are the innocent ones, whose passports were stolen, still listed as a hi-jacker?) like the fact that there were a lot of put options on the two airlines used, the fact that many people were warned. But mainstream media barely touched on any of these facts and there was no investigation into it by the media.

Also the fact that the white house staff was put on cipro (an antibiotic used in the treatement of anthrax) immediately after 911, the report above say on the day of 911, though the first anthrax death was not until after Sept. 30, and no one supposedly had any knowledge of an anthrax attack. So why put the white house staff on cipro unless you knew the anthrax attack was coming?

Of course anthrax has an a incubation period meaning the first victim came in contact with the anthrax before he became sick with it. So if you had advance knowledge that there was going to be an anthrax attack it would make sense to take the cipro before anyone was diagnosed with it.

[edit on 26-7-2006 by goose]

I think it was sent to the media to insure instant coverage for puplic consumption.

Remember this happened right before the signing of the patriot act, which no one read before they signed. It was to make it appear, along woth 9-11, that the US was truly under attack from middle eastern terrorists.

But they made mistakes....For one example the dates used on the envelopes were wrong for the middle east. They used the US style, Month, day, yr. The middle east, and most of the rest of the world, use day, month, yr.

Hmmmm, interesting idea. I recall reading that the anthrax strain used was a US strain. Hence, once again, silence. We couldn't let on that we were researching with anthrax, for the reasons stated in this article
www.inthesetimes.com...

The best way to silence your critics is to kill or attempt to kill them.

en.wikipedia.org...

Robert Stevens (d. October 5, 2001) was a photo editor for the Florida based tabloid, Sun, employed by American Media Inc. He was the first fatality linked to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States. He died of pulmonary anthrax after inhaling anthrax spores from a letter that is believed to have arrived at the American Media offices. He was 63 years old.

His wife, Maureen Stevens, is suing the government for lax security, because she states DNA testing would prove the particular strain used in this attack comes from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick. The case has been held up on grounds of 'national security'.

I've found this aspect of the case interesting.

Originally posted by ANOK
But they made mistakes....For one example the dates used on the envelopes were wrong for the middle east. They used the US style, Month, day, yr. The middle east, and most of the rest of the world, use day, month, yr.

Yep. At least one of the letters also had a note that referred to Allah (again, trying to frame Muslims). Too bad Muslims don't refer to their god as Allah, but simply God, in English.

A pretty sloppy job, whoever was behind it.

Yeah bsbray they said 'Allah is great'....

You just answered something I was wondering about, if they say 'God is great' why not 'Allah is great' But now I see it's obvious....LOL

They say 'Allah Achbar', or 'God is great'...

What if the operation was a pretty fast, almost last minute thing? Someone in on the whole deal here suddenly got this idea to help the patriot act go through?
Maybe they were brainstorming expecting it to get voted out?

They didn't have time to get the details right, and probably didn't care. It was expected to happen fast, and be forgotten about just as fast with no real scrutiny. In the light of 9-11 and everything it was easy to convince people it was another terror attack??

[edit on 26/7/2006 by ANOK]

Its so funny to hear those people who are Bush supporters rant and rave about the so called liberal media these days especially in light of the report below that ranks the American press in freedom as #44.

The so called liberal media who can't even ask Bush why his people were taking cipro at least two weeks before the anthrax attack. No their too busy reporting on entertainment matters, I swear I watched 20 mins of news earlier and all I saw was entertainment news and sports and commercials. Sad!

en.wikipedia.org...
The report is based on a questionnaire sent to partner organisations of Reporters Without Borders (14 freedom of expression groups in five continents) and its 130 correspondents around the world, as well as to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists.

The survey asks questions about direct attacks on journalists and the media as well as other indirect sources of pressure against the free press. RWB is careful to note that the index only deals with press freedom, and does not measure the quality of journalism. Due to the nature of the survey's methodology based on individual perceptions, there are often wide contrasts in a country's ranking from year to year. The ranking also states it takes into account pressure on journalists by non-governmental groups, for example the Basque militant group ETA in Spain or the Mafia in Russia, or pressure groups that can pose a real threat to press freedom.

A higher number in the ranking means more restraints on freedom of the press

Well if people really think the media is liberal, then I can understand why they don't like liberals...But if they really think that is what liberal is, then are they just as confused what conservative is? Left and right? Geography...

I mean c'mon I just found out there are people who think Hitler was a lefty!
Check out Mein Kamph sometime...The communist manifesto it's not.

If they think that then I'm not surprised people are so confused. Politics in the US is so damn twisted I don't think anybody knows what they really are...LOL

Ya, comrade Hitler

You got that right, it has gotten to where you can't tell one party from the other, they have all become the same party.

The one thing I do know for sure though is that the government must have had advance knowledge of those letters. They had to of known ahead of time to have put their people on the script for protection against it. They did this before anyone else knew there was going to be an anthrax attack? Why aren't the press going after them on this?

[edit on 27-7-2006 by goose]

Originally posted by goose
You got that right, it has gotten to where you can't tell one party from the other, they have all become the same party.

Yeah, I really think that's the biggest conspiracy of all. People still think they have a choice, but it's an empty choice that really amounts to nothing. All it is is another way to control how the population thinks, and most of all to convince them of the necessity of government power and allow them to control their lives.
Question the government all you want, but as long as you argue within their paradigm it will make absolutely no difference to the status quo. Nothing will change, just keep on going around in circles while the elites gain more over our lives.
Big changes are made by small groups, not majorities...

Anyway sry for getting off topic....