ABC, Anthrax And Unreliable Sources

Glenn Greenwald today has been taking ABC to task for its attitude of "We're ABC, trust us, trust our sources" over some recent articles pointing a finger at Iran. And with good reason. One recent article on Iran's supposed acceleration of its alleged nuclear weapons program was entirely slip-shod, totally ignoring the most important factors which might have made it credible, and based on a single anonymous source.

One of the things that showed strongly in Glenn's discussion with Jeffrey Schneider, Senior Vice President of ABC News, is that ABC seems to feel it doesn't owe anyone a mea culpa when it comes to Pre-Iraq war reporting. Glenn links to and quotes several examples of ABC's reporting over the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, and in particular this one sentence:

Despite a last-minute denial from the White House, sources tell ABCNEWS the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite. The potent additive is known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons -- Iraq.

Bentonite is a sillicate compound made from volcanic ash which, contrary to the implicit suggestion of the ABC report, is not at all rare. It is also known as fuller's earth - kitty litter.

Glenn writes:

On October 28, 2001, Ross himself went on ABC News to discuss -- as Vanderbilt University's Television Archives put it -- "the significance of the discovery of bentonite in the anthrax sent to Senate majority leader Tom Daschle," "the possible link to Iraq," [and] "details recalled of the meeting in the Czech Republic of hijacker Mohamed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer."

That ABC News report, even as early as November 2001, led various warmongers to cite that report in order to argue for war against Saddam on the ground that he was likely responsible for the anthrax attacks, and they still cite that report to this day to imply the same thing.

And yet, if this is an example of "We're ABC, we and our sources are trustable" then it fails to inspire that trust.

In an article in the December 2006 edition of Chemical and Engineering News (H/t Cheryl at Whirled News), reporter Lois Ember noted that in a peer-reviewed article that August, Douglas J. Beecher, a microbiologist in the FBI's hazardous materials response unit, had written:

"A widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production."

This was the FBI's first public statement on the investigation since it began analyzing the material in the Leahy letter and the first time the bureau had described the anthrax powder. It makes it quite clear - there were no additives in the anthrax spores whatsoever.

Clearly, ABC's trustworthy sources weren't trustworthy at all in this famous instance. And the uses to which that untrustworthy "evidence" were put weren't the kind of journalistic integrity which would inspire trust either.

Glenn asks "might a rational person have ample grounds for refusing to place faith and trust in Brian Ross's secret, non-transparent judgments, in reliance on his very, very trustworthy (he swears) completely anonymous sources?

Damn straight.

Update Newshog friend Pygalgia, speaking from personal experience, suggests that any pressure to pin the anthrax letters on a middle-eastern culprit began in the federal corridors of power.

I have a bit of inside knowledge about the case because I worked at Northern Arizona University at the time. NAU is the base for the lab of Dr. Paul Keim, who's one of the worlds top anthrax researchers. Because I was one of many who had access to that lab, I was interviewed by the FBI as part of the investigation. The interview was somewhat surreal, with the FBI repeatedly asking about "middle eastern males" who might have gained access to the lab (which by the way didn't have anywhere near the quantities used in the attack). I was asked multiple times if I'd seen any suspicious activity by "middle eastern males", and it really bothered me that the FBI had ruled out any American suspects.

One wonders how much time was wasted chasing that particular wild goose and whether that chase had a direct bearing on the authorities inability to catch the actual perpetrator even to this day. Given so much breathing time, his traces could have been well and truly covered.

Pygalgia gives his own opinion on the perpetrator:

It seems the most logical suspect had to have inside access to Fort Detrick, and more specifically to the bioweapons lab. In short, it was an inside job. I'm not saying a government sanctioned hit, but whoever mailed the letters to two top democratic senators worked for the facility.

That's surely a pretty small pool of suspects, but it seems the authorities still have no leads.