Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into
the anthrax attacks following 9/11 -- one of the most important of his career
-- did not go well, to say the least.
Mystery surrounds Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russia
and President Trump. Some think he is the ultimate professional, others that he
is a Democrat lackey, still others maintain he is working on Trump’s side.
We can see
how he works if we look at how Mueller ran his second-most important
investigation as FBI Director. In September of 2001, an entity began mailing
anthrax through the US Postal system, hitting such prominent targets as NBC and
Senator Daschle’s office. The terrorist attacks killed five and left others
hospitalized. The world panicked.
Under
Mueller’s management, the FBI launched an investigation lasting ten years. They
now brag about
spending “hundreds of thousands of investigator hours on this case.” Let’s take
a closer look at Mueller’s response to understand the context of the
investigation — who his people investigated, targeted, and found guilty.
The anthrax
letters began just a week after the 9/11 attack. While planning the airplane
hijackings, Al-Qaeda had been weaponizing anthrax,
setting up a lab in Afghanistan manned by Yazid Sufaat, the same man who housed two of the 9/11 hijackers.
Two hijackers later sought medical help due to conditions consistent with infection via anthrax:
Al Haznawi went to the emergency room for a skin lesion which he claimed was
from “bumping into a suitcase,” and ringleader Mohamed Atta needed medicine for
“skin irritation.” A team of bioterrorism experts from John Hopkins confirmed
that anthrax was the most likely cause of the lesion. Meanwhile, the 9/11
hijackers were also trying to obtain crop-dusting
airplanes.
So how did Mueller’s investigative team handle the case?
Mueller
issued a statement in
October of 2001, while anthrax victims were still dying: the FBI had found “no
direct link to organized terrorism.” The John Hopkins team of experts was
mistaken, the FBI continued, Al
Haznawi never had an anthrax infection. The crop-dusting airplanes they needed
was possibly for a separate and unrelated anthrax attack.
A few weeks
later, the FBI released a remarkable profile of
the attacker. FBI experts eschewed analysis of the content of the letters,
where it was written in bold block letters, “Death to America, Death to Israel,
Allah is Great.” Instead, they focused on a “linguistic analysis,” stating that
the letter’s writer was atypical in many respects and not “comfortable or
practiced in writing in lower case lettering.” The FBI therefore concluded that
it was likely a disgruntled American with
bad personal skills.
The investigators hypothesized that the attacker was a lonely
American who had wanted to kill people with anthrax for some undefined time
period, but then became “mission oriented” following 9/11 and immediately
prepared and mailed the deadly spores while pretending to be a Muslim.
Mueller’s
FBI honed in on Steven Hatfill as the culprit — a “flag-waving” American,
who had served in the Army, then dedicated himself to protecting America from
bioterrorist threats by working in the United States Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases.
There
was no direct link from
Hatfill to the attacks, by the FBI’s own admission, and the bureau never
charged Hatfill. The FBI did however spy on, follow, and harass him non-stop
for years. The Department of Justice also publicly outed Hatfill as the
possible terrorist.
While
Hatfill’s dignity and life was being trampled on by America’s secret police,
Mueller took a stand. But on a different topic. He made front page news
for threatening President Bush he
would resign over NSA policy. All while his own team was
trampling on the rights of an American in the FBI’s largest-ever investigation.
Hatfill successfully sued the government for its unlawful actions.
He won almost $6 million dollars.
After the
Hatfill investigation blew up in the FBI’s face, they moved on to Bruce Ivins,
another Army researcher who had actually volunteered to help the FBI
investigate this case, and had been doing so for years. It wasn’t until five
years after the attack that Mueller’s men decided Ivins was a target.
The FBI case against Ivins, once again, was based on
circumstantial evidence.
The
prosecution stated Ivins purposefully gave a misleading sample of anthrax
spore, but Frontline documented this
was not true. Ivins was “familiar” with the area from which the anthrax letters
were mailed, the FBI said, but Pulitzer Prize winning ProPublica lays out the
accepted facts of the case showing it was impossible for Ivins to make
the trip to mail the letters.
The spores
used in the attacks were a similar type to the laboratory spores where Ivins
worked, but that ignored the fact that the anthrax letters had a unique
additive — so sophisticated and dangerous a scientist commented, “This is
not your mother’s anthrax” — that was likely produced by a nation state or
Al-Qaeda.
Ivins was
never indicted, just given the Hatfill treatment. His house was raided, and he
was threatened with a death sentence, or as his lawyer put it, put under “relentless pressure of
accusation and innuendo.” He committed suicide.
One week
later, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor stated Ivins
was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and they were “confident that Dr. Ivins
was the only person responsible for these attacks.”
Democratic
Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of the intended victims of the anthrax terror
attacks, did not believe that Ivins was
the sole actor. Mueller ordered an independent audit of the FBI’s
case by the National Academy of Science, then formally closed the case in 2010,
sticking with the conclusion that Ivins, and Ivins alone, committed the terror
attack. One year later the NAS released their results and confirmed what many
scientists had been repeating for years: the FBI’s science and conclusions
were not solid.
A former FBI
official involved in the investigation sued the FBI,
alleging the FBI concealed evidence exculpatory to Ivins.
Mueller
made his position known,
saying, “I do not apologize for any aspect of this investigation,” and stated
that the FBI had made no mistakes.
The
investigation was an unmitigated disaster for America. Mueller didn’t go after
al-Qaida for the anthrax letters because he couldn’t find a direct link. But
then he targeted American citizens without showing a direct link. For his
deeds, he had the second longest tenure as FBI Director ever, and was roundly
applauded by nearly everyone (except Republican Rep. Louie
Gohmert).
Now he’s running the Trump-Russia investigation.
Daniel
Ashman is the author of two books, "Dominate No-Limit Hold'em" and
"Secrets of Short-Handed No Limit Hold'em," that have been published
worldwide and translated into four languages. Follow him at @dashman76.