“The Elephant in the Room”

by Sean Osborne, Military Affairs Expert, Senior Analyst at NEIN

23 March 2005: You’ve probably heard a casual mention on one of the evening news programs recently of an “incident” involving a report of anthrax being found at the Pentagon and two other facilities in Washington, DC last week. This report was quickly followed by reports that the alarm was really the cause of “false positive” test results and the incident was actually a “non-event.” Lacking true investigative journalists for the most part, the press rarely follows through on getting answers to the more difficult questions and accepts the official denials, moving on to cover more sensational stories such as the Michael Jackson trial and the sad case of Terry Schiavo as the talk of terrorism is beginning to get tiresome anyway. More importantly, though, this most recent anthrax case brings to mind the old phrase about the presence of there being an “elephant in the room,” which is used to describe a situation where there is a very large problem or situation, but everyone pretends that it really isn’t there, and no one really wants to talk about it. Such describes the anthrax “incident” that began in Washington, DC on Thursday, March 10, 2005.

“Incident” is, of course an improper term should the facts ever show that the “false positives” and accusations of “cross contamination” prove to be government doublespeak superficial denials as we have come to know them. ”Biological attack” is a more appropriate phrase, although no one dares utter that on the record. Rather, the official line is to blame an independent laboratory, Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. (CBI), one that has conducted over 2,000 such tests in the past two years and tens of thousands of others and has never experienced a false positive test result. Further, those results were also verified by two other independent laboratories as being “true positive.” We were also treated to an interesting confirmation from a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Frederick, Maryland, Carlee Vander Linden. She stated that they tested the samples after CBI reported the tests for anthrax as positive, and confirmed that their follow-up tests on the first sample were also positive and admitted that two other labs had done such tests and received the same conclusively positive results.

Summarized Chronology of Events

It began on Thursday, March 10, 2005 when CBI collected initial samples consisting of swabs of surfaces from the Pentagon mail facility (detached from the Pentagon but located on the same grounds) in Arlington, Virginia and at a mailroom in a Defense Department-leased building in Falls Church, Virginia, which is part of a three-building complex. Those tests were completed in 24-hours and read “positive for bacillus anthracis (anthrax).” According to Robert B. Harris, president and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc. (CBI) in Richmond, Virginia, the conclusive results were reported to the appropriate authorities the very next day, on March 11, 2005. Further, stated Harris, not only were the tests presumptively and conclusively proved positive, the “the anthrax found at the Pentagon was the same genetic strain used in the 2001 attacks.”

Then on Friday, March 18, 2005, yet another alarm sounded at Bolling Air Force Base, which is located along the Anacostia River in Washington. The alert occurred in a mail-handling facility used by the Defense Intelligence Agency at that location. DIA spokesman Major Paul Swiergosz verified that the DIA remote-delivery facility was closed due to an initial positive test of incoming mail for hazardous biological agents.” He added that all people who were working and inside of the building were asked to stay, and based on an independent report to the Northeast Intelligence Network, actual decontamination procedures were utilized at this facility.

Conflicting Stories

According to officials reporting these incidents, all appear to be the result of “cross-contamination somewhere” in the Defense Department mail system. There were three alerts: one at the Pentagon, one in Falls Church and one at Bolling Air Force Base, and all three were specific for anthrax. The official storyline is that all three tests were posiive for anthrax, but that cross-contamination of the collected samples appeared to be the cause.

That explanation sounds reasonable until more probing questions are asked and the procedures inspected a little closer. It is critical to note that two of the three alerts resulted from biosensor readings located Falls Church and at Bolling in the facilities and were totally unrelated to CBI testing. Accordingly, the issue of cross-contamination by CBI, then, is not possible. And despite the reports of “false positives,” the entire three-building complex at Falls Church remained closed for two days and decontamination procedures were implemented.

On Monday, March 14, 2005, Douglas J. Hagmann, Director of the Northeast Intelligence Network independently confirmed that the Falls Church facility at the Skyline Plaza was in “lock down” for at least six hours and about 25 building occupants were being actively decontaminated. An official source at the scene who spoke on the condition of anonymity stated that “this is the first time this has happened in this area since the first time in 2001.”

Despite the downplaying of these events and the allegations of cross contamination by CBI, Pentagon officials continue to this day to gather thousands of pieces of mail that moved through the detached facility between March 10 and March 14, 2005 for review and further testing.

Disturbing Scenario

In summary, we have a situation where an independent laboratory with an impressive track record collected surface swabs from two Defense Department mail facilities that conclusively tested positive for anthrax. Further, this was not just “any old strain” of anthrax, but the very same genetic strain of bacillus anthracis that was used in the biological attacks in 2001, a crime still unsolved. CBI President was emphatic about his results, and noted that not only his lab, but tests by two other laboratories came up with the same results: “It is a fact that we had a presumptive positive test come up,” he said. “That presumptive positive test was confirmed by us and by at least two other labs as being a true positive.”

Finally, we have Carlee Vander Linden, from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., which tested the samples after CBI and confirmed that the follow-up tests on the first sample were indeed positive and also confirmed Harris’s assertions that two other labs had done such tests. Referring to the possible cross-contamination issue, she interestingly and carefully made the following statement: “USAMRIID is not saying that, ‘Gee, there probably was a contamination event.’ I think some people are surmising that. It certainly has been reported that way. I think that we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Analysis

Based on my extensive research into the anthrax attacks of 2001, investigation of the current suspects and my belief that the original attacks were certainly not domestic in nature, I believe that the heart of the US military is under a continuing biological warfare attack in the Washington DC area. I also believe the suppression of truth and blatant disinformation regarding this biological warfare on US soil might have its roots in a legitimate U.S. military tactic, but at some point, that tactic must give-way to recognizing and dealing with the proverbial elephant. The legitimate aspect, in my professional opinion, is part of a larger process intended to deny the terrorist enemy of a credible battle damage assessment of his chosen pathogen and delivery system. This, I believe in my military experience, is a good thing. I also suspect that there is a secondary and less legitimate motive as well. By denying these attacks or by convoluting them to such an extent that they are trodden by the media and forgotten by the public, such attacks can be contained well below the threshold required for them to be considered an “act of war” by our government. And the elephant stays.

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