To:
From: John McAuliff <jmcauliff@igc.org>
Subject: More on home grown anthrax



Have I missed this stuff on the networks and on CNN?
John

War on Terrorism: Observer special

Ed Vulliamy in New York
Sunday October 28, 2001
The Observer

Neo-Nazi extremists within the US are behind the deadly wave of
anthrax attacks against America, according to latest briefings from
the security services and Justice Department.
Experts on 'survivalist' groups and extreme-right 'Aryan' militants
have been drafted into the investigation as the focus shifts away
from possible links with the 11 September terrorists or even possible
state backers such as Iraq.
'We've been zeroing in on a number of hate groups, especially one
on the West Coast,' a source at the Justice Department told The
Observer yesterday. 'We've certainly not discounted the possibility
that they may be involved.'
The anthrax crisis, which grew last week, had by Friday night
spread to mailrooms at CIA headquarters, the Supreme Court and a
hospital, and yesterday three traces were found in an office building
serving the US Capitol.
'There are a number of strong leads, and some people we know well
that we are looking at,' the Justice Department said. 'These are
groups organised into militia and "survivalist" movements - which
pull out of society and take to the hills to make war on the
government, and who will support anyone else making war on the
government.'
Investigators are examining threatening letters sent to media
organisations - some dated before the 11 September attacks - which
did not contain anthrax but contained similar messages and
handwriting style as those which later did. The theory is that the
anthrax attacks were planned - and the killer germ was obtained and
treated - long before the carnage of 11 September.
Speaking to The Observer yesterday, the Justice Department official
said: 'We have to see the right wing as much better coordinated
than its apparent disorganisation suggests. And we have to
presume that their opposition to government is just as virulent as
that of the Islamic terrorists, if not as accomplished.
'But that is, in its way, one of the most compelling possible leads in
the anthrax trail - that it is not really al-Qaeda's style, but rather that
of others who sympathise with its war against the American
government and media.'
The official said the investigation had, in the past week, drafted in
special teams from the Civil Rights division of the department to
reinforce the international terrorism teams. The American neo-Nazi
Right is motivated above all by its loathing of the federal
government, which it believes is selling out the homeland to a 'New
World Order' run by masons and Jews.
Its insane politics have propelled numerous attacks and armed
stand-offs over the past eight years, culminating in the carnage at
Oklahoma. Now the anthrax investigation is zooming in on possible
connections between these neo-Nazis and Arab extremists, united
by their mutual anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Such alliances
have been common among neo-Nazis in Europe, but have played a
lesser role in the US. However, monitoring of the hate groups shows
they are now embracing al-Qaeda's terrorism as commendable
attacks on the federal government.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal centre in Los
Angeles said that at a meeting in Lebanon this year, US neo-Nazis
were represented alongside Islamic militants. 'There's a great
solidarity with the point of view of the bin Ladens of the world,' said
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors the
far right. 'These people wouldn't let their daughters near an Arab,
but they are certainly making common cause on an ideological level.
They see the same enemy: American culture and multiculturalism.'
Neo-Nazi websites, including the largest umbrella organisation, the
National Alliance, show support for al-Qaeda. Billy Roper, the
alliance's membership coordinator posted a message within hours
of the 11 September attacks, reading: 'Anyone who is willing to drive
a plane into a building to kill Jews is all right by me. I wish our
members had half as much testicular fortitude.' Another group,
Aryan Action, praised the attacks of 11 September, saying: 'Either
you're fighting with the Jews against al-Qaeda or you support al-
Qaeda fighting against the Jews.' Others outwardly support the
anthrax mailing.
One message, entitled 'No Sympathy for the Devil', was posted in
several chat rooms by right-winger Grant Bruer, whose racist
writings are circulated among supremacist groups. It reads: 'Is there
not a single person who has received these anthrax letters that isn't
an avowed enemy of the white race? Tom Brokaw, Tom Daschle
and the gossip rag offices have all been 100 per cent legitimate
targets. Who among us has the slightest bit of sympathy for these
pukes?'
Right-wing groups have had an interest in anthrax and other
biological agents. A member of the Aryan Nation group once
bragged he had a stash of anthrax from digging up a field where
cows had died of the disease in the 1950s. Larry Wayne Harris was
arrested after trying to obtain three vials of bubonic plague from a
mail-order science company.
The trail leading investigators to groups from the domestic ultra-right
- rather than the al-Qaeda terror network - comes as a dramatic
twist in the confused crisis. Last week, parallel evidence appeared
to be linking the now rampant anthrax attacks to another trail:
leading from Iraq and through the Czech Republic, with al-Qaeda
militants as the likely couriers.
The shift in the investigation echoes that which followed America's
other infamous terrorist attack: the destruction of the federal
government building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The bombing was
initially thought to be the work of Arab extremists, but turned out to
be the work of the Aryan supremacists.