Listen to "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving

"In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic...."

Click the little horn and listen to Washington Irving's famous ghost story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," at PublicLiterature.org Many of the classics on this site have linked to audio books from Libravox.org. You can even volunteer to be a reader.

First published in 1820, Washington Irvings's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the companion tale "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) are still enjoyed today. You can also listen to the actor Walter Huston read adaptations of both stories at Kiddie Records Weekly.

I think that Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" bears a suspicious resemblance to Robert Burns's 1790 narrative poem "Tam O'Shanter." I think that's called "artistic license." Read the poem and then listen to David Daiches of Edinburgh University read "Tam O'Shanter" (#4) and see what you think!

For a stroll down memory lane, check out other offerings at Kiddie Records Weekly. The site notes:

Many of these recordings were extravagant Hollywood productions on major record labels and featured big time celebrities and composers.

For example, check out Sidney Greenstreet's portrayal of the madman Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (week 21), or "The Sorcerer's Apprentice for Children." Kiddie Records observes:

Although French composer Paul Dukas' 1897 symphonic poem was already quite well known and popular, it was made particularly famous by it's inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film, Fantasia. Today, few can hear the piece without picturing Mickey Mouse dressed in a red robe and his master's magical hat.

Public Literature.org includes an audio version of H.G. Wells's Halloween sci-fi favorite "War of the Worlds" (1898) and Mary Shelly's Gothic novella Frankenstein (1818). The Wikipedia entry notes that Shelly's novel "is often considered the first fully realised science fiction novel due to its pointed, if gruesome, focus on playing God by creating life from dead flesh."

You may also enjoy listening to Jane Austen's parody of the Gothic, Northanger Abbey. Wikipedia notes:

The most famous parody of the Gothic is Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey (1818) in which the naive protagonist, after reading too much Gothic fiction, conceives herself a heroine of a Radcliffian romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side, though the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. Jane Austen's novel is valuable for including a list of early Gothic works since known as the Northanger Horrid Novels.

One of my favorite stories is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem," which is included in the audio version of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Wikipedia has an interesting entry about this story and a link to "The Final Problem." You can listen Basil Rathbone read the story here. You can listen to Basil Rathbone read other Sherlock Holmes stories at the Internet Archive.

Ladies and Germs!

"The health department shut down the food-and-beverage operation at the shop, Vox Pop, in January, because of $29,000 in unpaid fines going back to 2007...The Jan. 28 inspection also turned up eight violations, including 'evidence of mice or live mice' and 'conditions conducive to vermin.'”--New York Times (3-16-2009)

According to Barnes and Noble, the crackpot 9-11 Truther Sander Hicks (search Hicks on this blog and scroll down) seems to have published a book titled Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health (2006). The synopsis of the book claims:

The sixth Critical Art Ensemble book offers a radical reframing of the rhetoric surrounding germ warfare. After refuting the idea that massive biological attack is a probable future occurrence, the book goes on to argue that biological weapons programs primarily serve the economic interests of the military-security complex, squandering resources needed to fight the massive loss of life each year from emerging infectious diseases. The book also includes two appendices examining the case of the U.S. Justice Department against Steve Kurtz, for which the original manuscript of the book was seized in the state's investigation.

On the other hand, Amazon says Marching Plague was written by the Critical Art Ensemble and published by a radical publisher called Autonomedia. Perhaps the actual author is Sander Hicks, but since the Critical Art Ensemble describes itself as a "collective," the actual authorship of Marching Plague is a bit murkey.

Critical Art Ensemble links Marching Plague to a turgid, poorly-composed project position paper titled "Bodies of Fear in a World of Threat." The position paper refers to "the authors" (presumably of Marching Plague) and opines:

CAE's opinion is a simple one. We believe that biowarfare "preparedness" is a euphemism for biowartech development and the militarization of the public sphere. Preparedness, as it now stands, is a madness that continues because it gets votes for politicians, audiences for media venues, profits for corporations, and funds for militarized knowledge production. If there is any real threat to our bodies and health, it is not coming from weaponized germs, but from the institutions that benefit from this weaponization.

Of course, the anonymous Simple Simons of this simple position paper--and perhaps of Marching Plague--don't know the first thing about the dangers of biological agents. Certainly Sander Hicks, who is credited as the author of Marching Plague by Barnes and Noble, is not a scientist with expertise in biological warfare, public health, or emerging infectious deseases. He started a Brooklyn coffee shop called Vox Pop that was closed down in January by the Health Department because of unsanitary conditions.

According to The New York Times (3-16-2009):

The health department shut down the food-and-beverage operation at the shop, Vox Pop, in January, because of $29,000 in unpaid fines going back to 2007.

Vox Pop is also three months behind on the rent. The telephone has been disconnected. And the person who was hired in December to straighten things out has never been paid.

...[A] health inspector walked into the Cortelyou Road shop, at the corner of Stratford Road. That visit was a follow-up to a Jan. 7 inspection that found, among other things, that Vox Pop’s permit had expired. The Jan. 28 inspection also turned up eight violations, including “evidence of mice or live mice” and “conditions conducive to vermin.” Ms. Ryan said those problems were in a part of the basement that was not used for food storage, and were corrected immediately, as were other issues the health department cited. But there remained fines from the earlier inspections — fines that were not paid while Mr. Hicks was in charge.

Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's Anthrax Conspiracy Theory

"[A]rticles I found on the Internet indicated [Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg] believed that the anthrax mailings were some kind of sinister plot involving a 'rogue scientist' and masterminded by the Bush Administration to undermine the BTWC in order to cover up America's secret and illegal biological weapons programs."--Ed Lake [Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks Home]

When the FBI revealed in August 2008 that the late Dr. Bruce Ivins was their suspect in the anthrax mailings, some people were suspicious and unhappy. The paranoid Maoist MIM grumbled as he quoted what the deceitful sociopathic anthrax murderer Bruce Ivins told his friends (A.P. 8-6-08):

Another case seemed rushed along just in time for elections. “Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.

Even today, the disreputable conspiracy theorist and 9-11 Truther Sander Hicks continues to malign Dr. Steven Hatfill with fabricated anthrax canards, although a letter dated 11-4-02 that the Justice Department sent to to Senator Charles Grassley explains:

When the FBI conducted a consensual search of Dr. Hatfill's apartment on June 25, 2002, in Frederick, Maryland, the mainstream media immediately interpreted this search as confirmation of all the speculation that had been previously circulating about Dr. Hatfill. The FBI was asked whether Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the case and when an arrest was anticipated. It was under these circumstances that unnamed sources at the FBI first described Steven Hatfill as one of many "persons of interest". ... The phrase was never used by the FBI or the Department of Justice to draw media attention to Dr. Hatfill. On the contrary, the phrase was used to deflect media scrutiny from Dr. Hatfill and to explain that he was just one of many scientists who had been inteviewed by the FBI and who were cooperating with the anthrax investigation.

The retired computer scientist and researcher Ed Lake explains in a post titled "Steven J. Hatfill And The Clueless Media" why he thinks that the FBI Amerithrax investigation initially focused so much attention on the Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill.

According to Mr. Lake, Dr. Hatfill was targeted by a scientist named Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg because he was a strong opponent of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention:

[Dr. Hatfill] is an outspoken opponent to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC). He publicly demonstrated the ease with which biological weapons could be created. He was actively convincing people that terrorists were the biggest threat - not secret government projects run by the CIA.

According to Mr. Lake, Dr. Rosenberg, a founder and Director of the Federation of American Scientists Chemical and Biological Weapons Program, was a strong supporter of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) who believed that the U.S. government was secretly and illegally making weaponized anthrax. Of course, as I observed in my first post on the anthrax mailings, the anthrax that was mailed in fall of 2001 was not weaponized at all.

According to Mr. Lake's post "Steven J. Hatfill And The Clueless Media" (6-10-03), Dr. Rosenberg believed:

[S]omeone from an illicit U.S. bioweapons program obtained anthrax from that program and sent it through the mail to undermine the position of those in favor of the BTWC.

Mr. Lake also has an interesting post titled "Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's 'Political Campaign'" (7-30-03). Mr. Lake begins his article by observing:

From the very beginning I viewed Barbara Hatch Rosenberg as just another crackpot conspiracy theorist. All the tell-tale signs were there. When she first made headlines in the anthrax case in November 2001 by making a speech at the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) in Geneva, the articles I found on the Internet indicated she believed that the anthrax mailings were some kind of sinister plot involving a "rogue scientist" and masterminded by the Bush Administration to undermine the BTWC in order to cover up America's secret and illegal biological weapons programs. Those are the types of accusations found in most conspiracy theories.

Another early critic of Dr. Rosenberg is David Tell, who voiced skepticism of Dr. Rosenberg's science and her "crackpot" conspiracy theories in an article he published in The Weekly Standard (4-29-02):

[T]his veteran molecular biologist's sensational pronouncements betray a surprisingly uncertain grasp of contemporary genetic research and clinical protocols concerning Bacillus anthracis. And a surprisingly limited familiarity with anthrax-related military and civil-defense projects around the world. And a surprisingly unscientific, even Oliver Stone-scale, incaution about the "facts" at her disposal. Rosenberg claims the FBI has known the anthrax mailer's precise identity for months already, but has deliberately avoided arresting him--indeed, may never arrest him--because he "knows too much" that the United States "isn't very anxious to publicize." Specifically, according to an account the hazel-eyed professor offered on BBC Two's flagship "Newsnight" telecast March 14, the suspect is a former federal bioweapons scientist now doing contract work for the CIA.

Mr. Lake published a book titled Analyzing The Anthrax Attacks (2005). I wonder if he will publish a second book when the National Research Council scientists finish their extensive review of the science behind the Amerithrax investigation.

Who Is the Teacher-Detective Candy Hamilton?

In December 1975, the American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Anna Mae Aquash, the Canadian Indian mother of two young schoolgirls (above), was kidnapped, interrogated, raped, and murdered. Before her murder, she was held at the Rapid City office/house of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committe (WKLDOC). This organization defended AIM members for crimes they were accused of during their cowardly 1973 terrorist attack on the historic village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

One theory for the motive behind the Aquash murder is that the AIM thought Aquash was an FBI informant. Aquash might also have been able to link Leonard Peltier to the 6-26-75 murder of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Indian reservation. People who want an honest, fact-based account of what happened to Anna Mae Aquash should read American Indian Mafia by Joseph and John Trimbach, the AIM Myth Busters blog, and the Aquash file at News from Indian Country.

One Indian AIMster, Arlo Looking Cloud, is already in prison for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. Three more people have been indicted by state and federal authorities: Richard Marshall, John Graham, and Thelma Rios. It is possible that more important AIMsters will be indicted for complicity in Anna Mae's brutal murder. Information about the backgrounds of Marshall, Graham, and Rios can be found by searching this blog. Marshall, for example, is the former bodyguard of Russell Means and has already served time for another murder.

When Looking Cloud was tried and convicted of the Aquash murder in 2004, Candy Hamilton, a teacher, Hollywood film consultant, and political activist who had once worked as a media specialist or propagandist for the WKLDOC, testified about who was at the apartment of Thelma Rios's mother and about who subsequently attended the meeting of AIMsters who were holding Aquash at the WKLDOC house/office.

Candy Hamilton testified that she couldn't understand any of the discussion in the front room:

I could hear voices, but I didn't hear any of the conversation.

Candy Hamilton, who is reportedly also a former correspondent for the Rapid City Journal, testified that she stayed upstairs most of the day and saw Anna Mae Aquash only briefly when she (Hamilton) went to the kitchen and briefly spoke with her very distraught friend who was getting a cup of coffee.

Hamilton told the court the names of most of the people in the front room. She said she didn't remember the last name of a "legal worker" nicknamed "Red."

I found the teacher's testimony about the last day of her friend's life insincere and unconvincing. She didn't seem like an innocent teacher or a dedicated Indian rights activist to me. If Hamilton were Anna Mae's true friend and a real Indian rights activist, why didn't she call the police or help her friend escape?

I first read the name Candy Hamilton in a 1985 article written by the discredited former professor Ward Churchill and published in the KGB-sponsored Covert Acton Information Bulletin. According to a KGB archivist named Vasili Mitrokhin and the British scholar Christopher Andrews, the CAIB specialized in writing defamatory articles about the CIA and FBI. The former KGB archivist Mitrokhin also revealed that the AIM lawyer and writer Mark Lane had a relationship with the Soviet KGB through Soviet journalists such as Genrikh Borovik, the brother-in-law of KGB chief Kryuchkov, one of the main plotters who orchestrated the kidnapping Gorbachev and his wife during the 1991 coup attempt.

Churchill claimed in his propagandistic CAIB article that an independent researcher named Candy Hamilton was his source for his apocryphal claim that FBI-backed death squads had murdered 342 Indians on Pine Ridge. That's some fancy detective work for a teacher!

As far as I know, independent researcher Hamilton, who has a master's degree, has never published any documentation about these supposed 342 murders. Still, as far as I know, independent researcher Candy Hamilton has never disputed what the discredited Ward Churchill attributes to her. This claim that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Indians has no credibility because it was published by the KGB and written by a dishonest "scholar" who has finally been fired from his tenured position at the University of Colorado.

During the 2004 Looking Cloud trial, Hamilton testified that she teaches at the Black Hills State University (BHSU) in the career learning center. An Internet profile of Hamilton posted by the South Dakota Arts Council also notes that she has a master's degree and served as a consultant on the film Incident at Oglala and Life of Leonard Peltier:

Candy Hamilton is a published poet and story writer. In addition to completing her master’s degree at USD, Hamilton has worked as a researcher for film companies, serving as a consultant to the films Incident at Oglala and Life of Leonard Peltier. Her poetry has been included in Woven on the Wind (2001), Prairie Peaks and Skies (1998) and a variety of other collections. Her articles and stories have been published in Christian Science Monitor, People, South Dakota Magazine and Winds of Change, among others. An instructor for the Career Learning Center in Rapid City and Black Hills State University, Hamilton’s residencies will focus on the impact of reading on writing and vice versa, using sensory descriptions to enliven short fiction, personal essays and poetry. Using the five physical senses and emotions improves writing. Reading skills, vocabulary, observation skills and general communication create strong writing. Residency activities may include collecting family stories and developing family reading/writing time. Presentations are available for adults or children.

I thought it was interesting that the story writer Hamilton was a consultant for the propagandistic film Incident at Oglala because it was possibly another connection between her and Ward Churchill: I once read that AIMster Robert Robideau claimed that "the now infamous Mr. X segment filmed for Incident at Oglala was made in Ward Churchill's home."

Like Candy Hamilton, the discredited ex-professor Ward Churchill has also taught at BHSU in Spearfish, South Dakota. Ward Churchill even claims he was travelling though Pine Ridge Indian reservation to take up a faculty position at Spearfish when he witnessed the FBI searching for the killers of two FBI agents.

It seems to me that the story writer Candy Hamilton---like Ward Churchill---is really a propagandist, not an Indian rights activist. She is certainly not what Ward Churchill called her: an independent researcher. According to Hamilton's own testimony in court, she worked as a media person on behalf of the WKLDOC.

How did Candy Hamilton protect Anna Mae's rights? The teacher didn't help her friend, the mother of two little schoolgirls, at all. She just claimed that she didn't know what was being discussed in the WKLDOC house or that her friend was in danger.

If Candy Hamilton was so oblivious that she didn't suspect that a murder plot against an Indian woman was being hatched in the WKLDOC office/house right under her nose, how did this teacher-detective ever manage the amazing feat of discovering that FBI-backed death squads killed 342 Indians in the wilderness of of Pine Ridge?

Story writer Candy Hamilton works as a teacher, but in my opinion she is really a propagandist who whitewashes the crimes of the AIM/WKLDOC and Leonard Peltier. The story writer is very good at making propaganda, too. She even consults on Hollywood movies! It's hard for me to understand how a teacher-story writer who is so brilliant that she uncovers 342 FBI-backed murders and so clever that she is a consultant to Hollywood movies would be so oblivious that she didn't notice what was happening to her friend in the WKLDOC house.

I wonder why this teacher-story teller, who claims to be an activist for Indian issues, feels called to make propaganda films that whitewash AIM/WKLDOC killers. I would like to know how she became a "source" for Ward Churchill's risible claim that the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Pine Ridge Indians.

Hopefully, when the guilty are tried for Anna Mae's murder, the prosecutor will ask the brilliant story teller and writing teacher, who supposedly documented 342 FBI-backed murders and who consulted for Hollywood, some of the questions that trouble me about her court testimony and about her subsequent career as an independent researcher and Hollywood consultant.

I just can't get over the fact that the amazing teacher-detective supposedly documented the murders of 342 Indians but couldn't be more helpful in uncovering the killer of just one Indian mother, her friend Anna Mae Aquash, whose murder was plotted in the WKLDOC office while she was there.

Washington Bureau Chiefs Defend Fox News

Fox News (10-23-09) reports:

The Obama administration on Thursday failed in its attempt to exclude Fox News from participating in an interview of an administration official, as Republicans on Capitol Hill stepped up their criticism of the hardball tactics employed by the White House.

The Treasury Department on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the network pool except Fox News. The pool is the five-network rotation that for decades has shared the costs and duties of daily coverage of the presidency and other Washington institutions.

But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks consulted and decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included. The pool informed Treasury that Fox News, as a member of the network pool, could not be excluded from such interviews under the rules of the pool.

The administration relented, making Feinberg available for all five pool members and Bloomberg TV.

The pushback came after White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday that Fox News is not a real news organization and other news networks "ought not to treat them that way."

Media analysts cheered the decision to boycott the Feinberg interview unless Fox News was included, saying the administration's gambit was taking its feud with Fox News too far. President Obama has already declined to go on "Fox News Sunday," even while appearing on the other Sunday shows.

"I'm really cheered by the other members saying "No, if Fox can't be part of it, we won't be part of it,'" said Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, calling the move to limit Feinberg's availability "outrageous."

"What it's really about to me is the Executive Branch of the government trying to tell the press how it should behave. I mean, this democracy -- we know this -- only works with a free and unfettered press to provide information," he said.

Several top White House advisers have appeared on other news channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news network. [Full text]

Anthrax Investigation Researcher Ed Lake Reviews the 9-11 "Truthers"

A retired computer specialist named Ed Lake has been keeping track of the anthrax investigation on his very informative site for many years. Mr. Lake maintains a large archive of media commentary about the anthrax mailings. He explains how early errors in the scientific analysis of the anthrax used in the attacks led to a lot of mistaken speculation.

Mr. Lake has also followed the campaign against the Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill here and here. According to Mr. Lake:

The Hatfill "investigation" was purely political and based upon "tips" from conspiracy theorist scientists who claimed the FBI was "covering up" for Dr. Hatfill when the FBI's investigation found nothing to tie him to the mailings. The Ivins investigation, on the other hand, was the result of years of detailed scientific analysis followed by an equally detailed criminal investigation.

Although Dr. Hatfill has won lawsuits and has been publically exonerated of complicity in the anthrax mailings, he is once again being maligned by unsubstantiated rumors and accused of killing black Africans with anthrax by 9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks, a disreputable conspiracist who publishes the lies and ridiculous alibis of a convicted car-bomber and a convicted pedophile and child-pornographer.

On 10-18-09, Mr. Lake commented on the conspiracy theories of the 9-11 "Truthers" in his Thoughts and Comments:

October 18 - 2009...[O]ver a month ago, in September, a group of "Truthers" with various issues held a 3-day conference at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, New York City. It appears that the same pattern I've seen elsewhere held true at that conference: No two of the speakers seem to argue the exact same issue. I believe that is almost the perfect definition of the word "babble"...

It's difficult to summarize their issues in just a few words, but it appears they had a holocaust denier, an ex-CIA spy who thinks Dick Cheney had something to do with 9/11, an economist who talked about money-laundering, terrorism and 9/11, a lawyer with issues about how money is created, a musician/ investigative journalist who writes about "The U.S. Government’s Shepherding of the 9/11 Hijackers," an investigative journalist with issues about child-abuse and the Bush Administration, and a lawyer who believes in many different conspiracy theories. At least two of them talked about the anthrax attacks.

It's interesting that these people and others on the "Lunatic Fringe" all claim to be looking for "the truth," yet none seems to be looking for the same "truth." What each one really seems to be looking for is an audience, people they can try to convert to their specific belief.

It also appears that they have absolutely no interest in coherency or understanding. Coherency and understanding are what the other side is looking for.

Contrast their rantings with the methodology of the people on "the other side," i.e., the people who are looking for the facts and who are trying to make coherent sense of the facts.

The people looking to make coherent sense of the facts began with meetings where they discussed the best ways to gather the facts, the best ways to learn the significance of the facts, the best ways to validate the facts and the best ways for top experts in various scientific and investigative areas to assemble their specific facts and fit them into a coherent whole that everyone can understand.

They then set about implementing their plans. They collected data, they tested the data, they organized the data and they discussed the data to get mutual understanding and agreement on the significance of the data.

When data collection and analysis was complete, they gave presentations where the entire issue is summarized, and then the various speakers talked about their particular areas of expertise and their work in assembling the coherent whole.

If the objective had been a purely scientific finding, there might already be unanimous agreement on what they found. In the Amerithrax investigation, however, the individual experts can only agree that their particular findings are accurate, since much of the time they didn't know what other scientists were doing. They may still have questions about how and where their findings fit in the overall scheme of things, but they generally understand the need for validation of the coherent whole as well as each part of the coherent whole--which is why they are doing their best to aid the review of the science of the Amerithrax case being done by The National Academies of Science (NAS).

Of course, the scientific investigation is only part of the Amerithrax investigation. The "coherent whole" must also include everything that can be known about the anthrax attacks of 2001 and who was responsible. The things which cannot be known must still fit into the coherent whole. The coherent whole cannot be coherent if it includes impossiblities. For example, we cannot know what was going on inside the brain of a person who died without telling everyone what he was thinking. But it is sufficient to know he could have had a motive to do what the facts say he did. Also, if years of seaching found no travel records, we may not know exactly how he got from Point A to Point B at some critical point in time, but we can be confident that it is not impossible for him to have traveled from Point A to Point B, because all the known facts indicate he did indeed move from Point A to Point B at that specific time and no facts conclusively say otherwise.

There are no known facts which say that it would have been impossible for Dr. Ivins to have committed the crime. So, what we need now is to see the "coherent whole" of all the known facts--from the science and from the criminal investigation--to allow the interested public to understand how all the major conclusions were reached. In particular, we need to understand how the conclusion was reached that Dr. Bruce Ivins was the anthrax mailer and that he acted alone.

In a perfect world, everyone who views the coherent whole--the summary of the entire case--would fully agree on the findings. In our imperfect world, many of those who currently have other theories will probably continue to believe their own theories, regardless of what the facts say.

So, our imperfect world can be expected to produce two things: (1) a coherent summary of the case which will be accepted by the vast majority of people who study it, and (2) a small bunch of conspiracy theorists and True Believers with little agreement on anything except that they all disagree with the coherent summary of the case.

FBI Sting Nabs Maryland Scientist Stewart David Nozette for Attempted Espionage

"The FBI document, signed by Special Agent Leslie G. Martell, says Nozette in January 2009 told a colleague "that if the United States government tried to put him in jail" on an unrelated matter, Nozette would move to Israel or another unidentified foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows."---CNN (10-19-09)

The FBI (10-19-09) is reporting that a Maryland scientist named Stewart David Nozette has been arrested for attempted espionage after he provided classified information to a person he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer. In fact, the "Israeli intelligence officer" was an undercover FBI agent.

The FBI (10-19-09) site states:

The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.

Does this mean that Nozette never really spied for Israel? If so, why did the FBI orchestrate this sting? That's still a mystery. Perhaps he was targeted because of the "unrelated matter" mentioned in the CNN article, above. The interesting CNN quote does not appear in the FBI press release.

The FBI (10-19-09) reports:

A Maryland scientist who once worked in varying capacities for the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been arrested for attempted espionage...

A criminal complaint unsealed today in the District of Columbia charges Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, with attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case...

According to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Nozette received a Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from MIT in 1983, and worked at the White House on the National Space Council, Executive Office of the President, in 1989 and 1990. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. Nozette also worked at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from approximately 1990 to 1999 where he designed highly advanced technology. At the Department of Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department Top Secret and Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information clearances. Department of Energy clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette was also the President, Treasurer and Director of the Alliance for Competitive Technology (ACT), a non-profit corporation that he organized in March 1990. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company ACT, entered into several agreements to develop advanced technology for the U.S. government. Nozette performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Virginia, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. From 1989 through 2006, Nozette held security clearances as high as Top Secret and had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the U.S. national defense.

According to the affidavit, on Sept. 3, 2009, Nozette was contacted via telephone by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI (UCE). During that call, Nozette agreed to meet with the UCE later that day at a hotel in Washington D.C. According to the affidavit, Nozette met with the UCE that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence.

Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information. Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The UCE explained to Nozette that the Israeli intelligence agency, or “Mossad,” would arrange for a communication system so that Nozette could pass information to the Mossad in a post office box. Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information to the UCE and asked for an Israeli passport.

According to the affidavit, Nozette and the UCE met again on Sept. 4, 2009, in the same hotel. During the meeting, Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that, although he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall the classified information to which he had been granted access, indicating that it was all still in his head. In the meeting, Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, specifying that he preferred to receive cash amounts “under ten thousand” so he didn’t have to report it. At the conclusion of this meeting, Nozette allegedly informed the UCE, “Well I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ...they don't expect me to do this for free.”

On or about Sept. 10, 2009, undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box for Nozette. In the letter, the FBI asked Nozette to answer a list of questions concerning U.S. satellite information. The undercover agents also provided a $2,000 cash payment for Nozette. The serial numbers of the bills were recorded. Nozette retrieved the questions and the money from the post office the same day.

On or about Sept. 16, 2009, Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the designated post office box in the District of Columbia. The next day, FBI agents retrieved the sealed manila envelope that Nozette had dropped off and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions posed by the undercover agents and an encrypted computer thumb drive. One of answers provided by Nozette contained information classified as Secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. In addition, Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

Also on or about Sept. 17, 2009, undercover FBI agents left a second letter in the post office box for Nozette. In the letter, the FBI asked Nozette to answer another list of questions concerning U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000 in the post office box. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money from the post office box later that same day.

On or about October 1, 2009, Nozette was filmed on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. Later that day, FBI agents retrieved the manila envelope left by Nozette and found a second set of answers from him. The answers contained information classified as both Top Secret and Secret that concerned U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

This investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with assistance from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. [See full text.]

9-11 Truther Sander Hicks Recycles Discredited "Bioevangelist" Anthrax Canards about Steven Hatfill

9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks being escorted out of a Loveland, Colorado coffee shop for being disprutive on private property---Denver Post (11-10-07)

"I owe an apology to Dr. Hatfill...the job of the news media is supposed to be to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Instead, I managed to afflict the afflicted."---Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (8-27-08)

A letter dated 11-4-02 that the Justice Department sent to to Senator Charles Grassley explains:

When the FBI conducted a consensual search of Dr. Hatfill's apartment on June 25, 2002, in Frederick, Maryland, the mainstream media immediately interpreted this search as confirmation of all the speculation that had been previously circulating about Dr. Hatfill. The FBI was asked whether Dr. Hatfill was a suspect in the case and when an arrest was anticipated. It was under these circumstances that unnamed sources at the FBI first described Steven Hatfill as one of many "persons of interest". ... The phrase was never used by the FBI or the Department of Justice to draw media attention to Dr. Hatfill. On the contrary, the phrase was used to deflect media scrutiny from Dr. Hatfill and to explain that he was just one of many scientists who had been inteviewed by the FBI and who were cooperating with the anthrax investigation.

Never-the-less, Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times, the Justice Department, the FBI, and others were sued by the U.S. Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill because they publicly named him as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case. Kristof also suggested that Dr. Hatfill was a racist and wrote in the New York Times that Dr. Hatfill "served in the armed forces of two white racist governments." Just search the linked articles for the word "racist" a few times.

A radical New York "Jewish" organization called "The Jewish Defense Organization" (JDO) further demonized the Army scientist Dr. Hatfill for his alleged racism. David Tell of The Weekly Standard (9-16-02) observes on page 2:

[V]isitors to the [JDO] website--every American reporter on the anthrax beat has surely been there--immediately discover that its top-featured section ... includes a lovingly imagined account of some future day, very soon, when "Dr. Steven 'Mengele' Hatfill," having first "attempted suicide," will be "awakened at 4 a.m. and transported to a cold, damp, and dirty holding cell," then tried, convicted, and given a lethal injection, "just like the lethal injection his former boss, Wouter Basson, gave to hundreds of black South Africans." This and much, much else besides is contained in an extraordinary, 50-some-page, always expanding dossier, "soon to be a paperback book," entitled The Bioevangelist and purporting to prove that "he did it."

Now the musty old JDO Bioevangelist conspiracy theory about "Dr. Steven 'Mengele' Hatfill" is being exhumed by the odious 9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks.

Hicks is an apologist for a convicted Dallas car-bomber, the late James H. Hatfield, whose long criminal career was exposed by The Texas Monthly (10-99), 60 Minutes (2-13-2000), and The Washington Post (3-19-2000).

Pamela Colloff, the author of the article in The Texas Monthly, also complained that passages in the original St. Martin's edition of Fortunate Son had been plagiarized from her own work! In her article "Bio Hazard: Exposing the disgraced author of a discredited book on George W.," Colloff observes:

[Fortunate Son] is littered with unattributed quotes from newspapers and magazines, a technique that allowed Hatfield to give readers the impression that he had conducted extensive research ... of the seventeen people I contacted whom Hatfield listed as sources, not one recalled ever having been interviewed by him.

Hicks is also an apologist for the convicted Denver child pornographer and pedophile, Delmart Vreeland. In 2005, Hicks published The Big Wedding. The book cited Vreeland, who had been arrested for child pornography and other crimes in 2004, as a source for the conspiracy theory that the government was complicit in 9-11.

According to the Denver Channel (10-24-08):

A man with an international following has been sentenced to 336 years to life in prison after he was convicted of luring two boys into performing sex acts and making child pornography....

Vreeland was arrested in October 2004 for numerous charges including child prostitution. Witnesses reported that Vreeland provided drugs and alcohol to two teenage boys, and then induced them to perform sex acts and make child pornography for the promise of thousands of dollars and a drum set. The victims reported Vreeland to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

Detectives conducted an extensive background search on Vreeland and learned that he was wanted in several states and Canada. He has over 40 aliases and an extensive criminal history dating back over 20 years...

Douglas County authorities called Vreeland an international "folk hero" and conspiracy theorist who claimed that while he was incarcerated in a Canadian Jail in 2001 he forewarned Canadian officials of the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Vreeland has claimed to be a U.S. spy, a covert operative, and a Naval Intelligence Officer, all of which have been proven false, according to investigators. U.S. Naval records show that in 1986 Vreeland was kicked out of basic training for his inability to conform to military regulations."

Vreeland has continually claimed to have information on terror plots and high profile murder and kidnapping cases. However, Douglas County detectives and the FBI state that Vreeland's claims have no merit, and he is not a credible source of information.

The mudslinging conspiracist (not microbiologist) Sander Hicks now claims that the FBI's cutting-edge forensics in the anthrax case is "junk science" and that the former Army scientist (and multi-millionaire) Dr. Steven Hatfill is a "fascist" who deliberately infected black people in Africa with anthrax. Hicks's allegation about Dr. Hatfill's supposedly genocidal impulses appears on Youtube (10-2-09). [See an earlier article about this anthrax canard here.]

Sander Hicks is a shill for criminals. His book The Big Wedding depicts the despicable and now-imprisoned Denver con-artist, child-pornographer, and pedophile Delmart Vreeland as a government "whistleblower" who was "framed" for revealing that 9-11 was an "inside job." Ironically, Hicks is now promoting the anti-government pedophile conspiracist Nick Bryant. According to Bryant, there was a "national pedophile network that pandered children to America’s power elite" and there is a "cover-up" of this crime "by state and federal law enforcement."

The government is protecting pedophiles. Where have I heard that canard before?

Really, this conspiracy theory is so absurd. The whole ridiculous lie about government-protected pedophiles seems to be no more than an updated version of the infamous anti-Semitic blood libel, which alleges that the blood of kidnapped children is being made into matzo balls.

Sander Hicks recently interviewed Nick Bryant, who spoke at Hicks's "We Demand Transparency" conference. The conference offered a veritable smorgasborg of conspiracy theories.

But the not-very-sincere Sander Hicks was less than transparent about one thing: If the government is protecting pedophiles, why did the FBI, the judge, and the jury send the international criminal and child pornographer Delmart Vreeland---one of the "sources" for the moronic 9-11 "Trutherisms" that appear in Hick's 2005 book The Big Wedding---to prison for 336 years?

It seems to me that Sander Hicks is the one who is conspiring to protect a pedophile, not the government. It is Sander Hicks who is "covering up" for the pedophile and child pornographer by using The Big Wedding to promote Vreeland's ludicrous and desperate alibi that he was "framed" for his crimes because he was really a Navy whistleblower who claimed that elements in the Bush government were behind 9-11.

The ridiculous notion that the government is complicit in 9-11 is also expresed at the end of a psychologically revealing 2003 play Sander Hicks wrote called Sarcoxie and Sealove. A ghost called "Coby," who is modelled after the late car-bomber James Hatfield, says to a political candidate modelled after George Bush:

Two months after I "ODed" & died, the world ended for 3000 New Yorkers. Did they tell you that would happen?

In fact, the real James Hatfield was a career criminal who killed himself with an over-dose of prescription drugs the summer before 9-11 because he was arrested for computer fraud while he was on parole for the car-bombing. Hatfield didn't want to be sent back to prison for life. Sander Hicks was discredited after he published a book the con-man Hatfield wrote called Fortunate Son. The book claimed, based on an anonymous source, that George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession. Hatfield and Hicks would later claim in a press conference that the anonymous source was none other than Karl Rove, who supposedly sat in a boat on a lake with a known car-bomber and told him that President George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine possession.

Ironically, Hicks accuses the U.S. government of complicity in the 9-11 bombings, but Hicks is the one who was an apologist for the convicted con-man and car-bomber James Hatfield. Ironically, Hicks accuses the U.S. government of complicity in child abuse, but Hicks is the one who was an apologist for the convicted Denver child abuser, pedophile, child-pornographer and congenital liar Delmart Vreeland.

Sander Hicks says we need to "demand transparency" and the "truth." Perhaps we should start by having a little more transparency and truth about Sander Hicks.

So far, the New York Times and Nick Kristof aren't defending the afflicted Dr. Hatfill from the mendacious Sander Hicks; but luckily, the much-maligned Dr. Hatfill seems more than capable of defending himself from the canards of conspiracists.

FBI Chief to Indian Museum: Support Truthful Native American History

Photo of Peter Matthiessen, author

"I just want Director Gover to know that there is only one side to the story: the factual side...I hope you will take the occasion of the museum's gala celebration to allow me, as well as the Indian witnesses in American Indian Mafia, the opportunity to counter Peter Matthiessen's unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero."---Joseph H. Trimbach, former Special Agent in Charge, FBI (10-7-09)

Today, John M. Trimbach issued a press release (10-13-09) that criticizes Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse for its "unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero." The press release follows a letter (10-7-09) sent to Dr. Kevin Gover, the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

In a letter to the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, former FBI Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach writes that a book sold in the museum's bookstore denigrates Native American history by depicting a murderer as a Native American leader. The book, Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, exonerates convicted killer Leonard Peltier, who is now serving life sentences for the 1975 murders of two FBI Agents. The letter, dated October 7, 2009, to Director Kevin Gover (Pawnee, Comanche) coincides with the Smithsonian's celebration of the museum's five-year anniversary.

Trimbach contends that Matthiessen's book falsifies Indian history and glorifies Peltier by comparing him to Chief Crazy Horse. Trimbach writes that his 2007 book, American Indian Mafia, takes issue with attempts to "portray Peltier's cowardice and evil as Indian heroism and virtue." Native journalist Tim Giago wrote that Trimbach's book exposes In the Spirit of Crazy Horse as a "fraud." Native newspaper publisher Paul DeMain says that Mafia helps expose Peltier's "false cry for human rights."

Peltier was convicted in 1977 of the execution-style murders of Ron Williams and Jack Coler, two young Agents under Trimbach's supervision. Peltier's 2009 parole board concluded that he is undeserving of parole and that releasing him would promote disrespect for the law. The board cited infractions committed by Peltier behind bars, including his armed escape from Lompoc prison in 1979, which resulted in the shooting death of another escapee. Peltier refuses to release his score sheet from his July 28 parole hearing, a document that lists other reasons why the board found against him. Trimbach read a statement to Peltier at his hearing and told him that the issue of his guilt was settled over 30 years ago and that accepting responsibility for his crimes and asking for forgiveness constitute his only real chance for parole. Peltier has lost all of his appeals.

Following Peltier's recent hearing, held at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, his lawyer Eric Seitz met with supporters outside the prison. Seitz complained that previous boards have been unyielding in their insistence on good behavior and contrition before considering parole for his client. "It's just a very wooden position," said Seitz. "Kill an FBI Agent–live the rest of your life in prison." Trimbach noted Seitz's comments and added, "I wonder how the widows of other murdered law enforcement officers would feel if their husbands' remorseless killers were freed. The idea that keeping unrepentant murderers behind bars is a 'wooden position' is simply asinine."

For the last 30 years, Peltier has collected money from people all over the world who believe that he was unjustly convicted of the murders. Some estimates put the amount at over a hundred million dollars. In his letter to Director Gover, Trimbach says that Peltier has parlayed his Indian ancestry into a criminal enterprise by collecting money from unsuspecting donors under false pretense. The funds are supposed to be used for Peltier's defense and to "raise awareness" but apparently go to his friends and supporters. Trimbach alleges that the fund exists under tax-exempt status in violation of IRS regulations and reporting requirements. "To make matters worse," Trimbach writes, "proceeds from the sale of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse go directly to Peltier's not-for-profit corporation, with no accountability." Trimbach believes that both Peltier and Matthiessen are aware of the misappropriation.

"It sickens me to think of all that money going to waste when it could have been used to alleviate genuine hardship on the reservation," says Trimbach. He believes Director Gover owes it to his patrons to have the museum bookstore carry American Indian Mafia to refute "Peltier's lies." Trimbach stops short of calling for an outright ban on Matthiessen's book, saying he is not in favor or censorship. "I just want Director Gover to know that there is only one side to the story: the factual side." Trimbach concluded his letter, "I hope you will take the occasion of the museum's gala celebration to allow me, as well as the Indian witnesses in American Indian Mafia, the opportunity to counter Peter Matthiessen's unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero."

For more information, please visit American Indian Mafia.

John M. Trimbach
Trimbach & Associates, Inc.
Atlanta
770-883-5086

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Second Url: AIM Myth Busters

Book Title: American Indian Mafia, An FBI Agent's True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)

Journalists - Click here for a Review Copy of American Indian Mafia, An FBI Agent's True Story About Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)

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Former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach Writes to Dr. Kevin Gover, Director of the National Museum of the American Indian

The introduction and open letter dated 10-7-09 that follow were originally posted on Aim Myth Busters (10-12-09) and are re-posted here with permission. Today, John M. Trimbach, the son of Joseph H. Trimbach, followed up with a press release (10-13-09). The press release are commentary are in my next post.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Letter asks the National Museum of the American Indian to Support Truthful Indian History and Exposes Leonard Peltier Fund Fraud

In a letter to the Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, former FBI Agent in Charge Joseph H. Trimbach asks for the Director's help in supporting truthful Native American history. The letter also raises questions about the legality of Leonard Peltier's legal defense funds. On April 28, 2008, Peltier's sister, Betty Ann Solano, filed articles of incorporation for the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee. The fund was previously known as the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Peltier's funds are filed under nonprofit corporations in possible violation of IRS tax regulations and disclosure requirements. Peltier has thus far refused to publicly disclose his financial records.

October 7, 2009

Mr. Kevin Gover, Director
National Museum of the American Indian
PO Box 23473
Washington, DC 20026

Dear Mr. Gover,

Congratulations on the fifth anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum showcases a masterful display of Indian culture and artistry and has become a wonderful addition to the Smithsonian. It has come to my attention, however, that the museum bookstore sells a book that falsifies Indian history by depicting a murderer as an Indian hero. Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse glorifies convicted killer Leonard Peltier and places him on a pedestal alongside the brave and noble Chief Crazy Horse. My account of what happened, American Indian Mafia, takes issue with this attempt to portray Peltier’s cowardice and evil as Indian heroism and virtue. I cite several Native Americans who honor the truth and who contributed to setting the historical record straight. Award-winning Native journalist Tim Giago wrote that American Indian Mafia “takes apart” In the Spirit of Crazy Horse “and exposes it for the fraud that it is. It is refreshing to finally hear the other side of the story.” Paul DeMain, editor of News from Indian Country, says that my book helps expose Peltier’s foggy alibis and false cry for human rights.

Mr. Gover, I was the FBI Agent in Charge when, on June 26, 1975, Peltier gunned down two of my Agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. After the men were injured and disarmed, Peltier executed both of them with his assault rifle. We know this because of the evidence presented at his trial and because Peltier later boasted about shooting 28-year-old Ron Williams in the face at point-blank range as he sat pleading for his life and trying to save Jack Coler, his injured partner. Peltier’s recent parole board concluded that he is undeserving of parole based on his behavior behind bars. I read a statement to Peltier at his July 28 hearing; and I can assure you that he remains defiant, manipulative, and utterly unrepentant.

Despite losing all his appeals, Peltier and his lawyers have fooled many people into believing that he was framed for the murders. Rather than accept responsibility for his crimes, Peltier exploits his Indian ancestry by sponsoring a fraudulent defense fund under the shelter of a tax-exempt organization. Over the last 30 years, Peltier has collected millions of dollars abusing the charitable instincts of people who care about genuine Indian suffering and hardship. Donors have no idea that this money is doled out to Peltier’s friends and supporters. Proceeds from the sale of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse also go directly to Peltier’s not-for-profit corporation, with no accountability.

Mr. Gover, the National Museum of the American Indian is a cultural gem that has enlightened and educated millions of visitors, but having Matthiessen’s book on display in your bookstore is a conspicuous blot on an otherwise fine collection of Indian literature. It is bad enough to invoke the spirit of Crazy Horse in defense of a murderer, but it is even worse to profit from this charade under the guise of authentic Indian history.

I am not in favor of censorship, but I believe you owe it to your patrons to present “both sides of the story.” Please consider making my historical account available in your bookstore so that people will have access to a fact-based rebuttal to Peltier’s lies. I hope you will take the occasion of the museum’s gala celebration to allow me, as well as the Indian witnesses in American Indian Mafia, the opportunity to counter Peter Matthiessen’s unconscionable depiction of Leonard Peltier as an Indian hero.

Regards,

Joseph H.Trimbach

AmericanIndianMafia.com

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Weather Underground Terrorist Bill Ayers Reportedly Claims He Wrote President Obama's Memoir "Dreams from My Father"

I wrote Dreams From My Father...Michelle [Obama] asked me to...and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties...I really wrote it.---Weather Underground Terrorist Bill Ayers on Monday, October 5, 2009

Dr. Jack Cashill has written a series of articles that make the case that the terrorist Bill Ayers helped write President Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father.

In support of his thesis, Dr. Cashill can now cite (10-1-09) the words of biographer Christopher Anderson, who wrote in his best-seller Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage:

These oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers...Thanks to help from veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Book.

Dr. Cashill subsequently reported (10-8-09):

Christopher Andersen, author of the new best-seller Barack and Michelle: Portrait of An American Marriage, told Sean Hannity that Bill Ayers did indeed lend a major assist to the writing of Barack Obama's acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. [See more about Anderson's book here.]

Cashill also reports that a blogger named Anne Leary confronted Bill Ayers at Washington's Reagan Airport and that he claimed he had written the President's book.

Ayers reportedly told Leary, the blogger at Back Yard Conservative (10-6-09):

I wrote Dreams From My Father...Michelle [Obama] asked me to...and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties...I really wrote it.

Leary writes that she told Ayers:

[W]hy would I believe you, you're a liar.

He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.

9-11 Truther Sander Hicks Accuses Scientist Steven Hatfill of Deliberately Infecting Black Africans with Anthrax

9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks being removed by the police from private property in Loveland, Colorado---Denver Post (11-10-07)

"[V]aguely sourced "suspicions" that [Steven] Hatfill helped the racists kill black people with germs...[are] very hard to find, as it happens. And, oddly enough, what little, shaky evidence there is...inevitably traces...back to...an outfit called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

That group's current role as a central clearinghouse of Hatfill demonology is never acknowledged by mainstream reporters [see for example, Nicholas Kristof of the NYT] who make use of the material -- and for obvious reasons. JDO is located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life. It was founded in the 1980s as a radical, breakaway faction of Meir Kahane's already-quite-radical Jewish Defense League (JDL) by a man named Mordechai Levy. And under Levy, JDO has established a long record of scurrilous, sometimes even homicidal attacks on its real or imagined enemies."-- Weekly Standard (9-16-02/page 2)

9-11 "Truther" Sander Hicks has accused an early FBI "person of interest" in the anthrax mailings, scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill, of being a "fascist" who deliberately infected black people in Africa with anthrax. Hicks's allegation about Dr. Hatfill's supposedly genocidal impulses appears on Youtube (10-2-09) and is discussed in an earlier post that primarily treats Hick's ludicrous claim that the FBI anthrax forensics is "junk science."

Hicks's anthrax canard about the Army scientist Steven Hatfill sounds a lot like ex-professor Ward Churchill's fabricated canard that the U.S. Army deliberately infected the Mandan with smallpox or the now-acknowledged KGB canard that the U.S. Army made AIDS to kill black people.

Hicks's anthrax canard may have its antecedents in propaganda disseminated following the anthrax mailings by an an extremist organization called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO) and a series of conspiracist articles penned by NYT writer Nicholas Kristof.

David Tell of The Weekly Standard (9-16-02) notes on page 2:

Hatfill has lived in two different African countries formerly ruled by white minority regimes, and he appears in the past to have claimed a "military background" or "combat experience" in one of those countries, and "reserve" and "consultant" relationships with the army of the other. What these claims might mean, and what part of them is true, are wide open questions that probably can't and won't be settled until Hatfill comes forward with a clarification. For now, he is operating under an attorney's instructions not to answer media inquiries about his past. So there remains a quite considerable leap of speculation between what is known for certain about Hatfill's student days, on the one hand, and the widely circulating charge, on the other, that he "served in the armed forces of two white racist governments," as New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has put it. Documentary and testimonial corroboration of this "fact" (sometimes attached to vaguely sourced "suspicions" that Hatfill helped the racists kill black people with germs) [See Kristof articles] is very hard to find, as it happens. And, oddly enough, what little, shaky evidence there is, insofar as anyone ever bothers to cite it, inevitably traces from -- or through, or back to -- an outfit called the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

That group's current role as a central clearinghouse of Hatfill demonology is never acknowledged by mainstream reporters who make use of the material -- and for obvious reasons. JDO is located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life. It was founded in the 1980s as a radical, breakaway faction of Meir Kahane's already-quite-radical Jewish Defense League (JDL) by a man named Mordechai Levy. And under Levy, JDO has established a long record of scurrilous, sometimes even homicidal attacks on its real or imagined enemies. One day in August 1989, for example, when process servers attempted to present him with legal papers in a libel action brought against the JDO by a leader of the rival JDL, Levy mounted the roof of a Manhattan apartment building and opened fire on his visitors with an automatic rifle, missing the intended targets and wounding a 69-year-old bystander instead. For which crime Levy was sent to prison. More recently, in April 2000, Levy pled guilty to charges of assault after a 12-year-old boy told police that the man had kicked him in the face and testicles.

Levy and the JDO have not yet threatened Dr. Hatfill with bodily harm, though visitors to the organization's website -- every American reporter on the anthrax beat has surely been there -- immediately discover that its top-featured section... includes a lovingly imagined account of some future day, very soon, when "Dr. Steven 'Mengele' Hatfill," having first "attempted suicide," will be "awakened at 4 a.m. and transported to a cold, damp, and dirty holding cell," then tried, convicted, and given a lethal injection, "just like the lethal injection his former boss, Wouter Basson, gave to hundreds of black South Africans." This and much, much else besides is contained in an extraordinary, 50-some-page, always expanding dossier, "soon to be a paperback book," entitled The Bioevangelist and purporting to prove that "he did it."

To wit: Hatfill is a "Nazi" who "participated in genocide." Hatfill's "mentor" at the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine was supposedly one Robert Burns Symington, "father of Rhodesia's biological warfare program." Hatfill helped Symington and the "white supremacist regime" start an epidemic of anthrax "in the latter phase of Zimbabwe's liberation war." The White Man having lost that war, Hatfill then took his wares to the "Medical Special Operations Battalion of the South African Army founded in 1981 by Wouter Basson," the Afrikaner regime's notorious biowarfare capo. While in South Africa, Hatfill was a "close associate of Eugene Terre Blanche," head of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement and a convicted murderer. And so on.

Trouble is, nothing in the many, impressive-looking footnotes appended to The Bioevangelist substantiates these assertions. Nothing links Hatfill to Robert Burns Symington. Nothing links Symington to anthrax, and nothing explains how Hatfill, then a first-year medical student with no biochemical laboratory training, could have helped Symington weaponize anthrax spores in the first place. Nothing links Hatfill to a "Special Operations Battalion" in South Africa. Nothing links Hatfill to Wouter Basson. And nothing links Hatfill to Eugene Terre Blanche (Terre Blanche denies the connection) -- except a risibly amateurish South African news-service story, which cites a photograph that no one can find, and an unnamed "former colleague" who says Hatfill once claimed to have run a Resistance Movement training session (whose leader denies that).

Trouble is, too, that transparent innuendo like this -- in sanitized, journalism-school, "some say," "is alleged" form -- has now entered the American news-media bloodstream (thanks most prominently to New York Times columnist Kristof), casting an awful cloud of "racism" over Steven Hatfill's head. [See Kristof articles.]

Asked by e-mail for his name, and for additional evidence to buttress his case against Hatfill the "Nazi," the author of The Bioevangelist has sent The Weekly Standard a reformatted version of the same essay, with many additional but entirely peripheral citations, and he has identified himself as A.J. Weberman....

During the 1970s, A.J. Weberman was briefly famous (in certain circles) for having decided, by virtue of extremely close, drug-fueled analysis of the lyrics to Bob Dylan songs, that Dylan was a heroin addict. In an effort to prove the point, Weberman then began collecting . . . things. He took out newspaper classified ads: "If anyone has a sample of Dylan's urine, please send it to me." He once broke into Dylan's home to confront the singer. And, most notably, he developed a habit of going through Dylan's garbage can and publicizing whatever he found. Weberman retains a casual interest in Dylan even today, it would seem. (A Dylan song plays in the background on the JDO Bioevangelist web page, if you have the right browser.) But Weberman eventually suspended his full-time practice of Dylan "garbology," moving on to the trash bins of such as Jackie Kennedy and Norman Mailer. And Weberman then, at some point, abandoned garbology altogether -- and hooked up with Mordechai Levy and the JDO.

It was from the rooftop of A.J. Weberman's apartment building that Levy sprayed lower Manhattan with automatic rifle fire that day in 1989; the two men were named co-defendants in the libel action Levy was attempting to evade. And it was with A.J. Weberman as named co-defendant that Levy and his organization were very recently and successfully sued for libel again -- by a man whom JDO's website had called a "pathological liar" and "psychopath." Six months ago, a Brooklyn, New York, jury unanimously assigned Weberman responsibility for $300,000 of a total $850,000 judgment. [Full text.]