Alibek Doubts FBI Claims on Hatfill

Alibek Doubts FBI Claims on Hatfill

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002

Dr. Ken Alibek, one the world's leading authorities on biowarfare, has cast significant doubt on the claims of the FBI that Dr. Steven Hatfill or another American may have been behind last years mail anthrax attacks.

Alibek, former head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons program and now executive director for George Mason University's Center for Bio-Defense and a distinguished professor at GMU, offered his candid comments about the Hatfill case on NewsMax's exclusive "Off The Record" Club audioprogram. Click Here for more info.

Alibek, who has been consulted by the FBI on the anthrax attacks, said that an analysis of available evidence suggests that there is reason to believe that the source of the anthrax attack was foreign, not domestic, as claimed by the FBI.

Though not precluding the possibility the anthrax was from a domestic source, Alibek says on "Off the Record" that he has serious questions about this theeory.

Alibek cites, among other issues:

The hijackers were looking for crop dusters. He says it's hard to believe that they wanted to use crop dusters for attacking the World Trade Center.

The first cases of anthrax were in Florida, near where some of these hijackers lived. Also, there were reports about a strange anthrax-type ulcer on the leg of one of the hijackers before 9/11.

The timing of the attack in conjunction with 9/11 was "sort of a simultaneous attempt" to cause a greater fear and anxiety. "Sometimes, it seems to me, that somebody actually used this atmosphere of panic, anxiety for sending anthrax in which it could be a domestic case. There are many issues and questions that we still have unanswered, but you notice I don't answer this question to say, 'OK, it was a domestic war' or '... a foreign case.'"

In one of the letters the word "penicillin" was misspelled. Hatfill, a medical doctor, would hardly have not known how to spell the word. "It's hard for me to believe that somebody with medical background would make such a big mistake, if it's not done intentionally, of course."

The FBI failed to conduct an immediate search of the places where the hijackers lived in Florida. Alibek said that "when you do any investigation you shouldn't get rid of any possible opportunity, any possible lead. If you took a week just to reach your conclusion, saying OK, domestic case or foreign case, you can lose some very important evidence. And specifically, if, for example, you narrow down your investigation, at the earliest stage of investigation and then you follow this path, for example, and just, in about six, eight or nine months or a year, you find out it was the wrong case, of course, it's too late to go back to seek for some other cause ... because in many cases, people have short memories."

Alibek said he didn't buy the claims of FBI profilers who think the anthrax attacks were orchestrated by a patriotic American who wanted to warn Americans about the danger of bioweapons. He said those who concocted the anthrax mail attacks were simply cold-blooded killers.

Noting that the FBI early on devoted most of its energies and resources to tracking a domestic perpetrator, Alibek said: "For example, if you investigate something immediately after it happened, people still have something in mind, what they saw, what they knew, and so on and so forth.

"In my opinion, in each case when you do an investigation, of course, you need to keep in mind all possible situations until you have ... very strong opinion or very strong proof that some of the leads are appropriate, I would say. In this case, you shouldn't have done domestic investigation at early stage of this investigation."

In "Off the Record," Dr. Alibek makes more, startling revelations about a possible smallpox attack, and the source of the West Nile virus.

Click Here to read about Alibek's smallpox concerns.

Also get more info on the Alibek tape – Click Here.

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Bioterrorism