Bubonica

To: Retort
From: The Down-on-Freemasons-Again Department


Ed Vulliamy
The Guardian
October 27 2001


> 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.