http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine3.html
The CIA and Poison Letters
Black Valentines?
By Douglas Valentine
CounterPunch,
October 16, 2001
As everyone is aware by now, the anthrax postal attacks began on 4
October in Florida, when a photo editor at a Boca Raton tabloid
inhaled the bacteria form of anthrax, and died. His was the first such
death in the US since 1976. Two other Sun employees also were
infected, but survived, and are being treated. Unidentified FBI
agents, with their hats pulled down low over their eyes, said their
hands-off investigation is now a criminal probe, while other unnamed
officials (CIA?) said there is no evidence linking the outbreak to the
September 11 terrorist attacks.
Then in New York, teeny-tiny anthrax spores were found on the
police officer and two lab technicians who were investigating a
totally unrelated case in which an anthrax infected letter was sent to
government propagandist Tom Brokaw.
Basking in the limelight of the recent tragedy, New York Mayor (and
adulterer) Rudolph Giuliani said Brokaw had not, repeat, not been
contaminated. The Greatest Generation could relax, he said, urging
calm, and asking that the usurper issue an emergency order allowing to
him remain as mayor indefinitely.
Like the isolated case in Florida, the New Yorkers who contracted
the deadly disease had touched envelopes that contained anthrax
spores, the type that have been artificially produced across America
for years, in order to develop antidotes in case a Three Mile
Island-type accident spread the military's purely defensive (unlike
Saddam's) anthrax arsenal o'er our beloved Homeland.
Then on Saturday the Microsoft office in arid Reno, Nevada received
a piece of mail sent from Malaysia containing anthrax dust. None of
the six people who accessed the envelope are known to have been
infected by the bacteria (not virus) or offended by the pornography
the envelope also contained. (The pictures were not released to the
public, but are rumored to be of you-know-who in his snorting days,
cavorting with a donkey in Tijuana.)
The latest and most newsworthy of these unrelated incidents came on
Monday, when the senate office of Bush Administration rubberstamp, Tom
Daschle, was suddenly struck. Camera shy FBI agents said the package
was postmarked Trenton, New Jersey, same as the anthrax-laced letter
sent to Brokaw.
When asked if the object of Eternal Hot Pursuit, Osama bin Laden,
had sent the black valentines, the idiotic unpresident replied,
"I wouldn't put it past him."
All kidding aside, while the sending of anthrax to U.S. citizens
seems to be yet another bizarre aspect of the on-going terror attacks
on America, there is a precedent, and it is connected to America's
on-going woes with the Arab world.
The problem began in 1958, with the formation of the United Arab
Republic by Egypt and Syria. To protect Israel, the CIA armed Iraq's
Kurds and encouraged them to revolt and attack Syria, which was
considered a Soviet pawn. In response, Colonel Abdul Karim el-Kassem
overthrew Iraq's King Faisal and restored relations with the Soviets.
The coup d'etat incited nationalists in Lebanon's Arab community and
in May 1958, armed revolt erupted in Beirut. The U.S. Information
Agency building was burned and sacked and the ARAMCO pipeline from
Saudi Arabia to Tripoli was severed. To placate King Hussein, America
began selling arms to Jordan and mounting covert operations against
Iraq, including an MKULTRA operation in which the infamous CIA
officer, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb sent, from India, a handkerchief laced
with poison to Colonel Kassem.
According to CIAnik Seymour Hersh in his JFK-bashing book, The Dark
Side of Camelot (page 194): "the (CIA's Technical Services Division)
created a poisoned handkerchief that was mailed with the approval of
the agency's top management to the home of General Abdul Karim Kassem,
the military strongman of Iraq. Kassem had seized power in a bloody
coup and, to the dismay of the U.S., immediately restored diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union and lifted a ban on the Communist
Party in Iraq. Sidney Gottlieb came up with the idea of infecting a
handkerchief and mailing it to Iraq via the CIA station in New Delhi,
India. 'It was not an assassination,' Gottlieb told (Hersh) in an
interview. 'They [the CIA's Near East division] just wanted him to get
sick for a long time. I went to (CIA Deputy Director of Plans,
Richard) Bissell and he said go ahead.'
"Others in the agency saw it differently. One senior officer, in an
interview for this book, revealed that the men running the Near East
division were interested in getting rid of General Kassem
permanently."
(Incidentally, in a Frontline story aired on 25 January 2000,
titled The Survival of Saddam, it was revealed that Saddam Hussein,
then an up-and-coming CIA asset and dictator, and other members of the
Ba'ath party worked with "the Americans" to overthrow General Kassem.
According to Frontline, "With CIA help, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party seized
power in 1963. General Kassem was killed in the coup. The CIA provided
lists of suspected communists for Ba'ath Party hit squads, who
liquidated at least 800 people. Saddam Hussein rushed home to join in
as a interrogator, torturer and killer.")
So, if the FBI is looking for motive and method (meaning modus
operandi), the CIA must rate as a prime suspect in the anthrax black
valentines that are currently being sent across the country. The
motive, of course, is to keep the threat of terrorism alive and
widespread, so more assaults can be made on our Civil Liberties, thus
strengthening the National Security elite. The method of sending
envelopes packed with poison, as we know, was developed and perfected
by the CIA.
Over to you, Governor Ridge.
Douglas Valentine writes frequently for CounterPunch. He is the
author of (http://www.douglasvalentine.com/) The Phoenix Program, the
only comprehensive account of the CIA's torture and assassination
operation in Vietnam, as well as TDY a chilling novel about the CIA
and the drug trade.
