2001 Anthrax attacks (9/11)
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2026 5:19 am
It was the 9/11 anniversary yesterday, so I wanted to post some notes on the anthrax attacks. This seems like a largely forgotten and greatly underemphasized episode. I think it's a good point of focus for a couple of reasons. First, it's a fairly self-contained episode that can be looked into on its own without the burden of having to investigate and explain the entirety of 9/11 (and the many contradictory theories about that). Second, the original story is officially admitted to have been false and the current official story emerged very gradually and is not very convincing. It is so dubious that the whole thing has been memory-holed and even mainstream sources have been critical of it. All the material can be presented using mainstream sources and it's difficult to dismiss as crazy conspiracy thinking.
The Original Story
The original story was that the anthrax attacks were directly connected to 9/11 as a second stage of attacks. Immediately after 9/11 there was talk of follow-ups, including with biological weapons, talk of the terrorists trying to get crop-dusters and that sort of thing. There was a clear attempt to connect Iraq to the anthrax. John McCain promoted the idea on Letterman on October 18.
Further Iraq "connections" were suggested by the story that Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. The Israelis were pushing the claim that the Iraqis had possibly supplied Atta with anthrax at this meeting.
CNN with an early report
https://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditi ... index.html
LA Times (this mentions the Israeli anthrax claims)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
NYT article by neo-con William Safire.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/opin ... rague.html
ABC News published a false (planted) story that indicated the anthrax samples might contain bentonite, a supposed Iraqi signature. (ABC News, Oct 28, 2001)
https://abcnews.com/US/story?id=92271&page=1
The original story fell apart because the anthrax as found to be the Ames strain which is a strain originating from the US and found primarily in select US labs, with the only foreign labs known to have it being Canada, Sweden, and the UK. This pretty much sunk the idea of Iraqi or Al-Qaida connections. Thereafter the investigation shifted by necessity into a drawn out search for a domestic "lone wolf" attacker.
The Lone Wolf Theory
The feds began looking into employees at the Fort Detrick lab for plausible suspects. Steven Hatfill was named a person of interest in August 2002. This dragged out for a while, but Hatfill was eventually cleared and got a settlement from the government of $5.8M. Suspicion then shifted to Bruce Ivins. Ivins had mental health problems and committed suicide in July 2008. This was a blessing for the government who quickly declared the case to be solved with Ivins as the presumed perpetrator despite this never being proved. The government actually contradicted their own conclusion later on in the Robert Stevens civil case (Stevens was one of the anthrax victims). Stevens's family alleged wrongful death because the government, by their own admission, had allowed bioweapons to be stolen from Fort Detrick. The government rather awkwardly argued in a 2011 filing that it was not possible to prepare the dried spores or the very fine, pure powder at For Detrick. This contradiction was embarrassing enough that the government actually withdrew the filing and amended it.
Just in terms of common sense, if they actually had strong evidence for this lone wolf culprit, it shouldn't have taken them so long to put it together. The trajectory of the investigation looks more like a search for a fall guy and they jumped on the first opportunity to close the case. There are real technical questions over whether Ivins could have prepared the very pure, very fine dry powder on his own without being noticed. And the story appears even less plausible when we consider the letters and the apparent motives.
For more on Fort Detrick, see this collection of articles from the Hartford Courant
https://web.archive.org/web/20210126043 ... urant.html
The Anthrax Letters
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/the-anthrax-mail-attack
There are indications of advanced knowledge of the anthrax attacks prior to Oct 4. The New York Times reported on 9/27 a run on the antibiotic Cipro used to treat anthrax.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/27/us/n ... iotic.html
These anthrax rumors are interesting because under the original foreign terrorist group hypothesis, this could perhaps be explained as originating from "chatter" of the plot that was picked up by intelligence services and that got leaked to certain connected people. But if there was no al-Qaeda anthrax plot as is now acknowledged, this becomes harder to explain. We'd have to posit that there were general anthrax rumors based on essentially nothing (note that the Cipro stories cite anthrax specifically which is only one of many biological weapons) and the lone wolf Ivins pounced on this opportunity to send anthrax letters using al-Qaeda as cover. The problem with this is that the first round of letters were mailed around Sep 18, only a week after 9/11. Would this interval of one week have been enough time for Ivins to notice the anthrax rumors and hatch his own plot? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen remarked in Slate,
Hoax Letters
In addition to the foreknowledge, there is the curiosity of the "hoax" anthrax letters, letters made to look like anthrax letters but which did not contain real anthrax.
https://www.storytel.com/is/podcasts/me ... ne-4907063
The odd thing about the hoax letters though is that the first two were sent very early, well before any anthrax cases had been announced, and they were sent to two of the same targets as the real letters, NBC and New York Post. It would be remarkable if someone just happened to do this independently. The hoax letters are sometimes called the St. Petersburg (FL) letters because they were sent from there.
The feds were never able to definitively place Ivins in NJ but argued that Ivins theoretically had a very narrow window in the middle of the night to drive from his home in MD up to NJ to mail the letters. If we add the Florida hoax letters into the mix this becomes even less plausible because Ivins either has to travel to Florida to mail those or by some amazing coincidence someone else was independently mailing the hoax letters at the exact same time Ivins was mailing the real letters.
9/11 Hijacker Connections
The NJ and Florida locations seem to have been chosen to establish a connection to the 9/11 hijackers. This connection became inconvenient when the story fell apart, but originally the whole idea was to connect the attacks (and tie Iraq to 9/11). There is another coincidence in that a Florida real estate agent Gloria Irish knew Robert Stevens. Stevens was a client of hers and her husband also worked at AMI. Two of the hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi and Hamza al-Ghamdi, were also clients of Irish.
There were also media stories suggesting that the hijackers had been treated for cutaneous anthrax exposure and other suggestive details.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/us/n ... gated.html
Motive and Means
The government's theory is that Ivins was concerned about biodefense/anthrax vaccines being cut and wanted to gin up an anthrax scare to boost funding. But Ivins's boss went on record as disputing the FBI's timeline, saying that Ivins had little reason to fear for his job at the time (and presumably even less need to worry after 9/11!).
https://www.propublica.org/article/new- ... ce-e-ivins
The government's story also ignores the much more obvious neo-con motive of ginning up a war with Iraq and the many media stories and false intel that were disseminated with that aim.
The Daschle and Leahy letters also strongly suggest a political motive. Daschle was Senate Majority Leader and Leahy was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time the House was Republican but the Senate was (narrowly) under Democratic control which would potentially complicate passage of the Patriot Act. Daschle and Leahy were two of the main obstacles to swift passage of the bill. Leahy in particular, while not outright opposed to a bill, had reservations about it. Cheney had set a deadline of Oct 5 for passage of the bill which was not fulfilled. The anthrax letters were to the two senators a couple of days after that. This seems to be the work of broader political interests, not Ivins wanting to keep his job.
Further Reading
Ron Unz, American Pravda: The Forgotten Anthrax Attacks, Oct 17, 2023
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravd ... x-attacks/
Graeme MacQueen, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, 2014
https://www.amazon.com/2001-Anthrax-Dec ... 986073121/
Christopher Ketcham, “The Anthrax Files,” The American Conservative, Aug 24, 2008
https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... rax-files/
The Original Story
The original story was that the anthrax attacks were directly connected to 9/11 as a second stage of attacks. Immediately after 9/11 there was talk of follow-ups, including with biological weapons, talk of the terrorists trying to get crop-dusters and that sort of thing. There was a clear attempt to connect Iraq to the anthrax. John McCain promoted the idea on Letterman on October 18.
Further Iraq "connections" were suggested by the story that Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. The Israelis were pushing the claim that the Iraqis had possibly supplied Atta with anthrax at this meeting.
CNN with an early report
https://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditi ... index.html
LA Times (this mentions the Israeli anthrax claims)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
NYT article by neo-con William Safire.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/opin ... rague.html
ABC News published a false (planted) story that indicated the anthrax samples might contain bentonite, a supposed Iraqi signature. (ABC News, Oct 28, 2001)
https://abcnews.com/US/story?id=92271&page=1
The original story fell apart because the anthrax as found to be the Ames strain which is a strain originating from the US and found primarily in select US labs, with the only foreign labs known to have it being Canada, Sweden, and the UK. This pretty much sunk the idea of Iraqi or Al-Qaida connections. Thereafter the investigation shifted by necessity into a drawn out search for a domestic "lone wolf" attacker.
The Lone Wolf Theory
The feds began looking into employees at the Fort Detrick lab for plausible suspects. Steven Hatfill was named a person of interest in August 2002. This dragged out for a while, but Hatfill was eventually cleared and got a settlement from the government of $5.8M. Suspicion then shifted to Bruce Ivins. Ivins had mental health problems and committed suicide in July 2008. This was a blessing for the government who quickly declared the case to be solved with Ivins as the presumed perpetrator despite this never being proved. The government actually contradicted their own conclusion later on in the Robert Stevens civil case (Stevens was one of the anthrax victims). Stevens's family alleged wrongful death because the government, by their own admission, had allowed bioweapons to be stolen from Fort Detrick. The government rather awkwardly argued in a 2011 filing that it was not possible to prepare the dried spores or the very fine, pure powder at For Detrick. This contradiction was embarrassing enough that the government actually withdrew the filing and amended it.
Just in terms of common sense, if they actually had strong evidence for this lone wolf culprit, it shouldn't have taken them so long to put it together. The trajectory of the investigation looks more like a search for a fall guy and they jumped on the first opportunity to close the case. There are real technical questions over whether Ivins could have prepared the very pure, very fine dry powder on his own without being noticed. And the story appears even less plausible when we consider the letters and the apparent motives.
For more on Fort Detrick, see this collection of articles from the Hartford Courant
https://web.archive.org/web/20210126043 ... urant.html
The Anthrax Letters
- First Case: Robert Stevens, journalist for the Sun in Florida. No letter was ever recovered but it is believed the anthrax was mailed to AMI (media company that owns the Sun). The case was made public on Oct 4, 2001, the first public mention of a confirmed anthrax attack.
- NBC News and New York Post - Reports of these letters broke after the Stevens story. The two letters were recovered and were the same. As there were also anthrax cases at ABC and CBS, it is inferred that letters were sent to those locations though these were never recovered.
- Senators Daschle and Leahy - letters sent from Princeton, NJ, postmarked Oct 9. The Daschle letter was opened on Oct 15. The Leahy letter was impounded and eventually discovered on Nov 16.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/the-anthrax-mail-attack
There are indications of advanced knowledge of the anthrax attacks prior to Oct 4. The New York Times reported on 9/27 a run on the antibiotic Cipro used to treat anthrax.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/27/us/n ... iotic.html
These anthrax rumors are interesting because under the original foreign terrorist group hypothesis, this could perhaps be explained as originating from "chatter" of the plot that was picked up by intelligence services and that got leaked to certain connected people. But if there was no al-Qaeda anthrax plot as is now acknowledged, this becomes harder to explain. We'd have to posit that there were general anthrax rumors based on essentially nothing (note that the Cipro stories cite anthrax specifically which is only one of many biological weapons) and the lone wolf Ivins pounced on this opportunity to send anthrax letters using al-Qaeda as cover. The problem with this is that the first round of letters were mailed around Sep 18, only a week after 9/11. Would this interval of one week have been enough time for Ivins to notice the anthrax rumors and hatch his own plot? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen remarked in Slate,
The anthrax letters themselves contain this exact same idea, "TAKE PENACILIN NOW."The [anthrax] attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
Hoax Letters
In addition to the foreknowledge, there is the curiosity of the "hoax" anthrax letters, letters made to look like anthrax letters but which did not contain real anthrax.
- Two letters postmarked Sep 20 that were sent to NBC/Tom Brokaw and the New York Post
- Two letters postmarked Oct 5 sent to Judith Miller of the NYT and Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg Times
https://www.storytel.com/is/podcasts/me ... ne-4907063
The odd thing about the hoax letters though is that the first two were sent very early, well before any anthrax cases had been announced, and they were sent to two of the same targets as the real letters, NBC and New York Post. It would be remarkable if someone just happened to do this independently. The hoax letters are sometimes called the St. Petersburg (FL) letters because they were sent from there.
The feds were never able to definitively place Ivins in NJ but argued that Ivins theoretically had a very narrow window in the middle of the night to drive from his home in MD up to NJ to mail the letters. If we add the Florida hoax letters into the mix this becomes even less plausible because Ivins either has to travel to Florida to mail those or by some amazing coincidence someone else was independently mailing the hoax letters at the exact same time Ivins was mailing the real letters.
9/11 Hijacker Connections
The NJ and Florida locations seem to have been chosen to establish a connection to the 9/11 hijackers. This connection became inconvenient when the story fell apart, but originally the whole idea was to connect the attacks (and tie Iraq to 9/11). There is another coincidence in that a Florida real estate agent Gloria Irish knew Robert Stevens. Stevens was a client of hers and her husband also worked at AMI. Two of the hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi and Hamza al-Ghamdi, were also clients of Irish.
There were also media stories suggesting that the hijackers had been treated for cutaneous anthrax exposure and other suggestive details.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/us/n ... gated.html
Motive and Means
The government's theory is that Ivins was concerned about biodefense/anthrax vaccines being cut and wanted to gin up an anthrax scare to boost funding. But Ivins's boss went on record as disputing the FBI's timeline, saying that Ivins had little reason to fear for his job at the time (and presumably even less need to worry after 9/11!).
https://www.propublica.org/article/new- ... ce-e-ivins
The government's story also ignores the much more obvious neo-con motive of ginning up a war with Iraq and the many media stories and false intel that were disseminated with that aim.
The Daschle and Leahy letters also strongly suggest a political motive. Daschle was Senate Majority Leader and Leahy was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time the House was Republican but the Senate was (narrowly) under Democratic control which would potentially complicate passage of the Patriot Act. Daschle and Leahy were two of the main obstacles to swift passage of the bill. Leahy in particular, while not outright opposed to a bill, had reservations about it. Cheney had set a deadline of Oct 5 for passage of the bill which was not fulfilled. The anthrax letters were to the two senators a couple of days after that. This seems to be the work of broader political interests, not Ivins wanting to keep his job.
Further Reading
Ron Unz, American Pravda: The Forgotten Anthrax Attacks, Oct 17, 2023
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravd ... x-attacks/
Graeme MacQueen, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, 2014
https://www.amazon.com/2001-Anthrax-Dec ... 986073121/
Christopher Ketcham, “The Anthrax Files,” The American Conservative, Aug 24, 2008
https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... rax-files/