Jewish Suspect in Anthrax Attacks
Meet Dr. Phillip Zack

Anthrax Missing From Army Lab
January 20, 2002
By JACK DOLAN And DAVE ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writers

Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army's biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there, documents from an internal Army inquiry show.

The 1992 inquiry also found evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab late at night to conduct unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher, who left the misspelled label "antrax" in the machine's electronic memory, according to the documents obtained by The Courant.

Experts disagree on whether the lost specimens pose a danger. An Army spokesperson said they do not because they would have been effectively killed by chemicals in preparation for microscopic study. A prominent molecular biologist said, however, that resilient anthrax spores could possibly be retrieved from a treated specimen.

In addition, a scientist who once worked at the Army facility said that because of poor inventory controls, it is possible some of the specimens disappeared while still viable, before being treated.

Not in dispute is what the incidents say about disorganization and lack of security in some quarters of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases - known as USAMRIID - at Fort Detrick, Md., in the 1990s. Fort Detrick is believed to be the original source of the Ames strain of anthrax used in the mail attacks last fall, and investigators have questioned people there and at a handful of other government labs and contractors.

It is unclear whether Ames was among the strains of anthrax in the 27 sets of specimens reported missing at Fort Detrick after an inventory in 1992. The Army spokesperson, Caree Vander-Linden, said that at least some of the lost anthrax was not Ames. But a former lab technician who worked with some of the anthrax that was later reported missing said all he ever handled was the Ames strain.

Meanwhile, one of the 27 sets of specimens has been found and is still in the lab; an Army spokesperson said it may have been in use when the inventory was taken. The fate of the rest, some containing samples no larger than a pencil point, remains unclear. In addition to anthrax and Ebola, the specimens included hanta virus, simian AIDS virus and two that were labeled "unknown" - an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret.

A former commander of the lab said in an interview he did not believe any of the missing specimens were ever found. Vander-Linden said last week that in addition to the one complete specimen set, some samples from several others were later located, but she could not provide a fuller accounting because of incomplete records regarding the disposal of specimens.

"In January of 2002, it's hard to say how many of those were missing in February of 1991," said Vander-Linden, adding that it's likely some were simply thrown out with the trash.

Discoveries of lost specimens and unauthorized research coincided with an Army inquiry into allegations of "improper conduct" at Fort Detrick's experimental pathology branch in 1992. The inquiry did not substantiate the specific charges of mismanagement by a handful of officers.

But a review of hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, signed statements and internal memos related to the inquiry portrays a climate charged with bitter personal rivalries over credit for research, as well as allegations of sexual and ethnic harassment. The recriminations and unhappiness ultimately became a factor in the departures of at least five frustrated Fort Detrick scientists.

In interviews with The Courant last month, two of the former scientists said that as recently as 1997, when they left, controls at Fort Detrick were so lax it wouldn't have been hard for someone with security clearance for its handful of labs to smuggle out biological specimens.

Lost Samples

The 27 specimens were reported missing in February 1992, after a new officer, Lt. Col. Michael Langford, took command of what was viewed by Fort Detrick brass as a dysfunctional pathology lab. Langford, who no longer works at Fort Detrick, said he ordered an inventory after he recognized there was "little or no organization" and "little or no accountability" in the lab.

"I knew we had to basically tighten up what I thought was a very lax and unorganized system," he said in an interview last week.

A factor in Langford's decision to order an inventory was his suspicion - never proven - that someone in the lab had been tampering with records of specimens to conceal unauthorized research. As he explained later to Army investigators, he asked a lab technician, Charles Brown, to "make a list of everything that was missing."

"It turned out that there was quite a bit of stuff that was unaccounted for, which only verifies that there needs to be some kind of accountability down there," Langford told investigators, according to a transcript of his April 1992 interview.

Brown - whose inventory was limited to specimens logged into the lab during the 1991 calendar year - detailed his findings in a two-page memo to Langford, in which he lamented the loss of the items "due to their immediate and future value to the pathology division and USAMRIID."

Many of the specimens were tiny samples of tissue taken from the dead bodies of lab animals infected with deadly diseases during vaccine research. Standard procedure for the pathology lab would be to soak the samples in a formaldehyde-like fixative and embed them in a hard resin or paraffin, in preparation for study under an electron microscope.

Some samples, particularly viruses, are also irradiated with gamma rays before they are handled by the pathology lab.

Whether all of the lost samples went through this treatment process is unclear. Vander-Linden said the samples had to have been rendered inert if they were being worked on in the pathology lab.

But Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a former Fort Detrick scientist who had extensive dealings with the lab, said that because some samples were received at the lab while still alive - with the expectation they would be treated before being worked on - it is possible some became missing before treatment. A phony "log slip" could then have been entered into the lab computer, making it appear they had been processed and logged.

In fact, Army investigators appear to have wondered if some of the anthrax specimens reported missing had ever really been logged in. When an investigator produced a log slip and asked Langford if "these exist or [are they] just made up on a data entry form," Langford replied that he didn't know.

Assuming a specimen was chemically treated and embedded for microscopic study, Vander-Linden and several scientists interviewed said it would be impossible to recover a viable pathogen from them. Brown, who did the inventory for Langford and has since left Fort Detrick, said in an interview that the specimens he worked on in the lab "were completely inert."

"You could spread them on a sandwich," he said.

But Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York who is investigating the recent anthrax attacks for the Federation of American Scientists, said she would not rule out the possibility that anthrax in spore form could survive the chemical-fixative process.

"You'd have to grind it up and hope that some of the spores survived," Rosenberg said. "It would be a mess.

"It seems to me that it would be an unnecessarily difficult task. Anybody who had access to those labs could probably get something more useful."

Rosenberg's analysis of the anthrax attacks, which has been widely reported, concludes that the culprit is probably a government insider, possibly someone from Fort Detrick. The Army facility manufactured anthrax before biological weapons were banned in 1969, and it has experimented with the Ames strain for defensive research since the early 1980s.

Vander-Linden said that one of the two sets of anthrax specimens listed as missing at Fort Detrick was the Vollum strain, which was used in the early days of the U.S. biological weapons program. It was not clear what the type of anthrax in the other missing specimen was.

Eric Oldenberg, a soldier and pathology lab technician who left Fort Detrick and is now a police detective in Phoenix, said in an interview that Ames was the only anthrax strain he worked with in the lab.

Late-Night Research

More troubling to Langford than the missing specimens was what investigators called "surreptitious" work being done in the pathology lab late at night and on weekends.

Dr. Mary Beth Downs told investigators that she had come to work several times in January and February of 1992 to find that someone had been in the lab at odd hours, clumsily using the sophisticated electron microscope to conduct some kind of off-the-books research.

After one weekend in February, Downs discovered that someone had been in the lab using the microscope to take photos of slides, and apparently had forgotten to reset a feature on the microscope that imprints each photo with a label. After taking a few pictures of her own slides that morning, Downs was surprised to see "Antrax 005" emblazoned on her negatives.

Downs also noted that an automatic counter on the camera, like an odometer on a car, had been rolled back to hide the fact that pictures had been taken over the weekend. She wrote of her findings in a memo to Langford, noting that whoever was using the microscope was "either in a big hurry or didn't know what they were doing."

It is unclear if the Army ever got to the bottom of the incident, and some lab insiders believed concerns about it were overblown. Brown said many Army officers did not understand the scientific process, which he said doesn't always follow a 9-to-5 schedule.

"People all over the base knew that they could come in at anytime and get on the microscope," Brown said. "If you had security clearance, the guard isn't going to ask you if you are qualified to use the equipment. I'm sure people used it often without our knowledge."

Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab building at night was Langford's predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report filed by a security guard.

Zack could not be reached for comment. In an interview this week, Rippy said that she doesn't remember letting Zack in, but that he occasionally stopped by after he was transferred off the base.

"After he left, he had no [authorized] access to the building. Other people let him in," she said. "He knew a lot of people there and he was still part of the military. I can tell you, there was no suspicious stuff going on there with specimens."

Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy, Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination.

Assaad said he had believed the harassment was behind him until last October, until after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He said that is when the FBI contacted him, saying someone had mailed an anonymous letter - a few days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known - naming Assaad as a potential bioterrorist. FBI agents decided the note was a hoax after interviewing Assaad.

But Assaad said he believes the note's timing makes the author a suspect in the anthrax attacks, and he is convinced that details of his work contained in the letter mean the author must be a former Fort Detrick colleague.

Brown said that he doesn't know who sent the letter, but that Assaad's nationality and expertise in biological agents made him an obvious subject of concern after Sept. 11.

DR. PHILLIP ZACK, A JEW, CAPTURED ON TAPE IN ARMY ANTHRAX LAB
Anthrax Cover Up?
By Justin Raimondo
www.antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j022202.html

ANTHRAX COVER-UP?
We know who the suspects are – so why no arrest?
The news that the US government has set up a special department, the "Office of Strategic Influence," to plant false news items has liberals and journalists (or do I repeat myself?) in a funk: this is terrible, they whine, why it's unprecedented. To which the only possible reply is: Oh really?




DISINFORMATION: A SHORT HISTORY
The US government has been playing the same game since the dawn of the cold war, when the Congress of Cultural Freedom was run as a CIA operation to influence world opinion in the struggle against the Soviet Union: A whole raft of ostensibly "private" individuals, such as Irving Kristol, a CCF stalwart, and assorted other intellectuals-for-hire, were on the CIA payroll, although they may not have known it (or wanted to know it) at the time. The Agency cultivated "mainstream" journalists, planted news stories, and routinely used the media to mislead, misinform, and confuse. Do you mean the government is lying to us, scream the liberals, who are shocked – shocked! – that such a thing is possible. Fer chrissake, what do you think they've been doing all along?

THE BIG LIE

The US government is spreading lies. Why is this considered so unusual? After all, our entire foreign policy is based on a structure of lies, the central one being the inevitable beneficence and altruism of the United States as a world power; and this, in turn, is based on the Biggest Lie of Them All, the one that seeks to justify and explain every bit of self-aggrandizement on the part of our great and glorious leaders: the lie of "democracy," which rubberstamps, every four years or so, decisions that have already been made by those who really rule.

EMANATIONS OF UNTRUTH

So they're lying to us: but lies come in all sorts of colors and shades of prevarication, including the more subtle emanations of untruth that might be called lies of omission. Liars must always cover their tracks: indeed, government officials spend a lot of their time, energy – and your money – doing exactly that. It isn't what they're telling us that matters so much: any halfway conscious human being is smart enough to discount that right off the bat. It's what they're not telling us that counts.

GATE-KEEPERS

Of course, in this day and age, for a lie to go over, government officials must have at least the passive cooperation of journalists – or at least those relatively few gatekeepers who pretty much still determine what gets reported and what is relegated to the Memory Hole. This doesn't mean that journalists are recruited to write lies, but, somehow, they know what not to write about.

TWO SPIKED STORIES

A good example is the four-part series on Fox News reporting on an extensive Israeli spy operation in the US that was discovered, apparently, prior to 9/11 – and raising the possibility of Israeli foreknowledge of the attacks. After four days of one stunning revelation after another – the Israelis had penetrated US government communications systems, they had been watching Al Qaeda cells in the US, and had sent agents to penetrate US military facilities – the story dropped like a stone in a bottomless abyss, noiselessly and seemingly without leaving so much as a ripple of air in its wake. Another example: the story about how the stocks of certain companies with a 9/11 connection were dramatically manipulated in the days and hours prior to the attacks. Who profited? What became of the promised Securities and Exchange Commission investigation? So far we have heard not a peep out of the news media on this, nor has anyone in Congress bothered to ask questions.

AT LOOSE ENDS

But the most dramatic loose end left conspicuously hanging in the aftermath of 9/11 is undoubtedly the anthrax story. For a few weeks in October, and into November, the anthrax letters sent to media outlets and prominent elected officials were the top story: but when the attacks stopped, and the media ran out of scare stories on the possibilities of bio-terrorism (after all, how many documentaries about smallpox and ebola can you run without sending the audience fleeing?) the coverage sputtered out rather quickly, and soon came to a complete dead end. The investigation, too, seemed to have reached a similar blind alley: the authorities were baffled, or so they said. But they were lying: indeed, as the investigation proceeded, usually voluble government officials, eager to be seen as "on the job," were laconic in their public pronouncements. On November 19, John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, averred that "We don't know…at the moment, in a way that we could make public, where the anthrax attacks came from."

Of course they can't make it public: because, at the very least, the truth points to their own incompetence and passive complicity. And, at worst …

WHY THE FOOT-DRAGGING?

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' chemical and biological weapons program, says the US government has "a strong hunch" about who is behind the anthrax letters, but is "dragging its feet" in the investigation because the chief suspect is a former government scientist with knowledge of "secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed." Rosenberg has written a very interesting analysis of the anthrax attacks that leads to one and only one ineluctable conclusion: that the chief culprit was not some Arab terrorist, associated with Al Qaeda or similar groups, but an American, a former US government employee – one who, furthermore, is a middle-aged "insider" in the biodefense field, with a doctoral degree, who probably worked in the USAMRID laboratory, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, still has access – and had some dispute with a government agency.

PLEASE TRY THIS AT HOME!

Furthermore, given the information compiled by Rosenberg, and with the aid of Google.com, anyone with computer access can identify by name the person or persons in possession of the key to unlocking the mystery of the anthrax attack.

POISON PEN

The strain of weaponised anthrax used in the attacks narrows the search for the perpetrator(s) down to a few US labs: but law enforcement agencies have yet to issue a single subpoena for employee records at the four labs with a history of working with this strain. We know about the anthrax letters, of course, and the several hoax letters, but a major clue in this investigation is an anonymous letter, sent before the anthrax hysteria, in late September, to the military police at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, accusing a US government bioengineer, Egyptian-born Dr. Ayaad Assaad, of being behind a bio-terrorist plot. The letter-writer revealed a detailed knowledge of Dr. Assaad's life and work at USAMRID, including details of his personal life that only someone who worked with him could have possibly known: indeed, the poison-pen author claimed to have formerly worked with Dr. Assaad.

FBI TAKES A PASS

While FBI spokesman Chris Murray confirmed that Assaad was not under suspicion, he also stated to reporters that the FBI is not trying to find out who sent the anonymous hate-letter – which the FBI won't show to Assaad. The odd timing of the letter – sent after the anthrax letters were mailed, but before their deadly contents were known – doesn't even have them mildly curious.

WHERE THE ANTHRAX TRAILS LEADS

Rosenberg believes that the poison-pen missive was written by the real perpetrator of the anthrax attacks, who sought to ride the wave of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim hysteria that swept the nation after 9/11. This also fits the pattern of masquerade that characterizes the anthrax letters to NBC, Daschle, Leahy, et al, with their anti-Israel, pro-Muslim slogans neatly printed in block letters. Indeed, the one thread that seems to run throughout this story is anti-Arab animus, as the astonishing – and truly frightening – story of what happened at Ft. Detrick in the early 1990s makes all too clear….

IT CAME FROM FT. DETRICK

Things were turning up missing at AMRIID, and Lt. Col. Michael Langford was baffled. He suspected that someone was tampering with records, perhaps in order to conduct unauthorized research. He told a lab technician to "make a list of everything that was missing," and "it turned out that there was quite a bit of stuff that was unaccounted for," 27 sets of specimens, including anthrax, hanta virus, simian AIDS virus "and two that were labeled 'unknown' – an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret," as this chilling Hartford Courant story by Jack Dolan and Dave Altimari puts it. One set of specimens has since been found: the rest are still missing….

CAUGHT ON TAPE

An investigation was launched that exposed the shockingly lax security measures at the lab, and raised the possibility that some specimens may never have been entered in lab records. Also uncovered was a tape from a surveillance camera showing the entry of an unauthorized person into the lab, at 8:40, on January 23, 1992, let in by Dr. Marian Rippy, lab pathologist. The night visitor was Lt. Col. Philip Zack, a former employee who had left as a result of a dispute with the lab over his alleged harassment of Dr. Assaad. The Courant reports:

"Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy, [lab technician Charles] Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination."

THE KAMEL KLUB KIDS

According to Assaad, in the week before Easter 1991, he found a poem in his mailbox, described in another Courant story:

"The poem, which became a court exhibit, has 235 lines, many of them lewd, mocking Assaad. The poem also refers to another creation of the scientists who wrote it — a rubber camel outfitted with sexually explicit appendages. The poem reads: 'In (Assaad's) honor we created this beast; it represents life lower than yeast.' The camel, it notes, each week will be given 'to who did the least.' The poem also doubles as an ode to each of the participants who adorned the camel, who number at least six and referred to themselves as 'the camel club.' Two — Dr. Philip Zack and Dr. Marian Rippy — voluntarily left Fort Detrick soon after Assaad brought the poem to the attention of supervisors."

Charming, eh? This kind of organized harassment has an ideological edge to it not completely attributable to personal antipathy, and seems politically inspired, a possibility that is intriguing given the political repercussions of the anthrax scare.

SULLIVAN SAYS: 'NUKE 'EM!'

Bill Kristol, of the Weekly Standard, was positively gloating that, after years of neoconservative hectoring – and with little to show for it except a few hundred thousand dead Iraqi babies – the anthrax attacks had finally put the "get Iraq" lobby over the top in Washington: the Iraqis, he exulted, would now get what was coming to them. But Andrew Sullivan, for his part, wasn't content with a mere bombing campaign or even an invasion: Writing in his "weblog" for October 17 [01], he demanded that we nuke 'em without waiting for the evidence:

"At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter."

I guess he must've taken an overdose of testosterone that day: what is astonishing is that, after having made such an obviously deranged statement in all seriousness, he was ever taken seriously by anyone again. Instead, he has been lionized and touted as the living incarnation of George Orwell – a truly Orwellian claim, considering his recent defense of the Office of Strategic Influence plan to spread lies far and wide:

"Those kinds of lies are often necessary to ensure the success of military strikes, and pose no threat to the credibility of the American government or the domestic press."

What kind of lies Sullivan tells himself in order to evade the overwhelming evidence of his complete moral bankruptcy is open to speculation. But of one thing we can be sure: he has by now completely forgotten what he wrote about the anthrax attacks and the alleged moral imperative of immediately reducing an entire nation to a nuclearized cinder. As I wrote in a column some months ago:

"It kind of reminds me of the idiot who killed a turban-wearing immigrant from India, because, as he told his wife, 'all Arabs should be shot.' When the cops came to his Phoenix home to arrest him, he reportedly said: "I'm an American. Arrest me and let those terrorists run wild?" The differences between this drunken sub-literate wife-beating fool and the literary wonder boy of the neocon set are superficial: morally, they are brothers under the skin – though at least the Arizona knuckle-dragger had the courage to act on his murderous convictions. All Sullivan can do is write in his little weblog – and thank God for that!"

OMINOUS PARALLELS

There is an ominous and telling parallel with the 9/11 investigation here: that's another instance in which the authorities are being extra careful not to dig too deeply, at least in public. For the anthrax sub-plot was almost like an afterthought to the main mystery of 9/11: how did an underground terrorist network manage to operate in the US for as long as five years, and perhaps more, without being detected by law enforcement agencies? Multiple agencies of government were laden with multi-billion dollar budgets earmarked for "anti-terrorist" activities, yet they knew nothing of this operation, had not even a hint. The CIA and other intelligence agencies aren't to blame, says CIA director George Tenant, who testified before Congress that "intelligence will never give you 100 percent predictive capability."

Yeah, but how about 50 percent, or 30 percent? Perhaps even as much as 10 percent intelligence might have changed the course of events, and prevented or at least ameliorated the biggest terrorist attack in US history. At any rate, the investigation isn't going anywhere, no doubt for the same reasons the FBI refuses to move on the anthrax case: too much embarrassing and potentially explosive information could get out, exposing the US government – or, perhaps, one of its closest allies – as criminally negligent or even complicit in the attacks.

A DOMESTIC OPERATION?

Evidence that Saddam Hussein was the mastermind behind the anthrax attacks has failed to materialize: the evidence, and official suspicions, all point to a domestic operation. But that doesn't rule out an overseas connection. Iraq isn't the only foreign intelligence service that has the resources, methods, and most importantly the motive to pull off a stunt clearly designed to spread fear throughout the land – and provoke a violent American military response. The mystery, to this day, remains unsolved – and, if you don't believe that, then you'd better pay a visit to the Office of Strategic Influence. I'm sure they'd be more than glad to straighten you out….

FBI Closes In
Jewish Anthrax Terrorist

Prime Suspect is a Zionist

by Hector Carreon
La Voz de Aztlan
http://aztlan.net/zack.htm

Los Angeles, Alta California - 2/26/2002 - (ACN) Jewish microbiologist Dr. Philip M. Zack may be behind the deadly anthrax contaminated letters that were mailed to NBC's Tom Brokaw, Senator Tom Daschle and others, according to FBI sources. In a rapidly unravelling investigation by the FBI, it appears that the "Arab-hating-Jew" was behind a vile conspiracy to frame a colleague who was born in Egypt and who worked, along with Dr. Zack, at the U.S. Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md.

La Voz de Aztlan has maintained from the beginning that the anthrax-laced letters seemed contrived and were purposely written to make them appear that they were coming from someone in the Islamic World. New information just released by the FBI confirms our suspicions. On October 9, 2001 we published "Anthrax Terrorists may be Zionists" in which we outlined the reasons for our suspicions and in addition reported on a letter we received with a yellowish powder. On October 24, 2001 we published an editorial "Anthrax Letter Messages Seem Contrived" in which we commented on our theory concerning the origin of the letters. We also published pictures of the three actual letters and envelopes. We have now compared the handwriting on these letters to the one we received and it looks suspiciously the same. We are not handwriting experts and have made the decision to publish the envelope and letter we received so that our readership can see for themselves. Our local police department never came to pick up the envelope and letter and we still have them in a double zip-lock plastic bag. The letter and envelope addressed to La Voz de Aztlan are published at http://www.aztlan.net/letterbiochem.htm

The case against Dr. Phillip M. Zack began unravelling when Egyptian-born scientist Dr. Ayaad Assaad, now a U.S. citizen, was called in by the FBI for an interview on October 2, 2001. The FBI had received an unsigned letter falsely accusing Dr. Assaad of being responsible for mailing the anthrax tainted letters. The letter stated, among other things, "Dr. Assaad is a potential biological terrorist," and "I have worked with Dr. Assaad, and I heard him say that he has a vendetta against the U.S. government and that if anything happens to him, he told his sons to carry on." Rosemary A. McDermott, attorney for Dr. Assaad, stated that here is a very close connection between the person who sent that letter and the person who sent the anthrax. Ms. McDermott said "The person who wrote that letter knew intimate details of my client's life and his professional history, and about the Fort Detrick operation. I don't think that is a coincidence." The Fort Detrick biochemical research laboratory has maintained stores of weapons-grade anthrax that is commonly known as the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis.

The anonymous letter falsely accusing Dr. Assaad was sent a little after the September 11 terrorist attacks but before anyone knew about the anthrax-laced letters. On October 5, 2001, about 10 days after the anonymous letter was mailed, Robert Stevens, Photo Editor of The Sun in Florida, became the first of five individuals to die from an anthrax infection.

The racist and bigoted attacks on Dr. Ayaad Assaad by Zionist Philip Zack and others started while he worked at the Army's bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland during the 1990's. This is when a vicious racist vendetta was launched against the scientist of Arab descent. A group of coworkers led by then Army Lt. Col. Philip Zack began a hateful campaign to harass and get Dr. Assaad fired from his duties. The Zionists apparently wanted to get rid of anyone that could uncover their sinister plans which consisted in stealing "weapons grade anthrax" and other deadly viruses used in biological weapons. The conspirators had the support of the lab's former commander. Among other things, the bigots wrote and passed around a very crude poem denigrating Arab Americans, an obscene rubber camel and constantly poked fun at Dr. Assaad's use of the English language. In 1991 Dr. Assaad discovered the eight-page poem in his mailbox. The poem was lewd and mocked Dr. Assaad. The poem also referred to the rubber camel that was passed around. It was outfitted with all manner of sexually explicit appendages. The poem in part read: ``In Assaad's honor we created this beast; it represents life lower than yeast.'' The bigots noted that the rubber camel will be given each week ``to who did the least.''

It appears that the conspirators created an extremely toxic workplace on purpose in order to take control of the laboratory. The lab became very dysfunctional and hostile to the few "good" scientists that worked there which included Dr. Assaad. Dr. Assaad said ``This person knew in advance what was going to happen and created a suitable, well-fitted scapegoat for this action. You do not need to be a Nobel laureate to put two and two together.'' Dr. Assaad said he reported everything to his supervisor, Col. David R. Franz, but that Colonel Franz ``kicked me out of his office and slammed the door in my face, because he didn't want to talk about it.'' Dr. Assaad was eventually dismissed by Colonel Franz as were two other scientists of Arab descent.

The evidence against the racist Zionist bigot Dr. Philip "Mengele" Zack is very strong. Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army's biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s during the very same period that the conspirators were harassing Dr. Assaad. An 1992 inquiry into the disappearance of the deadly pathogens found evidence that someone was secretly entering the laboratory late at night to conduct unauthorized research involving anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher. A lab scientist, Dr. Mary Beth Downs, told investigators that she had come to work several times in 1992 to find that someone had been in the lab at odd hours to use the electron microscope to conduct some clandestine research. Dr. Downs reported in a memo that whoever was using the microscope was "either in a big hurry or didn't know what they were doing." Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the laboratory at night was Lt. Col. Philip Zack who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Lt. Col. Zack being let in at 8:40 P.M. on January 23, 1992, by another conspirator by the name Dr. Marian Rippy. Dr. Philip M. Zack has not been arrested.

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Dr. Zack's Story in Salon Magazine