dragonfly
02-03-2004, 07:14 AM
This alleged ricin incident involving Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s office smells awfully funny to me.
It comes right as the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, arguably one of the most important intellectual journals in the U.S., features a piece by Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew on Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s new book, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever.
“Daschle gives us a particularly telling account of what happened when envelopes containing deadly anthrax spores were delivered to his office, as well as the offices of two other senators," Drew writes. (But I think she is wrong here -- I believe the letters were sent to Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, as well as to some newsrooms.) "This was no ‘scare,’ as it was frequently described at the time. It was a horror. Dozens of lives were at risk; squabbling federal agencies delayed delivery of the right medicine. The victims and their families were left in ignorance about what to do in this life-threatening situation. Daschle still doesn’t know who sent the anthrax; nor, apparently, does the FBI.”
So just as the intelligentsia is reminded of the strange partisan nature of the 2001 anthrax attacks (why would international terrorists target only Democrats?), we suddenly get ricin in the office of the Republican-controlled Senate’s top leader.
How … convenient.
And what a strange unfolding of events. The Associated Press reports that a “senior government investigator, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the powdery substance was found in an area where mail is opened in Frist's office but has not yet been traced to any specific piece of mail.”
Someone in a Senate mailroom would open a piece of mail containing a powdery substance but wouldn’t flag the piece of mail? I don’t buy it.
And did anyone see Frist on TV last night talking about the incident? He seemed oddly cheerful for someone who had potentially been exposed to a deadly biological agent.
This whole thing strikes me as fishy.
It comes right as the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, arguably one of the most important intellectual journals in the U.S., features a piece by Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew on Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s new book, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever.
“Daschle gives us a particularly telling account of what happened when envelopes containing deadly anthrax spores were delivered to his office, as well as the offices of two other senators," Drew writes. (But I think she is wrong here -- I believe the letters were sent to Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, as well as to some newsrooms.) "This was no ‘scare,’ as it was frequently described at the time. It was a horror. Dozens of lives were at risk; squabbling federal agencies delayed delivery of the right medicine. The victims and their families were left in ignorance about what to do in this life-threatening situation. Daschle still doesn’t know who sent the anthrax; nor, apparently, does the FBI.”
So just as the intelligentsia is reminded of the strange partisan nature of the 2001 anthrax attacks (why would international terrorists target only Democrats?), we suddenly get ricin in the office of the Republican-controlled Senate’s top leader.
How … convenient.
And what a strange unfolding of events. The Associated Press reports that a “senior government investigator, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the powdery substance was found in an area where mail is opened in Frist's office but has not yet been traced to any specific piece of mail.”
Someone in a Senate mailroom would open a piece of mail containing a powdery substance but wouldn’t flag the piece of mail? I don’t buy it.
And did anyone see Frist on TV last night talking about the incident? He seemed oddly cheerful for someone who had potentially been exposed to a deadly biological agent.
This whole thing strikes me as fishy.