August 10, 2002
MURDER AMONG THE GERM-WARFARE RESEARCHERS: Sounds like the plot of a thriller novel, but it’s more than that.
MURDER AMONG THE GERM-WARFARE RESEARCHERS: Sounds like the plot of a thriller novel, but it’s more than that.
np says:
This microbiology/bioterrorism conspiracy theory has been making the rounds for quite a while now …
August 10, 2002, 4:01 pmGlenn Reynolds says:
Yeah, I had some posts on it a few months back. But the story seems to be growing.
August 10, 2002, 5:18 pmJoanne Jacobs says:
I’d say this article blows it out of the water. I was especially amused that people find it significant that a Vietnamese scientist who died had the same last name as the Vietnamese woman who died of anthrax in New York: Finding two Vietnamese named Nguyen is not exactly a longshot.
Three moms in my daughter’s pre-school class were diagnosed with cancer in a 12-month period. Different cancers, different outcomes. Just dumb (bad) luck.
August 10, 2002, 6:09 pmKen says:
OK, so the whole web of deaths may be blown out of the water, but, jeebus, what happened to the coroner is weird enough on its own, and the Don C. Wiley explanation (the bridge did it?) sounds kinda frail… Coincidence?
K
August 10, 2002, 6:51 pmnp says:
As more and more researchers seem to get involved … even if involuntarily. Sorry.
August 10, 2002, 6:58 pmHoward Veit says:
Doesn’t it seem strange that the New York Times, an anti-war and anti-Bush paper should trash this story? Didn’t the NYT publish the fake body counts in Afghanistan? Isn’t the editor named Raines, and wasn’t it Claude Raines in the movie Casablanca who sold the Germans down the river. And isn’t the publisher of the times named Sulzberger and wasn’t it Captain Sulzberger of the Prussian army who shot two Muslims dead at the battle of Vienna?
There is more to this than meets the eye.
BTW Mickey Kaus is notoriously anti-monkey and is not to be taken seriously either
August 10, 2002, 7:28 pmHarry says:
It’s a valuable article for pointing out that what at first seem to be remarkable coincidences are, when examined further, just remarkable coincidences. But it’s also a dangerous article for implying that investigating such remarkable coincidences and odd patterns is usually a waste of time and prima facie evidence of being paranoid or a “conspiracy theorist.”
After all, at this time last year the presence of odd Middle Eastern students at flight schools in Minneapolis and Arizona could be easily attributed to “remarkable coincidence.” Maybe those reports in late June of Middle Eastern men videotaping the interiors and control positions of ferry boats on the SF Bay (via the SF Examiner) and Puget Sound (via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) are merely coincidences. But what if they’re not? It’s not being paranoid or a conspiracy theorist if you suspect a hijacked ferry could be used as a mobile platform for launching a biochem attack on a major city; it’s well within the realm of feasibility and evidence pointing in that direction must be investigated.
After all, four airliners were hijacked on the same day and used to kill over 3000 people on American soil within a couple of hours. What were “the odds of that”?
August 10, 2002, 7:49 pmLouis J. Zurr says:
Yes, the article, like everything the Times prints, had a political motive. Now they have established that apparent conspiraces or linked events are only apparent – because we yokels have such primitive mentalities. They must have printed this because they are worried about some other pattern of events, call it x, not yet apparent, that they fear will soon be perceived by us primitives. Presently however we will learn what x is, and x will *not* be merely an overblown series of coincidences. Thus the necessity of this article. Now by associating in the reader’s mind the (admittedly) misinformed reaction to the coincidences of the supposed “microbiologist” deaths with this future x, they will have already gone some distance toward discrediting anyone who would see a pattern in x.
August 10, 2002, 8:29 pmPhool says:
let me see now, paranoid is the word used by people in power to identify people not in power? If I were rich and had rich friends who sold weapons to really questionable “Royalty” who ruled unquestionably marginal theocracys, I would probably use every newspaper, television station, global-satelite agency I owned to notify my readers/viewers/listeners/advertizers to watch out for dangerous “paranoids” who disagreed with the legislators that made my friends weapons necessary.
August 10, 2002, 9:26 pmtm says:
How does it go?: Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.
August 11, 2002, 9:24 am