espite Attorney General Ashcroft’s statements that the anthrax mailings had a domestic source, most Americans are still making an association between the bio-terror scare and Osama Bin Laden’s Arab terrorists.

This is understandable. Americans yearn to see at least one of the heinous crimes committed against the American people last fall solved, and its perpetrators punished.

But there’s always been something a little hinky—suspicious—about the anthrax terror that followed hard on the heels of the Sept 11 disaster.

Just as people began asking questions about how Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre could have infiltrated so easily into our country… the anthrax hit.

And immediately America’s obedient media turned its full attention to the bio-terror threat. And although some (relatively) brave FBI agents complained loudly when they were pulled off the investigation into Atta and his terrorist buddies and transferred to the anthrax case, it was all to no avail.

Case Closed?

Anyone who was still waiting for Colin Powell’s promised “white paper” on the terrorists was wasting their time.

“Case closed,” said Atty. Gen. Ashcroft.

The results of this sudden change of focus are today everywhere around us. There is still no coherent chronology of the WTC disaster. And—surprise surprise—there are still no suspects in custody in the murder of five poor souls unlucky enough to have gotten dusted with deadly white powder.

Perhaps the bio-terrorists have slipped out of the country, and are now  riding around on motorbikes through the Afghan countryside with Mullah Omar.

Follow the dancing ball

Could the anthrax scare have been intended as a diversion? Could bio-terror have been unleashed on the American people to divert their attention from seeking a coherent explanation for the holes, discrepancies, and unanswered questions that the FBI shows absolutely no interest in clearing up?

Then came the recent news that either our CIA—or our military—is the original source of the anthrax used in the letters to Senators Daschle & Leahy…

And that’s when we remembered Russell Welch, an investigator for the Arkansas State Police who had been trying to blow the whistle a dozen years ago on the massive cocaine smuggling scandal unfolding in front of him in Mena, Arkansas.

What does an obscure state cop in an obscure state have to do with today’s bio-terror?

Russell Welch was exposed to weaponized  anthrax over a decade ago when he opened a letter which released electrostatically charged floating spores in his face.

“I got so sick that my wife had to help me to the car,” Welch told us several years ago, when we interviewed him for our two-hour documentary (banned from TV) about the Mena Scandal called “The Secret Heartbeat of America.”

“Luckily we had a doctor in town, a Vietnam vet, who when he saw me immediately called the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.”

Prompt diagnosis saved Welch’s life, if not his health. As Welch can tell you, anthrax is extremely nasty stuff…

“The next day a doctor came into my room and asked me how much danger was involved with my job,” Welch relates. “I told her danger was pretty much inherent with the job, because I was a cop that generally handled major cases, and asked why she wanted to know.”

The doctor told Welch, “I think you’ve been poisoned with anthrax. Somebody did this to you.”

Later his doctor’s office was burglarized, and test results and correspondence with Center for Disease Control officials in Atlanta were stolen.

No one has fingered Al Qaeda for the burglary of Russell Welch’s doctor’s office. So clearly, some other organization must have been involved.

If it worked once…

Anthrax was used to silence Welch, and stop him from investigating the CIA cocaine smuggling operation associated with Barry Seal at the infamous Mena Arkansas airport.

Bio-terror was employed on an Arkansas State law enforcement officer to stop his investigation into a CIA aviation scandal.

Russell Welch was targeted, either to make him an asset… or to make him dead.

No one we know of has been asking why two Democratic senators, and the major media, were targeted with anthrax. No one has wondered aloud why, say, Republican Senator Shelby from Alabama was spared, and Senator Daschle wasn’t…

Could someone be sending a similar message to the one sent Russell Welch a dozen years ago to two influential Democratic Senators today?

Are these two episodes related? 

Could someone be engineering this bio-terror crisis to silence anyone from questioning the “official version of events?”

Steering the American public’s focus away from potentially damaging revelations about Mohamed Atta and his cadre’s possibly explosive past links to people inside our own government?

Maybe somebody should ask. Over to you, Senator.