TERRORISM -- FORMER FBI OFFICIAL SAYS WHITE HOUSE TOLD FBI TO BLAME ANTHRAX ATTACKS ON AL QAEDA

TERRORISM -- FORMER FBI OFFICIAL SAYS WHITE HOUSE TOLD FBI TO BLAME ANTHRAX ATTACKS ON AL QAEDA: Last week, Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who researched anthrax and was expected to be charged in connection with the 2001 attacks, reportedly committed suicide. As Glenn Greenwald has noted, President Bush and his administration initially attempted to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq. The New York Daily News has a new twist in the administration's attempt to peg the anthrax attacks to its own bellicose aims. Immediately after 9/11, the Daily News reported Saturday, "White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda," according to a former FBI official. "Mueller was 'beaten up' during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide." The claims, however, were rejected by experts, who "told us this was not something some guy in a cave could come up with," the former FBI official said. As press reports have indicated, while the source of the attacks is still unknown, a large body of evidence points towards Ivins's lab in Ft. Detrick, Maryland.