— Brad Friedman
With the mainstream corporate media reports today on the apparent suicide of Bruce E. Ivins of the U.S. Government’s bio weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, MD, who was reportedly about to be charged with the Anthrax murders of late 2001, it’s curious — if hardly surprising — that none of the major outlets reporting the news bothered to note that the attacks were all made on perceived “liberals.”
Letters, seeming to appear as if they were from Muslim extremists, declaring “Death to America…Death to Israel…Allah is Great,” were sent to then-Democratic Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, powerful Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and then NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw.
Given the recent coverage (or extraordinary lack thereof) of the church shootings earlier this week in Knoxville, TN, carried out by a gunman who was said to have blamed “liberal Democrats” for all of this country’s woes… and the coinciding news that the Bush Administration’s DoJ illegally screened out applicants for career posts based on perceived beliefs that they might support “liberal Democratic” causes (a convergance that we noted, if few others did)… it’s all the more curious — if still not surprising in the least — that the supposed “Liberal Media” haven’t bothered to highlight who the actual targets of the anthrax attacks were, or the reasons why they appear to have been targeted.
Even the parade of reporters contacting the Ivins family today failed to bring up the topic.
We spoke with Ivins eldest brother Thomas today, to ask if he had any idea of Bruce’s political leanings, and he told us “No, I didn’t. I didn’t know what his affiliations where. And that’s a good question.”
He was surprised by the question, and although he said he’d been speaking with reporters all day, “one after another,” he told The BRAD BLOG none of the other reporters, not one of them, had asked him about his brother’s political affiliations, leanings, or beliefs.
Apparently, it remains open hunting season on perceived “liberals.” Today’s remarkable MSM coverage of Ivins’ death continues to underscore that point…
The Los Angeles Times’ David Willman, who first broke the story on Ivins’ death today, noted that the anthrax attacks “shut down a Senate office building” and included “letters addressed to two senators.”
The senators aren’t named.
AP’s latest report, says only: “The letters contained [sic] anthrax powder were sent on the heels of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and turned up at congressional offices, newsrooms and elsewhere, leaving a deadly trail through post offices on way.”
Later in the article, AP misleads readers by noting, “The victims of the attacks had little in common.” That may be true, if one separates the victims who died from the targets to whom the attacks were clearly sent.
AP’s video report noted that the anthrax killer “sent letters to a number of people.” Later, the report adds: “Some of the letters were sent to members of Congress, and to the media.”
Anybody in particular in either the Congress or the media? The AP, as in its written coverage, doesn’t bother to say.
USA Today, in an article they describe as being culled “from staff and wire reports,” tells us only that “letters…were mailed to lawmakers’ Capitol Hill offices, TV networks in New York, and tabloid newspaper offices in Florida.”
The New York Times reported: “Letters containing anthrax powder were also sent to lawmakers’ offices on Capitol Hill, causing great alarm in the capital when it was still jittery from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”
While no clue is offered as to who those “lawmakers” were in their description above, buried on the second page of the article, in the final grafs of the story (which I don’t recall being there this morning when I was first canvassing coverage of the story) there is some cursory coverage of the specific targets and victims of the attacks.
In the third to final graf there’s this: “The 2001 anthrax mailings were baffling in several ways, not least because the victims — whether they were chosen or were struck at random — seemed to have nothing in common.”
The graf goes on to detail those who died — “an editor at a tabloid newspaper based in Florida” and the others. Clearly, those victims had inadvertently come in contact with the anthrax via post offices through which the letters were routed.
So, despite the NYTimes’ language there, what’s actually “baffling” is not the random folks who were killed along the way, but rather, that the Times (like AP) would even focus on the random victims as a reason for “bafflement.”
The targets of the attack were quite clear, and not “baffling” in the least. They were all perceived by the rightwing as powerful “liberals.”
Finally, in the penultimate graf — and one that I suspect was added later, after the first story was posted — the NYTimes identifies the “targets of the mailings” to have included “Tom Brokaw of NBC and two Democratic senators: Tom Daschle of South Dakota, then his party’s Senate leader, and Patrick J. Leahy, a leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee but arguably not an instantly recognizable figure outside Washington and his home state.”
If Leahy was “not an instantly recognizable figure outside Washington and his home state,” he was certainly recognizable to rightwing political junkies, who feared his recent takeover as chair of the Judiciary Committee might serve to be a roadblock to the Republican legislative agenda. Leahy had taken over the Senate Judiciary Committee after Sen. Jim Jeffords left the Republican party, handing a thin majority — and the Senate committee chairs with it — to the Democrats.
On his radio program this morning, Thom Hartmann noted that Daschle and Leahy held the most important roles in Congress, as Majority Leader and Chair of Judiciary, respectively, in the possible blockage of the PATRIOT Act, which both men had originally indicated they might oppose.
The long-time attacks on NBC News and other media outlets perceived to have a “Liberal” bias are well known.
It should be noted that Anthrax letters were also sent to the Editor of the New York Post (a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper) and the National Enquirer offices, whose political bent, if they have one, seems difficult to discern.
So why the lack of focus — and in many cases, any mention at all — of who the Anthrax Killer’s actual targets were? If the attacks had been against, say, Tom Delay, Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly, would the media have noted, in summarizing them upon Ivins’ death, that the attacks were sent to “prominent conservatives”?
Of course they would have.
Attacking perceived “liberals” in the United States, illegally barring them from government jobs, shooting them in churches and sending them anthrax in the mail is, apparently, just fine in these United States of America these days.
At least that’s what the supposed “Liberal Media” coverage of these recent events would seem to suggest.
By way of related addendum… Glen Greenwald’s coverage at Salon today is an absolute must read. He notes the unbelievably irresponsible reporting of ABC News prior to the Iraq War, in which they breathlessly reported from “four well-placed and separate sources,” that the anthrax used in the letter attacks was linked with Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
While ABC’s and Brian Ross’ reports have since been discredited again and again — and certainly today’s news would seem to put yet another nail in that already rotting coffin — their report was used, big time, to help rally the country towards supporting a war against Iraq prior to Congress handing authorization to George W. Bush to do so.
In fact, ABC’s false reports seem to have been the only actual tie between Iraq and the anthrax attacks that played such an effective role when Bush referred to “the Iraqi regime [having] plotted to develop anthrax,” in his 2003 State of the Union Address, and the collective chill that ran down American spines when Colin Powell held up his infamous fake vial of anthrax in his presentation to the U.N. declaring little doubt that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction.
As Greenwald notes today [emphasis in original]:
…
Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the last decade.
…
ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who concocted the false bentonite story [which served to falsely connect Saddam to the anthrax attacks] and who passed it on to them with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and — as importantly — to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet, unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to disclose who did all of this. They’re allegedly a news organization, in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years later.
They’re not protecting “sources.” The people who fed them the bentonite story aren’t “sources.” They’re fabricators and liars who purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization uncovering such frauds.
So here we are today, almost seven years after ABC’s October 2001 report. Here we are, still waiting for either a retraction, or more importantly, the disclosure of who “concocted and fed,” as Greenwald puts it, the false reports to ABC way back then, playing what was perhaps the most crucial element in helping to lead the country into war. Here we are in August of 2008 and ABC is protecting the liars even today.
And with a major break in the anthrax story, even now the mainstream corporate media fail to note the connection to the targeting of perceived “liberals.”
Thomas Ivins, the brother of the government’s now-deceased and apparent top suspect in the anthrax attacks, said that after speaking the entire day to one reporter after another — who, he noted, had told him “a great deal” about the story which he hadn’t known — had no idea that the targets of the attacks were two high-ranking Democratic members of Congress.
“Really? I didn’t know that,” he told me when I bothered to inform him.
That part of the story, apparently, just isn’t news for the mainstream corporate media. So, the open season on “liberals” continues, even as our years-long hunt for the great mythical “Liberal Media” continues as well.
Well, that’s simple enough; “If you can’t kill ’em, jail ’em!”
either it’s a genuine error, or Digg is blocking this article from being submitted- will someone else try?
Brad,
I think that this Anthrax was military grade to boot. That makes the puzzle even more interesting.
Excellent, catching this. The corporate media is actually implicating themselves in all of this! I know it’s hard for many people to realize the corporate media is in on all of this.
Daschle and Leahy were big against going to war, too. The anthrax to Dem leaders and the media: shut up the opposing party and the media about 9/11. Was anthrax sent to any Republican? No.
I didn’t hear once today in any reporting on TV or radio, a reminder that even though this guy was an American scientist connected with the Pentagon, that he (if he did it) was trying to link Muslims with 9/11, with messages like “Death To Israel”.
Around 1998 it was in the news they required young military soldiers to take anthrax vaccines and in the Navy a few of them died from reactions to the shots. When others refused the injections, they faced court-martial.
Then in 1999 a building housing an Atlanta TV station was evacuated because of a letter marked “Anthrax.” It’s always been curious because it appeared they were preparing for something several years before 2001 (in more ways than anthrax.)
Good thing Cheney had the anecdote handy. Anthrax spores may have given him a heart attack.
Oh Jesus Christ it gets better. Why do I go to MSN.com? Because they paint a broad picture of how INSANE this country is. Anyhoo, the title of the article is “CLOSURE FOR FAMILIES OF ANTHRAX VICTIMS” As if. And the subtitle, which is beyond insane: ‘The suicide is pretty convincing evidence that it was him,’ one victim says.
I am all for prosecuting the MSM, the bloody lot of them, and revoking their broadcasting licenses. Aren’t they supposed to act in the interest of the people?
Thanks for being on top of this immensely important story Brad. I’m going to send you another $50 spot just for this blog article. Cancel your newspaper subscriptions people, they are worthless. I’d dump my cable too if it weren’t for C-Span and Noggin.
Soul Rebel said:
Oh, Soul Rebel. That’s so 1970’s of you.
Thanks for the kind words and (in advance) for filling the tip jar today.
Hey, hey, hey, I resemble that remark! Codgers rule.
My (speculative) theory is that subversives in the FBI sought to make Ivins the fall guy and then knocked him off and made it look like a suicide. That conveniently prevents Ivins from putting up a defense against the accusations, as [Steven Hatfill] did very effectively for himself when the FBI tried to do make him the fall guy. This is what we could call the “Lee Harvey Oswald” strategy.
{Ed Note: The guy’s name is “Steven Hatfill” and I think it’s important we try to keep that straight, so I changed it here. –99}
Dead men tell no truths.
Plus the fact [Hatfill] cost them 6 million …
Couldn’t let that happen again!
{Ed Note: The guy’s name is “Steven Hatfill” and I think it’s important we try to keep that straight, so I changed it here. –99}
I wonder if this has anything to do with the apparent (gangland) roadside suicide of Senator Webb’s staff-person in VA?
Too many shallowly investigated suicides in politics over the last 47 years…. and perhaps many more years into the past as well.
This new bedtime story does tie up the anthrax loose ends doesn’t it?
My first thought was Oh, Ok, it’s Cheney and Rummy making sure this cat don’t get out of the bag in court.
I think we should face the fact that they can do whatever the hell they want and the media and the legislature will not only let them get away with it but help them get away with it, that we need to take as a baseline that the truth is no part of the “public discourse” and see if we can make anything cogent emerge despite these filthy facts.
I just continually am reminded of Lee Iacocca’s Chrysler gig, where he gave out this spectacular warrantee and you could call up and find unfailingly pleasant and seemingly co-operative Chrysler people, but never get your problems or complaints addressed. It was revolutionary. As long as we thought we were being served they could outright not serve us, laughing all the way to the bank. That morphed into resource extraction companies making a hairy deal out of their environmental concern — where there was none — but it mollified masses anyway. That morphed into big companies and government agencies taking input from the public that is outright ignored, but most of the public who bother to input are completely happy with them because just being able to state their concerns makes them feel that good things are happening.
Now, we get to comment on all these travesties, yell, gripe, ask however many salient questions we have, and NOTHING is EVER accomplished by it. We either decide to believe whatever the official media dishes and proceed “happily” with our lives or we turn ourselves into professional grousers with equally zero effect… or we spend all our days feeling as though we are going to explode from the unremitting frustration of living on Planet Cognitive Dissonance.
We’re adults. We decide how this world is going to be. We can decide it will be different than this.
agent99@16
I acknowledged those facts long ago, when I really started to understand Cannabis/Hemp Prohibition in this country. The Presidential election will be manipulated for Obama and McCain, and few if any will notice, at that will only be after the fact.
If the votes are hacked in favor of the Ficus, it would be noticed by everyone, and we won’t have to seat another unelected President.
Back, to the Anthrax. Greenwald has some great analysis and is smart to focus on the ABC “4 sources” angle similar to Truthers focusing on Building 7.
The only people not down for Revolution at this point are the gullible and the content.
Wilbur ~ I keep telling ya the corporate m$m media and conservative talk radio are nothing but a Protection RACKET for republicans and big business.
Another GIANT hurdle is the post hypnotic conspiracy theory tactic. It works beyond belief in this country.There are a thousand ways you can be discounted instantly for life unless the media decides you can be believed no matter what you’ve done.
The post hypnotic conspiracy theory method works, but we all know something strange is going on here, so keep on keeping on discounting yourselves. It’s all we have. Doesn’t this suck though?
I am not sure what you folks are implying here. I am not prone to conspiracy theories but there does seem to be contradictory elements to what I have read. The anthrax incident did come on the heals of 9-1-1 and shored up the Bush case for attacking Iraq. If he was a right winger and affiliated with the goverment (perhaps covert type) I suppose he could have been acting on super secret orders and killed for it years later so the story would die OR maybe this is only a good idea for a fiction novel???
Code Pink has the right idea.
Philip Zack Steals Anthrax
http://www.thesimon.com/magazin...s_anthrax.html
ANTHRAX COVER-UP?
We know who the suspects are – so why no arrest?
“with the aid of Google.com, anyone with computer access can identify by name [Philip Zack] the person or persons in possession of the key to unlocking the mystery of the anthrax attack”
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j022202.html
While Media Spotlights One Anthrax Suspect, Another Is Too Hot to Touch
http://www.washington-report.or...2/0209018.html
Philip Zack, Philip Zack, Philip Zack, Philip Zack…..
Why include the National Enquirer headquarters? How about the stories they ran about Bush’s cocaine use, or his partying twins, or even his grandfathers financing of the Nazis? The attacks certainly provided another fear based argument for war with Iraq. However, it also certainly put enough fear into the mainstream media and the Democrats to allow the Bush crime family to get away with a plethora of crimes without any prosecution. Impeachment would be off the table if you feared a biological attack on your family, or ever being able to fly in a plane, (i.e. JFK Jr., Carnahan, Welstone, etc.) Are they really paranoid conspiracy theories when there are fascists in power really conspiring to destroy these people and our Democracy?
Not only was the initial lethal anthrax mailing directed at liberals, but I’d guess that over 99 percent of the copycat terrorist mailings that have followed were also directed at liberals.
In December 2001, CNN ran a bottom-screen news scroll stating that the FBI was conducting 15,000+ investigations into these mailings. This info ran for only 15 minutes, then disappeared. Who ordered CNN execs to pull this?
Several years ago, I read an article on-line (local news coverage) about Al Gore’s Nashville TN office receiving an envelope with non-lethal powder in it. A first responder said that this terrorist mailing incident was just one of 400 he’d responded to in that area alone.
So, this cover-up by the corrupt Bush adminstration (and MSM) of right-wingers sending terrorist letters to liberal individuals and organzations is definitely tied into all the other right-wing attempts to use fear as a tool in their “permanent Republican majority” toolbag.
And I figure that the criminals in the Bush administration ordered the CNN report pulled in December 2001 because they didn’t want anyone to realize that domestic right-wing terrorists were behind the intitial anthrax and subsequent copycat terrorist mailings…because it would undermine their lying attempt to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks, both 9/11 and the terrorist mailings.
Now, the Bush administration, Justice Department, FBI and most MSM outlets have made it a policy to downplay the right-wing connection to all these terrorist attacks inside the United States since 9/11, because if this ever came out, most patriotic U.S. citizens might actually decide to vote for, gasp, a Democrat, and not for one of the “Good Americans,” like those that Republicans were trying to pack our federal government with, top to bottom, breaking one law after another to do.
Note: It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this Knoxville killer, a right-winger with intense hatred of liberals, had mailed off a few of these right-wing terrorist letters himself.
Johnathon Loyd #23
When Wellstone’s plane went down after Carnahan’s I thought to myself, “These pricks aren’t even trying to hide it, not even trying to be creative.” I had an opportunity to talk to Al Franken a little less than a year after Wellstone’s death, face to face, in front of an audience of 8000+ at the Seattle Center Arena when he was promoting “Lies” along with Molly Ivins. I asked him point blank if he thought that these neocons were capable of murder to protect themselves – I mean, their policies result in death, destruction, and mayhem for their own profit and power, so why not take the more direct route (murder) when it suits their purpose. I referenced Carnahan and Wellstone, but didn’t ask if he thought they were murdered, just if Cheney (specifically) was capable of it. So here’s the rub, and I think exactly what the problem is with talking heads and Democratic politicians – he completely avoided it “No, no, that was pilot error. That’s a bad question.” He was pissed at me for even bringing it up, but I’ll bet the bank that a good half of that audience thought it was a great question, in fact, at least ten people stopped me when it was done and thanked me for bringing it up.
When is a theory a conspiracy? When people who are supposedly on YOUR side (and I say this because I agree with 99% of what Al says, and I love his books) dismiss the supposition, avoid the topic, because of their own ego. My respect for Franken plummeted that day.
So what does that mean for us? It means that stating the bleedin’ obvious turns US into kooks and tinfoil hat wearers. But it also exposes the lack of courage of our leaders (in government and in the media). It’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck with Brad for four years now. There are about 3 places that I think I can turn to for real news these days, Brad, Randi Rhodes, and Mike Malloy (although Mike is sometimes more vitriol that information, but I believe there’s definitely a place for it.) As Randi likes to say : The news has been cancelled.
Too true mate, too bloody true.
Since it wasn’t a story but a fabrication, ABC could be hauled into court as accessories to murder. Grand jury stuff. Name the sources or face hard time.
Don’t get me wrong I think Bush and thugs are perfectly capable from a moral deprivation point of view. I just think the stupidity factor would have led to their exposure sooner than this, after all they could not cover up the lack of WMDs. I do think more rot will come out as we get further away from the Bush administration. The fear tactics of Bush and RNC crones has become a head f*** that has gone on way too long. The politics of fear apparently appeals to enough to keep those pricks in office but I am hoping their constant appeals to the wolf will wear out their welcome. McCain seems all too willing to keep the legacy going. He is trying to get people to distrust Obama as a” star” and not a leader. Why doesn’t Obama blast back that a leader that makes wrong decisions, like defending and voting for wars that were started by mistake is not any leadership credentials to brag about?
Today’s report in the 8/3/08 LA Times (pg. A17, col 1) about the “therapist” social worker, Jean Duley, who sought a restraining order against Ivins in court on July 24, 2008 because she was “scared to death” of him, seems odd in that:
1) It comes rather late in time before he was about to be arrested and conveniently serves to help paint Ivins as “a sociopathic, homicidal killer…” and someone who had plotted “revenge killings,” even though other press interviews with co-workers and neighbors have all seemed to uniformly show they are surprised Ivins could be capable of committing such crimes.
2) The alleged need for Duley to expend her time and money in going to court to obtain a protective restraining order against Ivins seems somewhat redundant and unnecessary given the reports about the ongoing investigations of Ivins by the FBI who, by that point in time, were said to be following him 24 hours a day.
3) Most State jurisdictions provide for allowing therapists to breach patient/therapist confidentiality when a patient presents a clear threat of great bodily harm or death to another or him/herself, and yet it is not clear from the articles I have seen whether that was a factor in Ivin’s case, or even in what capacity or extent “social worker” Duley worked with Ivins as a therapist (e.g., was she a licensed social worker? What kind of therapy had she provided? Had Ivins admitted killing anyone to her?).
Not enough facts about the specific evidence against Ivins has been made available to the public to yet form any clear opinions, but the very paucity of the information provided, as well as the many other suspicious circumstances of the anthrax attack investigations, and the timing of naming Ivins as a suspect, so far certainly don’t pass the stink test.
As a separate matter related to the possible “anti-liberal” motives of the perpetrator(s) for targeting specifically named victims on envelopes addressed in the anthrax attacks, it may be worth checking the circumstance that shortly before the anthrax attacks occurred, many tabloid newspapers had published several unflattering articles and photos about the drinking and partying behaviors of President Bush’s then underaged daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, whose youthful antics had recently attracted the attention of the press. I have long wondered whether any of the named individuals who were addressed in the anthrax attacks had also been involved in any way with publishing those particular articles or photos.
Terrific piece, Brad.
Would love to see someone do a video spoof on the hunt for the mythical liberal media, along the lines of the Presiden’t’s disgusting little “jus’ jokin’ around y’all” skit about the hunt for the mythical WMDs in Iraq.
The “Ivins” suicide is along in a long list of nutty, antisocial killers beginning with Oswald so successful for power-made men/women trying to run this country and provide themselves with mega-comfort level lifestyles. The favored methods of disposing of people with conscience are either plane crashes or lone killers with bad psychological problems. Our fellow country men and women just look scared and keep silent. They can just excuse their comfort level with crazy conspiracy nut theory and return to keeping themselves entertained. Who can blame them? What option do they have? To keep from looking at reality, all they have to do is listen to the mainstream news media and be reassured there is a dead heat between the liberals and conservatives and facile discussions means all is well. They can pretend we are not headed to bankruptcy and “civilization” collapse because of the total ignorance of peak population and diminishing resources. Can one even comprehend a world where someone like Rush Limbaugh gets paid the unbelievable amount he is paid? If it were written in fiction no one would believe it could actually happen!
Brad,
Your list of liberals is not complete without the names of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. (Some think they don’t belong because attempts were made on Ford and Reagan, too; however, the attempts failed afterall. A discussion of these Bush I failures is for another time.)
There is a strange dissonance in our culture where corporations decide on what we see on TV and in Movies via their investments in only certain ‘properties’; thus our airwaves and moviehouses are filled with all manner of mayhem, murder, torture and assassination as receive corporate approval. And yet, at the same time, a clear examination of reality is disallowed on major corporate media, and the only explanations I’ve ever picked up around the fringes of discussion are: 1/ It’s not good for the children (!) and 2/ It would induce “copycat” crimes.
Regarding the non-mention of the intended victims of the anthrax letters– You are so right. The AP article in my a local paper here relegated Daschle’s call for “a complete accounting of their investigation” to the last two paragraphs of the story. And — as if to indicate a total randomness to the poisoning attempts — there was a description with photos of the anthrax death of an elderly lady (Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Connecticut).
What is that smell? I think I smell a rat. Wait. No, no, make that RATS. The anthrax poisonings/scare were too much for one LONE RAT (The Lone Gunman Explanation) to have accomplished. We MUST start allowing a non-derided public discussion of the Crimes of Conspiracy. Because they are so much more efficient, and we have had just too, too many efficient crimes against Progressives for too, too long. (Let’s start our list early and include the Pinkertons shooting down unarmed strikers!)
I’d very much like to see the FBIs evidence that Ivins was ever in Franklin Park, NJ also. Kinda hard to pin the attacks on him without that you’d think. Maybe Dick Cheneys staff can forge some documents and filter them through the Italians to show that he was there?
Great post.
But I think we need to stop blaming the big, bad MSM. At the time of the attacks, it was obvious that only opponents of the Bush WH and its agendas were targeted. We really shouldn’t need the media to spoon-feed every connection to us. The names and titles of each target were reported in October 2001.
It was clear that leading outlets of the media as well as democratic leaders in the Senate were the targets. It was labelled a terrorist attack, yet not WH or administration officials or military sites were targeted.
As far as why the NY Post was targeted? It was coincidental that it and the SUN were the last media outlets to carry stories of the Bush daughters’ activities, including pictures. Since then, you haven’t heard a peep about them.
The purpose of the attack was a public shot across the bow for any opponents of this admin. And the media and Democratic leaders in Congress heard the message.