Immediately after the anthrax attacks , White House officials repeatedly pressured FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove that they were a second-wave assault by al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks . During the president 's morning intelligence briefings , Mueller was " beaten up " for not producing proof that the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden , according to a former aide . " They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East , " the retired senior FBI official stated . The FBI knew early on that the anthrax used was of a consistency requiring sophisticated equipment and was unlikely to have been produced in some " cave " . At the same time , both President Bush and Vice President Cheney in public statements speculated about the possibility of a link between the anthrax attacks and Al Qaeda . The Guardian reported in early October that American scientists had implicated Iraq as the source of the anthrax , and the next day the Wall St. Journal editorialized that Al Qaeda perpetrated the mailings , with Iraq the source of the anthrax . A few days later , John McCain suggested on the Late Show with David Letterman that the anthrax may have come from Iraq , and the next week ABC News did a series of reports stating that three or four ( depending on the report ) sources had identified bentonite as an ingredient in the anthrax preparations , implicating Iraq
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
2001 anthrax attacks