Thread by @gumby4christ

ANTHRAX ELVIS --- Giuliani, Amerithrax, the National Enquirer, and the King of Rock and Roll. A thread.

In 1977, the National Enquirer paid Elvis's cousin $18,000 to snap a photo of the King in his coffin. The photo graced the cover of the tabloid in an issue that would go on to sell an astonishing 6.5 million copies.

This photo would also become fodder for innumerable "Elvis is Alive" theories, based on the supposedly impossible placement of his head, his unusually pudgy nose, etc.

The original photo was kept at the Boca Raton HQ of American Media, Inc. (AMI), the company that owned the Enquirer. It was valued at $1 million. In Oct. 2001, the HQ was the target of the first of a series of anthrax attacks, which would kill AMI photo editor Robert Stevens.

Media reports initially traced the anthrax to a strange love letter addressed to Jennifer Lopez, which contained a "soapy, powdery substance" and a cheap Star of David charm. However, the actual source of the anthrax remains undetermined. nbcnews.com/id/wbna3067576

At any rate, the anthrax caused the entire building to be shut down for years. Though valued at $10 million, it was sold to a real estate investor named David Rustine for a mere $40,000 in a deal that also stated he should destroy all personal property inside.

That property included AMI's massive archive, which, in addition to the famous Elvis Photo, contained some 5 million pictures. This would become the subject of contract disputes and a heated lawsuit. nypost.com/2005/08/17/rud…

Rustine contracted clean-up duties to a newly created company called BioONE, a joint venture between Sabre Technical Services (which had decontaminated anthrax-infected buildings in DC) and...Rudy Giuliani's company, Giuliani Partners. heraldtribune.com/article/LK/200…

But BioONE wasn't just cleaning the building, Rustine also agreed to lease it to BioONE for use as its new headquarters. As Boca Raton mayor Steve Abrams put it, "It used to be home of the National Enquirer and now it's the home of a national hero." nysun.com/new-york/giuli…

BioONE plan to fumigate the building with chlorine dioxide, a process that only took about 24 hours. But BioONE never took over the building and never got paid for its services. BioONE refused to release cleanup data. ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/for…

The source of the dispute was the photo archive. The photographers who took the pictures demanded to be given back their work. Lawsuits ensued. According to one suit, John Mason of Sabre/BioONE found the Elvis Photo and threatened to "lose" it unless his contract was extended.

Mason countersued, claiming he never made such a threat and that the Elvis Photo, along with the rest of the photo archive, was destroyed in accordance with Sabre's contract and *with the express assent of AMI*.

In fact, Mason's Answer/Counterclaim even attached a photo showing AMI's attorney, Daniel Rotstein, holding the Elvis Photo just before it was to be shredded.

Now, it's totally possible the photo wasn't actually shredded, and maybe what Rotstein is holding in that picture isn't even the original. What's important here is that AMI specifically authorized the total destruction of millions of photographs.

This is significant because AMI is widely known to be both a high-level extortion scheme and a "catch and kill" operation. David Pecker, who ran AMI from 1999-2020, has admitted a much.

e.g., during the 2016 election, Pecker—a close friend of Donald Trump—coordinated with Trump to buy up and suppress Playboy model Karen Macdougal's story of a sexual affair. theguardian.com/us-news/2018/d…

Pecker has admitted to keeping a safe full of dirt and hush money payments on Trump as well as damaging info on other celebs obtained by AMI with the intention of burying it. Employees of AMI said that this safe was "a great source of power for Pecker." courthousenews.com/national-enqui…

Knowing Pecker kept such tight control over his own safe of celebrity dirt, why did he so easily allow AMI's photo archive to be destroyed? Is it possible this was the entire reason AMI (acquired by Pecker just 2 years prior) was targeted in the first place?

In other words, did someone use anthrax to provide plausible cover for the destruction of decades' worth of dirt on all sorts of famous and powerful personages?