These are not musings from "popular media"....
Ping. A MUST read for the FR Anthrax-Busters.
Ping.
Good article, confirming what we have read elsewhere.
are there any previous links between Hatfill and the apparent targets? ... I haven't followed it that close so I don't know ...
I think you'll find the contents of this article are what the FBI didn't want us to know - presumably because they feared some bushy-chinned terrorist could whip up a batch in the boondocks.
Why didn't Patrick and Alibek recognize what they saw ?
Possibly it was light years beyond what they had worked on !
Yesterday's research has a way of becoming "old hat" fast.
Just for the hell of it, let's rule out Russia,Iraq,Algeria,Syria,and Iran.
(Again, this is just for argument's sake !)
That would leave us: Pakistan,India,China, and N. Korea.
Let me do a bit of research and get back to this...
Very important stuff, should clear up any misconceptions or lies one final time. As someone mentioned in another thread, the tide is turning.
My name is Gary Matsumoto. I am the author of the Science magazine article published this week under the title: Anthrax Powder: State of the Art?
Over the past few days I have been alternately entertained and appalled by the emails of Mr. Ed Lake which have grown progressively more shrill with each passing day. Mr. Lake has been boorish and he is entitled to be a boor, but he has also been grotesquely inaccurate, and to the extent that he is trying to tell other people what to think on a matter of national security, he is obligated to make a minimal effort get his facts straight. As he seems to take that obligation lightly, I feel it is necessary to offer the following response.
The scientists who performed the electronmicroscopy and elemental analyses on the Senate anthrax powder have stated, on-the-record, that there was silica present;
Two of those scientists, Tom Geisbert and Peter Jahrling of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), saw silica nanoparticles on the Daschle anthrax spores that looked, as author Richard Preston described it in his book, The Demon in the Freezer, "like fried-egg gunk, dripping off the spores";
There are several detailed descriptions of these silica nanoparticles in Preston's book. Although Geisbert and Jahrling have not been allowed to communicate with anyone other than Preston, Fort Detrick spokesperson, Caree Vanderlinden, told me that USAMRIID does not dispute the facts in Preston's book;
The 2001 Canadian military study, which assessed the risk posed by anthrax spores delivered by mail, used the U.S. Army's anthrax simulant that I described in my article. The Bacillus globigii spores were coated in silica nanoparticles; they also appeared to be energetic (without passing through a sorting machine, which has been cited as a potential source of static electricity), swiftly disseminating through a simulated office space in less than two minutes. The BG spore's energetic behavior was prima facie evidence of an electrostatic charge. The spore concentration reported by the Canadians (1x10^11/gram or 100+ billion spores/gram) tells you that they received the Army's newest batch of simulant made by Chris Hansen. According to military sources, the Army's older batch of simulant contained a much lower spore concentration (1-5x10^9/gram or 1 to 5 billion spores/gram); the older simulant stock also contained silica;
Mr. Lake is correct in saying that the simulant used in the Canadian study, donated by Dugway Proving Ground and treated with silica , behaved like the Daschle anthrax powder;
Dr. Matthew Meselson of Harvard has previously stated that he did not see silica nanoparticles on the Daschle spores as I described them in an October 2002 Washington Post article co-wrotten with Guy Gugliotta. This hairsplitting distinction may offer one possible explanation for the discrepancy between the Geisbert/Jahrling accounts, and those of Meselson/Alibek. In the Post article, Guy and I described an individual particle of CAB-O-SIL (a fumed silica) at a magnification of 350,000x, which is several hundred thousand times greater than the magnification employed to view, and photograph, a cluster of spores. As it is the molecular structure of a silica nanoparticle that make it an ideal dispersing agent, Guy and I deemed it necessary to provide, in words, a close-up view. At 350,000x, one can discern the ultrastructure of a single silica nanoparticle, but the surface of a spore would be completely obscured--the scanning distance would be too close. So, unless Meselson/Alibek were viewing electronmicrographs at this extreme magnification, they would not see what I described;
Individual silica nanoparticles can look different from CAB-O-SIL; it depends on how they were processed. Individual silica nanoparticles can be as small as 5 nanometers in diameter (smaller than a polio virus); agglomerates can appear as Preston describes them, like the "splatty goop or gunk" of a fried egg white;
The presence of silica is not determined by the visual examination of electronmicrographs. It is a determination made with laboratory instruments such as the Thermo-Noran Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer used by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology to analyze the Daschle spores. This instrument is precise and generates unambiguous data; Other instruments, equally precise, would be used to determine the presence of a silane coupling agent;
As I reported in my article, various news organizations reported the presence of an unidentified substance in the Senate powder, in addition to silica. In her book, The Killer Strain, Washington Post correspondent Marilyn Thompson said "the silica also appeared to contain a chemical additive to aid in bonding." My reportage is consistent with these accounts, and advances this particular part of the story;
The possible presence of silicon atoms embedded in the internal structures of Bacillus spores is irrelevant when it comes to making an aerosol. To make a refined aerosol, an additive needs to be on the surface of a spore's outer envelope (the exosporium) to block adhesiveness due to van der Waals forces and the Coulombic fields surrounding various point charges on a particle. The spore's internal structures could be drenched in naturally-occurring silicon atoms (assuming that such atoms do occur naturally), and those atoms would not prevent clumping, or make a spore more"aerogenic." Untreated spores do not behave like the Senate material or the U.S. Army anthrax simulant. They behave like the coarse, non-energetic powder produced by Dugway Proving Ground's reverse engineering attempts earlier this year, which was made, allegedly at the FBI's specific request, without an additive.;
There is another critical difference between the X-Ray microanalysis data in the 1980 J. of Bact. paper that reported silicon in the cortex and spore coats of B. cereus spores and the energy dispersive X-Ray fluorescence spectroscopy that detected silica on the surface of B. anthracis spores. The B. cereus spores were cryosectioned in order to detect elements inside of the bacilli. The J. of Bact. paper's "silicon map" shows the alleged location of the silicon atoms--"the cortex/coat." I have been told that the AFIP spectroscopy examined the surfaces of whole B. anthracis spores mailed to Senator Daschle.
In a separate email, Mr. Milton Leitenberg, argues that through syntactical contrivance I misled him, and others, into thinking that chemist, Dr. Stuart Jacobsen, was part of "the FBI reference group dealing with Amerithrax events." I respectfully disagree. I made no references whatsoever to this group in my article. Dr. Jacobsen was not a source for any information concerning the engineering specifications of the Senate powder, the U.S. Army simulant powder, or the dried anthrax made by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick prior to the cancellation of the U.S. biological warfare program. Dr. Jacobsen provided expert comment on the coating of small particles with silica nanoparticles and a coupling agent, which he was eminently qualified to do as he engineered coated particles during a project for the U.S. Defense Department.
As Leitenberg correctly states, I told him some time ago that I would not disclose information that reveals how to engineer an anthrax powder. I understand his concern, and I take this specific criticism of my article quite seriously. I do not believe, however, that I published anything resembling a blueprint for a BW aerosol. No one could go out and make a refined anthrax powder based on my Science article.
Finally, Mr. Leitenberg suggests that "the parameters listed by the JAMA authors were a generic description of "weapons grade," material and not a description of the Amerithrax samples." Again, I disagree. The authors of the JAMA paper clearly state that the "parameters" in question (i.e.., "high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping.") referred to material "such as that used in the 2001 attacks." In other words, those parameters did, in fact, describe the Senate powder. This interpretation is buttressed by the fact that at the time JAMA published this paper, May 2002, various government officials had already ascribed the above characteristics to the Senate powder in press conferences and other on-the-record briefings.
There is, in fact, no such thing as a "generic description" of weapons grade material, because no such material exists. The various anthrax weapons known to U.S. intelligence are heterogenous in composition and their characteristics. The specifications of the Senate powder, as I pointed out in my article, did not resemble the former U.S. weapon, which had a much lower spore concentration ... was lyophilized, milled and contained no additive. There are no known parameters for an Iraqi anthrax powder as no such powder has been discovered. Weapons inspectors have never recovered an Iraqi anthrax weapon, wet or dry. According to Dr. Richard Spertzel, UNSCOM inspectors have only found DNA from the Vollum 1B strain, but no samples from an actual weapon. In previous interviews that I have conducted with Dr. Ken Alibek, he said the anthrax powder produced by the former Soviet Union contained no electrostatic charge.
The Science article is the culmination of a year-long investigation. Several staff editors and correspondents reviewed it. The magazine also took the unusual step of having scientists critique the article, which is standard practice for peer-reviewed scientific papers, but not news articles. Five Ph.D. scientists who specialize in B. anthracis , biotechnology and molecular chemistry reviewed the article for publication. All endorsed the scientific content.
In general, I think it is a dubious practice to extrapolate occult meanings from an author's syntax, or to impute ulterior motives merely because an author reports facts that inconveniently skewer a pet theory. When in doubt, ask. The Science article is not a Dead Sea scroll. The authors, and his editors, are alive and willing to answer questions.
-Gary Matsumoto-
