Posted on 07/04/2004 6:08:42 AM PDT by TrebleRebel
Distinct signature found in ’01 anthrax Discovery raises hope that source can be traced By Scott Shane Sun National Staff Originally published July 4, 2004 In a possible break for the FBI's investigation of the anthrax letters of 2001, scientists have discovered that the mailed anthrax was a mix of two slightly different samples, giving the bacteria a distinct signature that might make it easier to match with a source, according to two non-government experts who have been told of the finding. The discovery that bacteria taken from the letters all grew in the double pattern was made at least a year ago, and it is not known whether the FBI's hunt for a matching sample has succeeded.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
That was its purpose. He responded as surely as one of Pavlov's dogs. Others like him have taken the lesson and have learnt to avoid the issue. No one will touch it now. No one on the left, and no one on the right.
They flew into the flame just like moths. Once burnt, they won't be returning.
My apologies for the many copies. I swear I only clicked Post one time.
Looks like somebody took a knife to a gunfight. Notice the spent brass on the ground.
Will the judge ask?
Good question. Here's his info:
Judge Reggie B. Walton assumed his position as a United States District Judge for the District of Columbia on October 29, 2001, after being nominated to the position by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate. Judge Walton previously served as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and 1991 to 2001, having been appointed to that position by Presidents Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George H. W. Bush in 1991. While serving on the Superior Court, Judge Walton was the court's Presiding Judge of the Family Division, Presiding Judge of the Domestic Violence Unit and Deputy Presiding Judge of the Criminal Division. Between 1989 and 1991, Judge Walton served as President George H. W. Bush's Associate Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President and as President Bush's Senior White House Advisor for Crime.
Ever the cynical optimist, I wonder if this could in any way be a good thing--that they really are in a critical stage of an investigation. Southack pretty much summed up the possibilty of foreign perps, and I guess it's pretty reasonable that we'd want to wait till we're ready to go before we i.d. them.
OTOH what if they're actually investigating domestic perps or highly placed domestic perps in collusion with foreign ones?
Yeah I know. Not likely any such would go anywhere even if true, but look back at the thread backhoe was kind enough to link in #32--look at rubbertramp's #59 post: I think his most dangerous association was his cover up of Hillary's Iraqgate connections to that Kennemetal firm...remember, all that commerce with people we were at war with, facilitating bioterrorism.
I haven't thought about Kennemetal or Iraqgate (GWI) in years! However, I have thought often about anthrax and who might have used it long before 9/11. (Vics being Russell Welsh and Ron Miller.)
The cynic can't believe anybody in this administration would ever prosecute certain perps, but I keep remembering the satisfaction, if not enjoyment, I thought I heard in Ashcroft's voice when he busted Gorelick publically for her "wall" which facilitated 9/11, whatever her intent may have been.
I'm just thinking of a few very quiet investigations/prosecutions that have been going on below the radar of national media: Philadelphia, Enron (very little reported, but it's going on) plus the Ron Brown's Body has a bullet in the head stuff that's coming back into focus again. What if this is a real investigation that encompasses the 1997 possible anthrax poisoning of Ron Miller and the late '80s anthrax poisoningdiagnosis for Russell Welsh.
Going with Occam's Razor, the simplist answer is that we aren't ready to make public the entity behind the anthrax attacks. Yet.
Based upon that, we can rule out Iraq and Afghanistan (no longer any reason to hide their involvement if they were the culprits).
Well, what does *that* tell us??
It says that sophisticated anthrax attacks were *coordinated* with the 9/11 hijackers (and in fact, the 9/11 terror cells involved probably were the agents behind the anthrax attacks themselves, too) outside of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, who else is *known* to have weaponized anthrax? North Korea. Syria. Iran.
Hmmm... that's the remaining Axis of Evil plus one.
Now think back to 2001 when President Bush was outlining to Congress on national TV our resolve against Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan (leading up to our invasion thereof). In that speech, the President named the Axis of Evil as being three nations *other* than Afghanistan even though he was making it perfectly clear that we were about to invade there.
Why would he mention Iraq, Iran, and North Korea back when we were about to invade Afghanistan?
Well, the reason for mentioning Iraq has been made clear, of course, as we've already cleaned that nation up after we finished throttling the Taliban in Afghanstan.
That leaves us with two other nations on Bush's original 2001 list, plus Syria, as being able of being behind the anthrax attacks.
Frankly, the pucker factor ought to be going through the roof about right now in those three countries wondering which of them we'll obliterate next.
Especially in whichever nation that knows that it was behind those attacks.
War is coming.
...And man, they aren't going to like what we do to them, either. Our war machine simply can't be stopped by opposing militaries.
The question, of course, is now "Which nation will be next o fall to us?"
They are. You can take it to the bank.
The 2002 Science article demonstrated that the anthrax that killed Bob Stevens was very closely related to a known sample from USAMRIID, Ft Detrick.
Rumours floating around are that the anthrax utilised in 2001 was not directly from Ft Detrick. The line had passed through Battelle after twas at USAMRIID.
Bump
I can't believe I hadn't heard this. That has to make a Baathist agent murder suspect #1, with suspect #2 being someone trying to make it look like a Baathist agent killed him. July 17, and days thereabout, is when the Iraqi Baath Party does stuff! They call the very revolution in which they seized power "the July 17 Revolution". Iraq overthrew the monarchy and became a republic on July 14, 1958 (that wasn't their work, but evidently they had it in mind when they came to power ten years later); July 17, 1968 is when the Baath actually assumed power in Iraq; July 16, 1979 is when Saddam became president; mid-July 1988 is when Iran finally agreed to a ceasefire; July 15-17, 1990 is when Saddam started threatening Kuwait; July 17, 1996 is when TWA Flight 800 blew up (and during the Bojinka plane-bombing trial of Ramzi Yousef); and to this we can now add the death of David Kelly. I wonder what they have in store for us this year.
bump
The axis of evil was introduced to the world in the 2002 State of the Union address, after the overthrow of the Taliban. Bob Woodward, in Plan of Attack, says it was a way to hide the fact that preparations for war specifically against Iraq were in progress. I think that's half-true - it also served to deter Iran and North Korea from getting involved. The post-9/11 battle with them has been a 'cold war', in which they have been given a chance to reform themselves. But Iraq was always in line for regime change, by force if necessary, because it had participated in 9/11, and then threatened the use of WMDs (the anthrax letters).
So my Occam's Razor tells me something different - Iraq was behind 9/11 and the anthrax letters (and a whole lot more), but there is no plan to ever come clean on this. The FBI and the CIA have full leeway from the White House to go on covering up their previous cover-ups, because the administration has more important things to do than to drag those institutions through the mud.
Invert emulsions? IIRC that was around in 1985.
Note how difficult it was for them to coat lactose particles with silica and not simply end of with a messy mixture of lactose and silica.
It's not bucket chemistry, but it didn't look that bad to me. In fact, it was a fairly straightforward process requiring relatively simple equipment compared to, for example, a silicon wafer fab or nuclear weapons development.
Iraq has a number of very well educated technologists. Saddam would give them all the money they needed. Equipment isn't that hard to get and it doesn't cost that much. You can buy a $36k Leica SEM on eBay. Chump change for Osama bin Laden. Need a cryogenic grinder? Desktop models are available. It's America. The base information is in scientific journals all over the world. I don't see what you described as anything more than a barrier requiring time and money. Given that Saddam was on his way to nuclear weapons, a process that requires VASTLY more expensive and bulkier equipment, why should coating particles be so far beyond a determined effort?
For anyone who would like background on the "double pattern" below are a couple
of fairly good links along with some relevant exerpts:
http://jb.asm.org/cgi/content/full/182/4/1089
Colony morphology has been used as an important identification and
characterization criterion in bacteriology for many decades. However, the
molecular mechanisms underlying the appearance of different colony types have
been given little attention.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2180/2/33
Colony shape as a genetic trait in the pattern-forming Bacillus mycoides
From what I can gather, at least in the case of E Coli, even pure strains can
spontaneously give rise to different colony growth by subtle mutations.
Restreaking the "new colonies" also has an effect on how these new colonies
grow.
Before the days of sophisticated DNA analysis it seems colony morphology was
used to help determine what strain was present in a sample.
Which leads to the question - are there 2 strains in the senate anthrax? Or is
it just one strain with different preparation history. If so, the restreaking
would surely help determine this.
For one, they're being sued for millions of dollars, so naturally they're trying to put the best show on they can, as would anyone.
It's the same article, same author.
I think he was given a leak, and he reports it. I don't think it's disinformation in that it's false, so I see no problem with the author. In fact, since he's a smart one, I bet 50-50 when given the info he asked how old the test was - being a year old, something the leaker probably wouldn't have offered up first.
They didn't say it was a year old, they said it was "at least a year ago" (my emphasis). Weasel words. The discovery could have been made in November, 2001, for all we know.
In fact, I'd bet that the discovery was made closer to two years ago. If not, why would they have used weasel wording?
Perhaps the reason for this is that they don't want to go before the judge and say that they've known this since the very beginning but they want to use it an excue for a delay now.
I agree with you on Shane, BTW.
I don't know. They're obviously saying as little as they can about this.
I can remember getting a bad grade in class if you even mentioned colony morphology.
Why?
Thanks for posting #51. That's an interesting perspective on the "Axis of Evil" (which we haven't heard much about lately, by the way).
"at least a year ago"
Right on. Weasel words.
And, what are the chances that the dating of the experiment will be in the report. Ie, it could read something like this:
"Progress report: we discoverd that two samples...[etc. etc. plus lots of scientific lingo]" But omitted is any dating of the experiment.
So Mr. Shane, who I really like from his insightful articles, may have done a great service in eliciting this information.
Put it another way, do you think the report would calrify to the judge "According to tests done over a year ago..." ? I bet not.
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