Posted on 09/01/2008 10:28:31 AM PDT by Prunetacos
Investigators were at an impasse when a lucky discovery narrowed the hunt for the culprit who mailed the deadly spores.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2058154/posts
See posts from Battle Axe # 268, 270, 271 in reply to cynwoody.
Where did the grandmother spores come from?
BA
Red flags should have been thrown in the air when atypical colonies start showing up on plates.
First thing you have to look at is genetic drift, natural selection, host specificity. Then I would infect some hosts...I’d have to stay with animal models and see how the different colonies expressed in the host.
One would assume if there was this mixture in Bob Stevens, and there was, that there is no natural selection, no genetic drift, no host specificity. So that leaves expression.
How do the two types differ in appearance when causing an infection?
How does a mixture of the two express itself?
BA
Pinging
“Within two months of the 2001 anthrax attacks, researchers helping the FBI were able to exclude Iraq and Russia as likely suspects.”
What about Britain, Canada, Saudi, Pakistan, etc?
The the early project to preclude Russia and Iraq in the first weeks of the investigation eerily parallel Meselson & wife’s (and Ritter) early public pronouncements working to proactively preclude Iraq and Russia.
Where did the grandmother spores come from?
“And there is also the fact that Assaad used to work at the U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), in Fort Detrick, Md., a biowarfare lab many critics believe might have been the source of the stolen anthrax. According to internal Army documents in Assaad’s own possession (and first reported about in the Hartford Courant), 27 specimens, including anthrax, Ebola and the hantavirus were lost in the early 1990s from the lab. The documents paint a chaotic picture of a poorly managed lab.”
Ping
Might be some new stuff in this article.
Yes, this was the sound of their case against Ivins being flushed down the toilet from the mouth of their star witness.
“Did Ivins alter the official sample he submitted? Keim said the test was sensitive enough that it should have picked up the signature of the mutant spores had Ivins followed the FBI’s directions for making the samples.
‘”Ivins may simply have failed to collect a representative sample,” he said, adding that “the FBI is implying he did it on purpose.’ “
Mon, Sep. 1, 2008
Cracking the anthrax case
Investigators were at an impasse when a lucky discovery narrowed the hunt for the culprit who mailed the deadly spores.
I would further note that while I’ve never thought that Iraq or Russia were in any way involved, it is a silly fallacy to think that because it was the Ames strain, those could be excluded. Instead the inquiry was whether they had obtained it. For example, Dr. Alibek explained that Russia routinely obtained all of Detrick’s pathogens within 6 months by reason of a spy. Others who worked in the Soviet program have confirmed that. You just filled out an order form requesting the pathogen you wanted.
Ping
>>>Yes, this was the sound of their case against Ivins being flushed down the toilet from the mouth of their star witness.
If that is true, I hope the FBI is in someway investigated and held liable for Ivin’s death.
A stressed, paranoid person can easily and accidently overdose on tylenol It doesn’t that many doses at all.
The other point which seems to have politicized the investigation has merit, IMHO, if I recall correctly that any lab could request samples of the strain simply by asking for them. Misdirection would have pointed away from Iraq easily.
Thanks Shermy...
If he was truly guilty, that will make the issue moot. But his passing of the polygraphs makes me wonder.
More people will fall by the way side for this bastard vaccine. The people who lied about its testing.
The people who falsified documents for it.
The people who were ordered to lie about its success and more.
How about Louis Caldera, giving the company manufacturing it a Letter of Indemnification?
How about Clinton's friend, Admiral Crowe (only admitted controlling interest partner in the company) who helped Clinton when he was running for president by openly supporting him so as to get passed the Draft Dodging issue?
How about the fact that three times the line was shut down for problems with the vaccine?
How about the DOD and the FDA admitting that the vaccine was 175 times more reactagenic then previously admitted to?
How about the FACT that the man they now accuse of mailing out the spores is dead and HIS research was the research used for the vaccines justification for forced inoculation of our troops?
No....can't be ANY of that...it has to be some fantastic Taliban Muslim connection that does not exist, or something like that.
Face it folks...it was done to protect a vaccine program, connections and MONEY!
The FBI wants to blame one of our scientists and USAMRIID.
How about all the “scientists” that our colleges and universities train every year. These students...mostly from the Middle East or Indonesia, are excellent students. They could trounce the heck out of me.
I had one Chinese girl so mad at me for not getting a better result on an experiment she was stomping her feet. We were lab partners.....me Waspy White head strong female, this Chinese girl whose name I could never pronounce and a 25 year old Palestinian who had been deported a couple of times....his mother was born in Bethlehem and his father was born in Jerusalem. The guy was pretty laid back.
So.... yes it came from within the shores of America, but I do not think at American hands.
Good call Calper....Ivins was tortured.
BA
After what went on with Hatfill, and Ivens telling no tales...I think this is a setup...and someday we'll find out it leads back to ATTA...and Iraq....if everyone hasn't been knocked off yet.
He could not be linked to the Quantico letter that fingered Dr. Assaad.
Conclusive evidence of means, motive and opportunity are missing
Case Analysis in a Nutshell
1. Ivins cannot be placed at the Princeton mailbox at either of the two times he would have to have been there.
2. There are additional hoax letters that have not been discussed by FBI in the information released Wednesday; may we assume Ivins could not be placed at those mailbox locations during the requisite windows of opportunity?
3. No official evidence has come forward indicating the nature of the Daschle/Leahy spore preparation, nor whether Ivins possessed the knowledge regarding its production, or access to the necessary equipment.
4. No convincing motive has been presented, although a variety of implausible motives have been suggested.
5. Although many other people with a strong motive can be identified, there is no evidence they were investigated by FBI and exculpated
6. "The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks." However, details about the microbial forensic analysis have not been released, and may not be available for months or years pending publication. Scientists doubt that any forensic analysis can do more than identify the precise strain of anthrax.
7. The pre-franked envelopes could not be identified as coming from Ivins' post office, as initially claimed, but were instead sold in multiple post offices, none of which was definitely in Frederick.
8. Ivins was not the "sole custodian" of the RMR-1029 strain; over 100 people had access to it and they may have shared it with others. How was Ivins selected as a suspect and the others exonerated?
9. Handwriting analysis has not linked him to the crime.
10. He could not be linked to the Quantico letter that fingered Dr. Assaad. He could not be linked to any efforts to finger Dr. Hatfill.
11. No physical evidence links him to the crime: this includes the tape on the letters, fibers, human DNA, spores in his car, home or personal effects, evidence of any kind he travelled to the areas where the letters were mailed, including purchasing enough gasoline for a 7 hour trip to Princeton, twice.
12. He passed two polygraph examinations at Fort Detrick. 13. Since the FBI has been unable to build a convincing case against any one individual in the 7 years since the letters were sent, why didn't it focus on identifying a conspiracy of individuals who together may have been able to perform the complex actions required to send the anthrax letters and hoax letters?
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D.
The bigger question to me would be motive and that might lead to misdirection if nothing was or is apparent.
A few years before I joined this message forum, a large amount of freepers came up with thoughts of who was behind the mailings and why.
Ironically, before I ever saw this forum, I came up with the same name. The personal experiences and ‘interactions’ with this personal were quite unusual and scary.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3bf604733e1b.htm
Freeper Research on Anthrax Perps - Updated 9/17/01
(please ignore that September date in the title. This is not the first thread Alamo Girl posted. Apparently complaints came in about the first one and she had to repost it with a disclaimer)
Original thread that was posted without the disclaimer:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/571792/posts?page=1
Freeper Research on the Anthrax Perp
Are you supposing that the deceased is a cat’s paw? I read part of the post, but it’s dense and dated for my tired eyes.
Cat’s paw? I don’t know what that means.
A cat’s paw is a person who acts at the behest of another person without any obvious benefit to himself. IOW, if this fellow didn’t have an obvious motive, the question would be, who did who had contact with him?
All roads lead to Detrick.
Fort Detrick’s anthrax mystery
“We were not to continue any work; in fact I was aware that [Pathology division commander Lt. Col. Nancy Jaax] had secured the SIV materials and people because again it appeared from many sources that Phil Zack was asking people to work basically covertly and continue his SIV work against obvious clear mandates and directives of the division chief,” Langford told the investigator. (In an interesting side note, Jaax, whom Langford refers to, is the protagonist of the Richard Preston book “The Hot Zone,” about an Ebola outbreak in lab monkeys in Reston, Va., in 1989. The real-life events were also the basis of the movie “Outbreak,” starring Dustin Hoffman.)
It was during this period, from 1990 to early 1992, when scientists apparently pursued projects covertly at the lab, that the Army facility appears to have lost track of 27 specimens, including anthrax, Ebola and hantavirus. USAMRIID told media this week that any specimens that went missing were rendered harmless by various preservation and radiation processes — a contention Assaad says is not true. He says the specimens leave behind a residue that could be reactivated.
Assaad’s personal experience at that lab makes him particularly skeptical. He complains of behavior from colleagues that, while certainly not necessarily that of potential terrorists, does seem like symptoms of a poorly managed lab that was out of control.
In particular, Assaad, who is Egyptian-American, was the target of the group of USAMRIID scientists and lab technicians who called themselves the Camel Club. Among his antagonists were colleagues in Fort Detrick lab’s experimental pathology division, Zack and Rippy.
Using a stuffed camel as a kind of mascot, the Camel Club composed a poem, “The Rhyme of the Ancient Camellier,” with the apparent purpose of humiliating Assaad. It begins:
“Ayaad Assaad was the start,
with a reputation for not having heart
A ‘skimmer’ without equal
We hope there’s no sequel
In his honor we created this beast
It represents life lower than yeast
Whoever is voted this sucker,
you can’t duck her, You must accept blame,
And bear all the shame Unlike Assaad,
that first motherfucker”
The poem continues for five typewritten rhyming pages, ending with:
Well it’s time for the camel to pass.
So let’s all reach and raise up a glass.
Let’s give’m the credit,
the one who will get it,
the poor bastard we’re gonna harass.
Assaad theorizes that the Camel Club and the racial discrimination he experienced were at least partly an outgrowth of a dispute he had with Zack and Rippy over the authorship of a scientific paper for which he says he had done the research. Rippy and Zack, Assaad says, had done only minor work, but wanted to put their names on the research paper, and he says he felt they didn’t deserve it. Assaad says the dispute escalated, with Rippy and Zack threatening to be disruptive and humiliate him at a scientific conference where he delivered his paper’s findings. Then, he says, their harassment took an ethnic cast, because of his Arabic heritage.
In a filing unsealed this Spring, Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer explained that his client, a computational biologist who had worked in the building housing the “Center for Biodefense” funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”), was “considered an anthrax weapons suspect.”
Dr. Al-Timimi’s distinguished counsel summarizes:
“we know Dr. Al-Timimi:
* was interviewed in 1994 by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his ties to the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing;
* was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis;
* was described to his brother by the FBI within days of the 9-11 attacks as an immediate suspect in the Al Qaeda conspiracy;
* was contacted by the FBI only nine days after 9-11 and asked about the attacks and its perpetrators;
* was considered an anthrax weapons suspect;
[redacted]
* was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having “extensive ties” with the “broader al-Qaeda network”;
* was described in the indictment and superseding indictment as being associated with terrorists seeking harm to the United States;
* was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali; and
* was associated with the long investigation of the Virginia Jihad Group.
***
The conversation with Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. Al-Timimi called Dr. Hawali after the dinner with Kwon on September 16, 2001 and just two hours before he met with Kwon and Hassan for the last time on September 19, 2001.
[911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.
[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden — [redacted]”
The letter by Al-Timimi’s counsel attached as an exhibit is equally meaty. An example of an additional detail is that in March 2002, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke with Dr. Al-Hawali (Bin Laden’s sheik who was the subject of OBL’s “Declaration of War”) about assisting Moussaoui in his defense.
The filing and the letter exhibit each copy defense co-counsel, the daughter of the lead prosecutor in Amerithrax. That prosecutor has pled the Fifth Amendment concerning all the leaks hyping a “POI” of the other Amerithrax squad, Dr. Steve Hatfill.
In an e-mail obtained by FOX News written by Bruce Ivins to Patricia Fellows titled “HOT News”, Ivins reported to his former Fort Detrick colleague a colleague’s report that the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material.” “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same — his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!’”
FOX News reports:
“The FBI has narrowed its focus to ‘about four’ suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.
Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.”
I submit to you that regardless of the recent report about sorority panty raids and the like, the FBI knows that it was more than a happy coincidence for Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Islambouli that an active supporter of the Taliban and supporter of jihad was a US biodefense insider.
Al-Timimi worked in the same building as famed Russian bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Charles Bailey, who would publish a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax.
Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. Ali would speak along with the blind sheik’s son at charity conferences — the blind sheik’s son served on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee. Al-Timimi’s mentor Bilal Philips was known for recruiting members of the military to jihad. The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Al-Timimi. He was a microbiology graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”). Ali, according to his lawyer, had been questioned by an FBI agent and Secret Service agent in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a high security clearance for work for the Navy in he late 1990s and in 1996 for two months had worked for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with the charity Islamic Assembly of North America.
Folks who assume that Al-Timimi and his colleagues would have claimed responsibility are not taking into account that Bin Laden denied responsibility for 911 initially until it became beyond denying. Zawahiri thinks that war is deception. US Attorney Jeff Taylor, former counsel to Attorney Gonzalez, may also think that. (Alternatively, he just has not mastered the facts because of his wide range of responsibilities and heavy workload).
Al-Timimi was interviewed 7 or 8 time before indictment. He was indicted a few days before the FBI’s self-imposed deadline of October 1, 2004 for bringing an indictment in Amerithrax passed. Mueller announced in July 2004.
Al-Timimi is not thought by the DOJ officials as being the processor or mailer, which means it is still a very active investigation.
But after Labor Day, let’s turn our attention to a different ring in the circus — an amended indictment of Aafia Siddiqui in a few days. She knows the identity of US-based operatives.
Follow this “thread”
“The Rhyme of the Ancient Camellier,”
Thank you for pinging me.
Interesting, I copied it, and will read it again.
Emerg Infect Dis. 2008 Sep;14(9):1494-1496.
Texas Isolates Closely Related to Bacillus anthracis Ames.
Kenefic LJ, Pearson T, Okinaka RT, Chung WK, Max T, Van Ert MN, Marston CK, Gutierrez K, Swinford AK, Hoffmaster AR, Keim P.
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA (L.J. Kenefic, T. Pearson, R.T. Okinaka, W.-K. Chung, T. Max, M.N. Van Ert, P. Keim); Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA (R.T. Okinaka); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (C.K. Marston, A. R. Hoffmaster); Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory, College Station, Texas, USA (K. Gutierrez, A.K. Swinford); and Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, Arizona, USA (P. Keim).
To the Editor: Forensic and epidemiologic investigation of the 2001 bioterrorism-associated anthrax attacks used multiple-locus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis (MLVA) to identify the attack strain as Ames. Strain identity was essential for subsequent molecular epidemiologic and forensic investigations of this biocrime. To more easily identify this particular strain, comparative whole-genome sequencing and phylogenetic analyses were used to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that seem highly specific for Ames strain identification. Because Bacillus anthracis is a recently emerged clonal pathogen, these SNPs represent highly evolutionarily stable markers that are amenable to many rapid and cost-effective analytical techniques.
So what about the “hoax letters”
“At least one hoax letter was apparently thought by the FBI to have been sent by the anthrax perpetrator (it was sent from England while Steven Hatfill was training there, and was considered to be part of the case against him). Judith Miller at the NY Times received a hoax letter. Anthrax hoax letters were sent from Florida, Malaysia and possibly other places. It is critical that these letters be publicly revealed, and that handwriting analysis, identification of the envelopes, identification of the tape used (if any) and the ink is compared to the true anthrax letters. If any came from the same source, then the anthrax perpetrator(s) must be able to be placed where they were mailed, in the appropriate time frame. Can any of the one hundred persons who had access to the spores from Ivins’ flask be placed in New Jersey and these other locations at the right times? If not, the crime involves more than one person.....”
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D.
For folks who don’t like their coffee flavored by the FBI?
Feds announce $20,000 reward for SRS anthrax hoax in 2005
Tuesday, September 02, 2008 4:28:45 PM · by Prunetacos · 15+ views
Augusta Chronicle. ^ | September 02, 2008
Federal and local law enforcement agencies today issued a $20,000 reward for information about a 2005 anthrax hoax at Savannah River Site. The Atlanta Field Office of the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office jointly issued the reward to aid their investigation into discovering the identity and location of the person initiating the hoax against officials at SRS and the federal Department of Energy, according to an FBI press release.
Awesome, someone is capitalizing on this fiasco to try and make a few extra bucks. Only in America!
Meanwhile, they were unable to exclude Cuba or al Qaeda.
...Iran or Pakistan...
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