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The EPA was a telephone conversation and I'll think of her name in the middle of the night. I'm sure her number is in my note somewhere. She told me there were different places that were approved for treatment, one used.....grams and the other......grams. So there were two places that had some contamination.

I remember driving by the USDA facility which was actually on my way home, north of the main campus, by the railroad tracks out by itself. It was a concrete block building with one door in the front, no windows or doors on the east side and only one block glass window, the kind that wouldn't implode or get smashed on the west side. I never saw the back of the place, but that was where the fences led, so I assume that the animals that were kept in small pens on the west side were funneled around the back and were allowed in the north side.

I've tried to find that building on Google Earth and can't. Might not be there now. But it was where they actually did the experiments on animals.

I was always intrigued by the contraptions on the flat roof. Huge boxes, tubes, coils, funnels and lots of stainless steel. Today I feel that was a negative air flow system so that no spores could get out.

That supposedly had its own collection or supply of anthrax. That was not destroyed.

Now the vet school was and still in right on the south edge almost on top of I-80. Back then it was not the sprawling collection of buildings that it is today. Then there was a long driveway leading to it from the main turn-off. Now I think the whole thing is built up and lots of parking lots.

I know they said there was no overall inventory, so are they admitting that their stewardship of this pathogen was compromised early on?

There was a report early on that the cabinet wasn't lock during the day, but was locked at night. But what does this stuff look like? Could you uncork it and take a spore or two? Was it sealed?

I have to assume that it was not sealed when it was sent to the contact, but the innocent student got it by mistake. The innocent student and her husband both had lesions. She did say she opened the package, she did not say if she opened a vial, or how it was packaged. She just said it looked like seeds.

So why send it TO the mysterious Pakistani at Iowa State, if the stuff was already AT Iowa State?! Where was it supposedly from? Are you saying they stole it from the collection, put it onto dry ice, and mailed it locally?!?

And after going through the mail and being shattered, the remaining dry ice wouldn't fit into the container?

Hmmm...fishy... Maybe Reba and her husband were your mysterious thieves.

I remember driving by the USDA facility which was actually on my way home, north of the main campus, by the railroad tracks out by itself.

Are you talking about the building that was just north of Industrial Education II, taken down in the late 1990s?

I know they said there was no overall inventory, so are they admitting that their stewardship of this pathogen was compromised early on?

That's how I took it...that there was nobody using it actively, so it was a pure liability from the administrative standpoint.