Posted on 08/07/2008 11:49:06 AM PDT by Shermy
WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001.
After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we could prove his guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Lawyers for Dr. Ivins reasserted their late client’s innocence and criticized the government for presenting what they called “heaps of innuendo” that failed to link him directly to the crime and would never have to be tested in court. “It was an explanation of why Bruce Ivins was a suspect,” said Paul F. Kemp, who represented the scientist for more than a year before his death on July 29 at age 62. “But there’s a total absence of proof that he committed this crime.”
The conflicting views of Dr. Ivins emerged in a day of emotional crosscurrents. At a morning memorial service at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., weeping Army scientists praised Dr. Ivins as a beloved colleague “known for his patience and enthusiasm for science,” as a written program put it. At the same time, at F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and bureau officials were explaining to survivors of the anthrax attacks and relatives of the five people who died why they believe Dr. Ivins was a mass murderer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
--Your honor, Defense Evidence #1 !!!
Almost two years ago this prescient person predicted the flimsy Beecher paper would be used as the scientific "proof" that the anthrax was not sophisticated.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/812/1
The Anthrax Case: From Spores to a Suspect
By Martin Enserink
ScienceNOW Daily News
12 August 2008
The scientific evidence against Bruce Ivins, the 62-year-old Army scientist who killed himself while about to be indicted for the anthrax murders, is finally emerging. Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) laid some of its cards on the table. One key document, scientists say, now enables a reconstruction of the trail that led the FBI from the deadly letters back to Ivins’s lab at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
The investigation relied heavily on outside labs such as The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, which sequenced a large number of anthrax samples; it also required the development of new genetic tests. Although none of the steps was revolutionary or particularly inventive, researchers say, combining them to solve a criminal case was. Surprisingly, many past speculations on the forensic science were wrong on one point: Sophisticated fingerprinting techniques for Bacillus anthracis developed at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, widely rumored to be crucial, didn’t play a significant role.
Scientists say they need many more details to decide the merits of the case against Ivins. But despite the bureau’s widely ridiculed mistakes—including an early focus on Ivins’s former colleague Steven Hatfill—”the scientific evidence is probably really strong,” says Steven Salzberg, a former TIGR researcher now at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. “They’ve got some very good people,” Salzberg says. “The impression that they’re not good may just come from their style. They never tell you anything.”
The main document unsealed last week is an October 2007 affidavit by Thomas Dellafera, a postal inspector. Filed in support of a warrant to search Ivins’s home, cars, and a safety box, the 25 pages of text didn’t spell out the details of the evidence. But a close reading of the four paragraphs about the FBI’s genetic analysis helps clarify how the bureau approached the problem, says microbiologist Jeffrey Miller of the University of California, Los Angeles.
The key to understanding the investigation is that the anthrax used in the attacks didn’t have a single, uniform genetic makeup, a source close to the investigation says. Each of the envelopes likely contained many billions of spores; within such a population, there are always subpopulations of cells bearing mutations that set them apart from the majority. The same minorities would presumably have been present in the “mother stock” of anthrax from which the spores were prepared.
However, standard sequencing—which would require the DNA from thousands of spores—would have resulted in a “consensus sequence” for the spores, in which such rare mutations were simply drowned out. To find them, researchers used a different technique: They grew spores from the envelopes on petri dishes, generating hundreds or even thousands of colonies per dish, each the progeny of a single spore. They then searched for colonies that looked different from the majority; the affidavit mentions variations in “shape, color, texture.” (Those colonies might have been rough instead of smooth, or much smaller than most, Miller says.) Next, they set out to find the mutations that made those colonies different.
To do that, the FBI used a brute-force approach: It had the entire genomes of the bacteria in the minority sequenced. TIGR—which merged into the J. Craig Venter Institute in 2006—sequenced “probably somewhere between 10 and 20” such genomes in the years after the attacks, Salzberg says. TIGR could not handle live anthrax cells itself; the FBI gave the lab purified DNA produced by Paul Keim’s lab at NAU, Salzberg says. Claire Fraser-Liggett, who led TIGR at the time and is now also at UMD, declines to discuss details of the investigation. But two other sources confirm TIGR’s role.
Comparing the sequence of the variant colonies to an original B. anthracis strain called Ames, widely used in research, identified a number of mutations, says Salzberg; they included single-nucleotide polymorphisms, a change of a single base pair, and tandem repeats, in which a short piece of DNA is repeated a variable number of times.
The FBI then had scientists at other labs develop tests that allowed them to screen any anthrax sample for four of these mutations. Such assays “are very easy to design,” for instance, using a polymerase chain reaction-based strategy, says evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing; molecular biology labs do it all the time.
Armed with the four tests, the FBI examined more than 1000 anthrax isolates, collected from 16 labs that had the Ames strain in the United States and several more in Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In only eight of those samples, they found all four mutations seen in the envelope samples; and each of these eight, the affidavit says, was “directly related” to a “large flask” of spores, identified as RMR-1029, which Ivins had created in 1997 and of which he was the “sole custodian.”
That still leaves many questions open, researchers say. One thing that needs to be explained, says Miller, is whether the eight isolates that were “directly related” to RMR-1029 were all found at USAMRIID, or whether some came from other laboratories. In the latter case, it’s unclear why the FBI ruled out those labs as the potential origin. (One clue that the affidavit offers is that USAMRIID is the only lab in Maryland or Virginia, the states where the particular envelopes used in the attacks were sold.)
It’s also unclear how many of the 1000 samples had fewer than four, but more than zero, of the mutations. “If a whole bunch of them had two or three,” that would increase the odds that the perfect match at USAMRIID was just a false positive, Lenski says. Another key question, he adds: Where in the anthrax genome did the four mutations occur? If they were in hypervariable regions, that would also probably make the case against Ivins weaker.
Whether the analysis would hold up in court seemed to be front and center in the FBI’s thinking, says Salzberg. For instance, when researchers from TIGR and NAU published a comparison of two anthrax strains in Science in 2002 (14 June 2002, p. 2028), a top FBI researcher named Bruce Budowle encouraged them to include a statistical analysis to estimate the data’s accuracy, Salzberg says. “Budowle felt it would be useful to have it all go through peer review, in case it went to court,” he says.
The FBI has invested heavily in microbial forensic expertise since 2001, and Budowle has co-authored many papers on the topic. But the bureau farmed out much of the scientific bench work, in part because the Marine Corps doesn’t allow bioweapons agents at its base in Quantico, Virginia, where the FBI Laboratory is located. The work was “highly compartmentalized,” says a source close to the investigation: Most labs didn’t know exactly what the others were doing.
The affidavit is very unclear about whether the spore preparations might have undergone physical or chemical treatments to make them disperse more easily—still a point of major confusion, says Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a bioweapons specialist at Purchase College in New York. Scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology reported in October 2001 that the spores sent to U.S. Senator Tom Daschle’s office had been mixed with silica to make them more easily dispersible. However, in congressional briefings and in a paper published in the August 2006 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI officials described the powder as a simple spore preparation without additives.
The affidavit reports that there was “an elemental signature of Silicon within the spores” in all four letters that were recovered. This silicon signature is later cited as part of the evidence linking the mailed anthrax to the flask of spores that Ivins had access to. But what the silicon was for, or whether other samples were tested for the signature, remains unclear.
Science aside, the affidavit relies heavily on circumstantial evidence. For instance, it notes unexplained spikes in Ivins’s nighttime lab activity right before the two waves of letters were sent. It also claims that he tried to mislead investigators to hide his involvement. In April 2002, he submitted samples from his lab that tested negative for the four mutations, according to the affidavit; but on 7 April 2004, an FBI agent seized the RMR-1029 flask, which tested positive for all four. Ivins insisted he had given agents RMR-1029 the first time around, however.
One of the weak points in the affidavit is Ivins’s motive, says Gregory Koblentz, a biodefense specialist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The FBI suggests that Ivins was afraid of losing his job if the government ended a project he was working on that was trying to solve regulatory issues around the so-called AVA anthrax vaccine. It “seems a bit of a stretch” that Ivins would have thought his job hinged on that project, says Koblentz. His group “would have had plenty of other anthrax vaccine-related work to keep them busy.” A glaring omission, meanwhile, is any evidence placing Ivins in Princeton, New Jersey, on any of the days the envelopes could have been mailed from there.
A spokesperson for the FBI’s laboratory declined a request to interview Budowle and referred scientific questions to the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office. “In the near future the FBI will determine the best way to address the science involved in the anthrax case,” she e-mailed Science. Many suspect that with so many burning questions, a full account of the evidence—including the scientific details—is now just a matter of time.
With reporting by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee.
“He wants details of the measurements of oxygen isotopes in the attack anthrax, which reportedly identified where it was grown, and why logs showing late work in Ivins’ lab before the mailings did not focus the investigation on Ivins earlier.”
(The isotope ratios indicate the anthrax was grown in the Northeastern US according to an earlier MSNBC report.
_______________________________
Interesting Grassley focused on that one, of many, arcane scientific points.
Maybe REp. Holt, a physicist by training, is helping the Senator?
Making Ivins Crazy, August 11, 2008
http://www.governmentalityblog.com/my_weblog/2008/08/making-ivins-cr.html
Anthrax case spurs liability questions
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-11-anthrax_N.htm
(am informed the cited “Turley” is a lawyer for Al-Timimi
Dina Temple-Ralston, “Charles Ivins ‘Stunned’ By Evidence Against Brother,” August 10, 2008
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93483076
Amateur Economists, August 13, 2008
http://www.amateureconomists.com/view_articles_detail.php?aid=83
Our own worst bioenemy
The U.S. bioweapons program has grown so large that it has become a threat to Americans.
By Wendy Orent
August 13, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-orent13-2008aug13,0,1045104.story
Talk Back: Do you believe Bruce Ivins was responsible for the anthrax attacks? August 13, 2008
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=78746
“Should we believe the government this time?,” August 13, 2008
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/082008/08132008/400114
FBI Shifts Anthrax Blame to Dead Man, August 13, 2008
http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=171598
Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008
Two former Montgomery Village residents troubled by anthrax suspect
http://www.gazette.net/stories/08132008/germnew202448_32482.shtml
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2008/08/13/olbermann-us-provoked-russia-troubling-neocon-echoes
OLBERMANN: Anthrax-gate. The idea that the FBI and the Bush administration are somehow covering up what really happened by blaming it on the late Dr. Bruce Ivins creeps more and more total plausibility.
I haven’t looked closely at all the links at #126, they were supplied to me. A couple of points though. The second to last article is about Nancy Haigwood who is credible about how Ivins possibly stalked her. The second from beginning article is from the Los Angeles Times. Predictably, it begins with a charge Ivins “most likely” did it. Predictably, I say, because every other news outlet I’ve seen takes an agnostic view on the case against Ivins, but the Los Angeles Times was the gullible outlet of first choice for the Feds to spin their tale.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2058930/posts
In Anthrax Case, Hindsight Shifts View of Ivins
Actions to Aid Probe Appear Now As Cover-Up
WASHINGTON — One night in autumn 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the worst act of bioterrorism in its history, Bruce Ivins was alone in his cluttered Fort Detrick, Md., office, scrubbing phones, walls and furniture.
......
Dr. Ivins, his colleagues said, argued that al Qaeda was responsible. “He was very passionate about this,” former boss Jeffrey Adamovicz said. “He was very agitated.” In these conversations, Dr. Ivins dwelled at one point on a purported link between Florida victim Robert Stevens, a photographer for American Media, and an apartment rented to 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta, Dr. Adamovicz said. (The FBI discounts that as an explanation.)
......
That winter, the FBI asked Dr. Ivins to take his first and only lie-detector test, according to a law-enforcement official. The polygraph was part of the bureau’s vetting of investigators. The FBI hasn’t released the results. Dr. Ivins retained his role in the investigation.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2055865/posts
Scientists Question FBI Probe On Anthrax
Washington Post ^ | Sunday, August 3, 2008;
Posted on Sunday, August 03, 2008 01:31:44 PM by Perdogg
For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick’s Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects.
Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers, according to one of Ivins’s former supervisors. In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were searched, and their computers and equipment carted away.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-suspect1-2008aug01,0,1343109.story
The famous Los Angeles Times story from August 1 that started it all. Has the “He’s messy, he’s guilty” claim, and the infamous quotes from one of Ivins’ brothers, but the L.A. Times failed to mention the brother hadn’t spoken to Ivins in 23 years. FBI had to have fed the LA Times reporter with that brother, and not Ivins’ other brother.
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?storyid=78746
Talk Back: Do you believe Bruce Ivins was responsible for the anthrax attacks? (August 13)
Interesting because it’s from the Frederick newspaper, where a reporter can do a “man on the street” poll and find someone who knew Hatfill.
I think I'll pass on this one..
Yeah that flask of which he was the sole custodian.
And the FBI has total proof he was the sole custodian.
(How do you prove a negative?)
And the FBI can prove there were no other ‘flasks’
with the same genetic mutations???
This reads like a lot of BS bafflegab
the FBI trying to snow us
blow smoke into our eyes
(but not aerosolized anthrax smoke, I hope)
And what the heck is ‘ScienceNow Daily News’, anyhow??
Re: Olberman #126
One thing I am sure about.
There has been absolutely no pressure
on the FBI
to ‘close’ this case
before this administration leaves office.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/08142008/walknew191857_32465.shtml
Ivins’ colleagues remain skeptical
Aug. 6
by Keith L. Martin and Margarita Raycheva | Staff Writers
A day after the U.S. Justice Department released hundreds of pages of court documents detailing its case against Dr. Bruce Ivins, Dr. W. Russell Byrne sat in disbelief about the possible link between his friend and colleague and the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks.
“I am absolutely stunned at what they consider evidence,” said Byrne, who headed Ivins’ USAMRIID division from 1998 to 2000. “… Plus, all these e-mails. I knew [Ivins] was having a hard time in life, but I did not know this was the way it was.”
......
Other anomalies include the fact Byrne said Ivins knew e-mails were not “private” and could be read by anyone. And, he argued, if the FBI had hairs from the Princeton, N.J. mailbox where the anthrax letters were mailed, why were they never compared with Ivins’ hair?
“I think [the public] is being taken advantage of because they don’t know the science … or know anything about USAMRIID,” Byrne said.
...
Byrnes’ skepticism is matched by Dr. Meryl Nass, a Maine physician and expert on anthrax and bioterrorism who has testified before Congress. She met Ivins in 1991 and last exchanged correspondence with him six years ago.
Since the government’s case has been made public, Nass has posted several questions on her Web site – www.anthraxvaccine.org – and said the Justice Department’s case is not clear. The closest link the FBI found between Ivins and Princeton, she said, is a detail of Ivins’ alleged fascination with the Kappa Kappa Gama sorority, which has an office near the Princeton collection box.
“The profusion of non-evidentiary material is profound,” she said. “If the FBI is spending [pages] detailing his connection to a sorority … it is pointing that out because it doesn’t have a case … The FBI knows this case is too complex for the public to comprehend, that’s why this nonsense [about the sorority] is out there.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-web-anthrax-lataug14,0,4362601.story
Anthrax hair samples don’t match
By Carrie Johnson | The Washington Post
7:19 PM CDT, August 13, 2008
WASHINGTON - Federal investigators probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks recovered human hair samples from a telltale mailbox in Princeton, N.J., but the strands did not match the lead suspect in the case, according to sources briefed on the probe.
FBI agents and U.S. Postal Service inspectors analyzed the data in an effort to place Fort Detrick, Md., scientist Bruce E. Ivins at the postbox from which germ-filled letters were sent to Senate offices and media organizations, the sources said.
The hair sample is one of many pieces of evidence that researchers continue to puzzle over in the notorious case, which ended abruptly after Ivins committed suicide while prosecutors prepared to seek his indictment.
Last two posts 1. Dr. Byrne asks why no tests were done on the mail box hairs, 2. Later story reveals the hairs didn’t match.
Which brings the bigger issue, why were the hairs mentioned the released papers at all? Or were they for a court warrant application and the inspectors misled the judge with innuendo tht the hairs were Ivins?
Doesn’t give one a warm/fuzzy, does it?<<<
Not when you give thought to the dead Somali man in Denver, with a full pound of cyanide in the hotel room.
Why?
You have a friend who says that. But why couldn’t be done under a hood on a small scale?
My big problem with analyzing any of this is that I still don't see a reliable particle size distribution analysis of this anthrax powder. "Smoke" is typically just over .5 micron. Cab O Sil fumed silica is 0.2 - 0.3 micron. I don't know anything about anthrax soup. An Aerobell can make 2-3 micron direct droplets readily that shrink as they dry. The satellite droplets are usually a third of that, which you could then air classify (which isn't too bad if you don't care about yield). Of course, containing it well enough to stay alive through all that is another matter.
A few details would be helpful.
>>>And that makes it overwhelmingly likely it was an inside job by a disgruntled federal employee and not AQ terrorism.
Saddam Hussein’s son had access to that lab,
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