Posted on 08/07/2008 11:49:06 AM PDT by Shermy
Is that what you're trying to tell us gene?!
My own opinion starts with the flow of postal MTE (mail transport equipment, i.e. trays and sacks) through the processing systems in contaminated post offices BEFORE the attack was discovered.
It took several days for people to get sick so during that period thousands of pieces of equipment were contaminated.
One type of equipment, the "flat tray" (used for large letters and small parcels), is used in the bottom of traditional letter mail collection boxes. You drop in your letters and they fall into the tray inside. The collection employee comes around and simply swaps out the full tray with an empty one in seconds.
So, Franklin facility is contaminated, thousands of trays full of contaminated mail are moved out into their service area, an empty contaminated tray is placed in the bottom of a collection box in Princeton, the contamination is expressed out of the tray as the tray is filled, and even puffs out and contaminates the outside of the box.
That's the fundamental item the FBI bases 100% of its case on. They use that contamined piece of equipment to have Ivins running about the countryside, chasing down a sorority, and doing all this on a certain date where he is also working a couple of hours extra at night.
It is not possible to prove that a collection box within 500 miles of the Franklin facility or the DC post office was the point of mailing ~ since so many of them were "contaminated".
My conclusion is the FBI has come up with this story to cover-up the fact that postal executives actually conspired to suppress public knowledge of how widespread MTE contamination really was. That is, a felony was commited, and the FBI is flipping that into a reason why they could go after Dr. Ivins.
None of these pukes are to be trusted.
Tylenol with codeine is usually a long, long OD of several days with the liver and kidneys going into failure.
Muwiyah-with all due respect, I reviewed your tray scenario a long time ago,and couldn’t make it work : well thought-out as it was.
I still can’t make it fit. If we find it hard to believe Ivins drove to NJ to post the deadly letters,how much harder is it to believe he went to Florida to do the same ?
Ironically, the least explainable of the deaths-that of Kathy Nguyen-becomes less mystifying if she actually helped him distribute anthrax for religious reasons.
Ivins’ (alleged) motive was the punishment of notable Catholics who had taken a public stance favoring abortion.
If Nguyen- a devout Catholic had decided to join him in this “crusade” , she MIGHT have smuggled a small quantity of anthrax into a medical or nursing facility, and found some way to administer it to a patient we know nothing about(because the death was attributed to pneumonia or other natural causes.) This hypothetical “Patient X” may also have been a Catholic abortion supporter.
This would explain how Ms Nguyen became fatally contaminated herself...BUT...this is pure speculation,with absolutely nothing to support it; so, as far as I’m concerned, I’m closing my “file” for good.
She's going to have a large "flat tray" with her. She will walk over to the collection box and open it with a key. She opens the door. There's a "flat tray" inside. She pulls it out and places it on the ground. She then puts the empty tray inside and closes the door, which she then locks. She will then stand up, pick up the tray she's just removed from the box and take it inside the postal facility where that mail will be sent on to a mail processing activity ~ either there or some other facility.
This activity takes place thousands of times a day.
If the clerk has a tray contaminated with anthrax and she places it inside the collection box there's a very good chance the anthrax spores will be bounced out of the tray onto the walls, and into the opening at the top whenever anyone drops mail inside.
That's how that works. I can't imagine how you could screw it up.
Now, about Ivins going to Florida, he didn't have to. Someone else did the job in Florida!
At the time of that event I read every little piece of news about her activities watching for sign of contact with some MTE.
As I recall she had such contact.
BTW, the large "flat trays" are popular for home use. No doubt the general public continued to steal them at the normal rate during the period when thousands of them were contaminated. They're sitting there in the garage, or under the desk in the "study", laden with anthrax spores just waiting for a chance to kill again!
Whenever I visit someone's home and see one I notify them that they should call the Inspection Service an ask that they come and retrieve the tray lest it be contaminated with anthrax. I then back away slowly, get in my car, and get outta' there.
Also say the Greenwald stuff. Good stuff. He's moving away from the knee jerk "ABC and Bentonite got us into war" stuff too.
http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_10157273
Fairfield resident recalls time at Fort Detrick; worked with suspected anthrax terrorist
Ten years have passed since Fairfield resident Luann Battersby crossed paths as a coworker with a man the government said was the lone person responsible for deadly anthrax attacks, but Battersby said she never would have suspected him.
Battersby worked for eight years as a microbiologist for the government at Fort Detrick in Frederick County, Md., in the same department as Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist who committed suicide last month amid an FBI investigation. The Justice Department said Wednesday Ivins was the “only person responsible” for anthrax attacks that killed five people in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The FBI spoke to Battersby in 2001 about the situation, she said, and the incident involved a polygraph. The field agents she dealt with were “reasonable,” Battersby said.
“They knew I wasn’t a reasonable suspect,” she said. “But then again, I wouldn’t have suspected Bruce (Ivins) to be a reasonable suspect.”
....Senate Sergeant at Arms Terence Gainer attended Wednesday’s briefing for the victims’ families and said FBI agents told the group there was no evidence anyone else was involved in the attacks.
Battersby described Ivins as “more bottled up,” which she said was not unusual for a scientist. He was weird, she said, but “not any weirder than a typical scientist.”
“He was not the weirdest by far I worked with down there,” Battersby said.
Battersby would be surprised at anyone committing suicide, she said, but she never saw Ivins as a “strong person.”
“I would say he was milquetoast,” Battersby said. “The fact that he was a terrorist doesn’t really square with my opinion with who he was.”
...”I’m amazed at all this,” Battersby said. “I assume there’s evidence and that it’s true, but I certainly never would have suspected (Ivins).”
Battersby and Ivins worked in the same division but in different parts of the Fort Detrick complex: Battersby in bacteriology, doing work with immunology, and Ivins in biocontainment. Their similar employment meant Battersby and Ivins endured the same dreary Friday-afternoon meetings, Battersby said. She knew Ivins a little professionally, seeing him in the lab from time to time, but did not know much about his personal life.
“I thought he was completely harmless, if you ask me,” Battersby said of Ivins. “Maybe I didn’t know him that well.”
...”Seven years is a long time to do DNA fingerprinting to figure this out,” Battersby said. “It seems like an awful long time.”
...”Any competent microbiologist can grow up a culture of anthrax,” she said. “It’s not tough. Weaponizing it is a different issue.”
Battersby said she was amazed the person behind the anthrax attacks was someone who worked there. Instead, she said, she thought it was someone who had traveled to the United States. And while there were foreigners working at Fort Detrick, she said, she does not remember any working for the anthrax program.
...While civilians like Battersby work at Fort Detrick, the site has military management, she said. And some people, such as those who want to advance their careers, have stayed quiet about their experience there, according to Battersby.
But the few people not worried about talking about their experience with the government should talk, she said.
“It’s painful to me on a whole bunch of levels,” Battersby said. “I feel like I should tell my story because I know I can.”
“but the points she expressed in this story didn’t come up during the interview.”
wow.
>>I’d start investigating them.
It’s like in early 2002 when there was lots of discussion here about the incompetence, culpability or downright ignorance in the Radical Fundamentalist Unit of the FBI.
Dave Frasca was the name that comes to mind.
And heck, the administration, President Bush, has refused to allow Agent Wright to publish his account of the Saudi investigations.
So, lots more under the sheets we can only speculate about.
Meryl Nass’ 13 point criticism about the case against Ivins.
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2008/08/conclusive-evidence-of-means-motive-and.html
Blog on Aug. 5. documenting how the story seems thin, and changing at the time.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6247
(Maryland)Firms vie for anthrax pacts
Annapolis, Rockville companies seeking share of millions of vaccine doses
By Frank D. Roylance | Sun reporter August 11, 2008
Drug companies based in Annapolis and Rockville are battling for potentially lucrative federal contracts to supply at least 25 million doses of new, improved anthrax vaccine to protect Americans against another bioterror attack like the one in 2001.
PharmAthene Inc. of Annapolis, which is also developing drugs to protect against chemical nerve agents and the plague bacterium, says it could begin delivering its SparVax vaccine to the Strategic National Stockpile as early as 2012.
In Rockville, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced that it, too, had a recombinant anthrax vaccine in development.
Both companies filed proposals July 31 in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for a more modern, bioengineered vaccine to replace the current vaccine, BioThrax, made by Emergent.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services said contract awards could come as early as this fall.
"This will not be a cakewalk for us. We have very strong competitors," said David P. Wright, PharmAthene's president and CEO. "But I believe, with the caliber of the staff we have ... that we will be successful at the end of the day in producing for this country the vaccine we need."
Emergent's chairman and CEO, Fuad El-Hibri, said in announcing its participation, "We are confident that our ... vaccine is a leading candidate to be selected as an advanced ... anthrax vaccine. Our company is proud of our proven track record of delivering critical biodefense countermeasures to the U.S. government."
The government is still beefing up its biodefenses in the wake of the 2001 letter attacks that prosecutors say were launched by Bruce E. Ivins, a federal microbiologist who killed himself last month as officials prepared to indict him.
The push is now on to replace BioThrax, which requires six doses over 18 months to achieve immunity and has a history of side effects and shelf-life problems. Emergent said almost 2 million U.S. military personnel have received the vaccine.
-snip-
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20080810_DNA_is_just_anthrax_clue__not_clincher.html
DNA is just anthrax clue, not clincher...
...At first, prosecutors seemed to suggest that forensic DNA had solved the case. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said science had enabled the government to link the anthrax spores in the 2001 attack to a flask “created and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins” in his federal lab.
But at least eight other anthrax samples gathered from researchers in the investigation carried the same genetic signature as Ivins’ batch at Fort Detrick, Md., court documents say.
...”Anthrax spends the majority of time as a spore. That’s why we don’t see diversity in the genome that we see in [other] organisms,” said Ted Hadfield, a biologist at the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, Mo., and former head of microbiology for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
As spores, anthrax bacteria can exist for years in suspended animation without undergoing the cell divisions that allow mutations to crop up.
With human DNA, investigators can connect an individual to a crime sample by examining repetitive areas called STRs, or short tandem repeats.
Experts liken these to little stutters in the code. Counting the number of times these pieces repeat distinguishes one person’s DNA from another’s.
Anthrax DNA has far fewer such stutters, scientists say, making it much harder to distinguish one sample from the next.
Until recently, it was hard even to divide anthrax into distinct strains.
In 2000, microbiologist Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University published a landmark paper on repeating regions called VNTRs, or variable number tandem repeats, that occur in anthrax.
Keim, one of the country’s top genetics experts, declined to be interviewed, but in several scientific papers he described how he and colleagues developed a system of distinguishing anthrax strains using these VNTRs.
That was one tool the investigators had in 2001. It took them less than a month after the attacks to identify the spores as belonging to an anthrax strain called Ames.
But that still left them with an overwhelming number of potential suspects, since the Ames strain was stored in labs around the world.
The name comes from Ames, Iowa, where veterinarians at the National Animal Disease Center isolated it from sick cattle in 1981. Because this strain was seen as particularly deadly, it became the most common one for laboratory studies, and was used to test the anthrax vaccine given to military personnel.
In the 1980s, a Virginia company called American Type Culture Collection kept samples of Ames anthrax and sent them to labs around the world - including ones in Iraq, which the United States was helping at the time.
Faced with an enormous haystack and an elusive needle, the FBI investigators requested that every U.S. researcher with access to anthrax send in samples of all possible strains. They ended up with 1,000 samples, according to FBI documents released last week.
The one hope they had for solving the case came from the fact that anthrax DNA can occasionally develop single spelling errors called SNPs.
These errors occur in only about one in a million bacteria as they’re grown in culture, microbiologist Hadfield said. That could create tiny but recognizable differences among samples.
Finding those spelling errors isn’t easy, researchers say. Such a feat would likely require a complete reading of the genetic codes of various samples and comparing them.
In 2001, biologists had just completed the Human Genome Project, for which they sequenced a small sample of human DNA.
At that time, sequencing an organism’s entire genetic code would have taken $1 million and months, Hadfield said. But this technology has advanced rapidly, so now it takes just days and about $25,000.
“As we got better at sequencing, we got a better feel for what the SNPs were and where the occurred,” Hadfield said.
Investigators eventually found four such SNP-type mutations that distinguished bacteria used in the attacks from samples of the original Ames strain.
Those four mutations were found in only eight of the 1,000 samples under investigation. This subgroup was labeled RMR-1029.
According to the FBI, all the people with positive samples said they had obtained them from Ivins.
But the sample Ivins initially provided in 2002 tested negative for the four key mutations.
In 2004, the documents say, investigators entered Ivins’ lab and seized samples, including the “parent” flask that had allegedly supplied the other positive RMR-1029 samples.
The bacteria in that flask allegedly carried the four telltale mutations.
That analysis alone, however, doesn’t rule out researchers who worked with the eight samples.
...Richard Spertzel, a bioweapons expert who worked at the same army lab as Ivins, said the perpetrator had used a sophisticated process to turn the spores into the deadly powder used in the attacks.
He said the machine in Ivins’ lab known as a lyophilizer is a common piece of equipment used to dry spores and would not by itself allow someone to create the 1.5- to 3-micron particles used in the attacks.
“He must have used some other new technique that we don’t know about,” he said.
Spertzel said he found it unlikely that someone acting alone could have created the anthrax used in 2001. “I’d like to see the details behind the hype.”
post 111
Nass’s 13 points are an excellent summary of the problems with the FBI’s case.
See post 111
Thanks for the ping.
Not a surprise, as I keep reading about the threat, on the Gov. sites and in the news.
Did you ever hear more about the lady scientist in the eastern US, who was found drowned in the water tank?
Was the case solved?
I’m not aware of that being solved. I’ve watched for it too on my local news since it is in my state.
Doesn’t give one a warm/fuzzy, does it?
Yes for #110.
And pay special attention to the link in point #3 in Nass’s post!
(Spertzel)
(I don’t think this important WSJ article has been posted)
Discussion of Douglas J. Beecher 2006 Anthrax paper
August 12, 2008
The suicide of Bruce Ivins and press conference of Jeffrey Taylor pinning the 2001 anthrax attacks on Ivins from Ft. Detrick Md including the letters to Daschle and Leahy has brought up issues relating to whether the original anthrax in the Senate letters was weaponized or required special procedures to make not available to Ivins.
The issues are
Was the anthrax in the Senate letters of 1 trillion spores per gram?
Is that purity achievable by Ivins with the equipment he had?
Was the Senate anthrax also weaponized in additional ways beyond purity?
This could include silica aditives.
This could include some means to make it more “energetic” i.e. to repel instead of clump.
Did the aerosolization observed in the Senate letters require some anti-clumping mechanism beyond just purity?
The Beecher FBI article claimed no special powder was needed beyond purification to 1 trillion spores per gram. It also claimed this was not itself such a great feat.
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/72/8/5304
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, August 2006, p. 5304-5310, Vol. 72, No. 8
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AEM.00940-06
Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores{dagger}
Douglas J. Beecher*
FBI Laboratory, Hazardous Materials Response Unit, 2501 Investigation Parkway, Quantico, Virginia 22135
Received 20 April 2006/ Accepted 22 May 2006
The article is about the search of the Senate letters, mail system, buildings, etc. for anthrax. Its not about lab science on anthrax and its properties. “To Identify Mail ” is the purpose of the analysis and what he did.
Note from part of the abstract:
The discovery of a letter intentionally filled with dried Bacillus anthracis spores in the office of a United States senator prompted the collection and quarantine of all mail in congressional buildings. This mail was subsequently searched for additional intentionally contaminated letters.
Conclusion
This paper shows that there was successful integration of microbiological methodology with law enforcement and hazmat objectives and procedures.
It was not a paper about lab science by the FBI about the properties of producing an aerosol of anthrax or the aerosol produced at the Senate.
Individuals familiar with the compositions of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents (6). However, a widely circulated misconception is that the spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production. This idea is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone (3, 6, 12; J. Kelly, Washington Times, 21 October 2003; G. Gugliotta and G. Matsumoto, The Washington Post, 28 October 2002). The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from the magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations.
No lab results from analyzing the spores was given, nor does it appear it happened for this paper. Its not a secret lab analysis with limited disclosure. Its a paper about collecting the letters that were contaminated.
He now argues for his opinion or hypothesis by citing the following
Purification of spores may exacerbate their dissemination to some extent by removing adhesive contaminants and maximizing the spore concentration. However, even in a crude state, dried microbial agents have long been considered especially hazardous. Experiments mimicking laboratory accidents have demonstrated that simply breaking vials of lyophilized bacterial cultures creates concentrated and persistent aerosols (4, 8). The potential for propagating disease with crude lyophilized material is illustrated by an outbreak of 24 cases of Venezuelan equine encephalitis throughout three floors of a Moscow virology institute. These infections were caused when vials containing dried infected mouse brain were accidentally broken on a stairwell landing and were spread by air currents and foot traffic (11).
This is his basis for the claim of no weaponization in the Senate anthrax.
He claims the purification in the Senate letters was nothing special. This also is pure assertion.
Particles aerosolized from purified powdered spores consist either of individual spores or aggregates of individual spores. The great majority of particles are generally the smallest particles in the population (2), which are single spores in spore powders. This is reflected in the count distribution, which should have a mode of roughly 1 to 2 µm. This size distribution phenomenon has practical safety implications. In essence, even if most of a spore powder is bound in relatively few large particles, some fraction is composed of particles that are precisely in the size range that is most hazardous for transmission of disease by inhalation. For perspective, a crudely ground preparation consisting of only 1 to 10% loose individual spores by mass would contain 1010 to 1011 loose individual spores in 1 g, considering that moderately purified dried spore preparations contain roughly 1012 spores per g (1).
“moderately purified dried spore preparations contain roughly 1012 spores per g ” i.e. 1 trillion spores per gram. Others describe this as close to the theoretical maximum and difficult to obtain. The former head of the US anthrax weapons program was expecting 1/20th of this purity.
We have the following questions
Could Ivins have prepared 1 trillion spores per gram pure anthrax from liquid anthrax in his lab?
Could he have escaped detection?
Is there a way to tell if the anthrax used in the letters came from anthrax powder prepared at Dugway instead of the Ivins beaker by methods used at Ft. Detrick?
Do they really know the Senate anthrax came from the Ivins flask at Ft. Detrick?
Based on what?
Is anthrax of purity 1 trillion spores per gram pure enough to aerosol as much as the Senate anthrax did without any anti-clumping means used in addition?
Wasn’t this approach what was tried and failed earlier?
==
http://cryptome.org/anthrax-powder.htm
In December 2002, the FBI decided to test whether a high-grade anthrax powder resembling the one mailed to the Senate could be made on a small budget, and without silica. To do this job, the bureau called upon Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground, a desolate Army test range in southwestern Utah. By February 2003, the scientists at Dugway had finished their work. According to military sources with firsthand knowledge of this effort, the resulting powder “flew like penguins.” The experiment had failed. (Penguins can’t fly.)
Military sources say that Dugway washed and centrifuged the material four times to create a pure spore preparation, then dried it by solvent extraction and azeotropic distillation —a process developed by the U.S. Chemical Corps at Fort Detrick in the late 1950s. It is not a simple method, but someone familiar with it might be able to jury-rig a lab to get the job done. As recently as 1996, Bill Patrick says he taught scientists at Dugway how to do this.
The FBI-Dugway effort produced a coarse powder. The spores—some dried under an infrared lamp and the others airdried —stuck together in little cakes, according to military sources, and then were sieved through “a fine steel mesh.” The resulting powder was placed into test tubes. When FBI officials arrived at Dugway to examine the results, a Dugway scientist shook one of the tubes. Unlike the electrostatically charged Senate anthrax spores that floated freely, the Dugway spores fell to the bottom of the test tube and stayed there. “That tells you the particles were too big,” says Spertzel. “It confirms what I’ve been saying all along: To make a good powder, you need an additive.”
==
Mr. Patrick postulated that the concentration of anthrax would be 50 billion spores per gram. ”This assumes a dried powder of moderate ability to generate into an aerosol when the envelope is opened,” he wrote.
In his report, Mr. Patrick said the American program had achieved a concentration of one trillion spores per gram — what scientists today say is near the theoretical limit of how many of the microscopic spheres can be packed into a tiny space.
Today, no terrorist or scientific maverick is known to have published anything that comes close to describing how to make concentrated anthrax powders. Timothy W. Tobiason, a habitué of gun shows who sells a self-published cookbook on how to make germ weapons, including ”mail delivered” anthrax, sketches out only the most rudimentary steps.
Experts judge Mr. Tobiason’s recipes as flawed in spots and at best capable of producing only low-quality anthrax. His book deals mostly with the production of wet anthrax, though it does suggest a way to grind clusters of dried anthrax into microscopic pieces, which can settle into the lungs.
It is unclear if any foreign nation has achieved high anthrax concentrations. The United States suspects that more than a dozen countries are clandestinely studying biological weapons, with anthrax among the top agents.
Ken Alibek, a former top official in the Soviet germ weapons program who is now president of Advanced Biosystems, a consulting company in Manassas, Va., said that it was routinely possible to create dry anthrax that contained 100 billion spores per gram and that, with some effort, 500 billion was possible.
Thus the US and Soviet expert disagree with the FBI article that 1 trillion spores per gram is easy.
“considering that moderately purified dried spore preparations contain roughly 10 to the 12 spores per g” i.e. 1 trillion per gram.
Moderately purified anthrax is 1 trillion per gram according to FBI guy. But according to others, 1 trillion per gram is “what scientists today say is near the theoretical limit of how many of the microscopic spheres can be packed into a tiny space.” So the FBI guy says 1 trillion per gram is moderately purified. The scientists say that 1 trillion per gram is almost theoretical purity, i.e. its not moderately pure, its almost absolutely pure.
This casts doubt on the FBI article from 2006 on the claims it makes of this type. Its really an article about the decontamination process and letter identification process. Its not an article about analyzing the spores. Its really about finding the Leahy letter unopened. The Daschle letter was opened by staff. The Leahy letter was found unopened by the FBI. The Beecher article is not about analyzing spores in the Senate letters or the science of anthrax. The Beecher letter would better be titled, my finding the unopened Leahy letter out of many letters unopened after the Daschle letter was opened and the Senate office building shut down.
However, it appears the FBI took these statements made off hand in the report on the discovery of the unopened Leahy letter as being based on some secret lab experiments on anthrax done by the FBI. There was no such basis for this Beecher paper. It was about his discovery of the unopened Leahy letter.
The title says it all:
Forensic Application of Microbiological Culture Analysis To Identify Mail Intentionally Contaminated with Bacillus anthracis Spores{dagger}
This is a paper about identifying mail contaminated with anthrax and his big career discovery of the Leahy letter unopened. Leahy’s staff didn’t discover the Leahy letter, Beecher and the FBI did.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.