F.B.I. Presents Anthrax Case, Saying Scientist Acted Alone

We found out in the original written brief that the scientists tested more than 1000 samples from labs around the world. This is presumably an exhaustive sampling of all known samples of Ames strain anthrax.

Problem #1: They could necessarily only test samples of Ames strain anthrax that they already knew existed. What if there are samples of Ames strain anthrax that the scientists did not test because they did not know they existed? Aside from Saddam’s non-existent WMD anthrax research, I could easily imagine any number of other governments (including our own) with highly secretive bioweapons programs hiding this information from the FBI’s anthrax investigators.

All the FBI can say is that the flask in Ivins’ possession is one possible source. They can’t prove that it is the only source.

Problem #2: To allay these concerns, the FBI can claim that it is likely that it is the source since, out of 1000 samples tested, all of the ones that matched could be traced to Ivins’ flask.

What?! More than one sample matched?! Yes – a total of 8 samples matched. “B-but, b-but, they could all be traced to Ivins,” stutters the FBI. We already know that Ivins was not the only person with access to “his” flask. But now we learn that, in addition to the 100 other people who had access to Ivins’ flask, there are at least 7 other people (and probably many, many more) who had access to anthrax that is biologically identical to the mailed anthrax. These 7 other samples were not located at AMRIID.

So, although we were initially told by the FBI-parroting media that sophisticated scientific techniques could uniquely identify Ivins’ flask as the smoking gun, we learn that even this flimsy piece of evidence isn’t true: there are 8 known smoking guns and a theoretically infinite number of unknown smoking guns.

Kathryn Muratore is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at American University. She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley.

source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/muratore9.html

I would only note that when the government announced that that they had limited the list from 16 labs to 4 labs, they noted that there were some samples abroad that they could not access.

Now as to whether any of these samples, if Ames, were downstream from Ivins flask, I don’t know.

I think we can expect that the disclosure relating to the 8 isolates and 100 KNOWN individuals will be very fuzzy (but all in the US). The ratio isotopes reportedly indicate that the anthrax was grown in the northeastern United States.

If they list 100 people by name, I expect their case would melt like a popiscle on the sidewalk in July. Instead, it might be very broad and use numbers — like #1 - 100.

Government testing by a military lab (air force) shows that the silicon spike results from the use of siliconizing solution used in growing the bacteria, which then can be removed from the surface by repeated centrifugation. No measurable silicon was found in the controls. Use of the siliconizing solution leads to greater concentration by dampening the vanderwaals forces according to the DARPA-funded patent which was confidential as of 9/11. When granted, the correspondence came to Ali Al-Timimi’s maildrop. He shared the maildrop with the leading anthrax scientist and former deputy USAMRIID. Ivins did not have access to the biochemistry information and the government has no theory on what might have led to a “silicon signature” in aerosolized anthrax made by him. Their data, moreover, does not support a theory of “natural variability.” It is a waste of time to use the word “weaponized” (undefined) in the debate. Or to debate whether silicon dioxide or a siliconizing solution is a sophisticated additive. The relevant scientific inquiry is whether it leads to the silicon signature and whether the silicon signature appears without it. The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second question is no. Dr. Michael’s data merely supports this conclusion. He offers no data that undermines it. His lab has no knowledge of or experiencing with biological processes and did not make the relevant examination that would address this. In making this argument, I am relying on the peer reviewed articles recently published by the air force lab, SEMS provided me by the lab, and the argument made by the head of the lab to me over the past months in correspondence. I myself have no scientific training and defer to the relevant experts who have done the relevant tests and who have the relevant data.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2008-08-24-fbi-anthrax-science_N.htm?csp=34

FBI explains the science behind the anthrax investigation (Aug 24 USA Today)

http://www.lcsun-news.com/news/ci_10297453

Sandia scientists help solve anthrax case

....Within a month of getting their first anthrax samples, Michael and his colleagues were able to answer the question: The sample did not appear to be “weaponized” anthrax — anthrax converted in a weapons research lab to enhance its lethality...

The FBI used radiation to ensure the spores were no longer dangerous, then sent a batch to Sandia to analyze.

Under Sandia’s high-powered microscopes, Michael and Sandia colleague Paul Kotula quickly determined the initial reports were wrong. The earlier identification of a coating had been a mistake, they concluded.

“Early on we knew it wasn’t weaponized,” Michael said.

The finding was not made public, and Michael said he watched in the intervening years as the claim the anthrax was weaponized continued to linger in public discussion of the case.

Sandia’s initial analysis also concluded the spores bore the same chemical fingerprints, suggesting they had come from the same place.

But that was only the beginning.

The FBI eventually sent about 200 anthrax samples to Sandia for analysis as they pursued new leads in the investigation.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/21/america/anthrax.php

Working secretly, scientists cracked the anthrax poisoning case (Aug 21)

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080821/full/4541039a.html?s=news_rss

Too close for comfort

Nancy Haigwood, director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, describes her encounters with anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/opinion/display_columnist.htm?StoryID=79410

If not Ivins ... (good roundup, brings up Batelle)

Dear cynwoody,

You are soooooo wrong!

The spores came from other spores that were like them. They were not magically dreamed up by Ivins.

Original collection of genotype 62 spores was in 1981 in southern Texas under a windmill from a Beefmaster heifer that died of anthrax. The sample was collected by a vet named Whitford. He sent them to the diagnostic lab at College Station Texas for identification. College Station then sent them to Iowa State University, probably their diagnostic lab but could have been the vet school there. Everyone knew that ISU had a historically collection of anthrax.

From there the ISU folks sent it to Ft. Detrick to a Dr. Knudson who had requested that any particularly virulent samples be forwarded to him. They still have the wrapper and it shows an Ames, Iowa postmark.

There was, in 1981 and through the mid 1990’s a professor named Cheville. He worked part time in the diagnostic lab and part time in the vet school. Did he see to it that the sample was added to the historical collection?

There was a building north of campus with a bio-level three set of air cleaners on the NW quadrant. That was the USDA testing facility. They studied anthrax and mastitis in that building.

The vet school was a huge set of buildings along I-80. Lots of different labs in there. The historically collection was in the vet school and the working collection was at the USDA facility.

I was a grad student at Iowa State from Jan 1989 to April 1991. On November 29, 1990, the woman who sat across from me in class received a package with her address, but the name of a Pakistani from Faisalabad in her mailbox. Well she opened it before she realized it was not intended for her.

All this made her late to class and she made a big presentation of why she was late.

Within 48 hours both she and her husband had pimple like sores, each had one, that DID NOT HURT.....SHE SAID....IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I LOOK AT IT.

The next Monday the physician at the student health center told her it was a spider or bug bite.

I viewed her sore on Thursday.....exactly one week after she opened the package. And by the way, she took the package to the Pakistani and that made her even later to class. He told her he was glad to get it and was expecting it.

Then on December 14, while sitting in the waiting room, (I was sick too but with a bad root canal) I saw the husbands sore. Same sore. Same drip, drip, drip that Judith Miller states the mailed anthrax caused the postal workers.

Yes, I have been interviewed. They are ignoring my testimony just like they are ignoring the witnesses who saw rockets going up to TWA 800.

Fellow Freepers. I am going to get this to someone who can write it all down. Only one of the three Postal Inspectors wanted to believe me. But they were under tremendous pressure to find someone to hang this on. Five days after the first guy died, Iowa State University destroyed this historical collection and all the records of who had access.

Zac and Pook may have something there. But the genetic drift of anthrax is dreadfully slow. You can ask Henry Niman about the numbers involved, but from my work with B. larvae, it is not out of the question at all that the mailed anthrax was stolen from ISU and replicated shortly before the mailings.

The husband of the girl across the table had the very same dripping sore that Margano had. And anthrax....prior to 9-11...was considered to be a dry lesion.

Why did ISU destroy all their samples? No one else made an open destruction charade.

Here is what I think. On the internet on the paraformaldehyde page for anthrax clean up, is a list of those institutions that had applied for a Section 18 use.

You don't get a Section 18 unless you really have to because it is a dreadful mess of paperwork and not to mention a trail. So why are there only 4 institutions that had a Section 18 ( for non labeled use). USAMRIID, Plum Island, some chicken processing place in ARK....ask WJC/HRC...and Iowa State.

So I called the EPA and I said....what was the causal organism that this was to be used on....Answer : A dreaded disease of both livestock and man. Signed by a lawyer for the USDA that also works at Johns Hopkins. I started a FOIA, but they gave me the info anyway.

The original date of the Section 18 is April 15, 1992 and it was in place on 9-11-01. This needs to be renewed every 3 years. What in the H....are they cleaning up?

Now...most labs if they spill some anthrax, will go to the chemical closet and just get some paraformaldehyde and put it in an electric skillet and tent off the area and burn it and...of course it does not work as good as one would hope, but the next step up is chlorine gas where everyone for a good distance needs to be evacuated. Paraf....can be used and then the building or room reoccupied shortly.

So why did they leave a trail and why April 15, 1992?

This is where we need Mark Furhman.

I worked in a dairy foods processing lab for 5 years. I was the low person on the totem pole. I got to do all the shitty jobs. One of the worse is the paperwork for certification of the lab.

Every lab, at least in the US, needs to be certified by some licensing authority. Either the state of the Feds every six months. The rule of what we had at the dairy foods lab was that you could fail two tests out of 5 but you could not fail two consecutive tests. Now failing is failing on any part and there are many parts.

One of the most important is contamination. If you are a diagnostic lab and you are diagnosing things and your lab is contaminated with anthrax....you will lose your certification. Our dairy foods lab was determining if the milk we received was clean or dirty, so we had to have a clean lab...so too with the diagnosis.

This package that was received by the woman who sat across the table from me was November 29, 1990. So let's assume that the lab was clean up to that date. Some time in the previous 6 months they had been tested.

So lets work backwards from April 15, 1992. Let's say that was the date that they were going to lose their certification for failing two previous tests. The previous tests would have been October 15, 1991 and April 15, 1991 that would have been failures. The previous test to that, October 15, 1990 would have been a passed test.

Long post, will break into two parts.

Part Two.

In our dairy lab, we would have the option of putting a plan into place to save the certification.

The state was not interested in putting us out of business, just keeping us scientifically correct.

So too with the lab at ISU. And they would not have filed for the use of the paraformaldehyde until the last minute. It took the folks at the EPA until June 15, 1992 to grant the Section 18 for ISU. But as long as they had that Section 18 in place, they could be in violation of the contamination of anthrax.

So I asked the EPA...just how much did they use? This stuff is measured in grams.....and they had used 110 pounds. Whoooooaaaaaa.

So what I am saying is that ISU knew they had a problem in 1992, or as early as 1991, but they may have never known who or where or how.

The package was mailed to the Pakistani, the Post Office had carried it out of the building. How ironic. Back then, you could not go in the library or walk anywhere on campus without thinking you were in the Middle East or Indonesia. The University had become to rely on the flow of tuition from out of the country.

Now ironically, the Pak with the address similar to the woman's never graduated. Highly unusual. Did he die? Did he take the package and go home?

Who lifted it? While everyone else was searching for the Beltway snipers, I had a 22,000 name phone book I was going through name by name. I knew it was in the and I thought I could find it. The one with the transposed address was from Faisalabad. Low and behold there was another Pak, also from Faisalabad, in the vet school majoring in Veterinary Microbiology. I wonder if he had a habit of transposing numbers. The woman lived at 161....the Pak lived at 116.

This article outlines why the FBI believes the attack anthrax came from RMR-1029. It says:

The scientists concluded that spores used in the mailings were not weaponized or coated with a special substance to make them more easily inhaled. The germs were traced back to a single flask at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), which exhibited four significant mutations that amounted to a genetic fingerprint.
Among the most persuasive pieces of evidence was the genetic analysis that the FBI says conclusively linked the letters to spores in Ivins's lab. Ivins possessed a flask of anthrax bacteria unlike any other -- a blend of spores from dozens of batches made in Army labs at Fort Detrick and at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Ivins's concoction -- labeled RMR-1029 -- was a mix of normal anthrax cells and four mutated varieties, or genetic oddballs.
The bacteria used in the attacks contained precisely the same mix of normal and mutated cells, the officials said. Of more than 1,000 samples of anthrax bacteria collected by the FBI in the years after the attacks, only eight contained the same four genetic mutants. All eight could be directly traced to the flask in Ivins's lab, the officials said.
While the FBI has acknowledged that more than 100 people could have had either access to Ivins's flask or samples of material from it, investigators say they eliminated all others as suspects.
Bureau scientists also found that Ivins had access to all the tools and skills needed to make the fine powder mailed to Senate offices in September 2001. Despite initial suspicions that the powder was weaponized, the process used to make the powder was relatively simple. FBI scientists easily reproduced it with gear that Ivins regularly used.

So, the question is, With all this Ame strain bacteria existing in those various labs, how likely is it that the ISU anthrax would turn out to contain those same four mutants?

Four markers on one strain or four distinct other types?

It is much more likely that there were two types, normal genotype 62 and the mutant with the fluted edges. Ivins could have grown some out and then cherry picked one or the other to send in as his first sample. Especially if they can be distinguished morphologically on a streak plate.

If there were four markers on one genetic mutant, which I think is the case, but not so stated in your post, it could have some via the 1990 package. If there are 5 different kinds then not.

In any case, one needs to eliminate ISU as the source before any conclusion can be made.

If you have 13 lime green Chevy sedans and one of them robs a drive through bank, leaving some lime green Chevy paint on the side of the bank, and you can find only 12 that are unmarked, and the owner of the 13th one takes it to the crusher the next day......you draw your own conclusions.

I'm sticking to my guns and they are loaded.

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