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.
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.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?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.