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I bring it up because the weaponization method of the spores appears to have Soviet Union written all over it.

In 1998 Ken Alibek was interviewed by Richard Preston for an article titled "The Bioweaponeers" published in the New Yorker[http://web.elastic.org/~fche/mirrors/cryptome.org/bioweap.htm]. In this interview Alibek disclosed details of a new advancement in Soviet dry powder anthrax technology. Preston wrote "The Alibekov anthrax became fully operational in 1989. It is an amber-gray powder, finer than bath talc, with smooth, creamy particles that tend to fly apart and vanish in the air, becoming invisible and drifting for miles. The Alibekov anthrax is four times more efficient than the standard product."

Alibek also disclosed to Preston that the Alibekov anthrax contained two additives. Preston wrote "The Alibekov anthrax is simple, and the formula is somewhat surprising, not quite what you'd expect. Two unrelated materials are mixed with pure powdered anthrax spores. It took a lot of research and testing to get the trick right, and Alibek must have driven his research group hard and skillfully to arrive at it."

Although Alibek revealed to Preston the identities of the two materials, Preston did not publish them. However, in the same year, Alibek was also interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for a documentary titled "Red Lies" [http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/bioweapons/redlies.html]. This documentary outlined the Soviet's continued development of advanced anthrax dry powder technology even after the Sverdlovsk accident killed up to one hundred people. The "Red Lies" documentary did provide details of the additives, stating "In the years since the Sverdlovsk accident, Alibek and a research team had taken the Soviet military's anthrax and made it even more deadly. He developed a process to take ground up anthrax spores and coat each particle in plastic and resin. It kept the anthrax aloft four times longer, increasing its ability to infect people."

These details have to be compared to descriptions of the 2001 senate anthrax that were leaked to the media in the period 2002-2003. The first set of leaks were made to Newsweek [ http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/sophisticatedstrainanthrax.html] , CNN [ http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/unusualcoating.html] and the Washigton Post[ http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/anthraxpowdernotroutine.html]in April 2002. Newsweek wrote "The Leahy anthrax -- mailed in an envelope that was recovered unopened from a Washington post office last November -- also was coated with a chemical compound unknown to experts who have worked in the field for years; the coating matches no known anthrax samples ever recovered from biological-weapons producers anywhere in the world, including Iraq and the former Soviet Union. The combination of the intense milling of the bacteria and the unusual coating produced an anthrax powder so fine and fluffy that individually coated anthrax spores were found in the Leahy envelope, something that U.S. bioweapons experts had never seen."

The second set of leaks were made to the Washington Post [ http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/fbisecretlyrecreate.html] in November 2002 who wrote "Investigators and experts have said the spores in the Daschle and Leahy letters were uniformly between 1 and 3 microns in size, and were coated with fine particles of frothy silica glass." In November 2003 Science Magazine [ http://www.angelfire.com/blog/sophie_d2/Anthrax_Science.pdf] reported that in addition to silica the senate anthrax contained "polymerized glass" and its purpose was to chemically bind the silica to the surface of the spores. Some speculate that the similarities between the descriptions of the Alibekov anthrax and the senate anthrax demonstrate a link to technology secretly developed in the Soviet Union in the late 1980's. Now, if the Soviets also got the Ames strain from a mole at Detrick they have all the elements necessary to make the 2001 anthrax.