Posted on 09/28/2006 5:33:03 PM PDT by Shermy
WASHINGTON - The FBI denied Thursday that it ever overestimated the potency of the anthrax spores used in mailings that killed five people in 2001.
The bureau also rejected a request for a classified briefing on the case from Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. Citing media reports, Holt said Wednesday that the FBI should have determined in days, not years, that the anthrax was less sophisticated than initially believed.
Shortly after the attacks, media reports said the spores contained additives and had been subjected to sophisticated milling — both techniques used in anthrax-based weapons — to make them more lethal. Earlier this month, there were media reports that the FBI belatedly learned that those techniques were not used and the anthrax was not enhanced.
Bureau officials say the early reports of weaponized anthrax were misconceptions, and the more recent reports misunderstood how early the FBI was able to accurately analyze the spores.
"The FBI and its partners in this investigation have never been under any misconceptions about the character of the anthrax used in the attacks," Assistant FBI Director Eleni P. Kalisch wrote Holt on Thursday. "On the contrary, since the earliest months of this investigation, we have consulted with the world's foremost scientific experts on anthrax and relevant bio-forensic sciences, both inside and outside the FBI. While there may have been erroneous media reports about the character of the 2001 anthrax, the FBI's investigation has never been guided by such reports."
In a letter Wednesday to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Holt had requested a classified briefing on the investigation.
Kalisch rejected that request on two grounds:
Although Holt and other members of Congress got updates and briefings in 2002 and 2003, Kalisch said the FBI and Justice Department decided to stop briefing members of Congress after sensitive investigative information was reported in the media citing congressional sources.
Because this is a criminal investigation rather than an intelligence activity, a briefing of the House Intelligence Committee, of which Holt is a member, would be inappropriate, Kalisch wrote.
In an interview, Holt responded, "The inference that any member of the intelligence committee was the source of previous leaks is outrageous, irresponsible and without foundation."
The case "clearly falls within the purview of the intelligence committee," Holt added. "Our job is to see that the government functions well and in the anthrax investigation our government has not functioned well."
In 2001, anthrax contamination was found in mail facilities in and near Holt's central New Jersey district and in his office on Capitol Hill.
Holt had written Mueller that the FBI's delay in determining what kind of anthrax was used meant that "resources were diverted and countless agents wasted their time investigating a small pool of suspects, instead of the broader search we now know was needed."
The FBI has conducted 9,100 interviews and issued 6,000 subpoenas in the case.
Holt asked Mueller to have Douglas Beecher, a scientist in the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit, testify before the House Intelligence Committee.
In April, Beecher wrote an article published in a scientific journal in August saying there was "a widely circulated misconception" that the anthrax spores were made using additives and sophisticated engineering akin to military weapons production.
The anthrax attacks, in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, killed five people across the country and sickened 17. There were five confirmed anthrax infections and two suspected cases in New Jersey but no fatalities.
>>> In an interview, Holt responded, "The inference that any member of the intelligence committee was the source of previous leaks is outrageous, irresponsible and without foundation." <<<<
Yeah. Sure. The guy's comment is laughable.
Thanks for the ping... bflr!
"Bureau officials say the early reports of weaponized anthrax were misconceptions, and the more recent reports misunderstood how early the FBI was able to accurately analyze the spores."
This statement that they knew all about the nature of the powder almost right from the beginning doesn't exactly add up. Michael Mason admitted 2 years AFTER the attacks that they had failed to reproduce the spores.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-29-anthrax_x.htm
FBI fails to re-create anthrax production
By Toni Locy, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Two years after the nation's deadly anthrax attacks, the FBI still has not been able to re-create the process the killer used to produce the substance sent through the U.S. mail, a top FBI official said Monday.
IMO not a good place to start in this matter.
I beg to differ. Did you read the language they used?
This is an FBI person writing the paper. He would have had to agree with all the language in it.
What would the theft of anthrax look like....how would you tell that there had been something going on??
IMO one would look for stray cases...especially downwind. I'd look for it in animals and on people who had no known contact.
The good thing is that we can identify the strain. That will tell all.
I know plenty of people ~ hundreds in fact ~ who were on Cipro for 6 months because of the attack.
The South Florida facilities showed only "trace amounts", and that was because the envelopes had just been freshly sealed and the anthrax had not yet migrated through the pores in the paper.
pingin myself
The assistant director appears to be conveniently not referencing any of this - almost like it doesn't exist.
How was AFIP a partner of the FBI? Everything seems to indicate that the initial investigation of the anthrax powder was handled exclusively by USAMRIID with a little help from AFIP. (USAMRIID didn't have an energy dispsersive X-ray spectrometer (EDX), so they had to use the one at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). Tom Geisbert from USAMRIID just spent one morning at AFIP, the morning of October 25, 2001.)
In Chapter 15 of my book I describe how the military made a series of silly mistakes, some of which misled some people into thinking there were additives in the Daschle anthrax.
1 - USAMRIID's John Ezzell put the edge of the Daschle envelope into a groove in the bottom of the glove box to stand it up so he could photograph it, and he failed to realize there was bleach still in the groove from when he cleaned the glove box. As a result, the Daschle envelope has a wet stain at the bottom, and the letter has a brown stain along a fold.
2 - USAMRIID's Tom Geisbert used a Transmission Electron Microscope to examine spores which had been soaking in HazMat chemicals and then killed with other chemicals. When Geisbert saw "goop" oozing out of the spores under high-magnification, he thought it was an additive put INTO the spores by the person who made them. In reality, it was just the chemicals Geisbert and HazMat had soaked into the spores. Geisbert made that mistake on October 16, 2001.
Geisbert and others at USAMRIID still hadn't realized they made that really silly mistake when USAMRIID's Peter Jahrling briefed people at a meeting at the White House on October 24, 2001. Jahrling passed around pictures of the "goop" oozing out of the spores. Information was leaked to the media, and the next day The New York Times was writing about an "additive" in the spores and scientists were speculating about what it meant. (The blind leading the blind.)
At that White House meeting, the FBI asked if there was any kind of chemical "signature" in the anthrax which could be used to determine where it came from. To me, that indicates that the FBI still didn't have any access to the anthrax. It also indicates that for over a week the scientists at USAMRIID didn't think to check on what chemicals might be in the anthrax.
The next day, October 25, 2001, Geisbert took a DRY sample of anthrax (a sample which had been killed with radiation instead of chemicals) to AFIP, and they checked it with the EDX. They found two atomic elements which didn't belong in anthrax: silicon and oxygen.
Speculation began immediately that the silicon and oxygen was silica. It may have been some form of glass, or it may have been silicone or some other compound of silicon and oxygen, but the GENERAL ASSUMPTION was that it was silica.
The problem was: No one SAW any additives in the anthrax. They'd examined it under a TEM and SEM and there were no additives visible (except for the "goop" which had oozed out). How could there be silica in the anthrax if no one could see any silica particles? That was the big mystery.
But the media doesn't like a mystery. When they learned that there was silica in the anthrax, they ran with it. And soon nearly everyone was talking about additives in the anthrax. No one mentioned that NO ONE ACTUALLY SAW ANY ADDITIVES. It was all just ASSUMPTIONS.
It wasn't until sometime in November that the FBI began to get information about "lab contamination" and how spores can somehow pick up silicon from lab equipment. Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard found two scientific articles from 1980 which talked about such contamination.
That started the ball rolling on formalizing the new science of microbial forensics. The lab contamination would have to be from THE CULPRIT'S LAB. It could help identify exactly which lab made the spores!
The news stories about additives in the anthrax were believed by some conspiracy theorists who felt that meant the anthrax was from some secret and ILLEGAL U.S. government bioweapons program. Somehow, they focused on Dr. Steven Hatfill as being the person most likely to have sent the letters. They intially believed he as a CIA agent or rogue agent doing the bidding of the Bush administration to destroy the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC) which was trying to require inspections of bioweapons labs, which the Bush administration totally opposed.
There is a lot more to this than meets the eye. It's easy to just conjure up a conspiracy theory and blame the FBI for everything. But, when you look at the FACTS, the FBI seems to have done a pretty good job -- until they were PRESSURED into publicly investigating Dr. Hatfill.
There's a good possiblity that a lawsuit Dr. Hatfill filed against one of the conspiracy theorists will be settled very soon -- maybe even this week or next. Let's hope that when it happens, there will be some news stories which will clarify just how Dr. Hatfill became "a person of interest."
Ed
I think I'll wait until AFIP responds (if they do). You seem to believe what you want to believe when the FBI make a talking point without evidence. These were the people that brought us Richard Jewel, Wen Ho Lee and Steven Hatfill. These were the same people that claimed a shirt box with a hole in one end (which was probably a kid's turtle trap) was used to fill envelopes with anthrax under water. Did you believe that?
Claims like this require evidence - obviously AFIP wrote detailed lab reports for the FBI. It would be interesting to see these reports and judge for ourselves why AFIP concluded silica was an additive.
So where is this place???
It's evidently a lab somewhere in Central New Jersey. It could be a hospital lab, a professional lab or some well-equipped college microbiology lab.
Working with dangerous pathogens is commonly done in hospital labs, and it is often done in the other types of labs, too.
Scientist working in such labs KNOW how to protect themselves from dangerous pathogens. And they KNOW how to clean up after themselves.
Years ago, I wrote on my web site that the culprit almost certainly used a professional glove box (a.k.a. biosafety cabinet) to put the anthrax in the envelopes. He probably then put the sealed envelopes into a Baggie and sealed the Baggie. He then almost certainly disinfected the interior of the glove box AND the exterior of the Baggie before opening the glove box to remove the Baggie.
He then transported the Baggie and the letters to a mailbox in or near Princeton, New Jersey. I doubt he travelled more than 50 miles, since it would be dangerous for him to be seen outside of his normal area at that critical time, plus he could be missed in his normal area if he was gone for too long a time.
At the mailbox, he unzipped the Baggie, dumped in the envelopes, and left - probably throwing the empty Baggie in some dumpster far away from the scene.
Anyone who believes that the letters were then somehow teleported to Florida or somehow sat around for weeks or months before they were postmarked is just twisting reality to fit some screwball theory.
Don't make things any more complicated than they have to be.
When the first mailing had almost no effect, the culprit then made a more dangerous batch of anthrax and repeated the same process over again (most likely using a different mailbox in the same general area, most likely the mail box directly across from Princeton University).
That's what the FACTS seem to indicate. But I can't prevent people from making up theories which aren't based on facts.
Ed
That is total baloney. The FBI made no such claim. As usual, you are twisting facts to fit your beliefs. That pond in Maryland was drained because the FBI had to prove there was nothing in it. They didn't expect to find anything, and they didn't find anything. But because some conspiracy theorist overheard Dr. Hatfill at a cocktail party talking about how he would have gotten rid of evidence, the FBI had to drain that pond or they would have been accused of "not being thorough" in their investigation of Dr. Hatfill.
...obviously AFIP wrote detailed lab reports for the FBI. It would be interesting to see these reports and judge for ourselves why AFIP concluded silica was an additive.
I seriously doubt that such a report will be made public before it is required in a trial. But, that doesn't mean that AFIP can't publicly explain how they came to their "conclusions" or ASSUMPTIONS.
If AFIP says they were just making ASSUMPTIONS, will you believe it, or will you claim that they were forced to make a false statement?
Ed
That is total baloney. The FBI made no such claim.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129647
Over the Christmas holiday, FBI divers recovered what they think was a piece of the makeshift equipment used to load the anthrax, a plastic sweater box with two hand-sized holes cut in it, sources said.
"That is total baloney. The FBI made no such claim."
I guess this must mean the FBI made no such claim at all - it was all just a misunderstanding. It was the MEDIA that made all the claims - it was the MEDIA that made up the story about the underwater box, not the FBI, right?
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/reignitesanthrax.html
New Find Reignites Anthrax Probe
Evidence From Pond May Indicate Killer's Method
By Marilyn W. Thompson, Washington Post Staff Writer
The FBI has developed a new theory on a central mystery of the 2001 anthrax attacks after finding evidence in a Frederick, Md., pond that may suggest how an ingenious criminal could have packed deadly anthrax spores into envelopes without killing or sickening himself, according to sources close to the investigation.
A piece of equipment and other evidence recovered this winter from ice-covered ponds in Frederick Municipal Forest have reinvigorated the 18-month-old case, leading officials to explore a novel theory with shades of science fiction. Some involved in the case believe that the killer may have waded into shallow water to delicately manipulate anthrax bacteria into envelopes, working within a partly submerged airtight chamber. When finished, the killer could have easily hidden the evidence by simply dumping contaminated equipment and clothing into the pond.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129647
Isn't this the same ABC news which said there was bentonite in the spores? Do you believe that nonsense, too? It appears to have been TOTALLY MADE UP. And in your cited article they are reporting about UNNAMED sources.
"Law enforcement sources said FBI officials knew the laborious undertaking was a long shot but, after much internal debate, decided to proceed rather than be second-guessed as to whether they were being thorough enough."
Source: www.anthraxinvestigation.com/wp030731.html
Ed
This is such a STUPID idea that it's difficult to believe that ANYONE would believe such nonsense. But Marilyn Thompson was listening to the conspiracy theorists, so she evidently believed it. (How could anyone not realize how much effort would be required to push an air-filled box underwater. It's just plain STUPID.)
All you are proving is that the media was printing a LOT of absolute nonsense. They have built a WALL OF NONSENSE around the actual facts of the case.
Hopefully, some of that wall is going to start falling down as facts become known. Beecher's article put a nasty dent in that wall.
Ed
So the media made all of the theories up about the underwater glove box themselves, right? The FBI did not give Marilyn any of these talking points, she fabricated it all herself, right?
Just like the media made up the stories about silica additives? They didn't get this information from Major General Parker, head of USAMRID, or Whitehouse spokesman Ari Fleischer. They just fabricated everything about silica on their own, just like Assistant FBI Director Eleni P. Kalisch said, right? It was the MEDIA that made this up, it certainly wasn't anyone in the Federal government that gave them this information.
I misspoke. Actually, facts aren't becoming known. They've been "known" for years. They were just hidden behind a wall of nonsense.
Now it appears that some of the facts are going to be RESTATED and CLARIFIED via scientific reports and the Hatfill lawsuits.
Hopefully, that will be enough to demolish the wall of nonsense created by the media and the conspiracy theorists.
Ed
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