Posted on 10/13/2006 3:46:10 PM PDT by Shermy
Nobody has been arrested for the anthrax mailings of 2001, but many people have paid for the crime.
Five died and at least 17 others got sick.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been frustrated. Careers have crumbled. Taxpayers have gotten socked for billions of dollars to shore up bioterror defenses that some experts say still fall short.
Now, an analysis from the FBI itself, buried in a microbiology journal, is raising more questions about the investigation.
In the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI scientist Douglas Beecher sought to set the record straight. Anthrax spores mailed to politicians and journalists in September and October 2001, Beecher wrote, were not prepared using advanced techniques and additives to make them more lethal, contrary to "a widely circulated misconception."
The notion the anthrax spores were "weaponized" had fueled conjecture that only a government insider could have carried out the operation.
Beecher's article suggested a much wider universe of potential suspects -- who showed they could kill without highly refined spores.
"A clever high school student" could make such a preparation, according to Ronald Atlas, former president of the American Society for Microbiology and co-director of the Center for Health Hazards Preparedness at the University of Louisville.
The Beecher paper has left Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., wondering if the killings, which further shook a nation already reeling from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, will ever be solved. He blames the FBI for "botching" the case.
Agents spun their wheels chasing a small circle of weapons experts, Holt said.
In the anthrax attacks, Steven Hatfill, a virologist who had worked for the government, landed in the cross-hairs. Labeled a "person of interest" by officials but never charged, the scientist claims the public probe has made him unemployable. He is suing the government and media outlets.
Kenneth Berry's career also unraveled after the FBI searched a Dover Township, N.J., summer home he was visiting in 2004. Berry was a doctor from upstate New York who started an organization for training emergency workers to deal with biochemical attacks. He never was charged, either.
Holt also chides authorities for taking nearly a year to discover anthrax traces in a mailbox near Princeton University. That mailbox, where letters laced with anthrax bacteria may have begun their journey in 2001, is on a route that feeds the Hamilton Township postal center where anthrax letters were processed.
In a letter to Holt, FBI Assistant Director Eleni Kalisch declined to give a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. Kalisch claimed sensitive information was leaked from classified briefings more than three years ago, and described the anthrax case as a criminal matter not subject to the committee's oversight.
Some cases take time to crack, Kalisch wrote. Seventeen FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors remain on the "Amerithrax" beat. The FBI said the anthrax investigation has spanned six continents and generated more than 9,100 interviews, 67 searches and 6,000 subpoenas.
Early on, the FBI hoped that analysis of the spores would point to the lab that prepared them. But Beecher's article underscores difficulties of such microscopic sleuthing. Particle sizes, for instance, may not yield as many clues as some expected.
Over time, after being handled and exposed to different conditions, particles "may not resemble the initial product," Beecher wrote.
Yet the FBI is confident, and has forged scientific ties and advances to help prevent future biological attacks, said Joseph Persichini Jr., acting assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, on the FBI's Web site.
Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist, still thinks the anthrax attacks were an inside job because they used a virulent form of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis, which only a few biodefense- or intelligence-related labs were thought to possess.
"Whoever did it is an insider," said Ayaad Assaad, a toxicologist with the Environmental Protection Agency, who formerly worked at an Army biodefense center at Fort Detrick, Md. "It started with anthrax. Now it's ricin, and God knows what's coming."
Ed Lake has tracked the case closely, self-publishing a book, "Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks, The First Three Years" and moderating a Web site. Lake is convinced the FBI knows the perpetrator but lacks evidence to prosecute. He believes the killer is a scientist from central New Jersey who wanted America to gird for an al-Qaida bioterror attack in the wake of Sept. 11.
"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake, referring to hand-printed letters, bearing New Jersey postmarks, sent to NBC and the New York Post.
Leon Harris retired last year from the Hamilton Township postal center. He too suspects the bad guys are home-grown and will be caught.
"I don't care if it takes 10 years," the Air Force veteran said. "They're going to find them."
Ernesto Blanco agreed. He survived inhalational anthrax that killed his friend Bob Stevens, a colleague at a tabloid in Florida, five years ago this month. Blanco, now 79, returned to his mailroom job at American Media Inc. in 2002.
"I am positive they will catch them," Blanco said. "I have faith in what they are doing."
TIMELINE
Key dates in the 5-year-old investigation of the anthrax attacks:
2001:
Sept. 18: Postal facility in Hamilton Township, N.J., processes anthrax-laced letters to NBC News in New York and the New York Post.
Oct. 5: Bob Stevens, photo editor at Florida tabloid the Sun dies from inhalational anthrax.
Oct. 9: Hamilton Township facility processes anthrax letters to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Patrick Leahy. Both letters have return address of fictitious "Greendale School" in Franklin Park, N.J.
Oct. 16: U.S. Senate closes; employees are tested for exposure to anthrax microbes.
Oct. 17: The House shuts down.
Oct. 18: Hamilton Township facility is closed.
Oct. 21: Washington postal worker Thomas Morris Jr. dies from anthrax.
Oct. 22: Washington postal worker Joseph Curseen dies from anthrax.
Oct. 31: Kathy Nguyen, who worked in a New York City hospital supply room, dies from anthrax.
Nov. 21: Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Conn., dies from anthrax. Authorities suspect her mail was contaminated by other mail.
[snip - more at link]
"appear to have been connections"? What may appear to be a "connection" may not actually be a connection if the facts are examined.
There is NO proven connection between the anthrax attacks and Muslim terrorists. "The Florida anthrax attack" was from "the New Jersey mailings". One of the letters sent from the Trenton, NJ, area was sent to Florida.
Ed
Here's a link to all the details about Dr. Berry: www.anthraxinvestigation.com/DrBerry.html
Ed
Just write up a list of the 50 anthrax experts within the US government (contractors included too of course)...and thats the inside group you have to look at.
"So he sent a warning to the media, saying this is next, there's a biological attack coming next, and be prepared: Take penicillin," said Lake..."
Yes, I know. This article is taken from a news service. The actual article was printed in the Newark New Jersey Star-Ledger on October 9.
Ed
This topic brings back a freeper post durring the anthrax incident after 9-11. I can't remember the freeper's name, but I won't forget this "theory" on the topic.
His(or her)post came up with this possible answer:
What if the anthrax letters were actually a not-so-subtle threat by Saddam after 9-11??
The reasons for the "mini" anthrax attack, was to threaten the Bush administration if we were going to invade Iraq, because of the tie-ins with Al-Queda and Saddam's BIG role in training them and letting them use Iraq as a "terrorist basic training site" to attack the US.
Saddam was playing the Oil-For-Food (OFF) thing, and had no way to retaliate against the US in any open attack that could be traced back to him.
Therefore, the Anthrax was the way to go. The US was still smarting from 9-11, had the "Gorelick Wall" still in place,Homeland Security was in BARELY underway, and we didn't have ANY idea if a large scale attack was already set to go here with nothing but a "GO" signal to set it off.
If you were the Bush administration at that time, how would you respond to a threat like that?? The airlines were all going broke because of so many people afraid to fly after the 9-11 attacks. Can you imagine a country wide coordinated anthrax attack, with the USPS as the main vehicle, and major ventalation systems in some of the larger buildings, and then in say the major public transportation systems ALL AT THE SAME TIME??
The Bush administration could have been "blackmailed" very easily by Saddam and Al-Queda, by saying they would do a full blown attack if Bush tried to pin the first attack on him. The attack would have been very hard to prove and connect it on Saddam and Al-Queda in the UN arena, due to the state of our intellegence apparatus at that time, and all the UN member countries involved in it, who could have also been "blackmailed" by Saddam and Al-Queda by threatening to expose them in the scandal if they didn't keep obstructing the US from gathering international support for the US and coalition almost certain retaliatory invasion because of the 9-11 and anthrax attacks.
The Bush adminisration could also NOT GO PUBLIC with this information. It would have devestated the US economy, not to mention the mass panic and fear. No US mail delivery for an extended period of time,due to the leaking of information like that is almost unimagionable. The incubation period alone is such an effective weapon, that by the time we realized that a wide spread attack had taken place,.....well let's just say it would be a major "problem".
And what if this "theory" really was true???
I would have to consider a major anthrax attack on the US in the WMD catagory. Why haven't we found out who did it yet?? IIRC, the "type" of anthrax used was only available to approximately four different locations in the world, with one of the four being in Iraq.
Can you imagine being President Bush, knowing what he knew, but not being able to go public with it?? Knowing for the VERY SURVIVAL OF THE US, HE HAD TO RETALIATE, or the "mudlums" would know they were on their way to our total destruction because we DID NOT RESPOND.
And worse yet, having to take all the crap he's taking since then, because the WMD reason given for our invasion of Iraq, didn't find ANY "Weapon's of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, according to the MSM, and the Dems, and all the Bush haters.
And one more thing before I close...can you imagine if some of the major Dem political anti-Bush bunch DO know about the situation Bush is in because of his not being able to expose it as yet, and are using it AGAINST HIM by painting Bush as a liar with this NO-WMD's in Iraq, so Bush is a liar mantra??.....
Sorry for the "rant", but IMHO, I considered that freeper's post kinda interesting.....
I don't recall the FBI ever expressing surprise about the purity. But a lot of other people were surprised by the purity because they were expecting something from some biological weapons program.
The attack anthrax didn't come from any biological weapons program. Such programs concentrate on quantity not quality/purity. They use industrialized processes where purity is a waste of time and money. Dropping a pound of powder that's only 10 percent spores on a soldier will kill him just as dead as an ounce of 100% pure spores, and the production costs are much less.
"PURE" spores come from a lab. Concentrations of pure anthrax spores are created every day suspended in liquids like distilled water so that they won't float around. It's less common to dry the spores into a powder, because dry spores will float around and are truly dangerous.
Ed
The false claims were mostly made by the MEDIA and by scientists who were just speculating about what the MEDIA told them.
The details of how all the bad information about coatings and additives got spread around are in Chapter 15 of my book. That chapter is titled "To Err Is Human" and can be read by clicking HERE.
Ed
They are excellent in providing protection for the Clinton agenda.
That was The Great Satan. Ironically, that is what Saddam called Bush.
It is an interesting theory.
That was The Great Satan. Ironically, that is what Saddam called Bush.
It is an interesting theory.
Someone said....It didn't have to be that good. (Pure)
So why was it???
I sort of answered this in another post. But here it is again:
A lot of other people were surprised by the purity because they were expecting something from some biological weapons program.
Such programs concentrate on quantity not quality/purity. They use industrialized processes where purity is a waste of time and money. Dropping a pound of powder that's only 10 percent spores on a soldier will kill him just as dead as an ounce of 100% pure spores, and the production costs for the impure powder are much MUCH less.
"PURE" spores come from a lab. The anthrax mailer didn't HAVE to create a powder of pure anthrax spores. The powder in the media letters was only 10 percent spores; the rest was just debris. Nevertheless, that impure powder harmed more people (12) than the powder made from PURE spores (10), but that's primarily because people took antibiotics to protect themselves from the second mailing. (And it depends upon how you count Kathy Nguyen. If you mistakenly believe that she was killed by the second mailing, then the pure and impure powders hurt the same number of people -- 11 each.)
Why did the anthrax mailer send PURE spores in the second mailing? Apparently he did it because the first mailing had almost no effect. It didn't achieve the intended result. It scared no one. So he created a really scary powder for the second mailing.
Ed
consistent statements?
Dateline, November 2, 2002. One year after the attacks:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/fbisecretlyrecreate.html
FBI investigators and federal scientists have been secretly working for months to replicate the type of anthrax used in last year's deadly mail attacks, as part of a previously undisclosed strategy designed to determine precisely how the spores were manufactured, officials said yesterday.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who revealed the experiments in remarks to reporters here, said that using such "reverse engineering" could help investigators narrow the list of possible suspects.
"We're replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured, but it is not an easy task," Mueller said. "We are going into new territory in some areas."
Dateline September 29, 2003, 2 years after attacks:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-29-anthrax_x.htm?POE=click-refer
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.
But Michael Mason, the new assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, said testing has helped investigators "narrow" some aspects of the investigation and convinced them that the culprit has special expertise.
"We would not have that if reverse engineering had completely failed to provide us with any information or valuable leads," Mason said.
Dateline September 28, 2006, 5 years after attacks:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060929/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_anthrax_2
"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."
If the statement from Ms. Kalisch bore any reflection with reality, don't you think the statements from year 1 and year 2 would more accurately read:
Year 1:
"We're replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured, but it is not an easy task," Mueller said. "We are going into new territory in some areas."
should have read:
"We're replicating the way or ways it might be manufactured. This is a relatively easy task since the anthrax was just pure spores and is routinley made by microbiologists," Mueller said. "We don't have to go into new territory or anything"
Year 2:
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.
should have read:
Two years after the nation's deadly anthrax attacks, the FBI has 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. It was straightforward to do this, since no special additives were used
You are just picking out the words which support your beliefs, while ignoring the facts which do NOT support your beliefs.
The first link you cite also includes this:
Some experts suggested that federal investigators, who have never coped with an anthrax agent as sophisticated as the material recovered from letters to Sens. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), may be feeling their way through the science to discover how difficult the agent would be to make.
"They'd probably want to look at several methods of doing it -- try to make it several different ways to reproduce the end result," said David Franz, head of the Chemical and Biological Defense Division of the Southern Research Institute and former commander of the the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the nation's principal biodefense research center. "It doesn't seem like an unreasonable idea."
The second article you cite includes this:
Scientists said Monday that it is unclear what Mason's revelation means. They say much depends on whether the FBI is attempting an identical re-creation.
There are many ways to create the powders in the anthrax letters. So, you have to duplicate the powder exactly if you want to create evidence for use in court. That means you also have to duplicate the lab contamination.
When you have to distort and leave out facts to make your case, that just shows how WRONG you are.
Ed
It doesn't surprise me in the least that you see perfect consistency in the FBI's statements from year 1, year 2 and year 5.
If true, it would be someone with insider Al Qaeda knowledge...since the first anthrax letter was mailed on September 8, 2001.
No.
You have random anthrax spores in wool processing facilities, as well as on the ground in sheep-grazing areas...without people getting infections.
An anthrax infection takes hundreds of spores at a single moment. It's a weak bio-agent.
It's the first thing for which a vaccine was ever developed (Louis Pasture circa 1850).
The first person to die was **not** from the Post Office, and the many people who were later infected were treated with modern anti-bodies that cure anthrax infections easily when applied early...a fact that ruins any statistical analysis of who died because of what...because once we realized that we had been hit with a bio-attack, the proper medicine was used to treat/prevent anthrax infections among the exposed.
Incorrect. In fact, no anthrax letter was **ever** found in the AMI building in Florida. Just theories about a wierd celebrity letter that a few staffers remember once seeing.
My own theory is that the wife of one of the AMI execs, who just happened to be the landlord for 2 of the 9/11 terrorists (she rented their apartment to them in Florida) caused Bob Stevens (who worked in the AMI building) to become infected via anthrax-tainted cash used to pay her their rent.
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