First - check and see how long Dr. Bailey was head of USAMRIID and under what circumstances he came to that position and left that position. When learning that, take into consideration how the military works (I used to be an MP so I can say that).
second - USAMRIID is a lab like any other lab except that they have some hot agents. Just because a person works there doesn’t mean they know ANYTHING about biological weapons. It only means that they know about biological agents. Be careful on that assumption.
third - for those of you who don’t work in academia, people who are not involved in research projects do sometimes get listed on publications just because of their administrative responsibilities rather than their scientific expertise and contribution. Always ask the authors to tell you their contributions. If they can’t explain, then you know they are only on there either out of courtesy (it does happen) or because they inserted themselves before publication (that happens too).
Dr. Bailey is an entomologist and studied Rift Valley Fever (I believe) and probably some other microbes too but you’d have to ask him what they were. It does not make him a BW expert anymore than being the senior Mason biodefense education program administrator makes him a BW expert. In some areas, he has far more knowledge than I do and he has my respect in those areas but I seriously doubt that he knows how to make anthrax biological weapon much less any biological weapon. Why would he?
This makes perfect sense — with Ft. Detrick in the business of vaccine research, for example, not research on aerosols.
Following his retirement from active duty, however, Dr. Bailey continued to have a very distinguished career — working for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) where he was responsible for following the offensive biological warfare program of the former Soviet Union. He was the DIA representative to the intelligence community on issues related to bioterrorism. Beginning in 1997, he worked for Battelle with Ken. So I imagine he has considerable access to know how. So my concern would be that this graduate student coming over from computer sciences at George Washington (Ali) to GMU’s bioinformatics program co-sponsored by ATCC would be able to gain surreptitious access to his communications and documents, particularly given that he had a high security clearance at some point for work for the Navy in bionformatics. Les Baillie once lectured to a group of scientists in the UK that included Ayman Zawahiri’s man Rauf Ahmad on the importance of bioinformatics in understanding the medical response to anthrax. (I’m handicapped by not knowing anything about science beyond what is taught by Bill Nye the Science Guy. Truth be told, I don’t know even that).
In 2001, the Navy was doing simulations involving aerosolized anthrax attacks on ships, though I have idea whether that is what Ali’s work for SRA involved. Ali worked long hours. He presumably was in the building at night — by my estimation, a spitwad’s distance from both Ken and Charles though I’m still working on confirmation. I’ve listed the room numbers and link a floor map. So I don’t see why Trebel Rebel is being so thickheaded on the solution to Amerithrax. US-based supporters of Al Qaeda are responsible and the FBI and CIA have kicked butt in the matter for 5 years but just haven’t been able to take credit.
Ali moved from GWU to GMU in 2000. It was in 1999 that Ayman wrote AQ military planner Atef saying that he planned to use the cover of universities and charities for the specialists they needed to weaponize anthrax. Even upon his indictment, the two folks he mentions (one being Qutb) are the two deep thinkers that most influenced Ayman. See the history of the Movement published this month by Al Qaeda’s spymaster and head of the IG member who joined AQ. The author also wrote a treatise that included a discussion about Amerithrax. The actual key player in arranging things, I believe, was the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Islambouli. He had been in a cell with KSM for years.
If there is an aerosolized attack on DC or NYC, there will be the usual handwringing about the failure of intelligence. But the failure of intelligence, this time, is one of the public that isn’t connecting the dots right in front of it. ... just because there isn’t a press release by the FBI confirming it wasn’t a First Grader who wrote the letters. In a national security matter, a successful prosecution is secondary to disruption of the enemy and keeping the secret.
The rub here, is: are all the secrets being kept legitimate law enforcement priorities? Or is there a strong motivation on the part of DIA, DARPA, USAMRIID etc. to avoid embarrassment. I credit Postal Inspector Richter that there is no “cover up.” But, hey, youse guys, isn’t it time to raise the curtain?
http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com